GOODY PARSONS’ ROSE
“To my dear foster-child, called Clotilde Lamotte, but who, if she
carries out my wish, will call herself Clotilde Sheffield until she
changes that name for another, I leave all my possessions in and near
the town of Hopewell and in her especial charge I place that plot of
ground that has long been called Master Simon’s garden. I leave behind
me no directions as to how she is to care for that garden, since I know
that she will tend and cherish it as lovingly as would I myself. I give
her with it my blessing and I bid her be of good heart and not
disappoint Master Simon.”
It was this portion of Stephen’s will, read to her by the staid old
lawyer, that made Clotilde smile, even through her tears. “Not to
disappoint Master Simon” had been a byword between herself and her dear
Master Sheffield whenever the world looked dark and it seemed hard to
face the future with courage. So, with as brave a spirit as she could
muster, she set out to fulfil his wishes.
There was still much, so very much hard work for her to do. Although the
surrender at Yorktown had marked the practical end of the fighting, the
negotiations for peace had dragged on, the country could not settle down
and want and poverty must still be bravely faced. The little town of
Hopewell, while it looked more cheerful and began to wear an air of
greater prosperity, was still full of women who had lost the mainstay of
their families, of men whose means of livelihood had been swept away, of
others wounded or suffering who needed a hand to set them on their feet
again. From cottage to cottage Clotilde went, giving freely of her help
in advice, money and the products of her lands. The time had not yet
come for the finishing of Stephen’s house or the replanting of Master
Simon’s garden.
At length the peace-treaty was signed and ratified by Congress, the last
winter of dire poverty went by and with the Spring the Colonies of
America began the task of setting their affairs to rights and forming a
new government. Many jealous eyes were watching them from across the
seas, for all the world was saying that, though Americans might know how
to fight for freedom they had no wisdom in the matter of keeping it.
Their good friend France had helped them to win their battles, but she
had no power to aid them now. Ah, how sorely was Stephen Sheffield
missed at this crisis and how much he could have done to smooth the
rough road of the blundering nation. Not only those nearest to him, but
also many of the great men of the country mourned the fact that Stephen
Sheffield’s calm, clear, tolerant mind could not assist in this great
task.
Miles Atherton did not come back to Hopewell until the last company of
soldiers had disbanded and until General Washington had gone back to
Mount Vernon to become a plain country gentleman again, instead of the
greatest man of his time. Then it was that Clotilde’s old play-fellow
came back to sit with her in the garden once more, to tell her that he
was to make one more journey, to explain hesitatingly that this was to
be a momentous one indeed—in short to unfold the whole story of the
Quaker Ladies.
“All through that terrible winter at Valley Forge,” he said as, little
by little, she drew the tale from him, “the soldiers used to talk of
some one whom they called the ‘little Quaker Lady.’ No one had ever seen
her close, for she used to come like a little grey shadow, slipping past
our outer lines and then running away into the dark again as though she
were a ghost. But what she left behind was apt to be far from
ghost-like, such baskets of wonderful good things, such fat capons, such
eggs and butter and fresh cream cheese! You would have to be a
half-starved soldier to realise what her gifts meant.”
“Well,” smiled Clotilde encouragingly, as Miles paused, “surely all your
raptures are not merely concerning what she brought you to eat.”
“No,” he answered. “I was only thinking of how I began to tell you of
this when I was here before, and of how my unwonted talkativeness
betrayed me to Master Sheffield and how he laughed at me. I am glad now
that he did guess my secret and that I have the memory of the good
wishes that he gave me. No,” he went on, returning to his tale, “if it
had not been for a chance happening, I would have had no raptures nor
ever known more of the Quaker Lady than that her hens laid most wondrous
fresh eggs.”
“Most eggs are fresh when laid,” Clotilde reminded him, but he assured
her that none could ever be compared to those roasted over the coals of
a campfire in the wind-sheltered hollows of Valley Forge.
