Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker Part 42

XXIII

On Sunday, the 21st of June, while our chief was crossing into the Jerseys, I was hearing at Christ Church, for the first time, the words of prayer in which William White commended Congress and our armies and their great leader to the protecting mercy of Almighty G.o.d. General Arnold was already busy with the great household and equipage which soon did so much to involve him in temptations growing out of his fondness for display. The militia were unwilling to act as a body-guard, or to stand sentries beside the great lamp-posts at his door. Nor did McLane and the rest of us fancy the social and guard duties which the general exacted; but we had to obey orders, and were likely, I feared, to remain long in this ungrateful service.

On June 30 we heard of the glorious battle at Monmouth, and with surprise of General Lee's disgrace. On the 3d of July came Jack with a bayonet-thrust in his right shoulder and a nasty cut over the left temple. He was able to be afoot, but was quite unfit for service.

I heard from him of the splendid courage and judgment shown by his Excellency, and of the profane and terrible language he had used to that traitor Lee. Jack said: "I was in the midst of a lot of scared men, with a leader who wanted only to get away. And then the general rode up, and all was changed. I think, Hugh, he was like an angry G.o.d of war. I should have died of the things he said to Mr. Lee."

When, long after this, in July, '79, his Excellency issued that severe order about swearing, how it was against all religion, decency, and order, Jack was much amused. Like the army in Flanders, our own army solaced their empty stomachs with much bad language. But, as Jack observed, "There is a time for everything; Mr. Lee did catch it hot."

McLane soon left us, glad to get away. Had he stayed much longer there would have been one more sad moth in the pretty net into which fell all who were long in the company of our fatal Darthea. I too applied for active duty, but some influence, probably that of General Arnold, came in the way and kept me in the city.

Very soon, to my pleasure, I received a letter from Mr. Hamilton, inclosing my commission as captain in the Third Regiment of the Pennsylvania line, and with it, not to my pleasure, an order to recruit in and near the city. Rather later the general asked me, as I was but little occupied, to act as an extra aide on his staff, a position which might have been my ruin, as I shall by and by relate.

Jack's hurts turning out worse than was antic.i.p.ated, he was of no use in camp, and remained at home to be petted and fussed over by my Aunt Gainor. After a month or two he was able to go about with his arm in a sling, and to be greatly noticed by the Whig women. Very soon he was caught, like me, in a ceaseless round of all manner of gaieties. He shortly grew weary of it, and fell back on his books and the society of the many who loved him--above all, that of my aunt and Darthea. For me there was no escape, as my own dissipations were chiefly those of official duty, and in company with my chief.

Congress was still in session, but from it were missing Adams, Franklin, Henry, Jay, and Rutledge, who were elsewhere filling posts of importance. It had no fully recognised powers, and the want of more distinct union was beginning to be sadly felt. Had not the ruin of the Conway cabal and the profound trust of the people lifted Washington into a position of authority, the fears and predictions of men like my friend Wilson would have been fully justified. Intrigues, ruinous methods of finance, appointments given to untried foreign officers who were mere adventurers--all these and baser influences were working toward the ruin of our cause.

Our own city went wild that winter. The Tories were sharply dealt with at first, but, as many of them were favoured by the general in command, they soon came back in mischievous numbers. The more moderate neutrals opened their doors to all parties. The general began to be at ease in the homes of the proprietary set, and, buying the great house of Mount Pleasant, made court to the lovely Margaret Shippen, and was foremost in a display of excess and luxury such as annoyed and troubled those who saw him hand and glove with the Tory gentlemen, and extravagant beyond anything hitherto seen in the quiet old city of Penn.

At this time the Congress often sat with but a dozen members. It was no longer the dignified body of seventy-six. Officers came and went. Men like Robert Morris and Dr. Rush shook their heads. Clinton lay in New York, watched by Washington, and in the South there was disaster after disaster, while even our best men wearied of the war, and asked anxiously how it was to end.

Recruiting in the face of such a state of things was slow indeed. I had little to do but wait on the general, read to my aunt, ride with her and Darthea, or shoot ducks with Jack when weather permitted; and so the long winter wore on.

With Darthea I restrained my useless pa.s.sion, and contented myself with knowing that we were day by day becoming closer friends. If Arthur wrote to her or not, I could not tell. She avoided mentioning him, and I asked no questions.

I shall let Jack's diary tell--at this time it was very full--what chanced in midwinter. Alas, my dear Jack!

"It has," he wrote, "been a season of foolish dissipation. While the army suffers for everything, these fools are dancing and gambling, and General A----- the worst of all, which seems a pity in so good a soldier. He is doing us a mighty harm.

