Twice-Told Tales (36 page)

Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests were the children
of the town. Toward 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.

"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 by-word
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.

"Oh, happy day! Oh, 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." 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 special 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 court-yard 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 conies 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
heartbroken 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 mantelpiece 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.

What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of
your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad
glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the
metaphor, you find yourself for a single instant wide awake in that
realm of illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its
ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their
strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed.
The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You
question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your
waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of
your dream. While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang
over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a
long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must
proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the
strokes—one, two; and there they cease with a booming sound like the
gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue, while before
you, till the sun comes from "Far Cathay" to brighten your window,
there is almost the space of a summer night—one hour to be spent in
thought with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and
two in that strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and
woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and
appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty
air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already
vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged
from the future. You have found an intermediate space where the
business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers
and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he
thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take
breath. Oh that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without
growing older!