FAIR MAIDS OF FRANCE
In the end the old doctor was neither wholly right nor wholly wrong.
Stephen was never again the square, sturdy lad that he had been before
his terrible illness, but none the less he grew through an active
boyhood and became a busy, useful man. If it ever was a bitter pain to
him to see other boys swim and run and climb in a way that he could
never do again, no one had known of it save perhaps his mother, or his
good friend Sergeant Branderby who had so long ago returned to England.
His hopes of being a soldier or a sailor were destroyed forever in that
single moment when he slipped from the pine tree branch; instead he
became a lawyer and made so brilliant a record that he should have had
small time to grieve over vanished dreams.
While he was still little more than a boy he became the most honoured
member of the Hopewell community; long before his hair was grey he began
to be spoken of as one of the great men of the Colony. What Master Simon
had been to his own little town, Stephen was beginning to be to all New
England. Governors and King’s officers sought his advice, merchants and
ship-masters and labouring men of every kind and degree laid their
perplexities before him. That he was esteemed the wisest man in all
Massachusetts was denied by no one save Stephen himself. With honest
sincerity he laughed at all allusions to his greatness and thought of
himself only as a humble man of law.
“If I have had good fortune,” he used to say, “it is because of the
shoemaker’s luck-penny. If people come to me it is only because they
know that I am a hampered fellow and cannot well go to them. It is
kindness of heart and that alone that brings a portion of the great
world past my doors.”
It was a strange and motley procession that went in and out of the great
house, for half of his guests were dressed in frieze and homespun, while
the other half came clad in satins and velvets and gold-laced scarlet
coats.
Gone now were the old times of rigid economy and stern simplicity among
the Puritans. Men wore bright-coloured uniforms, lace ruffles and great
powdered wigs, while the women, with their jewels, their patches, their
high, red heels and long brocaded trains, were as gorgeously arrayed as
the ladies of the English court. There used to be noble gatherings in
Stephen’s big dining-room, when the greatest men in the land sat about
his board and the tall wax tapers shone upon the officers’ red coats and
jewelled orders, upon the ladies’ powdered hair and diamonds and upon
the more soberly rich garb of the wealthy Massachusetts citizens. A
throng of black-faced servants, themselves decked out in livery and
powdered wigs, would wait upon the company and later conduct them into
the long white-panelled drawing-room whose open windows looked out
across the garden to the sea. Or, if it were winter, the guests would
gather about the fireplace which, although much of the house was new,
was the same rough stone one built by Master Simon’s hands. Amid this
gay crowd of friends moved Stephen, quiet-mannered and simply clad, the
only ornament upon his dark coat a diamond star given him by the King of
France.
That was a time, also, when the garden bloomed in greater glory than it
had ever known before. Those to whom Stephen had done good, and these
were a countless legion, could give him nothing in return in the way of
money or high office, for such rewards he did not want. But the royal
Governors could send him costly fruit-trees from their English estates,
poor sailors could bring him rare plants from foreign lands and his good
friends of Hopewell could offer him the best they had of flower or
fruit. The gardener used to say that Master Sheffield gave away so many
plants and flowers that soon there would be nothing left, but that is
the usual talk of gardeners. This one, with his acres of many coloured
blossoms could not say, generous as Stephen was, that the danger of
stripping the garden was a great or an immediate one.
One portion was left unaltered, that planted by Master Simon; for
beehives still stood in a row beneath the old, old apple trees, and
daffodils in Spring and hollyhocks in summer still bloomed in a riot of
colour beside the white gate. The Queen’s garden, too, was untouched by
any change and here Stephen came often to sit on the bench under the
linden tree and to ponder upon the more and more grave problems that
must be solved by those who had the welfare of New England at heart.
Troubled times were these, with greater difficulties plainly still to
come. It was here that he was sitting, one summer day, knitting his
brows over a letter with a great, red seal, when there came an
interruption that was to mean much to all his after life.