"To-day has been for me a sad one. I shall think ever of my folly with remorse. I set it down as a lesson to be read. We had a great sleighing-frolic to Cliveden. There were all the Tories, and few else--the general driving Peggy Shippen, and I Darthea. Mistress Wynne would have none of it. 'We were no worse off under Howe,' she says; 'Mr.

Arnold has no sense and no judgment.' It is true, I fear. Mrs. p.e.n.i.ston, half froze, went along in our old sleigh. We drove up to the stone steps of Cliveden about seven at night--a fine moonlight, so that the stone vases on the roof, crowned with their carved pineapples, stood out against the sky. The windows were all aglow, and neither doors nor shutters were as yet fully repaired.

"We had a warm welcome, and stood about the ample fires while the ladies went merrily upstairs to leave their cloaks. I looked about me curiously, for there were dozens of bullet-marks on the plaster and the woodwork. It had been a gallant defence, and cleverly contrived. Soon came down the stairs a bevy of laughing girls to look, with hushed voices, at the blood-stains on the floor and the dents the muskets had made. They did think to tease me by praising Colonel Musgrave, who had commanded the British; but I, not to be outdone, declared him the bravest man alive. Darthea smiled, but said nothing, and for that I loved her better than ever.

"Then we fell to chatting, and presently she said, 'Madam Chew, Mr.

Warder is to show me where the troops lay, and Mr. Wayne's brigade; and who will come too?' There were volunteers, but once outside they found it cold, and Darthea, saying, 'We shall be gone but a minute,' walked with me around the stone outbuilding to northwest. She was very thoughtful and quiet this night, looking as sweet as ever a woman could in a gray fur coat against the moon-lit drifts of snow. 'Over there,' I said, 'across the road, were our poor little four-pounders; and beyond yonder wall our chief held a brief council of war; and just there in the garden lay my own men and Hugh, and some Maryland troops, among the box where we used to play hide-and-find.'

"On this Darthea said, 'Let me see the place,' and we walked down the garden, a gentle excitement showing in her ways and talk; and I--ah me, that night!

"'I must see,' she said, 'where the dead lie; near the garden wall, is it?'

"'Here,' said I--'ours and theirs.'

"'In the peace which is past understanding,' said Darthea. Then, deep in thought, she turned from the house and into the woods a little beyond, not saying a word. Indeed, not a sound was to be heard, except the creak and craunch of the dry snow under our feet. A few paces farther we came to the summer-house, set on circular stone steps, and big enough to dine in. There she stood, saying, 'I cannot go back yet; oh, those still, still dead! Don't speak to me--not for a little while.' She stayed thus, looking up at the great white moon, while I stood by, and none other near.

"'I am better now, Jack, and you will not tell of how foolish I was--but--'

"I said there was some sweet folly, if she liked so to call it, which was better than wisdom. And then how it was I know not, nor ever shall.

I felt myself flush and tremble. It is my foolish way when in danger, being by nature timid, and forced to exercise rule over myself at such seasons.

"She said, 'What is it, Jack?' for so she often called me when we were alone, although Hugh was Mr. Wynne. The ways of women are strange.

"I could not help it, and yet I knew Hugh loved her. I knew also that she was surely to marry Mr. Arthur Wynne. I was wrong, but, G.o.d help us!

who is not wrong at times? I said: 'Darthea, I love you. If it were to be Hugh I should never say so.' I cared nothing about the other man; he hates my Hugh.

"'Oh, Jack, Jack! you hurt me!' Never was anything so sweet and tender.

Her great eyes--like Madam Wynne's that were--filled and ran over. 'Oh, Jack!' she cried, 'must I hurt you too, and is it my fault? Oh my dear Jack, whom I love and honour, I can't love you this way. I can't--I can't. And I am sorry. I must marry Arthur Wynne; I have promised. You men think we women give our hearts lightly, and take them again, as if they were mere counters; and I am troubled, Jack, and no one knows it.

I must not talk of that. I wish you would all go away. I can't marry you all.' And she began to be agitated, and to laugh in a way that seemed to me quite strange and out of place; but then I know little about women.

"I could but say: 'Forgive me; I have hurt you whom I love. I will never do it more--never. But, dear Darthea, you will let me love you, because I cannot help it, and this will all be as if it had never been. To hurt you--to hurt you of all the world! I had no right to ask you.'

"'Don't,' she said, with a great sob, which seemed to break my heart.

"'Darthea,' I said--'Darthea, do not marry that man! He is cruel; he is hard; he does not love you as my Hugh loves you.'

"'Sir,' she said, with such sudden dignity that I was overcome, and fell back a pace, 'I am promised; let that suffice. It is cold; let us go in.

It is cold--it is cold!'

