II

This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our

tyring-house; and we will do it in action.—_Midsummer Night’s

Dream._

How the town came to be named Whitfield nobody who was fortunate enough

to live there could remember, even if ever there had been any accurate

information on the subject. The town was as old as those others in

central and southern New York which are still worrying along under the

burden of names bestowed upon them by that band of surveyors who, fresh

from the schools where they had learned much of the history of ancient

cities, had christened the still unpopulated quarter sections with the

names of classic heroes, states, and battles. Utica, Syracuse, Troy,

Palmyra, Cicero, Manlius, Sparta, Homer, Ovid, Ithaca,—these towns, it

had been hoped by their sponsors in baptism, might grow up to be a

credit to their distinguished namesakes. Whitfield may have been named

for an eminent Methodist clergyman. Or possibly not. And it didn’t

matter anyway.

Whitfield was like a hundred other towns of its sort. One may find the

sort in almost any state except perhaps Arizona. It had an escape about

three miles wide from being on the railroad, and in consequence there

was little manufacturing. There was a long street which ran out at both

ends of the town and got lost somewhere in the country. This street was

cut at right angles by another of less pretension. Both streets were

bordered by great old trees, maples and elms and an occasional hickory,

which had been left from the days when there had been a forest

thereabouts. Looking at the town from the surrounding hillsides, these

trees shut out all view of the houses, but when the casual visitor

arrived in the village he found that they merely shaded them, and they

were grateful. There were other streets in the village, and according to

the census reports Whitfield had a population of 896, but that was

before the Henderson twins were born, and before the Richardsons—eight

of them—had moved into the Bradley house. Of course, this increase had

been offset somewhat by the death of Kirk Buckley, who in a moment of

temporary inebriety had walked one dark night into Deacon Wilson’s stone

quarry, with a fatal result.

So Whitfield had remained for some years practically stationary as to

population. It was a quiet, orderly, rather dignified town. Its

officials took it seriously. Casual visitors, who were entirely

unsympathetic because they had been born in cities, were apt to smile a

little at its peculiarities, which were not peculiarities, but only the

natural outpourings of a heart interested in the doings of whosoever

came within the line of vision. That was, and is to this day, the

Whitfield of this story.

At one corner of the long street and the shorter one which intersected

it stood the Adams house. When it had been built, a century before, the

Putnam Adams who built it had called the place Elmwood, but the name had

been forgotten. The house itself showed that essential severity which

characterized the Adamses, and was the pride of all Whitfield. It

reproduced, as well as wood and white paint could do so, the development

of the classic impulse which had its beginnings in eastern New York at

the time when Sir William Johnson was made colonel of the Six Nations.

The broad, low pediment set squarely upon four Ionic columns, the wide

stone veranda and massive stone steps were as much a part of the

landscape as the historic Whitfield elms. The interior of the house

reflected the Adams attitude of mind and action. There were few curves

in the decorations. The white-painted panels were uncompromisingly

square. The mahogany balustrade ran straight up from the broad hall, and

the stairs opened frankly at the top into the wide corridor which cut

the upper floor into two halves,—five rooms on one side, five on the

other, all precisely similar in size and shape. Every line which,

architecturally, had to do with the making of the house, was straight up

and down or straight across. There were no angles but right ones. There

were no curves except those of the Ionic columns, and Colonel Adams had

said after the house was built that he even wished he had made these

square. But it was too late, and to-day in Whitfield these same columns

stand, a lasting monument to the one weakness of decision in the

character of Colonel Putnam Adams, of His Majesty’s forces in the

Colonies.

But there was one other monument—the library.

While the library as it exists now could not, in the very nature of

things, have been built entire by the first Putnam Adams, yet he laid

the foundation for it; and when he was sent to America by the king, and

found a place where he was to build his home, he fetched with him from

England the library which he had collected in France and Italy and

Germany. Begun with little thought as to its ultimate fate, this

collection of books had grown with the changing tastes of the young

soldier. There were the classics in original and translation; much Greek

poetry, a wonderful edition of Horace, picked up in Rome, and bound in

leather and gold, which bore the magic signature, deeply wrought, of

Leonardo da Vinci. Then there was a Machiavelli and the stories of his

wars and his methods of statesmanship; there was the story of the Life,

which Benvenuto Cellini himself had written, and this book the Colonel

had caused to be inclosed in a case of silver which bore upon its cover

the arms of the House of the Cenci. This book he worshiped with a

worship which was little short of idolatry. In the long evenings, when

the Indians were at rest and the messages from Sir William were such as

to allow him some freedom, he would shut himself in his rooms—wherever

he might be—and sit the whole night through, living again with the

Benvenuto those fearsome hours when he fought his way through the

streets of Florence, leaving in his wake a line of fourteen dead men’s

bodies—but rushing on to his Art and his Love.

