Part 8

Nature's swift transition coming upon them so silently gave him a strange foreboding of impending trouble.

They were entering the street; the storm was at their backs. The day was stifled in a sable pall. There was a roll of thunder and a swift flash of lightning illumined the sky. Then out of the sullen blackness loomed the house, a sheet of fire, candles glowing in every room. A group of townspeople were about the door. Sally ran from André's side. Old Miss Townsend sat on the doorstep weeping, with her head in her apron. Sally looked at her and then at the faces about her. Most of the people were Tories, and there was little in their eyes but curiosity. Two or three neighbors glanced at her tenderly, and one stepped forward as if to speak, then checked herself. Inside there was the murmur of many voices. One that lived ever in her heart now came to her ears like an evil dream. Her face blanched. André was by her side in an instant.

"'Tis Jack," she whispered. In the hall she saw him bound and bleeding. His face was thin and haggard. There were bayonets all about him.

"You cannot enter here yet a while," a sentinel called out; but her ears were heedless. In André's arms she had swooned. The few who remained by the door were bending over her; about them roared the storm.

Sally's lover had been captured that afternoon in a rye field a mile from his home. He was dressed in a cheap, soiled homespun, and would have passed as a farmer's lad if a townsman vigilant in the service of King George had not recognized him. The youth was free after a long incarceration in a British warehouse prison in New York City. Many a weary mile he had skirted homeward bound. His one thought was to reach his mother's cool little cot again. The fever was still in his veins. He was nearing the road to rest when the soldiers ran out upon him. To his distraught fancy they seemed like red devils eager to drag him back to hades. Off over the fields he could see the roof of Sally's home. How glad she would be to see him again! Farther on was the little house he loved so well. The storm-clouds were beginning to form over it. His mother was no doubt bringing in the birds now from the willow garden house. Hark! was that the faint call of Rollin, his own pet bluewing?

"Yes, he belongs to the rebel forces," he heard a voice cry out. "He must be here spying." Grim faces pressed closer to him. Cruel hands bound him. Death was whispering to him--mocking. A thoughtless youth who carried a flute began to play the doleful music of "The Rogues' March." On they went to the tribunal.

Colonel Simcoe, who was kind at heart, could not condemn the young prisoner to death when there was little proof that he was a spy. His men had searched him for possible papers, but none were to be found. "Still, he may be a clever trickster," he mused. After consulting with his chief officers, it was decided to give out a mock sentence that he was to die on the morrow, to see whether aught could be learned from him. Then Major André, who had helped old Miss Townsend carry the prostrate Sally to her chamber, stood by the door from whence emanated justice when the verdict was reached. "If he is hung it will kill the poor maid," he thought. Through the ante-room he saw the prisoner. His head was drooping; the very attitude of his body betokened abject despair. "Poor lad," he said; "can Simcoe mean to carry out the murder?"

The storm was ceasing. So grave were the affairs over which the little world in the Townsend house were concerned that the night was on them unawares. The hour was long past the usual evening meal-time. The sentence of death sickened the hearts of all of those not in the plot. The court was about to break up when the prisoner asked permission to speak with Colonel Simcoe.

For the last hour they had been trying to wring from him that which he knew not. Was this a confession? The thought of death was a compelling force. A hush fell upon the room, broken only by the sputter of a candle.

"Colonel Simcoe," he said, "as this is to be my last night on earth, I ask of you a favor." He had suddenly grown pale like one arisen from a weary couch of sickness. "'Tis a great boon to ask, sir, and I have naught to give in exchange but my word. I came to this place to-day solely with the thought of seeing my old mother--and one other," he added, hesitatingly. "This has cost me my life, and I beg that you will let me go to her just for an hour or two, and I promise to come back again. Half a mile down the road is our house. She is thinking of me now, poor soul!" His voice had sunk into a whisper. "The bird woman; perhaps you know her, sir. You must trust me to go, and go alone. The knowing I am a prisoner would kill her. Do I ask too much?"

