“To my dear foster-child, called Clotilde Lamotte, but who, if she carries out my wish, will call herself Clotilde Sheffield until she changes that name for another, I leave all my possessions in and near the town of Hopewell and in her especial charge I place that plot of ground that has long been called Master Simon’s garden. I leave behind me no directions as to how she is to care for that garden, since I know that she will tend and cherish it as lovingly as would I myself. I give her with it my blessing and I bid her be of good heart and not disappoint Master Simon.”
It was this portion of Stephen’s will, read to her by the staid old lawyer, that made Clotilde smile, even through her tears. “Not to disappoint Master Simon” had been a byword between herself and her dear Master Sheffield whenever the world looked dark and it seemed hard to face the future with courage. So, with as brave a spirit as she could muster, she set out to fulfil his wishes.
There was still much, so very much hard work for her to do. Although the surrender at Yorktown had marked the practical end of the fighting, the negotiations for peace had dragged on, the country could not settle down and want and poverty must still be bravely faced. The little town of Hopewell, while it looked more cheerful and began to wear an air of greater prosperity, was still full of women who had lost the mainstay of their families, of men whose means of livelihood had been swept away, of others wounded or suffering who needed a hand to set them on their feet again. From cottage to cottage Clotilde went, giving freely of her help in advice, money and the products of her lands. The time had not yet come for the finishing of Stephen’s house or the replanting of Master Simon’s garden.
At length the peace-treaty was signed and ratified by Congress, the last winter of dire poverty went by and with the Spring the Colonies of America began the task of setting their affairs to rights and forming a new government. Many jealous eyes were watching them from across the seas, for all the world was saying that, though Americans might know how to fight for freedom they had no wisdom in the matter of keeping it. Their good friend France had helped them to win their battles, but she had no power to aid them now. Ah, how sorely was Stephen Sheffield missed at this crisis and how much he could have done to smooth the rough road of the blundering nation. Not only those nearest to him, but also many of the great men of the country mourned the fact that Stephen Sheffield’s calm, clear, tolerant mind could not assist in this great task.
Miles Atherton did not come back to Hopewell until the last company of soldiers had disbanded and until General Washington had gone back to Mount Vernon to become a plain country gentleman again, instead of the greatest man of his time. Then it was that Clotilde’s old play-fellow came back to sit with her in the garden once more, to tell her that he was to make one more journey, to explain hesitatingly that this was to be a momentous one indeed—in short to unfold the whole story of the Quaker Ladies.
“All through that terrible winter at Valley Forge,” he said as, little by little, she drew the tale from him, “the soldiers used to talk of some one whom they called the ‘little Quaker Lady.’ No one had ever seen her close, for she used to come like a little grey shadow, slipping past our outer lines and then running away into the dark again as though she were a ghost. But what she left behind was apt to be far from ghost-like, such baskets of wonderful good things, such fat capons, such eggs and butter and fresh cream cheese! You would have to be a half-starved soldier to realise what her gifts meant.”
“Well,” smiled Clotilde encouragingly, as Miles paused, “surely all your raptures are not merely concerning what she brought you to eat.”
“No,” he answered. “I was only thinking of how I began to tell you of this when I was here before, and of how my unwonted talkativeness betrayed me to Master Sheffield and how he laughed at me. I am glad now that he did guess my secret and that I have the memory of the good wishes that he gave me. No,” he went on, returning to his tale, “if it had not been for a chance happening, I would have had no raptures nor ever known more of the Quaker Lady than that her hens laid most wondrous fresh eggs.”
“Most eggs are fresh when laid,” Clotilde reminded him, but he assured her that none could ever be compared to those roasted over the coals of a campfire in the wind-sheltered hollows of Valley Forge.
“I was doing sentry duty one night,” he continued, “for officers took their turn as well as privates, so short-handed were we. I had built a little fire, just so that my comrades would not have the sorrow of finding a frozen man at my post when they came to relieve me. Suddenly I thought that I heard, above the crackling of the flames, a sound of footsteps on the frozen snow, and to make sure, I dropped a branch of fat pitch-pine upon the coals. There was a quick flare of light and I could make out, not ten paces from me, a little dark figure in a Quaker bonnet and cloak. For a single second I saw her face plainly before the flame died down. She cried out when she found that she had been discovered, dropped her burden and fled away into the shadows. How the men chided me when I carried the basket into camp and told my story; they feared that she had been too badly frightened to return and besides four of the precious eggs were broken.”
“But she did come back?” Clotilde said eagerly.
“Yes, but so shyly and secretly that I did not see her again all through the winter. I watched eagerly enough, of that you may be sure, but it was not until Spring that I met her again. I had wandered one day far from our valley, farther indeed than was thought safe, but so frantic was I to see something green after all those months in the barren camp, that I had no thought of where I went. I told you once of the meadow and the little clear stream with its banks blue-grey with the close-growing Quaker Ladies; I did not tell you that, as I was hidden for a moment behind a clump of willows, the little Quaker maid herself, in her blue-grey gown and with her hands full of flowers, came walking along the farther bank. When she saw me she would have run away again, but I—I persuaded her to remain.”
