during stephen’s illness that followed, it was mother jeanne’s devoted nursing that brought him back to health and her hard, brown, skilful hands that tended him with untiring faithfulness. illness was no new thing to stephen sheffield, but this long healing of an ugly wound was hard for him to bear when so much was passing in the world outside and the problems of the colonies growing graver every day.
“i will tell you nothing,” doctor thorndyke would say gruffly when stephen, as soon as the doctor appeared in the doorway, would begin to beg for news. “you fret yourself into a fever whenever i relate of some new tom-foolery wrought by king george the third and his bat-blind ministers. therefore i will say no more, since my first duty to my country is to make master stephen sheffield well again.”
but as soon as doctor thorndyke was gone, clotilde would steal to stephen’s bedside and recount all the news of the day that she had gathered from miles atherton, for she knew, better than did the gruff doctor, that it is wiser to tell a sick person the truth than to let him fret for the want of it. she was his constant and cheering companion through this time, since she was nearly as good a nurse as mother jeanne and quite as devoted a one.
it was upon her strong young shoulder that he leaned that first morning when he walked downstairs and out into the fresh air. he sat for a long time on the bench in the queen’s garden, feeling the sun warm upon him and watching the slow shadow of the sundial creep toward the hour.
“do you see that?” he said to clotilde, pointing to the steadily lengthening shadow that stretched its dark finger across the dial. “you can as easily stop the movement of that shadow as you can hold back the disaster that threatens these colonies. yet many people think that they can accomplish both the one and the other by the simple device of shutting their eyes!”
as he grew stronger and once more took up his burden of public affairs, it was clotilde who sat by his side, wrote the letters that his wounded arm still made impossible, ran his errands and delivered his orders. she had been an apt pupil at the village school and, now that she was growing toward womanhood, was quite capable of becoming a clever and ready secretary. she and stephen grew very close to each other during his illness and their labours together afterward, and finally became far more like father and daughter than like wealthy patron and humble french orphan girl.
people of the town began to speak of her quite as often by the name of clotilde sheffield as clotilde lamotte. what her real name was, remained a never-solved mystery, for, although stephen made many inquiries, no clue was ever found as to who her parents might have been. mother jeanne had always declared that the girl came of people of higher station than herself, a truth that every one began to realise as clotilde grew older. in spite of her having lived in new england since before she could talk, there was still retained in her speech and her deft, quick ways, a faint flavour of the well-born frenchwoman. passionately as the girl loved her old peasant foster-mother, it became more evident every year that the birth and breeding of the two were not the same.
that she was becoming also a great comfort to stephen sheffield was very plain to all who knew them. without her, the big house would have seemed empty indeed to him, although lonely such a man as he could never really be. friends, servants, acquaintances, all who came near him must love him. even now, when his hair had grown nearly white and his shoulders were bowed with heavy cares, there was something about the eagerness of his clear, blue eyes and the boyishness of his slow, sweet, friendly smile that made all hearts turn to him. mother jeanne would have gladly laid down her life for his sake and so, as she had already proved, would clotilde. he was reaping now the reward of his kindness to the homeless acadian woman and her charge, for he had the older woman’s faithful service and clotilde’s love, reverence and companionship. friends who had grieved much over his never having married, felt now that they need be concerned no more, since clotilde was as devoted to him and he to her as though she had been a child of his own.
in spite of his being unable to resume his long journeys from colony to colony, his share in the public affairs was still very great. many grave men of high importance came to consult with him, and every day, it seemed, messengers arrived with packets of papers or great sealed official letters that must be delivered in all haste to master sheffield. while the answers were being made ready, the men would sit before the kitchen fire, refreshing themselves with mother jeanne’s substantial good cheer and giving, in return, news of what was going on in the world outside hopewell.
clotilde, when her services as scribe were not needed in the study, loved to stand by and listen to the strangers’ talk, of how such and such a man had been put in jail for refusing the king’s officers the right to search his house for smuggled goods, or of how such and such a ship had been turned about and sent back to england because the americans would not pay the tax on her cargo of tea. with one conclusion the tale invariably ended, no matter who it was that spoke to the little audience gathered in the kitchen.
“if i were the king,” the men would always say, or “if i were william pitt,” or “if i were governor of massachusetts, i would do such—or such a thing and all would be well.”
once stephen interrupted an address of this kind, when he came to the kitchen door himself, the completed letter in his hand.
“there is much you can do in your own person, david thurston,” he said quietly. “this is a time when every man must act for the public good without waiting until he become governor or prime minister or king george the third.”
“god bless you, master sheffield, and i will strive to do as you say,” the man replied. he went away laughing, but with a new determination in his rugged face.
a scarlet-uniformed soldier, bringing a letter from the governor, sat upon the settle one day drinking gratefully, after his long ride, a great mug of home-brewed cider. he heard clotilde speaking in french with mère jeanne and looked round at her in surprise.
“how come you to speak that tongue as though you were born to it?” he asked. “there are not many of you new englanders who have learned french.”
“we are acadians,” clotilde told him, “and still cling to our own speech, although it is many years now since the brave english soldiers drove a harmless people from their homes.”
“ay,” answered the soldier without anger at her words, “that is a blunder for which england must answer some day. wrong she did then, perhaps even greater wrong she is doing now, so that there has come between the new country and the old so wide a breach, i fear, that it will never be healed. belike they will pour into the gulph a few thousands of us who wear the king’s red coat and that may end the quarrel and it may not. time will tell—and that right soon.”
clotilde watched him ride away, cantering through the sunshine and dappled shade of the long, tree-bordered avenue, with a great rattling of spurs and creaking of saddle-leather. in spite of his words, and although both were thinking of the future, neither he nor she had the faintest dream of the strange circumstances under which they were to meet again.
other news she used to hear, too, from miles atherton, who was a member of the hopewell company of minute-men that drilled every morning in the town square. he was nearly a man now, still sturdy and square and slow of speech, but bearing the same stout heart as did his grandfather, the hugh atherton who dared to speak out for justice in the famous witch panic. often, when he came of an evening, stephen would call him into the study to question him as to how people thought and felt in the village, and how many had joined the band of minute-men. more often, when there was distinguished company with the master of the house and clotilde had finished tending and serving the guests, she and miles would walk in the garden, their tongues still busy with talk of the king and his ministers and the shameful tax on tea. they were only like all the rest of new england, where people could think and talk of but little now save the growing cloud that hung over the colonies.
there were no longer those brilliant, festive gatherings in stephen’s dining hall, or laughing, gorgeously dressed companies grouped about master simon’s wide fireplace in the drawing-room. instead, grave-faced men would sit late into the night around the table in stephen’s study, sit so long indeed that more than once clotilde, slipping down to begin her work in the first faint light of dawn, had found them still in their places, the table covered with guttering candles and strewn with papers, the faces of all looking white and weary and worn. on one such occasion stephen heard her pass the door and called her in to find some papers that he had been unable to get together himself. in spite of the long discussion, the talk was still going on as she stood searching in the carved press.
“i tell thee, friend,” a stout grey-coated stranger was saying, “england forgets that for long years she has sent the freedom-lovers to america to be rid of them and has granted them many liberties as a bribe to them to stay there. now, in the third and fourth generation, the mother country seeks to take back these privileges and to make us law-ridden and yoke-bound like her own englishmen, who have stopped at home. it is a mistake that will cost the king dear.”
“yea,” ejaculated a man beside him whose black clothes indicated that he was a minister. “they sowed the wind, they will reap the whirlwind!” the black-clad gentleman, it seemed, was on the point of delivering a long sermon upon this text had not master sheffield, taking up the papers that clotilde gave him, rather adroitly cut the dissertation short, at which the stout quaker chuckled behind his hand.
later in the morning clotilde stood by stephen in the porch watching the broad back and wide grey hat of the stout visitor as he and his plump, ambling white horse disappeared down the avenue.
“look well at that man, clotilde,” said stephen, “he is a quaker and would, in master simon’s time have been whipped and stoned out of massachusetts. now we are proud that we have speech with him and that he has come all the long way from pennsylvania to consult with us. we puritans have learned a little, a very little, in a hundred years.”
clotilde sighed heavily and turned to go in. it seemed to her that she cared little to hear of such progress when all the time her dear master sheffield was growing thinner and whiter and that terrible war was coming ever nearer. she felt as she often did when the clouds of a summer thunderstorm were hanging lower and lower above the house, when the light was of a weird unearthly brightness and the air so terrifyingly still that, frightened as she was, she almost prayed for the storm to break.