The creak of the opening gate announced a visitor, its hurried bang as
it closed again told plainly that the newcomer was in haste. Looking up
from his letter, Stephen saw before him the town constable, his
good-natured face clouded with perplexity, his brass-tipped staff, the
badge of his office, held stiffly before him, a sure sign that public
duty was weighing the good man down. He was followed by a middle-aged
woman whose dark, weatherbeaten countenance was lined with grief and
whose hair, under her odd, close-fitting starched cap was threaded with
grey. She bore in her arms a bundle of what seemed to be nothing but
delicately embroidered garments but which, suddenly beginning to stir
and turn, revealed itself as a dark-eyed baby of possibly a year old.
The woman dropped a deep curtsey and then stood waiting in silence.
“Please, Master Sheffield,” began the distressed constable, “this woman
is one of the exiles from Acadia, who, as we all have heard, were landed
seven days ago in Boston and who have been wandering all through the
Colony. She has somehow come this far, but there is no one in the town
who can tell what to do with her. She understands no word we say and,
when I speak to her, only curtseys, weeps or breaks into some foreign
jargon of her own.”
“From Acadia?” repeated Stephen. His clear eyes clouded at the name, for
he knew and bitterly regretted the policy that had led British troops
into occupying the French-speaking province of Acadia, and into driving
all the peaceable inhabitants into exile. Hurrying them on board ship,
they had sent them off anywhere and everywhere, in wild haste to be rid
of them, little caring whether families were separated or children and
their parents were lost to each other forever. Stephen, very gently and
kindly, spoke to the woman in her own tongue.
Such a flash of joy as lighted up her poor worn face when she heard
speech that she could at last understand, and such a flood of voluble
French as she poured out when Stephen had finished! The constable looked
on in amazement and finally heaved a long sigh of relief.
“I might have known enough to come to Master Sheffield in the first
place,” he exclaimed. “He always knows what is best to do!”
Stephen, after talking a few minutes with the woman, turned to him.
“I will take the poor creature into my service,” he said, “there is need
of another helper in the kitchen and there seems naught else to do with
her. She can live, with the baby, in the cottage across the field
yonder, it has been empty this year past. Take her up to the house, if
you please, good Master Constable, and tell the servants to give her a
meal and something for the baby. And bid Jason, who was with me in
France and can speak a few words of her tongue, to go with her and show
her where she is to abide. It is a good child you have,” he added in
French to the woman, “is it a granddaughter or a grandson?”
“The baby is a girl, Monsieur,” she answered, “but not mine. Indeed I
have no way of knowing to whom she belongs, for, just as I was being
taken on board ship to be torn forever from my dear native land, I found
this little one wailing on the beach, left behind, in the confusion, by
the boat that must have carried away her parents. And I, who had lost
all those belonging to me in the same way, gathered her into my arms and
kept her with me through all the long, dreadful voyage. A good child she
is indeed, and I have named her Clotilde, after my own little daughter
that died twenty years ago. May Heaven bless you for taking pity on us
and letting us bide where we can hear our own speech again.”
She was led by the constable up toward the house while Stephen returned
to his letter. It had to do with a mission to England that all the
worthies of Massachusetts were begging him to undertake. Once before
this, he had gone to France on a weighty errand for the people of the
province. He had come back with the mission well performed, with the
good will of the French people and with the diamond star that the French
King’s own hands had pinned upon his coat. And now his comrades were
asking him to take up a still more difficult task, to do what he could
toward healing the growing breach between the Colonies and the Mother
Country.
Even as Sergeant Branderby had said, Kings and Queens had grown to be of
less value now, so that, with the fading loyalty to the crown, there had
diminished the regard of the New World for the Old. The dashing Stuart
Kings had been beloved in a way, so had the simple-hearted, good Queen
Anne, but these German princes who sat on the British throne, who
possessed little power and who were half the time in Hanover, what bond
had they with the Colonies? It was hard to be loyal to political
governors, to the constantly changing ministers in London and to the
Parliament that was ever piling up new laws that bore heavily on
America. It was, therefore, to mend these difficult matters that Stephen
Sheffield was begged to go to England.
