The Belle of Bowling Green
Then Mrs. Bloommaert rose, smiling trustfully and happily, but at the
door she turned. Her husband went toward her, and she toward him, and
when they met, she kissed him with untranslatable affection. Again she
was at the door, and the judge stood in the middle of the room watching
her. As she slowly opened it, he made up his mind about something he had
been pondering for a couple of weeks.
“Carlita,” he said, “you may tell Sapphira that to-morrow I will buy her
that grand pianoforte at Bailey & Stevens’, that she was so delighted
with.”
“Oh, my dear Gerardus!”
“It is not white rosebuds, but yet she may like it.” He could not help
this little fling.
“There is nothing in all the world she wanted so much, though she never
dreamed of possessing it.”
“We shall see, dear! We shall see!”
In about half an hour the door opened gently, and there was a swift,
light movement. Then Sappha was at his knees, and her face was against
his breast, and he bent his head, and she threw her white arms around
his neck and kissed him. There was no word spoken; and there was none
needed--the kiss--the kneeling figure--the clasping arms, were the
clearest of explanations, the surest of all promises. Verily “he that
ruleth his spirit is stronger than he who taketh a city.”
CHAPTER THREE
_A Sweetness More Desired than Spring_
In this sort of veiled truce the new days came, but the inheritance of
those other few days, following the declaration of war, was not disposed
of. On the contrary, its influence continually increased; though Leonard
received from Mrs. Bloommaert neither special favour nor special
disregard. As for the judge, he preserved a grave courtesy, which the
young man found it almost impossible either to warm, or to move; and it
soon became obvious to Mrs. Bloommaert that her husband’s frequent
visits to his friend, General Bloomfield, were made in order to prevent
all temptations to alter the polite reserve of his assumed manner.
But the lover’s power is the poet’s power. He can make love from all the
common strings with which this world is strung. And this time was far
from being common; it was thrilled through and through by rumours of
war, of defeat and of victory, so that the sound of trumpets, and the
march of fighting men were a constant obligato to the most trivial
affairs. No one knew what great news any hour might bring. Expectation
stood on tiptoe waiting for the incredible. This was not only the case
in America. All over Christendom the war flags were flying, and the
nations humbling themselves before the great Napoleon. With an army of
more than half a million men he was then on his way to invade the
dominions of the Emperor of Russia, and at the same time he was waging
war with England and Spain, in the Spanish peninsula. The greater part
of the rest of Europe was subject to his control; and England was
necessarily at war, not only with Napoleon, but with all the other
powers of Europe, who were either allies or dependents of Napoleon.
Under such circumstances it was hardly likely that she would send any
greater force from her continental wars than she thought necessary to
maintain her possessions in America. Thus, as yet, there was all the
stir and enthusiasm of war, without any great fear of immediate danger.
Leonard came and went, as many other young men did, to the house of
Bloommaert; and their talk was all of fighting. But the eyes have a
language of their own; the hands speak, flowers and books and music, all
were messengers of love, and did his high behests. Moreover, New York
was even abnormally gay. She gave vent to her emotions in social
delights and unlimited hospitality. Tea-and card-parties, assemblies or
subscription balls, excursions up the river, visits to Ballston mineral
springs, riding and driving, and the evening saunter on the
Battery--when the moon shone, and the band played, and embryo heroes
brought ices and made honest love--all these things were part and
parcel of these early days of war, in eighteen hundred and twelve; and
Leonard Murray and Sapphira Bloommaert met under such happy
circumstances continually.
The Bowling Green was the heart of this festivity, for it was the
headquarters of the military commanders; and all the colour and pomp of
war centred there. Every morning Sappha awoke to the sound of martial
music; and every hour of daylight the sidewalks were gay with the
uniforms of the army and the militia. It was Annette’s misfortune to
live in Nassau Street; but then, as she said, “a great many officers
found Nassau Street a convenient way to the Battery.” Doubtless they did
so, for her pretty face among the flowers and tantalising shrubbery of
the house was an attraction worth going a little out of the way for.
However, both Annette and Madame Bloommaert spent much time at the house
on the Bowling Green; and no one was more interested in public affairs
than the judge’s mother. Her daughter-in-law had many other cares and
duties; but the war to Madame Jonaca Bloommaert was the pivot on which
all her interests hung.
She was sitting, one morning towards the end of July, eating breakfast
with her granddaughter. There was a little breeze wandering about the
old place, and madame wore her white Canton crape shawl, a sure sign
that she intended to go to the Bowling Green. Well Annette had prepared
herself for such a likely visit, and she looked with complacent
satisfaction at her figured chintz frock, and her snow-white pelerine of
the sheerest muslin.
“About that affair at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church last Sunday, I want to
ask your uncle Gerardus,” said madame. “I take leave to say it was not
respectable. I can hardly credit the tale--eh; what do you think?”
“It must be true, grandmother; I was at the dinner table yesterday when
cousin Peter came in and told us.”
“Told you? What then?”
