_Wherein 'tis Shown that Boys Are but Boys._
The Faringfield house, as I have said, was flanked by garden space on
either side. It was on the Eastern side of the street, and so faced
West, the next house Southward being ours. The wide hall that we
entered ran straight back to a door opening from a wooden veranda that
looked toward the rear garden. At the right of this hall, as you went
in, a broad oak stairway invited you to the sleeping floor above. But
before you came to this stairway, you passed a door that gave into the
great parlour, which ran the whole length of the hall, and, being used
only on occasions of festivity or ceremony, was now closed and dark.
At the left of the hall, the first door led to the smaller parlour, as
wide but not as long as the great one, and in daily use as the chief
living-room of the house. Its windows were those through which the
candle-light within had welcomed us from the frosty, snowy air that
evening. Behind this parlour, and reached either directly from it, or
by a second door at the left side of the hall, was the library,
so-called although a single case of eight shelves sufficed to hold all
the books it contained. Yet Philip said there was a world in those
books. The room was a small and singularly cosy one, and here, when
Mr. Faringfield was not occupied at the mahogany desk, we children
might play at chess, draughts, cards, and other games. From this room,
one went back into the dining-room, another apartment endeared to me
by countless pleasant memories. Its two windows looked Southward
across the side grounds (for the hall and great parlour came not so
far back) to our house and garden. Behind the dining-room, and
separating it from the kitchen and pantry, was a passage with a back
stairway and with a bench of washing-basins, easily supplied with
water from a cistern below, and from the kettle in the adjacent
kitchen. To this place we youngsters now hastened, to put ourselves to
rights for supper. The house was carpeted throughout. The great
parlour was panelled in wood, white and gold. The other chief rooms
were wainscoted in oak; and as to their upper walls, some were bright
with French paper, while some shone white with smooth plaster; their
ceilings and borders were decorated with arabesque woodwork. There
were tiled fireplaces, with carved mantels, white, like the
rectangular window-frames and panelled doors. Well, well, 'twas but a
house like countless others, and why should I so closely describe
it?--save that I love the memory of it, and fain would linger upon its
commonest details.
Mighty snug was the dining-room that evening, with its oaken
sideboard, its prints and portraits on the wall, its sputtering fire,
and its well-filled table lighted from a candelabrum in the centre.
The sharp odour of the burning pine was keen to the nostrils, and
mingled with it was the smell of the fried ham. There was the softer
fragrance of the corn meal mush or porridge, served with milk, and
soft was the taste of it also. We had sausage cakes, too, and pancakes
to be eaten either with butter or with the syrup of the maple-tree;
and jam, and jelly, and fruit butter. These things seem homely fare,
no doubt, but there was a skill of cookery in the fat old negress,
Hannah--a skill consisting much in the plentiful use of salt and
pepper at proper stages--that would have given homelier fare a relish
to more fastidious tongues. I miss in the wholesome but limited and
unseasoned diet of the English the variety and savouriness of American
food (I mean the food of the well-to-do in the large towns), which
includes all the English and Scotch dishes, corrected of their
insipidity, besides countless dishes French, German, and Dutch, and
many native to the soil, all improved and diversified by the
surprising genius for cookery which, in so few generations, the negro
race has come to exhibit. I was a busy lad at that meal; a speechless
one, consequently, and for some minutes so engrossed in the business
of my jaws that I did not heed the unwonted silence of the rest. Then
suddenly it came upon me as something embarrassing and painful that
Mr. and Mrs. Faringfield, who usually conversed at meals, had nothing
to say, and that Philip Winwood sat gloomy and taciturn, merely going
through a hollow form of eating. As for Fanny, she was the picture of
childish sorrow, though now tearless. Only Madge and little Tom, who
had found some joke between themselves, occasionally spluttered with
suppressed laughter, smiling meanwhile knowingly at each other.
Of course this depression was due to the absence of Ned, regarding the
cause of which his mother was still in the dark. Not missing him until
we children had filed in to supper after tidying up, she had then
remarked that he was not yet in.