the spring passed and the summer, while the rumblings and threatenings of war still sounded loud. then, through the autumn and winter there was a lull, people began to look more cheerful, to talk of the possibility of a peaceful settlement, of england’s understanding that the struggle with the colonies would be too long and bitter to be worth while. for the work that stephen had done toward bringing the provinces together, those steady years of hopeful toil, had begun to bear fruit at last. committees of correspondence had been formed, the continental congress had met and the organisation of the massachusetts minute-men had been copied by similar bands all up and down the sea-board. the friends of america in england, were pointing out to the headlong king george the third that he was facing a nation with an army, instead of a handful of helpless rebels. so, for the winter at least, the king paused. and then came spring again.
it was an evening in april after a clear warm day, full of the sweet scent of growing things. a dash of rain had pattered over the garden, to be followed, just at sunset, by long, level shafts of light that shone on fresh green grass and budding shrubs and trees. a robin, in the hedge of the queen’s garden, was singing so loudly that clotilde came to the great open door to listen. the willow trees beyond the garden were yellow with young leaves and the line of daffodils by the gate had bloomed in a nodding row. then suddenly as she stood there, the robin’s little voice was drowned by a wild, fierce jangling of bells in the village, and a tall red tongue of flame leaped up from behind the houses on the hill. a thudding of hoof-beats came madly down the lane and a man leaped from his horse and ran in through the white gate, leaving his animal standing with the bridle trailing over its head. with hurried feet he came up the path and mounted the stone steps two at a time.
“a letter for master sheffield,” he said, “and news, great news! the british troops and the minute-men had a running fight from concord to lexington and back again. the americans were too much for the redcoats and the bells are pealing forth the tidings of our first victory. the people yonder in the town are burning the tavern sign of the ‘king’s arms.’ the war has begun!”
with his letter in his hand he vanished into stephen’s study, the door closing behind him.
“so this is the war at last!” thought clotilde.
her knees began suddenly to shake under her and she sat down upon the step since she could no longer stand. it had begun, and where would it end? would it bring them liberty or only destruction? would the death and ruin that were bound to come be kept back, or would the tide rise nearer and nearer, to sweep over dear master sheffield and mother jeanne, over miles atherton and herself? would it roll its devastating way across master simon’s garden blooming so bright and fair in the last glories of the april sunshine?
later she heard fuller tidings, for miles came up from the town and, sitting on the steps beside her, gave an account of the battle in more glowing and excited words than she had ever thought to hear from his lips. the hero of the day, it seemed, was one paul revere, that mild-faced silversmith who had come only last october to set in place the silver knocker upon stephen sheffield’s front door. at his warning, as he galloped all night across the countryside, so miles said, the minute-men had come tumbling out in an excited throng, half dressed but wholly ready for the work in hand. when the sun rose, the british soldiers had found themselves marching down what seemed to be a lane of unseen enemies whom they could not see to resist, so that the march became a run and the run a rout. it was a damp, hot spring day and the king’s men, oppressed with their heavy, clumsy coats and high padded hats, had been soon spent with heat and fatigue, and had staggered and reeled as they ran finally into the arms of their waiting comrades at lexington.
“poor men!” was clotilde’s one thought, which she spoke aloud. “poor, brave men!”
“what?” exclaimed miles. “poor men? why, clotilde, you are not sorry for them? they were britishers!”
“i do not mean to be sorry for them, but i am,” she answered. “they did their best and it was not really their quarrel.”
“and to-morrow,” concluded miles excitedly, “we are all to turn out, the fighting-men all over new england, and march down to boston to lay siege to the british army. oh, it will be a merry time!”
“merry!” cried out clotilde, “you call it merry when you may have to slay men and may never, never come back again yourself?”
“and if i should never come back,” said miles, half laughing, half sober, “would you be sorry, clotilde?”
“sorry?” she looked up at him, at dear, bright-eyed, stout-hearted miles with whom she had played, by whom she had been befriended ever since she was big enough to play at all. at the thought of his never coming back, a gush of tears rose to her eyes and ran unchecked down her cheeks. she sprang up without speaking further and ran into the house.
the study door stood open so that within she could see stephen sitting in his big chair with his grey head bowed upon his hands. he looked, as he sat there, pathetically weary and worn. she slipped into the room, and dropped upon her knees beside his chair and laid her hand upon his.
“dear master sheffield,” she said, “are you so grieved that the war has come at last?”
“ay, grieved i am,” he answered slowly as he put his arm about her, “yet, in a measure, i am lighter of heart, now that the thing that we have so long dreaded has finally come upon us. but, dear clotilde, while i would give all i have, house, lands, life itself, for the winning of this struggle, yet i thank a kind heaven that the war has found me old and outworn, unable to go forth and slay my fellow men.”
