Micro R&D 1/MicroRD-CD-ROM-Vol1-1994.iso/books/hawthorn/e_dudley

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                                      1839
                                TWICE-TOLD TALES
                               OLD ESTHER DUDLEY
                             by Nathaniel Hawthorne

   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 forever
from New England, he smote his clinched 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 staff
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 intrusted 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 cloak 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 clinched 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 was it 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 afterwards, 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 towards 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 ground, 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 by-gone 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. Towards 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 playday 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 byword 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.
   "O happy day! O 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
spectral 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 by-gone 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!"
   "That, Madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a
moment," replied the unknown guest of the Province House, and
courteously removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged
woman. "Yet, in reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith,
Heaven forbid that any here should say you nay. Over the realms
which still acknowledge his sceptre, God save King George!"
   Esther Dudley started to her feet, and hastily clutching back the
key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger; and dimly and
doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered
eyes half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the
gentry of the province. But the ban of the King had fallen upon him!
How, then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from
mercy, the monarch's most dreaded and hated foe, this New England
merchant had stood triumphantly against a kingdom's strength; and
his foot now trod upon humbled Royalty, as he ascended the steps of
the Province House, the people's chosen Governor of Massachusetts.
   "Wretch, wretch that I am!" muttered the old woman, with such a
heart-broken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger's
eyes. "Have I bidden a traitor welcome? Come, Death! come quickly!"
   "Alas, venerable lady. said Governor Hancock, lending her his
support with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a
queen. "Your life has been prolonged until the world has changed
around you. You have treasured up all that time has rendered
worthless- the principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and
acting, which another generation has flung aside- and you are a symbol
of the past. And I, and these around me- we represent a new race of
men- living no longer in the past, scarcely in the present- but
projecting our lives forward into the future. Ceasing to model
ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and principle to
press onward, onward! Yet," continued he, turning to his attendants,
"let us reverence, for the last time, the stately and gorgeous
prejudices of the tottering Past!"
   While the Republican Governor spoke, he had continued to support
the helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against
his arm; but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the
ancient woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The
key of the Province House fell from her grasp, and clanked against the
stone.
   "I have been faithful unto death," murmured she. "God save the
King!"
   "She hath done her office!" said Hancock solemnly. "We will
follow her reverently to the tomb of her ancestors; and then, my
fellow-citizens, onward- onward! We are no longer children of the
Past!
                        THE END