"He will not be home to supper," Mr. Faringfield had replied, in a
tone that forbade questioning until the pair should be alone, and
motioning his wife to be seated at the table. After that he had once
or twice essayed to talk upon casual subjects, as if nothing had
happened, but he had perceived that the attempt was hopeless while
Mrs. Faringfield remained in her state of deferred curiosity and vague
alarm, and so he had desisted.
After supper, which the lady's impatience made shorter than my
appetite would have dictated, the husband and wife went into the small
parlour, closing the door upon us children in the library. Here I
managed to make a pleasant evening, in games with Madge and little Tom
upon the floor. But Philip, though he came in as was his wont, was not
to be lured into our play or our talk. He did not even read, but sat
silent and pondering, in no cheerful mood. I, not reading him as Madge
did, knew not what the matter was, and accused him of having vapours,
like a girl. He looked at me heedlessly, in reply, as if he scarce
heard. But Madge, apparently, divined his feeling, and at times
respected it, for then she spoke low, and skilfully won me back from
my efforts to enliven him. At other times, his way seemed to irritate
her, and she hinted that he was foolish, and then she was
extraordinarily smiling and adorable to me (always, I now suspect,
with the corner of her eye upon him) as if to draw him back to his
usual good-fellowship by that method. But 'twas in vain. I left at
bedtime, wondering what change had come over him.
That night, I learned afterward, Philip slept little, debating
sorrowfully in his mind. He kept his window slightly open at night, in
all weather; and open also that night was one of the windows of Mr.
and Mrs. Faringfield's great chamber below. A sound that reached him
in the small hours, of Mrs. Faringfield whimpering and weeping,
decided him. And the next morning, after another silent meal, he
contrived to fall into Mr. Faringfield's company on the way to the
warehouse, which they had almost reached ere Phil, very down in the
mouth and perturbed, got up his courage to his unpleasant task and
blundered out in a boyish, frightened way:
"If you please, sir, I wished to tell you--I've made up my mind to
leave--and thank you very much for all your kindness!"
Mr. Faringfield stared from under his gathered brows, and asked Phil
to repeat the strange thing he had said.
"Leave what, sir?" he queried sharply, when Phil had done so.
"Leave your warehouse, sir; and your house; and New York."
"What do you mean, my boy?"
And Phil, thankful that Mr. Faringfield had paused to have the talk
out ere they should come among the men at the warehouse, explained at
first in vague terms, but finally in the explicit language to which
his benefactor's questions forced him, that he seemed, in Master Ned's
mind, to be standing in Ned's way; that he would not for the world
appear to supplant any man's son, much less the son of one who had
been so kind to him; that he had unintentionally been the cause of
Ned's departure the evening before; and that he hoped his going would
bring Ned back from the absence which caused his mother grief. "And I
wouldn't stay in New York after leaving you, sir," he said, "for
'twould look as if you and I had disagreed."
To all this Mr. Faringfield replied briefly that Ned was a foolish
boy, and would soon enough come back, glad of what welcome he might
get; and that, as for Philip's going away, it was simply not to be
heard of. But Phil persisted, conceding only that he should remain at
the warehouse for an hour that morning and complete a task he had left
unfinished. Mr. Faringfield still refused to have it that Phil should
go at all.
When Philip had done his hour's work, he went in to his employer's
office to say good-bye.
"Tut, tut," said Mr. Faringfield, looking annoyed at the interruption,
"there's no occasion for goodbyes. But look you, lad. I don't mind
your taking the day off, to put yourself into a reasonable state of
mind. Go home, and enjoy a holiday, and come back to your work
to-morrow, fresh and cheerful. Now, now, boy, I won't hear any more.
Only do as I bid you." And he assumed a chilling reserve that indeed
froze all further possible discussion.
"But I do say good-bye, sir, and mean it," said Phil, tremulously.
"And I thank you from my heart for all you've done for me."
