story goes that one of the new-comers was startled on a July night by
the appearance of two ghostly figures that seemed to come out of the
boxwood grotto and dance a stately minuet along the garden paths. Every
year, it is said, they still come back. When the trees are in their
fullest foliage and the earth carpeted with flowers, the shades of the
unhappy wife and the laughing-eyed soldier she could have loved haunt
the neglected garden, and with only a sighing wind for music, they bow
and sway through the tangled paths until the morning stains the dreary
faces of the decaying castles across the water.
MAJOR ANDRÉ'S LAST LOVE
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
MAJOR ANDRÉ'S LAST LOVE
At the foot of Broadway, New York City, there is a little plot of
grass, surrounded by a rusted iron railing, which is a part of the
one-time Bowling Green. In old Knickerbocker days and up to the time
of the Revolutionary War it played an important part in the history of
the Colony. When the British occupied the city it was often used as a
romping-ground by the neighborhood's Tory children and the waifs of the
alley-ways.
There in the summer of 1779 a happy-faced youth with sparkling dark
eyes and hair lightly powdered would sometimes be seen sketching a
group of frolicsome urchins as they rolled their hoops or played
games among the bushes. He was Major John André, then acting as an
aide-de-camp to General Clinton and living at his head-quarters.
One bright May day after the capture of Stony Point, when sweet airs
were stealing over from the fragrant wilderness Paulus Hook, and the
road Broadway was like a glittering golden ribbon drawn through a world
of summer time, Major André loitered near his favorite seat on the
greensward. Toying with his pencil, he glanced up to see a chair pass
by on its way up from Whitehall. By its side walked three cavaliers
dressed in the height of fashion and looking as if they might have just
stepped out of Court Alley. Its window-panels were down to let in the
air, and as it rounded the green the young soldier from his point of
view caught a glimpse of one of the fairest faces he had viewed during
his American career. Soft brown hair rolled high above eyes of the
same shade and a complexion as beautiful as the apple-blossoms of old
Derbyshire.
Who the maiden was he longed to inquire, but no one was by, and in an
instant the chair had passed. His eyes followed it, and as it turned in
its triumphal course into one of the upper streets he saw a white hand
rest for an instant above the door and wave the end of a fichu. All day
long the memory of the lovely face and the waving fichu stayed with him.
Looking out of a window of Sir Henry Clinton's drawing-room at
nightfall, he saw the same chair on its homeward way, followed by
another. Then he learned from some of his brother officers that the
vision of the morning was Sally Townsend, a belle of Long Island.
General Sir Henry Clinton was then occupying the mansion No. 1
Broadway. It was a spacious house with a garden extending to the river.
Only a portion of his time was spent there, for when the weather grew
extremely warm he departed with his household for the Beekman mansion
at Turtle Bay. In the garden of the former place, one of the noted
pleasure-spots in the city, Major André is said to have composed his
poem "The Cow Chase." These quaint verses would perhaps be forgotten
to-day if the one who penned them had not been immortalized by calamity.
[Illustration: THE TOWNSEND GARDEN]
Although the British officers made New York a theatre of amusement
in which the candles never flickered or died out for a space of many
months, the dashing André could not have found it as agreeable a spot
as Philadelphia. In that city he planned the famous Meschianza in
honor of jovial Sir William Howe, and was acclaimed the hero of the
hour. Fame to him seems to have been an instinctive passion, and
although of a family humbler than most of those of his scarlet-coated
compatriots, he rose like a meteor above the shackles of environment
and became the favorite of his regiment. It is small wonder that a
youth who could correspond with the learned Anna Seward, as he did at
the age of eighteen, should have hated his work in the mercantile shop
of old Warnford Court. Looking back over the years to-day, he appears
to us a paragon. That the "Cher Jean" of that humble home circle at
Litchfield should be described by all his faithful biographers in most
glowing colors is singular proof that he could not have fallen far
short of their eulogiums. Of unusual personal beauty, a poet, artist,
linguist, and musician, he lives for us again the handsome limner the
belle of Long Island waved to on an early summer's day.
