The Continental Dragoon by Robert Neilson Stephens
CHAPTER I.
THE RIDERS.
"I dare say 'tis a wild, foolish, dangerous thing; but I do it,nevertheless! As for my reasons, they are the strongest. First, I wishto do it. Second, you've all opposed my doing it. So there's an end ofthe matter!"
It was, of course, a woman that spoke,--moreover, a young one.
And she added:
"Drat the wind! Can't we ride faster? 'Twill be dark before we reachthe manor-house. Get along, Cato!"
She was one of three on horseback, who went northward on the Albanypost-road late in the afternoon of a gray, chill, blowy day inNovember, in the war-scourged year 1778. Beside the girl rode a younggentleman, wrapped in a dark cloak. The third horse, which plodded ashort distance in the rear, carried a small negro youth and two largeportmanteaus. The three riders made a group that was, as far as couldbe seen from their view-point, alone on the highway.
There were reasons why such a group, on that road at that time, was anunusual sight,--reasons familiar to any one who is well informed inthe history of the Revolution. Unfortunately, most good Americans arebetter acquainted with the French Revolution than with our own, knowmore about the state of affairs in Rome during the reign of Nero thanabout the condition of things in New York City during the Britishoccupation, and compensate for their knowledge of Scotch-Englishborder warfare in remote times by their ignorance of the borderwarfare that ravaged the vicinity of the island of Manhattan, for sixyears, little more than a century ago.
Our Revolutionary War had reached the respectable age of three and ahalf years. Lexington, Bunker Hill, Brooklyn, Harlem Heights, WhitePlains, Trenton, Princeton, the Brandywine, German-town, Bennington,Saratoga, and Monmouth--not to mention events in the South and inCanada and on the water--had taken their place in history. The army ofthe King of England had successively occupied Boston, New York, andPhiladelphia; had been driven out of Boston by siege, and had leftPhiladelphia to return to the town more pivotal and nearer thesea,--New York. One British commander-in-chief had been recalled bythe British ministry to explain why he had not crushed the rebellion,and one British major-general had surrendered an army, and was nowback in England defending his course and pleading in Parliament thecause of the Americans, to whom he was still a prisoner on parole. OurContinental army--called Continental because, like the generalCongress, it served the whole union of British-settled Colonies orStates on this continent, and was thus distinguished from the militia,which served in each case its particular Colony or State only--hadexperienced both defeats and victories in encounters with the King'stroops and his allies, German, Hessian, and American Tory. It hadendured the winter at Valley Forge while the British had fed, drunk,gambled, danced, flirted, and wenched in Philadelphia. The Frenchalliance had been sanctioned. Steuben, Lafayette, DeKalb, Pulaski,Kosciusko, Armand, and other Europeans, had taken service with us. Oneplot had been made in Congress and the army to supplant Washington inthe chief command, and had failed. The treason of General Charles Leehad come to naught,--but was to wait for disclosure till many yearsafter every person concerned should be graveyard dust. We hadcelebrated two anniversaries of the Fourth of July. The new free andindependent States had organized local governments. The King'sappointees still made a pretence of maintaining the royal provincialgovernments, but mostly abode under the protection of the King'stroops in New York. There also many of those Americans in the Northtook refuge who distinctly professed loyalty to the King. New York wasthus the chief lodging-place of all that embodied British sovereigntyin America. Naturally the material tokens of British rule radiatedfrom the town, covering all of the island of Manhattan, most of LongIsland, and all of Staten Island, and retaining a clutch here andthere on the mainland of New Jersey.
It was the present object of Washington to keep those visible signs ofEnglish authority penned up within this circle around New York. TheContinental posts, therefore, formed a vast arc, extending from theinterior of New Jersey through Southeastern New York State to LongIsland Sound and into Connecticut. This had been the situation sincemidsummer of 1778. It was but a detachment from our main army that hadcooperated with the French fleet in the futile attempt to dislodge aBritish force from Newport in August of that year.
The British commander-in-chief and most of the superior officers hadtheir quarters in the best residences of New York. That town waspacked snugly into the southern angle of the island of Manhattan, likea gift in the toe of a Christmas stocking. Southward, some of itsfinest houses looked across the Battery to the bay. Northward the townextended little beyond the common fields, of which the City HallSquare of 1898 is a reduced survival. The island of Manhattan--withits hills, woods, swamps, ponds, brooks, roads, farms, sightlyestates, gardens, and orchards--was dotted with the cantonments andgarrisoned forts of the British. The outposts were, largely, entrustedto bodies of Tory allies organized in this country. Thus was much ofLong Island guarded by the three Loyalist battalions of General OliverDe Lancey, himself a native of New York. On Staten Island wasquartered General Van Cortlandt Skinner's brigade of New JerseyVolunteers, a troop which seems to have had such difficulty in findingofficers in its own State that it had to go to New York for many ofthem,--or was it that so many more rich New York Loyalists had to beprovided with commissions than the New York Loyalist brigades requiredas officers?