And so, with a lump in his throat, Phil hastened home, and sped up the
stairs unseen, like a ghost; and had all his things out on his bed for
packing, when suddenly Madge, who had been astonished to hear him
moving about, from her mother's room below, flung open his door and
looked in upon him, all amazed.
"Why, Phil, what are you doing home at this hour? What are you putting
your things into your valise for?"
"Oh, nothing," said Phil, very downcast.
"Why, it looks as if--you were going away somewhere."
Phil made a brief answer; and then there was a long talk, all the
while he continued to pack his goods, in his perturbation stowing
things together in strange juxtaposition. The end of it was that
Madge, after vowing that if he went she would never speak to him
again, and would hate him for ever, indignantly left him to himself.
Phil went on packing, in all the outward calmness he could muster,
though I'll wager with a very pouting and dismal countenance. At last,
his possessions being bestowed, and the bag fastened with much
physical exertion, he left it on the bed, and slipped down-stairs to
find his one remaining piece of property. Philip's cat had waxed plump
in the Faringfield household, Master Ned always deterred from harming
it by the knowledge that if aught ill befell it, the finger of
accusation would point instantly and surely at him.
Phil was returning up the stairs, his pet under his arm, when Mistress
Madge reappeared before him, with magic unexpectedness, from a doorway
opening on a landing. As she stood in his way there, he stopped, and
the two faced each other.
"Well," said she, with sarcastic bitterness, "I suppose you've decided
where you're going to."
"Not yet," he replied. He had thought vaguely of Philadelphia or
Boston, either of which he now had means of reaching, having saved
most of his small salary at the warehouse, for he was not a bound
apprentice.
"I make no doubt," she went on, "'twill be the farthest place you can
find."
Phil gave her a reproachful look, and asked where her mother and the
children were, that he might bid them good-bye. He wondered, indeed,
that Madge had not told her mother of his resolve, for, from that
lady's not seeking him at once, he knew that she was still unaware of
it. He little guessed that 'twas the girl's own power over him she
wished to test, and that she would not enlist her mother's persuasions
but as a last resource.
"I don't know," she replied carelessly.
"I shall look for them," said Philip, and turned to go down-stairs
again.
But (though how could a boy imagine it?) Miss Faringfield would not
have it that his yielding should be due to her mother, if it could be
achieved as a victory for herself. So she stopped him with a sudden
tremulous "Oh, Phil!" and, raising her forearm to the door-post, hid
her face against it, and wept as if her heart would break.
Philip had never before known her to shed a tear, and this new
spectacle, in a second's time, took all the firmness out of him.
"Why, Madge, I didn't know--don't cry, Madgie--"
She turned swiftly, without looking up, and her face, still in a
shower of tears, found hiding no longer against the door-post, but
against Phil's breast.
"Don't cry, Madgie dear,--I sha'n't go!"
She raised her wet face, joy sparkling where the lines had not yet
lost the shape of grief; and Phil never thought to ask himself how
much of her pleasure was for his not going, and how much for the
evidence given of her feminine power. He had presently another thing
to consider, a not very palatable dose to swallow--the returning to
the warehouse and telling Mr. Faringfield of his change of mind. He
did this awkwardly enough, no doubt, but manfully enough, I'll take my
oath, though he always said he felt never so tamed and small and
ludicrous in his life, before or after.
And that scene upon the landing is the last picture, but one, I have
to present of childhood days, ere I hasten, over the period that
brought us all into our twenties and to strange, eventful times. The
one remaining sketch is of an unkempt, bedraggled figure that I saw at
the back hall door of the Faringfields one snowy night a week later,
when, for some reason or other, I was out late in our back garden.
This person, instead of knocking at the door, very cautiously tried it
to see if it would open, and, finding it locked, stood timidly back
and gazed at it in a quandary. Suspecting mischief, I went to the
paling fence that separated our ground from the Faringfields', and
called out, "Who's that?"
"Hallo, Bert!" came in a very conciliating tone, low-spoken; and then,
as with a sudden thought, "Come over here, will you?"
I crossed the fence, and was in a moment at the side of Master Ned,
who looked exceedingly the worse for wear, in face, figure, and
clothes.