The love-affairs of Major André have always created as much discussion
as the justice of his lamented fate. Whether he was true to that
paragon of virtues, Honora Sneyd, as has often been written, or
forgot her for Peggy Chew, Rebecca Redman, or any of the host of
colonial beauties whose names have been linked with his, can never be
answered. This we know, that after she was married to another, "the
endless Mr. Edgeworth," André still wore her miniature, and he himself
tells us that he secreted it in his mouth when taken a prisoner at
Quebec. His affection for her was pure and lofty, and in his sprightly
and characteristic letters to Anna Seward, her foster-sister, who
corresponded with him under the pseudonym of "Julia," we obtain
glimpses of a hopeless passion; of a lover who truly loved and longed,
but was never an accepted suitor. In the fall-time of 1769 he writes
to "Julia" from the midst of the implements of "quill-driving" in the
London establishment:
[Illustration: MAJOR JOHN ANDRÉ.]
"Instead of figuring a merchant as a middle-aged man, with a bob
wig, a rough beard, in snuff-colored clothes, grasping a guinea
in his red hand, I conceive a comely young man, with a tolerable
pigtail, wielding a pen with all the noble fierceness of the Duke of
Marlborough brandishing a truncheon upon a sign-post, surrounded with
types and emblems, and canopied with cornucopias that disembogue their
stores upon his head; Mercuries reclin'd upon bales of goods; Genii
playing with pens, ink, and paper, while in perspective his gorgeous
vessels launched on the bosom of the silver Thames, are wafting to
distant lands the produce of this commercial nation. Thus all the
mercantile glories crowd on my fancy, emblazoned in the most effulgent
coloring of an ardent imagination. Borne on her soaring pinions, I
wing my flight to the time when Heaven shall have crowned my labors
with success and opulence. I see sumptuous palaces rising to receive
me; I see orphans, and widows, and painters, and fiddlers, and poets,
and builders protected and encouraged; and when the fabrick is pretty
nearly finished by my shattered pericranium, I cast my eyes around and
find John André by a small coal fire in a gloomy compting house in
Warnford Court, nothing so little as what he has been making himself,
and in all probability never to be much more than he is at present.
But, oh! my dear Honora! it is for thy sake only I wish wealth."
Later in the day he pictures his Honora and a few of her friends
forming a snug circle about her dressing-room fireplace, and gives vent
to the wish that he were with them. Then comes the closing hour of
the "compting house," and he writes, "I am about to jog to Clapton on
my own stumps; musing as I homeward plod my way--Ah! need I name the
subject of my contemplation?"
Although Honora Sneyd was the grand passion of André's life, he had a
gay and volatile temperament, and many a pretty face caught his fancy
after donning the king's livery; and so we find him in the days that
followed his meeting with the belle of Long Island journeying to her
home in Oyster Bay.
The house where Sally Townsend resided still stands on the main street.
The old building was erected by Samuel Townsend in 1740, and is little
changed since the day Sally's gallant British admirers used to hurry
over from wind-swept Fort Hill in search of her. The Townsends were
among the first Long Island settlers, having purchased land in this
village in 1661. One of the early daughters of the family, by the name
of Freelove, married the famous pirate, Tom Jones, as dreaded by Long
Islanders as Captain Kidd was farther south. Their house at Massapequa,
known as "the pirate's house," remained standing until well into the
last century. An interesting tradition is often told of it. When the
pirate lay on his death-bed a great black bird hovered over the roof,
circling about the chimney. As his breath was ceasing it flew through
the western wall, and no one ever succeeded in closing the hole that
its strong wings made, the bricks and mortar always tumbling out as
fast as put in place.
Tom Jones had long been a troubled shade, if we credit the tales of
ghost-hunters, when Major André first came to Oyster Bay. Colonel
Simcoe, commander of the Queen's Rangers, was then quartered at the
Townsend house, and General Clinton's aide, on his week's leave of
absence from New York, knew he would receive a warm welcome from him.
It was noonday when he and two of his fellows arrived at the village;
a market lad directed them to the house. Wilting under the rays of the
hot sun, they were longing for the cool strip of Quogue's beach.
André was inwardly lamenting his foolhardiness in coming such a
long distance simply to get a closer view of a maiden who had waved
a kerchief at him. As they approached the wide gray shadow of the
Townsend dwelling the noise of some disturbance from within met their
ears. There was a clatter of china-ware, deep, boisterous laughter, and
a woman's voice in shrill accents. "Don't!" and "Lud!" and then "Keep
it up!" floated out through the windows. André parted the plumes of a
high peony-bush, stood on tiptoe, and gazed in at the scene. A girl,
dodging a line of lusty youths pursuing her about a table filled with
steaming viands, stopped in her flight.
