The Province House in Boston was the home of the Royal Governors of
Massachusetts. This is the story of how the stately, spectre-haunted
old Housekeeper, even after the departure of the last Royal Governor
and the triumph of the Colonies, remained “faithful unto death” to
her Sovereign Lord King George.
The hour had come--the hour of defeat and humiliation--when Sir William
Howe was to pass over the threshold of the Province House, and embark,
with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board
the British fleet. He bade his servants and military attendants go
before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of the mansion,
to quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom as with a
death-throb. Preferable, then, would he have deemed his fate had a
warrior’s death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a grave
within the soil which the king had given him to defend. With an ominous
perception that, as his departing footsteps echoed adown the staircase,
the sway of Britain was passing forever from New England, he smote his
clinched hand on his brow, and cursed the destiny that had flung the
shame of a dismembered empire upon him.
“Would to God,” cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, “that
the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A bloodstain upon the floor
should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
his trust.”
The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.
“Heaven’s cause and the King’s are one,” it said. “Go forth, Sir
William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in
triumph.”
Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith
that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged
woman, leaning on a gold-headed staff, was standing betwixt him and the
door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years
in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from it as
the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an ancient
and once eminent family, which had fallen into poverty and decay, and
left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the king, nor
any shelter except within the walls of the Province House. An office
in the household, with merely nominal duties, had been assigned to her
as a pretext for the payment of a small pension, the greater part of
which she expended in adorning herself with an antique magnificence of
attire. The claims of Esther Dudley’s gentle blood were acknowledged
by all the successive governors; and they treated her with the
punctilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand, not always
with success, from a neglectful world. The only actual share which
she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide through its
passages and public chambers, late at night, to see that the servants
had dropped no fire from their flaring torches, nor left embers
crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable
custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that caused the
superstition of the times to invest the old woman with attributes
of awe and mystery; fabling that she had entered the portal of the
Province House, none knew whence, in the train of the first royal
governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last should
have departed. But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had
forgotten it.
“Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?” asked he, with some
severity of tone. “It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of
the king.”
“Not so, if it please your Excellency,” answered the time-stricken
woman. “This roof has sheltered me long. I will not pass from it until
they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there
for old Esther Dudley save the Province House or the grave?”
“Now Heaven forgive me!” said Sir William Howe to himself. “I was
about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg. Take this,
good Mistress Dudley,” he added, putting a purse into her hands.
“King George’s head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will
continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock
their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the Province
House can now afford.”
“While the burden of life remains upon me, I will have no other shelter
than this roof,” persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the
floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve. “And when your
Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome
you.”
“My poor old friend!” answered the British General; and all his manly
and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears.
“This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king
intrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune--perchance
in disgrace--to return no more. And you, whose present being is
incorporated with the past--who have seen governor after governor, in
stately pageantry, ascend these steps--whose whole life has been an
observance of majestic ceremonies, and a worship of the king--how will
you endure the change? Come with us! Bid farewell to a land that has
shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government, at
Halifax.”
“Never, never!” said the pertinacious old dame. “Here will I abide;
and King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal
province.”
“Beshrew the old fool!” muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient
of her obstinacy, and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been
betrayed. “She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could
exist nowhere but in this musty edifice. Well, then, Mistress Dudley,
since you will needs tarry, I give the Province House in charge to
you. Take this key, and keep it safe until myself, or some other royal
governor, shall demand it of you.”
Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the heavy key of the
Province House, and, delivering it into the old lady’s hands, drew his
cloak around him for departure. As the General glanced back at Esther
Dudley’s antique figure, he deemed her well fitted for such a charge,
as being so perfect a representative of the decayed past--of an age
gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith, and feelings all fallen
into oblivion or scorn--of what had once been a reality, but was now
merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode
forth, smiting his clenched hands together in the fierce anguish of
his spirit; and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely
Province House, dwelling there with memory; and if Hope ever seemed to
flit around her, still it was Memory in disguise.