"Look here," said he, speaking rapidly, so as to prevent my touching
the subject of his return, "I want to sneak in, and up-stairs to bed,
without the old man seeing me. I don't just like to meet him till
to-morrow. But I can't sneak in, for the door's locked, and Noah would
be sure to tell dad. You knock, and when they let you in, pretend you
came to play with the kids; and whisper Fanny to slip out and open the
door for me."
I entered readily into the strategy, as a boy will, glad of Ned's
return for the sake of Phil, who I knew was ill at ease for Ned's
absence being in some sense due to himself.
Old Noah admitted me at my knock, locked the door after me, and sent
me into the smaller parlour, where the whole family happened to be.
When I whispered my message to Fanny, she turned so many colours, and
made so precipitately for the entrance hall, that her father was put
on the alert. He followed her quietly out, just in time to see a very
shivering, humble, shamefaced youth step in from the snowy outer
night. The sight of his father turned Ned cold and stiff upon the
threshold; but all the father did was to put on a grim look of
contempt, and say:
"Well, sir, I suppose you've changed your tune."
"Yes, sir," said the penitent, meekly, and there being now no reason
for secrecy he shambled after his father into the parlour. There,
after his mother's embrace, he grinned sheepishly upon us all. Fanny
was quite rejoiced, and so was little Tom till the novelty wore off;
while Madge greeted the prodigal good-humouredly enough, and one could
read Phil's relief and forgiveness on his smiling face. Master Ned,
grateful for an easier ordeal than he had feared, made no exception
against Phil in the somewhat sickly amiability he had for all, and we
thought that here were reconciliation and the assurance of future
peace.
Ned's home-coming brought trouble in its train, as indeed did his
every reappearance afterward. It came out that he and another boy--the
one in whose house he had found refuge on the night of his running
away--had started off for the North to lead the lives of hunters and
trappers, a career so inviting that they could not wait to provide a
sufficient equipment. They travelled afoot by the Albany post-road,
soliciting food at farmhouses, passing their nights in barns; and got
as far as Tarrytown, ere either one in his pride would admit to the
other, through chattering teeth, that he had had his fill of snow and
hunger and the raw winds of the Hudson River. So footsore, leg-weary,
empty, and frozen were they on their way back, that they helped
themselves to one of Jacob Post's horses, near the Philipse
manor-house; and not daring to ride into town on this beast,
thoughtlessly turned it loose in the Bowery lane, never thinking how
certainly it and they could be traced--for they had been noticed at
Van Cortlandt's, again at Kingsbridge, and again at the Blue Bell
tavern. After receiving its liberty, the horse had been seen once,
galloping toward Turtle Bay, and never again.
So, a few days after Ned's reentrance into the bosom of his family,
there came to the house a constable, of our own town, with a deputy
sent by the sheriff of Westchester County, wanting Master Edward
Faringfield.
Frightened and disgraced, his mother sent for her husband; and for the
sake of the family name, Mr. Faringfield adjusted matters by the
payment of twice or thrice what the horse was worth. Thus the would-be
hunter and trapper escaped the discomfort and shame of jail; though by
his father's sentence he underwent a fortnight's detention on bread
and water in his bedroom.
That was the first fright and humiliation that Master Ned brought on
his people; and he brought so many of these in after years, that the
time came when his parents, and all, were rather glad than sorry each
time he packed off again, and shuddered rather than rejoiced when,
after an absence, he turned up safe and healthy as ever, with his old
hangdog smile beneath which lurked a look half-defiant, half-injured.
As he grew older, and the boy in him made room for the man, there was
less of the smile, less injury, more defiance.