For a moment she gazed at the man's head and shoulders rising out of
the plant in the garden. To both their minds came the picture of a
patch of grass at the foot of Broadway and the memory of a waving bit
of white gauze. The girl blushed and so did the man over the peonies.
The noise was still going on about her. For a moment she hesitated,
then, rushing to the window, she merrily called, "Help! Help!" One of
the young soldiers had also caught a glimpse of André and recognized
him.
"'Tis John André, Clinton's aide, coming," he said; but the words had
no more than left his mouth when a biscuit hit the spot from whence
they came.
"Take that, and that," the rescuer cried, as he aimed the crispy balls
at the ungallant youths. "Shame on you! Four lads to one maid!"
The men were laughing.
The girl had become silent and her cheeks were flaming scarlet. "'Twas
a game of forfeits, sir," she cried, "and they took advantage. I shall
call the others of your tribe, gentlemen," she said, turning to her
tormentors. There was scorn in her voice, but her eyes smiled on André.
Later in the day André sat at the feet of Sally Townsend, as she
shelled peas in a grotto at the back of the house. Almost up to the
entrance of the spot which she herself had planned in imitation of a
Ranleagh grotto marched an army of radiant blooms. Over their fragrant
faces hovered a band of butterflies, and now and then a brigand bee
droned of his thefts to a heedless world. Every Simcoe redcoat was away
drilling in a distant field. The house seemed like some great white
bird asleep in the sun. The man and the girl under the cool arch of
cedar boughs were facing each other. Even the brook in the distance had
stopped its murmuring.
"And why did you wave to me that morn on Broadway as you journeyed to
your Aunt's?" André asked.
"'Twas all a mistake, I told you. I took you for some one else," the
girl replied.
"Tell me, was he much like me?" he began again.
The girl smiled. "Why press me, Major André?" she said.
The peas were flying through her rosy fingers. The young soldier by her
side reached out to a gaudy poppy and broke it from its frail stem. Now
he was playing with it. A shaft of sunlight had strayed over from the
flower field and was loitering on his unpowdered hair, beating it into
gold.
Suddenly he spoke:
"I came all the way from York to obtain another view of you, Miss
Townsend. The face by the chair window was so wonderfully sweet. Won't
you tell me why you waved?"
The girl bent her head over the pea-pods. The bees, for a moment deep
in the honeyed hearts of the flowers, were silent. The hot world seemed
like a colored print in a picture-book, brilliant but without life.
"If you must know," she said, hesitatingly, "I thought for a moment you
were the man I love. The color of the coat showed me my mistake."
She was smiling at his chagrin.
There was a silence for a few minutes.
"Where is your rebel to-day?" he said, when he had cast his dream away.
A look of sadness came over her face and tears choked her voice as she
answered, "God knows!"
It was the calls of old Miss Townsend for her evening vegetables which
broke up the visions of the two. The girl's last words had brought to
André's mind a picture of his Honora separated from him by miles and
miles of ocean. Did she care whether he followed this new beauty? he
asked himself. No; she had forgotten him. He looked at Sally. Where
were her eager thoughts now? With some slender youth tramping along a
Jersey road, perhaps. She was following him through the dark forest
where he walked with bleeding feet. Camp-fires glowed before her eyes
as he ate his starvation rations, the wind whistled in her ears with
its shriek of musketry and deep roar of cannon. Now she gazed upon him
wounded and creeping over the mossy turf to some stream to quench his
thirst of death. The agony of it was awful.
André saw the horror in her face.
"Poor girl," he whispered, "he is safe somewhere, I know; my heart
feels sure of it."
Sally rose and he carried her basket into the kitchen, where a slave
woman took it, murmuring protestations of thanks. There was no room in
the house for him to sleep, but Sally assured him that he could find a
lodging at the tavern.
"May I come and see you to-night?" he said, when they reached the
garden gate.
"You had better not," she answered. "You know me only as a hoyden with
silly wits. I should hate all of you redcoats!"
"Let me come and I will talk only of him," he whispered.
"Then come," she said. "King George has the whole village in his power,
and besides," she added, "you somehow make me think of Jack." And her
eyes followed him as he walked down the street, turning often to bow to
her until the night folded him in her arms.