“He said that after leaving church on Sunday morning, and seeing us
safely to our gate, he went up Nassau Street and crossed the City Hall
Park, intending to call on John Van Ambridge. Not finding him at home,
he took the Broadway to the Bowling Green, and as he was passing St.
Paul’s Episcopal Church an artillery regiment marched out of the church,
playing _Yankee Doodle_; and so up Broadway, to both the outspoken anger
and outspoken pleasure of the crowd. Many men called on them to cease;
others bid them go on, and there was a commotion that would likely have
been much greater, if it had not been Sunday.”
“What said Peter?”
“He did not like it; he said it never could have happened at the Middle
Dutch Church, and so he laid all the blame on Episcopacy.”
“And what said your uncle?”
“He did not like it either. He thought the officers should be
reprimanded. What do you say, grandmother?”
“I like it.”
Annette smiled with a pleasant anticipation. She rather enjoyed a
difference of opinion between the household powers. There was generally
some small advantage in one way or another as a result. Reconciliations
were sure to follow, and reconciliations brought laxities and
favours--not infrequently gifts. She did not forget Sappha’s new
piano--the white roses and the tear-stained face, and as a natural
sequence--the piano.
As they took their way to the Bowling Green madame noticed an unusual
quiet in the streets, but Annette, to whom the Bowling Green represented
New York, thought everything very lively. The musical exit from St.
John’s supplied the conversation, or at least seasoned it with a just
interesting acrimony, till the dinner hour arrived. The judge was always
pleased to see his mother, and always placed her in his own seat at the
table when she eat with them, and this loyal respect and kindness,
though so often repeated, never failed to touch madame as if it was a
new thing that very hour. So she spoke far more tolerantly than she
intended, about the scene at St. John’s, and expended her little store
of wrath upon an ordinance which the Common Council had just passed,
making it unlawful for any one but those in actual service to beat drums
or play fifes on the streets, except under great restrictions as to
time. Madame indignantly declared such a law to be “a restriction on the
liberty of the individual;” and she reminded her son how much of a
sinner he himself had been, when the Revolutionary War was beginning.
“You were then a lad of only ten years old, Gerardus, yet the drum was
never out of your hands, unless you were playing the fife,” she said.
“I am sorry to hear this, mother,” he answered. “The suffering that has
been caused by such exhibitions of boyish patriotism is beyond our
counting. The healthy have been made sick, the sick have been made
worse, and in many cases, undoubtedly, they have died in consequence of
the perpetual noise. Latterly these bands have taken to beating drums
incessantly before the house of any one thought to be opposed to the
war, and the general distress has compelled householders to beseech the
Town Council for its interference.”
“An old woman am I,” said madame, “but the noise never annoyed me.”
“Mother, you are not an old woman, and you will never be old. If you see
one hundred years, you will die young.”
She put out her thin, brown hand towards her son at this compliment, and
he laid his own all over it. Then she added a little defiantly: “More
noise than ever we shall have in a day or two. Just nobody, is the
Common Council. The new disease is noise, and the boys all have it.”
“Well, then, mother, the law will make short work of it--there is a
heavy fine and the watch-house for those who do not mind the law.”
“Poor boys!”
“I think we have had enough of that subject,” said Mrs. Bloommaert; “is
there no other news, Gerardus?”
“Well, my friend General Bloomfield is to be relieved of his command
here; so my pleasant evening smoke and chat with him will soon come to
an end. I heard, also, that the company raised by Leonard Murray had
joined Colonel Harsen’s artillery regiment, and offered their services
as a body to the governor, and that it has been accepted. Some parts of
it will go to Staten Island, others to Bedloe’s Island and the Narrows.”
He did not raise his eyes as he made this statement, or he must have
seen the face of his daughter flush and pale at his words. She
understood from them that Leonard would leave New York, and she could
not imagine how long his absence might be. Mrs. Bloommaert did not
speak; but she looked curiously at the dropped countenance of her
husband. In some dim, undefined way, she came in a moment to the
conclusion that this bit of military movement had been effected by
General Bloomfield, in order to please his friend. Annette shrugged her
shoulders and said some one, or something, always carried off _her_
friends. She wondered what she should do without Leonard--he was so
obliging, so merry, so always on hand when she wanted him, and so
discreetly absent when she would have felt him a nuisance. She went on
in a pretty, complaining way, as if Leonard was her special friend, or
even lover, and though all present looked at her with a mild
astonishment, no one cared to contradict the position she had taken.
Madame even endorsed it by her unconscious affectation of sympathy. “You
have a trifle of eight or ten other admirers, child,” she said; “and
Leonard Murray is by no means unparagoned. A token give to him, and let
him go; a little discipline, that will be good for him.”
This discussion had given Sappha time for self-control, and Mrs.
Bloommaert looked with admiration at her daughter. She had feared some
scornful or passionate word, but the face of Sappha was as calm as that
of a sleeping child. She had taken possession of herself completely; and
she asked her mother for some delicacy she wanted, with an air of one