The good vrow, who stood on the door-step, was giving them a last charge to hear every thing and see every thing to tell her; for she “always had to stay at home when any thing lively was going on.” As she turned from them, her housewife eye fell on the countryman’s market-basket. “Stop, neighbour,” said she, “and tell us the price of your butter and eggs.”
“Butter one dollar the pound, eggs three for a shilling.”
“That’s the prettiest price asked yet; but—”
“Ay, mother; but live and let live, you know.”
“Let live, truly. You Bergen people are turning your grass into gold.”
“We must make hay while the sun shines.”
“While the sun shines! Ah, it does shine as through a knot-hole on a few, but the rest of us are in solid darkness. Go your ways, friend; you’ll find lords and generals, admirals, commandants, and jail-keepers, to buy your butter and eggs; honest people must eat their bread without butter now-a-days. The hawks have come over the water to protect the doves, forsooth, and the doves’ food, doves and all, are like to be devoured.”
345This was a sort of figurative railing much indulged in by those who were secretly well-affected to the country’s cause, but who were constrained, by motives of prudence, to remain within the British lines.
It seemed to have struck a sympathetic chord in the countryman; for drawing near the good woman, whose exterior expressed very little resemblance to the gentle emblem by which she had chosen to personify herself, he said, kindly smiling, “Bring me a knife, mother, and I’ll give you a slice of butter to garnish your tea-table when your comely lasses come home.”
“This is kind and neighbourlike,” said the woman, hastily bringing the knife and plate; “I thought, the first minute you opened your lips, you were freehearted. This an’t the common way of the Bergen people—they sell the cat and her skin too—you have not their tongue, neither—mine is more broken than yours, and I’m only Dutch on the mother’s side.”
“Ah, mother, trading with gentlefolks, and such fair-spoken people as you, gets the mitten off one’s tongue. But I must be going. Can you direct me to Lizzy Bengin’s? our Lida wants a pink riband against Christmas.”
“Now don’t say you come to market, and don’t know where Lizzy Bengin lives! Did you never take notice of the little one-story building at the very lower end of Queen-street, with the stoop even with the ground, and plenty of cochinia, and cookey horses, and men and women, in the window, and a parrot hanging outside that beats the world for talking?” The man gave the expected assent, and his informant proceeded—“That is Lizzy’s; and without going a step out of your way, you may turn your butter and eggs into silver before you get there. Call at the Provost—Cunningham starves the prisoners, and eats the fat of the land himself—or at Admiral Digby’s, who has the young prince William under his roof, and therefore a warrant for the best in the land—or 346at Tryon’s, or Robertson’s, or any of the quality; their bread is buttered both sides; but the time is coming—”
“When the bread shall be fairly spread for all. I think so, mother; but I must be going—so good-day.”
“Good-day, and good luck to you—a nice youth and a well-spoken is that,” said she, looking after him; “and if butter must be a dollar a pound, I’m glad the money finds its way into the pockets of the like of him.”
Meanwhile, the subject of her approbation pursued his way, and soon found himself in the midst of a throng, who were hurrying forward to the place of execution. The usual place for military executions was in an apple orchard, where East Broadway now runs; but the condemned having to suffer as one of the infamous band of skinners, was not thought worthy to swing on a gallows devoted to military men. Accordingly, a gallows was erected in a field just above St. Paul’s church. Our friend of the butter and eggs found himself, on reaching Broadway, retarded and encompassed by the crowd. “Hold your basket up, fellow, and let me pass,” said a gentleman, who seemed eager to get beyond the crowd. The countryman obeyed, but turned his back upon the speaker, as if from involuntary resentment at his authoritative tone.
“Whither are you hastening, Meredith?” asked another voice.
“Ah, St. Clair, how are you! I am trying to get through this abominable crowd to join my mother and Lady Anne, who have gone to take a drive; my servant is waiting with my horse beyond the barracks.”
