Читать книгу A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 11

Besides my father and my mother, the figure which stands out most clearly in my memory of my childhood is that of the man who christened me. I cannot remember the time when I did not know and love him. He was a tall, well-built man, with kindly face and clear blue eyes which darkened when any emotion stirred him, and rode—how well I remember it!—a big, bony, gray horse. It was on this horse's back that I took my first ride, when I was scarce out of petticoats, and often after that, held carefully before him on the saddle, or, as I grew older, bumping joyously behind, my arms about his waist. My place was always on his knee when he was within our doors, and he held me there with unfailing good humor during his long talks with my mother, of which I, for the most part, comprehended nothing, except that oftentimes they spoke of me, and then he would smooth my hair with great tenderness. But I sat there quite content, and sometimes dozed off with my head against his flowered waistcoat—it was his one vanity—and wakened only when he set me gently down.

It was not until I grew older that I learned something of his history. One day, he had seized time from his parish work to take me for a ramble along the river, and as we reached the limit of our walk and sat down for a moment's rest before starting homeward, and looked across the wide water, I asked him, with a childish disregard for his feelings, if it were true that his father was a Frenchman, adding that I hoped it were not true, because I did not like the French.

"Yes, it is true," he answered, and looked down at me, smiling sadly.

"Shall I tell you the story, Thomas?"

I nodded eagerly, for I loved to listen to stories, especially true ones.

"When Louis Fourteenth was King of France," he began, and I think he took a melancholy pleasure in telling it, "he issued a decree commanding all the Protestants, who in France are called Huguenots, to abjure their faith and become Catholics, or leave the kingdom. He had oftentimes before promised them protection, but he was growing old and weak, and thought that this might help to save his soul, which was in great need of saving, for he had been a wicked king. My father and my mother were Huguenots, and they chose to leave their home rather than give up their faith, as did many thousand others, and after suffering many hardships, escaped to England, with no worldly possession save the clothes upon their backs, but with a great treasure in heaven and an abiding trust in the Lord. They had six children, and after giving us a good education, especially as to our religion, committed us to the providence of a covenant God to seek our fortunes in the wide world. All of us came to America, although Moses and John have since returned to England. James is a farmer in King William County, Francis is minister of York-Hampton parish, and sister Ruth lives with me, as you know."

A great deal more he told me, which slipped from my memory, for I was thinking over what he had already said.

"And your mother and father," I asked, as we started back together, "fled from France rather than give up their faith?"

"Yes," he answered, and smiled down into my eyes, raised anxiously to his.

"And were persecuted just as the early martyrs were?"

"Yes, very much the same. All of their goods were taken from them, and they were long in prison."

"But they were never sorry?"

"No, they were never sorry. No one is ever sorry for doing a thing like that."

I trotted on in silence for a moment, holding tight to his kindly hand, and revolving this new idea in my mind. At last I looked up at him, big with purpose.

"I am going to do something like that some day," I said.

He gazed down at me, his eyes shining queerly.

"God grant that you may have the strength, my boy," he said. He bent and kissed me, and we returned to the house together without saying another word.

It was the custom of the Fontaine family to hold a meeting every year to give thanks for the deliverance from persecution of their parents in France, and I remember being present with my father and mother at one of these meetings when I was seven or eight years old. One passage of the sermon he preached on that occasion remained fixed indelibly in my mind. He took his text from Romans, "That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He applied the duty thus enjoined to the Fontaine family, saying—

"For many weary months was our father forced to shift among forests and deserts for his safety, because he had dared to preach the word of God to the innocent and sincere people among whom he lived, and who desired to be instructed in their duty and to be confirmed in their faith. The forest afforded him a shelter and the rocks a resting-place, but his enemies gave him no quiet, and pursued him even to these fastnesses, until finally, of his own accord, he delivered himself to them. They loaded his hands with chains, a dungeon was his abode, and his feet stuck fast in the mire. Murderers and thieves were his companions, yet even among them did he pursue his labors, until God, by means of a pious gentlewoman, who had seen and pitied his sufferings, relieved him."

To my childish imagination, the picture thus painted was a real and living one, and filled me with a singular exaltation. I think each of us at some time of his life has felt, as I did then, a desire to suffer for conscience' sake.