"I had never seen her like this. I said: 'Certainly; I should not have kept you. I was thoughtless.' And as she said nothing in reply, I went after her, having said my say as I never intended, and more than was perhaps wise. At the door she turned about, and, facing me, said abruptly, with her dear face all of a flush: 'Do not let this trouble you. I am not good enough to make it worth while. I have been a foolish girl, discontented with our simple ways, wanting what I have not. I have cried for toys, and have got them, and now I don't care for them; but I have promised. Do you hear, sir? I have promised--I have promised.'

"She stayed for no answer, but went in. It seemed to me a singular speech, and to mean more than was said. The repeating of one phrase over and over appeared meant to reinforce a doubtful purpose. I think she cares little for Mr. Arthur Wynne, but who can say? Darthea is full of surprises.

"Can it be that she loves Hugh and knows it not, or that she has such a strong sense of honour that it is hard for her to break her word? She does not believe this man to be bad. That is sure. If ever I can make her see him as I see him, he will hold her not an hour. I shall disturb her life no more. Had she taken me to-day, I know not what would have come of it. I am not strong of will, like Hugh. G.o.d knows best. I will ask no more."

I was an old man when I, Hugh Wynne, read these pages, and I am not ashamed to say they cost me some tears.

So far as I remember, neither Jack nor Darthea betrayed by their manner what I learned naught of for so many years. Neither did my Aunt Gainor's shrewdness get any hint of what pa.s.sed at Cliveden. I recall, however, that Jack became more and more eager to rejoin his regiment, and this he did some two weeks later.

My father's condition was such as at times to alarm me, and at last I proposed to him to see Dr. Rush. To my surprise, he consented. I say to my surprise, for he had a vast distrust of doctors, and, to tell the truth, had never needed their help. The day after the doctor's visit I saw our great physician, whom now all the world has learned to revere, and who was ever more wise in matters of medicine than in matters of state.

He told me that my father was beginning to have some failure of brain because of his arteries being older than the rest of him, which I did not quite comprehend. He had, he said, losses of memory which were not constant. Especially was he affected with forgetfulness as to people, and for a time mistook them, so that for a while he had taken Dr. Rush for his old clerk Mason. The doctor said it was more common to lack remembrance of places. In my father's condition he might take one man for another, and to-morrow be as clear as to his acquaintance as ever he had been; but that as to business, as was in such eases rare, his mind continued to be lucid, except at times, when his memory would suddenly fail him for a few minutes. The doctor saw no remedy for his condition, and I mention it only because my father's varying peculiarities came in a measure to affect me and others in a way of which I shall have occasion to speak.

My sense of his state did much to make me more tender and more able to endure the sad outbreaks of pa.s.sion which Dr. Rush taught me were to be looked for. Nor was my aunt less troubled than I. Indeed, from this time she showed as regarded my father all of that gentleness which lay beneath the exterior roughness of her masculine nature. I observed that she looked after his house, paying him frequent visits, and in all ways was solicitous that he should be made comfortable.

Near about the 1st of March--I am not quite sure of the date--I was asked in the absence of Major Clarkson, chief of the staff, to take his duties for a few days. I then saw how needlessly the general was creating enmities. His worst foe, Mr. Joseph Reed, had become in December president of the Council of State, and we--I say we--were thenceforward forever at outs with the body over which he presided. When at last, thoroughly disgusted, General Arnold was about to resign from the army, those unpleasant charges were made against him which came to little or nothing, but which embittered a life already hara.s.sed by disappointed ambition and want of means, and now also by the need to show a fair face to Mr. Shippen, whose daughter's hand he had asked.

General Arnold's indifference as to privacy in his affairs amazed me, and I saw enough to make me both wonder and grieve. The friend of Schuyler and of Warren, the soldier whom Washington at one time absolutely trusted, attached me to him by his kindness and lavish generosity, and as an officer he had my unbounded admiration. Surely his place was in the field, and not at the dinner tables of Tories, whose society, as I have said, he much affected. It was a sign of weakness that he overesteemed the homage of a merely gay and fashionable set, and took with avidity the dangerous flattery of the Tory dames.

He was withal a somewhat coa.r.s.e man, with a vast amount of vanity. It was a blow to his self-estimate when he was unjustly pa.s.sed over in the promotions to major-general. He felt it deeply, and was at no pains to hide his disgust. I did not wonder that the Shippens did all they could to break off this strange love-affair. They failed; for when a delicate-minded, sensitive, well-bred woman falls in love with a strong, coa.r.s.e, pa.s.sionate man, there is no more to be said except, "Take her."

XXIV

As the spring came on my father's condition seemed to me to grow worse. At times he had great gusts of pa.s.sion or of tears, quite unlike himself; for a day he would think I was my cousin, and be more affectionate than I had ever seen him. Once or twice he talked in a confused way of our estate in Wales, and so, what with this and my annoyance over the irregularities at our headquarters, I had enough to trouble me.