The Belle of Bowling Green 3 – Barr · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Belle of Bowling Green 3Chapter 3
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Literature · Romance
The Belle of Bowling Green 3
Chapter 3
BarrEnglish
A Sweetness More Desired than Spring
In this sort of veiled truce the new days came, but the inheritance of those other few days, following the declaration of war, was not disposed of. On the contrary, its influence continually increased; though Leonard received from Mrs. Bloommaert neither special favour nor special disregard. As for the judge, he preserved a grave courtesy, which the young man found it almost impossible either to warm, or to move; and it soon became obvious to Mrs. Bloommaert that her husband’s frequent visits to his friend, General Bloomfield, were made in order to prevent all temptations to alter the polite reserve of his assumed manner.
But the lover’s power is the poet’s power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung. And this time was far from being common; it was thrilled through and through by rumours of war, of defeat and of victory, so that the sound of trumpets, and the march of fighting men were a constant obligato to the most trivial affairs. No one knew what great news any hour might bring. Expectation stood on tiptoe waiting for the incredible. This was not only the case in America. All over Christendom the war flags were flying, and the nations humbling themselves before the great Napoleon. With an army of more than half a million men he was then on his way to invade the dominions of the Emperor of Russia, and at the same time he was waging war with England and Spain, in the Spanish peninsula. The greater part of the rest of Europe was subject to his control; and England was necessarily at war, not only with Napoleon, but with all the other powers of Europe, who were either allies or dependents of Napoleon. Under such circumstances it was hardly likely that she would send any greater force from her continental wars than she thought necessary to maintain her possessions in America. Thus, as yet, there was all the stir and enthusiasm of war, without any great fear of immediate danger.
Leonard came and went, as many other young men did, to the house of Bloommaert; and their talk was all of fighting. But the eyes have a language of their own; the hands speak, flowers and books and music, all were messengers of love, and did his high behests. Moreover, New York was even abnormally gay. She gave vent to her emotions in social delights and unlimited hospitality. Tea-and card-parties, assemblies or subscription balls, excursions up the river, visits to Ballston mineral springs, riding and driving, and the evening saunter on the Battery--when the moon shone, and the band played, and embryo heroes brought ices and made honest love--all these things were part and parcel of these early days of war, in eighteen hundred and twelve; and Leonard Murray and Sapphira Bloommaert met under such happy circumstances continually.
The Bowling Green was the heart of this festivity, for it was the headquarters of the military commanders; and all the colour and pomp of war centred there. Every morning Sappha awoke to the sound of martial music; and every hour of daylight the sidewalks were gay with the uniforms of the army and the militia. It was Annette’s misfortune to live in Nassau Street; but then, as she said, “a great many officers found Nassau Street a convenient way to the Battery.” Doubtless they did so, for her pretty face among the flowers and tantalising shrubbery of the house was an attraction worth going a little out of the way for. However, both Annette and Madame Bloommaert spent much time at the house on the Bowling Green; and no one was more interested in public affairs than the judge’s mother. Her daughter-in-law had many other cares and duties; but the war to Madame Jonaca Bloommaert was the pivot on which all her interests hung.
She was sitting, one morning towards the end of July, eating breakfast with her granddaughter. There was a little breeze wandering about the old place, and madame wore her white Canton crape shawl, a sure sign that she intended to go to the Bowling Green. Well Annette had prepared herself for such a likely visit, and she looked with complacent satisfaction at her figured chintz frock, and her snow-white pelerine of the sheerest muslin.
“About that affair at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church last Sunday, I want to ask your uncle Gerardus,” said madame. “I take leave to say it was not respectable. I can hardly credit the tale--eh; what do you think?”
“It must be true, grandmother; I was at the dinner table yesterday when cousin Peter came in and told us.”
“Told you? What then?”
“He said that after leaving church on Sunday morning, and seeing us safely to our gate, he went up Nassau Street and crossed the City Hall Park, intending to call on John Van Ambridge. Not finding him at home, he took the Broadway to the Bowling Green, and as he was passing St. Paul’s Episcopal Church an artillery regiment marched out of the church, playing Yankee Doodle; and so up Broadway, to both the outspoken anger and outspoken pleasure of the crowd. Many men called on them to cease; others bid them go on, and there was a commotion that would likely have been much greater, if it had not been Sunday.”
“What said Peter?”
“He did not like it; he said it never could have happened at the Middle Dutch Church, and so he laid all the blame on Episcopacy.”
“And what said your uncle?”
“He did not like it either. He thought the officers should be reprimanded. What do you say, grandmother?”