“I was doing sentry duty one night,” he continued, “for officers took
their turn as well as privates, so short-handed were we. I had built a
little fire, just so that my comrades would not have the sorrow of
finding a frozen man at my post when they came to relieve me. Suddenly I
thought that I heard, above the crackling of the flames, a sound of
footsteps on the frozen snow, and to make sure, I dropped a branch of
fat pitch-pine upon the coals. There was a quick flare of light and I
could make out, not ten paces from me, a little dark figure in a Quaker
bonnet and cloak. For a single second I saw her face plainly before the
flame died down. She cried out when she found that she had been
discovered, dropped her burden and fled away into the shadows. How the
men chided me when I carried the basket into camp and told my story;
they feared that she had been too badly frightened to return and besides
four of the precious eggs were broken.”
“But she did come back?” Clotilde said eagerly.
“Yes, but so shyly and secretly that I did not see her again all through
the winter. I watched eagerly enough, of that you may be sure, but it
was not until Spring that I met her again. I had wandered one day far
from our valley, farther indeed than was thought safe, but so frantic
was I to see something green after all those months in the barren camp,
that I had no thought of where I went. I told you once of the meadow and
the little clear stream with its banks blue-grey with the close-growing
Quaker Ladies; I did not tell you that, as I was hidden for a moment
behind a clump of willows, the little Quaker maid herself, in her
blue-grey gown and with her hands full of flowers, came walking along
the farther bank. When she saw me she would have run away again, but I—I
persuaded her to remain.”
Clotilde laughed quietly. It was hard to picture slow-spoken Miles
standing on the bank of the stream, trying to beguile the shy Quaker
maiden on the other side into waiting to talk to him. But into the life
of even the most silent of youths there comes always an instant of
eloquence, and this, it seemed, was Miles’ great moment. He sat shaking
his head over the wonder and glory of it even now.
“And did General Washington have to send a squad of soldiers to bring
you home again?” she asked him at last.
“Not quite,” replied Miles, blushing but laughing at himself at the same
time, “although I admit that there was almost necessity for it. I came
to the meadow again and yet again, where she would come to meet me. I
began to feel—oh, Clotilde, how it does steal upon you unawares!”
Poor Clotilde felt a sudden fierce stab at her heart. How it did, to be
sure, come unawares and never go away again!
“At last our army marched forth from Valley Forge,” he went on, “and
she, just as Master Sheffield guessed, was peeping through the window to
see us go by. Her father was a prosperous farmer, not averse to our side
of the war, but more willing to sell his produce for the English gold
than for the worthless paper money that bought our supplies. Had he ever
known how many of his good things went into the larder of the American
soldiers, I fear it would have gone hard with his daughter.”
“It must have been difficult to see her after that,” Clotilde observed.
“Most surely it was,” he said with a sigh; “there were but brief visits
snatched as our army went back and forth. I was nearly captured more
than once, but several times brought back information that was of use to
our Commander, so I never received the reprimands that I well deserved.
There would have been no Captain Radpath to set me free this time had
the enemy laid hands upon me. By the way, have you heard aught of him
since he sailed for England?”
“No, nothing,” she answered hastily, and turned the subject quickly.
“And so now the war is over, you are going to be wedded? Oh, Miles, I am
so glad!”
“In two short months,” he told her joyfully, “and there will be the end
of midnight rides and secret meetings in the meadow. Then she will be
here always and nothing to come between us. Oh, if you could but know
how happy I am!”
She could well measure his happiness, she thought, by her own great
loneliness, but of that she could not speak. She was too fond of her old
playmate not to feel a glow of pleasure in his joy, and she made him
happier yet by the earnestness of her good wishes. He went away through
the gate at last, his joyfulness running over for all the world to see,
as he beamed delightedly upon every one he passed.
In spite of her good share in Miles’ happiness, the world seemed now
very empty and forlorn to Clotilde, for Mère Jeanne had slipped away
during the dark, stormy days of the winter and had left her adopted
child to face life all alone. Only Stephen’s last request, “not to
disappoint Master Simon” availed to keep up her failing courage. She had
a new task before her this Spring, one to which she could turn
unhindered at last, since starvation no longer threatened the poor of
Hopewell. And so, with a heavy heart, she bent her energies to the
replanting of Master Simon’s garden.
