Old Esther Dudley

Our host having resumed the chair, he, as well as Mr. Tiffany and
myself; expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the
story to which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first
of all saw fit to moisten his throat with another glass of wine,
and then, turning his face towards our coal fire, looked
steadfastly for a few moments into the depths of its cheerful
glow. Finally, he poured forth a great fluency of speech. The
generous liquid that he had imbibed, while it warmed his
age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his heart and
mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel, which we could
hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore
winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than
those of a younger man; or at least, the same degree of feeling
manifested itself by more visible effects than if his judgment
and will had possessed the potency of meridian life. At the
pathetic passages of his narrative he readily melted into tears.
When a breath of indignation swept across his spirit the blood
flushed his withered visage even to the roots of his white hair;
and he shook his clinched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors,
seeming to fancy enemies in those who felt very kindly towards
the desolate old soul. But ever and anon, sometimes in the midst
of his most earnest talk, this ancient person's intellect would
wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in hand, and
groping for it amid misty shadows. Then would he cackle forth a
feeble laugh, and express a doubt whether his wits--for by that
phrase it pleased our ancient friend to signify his mental
powers--were not getting a little the worse for wear.

Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist's story required more
revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the
series which have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that
the sentiment and tone of the affair may have undergone some
slight, or perchance more than slight, metamorphosis, in its
transmission to the reader through the medium of a thorough-going
democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch, with no involution of
plot, nor any great interest of events, yet possessing, if I have
rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over the mind which
the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the loiterer in
its court-yard.


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
ghost-like. 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 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 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
involuntary 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, tending 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!"


As the old loyalist concluded his narrative, the
enthusiasm which had been fitfully flashing within his sunken
eyes, and quivering across his wrinkled visage, faded away, as if
all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then,
too, a lamp upon the mantel-piece threw out a dying gleam, which
vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to
grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth.
With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam,
had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the Province
House, when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight. And
now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on
the breeze, knolling the hourly knell of the Past, crying out far
and wide through the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as
we sat in the dusky chamber, with its reverberating depth of
tone. In that same mansion--in that very chamber--what a volume
of history had been told off into hours, by the same voice that
was now trembling in the air. Many a Governor had heard those
midnight accents, and longed to exchange his stately cares for
slumber. And as for mine host and Mr. Bela Tiffany and the old
loyalist and me, we had babbled about dreams of the past, until
we almost fancied that the clock was still striking in a bygone
century. Neither of us would have wondered, had a
hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the
chamber, walking her rounds in the hush of midnight, as of yore,
and motioned us to quench the fading embers of the fire, and
leave the historic precincts to herself and her kindred shades.
But as no such vision was vouchsafed, I retired unbidden, and
would advise Mr. Tiffany to lay hold of another auditor, being
resolved not to show my face in the Province House for a good
while hence--if ever.