Part 25 (1/2)

”Give it me! What is it?” Then she put on a pair of the new spectacles with wire supports to rest on the ears. ”Dr. Franklin gave me these new inventions, and a great comfort too. I cannot endure bridge gla.s.ses; they leave dents in one's nose. You have not seen him lately. He was here to-day. You should see him, Hugh. He was dressed very fine in a velvet coat with new, s.h.i.+lling b.u.t.tons, and bless me! but he has got manners as fine as his ruffles, and that is saying a good deal--Mechlin of the best. You would not know the man.”

With this she began to look at my letter. ”Hoity-toity, sir! this is a fine setting down for a naughty Quaker.” And she read it aloud in a strong voice, her head back, and the great promontory of her nose twitching at the nostrils now and then with supreme contempt:

”'To HUGH WYNNE: A minute, this Tenth-day of Sixth-month, 1776, from the monthly Meeting of Friends held at Philadelphia.

”'Whereas Hugh Wynne hath had his birth and education among Friends, and, as we believe, hath been convinced of that divine principle which preserves the followers thereof from a disposition to contend for the a.s.serting of civil rights in a manner contrary to our peaceful profession, yet doth not manifest a disposition to make the Meeting a proper acknowledgment of his outgoings, and hath further declared his intention to continue his wrong-doing;

”'Therefore, for the clearing of truth and our society, we give forth our testimony against such breaches, and can have no unity with him, the said Hugh Wynne, as a member of our society until he become sensible of his deviations, and come to a sense of his error, and condemn the same to the satisfaction of Friends; which is that we, as Christian men, desire.

”'Signed in, and on behalf of, the Meeting by

”'ISAAC FREEMAN, ”'_Clerk_.'

”What insolent nonsense!” cried Miss Wynne. ”I hope your father is satisfied. I a.s.sure you I am. You are free at last. Here was James Warder to-day with a like doc.u.ment to the address of my dear Jack. I was a.s.sured that it was a terrible disgrace. I bade him take snuff and not be any greater fool than nature had made him. He took my snuff and sneezed for ten minutes. I think it helped him. One can neither grieve nor reason when one is sneezing. It is what Dr. Rush calls a moral alterative. Whenever the man fell to lamenting, I gave him more snuff. I think it helped him. And so the baa-lambs of Meeting have disowned their two black sheep. Well, well! I have better news for you. Mr. Carroll was here just now, with his charming ways. One would think when he is talking that one is the only woman alive. If I thought the priests taught him the trick, I would turn papist. You should observe his bow, Hugh. I thought Mr. Chew's bow not to be surpa.s.sed; but Mr. Carroll--oh, where was I?”

”Some good news,” I said.

”Yes, yes. He tells me the Congress this evening voted for a Declaration of Independence.”

”Indeed!” I cried. ”So it has come at last. I, too, am free, and it is time I went away, Aunt Gainor.”

”We will see,” she said. ”How can I do without you? and there is your father too. He is not the man he was, and I do not see, Hugh, how you can leave him yet.”

It was too true, as my last interview had shown me. He was no longer the strong, steadily obstinate John Wynne of a year or two back. He was less decisive, made occasional errors in his accounts, and would sometimes commit himself to risky ventures. Then Thomas Mason, our clerk, or my aunt would interfere, and he would protest and yield, having now by habit a great respect for my aunt's sagacity, which in fact was remarkable.

I went back to my work discontented, and pulled this way and that, not clearly seeing what I ought to do; for how could I leave him as he now was? My aunt was right.

Next day I heard Captain John Nixon read in the state-house yard the n.o.ble words of the declaration. Only a few hundred were there to hear it, and its vast consequences few men as yet could apprehend. Miss Norris told me not long after that she climbed on a barrow and looked over their garden wall at Fifth street and Chestnut; ”and really, Mr.

Wynne, there were not ten decent coats in the crowd.” But this Miss Norris was a hot Tory, and thought us all an underbred mob, as, I fear, did most of the proprietary set--the men lacking civil courage to fight on either side, and amazed that Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Reed, and Mr. Robert Morris, and the Virginia gentry, should side with demagogues like Adams and Roger Sherman.

