“There is always Jose Westervelt.”
“He will not do at all. He is too troublesome. He thinks I ought not to dance with any one but him; actually he objects to my speaking to some people, or even looking at them. It is too uncomfortable. I do not like tyranny--no American girl does.”
“So you rebelled. But then, do you expect to catch fish without wetting yourself?”
“It has been done.” She was putting on her grandmother’s feet the cloth slippers she usually wore in the house, and as she rose she perceived with a smile the delicious odour of the roasted pigeons which a negro slave was just bringing to the table.
“I told Commenia to roast them, grandmother. I knew you would want something nice when you got back.”
“Before the fire did she roast them?”
“Yes--on skewers, and basted them with fresh butter. I found enough peas on the vines, and I pulled and shelled them myself, for it was next to impossible to keep the blacks off the streets.”
“Thank you, dear one.”
“I have had such a happy year, grandmother, and now, I suppose, all our gaieties will be ended.”
“Come, come, there will be more gaieties than ever. I am sure that the Battery will be put in fighting trim; then the Bowling Green, with soldiers, will be alive. What will follow? Drills and parades, and what not; and in all the houses round about the Green the women will make idols of the men in uniform. And to be sure they will show their adoration by meat offerings and drink offerings; ceremonies, Annette, which generally end in dancing and love-making.”
“You notice everything, grandmother.”
“I have been young and now I am old; but love never gets a day older. What love was in the beginning, he is now, and ever shall be. These pigeons are very good. You said you had some at the Radcliffes’ yesterday--what kind of a dinner did they give?”
“It was a good dinner, but not a dinner to be asked out to; you and I often have a better one--and there was no dancing, only cards and games--and Jose Westervelt.”
“Poor Jose!”
“Grandmother, he is so magisterial. He sets up his opinions as if they were a golden image; and I am not the girl to fall down before them.”
“He is a distinguished mathematician already.”
“And looks it: besides he knows no more of dancing than a Hindoo knows of skating. Also, since he came back from England, he is so cold and positive in his views, and so stiff and rigid in his London-made clothes, that I cannot endure him. Did you see Sapphira, grandmother?”
“Yes. With some hair work she was busy--a finger ring, or brooch or some such trifle. There will be other work soon, I think. In the last war we had to make all our own clothing and most of our household necessities. The last war! Oh, Annette, dear one, I lost everything in the last war!”
“But you are now a rich woman, grandmother.”
“I mean not that. I lost your grandfather; he was everything to me. There was money, yes; and there was property; but all in a bad way then. Now; well, it is a little different.”
“However did you manage?”
“I worked and hoped and helped myself and others, and left the rest to God. While I slept He made things to grow and prosper. And when this war is over we shall have settled our standing among the nations beyond all dispute, and New York will stride forward as if she wore the seven-leagued boots.”
“Then, grandmother, you will build a fine house past Trinity Church--a good deal past it--perhaps half a mile, or even a mile, and we shall have a carriage of our own and be among the quality.”
“I shall never leave this house, Annette. But I tell you, my dear one--you shall go to Washington every season. If your uncle and aunt Bloommaert go there, that will be sufficient; if not, I have friends who will see to it. Sapphira grows wonderfully handsome.”
“And I, grandmother?”
“You have your own beauty. You need not to envy any one. Now I am tired and I will go to my room. I want to take some better counsel than my own.”
“May I not go to see Sapphira, grandmother? I want to see her very much.”
“You may not go to-day. Listen; the constant tramp of feet and the noise of men shouting and gathering grows louder. Stay in your home.”
“It is very tiresome! Men are always quarrelling about something. What is the use of governments if they can’t prevent war? Any one can settle a quarrel by fighting over it. I do not see what good fighting does. The drums parading round will give us headaches, and the men will go swaggering from one day to another after them. I am in a passion at President Madison--just too when summer is here, and we were going to the Springs, and I was sure to have had an enchanting time.”
“Thou little good-for-nothing! Hold thy foolish tongue! If our men are going to fight it is for thy liberty and thy honour and thy happiness. Sit still an hour and think of that.”
She shut the door when she had spoken these words, and then went, a little wearily, upstairs; but if any one had seen her half an hour afterwards sitting with closed eyes and clasped hands asleep in the large chair that stood by her bedside, they would have said, “She has been satisfied.” For though she looked much older when asleep, her face then showed nothing but that sacred peace and refinement which comes only through a constant idea of God’s care and presence.
Annette stood still until she heard her grandmother’s door close; then, after a moment or two of indecision, she took from under the sofa-cushion a book, and stood it up before her with a comical air of judgment.
“It is all your fault, you unlucky ‘Children of The Abbey,’” she said sternly. “If I had been able to get rid of you, I should have gone with grandmother to Uncle Gerard’s house this morning; and, considering the news, we should certainly have remained there all day. And as grandmother says, ‘if the pot boils, it always boils over on the Bowling Green.’ I ought to have been where I could see and hear all that was going on. I think Sapphira might have sent for me! People are so selfish, and affairs always work so contrary. If I try to be unselfish nothing good comes of it--to me; and if I am reasonably selfish then I am sure to suffer for it. Grandfather de Vries is right; whenever I go to see him, he always mumbles to me: ‘see now, love others well, but thyself most of all.’ Grandfather de Vries is a wise man--every one says so--and he tells me to love myself best of all. Well, I shall have no company this afternoon but these silly ‘Children of The Abbey.’ They are as distractingly absurd as they can be, but I want to know whether they get married or not.”
She sought this information with great apparent interest, yet ever as she turned the fascinating leaves, she let the book drop down a minute while she wondered “what was going on on the Bowling Green.” For she had that keen impression of “something missed” which frequently and mockingly informs a person in whom selfishness is ingrained, unconscious, hereditary.
And her premonition was more than true. Her uncle at that very hour was standing on the topmost step of the flight leading to his house door, and there was a crowd of young men before him--a crowd drunk with its own passionate enthusiasm--who would not be satisfied until he had spoken. His wife and his daughter stood at his right hand, and at his left his son Christopher held aloft the torn and stained colours that had floated above “Bloommaert’s Men” through the heroic days of the War for Independence. Shout after shout greeted his appearance, and when there was a moment’s pause, a beautiful youth stepped forward and called out:
“Speak to us, judge. It is your words we are waiting for.” His hat was in his hand, and his bare head, crowned with close, clustering curls, was lifted to the judge. For one moment his eyes sought out Sapphira, and she caught the glance, and it went to her heart like a ray of sunshine. Yet it was into her father’s face she smiled as she gently touched his arm. Then he spoke as if a burning coal had been laid on his lips, and the very air felt as if set on fire by his words:
“My neighbours, and my fellow citizens!” he cried, “I have hitherto been bitterly against this war with England; but now, I am for it. With all my heart and soul, with all my body, with every shilling of my estate I am for it. I have always been a true and consistent Federalist. But now, there are no Federalists! there are no Republicans! We are all Americans! Dutch and English and French and Scotch, all are to-day Americans! America is the mother of us all. She has nursed us at her breast. She has made us free from all ancient tyrannies. She has given us homes and wives and children, filled our granaries with the finest of the wheat, and set before us the commerce of the whole earth. Shall we not love her? Shall we not defend her when she is insulted and wronged and threatened?”
A roar of enthusiastic assent answered these questions.
“If we must fight we will strike no soft blows in battle. We will give our enemy and the whole world this lesson--that no foreign warships can safely come blustering and pillaging our coasts. New York is to be defended, and New Yorkers are the men to defend their native city. Will you do it?”