“I like it.”
Annette smiled with a pleasant anticipation. She rather enjoyed a difference of opinion between the household powers. There was generally some small advantage in one way or another as a result. Reconciliations were sure to follow, and reconciliations brought laxities and favours--not infrequently gifts. She did not forget Sappha’s new piano--the white roses and the tear-stained face, and as a natural sequence--the piano.
As they took their way to the Bowling Green madame noticed an unusual quiet in the streets, but Annette, to whom the Bowling Green represented New York, thought everything very lively. The musical exit from St. John’s supplied the conversation, or at least seasoned it with a just interesting acrimony, till the dinner hour arrived. The judge was always pleased to see his mother, and always placed her in his own seat at the table when she eat with them, and this loyal respect and kindness, though so often repeated, never failed to touch madame as if it was a new thing that very hour. So she spoke far more tolerantly than she intended, about the scene at St. John’s, and expended her little store of wrath upon an ordinance which the Common Council had just passed, making it unlawful for any one but those in actual service to beat drums or play fifes on the streets, except under great restrictions as to time. Madame indignantly declared such a law to be “a restriction on the liberty of the individual;” and she reminded her son how much of a sinner he himself had been, when the Revolutionary War was beginning.
“You were then a lad of only ten years old, Gerardus, yet the drum was never out of your hands, unless you were playing the fife,” she said.
“I am sorry to hear this, mother,” he answered. “The suffering that has been caused by such exhibitions of boyish patriotism is beyond our counting. The healthy have been made sick, the sick have been made worse, and in many cases, undoubtedly, they have died in consequence of the perpetual noise. Latterly these bands have taken to beating drums incessantly before the house of any one thought to be opposed to the war, and the general distress has compelled householders to beseech the Town Council for its interference.”
“An old woman am I,” said madame, “but the noise never annoyed me.”
“Mother, you are not an old woman, and you will never be old. If you see one hundred years, you will die young.”
She put out her thin, brown hand towards her son at this compliment, and he laid his own all over it. Then she added a little defiantly: “More noise than ever we shall have in a day or two. Just nobody, is the Common Council. The new disease is noise, and the boys all have it.”
“Well, then, mother, the law will make short work of it--there is a heavy fine and the watch-house for those who do not mind the law.”
“Poor boys!”
“I think we have had enough of that subject,” said Mrs. Bloommaert; “is there no other news, Gerardus?”
“Well, my friend General Bloomfield is to be relieved of his command here; so my pleasant evening smoke and chat with him will soon come to an end. I heard, also, that the company raised by Leonard Murray had joined Colonel Harsen’s artillery regiment, and offered their services as a body to the governor, and that it has been accepted. Some parts of it will go to Staten Island, others to Bedloe’s Island and the Narrows.”
He did not raise his eyes as he made this statement, or he must have seen the face of his daughter flush and pale at his words. She understood from them that Leonard would leave New York, and she could not imagine how long his absence might be. Mrs. Bloommaert did not speak; but she looked curiously at the dropped countenance of her husband. In some dim, undefined way, she came in a moment to the conclusion that this bit of military movement had been effected by General Bloomfield, in order to please his friend. Annette shrugged her shoulders and said some one, or something, always carried off her friends. She wondered what she should do without Leonard--he was so obliging, so merry, so always on hand when she wanted him, and so discreetly absent when she would have felt him a nuisance. She went on in a pretty, complaining way, as if Leonard was her special friend, or even lover, and though all present looked at her with a mild astonishment, no one cared to contradict the position she had taken. Madame even endorsed it by her unconscious affectation of sympathy. “You have a trifle of eight or ten other admirers, child,” she said; “and Leonard Murray is by no means unparagoned. A token give to him, and let him go; a little discipline, that will be good for him.”
This discussion had given Sappha time for self-control, and Mrs. Bloommaert looked with admiration at her daughter. She had feared some scornful or passionate word, but the face of Sappha was as calm as that of a sleeping child. She had taken possession of herself completely; and she asked her mother for some delicacy she wanted, with an air of one only concerned about her dinner. For by a strong mental effort she had closed the door on Leonard for the time being: she loved him too well, and too nobly, to babble about her relations with him--especially with her cousin Annette.
She asked her father for no further information, and he was pleased at her reticence; so much so that he gently stroked her hair as he passed her seat in going out; and the smile she gave him in return made him thoroughly respect her. It was a time when it was considered a mark of refinement in a woman to weep readily; and if under the stress of any unusual joy or grief or disappointment she fainted away, she was thought to have done the right thing to prove her exquisite sensibility. But if Sapphira had fainted on hearing of her lover’s departure, the judge would never have stroked her hair, and she would also have missed that comprehensive, kindling glance from her mother, which at once bid her be brave for the occasion, and assured her of sympathy.
