Twice-told tales
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.
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 comes too late. Thank Heaven
for this blessed hour! God save King George!”