Rewards and Fairies

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They walked to The Gap, where the cliff is only a few feet high.
A windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the
edge of it. The Coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an
old ship's figurehead of a Turk in a turban stared at them over the wall.
'This time tomorrow we shall be at home, thank goodness,'
said Una. 'I hate the sea!'

'I believe it's all right in the middle,' said Dan. 'The edges are
the sorrowful parts.'

Cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, levelled his
telescope at some fishing-boats, shut it with a click and walked
away. He grew smaller and smaller along the edge of the cliff,
where neat piles of white chalk every few yards show the path
even on the darkest night.
'Where's Cordery going?'said Una.

'Half-way to Newhaven,'said Dan. 'Then he'll meet the
Newhaven coastguard and turn back. He says if coastguards were done
away with, smuggling would start up at once.'

A voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing:

'The moon she shined on Telscombe Tye -
On Telscombe Tye at night it was -
She saw the smugglers riding by,
A very pretty sight it was!'

Feet scrabbled on the flinty path. A dark, thin-faced man in
very neat brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came up, followed
by Puck.

'Three Dunkirk boats was standin' in!'

the man went on.
'Hssh!' said Puck. 'You'll shock these nice young people.'

'Oh! Shall I? Mille pardons!' He shrugged his shoulders almost
up to his ears - spread his hands abroad, and jabbered in French.
'No comprenny?' he said. 'I'll give it you in Low German.' And
he went off in another language, changing his voice and manner
so completely that they hardly knew him for the same person.
But his dark beady-brown eyes still twinkled merrily in his lean
face, and the children felt that they did not suit the straight, plain,
snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches, and broad-brimmed
hat. His hair was tied 'in a short pigtail which danced wickedly
when he turned his head.

'Ha' done!' said Puck, laughing. 'Be one thing or t'other,
Pharaoh - French or English or German - no great odds which.'

'Oh, but it is, though,' said Una quickly. 'We haven't begun
German yet, and - and we're going back to our French next week.'

'Aren't you English?' said Dan. 'We heard you singing just now.'

'Aha! That was the Sussex side o' me. Dad he married a French
girl out o' Boulogne, and French she stayed till her dyin' day. She
was an Aurette, of course. We Lees mostly marry Aurettes.
Haven't you ever come across the saying:

'Aurettes and Lees,
Like as two peas.
What they can't smuggle,
They'll run over seas'?

'Then, are you a smuggler?' Una cried; and, 'Have you
smuggled much?'said Dan.

Mr Lee nodded solemnly.

'Mind you,' said he, 'I don't uphold smuggling for the generality
o' mankind - mostly they can't make a do of it - but I was
brought up to the trade, d'ye see, in a lawful line o' descent on' -
he waved across the Channel -'on both sides the water. 'Twas all
in the families, same as fiddling. The Aurettes used mostly to run
the stuff across from Boulogne, and we Lees landed it here and ran
it up to London Town, by the safest road.'

'Then where did you live?' said Una.

'You mustn't ever live too close to your business in our trade.
We kept our little fishing smack at Shoreham, but otherwise we
Lees was all honest cottager folk - at Warminghurst under Washington
- Bramber way - on the old Penn estate.'

'Ah!' said Puck, squatted by the windlass. 'I remember a piece
about the Lees at Warminghurst, I do:

'There was never a Lee to Warminghurst
That wasn't a gipsy last and first.

I reckon that's truth, Pharaoh.'

Pharaoh laughed. 'Admettin' that's true,' he said, 'my gipsy
blood must be wore pretty thin, for I've made and kept a worldly
fortune.'

'By smuggling?' Dan asked.
'No, in the tobacco trade.'

'You don't mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and
be a tobacconist!' Dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh.

'I'm sorry; but there's all sorts of tobacconists,' Pharaoh
replied. 'How far out, now, would you call that smack with the
patch on her foresail?' He pointed to the fishing-boats.

'A scant mile,' said Puck after a quick look.

'Just about. It's seven fathom under her - clean sand. That was
where Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from
Boulogne, and we fished 'em up and rowed 'em into The Gap
here for the ponies to run inland. One thickish night in January of
'Ninety-three, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came over from
Shoreham in the smack, and we found Uncle Aurette and the
L'Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with New
Year's presents from Mother's folk in Boulogne. I remember
Aunt Cecile she'd sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which I put
on then and there, for the French was having their Revolution in
those days, and red caps was all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us
that they had cut off their King Louis' head, and, moreover, the
Brest forts had fired on an English man-o'-war. The news wasn't
a week old.