But the weariest river finds the sea somewhere, and the time and the hour run through the longest day. There were visitors after dinner, and then tea-time came and went; and the judge prepared himself to see his mother and niece safely to their home.
“And, Carlita, my dear,” he said, “I may not be home until late. There is to be a meeting at Tammany Hall to approve the war, and considering our conversation to-day at dinner, one thing about the call is worth telling you--it is ‘recommended to citizens of forty-five years of age and upward.’”
Madame laughed and gave her long mitts an impatient jerk--“these greybeards of ‘forty-five and upward’ are going to talk very wisely, no doubt,” she said; “but the young men it is, who will man the ships and the batteries, and the real fighting do.”
“The old men will lead them, mother.”
“Sixteen were you when you went to the front in the last war, Gerardus; and Aaron Burr, who was no older, if as old, carried messages between Arnold and Montgomery through the thick of the fight at Quebec; and when Montgomery fell, little Burr it was who caught his body and carried it out of the line of fire through a very rain of bullets--a boy, mind you!”
“Mother, I have divested myself of all community of feeling with the man called Aaron Burr, and of all interest whatever in his sayings and doings.”
“There it is! However, the sayings and doings will talk for themselves some day. Come, let us be going. Carlita looks worn out with our chatter.”
Carlita did not deny the imputation, and as soon as the echo of their footsteps had died away in the distance, she said, “Sappha, carry the candles into the other parlour. I want to lie down on the sofa. I want to be quiet and dark, and find out where I am, and what I am. The strain has been very hard. Nassau Street always leaves me feeling fit for nothing but sleep.”
“And then to end it, that weary Aaron Burr controversy. Can’t people let him alone?”
“No! When he did well, he heard it never; now they say he has done ill, he hears of it day in and day out.”
So Sappha went to the best parlour, where the piano still stood open, with the new music scattered over it. She put it in order, and the very act brought her a restful, thoughtful mood. Then she closed the instrument, and drawing a comfortable chair before the window she sat down to commune with her own heart. If what her father had said concerning Leonard’s company was correct--and she had no doubt of it--then it was almost certain Leonard would himself call and tell her. He might call that very night; she was finally sure he would call, and her ears took intent note of every sound, and of every coming footstep.
Very rarely are our hopes and wishes accomplished! But this hour was favourable to Sappha’s love. In a very short time she heard the strong, quick steps she was waiting to hear; and her face grew luminous with pleasure, and a sweet smile made her little red mouth enchanting. She did not go to meet him--the front door stood wide open these summer evenings, and there was a distinct luxury in sitting still and waiting for the approach of happiness. It was approaching so surely, so swiftly, and as the steps came near, and more near, she heard in that scarcely broken silence the oracle of her heart.
He entered softly, with a grace half-mystical and half-sensuous; and without a word stood over her. Then she lifted her eyes, and he saw their bright light turn tender, and he stooped and laid his cheek against hers, and whispered: “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me, Sappha? Speak, dearest! Speak quickly! Oh, speak kindly!”
And her soul flew to her lips, and there was no need of words. Love found a sweeter interpretation.
“Thy little white hand, give it to me.”
She had no will to refuse it, almost of its own will it slipped between the two strong hands that held it fast. Then he found out those happy love words that are so glad that they dance as they burn; those words at once so simple and so wise, so gentle and so strong.
And the great marvel of love is ever this--the slenderness of the knowledge and experience which compels one human being to say to another, “I love you!” which compels souls to rush together, as if they were drawn by some such irresistible attraction as compels planets to follow their orbits. Both were so young and so happy that they made each other seem lovelier as they sat with clasped hands, speaking of Leonard’s company and its destination.
“How shall I endure your absence, Leonard? I know not. You are my life, now, dear one,” said Sappha.
“But, Sappha, my sweet, I shall be in your thoughts, as you in mine; and we shall not know that we are apart. Besides, it will be only for ninety days.”
“Ah, but, Leonard, love reckons days for years, and every little absence is an age! The tedious hours will move heavily away, and every minute seem a lazy day.”
“Where have you learned all this?”
“You taught me.”
“Oh, love! love! love! How sweet you are! When I return, then you will be my wife. Let me speak to your father and mother to-night. Why should we wait?”
“Leonard, I have promised my father and mother that I will not engage myself to any one, until the war is over.”