“Your mother, Lady Anne, and Miss Linwood!” An opening now before the countryman would have allowed him to pass on, but he did not move. “Upon my honour, St. Clair, I did not know that Miss Linwood was with them. They talked of asking Helen Ruthven.”
347“And so they did. Lady Anne sent me to her, but Miss Ruthven said, not very civilly I think, she had no inclination for a drive, and begged me to stop while she wrote you this note.”
Meredith opened the note, sealed with an anchor, and containing only these two lines, exquisitely written in pencil:—“Could I endure any thing called pleasure on the same day with my tête-à-tête walk with you this morning? Oh, no—there is no next best.—H. R.”
“You seem pleased, Meredith,” resumed St. Clair, as he saw Meredith’s eye kindle and his cheek brighten. Meredith made no reply, but thrust the note into his pocket. He was pleased. He felt much like a musician, whose ears have been tormented by discords, when the keys are rightly struck. “Lady Anne had hard work,” continued St. Clair, “to persuade Miss Linwood to go with her. It seems she has got up her nerves for this poor devil of a skinner. Lady Anne persuaded her at last; indeed, I believe she was glad to get beyond the tolling of the bell till the rumpus is over.”
“Women are riddles,” thought Meredith; “they feel without reason, and will not feel when reason bids them.” He had lost his desire to go alone to join the ladies; and he offered St. Clair his horse, saying he would himself ride his servant’s. St. Clair eagerly accepted his courtesy, and the two gentlemen elbowed their way through the crowd. The countryman turned to gaze after them; and while his eye followed Meredith with its keenest glance, the wave of the multitude had set towards him, and so completely hedged his way in front, that, not being able to proceed, he thought best to retreat a few yards to where the crowd was less dense, and wait till the pressure was past, which must be soon, as the procession with the prisoner had already moved from the Provost. In the meanwhile he secured the occupation of a slightly elevated 348platform, an entrance to a house, where, setting down his basket, he folded his arms, and while detained, had the benefit of the various remarks of the passers-by.
“What a disgrace it is,” said a British subaltern to his companion, “that those rebels,” pointing to some American officers, prisoners on parole, “are permitted to walk the streets in uniform. It is too annoying—I hate the sight of them.”
“Yes,” retorted his companion, laughing, “and so you have ever since they distanced you skating on the Kolch last winter.”
“A crying shame is it,” said an honest burgher to a fellow-vestryman, “that a human creature is going to his doom, and but one bell tolling. But the Lord’s temples are turned aside from all holy uses—our own sanctuary is a prison for soldiers, and the Middle Dutch a riding-school!”
“A soul’s a soul,” returned his companion; “but the lordly English bells may not toll for the parting of this poor wretch’s; only the tinkling bell of the Methodist Chapel, that’s kept open, forsooth, because John Wesley and his followers are loyal.”
“We shall have our pains for our trouble,” said a fellow, who seemed to have come to the spectacle en amateur: “the boys say he never will stand it to get to the gallows.”
“Move on—move on,” cried a voice that heralded the procession; and the crowd was driven forward, in order to leave an open space around the prisoner and his assistants.
It is impossible for a benevolent man to look on a fellow-creature about to suffer a violent death (be his doom ever so well merited), without a feeling of intense interest. The days of the culprits’ youth, of his inn
ocence, of his parents’ love and hope; the tremendous present, and the possible future, all push upon the mind. It would appear that our country friend was a man of reflection and sentiment; for, as he gazed at the prisoner, his cheek was blanched, his brow contracted, 349and the exclamation, “Oh, God! oh, God!” burst from lips that never lightly uttered that holy name.
Poor Kisel appeared as if nature would fain save him from the executioner’s touch. His head had fallen on his bosom, his knees were bent and trembling, and his step as wavering and uncertain as that of a blind man. He was supported and helped forward by a stout man on his right. When he was within a few feet of the countryman, a ray of consciousness seemed to shoot athwart his mind. He raised his head, shook back his shaggy locks, cast a wild inquiring glance around him, when his eye encountering the stranger, he seemed electrified, his joints to be reset, his nerves restrung. He drew up his person, uttered a piercing shriek, sprang forward like a cat, and, sinking at his feet, sobbed out, “Misser Eliot, hey!”
