In the Valley Part 16

It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and take up the proffered agency.

He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the best way out of the embarra.s.sment which hung over us. He still clung, or made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by my perseverance in the project.

Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon, who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of more utility.

In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.

At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.

It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of the Cedars.

As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.

Chapter XVIII.

The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.

The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had left behind.

For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.

I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was pitifully circ.u.mscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager national pa.s.sion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places, to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then, however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.

Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most delightful place. Its Yankee critics a.s.sail a host of features which were to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the ca.n.a.l in front of the houses, here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.

And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the gra.s.sy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.

Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.

Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to barter their furs for merchandise and drink--princ.i.p.ally drink--and occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.

For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.

There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the a.s.sembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pa.s.s unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know how neither to rest nor to play.

But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already sketched in this tale, there were no a.s.sociates for me who knew aught of books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies were mine.

But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age, and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.

These and their a.s.sociates were educated and refined gentlemen, not inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political life, were of my way of thinking.

More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth, and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act crisis, the Boston Ma.s.sacre--all the great events which were so bitterly discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it, as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.

Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became the most ardent of Whigs?

Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established, there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole current of the company's traffic to and fro pa.s.sed under my eye. There were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern, to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.

Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.

Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.

The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon other things.

Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had established my poor ident.i.ty in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.

I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed me, which was not at all.

The ill-a.s.sorted twain finally left Albany, taking pa.s.sage on one of the company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business, push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run over here."

So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.

It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held me far above the bartering and d.i.c.kering of the small traders. It is true that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city, for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.

I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden, and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.

So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs, twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to mortal man.

Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.

Chapter XIX.

I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.

We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night not to be forgotten while memory remains to me.

There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons, and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was I at last to meet Daisy?

Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening return to me.

You may still see for yourselves how n.o.ble, one might say palatial, was the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no power of fancy can restore for _you_--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad, fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome; the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights, hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their pa.s.sengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair b.r.e.a.s.t.s--all radiant in the hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the s.p.a.cious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests.

No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy.

The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all, pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead.

This round, l.u.s.trous...o...b.. pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman, when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it.

It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess.

She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is trouble brewing."

I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left, but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it would not do to pa.s.s him by unheeded.

While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a s.p.a.ce clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I perforce followed.

I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects.

Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered me his hand.

It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I pa.s.sed to make room for others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood.