No sooner had the British returned from their brief sally than they settled into winter quarters, and gave themselves up to such amusements as the city afforded or they could create.
The commissary had taken good heed to have one of the finest of the deserted Whig houses in the city assigned to him, and whatever it had once lacked had been supplied. A coach, a chair, and four saddle-horses were at his beck and call; a dozen servants, some military and some slave, performed the household and stable work; a larder and a cellar, filled to repletion, satisfied every creature need, and their contents were served on plate and china of the richest.
“I’ faith,” explained the officer, when Mr. Meredith commented on the completeness and elegance of the establishment, “’t is something to be commissary-general in these times; and since the houses about Germantown were to be destroyed, ’t was contrary to nature not to take from them what would serve to make me comfortable. Their owners, be they friends or foes, are none the poorer, for they think it all perished in the flames, as it would have done but for my forethought.”
However lavish the hospitality of Lord Clowes could be under these circumstances, it was not popular with the army, and such officers as came to eat and drink at his table were more remarkable for their gastronomic abilities than for their wits and manners. In his civilian guests the quality was better, the man being so powerful through his office that the best of the townsfolk only too gladly gathered about his table when they were bidden,—an eagerness at which the commissary jeered even while he invited them.
“They are all to be bought,” he sneered. “There is Tom Willing, who made the most part of his money importing Guinea niggers, and now is in a mortal funk lest some of it, like them, shall run away. Two years ago he was a member of the rebel Congress and a partner of that desperate speculator Morris, with a hand thrust deep in the Continental treasury rag-bag. Now he has trimmed ship better than any of his slavers ever did, gone about on the opposite tack, and is so loyal to British rule that his greatest ambition is to get his other hand in some government contracts. He and his pretty wife will dine here every time they are asked, and so will all the rest, ye’ll see.”
During the first days in their new domiciliary, Janice showed the utmost nervousness, seldom leaving her mother’s or father’s side, and never venturing into the hallways without a previous peep to see that they were empty. As the weeks wore on without any attempt on the commissary’s part to surprise her into a tête-à-tête, to recur to the words he had forced her to utter, or to be anything but a polite, entertaining, and thoughtful host, the girl gained courage, and little by little took life more equably. She would have been been less easy, though better able to understand his conduct, had she overheard or had repeated to her a conversation between Lord Clowes and her father on the day that they first took up their new abode.
“A beggar’s thanks are lean ones, Clowes,” the squire had said, over the wine; “but if ever the dice cease from throwing me blanks, ye shall find that Lambert Meredith has not forgot your loans of home and money.”
“Talk not to me in such strain, Meredith,” replied the host, with the frank, hearty manner he could so well command. “I ask no better payment than your company, but ’t is in your power to shift the debt onto my shoulders at any time, and by a single word at that.”
“How so?”
“It has scarce slipped thy memory that in a moment’s mistrust of thee—which I now concede was both unfriendly and unjustifiable—I sought to run off with thy beautiful maid. She was ready to marry me out of hand; but give thy consent as well, and I shall be thy debtor for life.”