“But that was before this happy hour. Such a promise cannot now stand, darling.”
“It cannot be broken. How could you ever trust me if I was false to the dear father and mother who love me so much?”
“But we are engaged, Sappha. No mere ceremony of asking consent can ever make us more truly one.”
“Then, my love, be content with that knowledge.”
“The war may last a lifetime.”
“It may be over in a year--or less.”
The love-light in her eyes, her tremulous smiles, her penetrative loveliness, her confident heart’s still fervour, filled him with an inward gladness that was unspeakable. His eyes dilated with rapture; he felt as if he was walking on air, and breathing some diviner atmosphere. The joy of love had gone to his head like wine.
In a little while Mrs. Bloommaert came into the room, and though she was sleepy and distrait, she could not but notice the couple who stood up hand-in-hand to meet her. Sappha was eighteen years old, but her radiant face looked almost childlike in its innocent joyousness; and Leonard at her side was the incarnation of young manhood; endowed with strength and grace and beauty, and crowned with the glory of fortunate love.
Leonard wished her to understand, but she smiled away all explanations, and pretended a little worry over her long sleep, and the late hour; and there was nothing left for Leonard but to say “Good-night.” They both went to the door with him, and when he was out of sight, the door was shut and the mother said, “I must have been asleep! Your father will be here soon, Sappha. You had better go to bed. I suppose Leonard is going with the men he raised.”
“Yes, he is going.”
“He ought to be glad to go. It is good for a young man to have some experiences. Well, dear one, the day is over; and you must be tired.”
Then Sappha perceived that her mother did not wish to know authentically, what she understood clearly enough; and a little saddened by this want of sympathy, she went quietly into solitude with her joy.
The three months that followed this interview were filled with incident. New Yorkers needed no theatre; the war supplied every emotion of dismay and triumph of which the human heart is capable. “On to Canada!” had been the slogan at its commencement; and General Hull with over two thousand fine troops quickly took peaceable possession of the little village of Sandwich, on the Canadian shore. His first dispatches threw New York into a tumult of excitement and delight. The American flag was flying on both sides of the Niagara River, and from the grandiloquent proclamation Hull had made the Canadians, and his first dispatches, it really appeared as if Canada had fallen. But even while bells were ringing and cannons firing jubilates for this news, Hull himself had thrown out the white flag from his fort at Detroit, and surrendered the stronghold and all his forces without firing a gun. The anger and mortification of the people were in due season, however, turned into triumph; for if General Hull surrendered on the nineteenth of August, Captain Hull of the frigate Constitution on the tenth of August took the British man-of-war Guerrière on the coast of Newfoundland; and the news of this victory, which arrived in New York about the first of September, roused the wildest enthusiasm.
This circumstance indicates very well the progress of the war. The army operations on the Canadian frontier were everywhere disastrous to America; on the ocean her ships vindicated by constant brilliant victories the descent of her sailors from that great maritime power whose flag had braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze. There is not in all history a more splendid naval record than the United States made during these ninety days of alternate dismay and triumph. And no city felt these wonderful sea victories quite as New York did. Her great ship-yards on the East River had sent out the armed frigates and brigs, that were covering the nation, even in the eyes of her enemy, with a great and unexpected glory. The Constitution! the President! the Essex! the United States! these gallant ships had a kind of personality to New Yorkers. They had seen them grow to perfection in Christian Bergh’s and Adam Brown’s yards. They had stood godfathers at their christening, and they watched their valiant careers almost as a father watches his son’s course to a glorious success.
On the fourth of September Sappha and Mrs. Bloommaert were in Greenwich Street shopping, when they suddenly heard a wild shout of joy. “The Constitution! the Constitution!” From mouth to mouth the two words flew like wild-fire. The whole city was roaring them. The bells clapped them out. The cannon sent them thundering over land and sea. Men meeting, though strangers, clasped hands; and women threw themselves into each other’s arms, weeping. Was there feeling enough left for a maid to be lovelorn or melancholy? Not in Sappha’s case. She gave her whole heart to rejoice with her country first, and then proudly remembered the dear youth who must at that moment be rejoicing with her.
Letters from him came more frequently than she had dared to hope. Some one available as a messenger was frequently at the Narrows fort, and Leonard never missed an opportunity. There was no restriction on this correspondence by her father and mother, though at the beginning of it the judge strongly advised restriction.
“Written words cannot be denied or rubbed out, Carlita,” he said. “I know what young men are. Suppose Leonard should show Sappha’s letters to some companion.”