I do not remember how many years it was after Philip's coming to New
York, that our Dutch schoolmaster went the way of all flesh, and there
came in his place, to conduct a school for boys only and in more
advanced studies, a pedagogue from Philadelphia, named Cornelius. He
was of American birth, but of European parentage, whether German or
Dutch I never knew. Certainly he had learning, and much more than was
due alone to his having gone through the college at Princeton in New
Jersey. He was in the early twenties, tall and robust, with a large
round face, and with these peculiarities: that his hair, eyebrows, and
lashes were perfectly white, his eyes of a singularly mild blue, his
skin of a pinkish tint; that he was given to blushing whenever he met
women or strangers, and that he spoke with pedantic preciseness, in a
wondrously low voice. But despite his bashfulness, there was a great
deal in the man, and when an emergency rose he never lacked resource.
He it was to whom my education, and Ned Faringfield's, was entrusted,
while the girls and little Tom still strove with the rudiments in the
dame-school. He it was that carried us to the portals of college; and
I carried Philip Winwood thither with me, by studying my lessons with
him in the evenings. In many things he was far beyond Mr. Cornelius's
highest teaching; but there had been lapses in his information, and
these he filled up, and regulated his knowledge as well, through
accompanying me in my progress. And he continued so to accompany me,
making better use of my books than ever I made, as I went through the
King's College; and that is the way in which Phil Winwood got his
stock of learning eked out, and put in due shape and order.
It happened that Philip's taste fastened upon one subject of which
there was scarce anything to be learned by keeping pace with my
studies, but upon which much was to be had from books in the college
library, of which I obtained the use for him. It was a strange subject
for a youth to take up at that time, or any time since, and in that
colonial country--architecture. Yet 'twas just like Phil Winwood to be
interested in something that all around him neglected or knew nothing
about. What hope an American could have in the pursuit of an art, for
which the very rare demands in his country were supplied from Europe,
and which indeed languished the world over, I could not see.
"Very well, then," said Phil, "'twill be worth while trying to waken
this sleeping art, and to find a place for it in this out-of-the-way
country. I wouldn't presume to attempt new forms, to be sure; but one
might revive some old ones, and maybe try new arrangements of them."
"Then you think you'll really be an architect?" I asked.
"Why, if it's possible. 'Faith, I'm not so young any more that I still
want to be a soldier, or a sailor either. One thing, 'twill take years
of study; I'll have to go to Europe for that."
"To England?"
"First of all."
"What will Mr. Faringfield say to that?"
"He will not mind it so much in my case. I'm not of the Faringfield
blood."
"Egad," said I, "there's some of the Faringfield blood hankers for a
sight of London."
"Whose? Ned's?"
"No. Margaret's."
We were young men now, and she would not let us call her Madge any
more. What I had said was true. She had not grown up without hearing
and reading much of the great world beyond the sea, and wishing she
might have her taste of its pleasures. She first showed a sense of her
deprivation--for it was a deprivation for a rich man's daughter--when
she finished at the dame-school and we boys entered college. Then she
hinted, very cautiously, that her and Fanny's education was being
neglected, and mentioned certain other New York gentlemen's daughters,
who had been sent to England to boarding-schools.
Delicately as she did this, the thought that his favourite child could
harbour a wish that involved going to England, was a blow to Mr.
Faringfield. He hastened to remove all cause of complaint on the score
of defective education. He arranged that the music teacher, who gave
the girls their lessons in singing and in playing upon the harpsichord
and guitar, should teach them four days a week instead of two. He
engaged Mr. Cornelius to become an inmate of his house and to give
them tuition out of his regular school hours. He paid a French widow
to instruct them in their pronunciation, their book-French and grammar
being acquired under Mr. Cornelius's teaching. And so, poor girls,
they got only additional work for Margaret's pains. But both of them
were docile, Fanny because it was her nature to be so, Margaret
because she had taken it into her head to become an accomplished lady.
We never guessed her dreams and ambitions in those years, and to this
day I often wonder at what hour in her girlhood the set design took
possession of her, that design which dominated all her actions when we
so little guessed its existence. Besides these three instructors, the
girls had their dancing-master, an Englishman who pretended to impart
not only the best-approved steps of a London assembly-room, but its
manners and graces as well.