“Ah, well,” he said at last, coming to the end of a long argument with
himself, “my strength is not much, but if it is of any worth to my
Colony I may as well give it while I can.”
So it happened that the little cottage that had once been Samuel
Skerry’s had scarcely received its new French tenants before the great
mansion on the hill was closed and its master had sailed away to
England. Madame Jeanne Lamotte, or Mother Lamotte, as the Acadian woman
came to be called in Hopewell, kept a watchful eye upon Stephen’s house
and the negro servants who had been left to care for it. For the rest of
the time, she was busy scrubbing and polishing in the shoemaker’s
dilapidated cottage, and tending the rapidly-growing Clotilde. A merry,
active little girl she soon grew to be, with yellow hair and great dark
eyes, quick and dainty in her ways and looking, so the people of the
village said, more like an infant angel than a foundling French child.
Slow-sailing ships and slow-dragging politics kept Stephen long away, so
that it was more than two years before he returned to America. He
brought with him, when at last he came, a priceless document, signed by
His Majesty King George the Second, and, what was of far greater worth,
by the new and powerful Prime Minister, William Pitt, assuring the
Colonies of their rights and privileges for a time at least. But even
now his travelling was not at an end, for he made long journeys up and
down the seacoast, preaching a new political doctrine of which he had
begun to see the desperate need, namely union for all of America. If the
colonists were to guard their freedom, they must learn to act together,
to band themselves into a nation of their own.
Friends remonstrated when they saw how much more frail and ill he began
to look, how hollow his gay blue eyes were becoming and how grey his
hair. But Stephen laughed like a boy at all they said, and put their
warnings aside.
“Grudge me not my share of the game,” he would say. “If the fighting
comes, you that are staunchly built and mighty of limb will then have
your turn and mine will be over. Let me do my part while the time
allows.”
It was only once during this long period that he saw the little
Clotilde. The meeting occurred one late afternoon when he was abiding
for a day or two in his own house and had walked out into the garden to
enjoy the coolness, peace and quiet beauty. Guests were coming later
among whom there would be much weighty discussion of urgent affairs, but
now, for a little, there was rest and stillness.
As he passed down one of the grass-covered walks, he heard, behind the
hawthorn bush, a sweet clear little voice singing an old French song. He
turned the corner of the path and came upon the little Acadian girl,
sitting beside a bed of white and yellow flowers and looking not unlike
them herself, so fair and dainty was she with her fresh white kerchief,
her snowy apron and her bright golden hair. Seeing Stephen, she jumped
up, quite unabashed, and dropped him a prim little curtsey.
“Tell me, what are you doing here and what was it you were singing?” he
asked with a smile.
“It was a French song that Mère Jeanne taught me,” was her reply, “and I
come here often to sit by the flowers and sing to them.”
“You sing to the flowers?” he repeated, puzzled. “What leads you to do
that and why to these especial ones?”
“The gardener told me that they came from our land,” she answered
gravely, “and that the name men give them is ‘fair maids of France.’ So,
since they are in exile as well as we, I come and sing my French songs
to them, lest they grow lonely and weep as Mère Jeanne so often does.”
Stephen held out his hand and took her tiny one into it.
“You are a very little maid to be so loyal to your country, and to your
fellow exiles,” he said, “and you are young indeed to know the sorrows
of banishment. Suppose you lead me to that Mère Jeanne of yours, so that
we may try to comfort her a little.”
That night Master Sheffield’s guests, although they were many and of
high importance, had to wait in the long drawing-room, while their host,
yonder across the misty field, sat on the bench before the shoemaker’s
cottage and talked in French to Mother Jeanne Lamotte. She, poor soul,
had learned but little English and found black Jason’s few halting words
of French, very small comfort indeed. Now that she could pour her heart
out to one who could understand her native speech, it seemed as though
she would never have done. Stephen duly admired the neatness and strict
order of her little dwelling but finally declared that it had grown too
old and tumble-down for comfort and that she and Clotilde must come to
abide in the great house, where, since his sisters’ marriages and the
death of his parents he lived alone save for the black servants.