The preachers of Virginia were, as a whole, anything but admirable, a condition due no doubt to the worldly spirit which pervaded the church on both sides of the ocean. The average parson was then—and many of them still are—coarse and rough, as contact with the forests and waste places of the world will often make men, even godly ones. But many of them were worse than that, gamblers and drunkards. They hunted the fox across country with great halloo, mounted on fast horses of their own. They attended horse-races and cock-fights, almost always with some money on the outcome, and frequently with a horse or cock entered in the races or the pittings. And when the sport was over, they would accompany the planters home to dinner, which ended in a drinking-bout, and it was seldom the parson who went under the table first. One fought a duel in the graveyard behind his church—our own little Westover church, it was—and succeeded in pinking his opponent through the breast, for which he had incontinently to return to England; another stopped the communion which he was celebrating, and bawled out to his warden, "Here, George, this bread's not fit for a dog," nor would he go on with the service until bread more to his liking had been brought; another married a wealthy widow, though he had already a wife living in England. His bishop was compelled to recall him, but I never heard that he was discharged from holy orders. Another on a certain Saturday called a meeting of his vestry, and when they refused to take some action which he desired, thrashed them all soundly, and on the next day added insult to injury by preaching to them from the text, "And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair." I should like to have seen the faces of the vestrymen while the sermon was in progress! It was not an unusual sight to see the parson riding home from some great dinner tied fast in his chaise to keep him from falling out, as the result of over-indulgence in the planter's red wine. But our worthy pastor, during his forty years' ministry in Charles City parish, was concerned in no such escapades, and I count it one of the great happinesses of my life that I had the good fortune to fall under the influence of such a man. A passage of a letter written by him to one of his brothers in England on the subject of preserving health gives an outline of the rules of his life. After commending active exercise in the open air on foot and on horseback, he says, "I drink no spirituous liquors at all; but when I am obliged to take more than ordinary fatigue, either in serving my churches or other branches of duty, I take one glass of good old Madeira wine, which revives me, and contributes to my going through without much fatigue."

One other figure do I recall distinctly. We had driven to church as usual one Sunday morning in early fall, and when we came in sight of the little brick building, peeping through its veil of ivy, I was surprised to see the parishioners in line on either side the path which led to the broad, low doorway. Mr. Fontaine stood there as though awaiting some one, and when he saw us, came down the steps and spoke a word to father. In a moment, from down the road came the rumble of heavy wheels, and then a great, gorgeous, yellow chariot, with four outriders, swung into view and drew up with a flourish before the church. The footmen sprang to the door, opened it, and let down the steps. I, who was staring with all my eyes, as you may well believe, saw descend a little old man, very weak and very tremulous, yet holding his head proudly, and after him a younger. They came slowly up the walk, the old man leaning heavily upon the other's shoulder and nodding recognition to right and left. As they drew near, I caught the gleam of a great jewel on his sword-hilt, and then of others on finger, knee, and instep. The younger bore himself very erect and haughty, yet I saw the two were fashioned in one mould. On up the steps and into the church they went, Mr. Fontaine before and we after them. They took their seats in the great pew with the curious carving on the back, which I had never before seen occupied.

"Who are the gentlemen, mother?" I whispered, so soon as I could get her ear.

"It is Colonel Byrd and his son come back from London," she answered.

"Now take your eyes off them and attend the service."

Take my eyes off them I did, by a great effort of will, but I fear I heard little of the service, for my mind was full of the great house on the river-bank, which it had once been my fortune to visit. Mr. Fontaine had taken me with him in his chaise for a pastoral call at quite the other end of his parish, and as we returned, we were caught in a sudden storm of rain. My companion had hesitated for a moment, and then turned his horse's head through a gateway with a curious monogram in iron at the top, along an avenue of stately tulip-trees, and so to the door of a massive square mansion of red brick, which stood on a little knoll overlooking the James. The door was closed and the windows shuttered, but half a dozen negroes came running from the back at the sound of our wheels and took us in out of the storm. A mighty fire was started in the deep fireplace, and as I stood steaming before it, I looked with dazzled eyes at the great carved staircase, at the paintings and at the books, of which there were many hundreds.

Presently the old overseer, whom Mr. Fontaine addressed as Murray, and who had grown from youth to trembling age in the Byrd service, came in to offer us refreshment, and over the table they fell to gossiping.

"Westover's not the place it was," said Murray, sipping his flip disconsolately—"not the place it was while Miss Evelyn was alive. There was no other like it in Virginia then. Why, it was always full of gay company, and the colonel kept a nigger down there at the gate to invite in every traveler who passed. But all that's changed, and has been these six year."