"André hath captured the belle," was the verdict of every Simcoe
officer quartered at Townsend's. They had become firm friends. The gay
young officer had journeyed into the country in search of a pretty
face and had found a good heart. André settled in his mind that the
waving fichu was but the caprice of a moment; the act of a young and
thoughtless girl who never hoped to see him again. Did he really look
like Jack? he often asked himself. From Sally he heard of that youth's
good parts, and soon began to feel a strange sympathy for him. Before
the war he was the master of the village school. He was a dreamer and a
writer of sweet verses who should have had naught to do with battle.
In a little vine-covered cot by the king's highway his mother dwelt,
breeding doves and rarer birds for a livelihood. There were few sales
for her now. André passed her sometimes, seated by her doorstep, her
wrinkled old face turned towards the west road where she had followed
her best beloved to the turnpike one bright morning two years before.
Her eyes were like those of a troubled parent bird, as she often sat
there brooding. Once he went to see her with Sally. The girl had told
him more of her lover. In a burst of confidence she had informed him
that they were not even betrothed; his poverty forbade him the house.
André sighed with her over the tale of no letters. There was one who
never wrote to him, too, but alas! from choice. Once he showed this
younger woman her miniature. He was growing to love Sally as a brother
would. They were so alike with their smiles and their laughter, yet
each with a sad secret. At Philadelphia and York, where gayety was
rife, the image of his Honora did not come before him as often as it
did in this quiet village.
With Sally, André would leave the house ostensibly to walk over to the
camp, but, once away from prying eyes, they would wander off through
the pines to heathy wastes where the golden-rod tossed its tassels
knee high, and through fields green and riant, filled with the very
passion of ripe summer. It was on these walks that they entered into
the closest communion. All their superficialities seemed to vanish.
André forgot the many beauties the God of Love had led his footsteps
to in America, and for the time was the simple "Cher Jean" of younger
days. The girl by his side felt stronger with him. Jack must be safe,
for he said so. "You will find him again and happiness," he would often
tell her. "The world cannot be all made up of dreary days." And a smile
always followed the sigh.
On the fifth day of André's stay in Oyster Bay he wandered with Sally
as usual beyond the outskirts of the township. Starting for home when
the sunbeams were beginning to fade along the roadway, they came upon a
fisherman's wife driving an empty cart. The woman was all excitement,
and in a jumbled Dutch dialect tried to tell them of something that had
happened, pointing often to the village. She evidently feared André,
for her eyes resting on him were filled with hatred. Sally was used to
seeing the woman pass by the Townsend gate. What could she mean by her
queer actions? She was evidently trying to tell them that something
had been taken from her.
"Her fish may have been seized by the soldiers, poor thing!" the girl
said, as, still gesticulating wildly, they watched her drive away. When
she was out of sight the two hurried on.
The sun left the tree-tops and sank into a misty grave. Gray vapors
stole over the meadows. The day was dying sadly. The dew came suddenly
upon the countryside and drenched all its varicolored beauty in tears.
The wings of a storm could be heard in the distance. André seized his
companion's hand and they ran laughingly with the wind.
The girl paused for breath. Her face changed. "Major André," she said,
"what do you think the woman meant?"
"'Twas her fish," he said, to comfort her.
Nature's swift transition coming upon them so silently gave him a
strange foreboding of impending trouble.
They were entering the street; the storm was at their backs. The day
was stifled in a sable pall. There was a roll of thunder and a swift
flash of lightning illumined the sky. Then out of the sullen blackness
loomed the house, a sheet of fire, candles glowing in every room. A
group of townspeople were about the door. Sally ran from André's side.
Old Miss Townsend sat on the doorstep weeping, with her head in her
apron. Sally looked at her and then at the faces about her. Most of the
people were Tories, and there was little in their eyes but curiosity.
Two or three neighbors glanced at her tenderly, and one stepped forward
as if to speak, then checked herself. Inside there was the murmur of
many voices. One that lived ever in her heart now came to her ears like
an evil dream. Her face blanched. André was by her side in an instant.
"'Tis Jack," she whispered. In the hall she saw him bound and bleeding.
His face was thin and haggard. There were bayonets all about him.