“But it will not be his garden now,” she reflected drearily. “It will be
a place like any other, since I who plant it am not even one of his own
children. All that belonged to him has perished utterly.”
When the place was ready, however, when the old beds had been dug and
the former lawns sown with grass again, she bethought her of at least
one flower that she could plant and know it was still Master Simon’s. Up
on the forest hillside was that wonderful group of daffodils, set out by
his hand and waiting all these years to return to the garden whence they
came. With old Jason beside her, she toiled through the muddy lanes and
up through the wood, where buds were bursting on the trees and
Mayflowers were opening under the dry leaves. There she found what she
sought, the dear yellow flowers, flinging their gold down the slope like
long drifts of Spring sunshine. Two great basketfuls they brought home,
and set the sturdy plants in a long row by the fence where daffodils had
always grown since the first year that the Colony was settled.
And then there began a miracle, so it seemed, a wonder wrought only by
simple love and friendliness, but a miracle just the same. She was
lingering over the task of putting the last clump of daffodils in place
when through the gate came young Giles Thurston, twelve-year-old brother
to the good soldier David. To his house more than to any other she had
gone, during the years of want, and had given help when otherwise
starvation would have come very close.
“Please, Mistress,” said Giles, laying upon the ground a great awkward
bundle that he had been carrying in both arms, “I heard that you were
planting your garden and I have been wishing so much that I might bring
you something to grow there. Our own garden is bare and planted with
turnips and cabbages of which you surely have enough already, but up on
the hill is a tumble-down empty cottage with a rose vine growing all
over its broken walls. My mother says that an old woman named Goody
Parsons used to dwell there a long, long time ago and that the rose once
grew in Master Simon’s garden. See, I have brought you a root of it.
Mother put a slip into the ground the very first Spring after your
garden was burned. And here, too, is a part of Goody Parsons’ hawthorn
bush that I think must also have come from Master Simon.”
Poor old Goody Parsons, dead so many years and gone to that Heaven that
was to be like Hertfordshire, how she would have rejoiced to know that
her memory still lived and had offered back the gift that Master Simon
had given.
Most joyfully did Clotilde accept what the boy had brought and together
they went quickly to find the very place where the former plants had
grown. They set the rose below the easement window of the drawing-room
and the hawthorn bush close to the edge of the Queen’s garden.
“Now,” exclaimed Clotilde, “though all the rest be only mine, I can feel
that part of the garden at least still belongs to those who planted it.”
Giles Thurston was not the only one, however, who had an offering to
bring. Nearly every day some woman would present her with a bag of
seeds, saying:
“These are of the pink and white hollyhocks that have flourished in our
dooryard ever since Mistress Margeret Bardwell gave my grandmother the
first plants.”
Or a man would stop at the gate to say:
“I have carried hither a clump of sweet-william that perhaps you may
like to have. It is a matter of pride with us that Master Simon himself
gave the first plants to one of our family. They say he brought them
from England.”
So it went on, Stephen’s flowers, Alisoun’s, Margeret’s and Master
Simon’s all were to be found growing somewhere, so many had been the
gifts and so grateful the friends who had received them. Fraxinella,
wallflowers, peonies and fair maids of France, all were there to grow
anew in memory of the brave old Puritan and his children. Clotilde
dropped a few tears as she set out the fair maids of France. What a
long, long time it was since Stephen had found her sitting beside the
bed to sing to them, how swift the years had been and how happy until so
little a time ago!
The most wonderful gift of all came at the very end of the replanting.
It was brought by the minister of Hopewell, who since the very beginning
of the war had been away and had only just now come home again. What he
gave her was a little bag of gold and an old, torn yellow letter.
“These were left in my hands,” he explained to Clotilde, “by the pastor
before me, who had received them in turn from the man who came before
him. It was only as I was on my way home that I heard full news of the
burning of the garden and realised that the assistant that I had left
here did not know that the letter had to do with just such a disaster.