Mr. Fontaine nodded over his tea.

"Yes," he said, "Evelyn's death was a great blow to her father."

"You may well say that, sir," assented Murray, with a sigh. "He was never the same man after. He used to sit there at that window and watch her in the garden, after they came back from London, and every day he saw her whiter and thinner. At night, after she was safe abed, I have seen him walking up and down over there along the river, sobbing like a baby. And when she died, he was like a man dazed, thinking, perhaps, it was he who had killed her."

"I know," nodded Mr. Fontaine. "I was here." There was a moment's silence. I was bursting with questions, but I did not dare to speak.

"The young master took him back to London after that," went on Murray, "hoping that a change would do him good and take his mind off Miss Evelyn, but I doubt he'll ever get over it. While they were in London, Sir Godfrey Kneller painted him and Miss Evelyn. Would you like to see the pictures, sir?"

"Yes, I should like to see them," said Mr. Fontaine softly. "Evelyn was very dear to me."

They were hanging side by side in the great hall, and even my childish eyes saw their strength and beauty. His was a narrow, patrician face, beautiful as a woman's, looking from a wealth of brown curls, soft and flowing. The little pucker at the corners of his mouth bespoke his relish of a jest, and the high nose and well-placed eyes his courage and spirit. But it was at the other I looked the longest. She was seated upon a grassy bank, with the shadows of the evening gathering about her. In the branches above her head gleamed a red-bird's brilliant plumage. On her lap lay a heap of roses, and in her hand she held a shepherd's crook. Her gown, of pale blue satin, was open at the throat, and showed its fair sweet fullness and the bosom's promise. Her face was pensive—sad, almost—the lips just touching, a soft light in the great dark eyes. I had never seen such a picture—nor have I ever looked upon another such. I can close my eyes and see it even now. But the storm had passed, and it was time to go.

"Why did Miss Evelyn die?" I questioned, as soon as we were out of the avenue of tulips and in the highway.

He looked down at me a moment, and seemed hesitating for an answer.

"She loved a man in London," he said. "Her father would not let her marry him, and brought her home. She was not strong, and gossips say her heart was broken."

"But why would he not let her marry him?" I asked.

"He was not of her religion. Her father thought he was acting for her good."

I pondered on this for a time in silence, and found here a question too great for my small brain.

"But was he right?" I asked at last, falling back upon my companion's greater knowledge.

"It is hard to say," he answered softly. "Perhaps he was, and yet I have come to think there is little to choose between one sect and another, so Christ be in them and the man honest."

He looked out across the fields with tender eyes and I slipped my hand in his. A vision of her sad face danced before me and I fell asleep, my head within his arm, to waken only when he lifted me down at our journey's end.

All this came back to me with the vividness which childish recollections sometimes have, as I sat there in the pew at my mother's side. Only I could not quite believe that this little wrinkled old man was the same who looked so proudly from Kneller's canvas. But when the service ended and he stopped to exchange a word with father, I saw the face was indeed the same, though now writ over sadly by the hand of time weighted down with sorrow. It was the only time I ever saw him in the flesh, for he was near the end and died soon after. He was buried beside his daughter in the little graveyard near his home. It was Mr. Fontaine who closed his eyes in hope of resurrection and spoke the last words above his grave—beloved in this great mansion as in the lowliest cabin at Charles City.

My pen would fain linger over the portrait of this sainted man, which is the fairest and most benign in the whole gallery of my youth, but I must turn to another subject—to the cloud which began to shadow my life at my tenth year, and which still shadows it to-day. For the first six or seven years of their married life my father and mother were, I believe, wholly and unaffectedly happy. When I think of them now, I think of them only as they were during that time, and wonder how many of the married people about me could say as much. Their means were small, and they lived a quiet life, which had few luxuries. But as time went on, my father began to chafe at the petty economies which the smallness of their income rendered necessary. He had been bred amid the luxuries of a great estate, where the house was open to every passer-by, and it vexed him that he could not now show the same wide hospitality. I think he yet had hopes of succeeding to his father's estate, out of which, indeed, there was no law in Virginia to keep him should he choose to claim it. Whatever his thoughts may have been, he grew gradually to live beyond his means, and as the years passed, he had recourse to the cards and dice in the hope, no doubt, of recouping his vanishing fortune. It was true then, as it is true now and always will be true, that the man who gambles because he needs the money is sure to lose, and affairs went from bad to worse until the final disaster came.