The Bow of Orange Ribbon - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best book club books of all time txt) 📗

boat will have the choice of oars.'"

"That was like Batavius, but I will take higher counsel than his."

Then he rose, put on his hat, and walked down his garden; and, as he slowly paced between the beds of budding flowers, he thought of many things,--the traditions of the past struggles for freedom, and the irritating wrongs that had imbittered his own experience for ten years. There was plenty of life yet in the spirit his fathers had bequeathed to him; and, as this and that memory of wrong smote it, the soul-fire kindled, glowed, burned with passionate flame. "Free, God gave us this fair land, and we will keep it free. There has been in it no crowns and sceptres, no bloody Philips, no priestly courts of cruelty; and, in God's name, we will have none!"

He was standing on the river-bank; and the meadows over it were green and fair to see, and the fresh wind blew into his soul a thought of its own untrammelled liberty. He looked up and down the river, and lifted his face to the clear sky, and said aloud, "Beautiful land! To be thy children we should not deserve, if one inch of thy soil we yielded to a tyrant. Truly a vaderland to me and to mine thou hast been. Truly do I love thee." And then, his soul being moved to its highest mark, he answered it tenderly, in the strong-syllabled mother-tongue that it knew so well,--

"Indien ik u vergeet, o Vaderland! zoo vergete mijne regter-hand zich zelve!"

Such communion he held with himself until the night came on, and the dew began to fall; and Lysbet said to herself, "I will walk down the garden: perhaps there is something I can say to him." As she rose, Joris entered, and they met in the centre of the room. He put his large hands upon her shoulders, and, looking solemnly in her face, said, "My Lysbet, I will go with the people; I will give myself willingly to the cause of freedom. A long battle is it. Two hundred years ago, a Joris Van Heemskirk was fighting in it. Not less of man than he was, am I, I hope."

There was a mist of tears over his eyes--a mist that was no dishonour; it only showed that the cost had been fully counted, and his allegiance given with a clear estimate of the value and sweetness of all that he might have to give with it. Lysbet was a little awed by the solemnity of his manner. She had not before understood the grandeur of such a complete surrender of self as her husband had just consummated. But never had she been so proud of him. Everything commonplace had slipped away: he looked taller, younger, handsomer.

She dropped her knitting to her feet, she put her arms around his neck, and, laying her head upon his breast, said softly, "My good Joris! I will love thee forever."

In a few minutes Elder Semple came in. He looked exceedingly worried; and, although Joris and he avoided politics by a kind of tacit agreement, he could not keep to kirk and commercial matters, but constantly returned to one subject,--a vessel lying at Murray's Wharf, which had sold her cargo of molasses and rum to the "Committee of Safety."

"And we'll be haeing the custom-house about the city's ears, if there's 'safety' in that,--the born idiots," he said.

Joris was in that grandly purposeful mood that takes no heed of fretful worries. He let the elder drift from one grievance to another; and he was just in the middle of a sentence containing his opinion of Sears and Willet, when Bram's entrance arrested it. There was something in the young man's face and attitude which made every one turn to him. He walked straight to the side of Joris,--

"Father, we have closed his Majesty's custom-house forever."

"_We!_ Who, then, Bram?"

"The Committee of Safety and the Sons of Liberty."

Semple rose to his feet, trembling with passion. "Let me tell you, then, Bram, you are a parcel o' rogues and rebels; and, if I were his Majesty, I'd gibbet the last ane o' you."

"Patience, Elder. Sit down, I'll speak"--

"No, Councillor, I'll no sit down until I ken what kind o' men I'm sitting wi'. Oot wi' your maist secret thoughts. Wha are you for?"

"For the people and for freedom am I," said Joris, calmly rising to his feet. "Too long have we borne injustice. My fathers would have spoken by the sword before this. Free kirk, free state, free commerce, are the breath of our nostrils. Not a king on earth our privileges and rights shall touch; no, not with his finger-tips. Bram, my son, I am your comrade in this quarrel." He spoke with fervent, but not rapid speech, and with a firm, round voice, full of magical sympathies.

"I'll hear nae mair o' such folly.--Gie me my bonnet and plaid, madam, and I'll be going.--The King o' England needna ask his Dutch subjects for leave to wear his crown, I'm thinking."

"Subjects!" said Bram, flashing up. "Subjection! Well, then, Elder, Dutchmen don't understand the word. Spain found that out."

"Hoots! dinna look sae far back, Bram. It's a far cry, to Alva and Philip. Hae you naething fresher? Gude-night, a'. I hope the morn will bring you a measure o' common sense." He was at the door as he spoke; but, ere he passed it, he lifted his bonnet above his head and said, "God save the king! God save his gracious Majesty, George of England!"