And so time ran on. I fenced, drilled, saw my companions drift away into war, and knew not how to escape. I can now look back on my dismissal from Meeting with more regret than it gave my youth. I have never seen my way to a return to Friends; yet I am still apt to be spoken of as one of the small number who const.i.tute, with Wetherill and Owen and Clement Biddle, the society of Friends known as Free Quakers. To discuss why later I did not claim my place as one of these would lead me to speaking of spiritual affairs, and this, as I have elsewhere said, I never do willingly, nor with comfort to myself.

One afternoon in September of this year I was balancing an account when my father came in and told me that Mason, our clerk, had just had a fall in the hold of one of our s.h.i.+ps. The day after I saw him, and although his hurts were painful they hardly seemed to justify my father in his desire that now at last he should take a long rest from work.

This threw all the detail of our affairs as largely into my hands as was possible with a man like my father. I think he guessed my intention to leave him for the army, and gladly improved this chance to load me with needless affairs, and all manner of small perplexities. My aunt was better--in fact, well; but here was this new trouble. What could I do?

My father declared that the old clerk would soon be able to resume his place, and meanwhile, he should have no one to help him but me. Now and then, to my surprise, he made some absurd business venture, and was impatient if I said a word of remonstrance. Twice I was sent to Maryland to see after our tobacco plantations. I was in despair, and became depressed and querulous, seeing no present way, nor any future likelihood, of escape. My father was well pleased, and even my aunt seemed to me too well satisfied with the ill turn which fate had done me. My father was clearly using the poor old clerk's calamity as an excuse to keep me busy; nor was it at all like him to employ such subterfuges. All his life long he had been direct, positive, and dictatorial; a few years back he would have ordered me to give up all idea of the army, and would as like as not have punished resistance with cold-blooded disinheritance. He was visibly and but too clearly changing from the resolute, uncompromising man he had once been. Was he cunning enough to know that his weakness was for me a bondage far stronger than his more vigorous rule had ever been?

XV

My personal difficulties were not made more easy to bear by the course of public events. Howe had taken New York. In November Fort Was.h.i.+ngton fell. Jack, who was within its walls, got away, but was slightly wounded. Our English general, Lee, had begun already to intrigue against Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton, writing, as Dr. Rush confided to my aunt, that he, Lee, ought to be made dictator. My aunt received the impression that the doctor, who loved his country well, was becoming discontented with our chief; but neither then nor later did she change her own opinion of the reserved and courteous Virginian.

He soon justified her views of his capacity. On December I he broke down the bridges in his rear over the Raritan, and marched through Jersey with a dwindling army. At Princeton he had but three thousand men; destroying every boat, he wisely put the broad Delaware between his army and the enemy.

Lord Cornwallis halted at the river, waiting for it to freeze that he might cross, and until this should happen went back with Howe to New York. About December 15 of '76, General Lee was captured, and, strange as it may now seem, no calamity yet come upon us created more consternation. Meanwhile our own alarmed citizens began to bury their silver plate. While the feeble were flying, and the doubtful were ready to renew their oath to the king, the wary and resolute commander-in-chief saw his chance.

To aid his courageous resolve came Sullivan and Gates from Lee's late command. ”At sunset on Christmas day we crossed the Delaware,” writes Jack. ”My general was in a small boat, with Knox, and two boatmen. We were ten hours in the ice, and marched nine miles, after crossing, in a blinding storm of sleet. By G.o.d's grace we took one thousand of those blackguard Hessians, and, but for Cadwalader's ill luck with the ice, would have got Donop also. I had a finger froze, but no worse accident.

”I dare say you know we fell back beyond a.s.sunpink Creek, below Trenton.

There we fought my lord marquis again with good fortune. Meanwhile he weakened his force at Princeton, and, I fancy, thought we were in a trap; but our general left fires burning, pa.s.sed round the enemy's left, and, as we came near Princeton at sunrise, fell upon Colonel Mawhood on his way to join Cornwallis. I was close to General Mercer when we saw them, and had as usual a fit of the shakes, hang them! Luckily there was small leisure to think.