The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the British
troops did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold. There was
not, for many years afterward, a governor of Massachusetts; and the
magistrates, who had charge of such matters, saw no objection to Esther
Dudley’s residence in the Province House, especially as they must
otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises, which
with her was a labor of love. And so they left her, the undisturbed
mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange were the fables
which the gossips whispered about her, in all the chimney-corners of
the town. Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left
in the mansion there was a tall, antique mirror, which was well worthy
of a tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one.
The gold of its heavily wrought frame was tarnished, and its surface
so blurred that the old woman’s figure, whenever she paused before
it, looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the general belief
that Esther could cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty, with
the beautiful ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the Indian
chiefs who had come up to the Province House to hold council or swear
allegiance, the grim, provincial warriors, the severe clergymen--in
short, all the pageantry of gone days--all the figures that ever
swept across the broad plate of glass in former times--she could
cause the whole to reappear, and people the inner world of the mirror
with shadows of old life. Such legends as these, together with the
singularity of her isolated existence, her age, and the infirmity
that each added winter flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley the
object both of fear and pity; and it was partly the result of either
sentiment that, amid all the angry license of the times, neither wrong
nor insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so
much haughtiness in her demeanor toward intruders, among whom she
reckoned all persons acting under the new authorities, that it was
really an affair of no small nerve to look her in the face. And to do
the people justice, stern republicans as they had now become, they
were well content that the old gentlewoman, in her hoop petticoat and
faded embroidery, should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and
overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying a history
in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt, year after year, in the Province
House, still reverencing all that others had flung aside, still
faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her
post, might be said to retain one true subject in New England, and one
spot of the empire that had been wrested from him.
And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, not so.
Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to
summon a black slave of Governor Shirley’s from the blurred mirror, and
send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those
deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight
or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the
burial-ground, knocking at the iron doors of tombs, or upon the marble
slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within, “My mistress,
old Esther Dudley, bids you to the Province House at midnight.” And
punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows
of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys, all the grandees of a
bygone generation, gliding beneath the portal into the well-known
mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a
shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is certain
that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch though
crestfallen old Tories who had lingered in the rebel town during those
days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle, containing
liquor that a royal governor might have smacked his lips over, they
quaffed healths to the king, and babbled treason to the Republic,
feeling as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung
around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they stole
timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob reviled
them in the street.
Yet Esther Dudley’s most frequent and favored guests were the children
of the town. Toward them she was never stern. A kindly and loving
nature, hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky
prejudices, lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of
gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted
their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the Province
House, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day there,
sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop petticoat, greedily
attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these little boys
and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious mansion, they
went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people had long ago
forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as if they had
gone astray into ancient times, and become children of the past. At
home, when their parents asked where they had loitered such a weary
while, and with whom they had been at play, the children would talk
of all the departed worthies of the province, as far back as Governor
Belcher, and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would seem as
though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous personages,
whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had toyed with the
embroidery of their rich waistcoats, or roguishly pulled the long
curls of their flowing wigs. “But Governor Belcher has been dead this
many a year,” would the mother say to her little boy. “And did you
really see him at the Province House?” “Oh, yes, dear mother! Yes!”
the half-dreaming child would answer. “But when old Esther had done
speaking about him he faded away out of his chair.” Thus, without
affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand into the
chambers of her own desolate heart, and made childhood’s fancy discern
the ghosts that haunted there.
Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating
her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley
appears to have grown partially crazed. It was found that she had no
right sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary War,
but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious
on every field, and destined to be ultimately triumphant. Whenever the
town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington, or Gates, or Morgan, or
Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the Province House, as
through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange
tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton, or Cornwallis. Sooner or later,
it was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the
footstool of the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that
such was already the case. On one occasion she startled the townspeople
by a brilliant illumination of the Province House, with candles at
every pane of glass, and a transparency of the king’s initials and a
crown of light in the great balcony window. The figure of the aged
woman, in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades, was
seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused before the
balcony, and flourished a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage
actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal
lamp.
“What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther’s joy portend?”
whispered a spectator. “It is frightful to see her gliding about the
chambers, and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company.”
“It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,” said another.