The officer looked at the youth. 'Twas a prodigious request, but bespoke honesty. The words touched a hidden part of his nature. The fair white face before him with the eager eyes brought back to him dead faces dreaming under cypress-trees. "I will set you free for two hours," he said, "on your promise to come back."

"I promise to return by all that I hold sacred," the youth answered.

The cords that bound his swelling arms were loosened. The great hall door swung back for freedom, and he staggered out into the garden. The storm was over. After the brightness of the room his eyes could not penetrate the darkness. A dash against a drenched rose-bush brought a cloud of raindrops and loosened petals on his head. The dampness and the faint odor of the flowers awakened him. A wind was arising, making a low murmur among the bushes.

Suddenly it came over him that he was leaving Sally's house. Only the Townsends had white garden-posts. Sally! How sweet the name! Long, long ago it was that he bade her good-by in the meadow. He felt her kiss on his cheek now. Then the wind sighed, "You are to die!--to die!"

A chill was creeping over him--he was to go back to the great house. No, it was not right. He was young; he was free; he could escape to the forest, and they would never know. For a moment he turned and looked at it, then hurried off into the road.

He began to run slowly at first, gradually increasing his pace until his strength was taxed to its utmost. He was a wild, hunted thing that the forces of the world were about to drown. A wet blanket was over the earth. Watery trees touched him with their wet arms, making him shudder. Deep pools in the middle of the roadway showed him his shadow. Dark, wet things flew out at him from coverts and joined his mad course. The wind was at his heels, growing louder and more insistent. "You are to die!--to die!" it shrieked. Now he was battling with it. "I cannot die!--I shall not die!" his soul said. On he plunged.

It was his own log school-house overlapping the road that stopped him. Close to his path it stood like some grim sentinel. Before it he paused, his breath coming in short gasps. "You must go back," it whispered. "You have promised." "I cannot die," he answered; but he lingered by it as if afraid to go on. The wind was lessening; it no longer challenged him. In its sweep he now heard the voices of children. "Here you taught us the meaning of faith and honor." Over the years he saw them all. A long line of eager little forms were stealing through a gate whose latch was rusted. Where were they all to-night: the merry boys who dreamed of playtimes over dull books; the girls with their flowers and apples for the master? No longer would he guide them. They were gone forever from him. The wind had caught their droning voices. A lad who wore the dunce-cap often was before him. He saw him stolid and indifferent in the corner of the dreary room; then again, awakened by the call of war, he was by his side, a drummer-boy, charging the heights of Bergen. The dunce was not afraid to die. "You will go back," the voices wailed, and he answered, "Yes!"

The moon was throwing off the mist veils, and her first pale beams sent earthward showed him his mother's cot. There were no lights in the windows. He approached the door and stood by it shivering. An awful fear came over him that perhaps she was away. A fourth of his time was already gone. What if he could not see her again? He longed to feel her tender arms about him, and yet he knew that the agony of leaving them would be more than he could bear. He dared not knock, but crept softly to an open window. In the old stole-band rocking-chair she was seated close to a dying fire, her eyes closed by sleep. The worn strip of wool rag carpet he knew so well was smooth beneath her feet. A pair of finches were twittering softly in their cage by the south window. Over the broad sill he climbed as in the days of his boyhood. To her side he crept and began to stroke her calloused, tired hands. His touch brought her back from her visionary realm. "Is he dead?" her waking lips murmured, and then she saw her son.

At the Townsend house none of the officers knew that the youth who left them was anything to Sally. It was proper for a tender-hearted maid to swoon at a danger. After the door closed upon him there were calls for the hostess. Was she revived? Then André stepped forward and told the officers what the condemned youth was to her. In his graphic way he repeated the simple love-story. The eyes of all in the room, expressing varying emotions, were still centred on his face when a faint rustle of women's garments was heard in the hall. André stopped speaking. In their midst stood Sally, pale and with anguish in her eyes. Miss Townsend was near her, wringing her hands.

