Twice-Told Tales (35 page)

Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no little Warmth of
applause upon this narrative, in which we had all been deeply
interested; for the reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the
effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in the present case, we
may repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who tells it. For
my own part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the
foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the
more faithfully had he professed himself an eyewitness of the doings
and sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might
demand documentary evidence, or even require him to produce the
embroidered mantle, forgetting that—Heaven be praised!—it was
consumed to ashes.

But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer,
began to talk, in his turn, about the traditions of the Province
House, and hinted that he, if it were agreeable, might add a few
reminiscences to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to
dread a rival, immediately besought him to favor us with a specimen;
my own entreaties, of course, were urged to the same effect; and our
venerable guest, well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited only
the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth to provide
accommodations for several new arrivals. Perchance the public—but be
this as its own caprice and ours shall settle the matter—may read the
result in another tale of the Province House.

Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as Mr. Tiffany and
myself expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story
to which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw
lit to moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then,
turning his face toward 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 toward 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 court-yard.

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 for ever from New England,
he smote his clenched 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 stuff 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."

"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
entrusted 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 clonk 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
clenched 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.

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 afterward 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 ghostlike. 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 reappear 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 toward 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-grounds, 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.