But the most important British posts were those which guarded thenorthern entrance to the island of Manhattan, where it was separatedfrom the mainland by Spuyten Duyvel Kill, flowing westward into theHudson, and the Harlem, flowing southward into the East River. King'sBridge and the Farmers' Bridge, not far apart, joined the island tothe main; and just before the Revolution a traveller might have madehis choice of these two bridges, whether he wished to take the Bostonroad or the road to Albany. In 1778 the British "barrier" was King'sBridge, the northern one of the two, the watch-house being the tavernat the mainland end of the bridge. Not only the bridge, but theHudson, the Spuyten Duyvel, and the Harlem, as well, were commanded byBritish forts on the island of Manhattan. Yet there were defencesstill further out. On the mainland was a line of forts extending fromthe Hudson, first eastward, then southward, to the East River. Furthernorth, between the Albany road and the Hudson, was a camp of Germanand Hessian allies, foot and horse. Northeast, on Valentine's Hill,were the Seventy-first Highlanders. Near the mainland bank of theHarlem were the quarters of various troops of dragoons, most of themAmerican Tory corps with English commanders, but one, at least, nativeto the soil, not only in rank and file, but in officers also,--andwith no less dash and daring than by Tarleton, Simcoe, and the rest,was King George III. served by Captain James De Lancey, of the countyof West Chester, with his "cowboys," officially known as the WestChester Light Horse.
Thus the outer northern lines of the British were just above King'sBridge. The principal camp of the Americans was far to the north. Eacharmy was affected by conditions that called for a wide space ofterritory between the two forces, between the outer rim of the Britishcircle, and the inner face of the American arc. Of this space theportion that lay bounded on the west by the Hudson, on the southeastby Long Island Sound, and cut in two by the southward-flowing Bronx,was the most interesting. It was called the Neutral Ground, andneutral it was in that it had the protection of neither side, while itwas ravaged by both. Foraged by the two armies, under the approvedrules of war, it underwent further a constant, irregular pillage bygangs of mounted rascals who claimed attachment, some to the British,some to the Americans, but were not owned by either. It was, too,overridden by the cavalry of both sides in attempts to surpriseoutposts, cut off supplies, and otherwise harass and sting. Unexpectedforays by the rangers and dragoons from King's Bridge and the Harlemwere reciprocated by sudden visitations of American horse and lightinfantry from the Greenburg Hills and thereabove. The Whig militia ofthe county also took a hand against British Tories and marauders. Ofthe residents, many Tories fled to New York, some Americans went tothe interior of the country, but numbers of each party held thei
Thus was it that Miss Elizabeth Philipse, Major John Colden, and MissPhilipse's negro boy, Cuff, all riding northward on the Albanypost-road, a few miles above King's Bridge, but still within territorypatrolled daily by the King's troops, constituted, on that bleakNovember evening in 1778, a group unusual to the time and place.
'Twas a wettish wind, concerning which Miss Elizabeth expressed, inthe imperative mood, her will that it be dratted,--a feminine wind,truly, as was clear from its unexpected flarings up and suddencalmings down, its illogical whiskings around and eccentric changes ofdirection. Now it swept down the slope from the east, as if it meantto bombard the travellers with all the brown leaves of the hillside.Now it assailed them from the north, as if to impede their journey;now rushed on them from the rear as if it had come up from New York tospeed them on their way; now attacked them in the left flank, armedwith a raw chill from the Hudson. It blew Miss Elizabeth's hair aboutand additionally reddened her cheeks. It caused the young Tory majorto frown, for the protection of his eyes, and thus to look more andmore unlike the happy man that Miss Elizabeth's accepted suitor oughtto have appeared.
"I make no doubt I've brought on me the anger of your whole family bylending myself to this. And yet I am as much against it as they are!"So spake the major, in tones as glum as his looks.
"'Twas a choice, then, between their anger and mine," said MissElizabeth, serenely. "Don't think I wouldn't have come, even if youhad refused your escort. I'd have made the trip alone with Cuff,that's all."
"I shall be blamed, none the less."
"Why? You couldn't have hindered me. If the excursion is as dangerousas they say it is, your company certainly does not add to my danger.It lessens it. So, as my safety is what they all clamor about, theyought to commend you for escorting me."
"If they were like ever to take that view, they would not all haverefused you their own company."
"They refused because they neither supposed that I would come alonenor that Providence would send me an escort in the shape of a surlymajor on leave of absence from Staten Island! Come, Jack, you needn'ttremble in dread of their wrath. By this time my amiable papa and mysolicitous mamma and my anxious brothers and sisters are in such astate of mind about me that, when you return to-night and report I'vebeen safely consigned to Aunt Sally's care, they'll fairly worship youas a messenger of good news. So be as cheerful as the wind and thecold will let you. We are almost there. It seems an age since wepassed Van Cortlandt's."
