moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the
nature of things and the character of the people. On one side the
religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the
other, the group of despotic rulers, with the High-Churchman in the
midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently
clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the
universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience
could be secured.
"O Lord of Hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a Champion
for thy people!"
This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry, to
introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were
now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the
soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The
intervening space was empty,--a paved solitude, between lofty edifices,
which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly, there was seen
the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the
people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to
confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and
a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before,
with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the
tremulous gait of age.
When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable
by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at
once of encouragement and warning, then turned again, and resumed his
way.
"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.
"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.
But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of fourscore
years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange that they should
forget one of such evident authority, whom they must have known in their
early days, the associate of Winthrop, and all the old councillors,
giving laws, and making prayers, and leading them against the savage.
The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with locks as gray in
their youth as their own were now. And the young! How could he have
passed so utterly from their memories,--that hoary sire, the relic of
long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on
their uncovered heads, in childhood?
"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?"
whispered the wondering crowd.
Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude
of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but
unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping
time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side, and
the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, till, when
scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by
the middle, and held it before him like a leader's truncheon.
"Stand!" cried he.
The eye, the face, and attitude of command; the solemn, yet warlike peal
of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man's word and
outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the
advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some
old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had
summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and
looked for the deliverance of New England.
The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the
hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but glancing his
severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it
sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old
man was chief ruler there, and that the Governor and Council, with
soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of
the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
"What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. "On,
Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
choice that you give all his countrymen,--to stand aside or be trampled
on!"
"Nay, nay, let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant,
laughing. "See you not, he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath
lain asleep these thirty years, and knows nothing of the change of
times? Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
Noll's name!"
"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor?"
"I have stayed the march of a king himself, ere now," replied the gray
figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry
of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place; and
beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And
what speak ye of James? There is no longer a Popish tyrant on the throne
of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a byword in this
very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that
wast a Governor, back! With this night thy power is ended,--to-morrow,
the prison!--back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"
The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words
of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
unaccustomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But
his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly
without arms, and ready to convert the very stones of the street into
deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast
his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with
that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to quench; and again he
fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space,
where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts,
he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were
overawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the
threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and
ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before
another sunset, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him,
were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated, King
William was proclaimed throughout New England.
But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported, that when the troops had
gone from King Street, and the people were thronging tumultuously in
their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, was seen to embrace a form
more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed, that while they
marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded
from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where
he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape
was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in
sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his
funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was.
And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the
records of that stern Court of Justice, which passed a sentence, too
mighty for the age, but glorious in all after times, for its humbling
lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard,
that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of
their sires, the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he
walked once more in King Street. Five years later, in the twilight of an
April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at
Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate
inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our
fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through
that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be, ere
he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril.
But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute
our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, for he is the type of New
England's hereditary spirit, and his shadowy march, on the eve of
danger, must ever be the pledge that New England's sons will vindicate
their ancestry.
End of Project Gutenberg's Little Masterpieces, by Nathaniel Hawthorne