Twice-Told Tales (31 page)

The old legendary guest of the Province House abode in my remembrance
from midsummer till January. One idle evening last winter, confident
that he would be found in the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I
resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to deserve well of my
country by snatching from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of
history. The night was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by
almost a gale of wind which whistled along Washington street, causing
the gaslights to flare and flicker within the lamps.

As I hurried onward my fancy was busy with a comparison between the
present aspect of the street and that which it probably wore when the
British governors inhabited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick
edifices in those times were few till a succession of destructive
fires had swept, and swept again, the wooden dwellings and warehouses
from the most populous quarters of the town. The buildings stood
insulated and independent, not, as now, merging their separate
existences into connected ranges with a front of tiresome identity,
but each possessing features of its own, as if the owner's individual
taste had shaped it, and the whole presenting a picturesque
irregularity the absence of which is hardly compensated by any
beauties of our modern architecture. Such a scene, dimly vanishing
from the eye by the ray of here and there a tallow candle glimmering
through the small panes of scattered windows, would form a sombre
contrast to the street as I beheld it with the gaslights blazing from
corner to corner, flaming within the shops and throwing a noonday
brightness through the huge plates of glass. But the black, lowering
sky, as I turned my eyes upward, wore, doubtless, the same visage as
when it frowned upon the ante-Revolutionary New Englanders. The wintry
blast had the same shriek that was familiar to their ears. The Old
South Church, too, still pointed its antique spire into the darkness
and was lost between earth and heaven, and, as I passed, its clock,
which had warned so many generations how transitory was their
lifetime, spoke heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to myself.
"Only seven o'clock!" thought I. "My old friend's legends will
scarcely kill the hours 'twixt this and bedtime."

Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the courtyard, the confined
precincts of which were made visible by a lantern over the portal of
the Province House. On entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected,
the old tradition-monger seated by a special good fire of anthracite,
compelling clouds of smoke from a corpulent cigar. He recognized me
with evident pleasure, for my rare properties as a patient listener
invariably make me a favorite with elderly gentlemen and ladies of
narrative propensites. Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired mine
host to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey-punch, which was
speedily prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom,
a dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of
nutmeg strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together, my
legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I
rejoiced at the oddity of the name, because it gave his image and
character a sort of individuality in my conception. The old
gentleman's draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it
overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead people and
traits of ancient manners, some of which were childish as a nurse's
lullaby, while others might have been worth the notice of the grave
historian. Nothing impressed me more than a story of a black
mysterious picture which used to hang in one of the chambers of the
Province House, directly above the room where we were now sitting. The
following is as correct a version of the fact as the reader would be
likely to obtain from any other source, although, assuredly, it has a
tinge of romance approaching to the marvellous.

In one of the apartments of the province-house there was long
preserved an ancient picture the frame of which was as black as ebony,
and the canvas itself so dark with age, damp and smoke that not a
touch of the painter's art could be discerned. Time had thrown an
impenetrable veil over it and left to tradition and fable and
conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed. During the rule
of many successive governors it had hung, by prescriptive and
undisputed right, over the mantel piece of the same chamber, and it
still kept its place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the
administration of the province on the departure of Sir Francis
Bernard.

The lieutenant-governor sat one afternoon resting his head against the
carved back of his stately arm-chair and gazing up thoughtfully at the
void blackness of the picture. It was scarcely a time for such
inactive musing, when affairs of the deepest moment required the
ruler's decision; for within that very hour Hutchinson had received
intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet bringing three
regiments from Halifax to overawe the insubordination of the people.
These troops awaited his permission to occupy the fortress of Castle
William and the town itself, yet, instead of affixing his signature to
an official order, there sat the lieutenant-governor so carefully
scrutinizing the black waste of canvas that his demeanor attracted the
notice of two young persons who attended him. One, wearing a military
dress of buff, was his kinsman, Francis Lincoln, the provincial
captain of Castle William; the other, who sat on a low stool beside
his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece. She was clad entirely
in white—a pale, ethereal creature who, though a native of New
England, had been educated abroad and seemed not merely a stranger
from another clime, but almost a being from another world. For several
years, until left an orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny
Italy, and there had acquired a taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and
painting which she found few opportunities of gratifying in the
undecorated dwellings of the colonial gentry. It was said that the
early productions of her own pencil exhibited no inferior genius,
though perhaps the rude atmosphere of New England had cramped her hand
and dimmed the glowing colors of her fancy. But, observing her uncle's
steadfast gaze, which appeared to search through the mist of years to
discover the subject of the picture, her curiosity was excited.

"Is it known, my dear uncle," inquired she, "what this old picture
once represented? Possibly, could it be made visible, it might prove a
masterpiece of some great artist; else why has it so long held such a
conspicuous place?"

