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Legends of the Province House
by
“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.