Indeed, so old is the trust that I had well-nigh forgotten it myself.”
Clotilde, standing by the open window in Stephen’s study, slowly opened
the worn, yellow missive. It bore the crabbed signature of Samuel Skerry
and contained these words:
“If ever Simon Radpath’s garden be destroyed, I know now that it will
not be God’s judgment, as Jeremiah Macrae has sought to make us think,
but that it will be the work of evil alone. Therefore, in the hands of
the minister of Hopewell I am leaving this money, the half of all I
have, so that if that living memorial to Master Simon should come to
harm, this will help to build it up again.
“I might have known that I could not hate him forever, might have
realised, when in a fit of jealous rage I sought to destroy his garden
that it was of no use. A garden such as his, that is planted in the
hearts of his fellow men, can never perish. As I have sat at my
cobbler’s bench through all these years, toiling for my living in an
alien land, I have fought against the thought of Master Simon and of all
the good he did to me and to others, but I have fought in vain. The
memory grew and grew within my heart, choking out my evil and bitter
thoughts, just as his clumps of blossoming plants used to grow until
there was no room left for weeds. So I have come back to do what justice
I can at last ere I die, and to struggle through the snow to look at his
gravestone where he sleeps up yonder on the hillside. I would that I had
earned, like him, such peaceful, true repose.”
The tears rained down Clotilde’s cheeks as she refolded the letter. So
that was why Samuel Skerry, old and broken as he was, had travelled all
the way from Holland to New England, spurred by his longing to make
amends for the wrong that he had done.
The minister emptied the contents of the bag upon the table.
“It is not a very great sum,” he said, “but the little shoemaker’s
penitence should make it equal to all the riches in the world.”
“It will buy back the land that, in the necessity of war, had to be
sold,” answered Clotilde, “the land that Master Sheffield valued at just
that sum—all the riches in the world.”
Thus it came about that the strip of meadow land running down to the sea
became once more a part of the garden, and its blossoming hedge that had
escaped the fire, bloomed, that Spring, for Clotilde and for Hopewell
and not for tight-pocketed Ephraim Paddock.
By this time every flower bed and border was filled again, the May
sunshine had brought out the apple blossoms and the linden leaves, had
quickened the growing hedges and made green the grass of the Queen’s
garden.
“Another year,” reflected Clotilde, rising from her task of setting out
the last plant, “and the place will be all itself again.”
She was working near the hedge that separated that part of the garden
from the lane, and as she stood there, surveying her handiwork, she
heard two men talking together as they passed on the other side of the
bushes.
“They say there is a ship from England come to anchor in Salem harbour,”
said one. “John Ashby rode up to see her, as she is partly his, the Star
of Hope. She was caught in an English port when war began and has been
held back by the winter storms ever since the peace was declared. She is
the first vessel to come to these parts from England since the war
ended.”
“Ay,” said the other. “John Ashby must be a glad man. It is a happy sign
for all of us when ships ply the seas again between the Old Country and
the New. I wonder what she carries!”
He could not have wondered so much as did the little maiden who stood on
the other side of the hedge, her heart beating as though it would choke
her. A ship—from England! No, no, he would not come, she must not let
herself believe it. Through all the long morning she forced herself to
go on with her work, and very badly indeed was it done, for her thoughts
were upon one subject to the exclusion of all else.
The shadow of the sundial had dwindled almost to the marking of noon,
when she heard feet in the lane again, the running feet of men and boys,
hurrying past and up the hill.
“There are travellers from Salem riding into the inn yard,” she heard
some one call. “Come quick to hear the news of the Star of Hope. John
Ashby is with them; he says that some men have come all the way from
London on her. She is the first ship from England.”
Housewives coming to their open doors re-echoed the cry.
“The first ship from England!” they called to one another. “Now indeed
will more prosperous times begin again!”
Sternly Clotilde took her way to the farthest corner of the garden,
where a tangle of wild blackberry and sweetbriar had grown up, and where
once had stood King James’ Tree.
