myself, expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story to
which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw fit
to moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then, turning his
face towards our coal fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into
the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally, he poured forth a great
fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had imbibed, while it
warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his heart
and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel, which we could
hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore winters. His
feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than those of a younger
man; or, at least, the same degree of feeling manifested itself by more
visible effects than if his judgment and will had possessed the potency
of meridian life. At the pathetic passages of his narrative, he readily
melted into tears. When a breath of indignation swept across his spirit,
the blood flushed his withered visage even to the roots of his white
hair; and he shook his clinched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors,
seeming to fancy enemies in those who felt very kindly towards the
desolate old soul. But ever and anon, sometimes in the midst of his most
earnest talk, this ancient person’s intellect would wander vaguely,
losing its hold of the matter in hand, and groping for it amid misty
shadows. Then would he cackle forth a feeble laugh, and express a doubt
whether his wits—for by that phrase it pleased our ancient friend to
signify his mental powers—were not getting a little the worse for wear.
Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist’s story required more
revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series
which have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment
and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight, or perchance more
than slight metamorphosis, in its transmission to the reader through the
medium of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch,
with no involution of plot, nor any great interest of events, yet
possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over
the mind, which the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the
loiterer in its courtyard.
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 blood-stain 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.”
[Illustration:
“Heaven’s cause and the King’s are one”
]
“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 clinched 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.
[Illustration:
Take this key and keep it safe—
]
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 afterwards, 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 ghost-like. 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 re-appear, 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 towards 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.
[Illustration:
A few of the stanch, though crestfallen, old Tories
]
Yet Esther Dudley’s most frequent and favored guests were the children
of the town. Towards 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.
[Illustration:
The King of England’s birthday—
]
“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!”
[Illustration:
“Receive my Trust.”
]
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!”
As the old loyalist concluded his narrative, the enthusiasm which had
been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes, and quivering across his
wrinkled visage, faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul
were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantel-piece threw
out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward,
compelling our eyes to grope for one another’s features by the dim glow
of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying
gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the Province
House, when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight. And now,
again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on the breeze,
knolling the hourly knell of the Past, crying out far and wide through
the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as we sat in the dusky
chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In that same mansion,—in
that very chamber,—what a volume of history had been told off into
hours, by the same voice that was now trembling in the air. Many a
governor had heard those midnight accents, and longed to exchange his
stately cares for slumber. And as for mine host, and Mr. Bela Tiffany,
and the old loyalist, and me, we had babbled about dreams of the past,
until we almost fancied that the clock was still striking in a bygone
century. Neither of us would have wondered had a hoop-petticoated
phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber, walking her rounds
in the hush of midnight, as of yore, and motioned us to quench the
fading embers of the fire, and leave the historic precincts to herself
and her kindred shades. But, as no such vision was vouchsafed, I retired
unbidden, and would advise Mr. Tiffany to lay hold of another auditor,
being resolved not to show my face in the Province House for a good
while hence,—if ever.
[Illustration:
Faithful unto death
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.