The multitude were for an instant palsied; not a sound—not a breath escaped them: and then a rush, and a shout, and cries of “Seize him!” and shrieks from those who were trodden under foot.
“Stand back—back—back, monsters!” cried Eliot, himself almost wild with amazement and grief—“give him air, space, breath, he is dying!” He raised Kisel’s head, and rested it on his breast, and bent his face over him, murmuring, “Kisel, my poor fellow!”
Kisel’s eye, gleaming with preternatural joy, was riveted to Eliot’s face. A slight convulsion passed over his frame; drops of sweat, like rain, gushed from every pore; and, while his quivering, half-smiling lips murmured inaudibly, “Misser Eliot!—Misser Eliot!” they stiffened, his eyes rolled up, and his released, exulting spirit fled.
Eliot was but for one instant unmanned; but for one instant did he lose the self-possession on which even at this moment of consternation he was conscious that much more than his own individual safety depended. He made no effort to escape from observation; that would have excited suspicion; 350but said, calmly, still supporting Kisel’s head, “The poor man, I think, is gone; is there not some physician here who can tell whether he be or not?” A doctor was called for; and, while one was bustling through the crowd, there were various conjectures, surmises, and assertions. Some said “he looked as good as dead when he came out of the prison;” some asked “if he could have hoped to have got away;” and others believed that the excitement of the scene had maddened his brain. Eliot said he had fallen at his feet like a spent ball; and, while he was internally blessing God that his poor follower had escaped all farther suffering, the medical man announced, with the authority of his art, that life was extinct. The body was conveyed to the prison for interment. The crowd dispersed; and Eliot, feeling that Heaven had conferred its best boon on Kisel, and extended a shield over him, pursued his way to Lizzy Bengin’s shop.
351CHAPTER XXXII.
“Les revers de la verité a cent milles figures, et un champ indefiny,
Les Pythagoriena font le bien certain et finy, le mal incertain et infiny.”
—MONTAIGNE.
While the circumstances related above were in action, the ladies in their drive had stopped at an opening to the Hudson, where the shore was shelving and indented with a footpath, on which the full mellow rays of the afternoon sun shone. And who would not pause to gaze at the noble Hudson, which, coming from its source in distant mountains, infolds in its arms the city it has created, wears on its bosom its little emerald island-gems, reposes in the bay, and then finishes its course through the portal of the Narrows?
The river is now precisely what it then was, for “man’s hand cannot make a mark upon the waters;” but on its shores what changes has that marvellous instrument wrought! Where nature sat, like a hermit, amid the magnificence of her solitary domain, are now bustling cities, fortified islands, wharves and warehouses, manufactories, stately mansions, ornamented pleasure-grounds, and citizens’ cottages, and the parent city extending up and branching out in every direction, from the narrow space it then occupied, covering with its thronged streets the wooded heights and bosky dells, now, 352alas! reduced from the aristocracy of nature to one uniform level. Then the city’s tributary waters bore on their surface a few fishing-skiffs, and some two or three British men-of-war. Now see the signals of population, enterprise, and commercial prosperity: schooners from our own eastern and southern ports, neatly rigged vessels from a hundred river-harbours, mammoth steamers bringing in and carrying out their hundreds at every hour of the day, ferryboats scudding to and fro, sail-boats dancing over the waves, row-boats darting out and in, hither and yon, packets taking their semiweekly departure for England and France, ships with the star-spangled banner floating from the masthead, and rich freighted argosies from all parts of each quarter of the globe. What a change!
Lady Anne heard the trampling of horses, and put her head out of the coach window. A blush suffused her sunny face at the recollection of her parting with Meredith in the morning. Her embarrassment was as transient as the suffusion. “Ah, cousin Jasper,” she said, “you have come at last; I have been waiting impatiently, sitting here, like a dutiful niece (as I am), because aunt has heard bugbear stories about American rattlesnakes, and absolutely forbade my strolling along the shore with Isabella. You will not be afraid, aunt, if the gentlemen are with me?”