'"That means war again, when we was only just getting used
to the peace," says Dad. "Why can't King George's men and King
Louis' men do on their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?"

'"Me too, I wish that," says Uncle Aurette. "But they'll be
pressing better men than themselves to fight for 'em. The press-
gangs are out already on our side. You look out for yours. "

'"I'll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, after
I've run this cargo; but I do wish" - Dad says, going over the
lugger's side with our New Year presents under his arm and
young L'Estrange holding the lantern - "I just do wish that those
folk which make war so easy had to run one cargo a month all this
winter. It 'ud show 'em what honest work means."

'"Well, I've warned ye," says Uncle Aurette. "I'll be slipping
off now before your Revenue cutter comes. Give my love to
Sister and take care o' the kegs. It's thicking to southward."
'I remember him waving to us and young Stephen L'Estrange
blowing out the lantern. By the time we'd fished up the kegs the
fog came down so thick Dad judged it risky for me to row 'em
ashore, even though we could hear the ponies stamping on the
beach. So he and Uncle Lot took the dinghy and left me in the
smack playing on my fiddle to guide 'em back.

'Presently I heard guns. Two of 'em sounded mighty like
Uncle Aurette's three-pounders. He didn't go naked about the
seas after dark. Then come more, which I reckoned was Captain
Giddens in the Revenue cutter. He was open-handed with his
compliments, but he would lay his guns himself. I stopped fiddling
to listen, and I heard a whole skyful o' French up in the fog -
and a high bow come down on top o' the smack. I hadn't time to
call or think. I remember the smack heeling over, and me
standing on the gunwale pushing against the ship's side as if I
hoped to bear her off. Then the square of an open port, with a
lantern in it, slid by in front of my nose. I kicked back on our
gunwale as it went under and slipped through that port into the
French ship - me and my fiddle.'

'Gracious!' said Una. 'What an adventure!'

'Didn't anybody see you come in?' said Dan.

'There wasn't any one there. I'd made use of an orlop-deck port
- that's the next deck below the gun-deck, which by rights should
not have been open at all. The crew was standing by their guns up
above. I rolled on to a pile of dunnage in the dark and I went to
sleep. When I woke, men was talking all round me, telling each
other their names and sorrows just like Dad told me pressed men
used to talk in the last war. Pretty soon I made out they'd all been
hove aboard together by the press-gangs, and left to sort
'emselves. The ship she was the Embuscade, a thirty-six-gun
Republican frigate, Captain Jean Baptiste Bompard, two days out
of Le Havre, going to the United States with a Republican French
Ambassador of the name of Genet. They had been up all night
clearing for action on account of hearing guns in the fog. Uncle
Aurette and Captain Giddens must have been passing the time o'
day with each other off Newhaven, and the frigate had drifted
past 'em. She never knew she'd run down our smack. Seeing so
many aboard was total strangers to each other, I thought one
more mightn't be noticed; so I put Aunt Cecile's red cap on the
back of my head, and my hands in my pockets like the rest, and, as
we French say, I circulated till I found the galley.

'"What! Here's one of 'em that isn't sick!" says a cook. "Take
his breakfast to Citizen Bompard."

'I carried the tray to the cabin, but I didn't call this Bompard
"Citizen." Oh no! "Mon Capitaine" was my little word, same as
Uncle Aurette used to answer in King Louis' Navy. Bompard, he
liked it. He took me on for cabin servant, and after that no one
asked questions; and thus I got good victuals and light work all
the way across to America. He talked a heap of politics, and so did
his officers, and when this Ambassador Genet got rid of his
land-stomach and laid down the law after dinner, a rooks'
parliament was nothing compared to their cabin. I learned to
know most of the men which had worked the French Revolution,
through waiting at table and hearing talk about 'em. One of our
forecas'le six-pounders was called Danton and t'other Marat. I
used to play the fiddle between 'em, sitting on the capstan. Day in
and day out Bompard and Monsieur Genet talked o' what France
had done, and how the United States was going to join her to
finish off the English in this war. Monsieur Genet said he'd
justabout make the United States fight for France. He was a rude
common man. But I liked listening. I always helped drink any
healths that was proposed - specially Citizen Danton's who'd cut
off King Louis' head. An all-Englishman might have been
shocked - but that's where my French blood saved me.