"Sirs," the girl said, "you have been here nigh a month, and we have given you of our best, hiding naught, although you are not of our color." Her voice was breaking. "I," she continued, "have worked for you, amused you, laughed for you, and now I want my pay. You must give me an innocent man's life. The one you have condemned to death is not a spy. I swear it before God!"

Bluff and hearty Colonel Simcoe, in the act of drawing a goblet of port, lowered the glass a few inches at each of the girl's passionate outbursts. He began to feel of his wig to see if it were awry. "Lud, here is a pretty to do," he murmured to himself. The lady was a fine creature and her words were true. He placed the heavy cut piece on the table and then he spoke. "His death-sentence was but a mock one," he said. "'Tis our mind to set him free, yet 'twas necessary to find out if he knew aught."

"Oh, sir, let me have his life! Write it on a paper that you set him free." The girl's tones were entreating. "I must go to him, and now."

For a moment the commander hesitated; then André's voice rang out. "Those who are for Sally unsheath their swords," he cried. The room was full of flashing steel. The pardon was in Sally's hand.

"Come," she said, as she turned and faced the group of excited men.

The next moment she was out in the night, followed by a line of supperless redcoats.

The moon, grown round and full, smiled on the procession. Sally and André headed the company splashing through the wet road. So intent were they on their errand that scarcely any one spoke.

They were nearing the lights of the cottage when Sally paused. Placing her finger to her mouth to enjoin silence, she said, "You must turn back, friends. The sight of you all might kill his mother. 'Twas thoughtless in asking you to come with me. André," she whispered, "you must stay to bring me home."

"Brave little Sally!" a youth's lusty voice rang out. The men surrounded her. One by one they asked to kiss her hand, then crept off through the dripping foliage. All the while she was gazing at the house. Rain-drops glistened in her hair and her garments hung limp about her knees. André stood by her side seemingly lost in thought. He was dreaming of days that were dead. Softly she touched his shoulder.

"André," she said, "I am afraid to go in."

The crashing of twigs under foot died away in the distance; the clouds were all swept out of the heavens and the night seemed one vast ambient plain of loneliness. The girl and the man in the middle of the roadway drew closer to each other. Tenderly he caught her trembling hands in his. "Do not be afraid, Sally," he said; "you will find happiness." His voice was breaking. "Two hearts will always beat for you--one belongs to the man in yonder cot and the other to John André." Softly she crept from him to the door which opened into her earthly Paradise.

PINDERINA SCRIBBLERUS, AN AMERICAN MONTAGU

PINDERINA SCRIBBLERUS, AN AMERICAN MONTAGU

When the great Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu was receiving the _bas-bleus_ of London in her Hill Street drawing-room there arose across the water a little American salon which reflected in a degree the spirit of the famous gatherings Admiral Boscawen named after the slovenly Dr. Stillingfleet's gray stockings. It is only recently that historians have taken a marked interest in the literature which followed in the wake of the Revolutionary War and the world has learned that in the newly-formed States there were a few bright spirits whose lives and aspirations reflected the culture of Europe. One of the most interesting of these was Elizabeth Kearny, _née_ Lawrence, a daughter of Judge Lawrence, of Burlington, and a half-sister of Captain James Lawrence of "Don't give up the ship" fame. She formed a literary circle which flourished for a few years in old Perth Amboy, Jersey's fallen capital.

Elizabeth Lawrence passed her early youth in Burlington, where she pursued the study of Greek and Latin, to the mild astonishment of the community. Over her father's library table in the Lawrence mansion, still existing impervious to the encroachments of time, she chatted as a girl with the Tory satirist Jonathan Odell. She must have imbibed some of his sarcasm, for in later years her loquacious tongue was barbed with a wit almost Walpolian in its acrid cleverness. At nearby Philadelphia she met the famous Peggy Chew, and formed an intimacy with Anne Willing, better known as Mrs. William Bingham. The "dazzling Bingham" she made the subject of some animated verses, entitled,--

"LINES ON MRS. BINGHAM'S RECALL OF A SUPPER INVITATION.

