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 Maste............