'It didn't save me from getting a dose of ship's fever though, the
week before we put Monsieur Genet ashore at Charleston; and
what was left of me after bleeding and pills took the dumb horrors
from living 'tween decks. The surgeon, Karaguen his name was,
kept me down there to help him with his plasters - I was too weak
to wait on Bompard. I don't remember much of any account for
the next few weeks, till I smelled lilacs, and I looked out of the
port, and we was moored to a wharf-edge and there was a town o'
fine gardens and red-brick houses and all the green leaves o' God's
world waiting for me outside.

'"What's this?" I said to the sick-bay man - Old Pierre
Tiphaigne he was. "Philadelphia," says Pierre. "You've missed it
all. We're sailing next week. "

'I just turned round and cried for longing to be amongst
the laylocks.

'"If that's your trouble," says old Pierre, "you go straight
ashore. None'll hinder you. They're all gone mad on these coasts
- French and American together. 'Tisn't my notion o' war."
Pierre was an old King Louis man.

'My legs was pretty tottly, but I made shift to go on deck,
which it was like a fair. The frigate was crowded with fine
gentlemen and ladies pouring in and out. They sung and they
waved French flags, while Captain Bompard and his officers -
yes, and some of the men - speechified to all and sundry about
war with England. They shouted, "Down with England!" -
"Down with Washington!" - "Hurrah for France and the
Republic!" I couldn't make sense of it. I wanted to get out from
that crunch of swords and petticoats and sit in a field. One of the
gentlemen said to me, "Is that a genuine cap o' Liberty you're
wearing?" 'Twas Aunt Cecile's red one, and pretty near wore
out. "Oh yes!" I says, "straight from France." "I'll give you a
shilling for it," he says, and with that money in my hand and my
fiddle under my arm I squeezed past the entry-port and went
ashore. It was like a dream - meadows, trees, flowers, birds,
houses, and people all different! I sat me down in a meadow and
fiddled a bit, and then I went in and out the streets, looking and
smelling and touching, like a little dog at a fair. Fine folk was
setting on the white stone doorsteps of their houses, and a girl
threw me a handful of laylock sprays, and when I said "Merci"
without thinking, she said she loved the French. They all was the
fashion in the city. I saw more tricolour flags in Philadelphia than
ever I'd seen in Boulogne, and every one was shouting for war
with England. A crowd o' folk was cheering after our French
Ambassador - that same Monsieur Genet which we'd left at
Charleston. He was a-horseback behaving as if the place belonged
to him - and commanding all and sundry to fight the British. But
I'd heard that before. I got into a long straight street as wide as the
Broyle, where gentlemen was racing horses. I'm fond o' horses.
Nobody hindered 'em, and a man told me it was called Race
Street o' purpose for that. Then I followed some black niggers,
which I'd never seen close before; but I left them to run after a
great, proud, copper-faced man with feathers in his hair and a red
blanket trailing behind him. A man told me he was a real Red
Indian called Red Jacket, and I followed him into an alley-way off
Race Street by Second Street, where there was a fiddle playing.
I'm fond o' fiddling. The Indian stopped at a baker's shop -
Conrad Gerhard's it was - and bought some sugary cakes. Hearing
what the price was I was going to have some too, but the
Indian asked me in English if I was hungry. "Oh yes!" I says. I
must have looked a sore scrattel. He opens a door on to a staircase
and leads the way up. We walked into a dirty little room full of
flutes and fiddles and a fat man fiddling by the window, in a smell
of cheese and medicines fit to knock you down. I was knocked
down too, for the fat man jumped up and hit me a smack in the
face. I fell against an old spinet covered with pill-boxes and the
pills rolled about the floor. The Indian never moved an eyelid.

'"Pick up the pills! Pick up the pills!" the fat man screeches.

'I started picking 'em up - hundreds of 'em - meaning to run
out under the Indian's arm, but I came on giddy all over and I sat
down. The fat man went back to his fiddling.

'"Toby!" says the Indian after quite a while. "I brought the
boy to be fed, not hit."

'"What?" says Toby, "I thought it was Gert Schwankfelder."
He put down his fiddle and took a good look at me. "Himmel!"
he says. "I have hit the wrong boy. It is not the new boy. Why are
you not the new boy? Why are you not Gert Schwankfelder?"

'"I don't know," I said. "The gentleman in the pink blanket
brought me."

'Says the Indian, "He is hungry, Toby. Christians always feed
the hungry. So I bring him."

'"You should have said that first," said Toby. He pushed
plates at me and the Indian put bread and pork on them, and a
glass of Madeira wine. I told him I was off the French ship, which
I had joined on account of my mother being French. That was
true enough when you think of it, and besides I saw that the
French was all the fashion in Philadelphia. Toby and the Indian
whispered and I went on picking up the pills.