"Just in from the country, with nothing to wear, At Bingham's to-night I am bidden repair. My one silken pelisse is all in a tangle, And I know I have lost my Parisian bangle: Not a whif of hair-powder to light up my head-- Methinks 'twould be better to get into bed! My slippers the parrot has quite eaten up-- Oh! why am I bidden to come in to sup? Now, Rebecca, do try make the child stop its wailing; At the thought of the company courage is failing! There's a chair going past and a coach with a clatter. If I go as I am--pray, what does it matter? Here give me some Rose-Bloom to ease up my face, And a patch on my chin would give it a grace. My new brilliant necklace, my white turkey wrapping, Ah, now I am ready; but who is that tapping? A word from the Binghams--you say a postponement: An illness--alas, 'tis a hurried atonement, With nothing to wear and nothing to eat! Come blow out the candles and gaze on the street."

There are very few records of this remarkable woman's girlhood still extant. Her brother John, for whom she cherished a strong attachment, was born after her marriage to Mr. Michael Kearny, "the beloved noble Michael," who erected her Perth Amboy cottage. There she lived as "the scribbling Mrs. Kearny, occupying the highest seat on Parnassus," a power in her world. Argus-eyed she evidently was, for nothing seems to have escaped her facile quill. There was scarcely a subject too great or too small for her to digress upon, and she wrote in the morning of "the shameful performance of certain gentlemen in Congress" and at night of "the sorrow she felt on finding a slave under the influence of pernicious rum."

About some of the streets of the city named in honor of the "passionately proud" Earl of Perth there lingers an air of decayed opulence. Although old Amboy of the scarlet coats died long ago, a few of her echoes live on undrowned by the din of new voices. In Mrs. Kearny's day many a stately garden crept down to the water-front. The great houses overlooking the smooth Raritan still sheltered a few of the noble Scotch and Irish families who had unwillingly relinquished their king and remained in the New World. In the letters of Sophia Brown, who lodged with the mother of William Dunlap, the art historian, there are glimpses of this society. The frail and aristocratic Misses Parker with their tea-drinkings, the gallant Captain Love, and other charming figures, look out at us from pages filled with the trivialities of every-day life. A child dreaming beside a broad pane overlooking the quiet street, where trees stood in line as if awaiting the call of Orpheus, saw many things. Now a youthful pair sauntered by in the spring-time of love, now an ancient crone in worn satin shoes that had once touched ever so lightly a king's feet in a long-forgotten dance, and now a tired veteran of the Revolution murmuring to himself of battles still unwon. Suddenly would come the rush of many footsteps. Off in the distance the bell of St. Peter's tolls. People of condition are to be married. Ladies in faded silk or humble erminetta mince past gentlemen in desay suits. Then the music creeps out of the chancel,--the faint, sweet air of an old English wedding-march. Even the sombre fronts of the houses seem to be ravished with it. The voices of the gentle choir may not be as pure as they were in the days of George III., but to the girl who listened then they were like strains from Paradise.

The city which had received its charter one day after New York was at that period beginning to lose its importance in the eyes of the Western world. No longer chariots drawn by white horses carried a supercilious nobility to the resort of the Knickerbockers. No longer big-wigs talked over the commercial supremacy of Perth Amboy in the Sweeting's Alley Coffee House. No longer were there stately minuets and revels at the Governor's palace. The old days were gone forever; but although the leading actors and the lights had fled, the stage remained unchanged. That sad-faced baggage Poverty loitered behind and came often to once proud dwelling-places. Pinderina heard the sighs of her friends, and decided to enliven the situation. In the Kearny Cottage, whose rooms seem to widen mysteriously as one enters, she held her gatherings of sympathetic souls. These affairs differed somewhat from the parties given at an earlier date by Mrs. Hugh Ferguson and Mrs. Richard Stockton, two other literary lights of the time, for the hostess suffered from a slender purse. Her guests came only for the pleasure of conversation, without the "stomach compensation" Mrs. Montagu and her American imitators thought so necessary.