“I can transplant the sweetbriar,” she was telling herself. “It used to
grow outside the window where Gerald—what am I saying, where Master
Sheffield loved to sit. I believe—”
Oh, what was that sound—horse’s hoofs coming down the lane, a pause for
dismounting, a creak of the gate! Whose were those feet on the path
behind her coming so quickly? She dared not look round, she could not.
She felt suddenly weak and giddy; the trembling of her knees forced her
to catch at a branch for support.
“Little Mademoiselle,” said a voice behind her. “What is the matter? Do
you know me only in a scarlet coat?”
What happened then all Hopewell might have watched unforbidden, had not
all, most fortunately, been occupied with other matters.
“For shame,” said Clotilde, finally freeing herself and realising, of a
sudden, where they were. “How can you do so, here by the highroad, where
every person in the town can see?”
“I care not who sees,” responded Gerald cheerfully, “but if it will save
your blushes, we will go into the Queen’s Garden.”
So there under the linden tree, Clotilde listened to just such words as
Alisoun Bardwell had heard there also, the same that Margeret Radpath
had hearkened to in the schoolhouse lane, words that had opened the
gates to such far-reaching happiness. The thin shadow of the sundial
passed the noon mark, stretched its dark finger across one figure and
then another on the circle of the dial. Still they sat there, while
Clotilde learned how Gerald had gone away in silence on account of that
unlucky letter from Miles, of his restless unhappiness in England and
his inability to hide at home when he heard of an American ship setting
sail for a port so near to Hopewell. Of how Miles had met him at the
gate of the inn and, so full of joy that he could not keep his news to
himself, had told of his approaching marriage. Whatever Gerald might
have already planned to do or say, if indeed he had plans at all, had at
once been swept away in his instant desire to reach Clotilde with all
the speed he might.
“I wish that dear Master Sheffield might have known of our happiness,”
said Clotilde as he concluded his story, “or might at least have seen
that it was to come.”
“Perhaps he did,” returned Gerald, “for when I went away he gave me
Samuel Skerry’s lucky penny and said, ‘It will be the best good fortune
of all, lad, when it brings you back to us.’ So here it is and here am
I, and it is on this side of the water that I am going to abide for the
rest of my life. The war is over, King George’s quarrel with the
Colonies is settled forever and I can, with all honesty, throw in my lot
with the Americans.”
Clotilde had much to tell also, of Stephen’s death and Mère Jeanne’s, of
the unhappy, dragging years of the war, of the final beginning of peace
and prosperity, and of the replanting of the garden.
“And see,” she cried joyously, pointing to the beds already green with
growing plants and to the rows of blossoms that had come out in all
their Spring bravery of colour just as though they knew the soil had
once been their real home, “is it not a marvel that Master Simon’s
garden has so come to its own again?”
“It is indeed,” replied Gerald soberly, “and it stands only for the
greater miracle that you have wrought, you Americans. Wonderful things
beyond the mere planting of flowers have been done by those who dwelt
here. Of all the tales told me by my own grandfather and by Master
Sheffield I like best the story of how Master Simon saved the French
priest at such great risk to himself, yet would not flee from peril
because, as he said, ‘I have planted a garden here in the wilderness and
I must abide to see what sort of fruit it bears.’ Ah, such a garden as
he planted in this new world, he and his kind, sowing the seeds of
liberty and justice and freedom for all! Their children and their
children’s children have tended what he planted, Master Sheffield and
his good comrades have carried the seed far, and here is the fruit at
last, a new country for a free people. I wonder at you all, little
Clotilde, at you and at the line of my forbears. Why did all that work
so prosper, both here in your garden and in the world without?”
“Master Simon knew why,” answered Clotilde simply.
She led him down to the sundial and lifted the trailing vines that grew
so close about the pedestal. There she showed him the words that Master
Simon’s hand had carved about the edge of the circle, cut so deep and so
long ago, for posterity to read at last:
“I have planted, you have watered, but God gave the increase.”