"You cannot enter here yet a while," a sentinel called out; but her
ears were heedless. In André's arms she had swooned. The few who
remained by the door were bending over her; about them roared the storm.
Sally's lover had been captured that afternoon in a rye field a mile
from his home. He was dressed in a cheap, soiled homespun, and would
have passed as a farmer's lad if a townsman vigilant in the service of
King George had not recognized him. The youth was free after a long
incarceration in a British warehouse prison in New York City. Many a
weary mile he had skirted homeward bound. His one thought was to reach
his mother's cool little cot again. The fever was still in his veins.
He was nearing the road to rest when the soldiers ran out upon him. To
his distraught fancy they seemed like red devils eager to drag him
back to hades. Off over the fields he could see the roof of Sally's
home. How glad she would be to see him again! Farther on was the little
house he loved so well. The storm-clouds were beginning to form over
it. His mother was no doubt bringing in the birds now from the willow
garden house. Hark! was that the faint call of Rollin, his own pet
bluewing?
"Yes, he belongs to the rebel forces," he heard a voice cry out. "He
must be here spying." Grim faces pressed closer to him. Cruel hands
bound him. Death was whispering to him--mocking. A thoughtless youth
who carried a flute began to play the doleful music of "The Rogues'
March." On they went to the tribunal.
Colonel Simcoe, who was kind at heart, could not condemn the young
prisoner to death when there was little proof that he was a spy. His
men had searched him for possible papers, but none were to be found.
"Still, he may be a clever trickster," he mused. After consulting with
his chief officers, it was decided to give out a mock sentence that
he was to die on the morrow, to see whether aught could be learned
from him. Then Major André, who had helped old Miss Townsend carry the
prostrate Sally to her chamber, stood by the door from whence emanated
justice when the verdict was reached. "If he is hung it will kill the
poor maid," he thought. Through the ante-room he saw the prisoner.
His head was drooping; the very attitude of his body betokened abject
despair. "Poor lad," he said; "can Simcoe mean to carry out the murder?"
The storm was ceasing. So grave were the affairs over which the little
world in the Townsend house were concerned that the night was on them
unawares. The hour was long past the usual evening meal-time. The
sentence of death sickened the hearts of all of those not in the plot.
The court was about to break up when the prisoner asked permission to
speak with Colonel Simcoe.
For the last hour they had been trying to wring from him that which he
knew not. Was this a confession? The thought of death was a compelling
force. A hush fell upon the room, broken only by the sputter of a
candle.
"Colonel Simcoe," he said, "as this is to be my last night on earth, I
ask of you a favor." He had suddenly grown pale like one arisen from
a weary couch of sickness. "'Tis a great boon to ask, sir, and I have
naught to give in exchange but my word. I came to this place to-day
solely with the thought of seeing my old mother--and one other," he
added, hesitatingly. "This has cost me my life, and I beg that you will
let me go to her just for an hour or two, and I promise to come back
again. Half a mile down the road is our house. She is thinking of me
now, poor soul!" His voice had sunk into a whisper. "The bird woman;
perhaps you know her, sir. You must trust me to go, and go alone. The
knowing I am a prisoner would kill her. Do I ask too much?"
The officer looked at the youth. 'Twas a prodigious request, but
bespoke honesty. The words touched a hidden part of his nature. The
fair white face before him with the eager eyes brought back to him
dead faces dreaming under cypress-trees. "I will set you free for two
hours," he said, "on your promise to come back."
"I promise to return by all that I hold sacred," the youth answered.
The cords that bound his swelling arms were loosened. The great hall
door swung back for freedom, and he staggered out into the garden. The
storm was over. After the brightness of the room his eyes could not
penetrate the darkness. A dash against a drenched rose-bush brought a
cloud of raindrops and loosened petals on his head. The dampness and
the faint odor of the flowers awakened him. A wind was arising, making
a low murmur among the bushes.
Suddenly it came over him that he was leaving Sally's house. Only the
Townsends had white garden-posts. Sally! How sweet the name! Long, long
ago it was that he bade her good-by in the meadow. He felt her kiss on
his cheek now. Then the wind sighed, "You are to die!--to die!"
A chill was creeping over him--he was to go back to the great house.
No, it was not right. He was young; he was free; he could escape to the
forest, and they would never know. For a moment he turned and looked at
it, then hurried off into the road.