As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom—for he was as attentive to
all the humors and caprices of Alice as if she had been his own
best-beloved child—did not immediately reply, the young captain of
Castle William took that office upon himself.

"This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin," said he, "has been
an heirloom in the province-house from time immemorial. As to the
painter, I can tell you nothing; but if half the stories told of it be
true, not one of the great Italian masters has ever produced so
marvellous a piece of work as that before you."

Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and
fantasies which, as it was impossible to refute them by ocular
demonstration, had grown to be articles of popular belief in reference
to this old picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the
best-accredited, accounts stated it to be an original and authentic
portrait of the evil one, taken at a witch-meeting near Salem, and
that its strong and terrible resemblance had been confirmed by several
of the confessing wizards and witches at their trial in open court. It
was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the
blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public
calamity to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for
instance, had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of General
Abercrombie's shameful and bloody defeat under the walls of
Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the province-house had caught
glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at morning or evening
twilight, or in the depths of night while raking up the fire that
glimmered on the hearth beneath, although, if any were, bold enough to
hold a torch before the picture, it would appear as black and
undistinguishable as ever. The oldest inhabitant of Boston recollected
that his father—in whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out
of sight—had once looked upon it, but would never suffer himself to
be questioned as to the face which was there represented. In
connection with such stories, it was remarkable that over the top of
the frame there were some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating
that a veil had formerly hung down before the picture until the
duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it. But, after all, it
was the most singular part of the affair that so many of the pompous
governors of Massachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to
remain in the state-chamber of the province-house.

"Some of these fables are really awful," observed Alice Vane, who had
occasionally shuddered as well as smiled while her cousin spoke. "It
would be almost worth while to wipe away the black surface of the
canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so formidable as
those which fancy paints instead of it."

"But would it be possible," inquired her cousin," to restore this dark
picture to its pristine hues?"

"Such arts are known in Italy," said Alice.

The lieutenant-governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood,
and listened with a smile to the conversation of his young relatives.
Yet his voice had something peculiar in its tones when he undertook
the explanation of the mystery.

"I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you
are so fond," remarked he, "but my antiquarian researches have long
since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture—if picture
it can be called—which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the
face of the long-buried man whom it once represented. It was the
portrait of Edward Randolph, the founder of this house, a person
famous in the history of New England."

"Of that Edward Randolph," exclaimed Captain Lincoln, "who obtained the
repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our forefathers
had enjoyed almost democratic privileges—he that was styled the
arch-enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation
as the destroyer of our liberties?"

"It was the same Randolph," answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in
his chair. "It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium."

"Our annals tell us," continued the captain of Castle William, "that
the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went and
wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its
effect was seen, likewise, in the manner of his death. They say, too,
that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward and was
visible on the wretched man's countenance, making it too horrible to
be looked upon. If so, and if this picture truly represented his
aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over
it."

"These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how little
of historic truth lies at the bottom," said the lieutenant-governor.
"As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too implicit
credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who—I must say it,
though some of his blood runs in my veins—has filled our early
history with old women's tales as fanciful and extravagant as those of
Greece or Rome."

"And yet," whispered Alice Vane, "may not such fables have a moral?
And methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not
without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the
province-house. When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were
well that they should be reminded of the awful weight of a people's
curse."

The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a moment at his niece,
as if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own
breast which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue.
He knew, indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education,
retained the native sympathies of a New England girl.

"Peace, silly child!" cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever
before addressed the gentle Alice. "The rebuke of a king; is more to
be dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude.—Captain
Lincoln, it is decided: the fortress of Castle William must be
occupied by the royal troops. The two remaining regiments shall be
billeted in the town or encamped upon the Common. It is time, after
years of tumult, and almost rebellion, that His Majesty's government
should have a wall of strength about it."

"Trust, sir—trust yet a while to the loyalty of the people," said
Captain Lincoln, "nor teach them that they can ever be on other terms
with British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as when they fought
side by side through the French war. Do not convert the streets of
your native town into a camp. Think twice before you give up old
Castle William, the key of the province, into other keeping than that
of true-born New Englanders."

"Young man, it is decided," repeated Hutchinson, rising from his
chair. "A British officer will be in attendance this evening to
receive the necessary instructions for the disposal of the troops.
Your presence also will be required. Till then, farewell."

With these words the lieutenant-governor hastily left the room, while
Alice and her cousin more slowly followed, whispering together, and
once pausing to glance back at the mysterious picture. The captain of
Castle William fancied that the girl's air and mien were such as might
have belonged to one of those spirits of fable—fairies or creatures
of a more antique mythology—who sometimes mingled their agency with
mortal affairs, half in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal
or woe. As he held the door for her to pass Alice beckoned to the
picture and smiled.