One of the most distinguished frequenters of Mrs. Kearny's Blue-Stocking Club was Philip Freneau, whose mother had made a second matrimonial venture and wedded Captain James Kearny, of Kearny Port, a relative of the Perth Amboy family. "Small but well formed, his blue eyes sparkling with poetic fire," it is easy to imagine him the lion of Mrs. Kearny's evenings. Whenever the old sloop "King William"--changed to "Liberty"--sailed into Amboy, bringing Mr. Freneau to pass the night with his friends before journeying to Monmouth, there was always great excitement in the town. Mrs. Kearny's black Rebecca was sent forth in haste to inform the chosen few of the neighborhood that their leader bade them to her drawing-room. The seven romping Kearny boys were hurried up to the attic to bed, the furniture rearranged, and Madam Scribblerus, as her world called her, slipped on her brocade gown to be in readiness for the battle of wits sure to ensue. A happy woman was this quaint personage when footfalls began to sound on the gallery steps. The rap-tap of the knocker made her spirits buoyant, and each greeting took her farther away from the cares of a commonplace existence. Although she was a lover of nature, she too could have said with Mr. Robinson, the father of Mrs. Montagu, that living in the country was like sleeping with one's eyes open. Each breath of the world beyond Amboy brought new life to her.

We can picture to ourselves the evening. About the oddly-shaped room, on hard-seated, fiddle-backed chairs, sits Pinderina's little court. By the wide fireplace on the settle old Judge Nevill, the editor of the first American magazine, is blinking at the embers. Mr. Freneau has finished telling some of his recent adventures in New York City. Now Mrs. Kearny begins the story of Captain Kidd's black cat, which lived on long after her master had been condemned to death in Old Bailey, and for these two hundred years has haunted the spot where the bold adventurer is said to have buried some of his chests of rupees. Sleepy eyes grow wider as she advances in her narrative. Timid ladies feel for each other's hands in the flickering light. The hostess is in her element.

Taking a penetrating look at the company over the years, they are not as we would at first imagine them. There are holes in Mr. Freneau's wrist ruffles, and the worn brocade gown of the hostess no longer gives forth even faint protesting rustle as she walks. In this respect the circle is true-blue,--for Oliver Goldsmith went to Mrs. Montagu's in darned stockings and a laced coat, and the immortal Johnson and many of his confrères were naturally careless in their attire, or were helped to the state by the lack of pence.

The one great ambition of Elizabeth Kearny's life was to write like her "admired Mr. Freneau," and her many mild plagiarisms of his poems, if they failed in their object, were no doubt regarded by him as flattering homage to his genius. Theirs was an unusual friendship of which the world knows very little, but mute testimonials remain of it to-day in her letters and her autographs fading under those of Philip Freneau's in many of his favorite volumes. She could have written of him as Mrs. Montagu once wrote, thinking no doubt of her faithful Dr. Beattie:

"Many guests my heart has not admitted; such as there are do it honor, and a long and intimate acquaintance has preceded their admittance; they were invited in it by its best virtues; they passed through the examination of severity, nay, even answered some questions of suspicion that inquired of their constancy and sincerity; but now they are delivered over to the keeping of constant faith and love; for doubt never visits the friends entirely, but only examines such as would come in, lest the way should be too common."

When Philip Freneau lived for a short period over a little shop in the Fly-Market, New York City, and edited _The Time Piece_, Mrs. Kearny became one of its constant contributors. Among that sentimental group of female poets, numbering a Saraperina, Edena, Cynthea, Clara, Carolina, and a Petronella, her effusions--generally under the _nome de guerre_ of "Scribelra"--stand forth in bold type. Turning the musty pages of a bound volume of the paper, we find

"LINES BY A LADY ON HEARING THE FROGS SING ON THE 17TH OF MARCH.