'"You like pills - eh?" says Toby.
'"No," I says. "I've seen our ship's doctor roll too many of
em.'

'"Ho!" he says, and he shoves two bottles at me. "What's
those?"

'"Calomel," I says. "And t'other's senna.

'"Right," he says. "One week have I tried to teach Gert
Schwankfelder the difference between them, yet he cannot tell.
You like to fiddle?" he says. He'd just seen my kit on the floor.

'"Oh yes!" says I,

'"Oho!" he says. "What note is this?" drawing his bow across.

'He meant it for A, so I told him it was.

'"My brother," he says to the Indian. "I think this is the hand
of Providence! I warned that Gert if he went to play upon the
wharves any more he would hear from me. Now look at this boy
and say what you think."

'The Indian looked me over whole minutes - there was a
musical clock on the wall and dolls came out and hopped while
the hour struck. He looked me over all the while they did it.

'"Good," he says at last. "This boy is good."

'"Good, then," says Toby. "Now I shall play my fiddle and
you shall sing your hymn, brother. Boy, go down to the bakery
and tell them you are young Gert Schwankfelder that was. The
horses are in Davy jones's locker. If you ask any questions you
shall hear from me."

'I left 'em singing hymns and I went down to old Conrad
Gerhard. He wasn't at all surprised when I told him I was young
Gert Schwankfelder that was. He knew Toby. His wife she
walked me into the back-yard without a word, and she washed
me and she cut my hair to the edge of a basin, and she put me to
bed, and oh! how I slept - how I slept in that little room behind the
oven looking on the flower garden! I didn't know Toby went to
the Embuscade that night and bought me off Dr Karaguen for
twelve dollars and a dozen bottles of Seneca Oil. Karaguen
wanted a new lace to his coat, and he reckoned I hadn't long to
live; so he put me down as "discharged sick."

'I like Toby,' said Una.

'Who was he?' said Puck.

'Apothecary Tobias Hirte,' Pharaoh replied. 'One Hundred
and Eighteen, Second Street - the famous Seneca Oil man, that
lived half of every year among the Indians. But let me tell my tale
my own way, same as his brown mare used to go to Lebanon.'

'Then why did he keep her in Davy Jones's locker?' Dan asked.
'That was his joke. He kept her under David Jones's hat shop in
the "Buck" tavern yard, and his Indian friends kept their ponies
there when they visited him. I looked after the horses when I
wasn't rolling pills on top of the old spinet, while he played his
fiddle and Red Jacket sang hymns. I liked it. I had good victuals,
light work, a suit o' clean clothes, a plenty music, and quiet,
smiling German folk all around that let me sit in their gardens.
My first Sunday, Toby took me to his church in Moravian Alley;
and that was in a garden too. The women wore long-eared caps
and handkerchiefs. They came in at one door and the men at
another, and there was a brass chandelier you could see your face
in, and a nigger-boy to blow the organ bellows. I carried Toby's
fiddle, and he played pretty much as he chose all against the organ
and the singing. He was the only one they let do it, for they was a
simple-minded folk. They used to wash each other's feet up in the
attic to keep 'emselves humble: which Lord knows they didn't need.'

'How very queer!' said Una.

Pharaoh's eyes twinkled. 'I've met many and seen much,' he
said; 'but I haven't yet found any better or quieter or forbearinger
people than the Brethren and Sistern of the Moravian Church in
Philadelphia. Nor will I ever forget my first Sunday - the service
was in English that week - with the smell of the flowers coming in
from Pastor Meder's garden where the big peach tree is, and me
looking at all the clean strangeness and thinking of 'tween decks
on the Embuscade only six days ago. Being a boy, it seemed to me
it had lasted for ever, and was going on for ever. But I didn't
know Toby then. As soon as the dancing clock struck midnight
that Sunday - I was lying under the spinet - I heard Toby's fiddle.
He'd just done his supper, which he always took late and heavy.
"Gert," says he, "get the horses. Liberty and Independence for
Ever! The flowers appear upon the earth, and the time of the
singing of birds is come. We are going to my country seat in
Lebanon."

'I rubbed my eyes, and fetched 'em out of the "Buck" stables.
Red Jacket was there saddling his, and when I'd packed the
saddle-bags we three rode up Race Street to the Ferry by starlight.
So we went travelling. It's a kindly, softly country there, back of
Philadelphia among the German towns, Lancaster way. Little
houses and bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as
peaceful as Heaven might be if they farmed there. Toby sold
medicines out of his saddlebags, and gave the French war-news to
folk along the roads. Him and his long-hilted umberell was as
well known as the stage-coaches. He took orders for that famous
Seneca Oil which he had the secret of from Red Jacket's Indians,
and he slept in friends' farmhouses, but he would shut all the
windows; so Red Jacket and me slept outside. There's nothing to
hurt except snakes - and they slip away quick enough if you
thrash in the bushes.'

