“Failure!” snapped the scowling man, as he, too, stooped over the blaze. “Nothing but failure. Here, when the people have been driven frantic by the outraging of their women and the plundering of their property, and want but the smallest encouragement to rise, one man dishes all our hopes by his cursed ambition and disobedience.”
“How so?”
Too angry to control himself, even to Lee’s aide, Jack continued his tirade. “Ever since the general was put into office his subordinates have been scheming to break him down, and in Congress there has always been a party against him, who, through dislike or incapacity, clog all he advises or asks. With the recent defeats, the plotters have gained courage to speak out their thoughts, and your general goes so far as to refuse to obey orders that would make possible a brilliant stroke, because he knows that ’t would stop this clack against his Excellency. Instead, he would have Washington sit passive and freezing on the Delaware while he steals the honours by some attempted action. And all the while he is writing to his Excellency letters signed, ‘Yours most affectionately,’ or ‘God bless you,’—cheap substitutes for the three thousand troops he owes us.” The aide went to the cupboard and helped himself to the apple-jack. “Canst get me a place to sleep, for God knows I’m tired?”
“Thou shalt have my bed, and welcome to thee,” offered Eustace, leading the way upstairs. “Thou’lt not mind my getting into my clothes, for ’t is not shirt-tail weather.”
“Sixty miles and upward I’ve come since five o’clock yesterday morning, and I’d agree to sleep under a field-piece in full action.” Brereton took off his cap and wig to toss both on the floor, unbuckled his belt, and let his sabre fall noisily; then sitting on the bed, he begged, “Give me a hand with my boots, will you?” Those pulled off without rising he rolled over, and, bundling the disarranged bedclothes about him, he was instantly asleep.
It was noon before consciousness returned to the tired body, and only then because the clatter of horses’ feet outside waked the sleeper and startled him so that he sprang from the bed to the window. Relieved by the sight of Continental uniforms, Brereton stretched himself as if still weary, and felt certain muscles, to test their various degrees of soreness, muttering complaints as he did so. Throwing aside his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt, he took his sword and pried out the crust of ice on the water in the tin milk-pail which stood on the wash-stand. Swashing the ice-cold water over his face and shoulders, he groaned a curse or two as the chill sent a shiver through him. But as he rubbed himself into a glow, he became less discontented, and when resuming the flannel shirt, he laughed. “Thank a kind God that it ’s as cold to the British as ’t is to us, and there are more of them to suffer.” Another moment served to don his outer clothing and boots, and to fit on his wig and sword. His toilet made, he went downstairs, humming cheerily. He turned first to the kitchen door, drawn thither by the smell that greeted his nostrils.
“Canst give a bestarved man a big breakfast and quickly?” he asked the woman.
“Shure, Oi’ve all Oi can do now,” was the surly response, “wid the general an’ his staff; an’ his escort, an’ thim as is comin’ an’ goin’, an’—”
Brereton came forward. “Ye ’d niver let an Oirishman go hungry,” he appealed, putting a brogue on his tongue. “Arrah, me darlin’, no maid wid such lips but has a kind heart.” The officer boldly put his hand under the woman’s chin and made as if he would kiss her. Then, as she eluded the threatened blandishment, he continued, “Sure, and do ye call yeself a woman, that ye starve a man all ways to wanst?”
“Ah, go long wid yez freeness and yez blarney,” retorted the woman, giving him a shove, though smiling.