“Pshaw! It is no such mystery,” observed an old man, after some brief
exercise of memory. “Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the King
of England’s birthday.” Then the people laughed aloud, and would
have thrown mud against the blazing transparency of the king’s crown
and initials, only that they pitied the poor old dame, who was so
dismally triumphant amid the wreck and ruin of the system to which she
appertained.
Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound
upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward
and countryward, watching for a British fleet, or for the march of
a grand procession, with the king’s banner floating over it. The
passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage, and
send up a shout, “When the golden Indian on the Province House shall
shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow,
then look for a royal governor again!”--for this had grown a byword
through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther
Dudley knew, or perchance she only dreamed, that a royal governor was
on the eve of returning to the Province House, to receive the heavy
key which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now it was the
fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther’s version
of it was current among the townspeople. She set the mansion in the
best order that her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks and
tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred mirror to admire her own
magnificence. As she gazed, the gray and withered lady moved her ashen
lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within the
mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the household friends of
memory, and bidding them rejoice with her, and come forth to meet the
governor. And, while absorbed in this communion, Mistress Dudley heard
the tramp of many footsteps in the street, and, looking out at the
window, beheld what she construed as the royal governor’s arrival.
“O happy day! O blessed, blessed hour!” she exclaimed. “Let me but bid
him welcome within the portal, and my task in the Province House, and
on earth, is done!”
Then with tottering feet, which age and tremulous joy caused to tread
amiss, she hurried down the grand staircase, her silks sweeping and
rustling as she went, so that the sound was as if a train of spectral
courtiers were thronging from the dim mirror. And Esther Dudley fancied
that, as soon as the wide door should be flung open, all the pomp and
splendor of bygone times would pace majestically into the Province
House, and the gilded tapestry of the past would be brightened by the
sunshine of the present. She turned the key, withdrew it from the
lock, unclosed the door, and stepped across the threshold. Advancing
up the courtyard appeared a person of most dignified mien, with
tokens, as Esther interpreted them, of gentle blood, high rank, and
long-accustomed authority, even in his walk and every gesture. He was
richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe, which, however, did not lessen
the stateliness of his gait. Around and behind him were people in
plain civic dresses, and two or three war-worn veterans, evidently
officers of rank, arrayed in a uniform of blue and buff. But Esther
Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened its roots about her heart,
beheld only the principal personage, and never doubted that this was
the long-looked-for governor, to whom she was to surrender up her
charge. As he approached, she involuntarily sank down on her knees, and
tremblingly held forth the heavy key.
“Receive my trust! take it quickly!” cried she; “for methinks Death is
striving to snatch away my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank Heaven
for this blessed hour! God save King George!”
“That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment,”
replied the unknown guest of the Province House, and, courteously
removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. “Yet, in
reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that
any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge
his sceptre, God save King George!”
Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the
key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger; and dimly and
doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes
half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry
of the province. But the ban of the king had fallen upon him! How,
then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from mercy, the
monarch’s most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant had
stood triumphantly against a kingdom’s strength; and his foot now trod
upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps of the Province House,
the people’s chosen governor of Massachusetts.
“Wretch, wretch that I am!” muttered the old woman, with such a
heart-broken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger’s eyes.
“Have I bidden a traitor welcome? Come, Death! come quickly!”
“Alas, venerable lady!” said Governor Hancock, lending her his support
with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen.
“Your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around
you. You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless--the
principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting, which another
generation has flung aside--and you are a symbol of the past. And I,
and these around me--we represent a new race of men--living no longer
in the past, scarcely in the present--but projecting our lives forward
into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions,
it is our faith and principle to press onward, onward! Yet,” continued
he, turning to his attendants, “let us reverence, for the last time,
the stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering Past!”
While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the
helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his
arm; but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient
woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of the
Province House fell from her grasp, and clanked against the stone.
“I have been faithful unto death,” murmured she. “God save the king!”
“She hath done her office!” said Hancock solemnly. “We will follow her
reverently to the tomb of her ancestors; and then, my fellow-citizens,
onward, onward! We are no longer children of the Past!”