So much for the education of the girls, Philip, and myself. Ned
Faringfield's was interrupted by his expulsion from King's for gross
misconduct; and was terminated by his disgrace at Yale College
(whither his father had sent him in vain hope that he might behave
better away from home and more self-dependent) for beating a smaller
student whom he had cheated at a clandestine game of cards. His
home-coming on this occasion was followed by his being packed off to
Virginia to play at superintending his father's tobacco plantations.
Neglecting this business to go shooting on the frontier, he got a
Scotch Presbyterian mountaineer's daughter into trouble; and when he
turned up again at the door in Queen Street, he was still shaky with
recollections of the mob of riflemen that had chased him out of
Virginia. That piece of sport cost his father a pretty penny, and
resulted in a place being got for Ned with a merchant who was Mr.
Faringfield's correspondent in the Barbadoes. So to the tropics the
young gentleman was shipped, with sighs of relief at his embarkation,
and--I have no doubt--with unuttered prayers that he might not show
his face in Queen Street for a long time to come. Already he had got
the name, in the family, of "the bad shilling," for his always coming
back unlooked for.
How different was his younger brother!--no longer "little Tom" (though
of but middle height and slim build), but always gay-hearted,
affectionate, innocent, and a gentleman. He was a handsome lad,
without and within--yes, "lad" I must call him, for, though he came to
manly years, he always seemed a boy to me. He followed in our steps,
in his time, through Mr. Cornelius's school, and into King's College,
too, but the coming of the war cut short his studies there.
It must have been in the year 1772--I remember Margaret spoke of her
being seventeen years old, in which case I was nineteen--when I got
(and speedily forgot) my first glimpse of Margaret's inmost mind. We
were at the play--for New York had had a playhouse ever since Mr.
Hallam had brought thither his company, with whom the great Garrick
had first appeared in London. I cannot recall what the piece was that
night; but I know it must have been a decent one, or Margaret would
not have been allowed to see it; and that it purported to set forth
true scenes of fashionable life in London. At one side of Margaret her
mother sat, at the other was myself, and I think I was that time their
only escort.
"What a fright!" said Margaret in my ear, as one of the actresses came
upon the stage with an affected gait, and a look of thinking herself
mighty fine and irresistible. "'Tis a slander, this."
"Of whom?" I asked.
"Of the fine ladies these poor things pretend to represent."
"How do you know?" I retorted, for I was somewhat taken with the
actresses, and thought to avenge them by bringing her down a peg or
two. "Have you seen so much of London fine ladies?"
"No, poor me!" she said sorrowfully, without a bit of anger, so that I
was softened in a trice. "But the ladies of New York, even, are no
such tawdry make-believes as this.--Heaven knows, I would give ten
years of life for a sight of the fine world of London!"
She was looking so divine at that moment, that I could not but
whisper:
"You would see nothing finer there than yourself."
"Do you think so?" she quickly asked, flashing her eyes upon me in a
strange way that called for a serious answer.
"'Tis the God's truth," I said, earnestly.
For a moment she was silent; then she whispered:
"What a silly whimsy of my father, his hatred of England! Does he
imagine none of us is really ever to see the world?--That reminds me,
don't forget the _Town and Country Magazine_ to-morrow."
I had once come upon a copy of that publication, which reflected the
high life of England, perhaps too much on its scandalous side; and had
shown it to Margaret. Immediately she had got me to subscribe for it,
and to pass each number clandestinely to her. I, delighted to do her a
favour, and to have a secret with her, complied joyously; and obtained
for her as many novels and plays as I could, as well.
Little I fancied what bee I thus helped to keep buzzing in her pretty
head, which she now carried with all the alternate imperiousness and
graciousness of confident and proven beauty. Little I divined of
feminine dreams of conquest in larger fields; or foresaw of dangerous
fruit to grow from seed planted with thoughtlessness. To my mind,
nothing of harm or evil could ensue from anything done, or thought, in
our happy little group. To my eyes, the future could be only radiant
and triumphant. For I was still but a lad at heart, and to think as I
did, or to be thoughtless as I was, is the way of youth.