“There is room in abundance,” he said, “and the little maid will help to
brighten a place where all of us, master and men, are growing dreary and
old together. Would you like to dwell there, Mademoiselle Clotilde?”
“Indeed I would,” she cried with joy, “for there are great wide rooms to
play in and here are only four walls and a smoky chimney.”
Mother Jeanne reproached her severely for this criticism of their
dwelling but Stephen, laughing, insisted that she was right and that the
change must be made at once. But when next day Mother Jeanne and
Clotilde gathered up their few possessions and carried them to the big
house, they found the master gone again and for several months they saw
his face no more.
He went and came much in the years that followed so that he and Clotilde
caught only fleeting glimpses of each other, yet learned, for all that,
to be close friends. Sometimes he found her racing about the garden
walks with her boon companion, Miles Atherton, a sturdy, slow-spoken lad
of Hopewell, sometimes he found her going about her work in the big
house, for she was nimble-fingered and industrious and began early to be
a great help to her dear Mère Jeanne. There was one cosy winter evening
when she sat on his knee before the blazing fire and heard the tale of
King James’ Tree and of Sergeant Branderby and learned how his two great
pistols came to hang above the chimney-piece. Upon another occasion, a
warm summer morning when the linden tree was in bloom, he and she and
Miles Atherton sat upon the bench in the Queen’s Garden while Stephen
told the two eager children the story of Master Simon and Queen
Elizabeth, and of how Margeret Radpath and Roger Bardwell had, on that
very spot, witnessed the French priest’s forbidden mass.
Stephen told them too, one rainy day as they sat in his study, of
Jeremiah Macrae and his still unfulfilled prophecy of the destruction of
the garden. He even got down the great family Bible and turned the pages
to find that same picture that had struck terror to the heart of little
Margeret Radpath, the figure of one of the prophets of old, standing by
the city gate and crying forth a warning of the ruin and desolation that
would come to the land. The tale laid such hold upon Clotilde’s
imagination that she dreamed that night of the ominous Master Macrae and
thought for many a day thereafter of what he had foretold. So dearly did
she love Master Simon’s garden and all that grew in it, that the very
thought of harm coming to that dear place was more than she could bear.
One day, some weeks after, Miles came upon her with the great Bible open
on the table while she stared in terrified fascination at the picture of
the prophet.
“Surely you are not thinking of that story still!” exclaimed Miles. “Why
the man has been dead and his words forgotten for nearly a hundred
years. You do not think that what he said could really come true,
Clotilde?”
“N-no,” she faltered, closing the book with a great sigh, “I do not
think his words could come true—but they might. I do not know what to
think, yet I cannot put the tale out of my mind. When Master Sheffield
comes home I will ask him whether I should believe it or not.”
“We will ask him,” returned Miles sturdily, “but I will not credit such
a dismal prophecy unless I must.”
Clotilde would have given much to feel as he did, but could not put
aside the secret misgiving hidden in her heart. She never let Miles see
her looking at the picture again, but she peeped at it more than once,
none the less. Quaint and rude as was the old woodcut, there was still
something very earnest and very terrible about the face and figure that
were supposed to resemble Jeremiah Macrae’s.
Before Stephen returned, however, the affair had very nearly drifted
from her mind. There were long, long months now when the master of the
house was from home, when she missed him sorely and when Mother Jeanne
would shake her head and say:
“Our good Monsieur has not too strong a hold upon health. It will cost
him his life if he does not give up these endless journeyings.”
There came an evening when Stephen, after a long absence, drew rein
before the door and dismounted, almost too weary to climb the wide,
stone steps. It was to a nearly empty house that he came, for the
servants had all gone to some festival in the village and only Clotilde
came running out to welcome him with a shout of joy, while Mère Jeanne
stood smiling and curtseying in the doorway.
“There will be three men to sup with me,” said Stephen, “so have all in
readiness as soon as you can. And let my man Michael, when he has
carried in the saddle bags, eat and go to bed at once, for he is worn
out with our long riding.”