Joris turned to his son. To shut up the king's customs was an overt action of treason. Bram, then, had fully committed himself; and, following out his own thoughts, he asked abruptly, "What will come of it, Bram?"

"War will come, and liberty--a great commonwealth, a great country."

"It was about the sloop at Murray's Wharf?"

"Yes. To the Committee of Safety her cargo she sold; but Collector Cruger would not that it should leave the vessel, although offered was the full duty."

"For use against the king were the goods; then Cruger, as a servant of King George, did right."

"Oh, but if a tyrant a man serves, we cannot suffer wrong that a good servant he may be! King George through him refused the duty: no more duties will we offer him. We have boarded up the doors and windows of the custom-house. Collector Cruger has a long holiday."

He did not speak lightly, and his air was that of a man who accepts a grave responsibility. "I met Sears and about thirty men with him on Wall Street. I went with them, thinking well on what I was going to do. I am ready by the deed to stand."

"And I with thee. Good-night, Bram, To-morrow there will be more to say."

Then Bram drew his chair to the hearth, and his mother began to question him; and her fine face grew finer as she listened to the details of the exploit. Bram looked at her proudly. "I wish only that a fort full of soldiers and cannon it had been," he said. "It does not seem such a fine thing to take a few barrels of rum and molasses."

"Every common thing is a fine thing when it is for justice. And a fine thing I think it was for these men to lay down every one his work and his tool, and quietly and orderly go do the work that was to be done for honour and for freedom. If there had been flying colours and beating drums, and much blood spilt, no grander thing would it have been, I think."

And, as Bram filled and lighted his pipe, he hummed softly the rallying song of the day,--

"In story we're told
How our fathers of old
Braved the rage of the winds and the waves;
And crossed the deep o'er,
For this far-away shore, All because they would never be slaves--brave boys!
All because they would never be slaves.

"The birthright we hold
Shall never be sold,
But sacred maintained to our graves;
And before we comply
We will gallantly die, For we will not, we will not be slaves--brave boys!
For we will not, we will not be slaves."

In the meantime Semple, fuming and ejaculating, was making his way slowly home. It was a dark night, and the road full of treacherous soft places, fatal to that spotless condition of hose and shoes which was one of his weak points. However, before he had gone very far, he was overtaken by his son Neil, now a very staid and stately gentleman, holding under the government a high legal position in the investigation of the disputed New-Hampshire grants.

He listened respectfully to his father's animadversions on the folly of the Van Heemskirks; but he was thinking mainly of the first news told him,--the early return of Katherine. He was conscious that he still loved Katherine, and that he still hated Hyde. As they approached the house, the elder saw the gleam of a candle through the drawn blind; and he asked querulously, "What's your mother doing wi' a candle at this hour, I wonder?"

"She'll be sewing or reading, father."

"Hoots! she should aye mak' the wark and the hour suit. There's spinning and knitting for the night-time. Wi' soldiers quartered to the right hand and the left hand, and a civil war staring us in the face, it's neither tallow nor wax we'll hae to spare."

He was climbing the pipe-clayed steps as he spoke, and in a few minutes was standing face to face with the offender. Madam Semple was reading and, as her husband opened the parlour door, she lifted her eyes from her book, and let them calmly rest upon him.

"Fire-light and candle-light, baith, Janet! A fair illumination, and nae ither thing but bad news for it."

"It is for reading the Word, Elder."

"For the night season, meditation, Janet, meditation;" and he lifted the extinguisher, and put out the candle. "Meditate on what you hae read. The Word will bide a deal o' thinking about. You'll hae heard the ill news?"

"I heard naething ill."

"Didna Neil tell you?"

"Anent what?"

"The closing o' the king's customs."

"Ay, Neil told me."

"Weel?"

"Weel, since you ask me, I say it was gude news."

"Noo, Janet, we'll hae to come to an understanding. If I hae swithered in my loyalty before, I'll do sae nae mair. From this hour, me and my house will serve King George. I'll hae nae treason done in it, nor said; no, nor even thocht o'."

"You'll be a vera Samson o' strength, and a vera Solomon o' wisdom, if you keep the hands and the tongues and the thochts o' this house. Whiles, you canna vera weel keep the door o' your ain mouth, gudeman. What's come o'er you, at a'?"

"I'm surely master in my ain house, Janet."

"'Deed, you are far from being that, Alexander Semple. Doesna King George quarter his men in it? And havena you to feed and shelter them, and to thole their ill tempers and their ill ways, morning, noon, and night? You master in your ain house! You're just a naebody in it!"

"Dinna get on your high horse, madam. Things are coming to the upshot: there's nae doot o' it."

"They've been lang aboot it--too lang."

"Do you really mean that you are going to set yoursel' among the rebels?"

"Going?