Major Colden merely sighed and looked more dismal, as if knowing thefutility of speech.
"There's the steeple!" presently cried the girl, looking ahead. "We'llbe at the parsonage in ten minutes, and safe in the manor-house infive more. Do look relieved, Jack! The journey's end is in sight, andwe haven't had sight of a soldier this side of King's Bridge,--exceptVan Wrumb's Hessians across Tippett's Vale, and they are friends.Br-r-r-r! I'll have Williams make a fire in every room in themanor-house!"
Now while these three rode in seeming security from the south towardsthe church, parsonage, country tavern, and great manor-house thatconstituted the village then called, sometimes Lower Philipsburgh andsometimes Younker's, that same hill-varied, forest-set, stream-dividedplace was being approached afar from the north by a company of mountedtroops riding as if the devil was after them. It was not the devil,but another body of cavalry, riding at equal speed, though at a greatdistance behind. The three people from New York as yet neither saw norheard anything of these horsemen dashing down from the north. Yet themajor's spirits sank lower and lower, as if he had an omen of comingevil.
He was a handsome young man, Major John Colden, being not more thantwenty-seven years old, and having the clearly outlined features bestsuited to that period of smooth-shaven faces. His dark eyes and hispensive expression were none the less effective for the white powderon his cued hair. A slightly petulant, uneasy look rather added to hiscountenance. He was of medium height and regular figure. He wore acivilian's cloak or outer coat over the uniform of his rank and corps,thus hiding also his sword and pistol. Other externals of his attirewere riding-boots, gloves, and a three-cornered hat without a militarycockade. He was mounted on a sorrel horse a little darker in hue thanthe animal ridden by Miss Elizabeth's black boy, Cuff, who wore therich livery of the Philipses.
The steed of Miss Elizabeth was a slender black, sensitive andresponsive to her slightest command--a fit mount for this, the mostimperious, though not the oldest, daughter of Colonel FrederickPhilipse, third lord, under the bygone royal regime, of the manor ofPhilipsburgh in the Province of New York. They gave classic names toquadrupeds in those days and Addison's tragedy was highly respected,so Elizabeth's scholarly father had christened this horse Cato.Howsoever the others who loved her regarded her present jaunt, noopposition was shown by Cato. Obedient now as ever, the animal boreher zealously forward, be it to danger or to what she would.
Elizabeth's resolve to revisit the manor hall on the Hudson, which hadbeen left closed up in the steward's charge when the family had soughtsafety in their New York City residence in 1777, had sprung in partfrom a powerful longing for the country and in part from a dream whichhad reawakened strongly her love for the old house of her birth and ofmost of her girlhood. The peril of her resolve only increased herdetermination to carry it out. Her parents, brothers, and sistersstood aghast at the project, and refused in any way to countenance it.But there was no other will in the Philipse household able to copewith Elizabeth's. She held that the thing was most practicable andsimple, inasmuch as the steward, with the aid of two servants, keptthe deserted house in a state of habitation, and as her mother'ssister, Miss Sarah Williams, was living with the widow Babcock in theparsonage of Lower Philipsburgh and could transfer her abode to themanor-house for the time of Elizabeth's stay. Major Colden, an unlovedlover,--for Elizabeth, accepting marriage as one of the inevitables,yet declared that she could never love any man, love being admittedlya weakness, and she not a weak person,--was ever watchful for theopportunity of ingratiating himself with the superb girl, and sofearful of displeasing her that he dared not refuse to ride with her.He was less able even than her own family to combat her purpose. Oneday some one had asked him why, since she called him Jack, and he wason the road to thirty years, while she was yet in her teens, he didnot call her Betty or Bess, as all other Elizabeths were called inthose days. He meditated a moment, then replied, "I never heard anyone, even in her own family, call her so. I can't imagine any one evercalling her by any more familiar name than Elizabeth."