“But yourself, Monsieur!” Mother Jeanne ventured to remonstrate.
“No, no, woman,” he replied quickly, “I am not weary and have much work
to do.”
The guests arrived presently, all three riding up to the door together.
There was Doctor Thorndyke of Hopewell in his shabby plum-coloured coat
and muddy boots, and with him two strangers, one from Boston, so
Clotilde gathered from their talk, and one from Salem.
“We came in company,” said Doctor Thorndyke as he dismounted at the
steps, “for our friend here tells me that a man rode after him half way
from the last inn and that he fears some rascal may have got wind of the
money that we carry.” He unstrapped his saddle bags and carried them
into the house. “My faith,” he said, “but I am not often so valuable a
man as I find myself to-night. I fairly jingle as I walk!”
Mère Jeanne, who was a famous cook, had prepared a supper fit for King
George himself. Clotilde waited on the company and received a nod and
smile from Doctor Thorndyke who was her old and well-loved friend. When
the meal was ended and she came to carry the plates away, she found that
the dishes had been pushed back and that each man had produced a leather
bag and had poured out on the table a stream of gold, silver and copper
money. Every kind of coin was there, clumsy pennies, silver shillings,
Spanish gold pieces of eight. When all was counted and piled in a heap
together it made a sum that caused Clotilde’s eyes to open wide and
quite took her breath away. It was a strange sight, the pile of coins
shining in the candlelight, the three eager faces lit by the yellow
flame, with Stephen’s white and weary one resting against the back of
his big armchair.
“Here, then,” she heard Doctor Thorndyke say as she was carrying away
the last of the dishes, “is the money for our first fighting-ship, the
gift of Massachusetts to the United Colonies. The sum has been
generously given by rich and poor alike, for people are beginning to
look a little into the future and to see that there will be need for
such a ship and many others. It would have been a misfortune surely had
we been robbed upon the way.”
“I can scarcely believe,” observed Stephen, “that there is any one in
the colony capable of such a deed.”
“We boast some precious rascals in our midst,” said the man from Salem,
“men who, if they would not do it of their own will, could easily be
persuaded to the task by some one above them. I think that the
authorities have got wind of our plan and, not daring to take so bold a
step as to confiscate the money openly, would be glad to lay hold of it
in some such way. However, the whole matter is a mere guess; there may
have been no harm in the fellow who followed us. At any rate, we have
arrived safely and the money for our ship lies here upon the table.” He
filled his glass and held it up:
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I give you the American navy.”
“I have a further gift to add,” said Stephen as he rose with the others
to drink the toast standing, “for I can see now that the great pine tree
at the corner of my garden can be of better service than as a shelter to
travellers on the King’s highway. It shall form the mast of our new
vessel and shall put to sea flying the flag—of a new nation.”
A shout and a clinking together of glasses followed his words, but
Clotilde heard no more for she had gone out with her tray and the door
had swung to behind her.
The night was warm and the long windows of the hall stood open into the
garden, letting in the scent of heliotrope and wallflowers and the
far-off sound of the sea. Clotilde, a little weary with the bustle of
unexpected preparations, set down her tray upon the sill and leaned her
hot forehead against the cool pane. Outside there was only starlight,
but so clear was the night that she could make out the lines of the
garden hedges and the narrow, winding walks. How strange, she seemed to
see a darker shadow moving toward her among the flower beds, then
another, and another! Could it be the servants coming home?
In the dining room, Stephen and his guests were leisurely returning the
money to the leather bags and discussing as to the safest and quickest
method of sending it to Boston, when they were startled by the sudden
crash of the window’s swinging back upon its hinges. A tall, dark-clad
man climbed over the sill, levelling toward them the long barrel of a
pistol. Behind him, three more scrambled up and, similarly armed and
similarly threatening, stood in a sinister row against the wall.
“Hold up your hands, good masters,” ordered the first one, with an easy
insolence that had almost the air of official authority. “You are dead
men otherwise, so you may as well obey!”