“Not in the least, my love; indeed, I will alight myself if Major St. Clair will give an old lady his arm.”
“She understands tactics,” thought St. Clair; “she will defile with me, and leave Jasper to a tête-à-tête on vantage-ground!” He however bowed en militaire, and gave Mrs. Meredith his arm; and she, as he had foreseen, led him off in an opposite direction from that which Lady Anne had taken.
Isabella had before alighted, and left her companion, on the pretext of looking for an autumnal flower that she knew grew on the river’s bank; but really, that she might, in the freedom of solitude, and in the calm of a sweet country walk, 353indulge her sad reflections. Isabella had learned to master herself in great trials; but she had not yet learned that far more difficult lesson, to be patient and serene under small annoyances. She was vexed and wearied with Mrs. Meredith’s pompous talk and commonplace and hollow sentiment, and somewhat disturbed by Lady Anne’s kind-hearted, but too manifest efforts, to divert her thoughts from the tragedy enacting in the city, to which she had imputed all the sadness that might have been in part ascribed to another cause.
Lady Anne had no enthusiasm for scenery. She had never lived in the country, never been trained in nature’s school, nor a guest at her perpetual and sweetest banquet; but she had youthful spirits stirred to joyousness by a ride, or a walk, or any other exciting cause; and she laughed, rattled, and bounded on, wondered where Isabella could be, and at last, quite out of breath, sat down on a grassy bank by a very high rock, around which the pass was narrow and difficult. “I will not venture that,” said she, pointing to the path. “You may go for Isabella, Jasper, and I will wait here for you.”
“Thank you, sweet coz; but I prefer staying here too, if you will permit me.”
“You may as well, I fancy. Isabella is rather penseroso this afternoon; and as she very faintly seconded my entreaties to aunt that I might go with her, I think she prefers la solitaire. To tell you the truth, Jasper, she is horribly blue to-day, though I would not own it to aunt.”
“And why not?”
“Oh, you know she is no favourite with aunt; and when we really love a person, as I do really and fervently Isabella Linwood, we are not fond of speaking of their faults to those who do not like them.”
“Then perhaps you think she is a favourite of mine?”
“Certainly I do—is she not?”
“She was.”
354With what different import do the same words fall on different ears. This “she was” hardly reached Lady Anne’s sensorium. Her thoughts were weighing something more important than any of Meredith’s words c
ould be to her. Meredith’s heart throbbed as he pronounced them. Uttered to Lady Anne, they seemed to him to cut the gordian knot that bound him to Isabella. There was another unseen, unwilling, and involuntary auditor, who, as on the other side of the rock she leaned breathless against it, proudly responded from the depths of her soul “she was—it is past—a finished dream to us both!”
“How very nice these little scarlet berries are,” said Lady Anne, picking some berries from their evergreen leaves.
“Very nice.”
“This is a lovely river, Jasper. How I should like a nice cottage on this very spot.”
“And when your imagination builds the cottage, coz, is there no one permitted to share it with you?”
Lady Anne picked the leaves from the stem in her hand, strewed them around, and laughing and blushing, said, “that absolute solitude in a cottage would be just as stupid as in a palace.”
“On this hint shall I—can I speak?” thought Meredith.
“Formerly, when I built castles in the air,” continued Lady Anne, engrossed in her own sweet fancies, and not dreaming of the interpretation Meredith’s deluded vanity was giving to her words, “I always put wings to them, and would lodge them in London, Paris, or Italy, as suited the humour of the moment—now I make them fixtures in America.”
Meredith felt somewhat like the sportsman, who, accustomed to the keen pursuit of game that incites and eludes him, cares not for the silly prey that runs into his toils. “Heigh-ho!” resumed Lady Anne, awaking from a revery after a short 355pause; “it is time we returned—the sun is setting—you are very stupid, Jasper—you have not spoken three words.”
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