“Suppose an impossibility, Gerardus.”
“Not so. A man in love is always a vain man, if his love is returned. He has conquered, and he puts on all the airs of a victor. He usually wants some one to admire and envy him, and a love letter is a visible proof of his prowess among women. I would not allow Sappha to write.”
“Then you are in the wrong, my dear one. Nothing is better for a lover than a course of love letters. It is the finest education for marriage.”
“They say so many extravagant things.”
“Very well. That is good. They get used to saying fine things, then they feel them, and ’tis no harm at all for a lover to write down his mistress ‘an angel.’ He may treat her the better for it, all their lives together.”
“So! so! Take thy own foolish way, wife. I do not forget thy dear little love notes--and ever the few leaves of sweet brier in them. I can smell it yet.”
So Sappha had her love letters, and she also wrote them. Leonard’s were like himself, frankly outspoken, full of extravagancy, both in love and war. “He loved her as never man loved before;” and she saw the words shine on the paper, and believed in them with all her soul. “He longed for those unspeakable English tyrants to come within reach of their guns, they would be sunk twenty fathoms deep in no time--then, then, then, oh, then he would fly to her, as a bird to its nest!” Love and glory mingled thus, until love took entire possession; then the conclusion was a passionate exploiting of that yearning word “why?” “Why could they not be married when he returned? Why should they wait? Why did she not think as he did? Why consider the war at all? Why let that old tyrant of a motherland called England interfere in their happiness? Why let anything? Or anybody?” There had been little parties of visitors at the Narrows, “Why had she not persuaded her father and mother to sail so far with her? Why, in short, did she not understand that life was dreadfully dull in the fort, and that a sight of her would be heaven to him? Why? Why? Why did she not love him as wildly and fondly and eternally as he loved her?”
All this exaggeration was the most beautiful truth to Sapphira. She adored her lover for the very prodigality of his pleas and protestations. It was right and proper that lovers should suffer all the pangs of separation; she was rather proud of Leonard’s wailing and complaining; and careful not to comfort it too much, by comparing it with her own. Indeed she rather affected the style of a sweet little mentor, bound to remind him that he must love honour, even before herself. And she so blended their own hopes and happiness with domestic and public affairs as to make her letters all that a daily paper might be to a man shut up in prison, or in a fort in a wilderness. Leonard saw through them, the New York he loved, the busy, hopeful people, talking, trading, singing, smoking, loving, living through every sense they had; and he felt with the keenest delight all Sappha’s sweet self-disparagements and compunctions for her own happiness and good fortune in being beloved by him.
“I cannot tell you, my own dear friend,” she wrote on the sixth of November, “how happy your assurances of affection make me. People who are very, very happy do not know how to write down their joy. I have no words but the old, old ones--I do so love you! If I but think of your name, I bless it forever. When your letters come, I kiss the seal before I open them; when I write you a letter I look love into every word I write. My father does not speak of you--oh, there is so much else for him to talk of! My mother looks only the sweet sympathy she will not utter, until my father wills it--and in that she is right, I think. Annette may suspect, but she knows nothing certainly; our secret is very much our own yet, and the dearer for it. You would say so also, if you could see and hear New York at the present time. In spite of our small deprivations, we are all very happy. The militia stationed here are having a most sociable time, and there are parades and reviews constantly in progress. The theatre is now filled every night it is open, and if only some gallant privateer, or some sailor from the ships comes in, the performance has to stop until he has been cheered to the skies. I am sorry, my dearest friend, that you did not join the navy; for just now sailors are the idols of our city--I do not mean that--oh, no! I could not bear to think of you at sea. I am counting the days and the hours now. I heard mother tell Annette that the men at the Narrows would be home for the great parade on Evacuation Day, Annette clapped her hands and said ‘then Leonard Murray will return to us; and I shall ask grandmother to give him a dinner. He will be so glad to see me,’ she added, ‘and I shall be so glad to see him.’ She put me out of calculation, and I did not mind; for if you remember, what care I if all the world forgets me? It is too bad the English ships will not give you a chance of glory, we have almost forgot how to fear them. Every one is in high spirits; we have no doubt of God, nor our country, nor of our brave sailors and soldiers. And, oh, Leonard! dear, dear Leonard, I have not one doubt of you. So then I send you my heart; for I do trust you, Leonard, for all the joy that life shall bring me. Yes I do! I do! Sappha.”
Such foolish words! Ah, no! Such words of delightful wisdom! And happy indeed is the woman who in her youth hides such letters away in her Book of Life. They will sweeten every page of it--even to the very end.