'I'd have liked that!' said Dan.

'I'd no fault to find with those days. In the cool o' the morning
the cat-bird sings. He's something to listen to. And there's a smell
of wild grape-vine growing in damp hollows which you drop
into, after long rides in the heat, which is beyond compare for
sweetness. So's the puffs out of the pine woods of afternoons.
Come sundown, the frogs strike up, and later on the fireflies
dance in the corn. Oh me, the fireflies in the corn! We were a week
or ten days on the road, tacking from one place to another - such
as Lancaster, Bethlehem-Ephrata - "thou Bethlehem-Ephrata."
No odds - I loved the going about. And so we jogged 'into dozy
little Lebanon by the Blue Mountains, where Toby had a cottage
and a garden of all fruits. He come north every year for this
wonderful Seneca Oil the Seneca Indians made for him. They'd
never sell to any one else, and he doctored 'em with von Swieten
pills, which they valued more than their own oil. He could do
what he chose with them, and, of course, he tried to make them
Moravians. The Senecas are a seemly, quiet people, and they'd
had trouble enough from white men - American and English -
during the wars, to keep 'em in that walk. They lived on a
Reservation by themselves away off by their lake. Toby took me
up there, and they treated me as if I was their own blood brother.
Red Jacket said the mark of my bare feet in the dust was just like an
Indian's and my style of walking was similar. I know I took to
their ways all over.'

'Maybe the gipsy drop in your blood helped you?' said Puck.

'Sometimes I think it did,' Pharaoh went on. 'Anyhow, Red
Jacket and Cornplanter, the other Seneca chief, they let me be
adopted into the tribe. It's only a compliment, of course, but
Toby was angry when I showed up with my face painted. They
gave me a side-name which means "Two Tongues," because,
d'ye see, I talked French and English.

'They had their own opinions (I've heard 'em) about the French
and the English, and the Americans. They'd suffered from all of
'em during the wars, and they only wished to be left alone. But
they thought a heap of the President of the United States. Cornplanter
had had dealings with him in some French wars out West
when General Washington was only a lad. His being President
afterwards made no odds to 'em. They always called him Big
Hand, for he was a large-fisted man, and he was all of their notion
of a white chief. Cornplanter 'ud sweep his blanket round him,
and after I'd filled his pipe he'd begin - "In the old days, long ago,
when braves were many and blankets were few, Big Hand said-"
If Red Jacket agreed to the say-so he'd trickle a little smoke out of
the corners of his mouth. If he didn't, he'd blow through his
nostrils. Then Cornplanter 'ud stop and Red Jacket 'ud take on.
Red Jacket was the better talker of the two. I've laid and listened to
'em for hours. Oh! they knew General Washington well. Cornplanter
used to meet him at Epply's - the great dancing-place in
the city before District Marshal William Nichols bought it. They
told me he was always glad to see 'em, and he'd hear 'em out to
the end if they had anything on their minds. They had a good deal
in those days. I came at it by degrees, after I was adopted into the
tribe. The talk up in Lebanon and everywhere else that summer
was about the French war with England and whether the United
States 'ud join in with France or make a peace treaty with
England. Toby wanted peace so as he could go about the Reservation
buying his oils. But most of the white men wished for war,
and they was angry because the President wouldn't give the sign
for it. The newspaper said men was burning Guy Fawkes images
of General Washington and yelling after him in the streets of
Philadelphia. You'd have been astonished what those two fine old
chiefs knew of the ins and outs of such matters. The little I've
learned of politics I picked up from Cornplanter and Red Jacket
on the Reservation. Toby used to read the Aurora newspaper. He
was what they call a "Democrat," though our Church is against
the Brethren concerning themselves with politics.'

'I hate politics, too,' said Una, and Pharaoh laughed.

'I might ha' guessed it,' he said. 'But here's something that isn't
politics. One hot evening late in August, Toby was reading the
newspaper on the stoop and Red Jacket was smoking under a
peach tree and I was fiddling. Of a sudden Toby drops his Aurora.

'"I am an oldish man, too fond of my own comforts," he says.
"I will go to the Church which is in Philadelphia. My brother,
lend me a spare pony. I must be there tomorrow night."

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