Clotilde laughed quietly. It was hard to picture slow-spoken Miles standing on the bank of the stream, trying to beguile the shy Quaker maiden on the other side into waiting to talk to him. But into the life of even the most silent of youths there comes always an instant of eloquence, and this, it seemed, was Miles’ great moment. He sat shaking his head over the wonder and glory of it even now.
“And did General Washington have to send a squad of soldiers to bring you home again?” she asked him at last.
“Not quite,” replied Miles, blushing but laughing at himself at the same time, “although I admit that there was almost necessity for it. I came to the meadow again and yet again, where she would come to meet me. I began to feel—oh, Clotilde, how it does steal upon you unawares!”
Poor Clotilde felt a sudden fierce stab at her heart. How it did, to be sure, come unawares and never go away again!
“At last our army marched forth from Valley Forge,” he went on, “and she, just as Master Sheffield guessed, was peeping through the window to see us go by. Her father was a prosperous farmer, not averse to our side of the war, but more willing to sell his produce for the English gold than for the worthless paper money that bought our supplies. Had he ever known how many of his good things went into the larder of the American soldiers, I fear it would have gone hard with his daughter.”
“It must have been difficult to see her after that,” Clotilde observed.
“Most surely it was,” he said with a sigh; “there were but brief visits snatched as our army went back and forth. I was nearly captured more than once, but several times brought back information that was of use to our Commander, so I never received the reprimands that I well deserved. There would have been no Captain Radpath to set me free this time had the enemy laid hands upon me. By the way, have you heard aught of him since he sailed for England?”
“No, nothing,” she answered hastily, and turned the subject quickly. “And so now the war is over, you are going to be wedded? Oh, Miles, I am so glad!”
“In two short months,” he told her joyfully, “and there will be the end of midnight rides and secret meetings in the meadow. Then she will be here always and nothing to come between us. Oh, if you could but know how happy I am!”
She could well measure his happiness, she thought, by her own great loneliness, but of that she could not speak. She was too fond of her old playmate not to feel a glow of pleasure in his joy, and she made him happier yet by the earnestness of her good wishes. He went away through the gate at last, his joyfulness running over for all the world to see, as he beamed delightedly upon every one he passed.
In spite of her good share in Miles’ happiness, the world seemed now very empty and forlorn to Clotilde, for Mère Jeanne had slipped away during the dark, stormy days of the winter and had left her adopted child to face life all alone. Only Stephen’s last request, “not to disappoint Master Simon” availed to keep up her failing courage. She had a new task before her this Spring, one to which she could turn unhindered at last, since starvation no longer threatened the poor of Hopewell. And so, with a heavy heart, she bent her energies to the replanting of Master Simon’s garden.
“But it will not be his garden now,” she reflected drearily. “It will be a place like any other, since I who plant it am not even one of his own children. All that belonged to him has perished utterly.”
When the place was ready, however, when the old beds had been dug and the former lawns sown with grass again, she bethought her of at least one flower that she could plant and know it was still Master Simon’s. Up on the forest hillside was that wonderful group of daffodils, set out by his hand and waiting all these years to return to the garden whence they came. With old Jason beside her, she toiled through the muddy lanes and up through the wood, where buds were bursting on the trees and Mayflowers were opening under the dry leaves. There she found what she sought, the dear yellow flowers, flinging their gold down the slope like long drifts of Spring sunshine. Two great basketfuls they brought home, and set the sturdy plants in a long row by the fence where daffodils had always grown since the first year that the Colony was settled.
And then there began a miracle, so it seemed, a wonder wrought only by simple love and friendliness, but a miracle just the same. She was lingering over the task of putting the last clump of daffodils in place when through the gate came young Giles Thurston, twelve-year-old brother to the good soldier David. To his house more than to any other she had gone, during the years of want, and had given help when otherwise starvation would have come very close.
“Please, Mistress,” said Giles, laying upon the ground a great awkward bundle that he had been carrying in both arms, “I heard that you were planting your garden and I have been wishing so much that I might bring you something to grow there. Our own garden is bare and planted with turnips and cabbages of which you surely have enough already, but up on the hill is a tumble-down empty cottage with a rose vine growing all over its broken walls. My mother says that an old woman named Goody Parsons used to dwell there a long, long time ago and that the rose once grew in Master Simon’s garden. See, I have brought you a root of it. Mother put a slip into the ground the very first Spring after your garden was burned. And here, too, is a part of Goody Parsons’ hawthorn bush that I think must also have come from Master Simon.”
Poor old Goody Parsons, dead so many years and gone to that ............