A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was
nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious
slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it
became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my
progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have
come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and
every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of
what use is all this now, alas!"
These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came
in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing
the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with
re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many
letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The
physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin
relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them.
One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of
the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English
trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease
concerning what remained of its interests.
The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat,
painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in
no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document,
which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame
Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not
inherited by her son.
"_January 9,_ A. D. 1776.
"Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most
part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen
you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you
no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to
be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a
God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I
surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do
not reproach you.
"The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars,
was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was
both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour
with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the
Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being
dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in
the way, and where others can help him to weep.
"When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been
deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with
paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The
burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it,
but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her
fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his
wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful
belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her
from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal
named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels,
essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms
that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant
from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained
nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at
best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence.
"Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief,
and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign
matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were
still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I
knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying
that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out
of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the
matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads
are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I
was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as
sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go
her own gait, and so she may for all of me.
"She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work
when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a
worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck
of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying
that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame
Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my
company was not desired longer.
"I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry
other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the
Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If
the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be
peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all
say matters will be worse before they mend.
"Affectionately, your mother,
"Katharine Mauverensen."
As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated
and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of
Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to
laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of
my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its
humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no
more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided
always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for
everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing
in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done
for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the
moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their
own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing
was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how
she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to
me, unconsciously revealing her pique.
Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her,
and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars
since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a
fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants;
she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and
foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a
large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the
fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and
fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her
bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring.
From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day
counts now. The sooner I get home the better."
"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to
Sorel to-morrow morning."
"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"
"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves
are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion,
like you, I should fear nothing."
"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means
of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my
restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I
gave him my mother's letter.
My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient
details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
whistle softly.
"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"
"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"
I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.
"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
well as fast as you like, and we will be off."
This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his
arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From
our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of
many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter
jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of
turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense
of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and
that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was
impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small
disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and
attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled
districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt
that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for
their courtesies.
Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had
evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it
was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy
preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General
Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full
fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he
had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and
difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with
books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during
my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the
General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy.
But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole
spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with
anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied
and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his
case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring
illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that
it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home.
It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was
really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk
duty at such a time.
But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed
that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one
morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform
with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he
called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans:
"John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his
Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came
down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the
woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month
much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead
near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots
day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue
for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who
followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington
is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no
reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to
send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the
thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs
them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and
all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the
neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest.
"You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for
you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached
to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go
with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near
place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You
need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you.
But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative
in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the
prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further."
When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.