Perhaps, after all, that was why Colonel Putnam Adams decided on the

curves for the capitals of the columns which guarded the entrance to the

home which he had built for Margery, the daughter of the governor of

Plymouth Colony.

The second Putnam Adams inherited his father’s tastes and spent much of

his time among the books, eagerly adding to the shelves such volumes as

his somewhat limited opportunities made possible.

Miss Esther’s father, the third Putnam Adams, enlarged the collection

still further, for in his time the flood of literature which marked the

Victorian era had already begun. He acquired not only valuable classics,

as had his ancestors, but also contemporary fiction, essays, and poetry.

The wife of the third Putnam Adams died when Esther was a baby, and the

child grew up in the great house with only her father for guide,

counselor, and friend. He was a silent man,—not stern with his little

daughter, but maintaining the uncompromising dignity of the Adams

family. He spent his days in the library, and Esther was allowed to stay

there only on condition that she should not speak to him when he was

reading. Often the child would stand wistfully waiting until he should

lay down his book. But often he would do so only to take up another, and

Esther would turn hopelessly away to amuse herself. Her amusements were

peculiarly her own, and were not those which would have been considered

entertaining by most children. She invented her own games. For the

lonely child there was a certain fascination about a crowd of people,

and her games always included certain strange individuals, who, though

invisible to others, were very real to her. She peopled the stairs with

vast armies marching valiantly up the hill and down again; she crowded

the parlors with squires and dames of high degree, who danced minuets of

great intricacy, bowing gallantly and languidly waving feathered fans.

The old Adams stables she filled with palfreys and milk-white steeds,

and the barnyard with peacocks and falcons. In the grass plot in front

of the house Esther could see a sun-dial where she fully expected in

some year to come to hold tryst with a lover who should wear a velvet

cloak and a curling feather, and who would say “Parting is such sweet

sorrow, that I could say good-night till it be morrow,” and then would

kiss her hand—just as Romeo did in the wonderful old engraving in the

Gilbert Shakespeare.

Thus Esther Adams grew up. She went through the Whitfield school as a

matter of course, but her tasks were easily learned and her school life

was casual and perfunctory and quite outside the sentient part of her

being. She lived in “that land where Rosalind and Imogen are—a Paradise

apart.” The woodland about the old place was the Forest of Arden. The

bank of the brook formed the shores of Illyria where the musicians

played before the duke, and where Esther played the part—yes, lived the

part—of Viola, and told to the wondering birds how she was letting

concealment feed on her damask cheek.

Instead of these fancies passing away, later years brought to Esther

Adams a stronger sense of reality in her dreams, and she but the more

thoroughly identified herself with the creatures which her imagination

had appropriated. Through girlhood to womanhood she lived Romance,

sometimes as Rosalind, sometimes as Iseult, and sometimes, when in

desperate mood, as Catherine of Medici.

But though the grass plot and the stairs had certain advantages of

stage-setting, yet it was in the library that Esther gave her fancy

fullest rein. The reason for this was too subtle to be understood by the

child; but she had an inexplicable, intangible sense of the atmosphere

of the books. As she grew older, this became clear to her, and she

enjoyed her library with the definite knowledge of the satisfaction to

be derived from the actual physical presence of books.

For forty-five years she had enjoyed this library, as she believed, as

much as was possible for her, without quite realizing that there was a

sense of restraint in the presence of her father. Though she adored the

silent man and gladly submitted to his mandates, the restrictions placed

upon her as a child were never removed until the day of her father’s

death, and it was not until after that event that she came to know what

freedom from even unconsciously obeyed authority meant. And in the ten

years since she had invested the room with more of her own personality,

and instead of being as it had been before, merely a library, it was now

her home.

Although always surrounded by her unreal associates, for the last seven

years Miss Esther’s only human companion had been Tekla, the maid, and

Tekla was very human. When she came to live at the Adams house, Miss

Esther was shocked at her deplorable ignorance, and immediately began to

teach her at least the rudiments of an education. The good lady

consciously and laboriously taught her charge reading and writing, but

far more easily yet, she unwittingly instilled in Tekla’s mind a

romantic sort of fancy not unlike her own. And that’s how it happened

that Tekla’s stolidly practical German adaptation of Miss Esther’s ideas

clothed the problematical farmer with a reality only second to Miss

Esther’s Romeos.