The three guests did as they were told instantly, the doctor sputtering
with rage and threatening the robbers with dire punishment. But
Stephen’s hands did not move.
“Quick, sir,” commanded the robber. “Have you no regard for your life?”
“I have,” replied Stephen quietly, “but I have a greater regard for the
people’s money that has been entrusted to my care. Were it my own, I
admit that I might give it up to avoid bloodshed, but as it is—”
There was a burst of flame from the robber’s pistol and a loud report.
The ball cut through Stephen’s coat sleeve and grazed his arm so that
the warm blood came trickling down into his hand.
“Now will you give up the money?” cried the thief as Stephen reeled and
caught at the back of the chair.
“No!” was his defiant answer. His only weapon was the ebony cane that
was always near his hand, but with this upraised, he advanced upon his
enemy. The masked robber lifted his pistol again.
“Come, men,” he was saying.
“Bang,” came a deafening crash from beyond the door. Had a cannon been
discharged within the house it could not have sounded louder. The
thieves drew back and looked at each other dismayed.
“Bang,” came a second explosion more terrific than the first. It shook
the walls of the whole dwelling and was followed by the tinkle of
breaking glass.
“It is the town watch!” cried one of the robbers.
Out through the window they plunged, stumbling and jostling and falling
over one another in their haste to escape. Doctor Thorndyke sprang
forward in pursuit unarmed as he was, the man from Salem was about to
follow, but Stephen held up his hand.
“Let them go for the moment,” he said, “should they turn upon you in the
garden you were surely a dead man. I will have my servant carry the
alarm to the village and call out the town watch.” He sank into the big
chair and his friends hastened to support his bleeding arm.
“Open the door,” Stephen directed weakly. “Let us see to whom we owe our
rescue. I am well-nigh certain that it was not the watch.”
It was Doctor Thorndyke who did his bidding, threw open the door and
started back in amazement at what he saw. Upon the threshold stood a
dainty little maiden with golden hair and neat, white frilled apron. In
either hand she held a great, smoking, horse-pistol.
“Clotilde!” cried Stephen. “Where, in Heaven’s name, got you such
weapons?”
“They were Sergeant Branderby’s,” she replied simply. “There seemed
naught else to do, so it occurred to me to climb up and see if by
chance, they were still loaded. I regret that I broke a window and blew
two great holes in the frame.”
“You are a brave lass,” exclaimed Doctor Thorndyke. Stephen put out his
unwounded arm and drew her to him.
“Child, child,” he said, “the pistols might have burst and killed you
where you stood!”
“That were no matter,” maintained the little girl stoutly, “so only you
and the public money were safe. Oh, oh, you are hurt!”
“It is nothing,” Stephen assured her, although his face was growing
whiter every moment. “Here,” he continued, turning to the others, “is a
generous enemy. Although she is a prisoner of war and an exile from her
own land, still she risks her life to preserve us from our foes. What
say you to such a maid of France?”
“I say that her banishment should be at an end,” said the man who stood
nearest, “and that she should be given, with all honour, a safe-conduct
back to her own country.”
Stephen had been fumbling in his pocket and now drew forth a key.
“Unlock yonder cupboard, Clotilde,” he said, “and bring me the velvet
case that you will find therein.”
When the box was set upon the table before him, he opened it and showed
the diamond star that, on great occasions, he wore pinned to his coat.
He took it up and awkwardly, with his one hand, fastened it to
Clotilde’s dress.
“The gift of the French King,” he said, “finds its true place over a
brave French heart!”
The three men bowed to the little girl who stood in awed and bewildered
silence.
“Clotilde, my child,” went on Stephen, his voice growing suddenly
strangely faint, “will you accept what this gentleman offers and can
give you, a safe-conduct with Mère Jeanne back to your own country?”
“No, no,” she cried, finding her voice at last. “I do not wish to go. I
want to stay here, with you, always!”
And springing forward she was just in time to fling her supporting arms
about him as he fell back, unconscious, in his chair.