Now it was not from her father that this regal young creature couldhave taken her resoluteness, though she may well have got from himsome of the pride that went with it. There certainly must have beenmore pride than determination in Frederick Philipse, third lord of themanor, colonel in provincial militia before the Revolution, graduateof King's College, churchman, benefactor, gentleman of literarytastes; amiable, courtly, and so fat that he and his handsome wifecould not comfortably ride in the same coach at the same time. Butthere was surely as much determination as pride in this gentleman'sgreat-grandfather, Vrederyck Flypse, descendant of a line of viscountsand keepers of the deer forests of Bohemia, Protestant victim ofreligious persecution in his own land, immigrant to New Amsterdamabout 1650, and soon afterward the richest merchant in the province,dealer with the Indians, ship-owner in the East and West India trade,importer of slaves, leader in provincial politics and governmen
Elizabeth, therefore, must have derived her spirit, with a goodmeasure of pride and a fair share (or more) of vanity, from hermother, though, thanks to that appreciation of personal comfort whichcomes with middle age, Madam Philipse's high-spiritedness would nolonger have displayed itself in dangerous excursions, nor was itlonger equal to a contest with the fresher energy of Elizabeth. Shewas the daughter of Charles Williams, once naval officer of the portof New York, and his wife, who had been Miss Sarah Olivier. Thus cameMadam Philipse honestly by the description, "imperious woman offashion," in which local history preserves her memory. She was awidow of twenty-four when Colonel Philipse married her, she havingbeen bereaved two years before of her first husband, Mr. AnthonyRutgers, the lawyer. She liked display, and her husband indulged herinclination without stint, receiving in repayment a good nursery-fullof what used, in the good old days, to be called pledges of affection.Being the daughter of a royal office-holding Englishman, how could shehave helped holding her head mighty high on receiving her elevation tothe ladyship of Philipsburgh, and who shall blame her daughter andnamesake, now within a stone's throw of St. John's parsonage and infull sight of the tree-bowered manorial home of her fathers, forholding hers, which was younger, a trifle higher?
Not many high-held heads of this or any other day are or were finerthan that of Elizabeth Philipse was in 1778, or are set on moregraceful figures. For all her haughtiness, she was not a very largeperson, nor yet was she a small one. She was neither fragile nor tooample. Her carriage made her look taller than she was. She was of thebrown-haired, blue-eyed type, but her eyes were not of unusual size orsurpassing lucidity, being merely clear, honest, steady eyes, capablerather of fearless or disdainful attention than of swift flashes orcoquettish glances. The precision with which her features wereoutlined did not lessen the interest that her face had from herpride, spirit, independence, and intelligence. She was, moreover, anactive, healthy creature, and if she commanded the dratting of thewind, it was not as much because she was chilled by it as because itblew her cloak and impeded her progress. In fine, she was a beauty;else this historian would never have taken the trouble of unearthingfrom many places and piecing together the details of this fatefulincident,--for if any one supposes that the people of this narrativeare mere fictions, he or she is radically in error. They lived andachieved, under the names they herein bear; were as actual as theplaces herein mentioned,--as any of the numerous patriotic Americanswho daily visit the genealogical shelves of the public libraries caneasily learn, if they will spare sufficient time from the laudabletask of hunting down their own ancestors. If this story is called aromance, that term is used here only as it is oft applied to actualoccurrences of a romantic character. So the Elizabeth Philipse who,before crossing the Neperan to approach the manor-house, stopped infront of the snug parsonage at the roadside and directed Cuff to knockat the door, was as real as was then the parsonage itself.
Presently a face appeared furtively at one of the up-stairs windows.The eyes thereof, having dwelt for an instant on the mounted partyshivering in the road, opened wide in amazement, and a minute later,after a sound of key-turning and bolt-drawing, the door opened, and agood-looking lady appeared in the doorway, backed up by a servant andtwo pretty children who clung, half-curious, half-frightened, to thelady's skirts.
"Why, Miss Elizabeth! Is it possible--"
But Elizabeth cut the speech of the astonished lady short.
"Yes, my dear Mrs. Babcock,--and I know how dangerous, and all that!And, thank you, I'll not come in. I shall see you during the week. I'mgoing to the manor-house to stay awhile, and I wish my aunt to staythere with me, if you can spare her."
"Why, yes,--of course,--but--here comes your aunt."
"Why, Elizabeth, what in the world--"
She was a somewhat stately woman at first sight, was Elizabeth'smother's sister, Miss Sarah Williams; but on acquaintance soonconciliated and found to be not at all the formidable and haughtyperson she would have had people believe her; not too far gone inmiddle age, preserving, despite her spinsterhood, much of her bloomand many of those little roundnesses of contour which adorn but do notencumber.
"I haven't time to say what, aunt," broke in Elizabeth. "I want to getto the manor-house before it is night. You are to stay with me there aweek. So put on a wrap and come over as soon as you can, to be intime for supper. I'll send a boy for you, if you like."
"Why, no, there's some one here will walk over with me, I dare say.But, la me, Elizabeth,--"
"Then I'll look for you in five minutes. Good night, Mrs. Babcock! Itrust your little ones are well."
And she rode off, followed by Colden and Cuff, leaving the two womenin the parsonage doorway to exchange what conjectures and whatejaculations of wonderment the circumstances might require.
Night was falling when the riders crossed the Neperan (then commonlyknown as the Saw Mill River) by the post-road bridge, and gazed moreclosely on the stone manor-house. Looking westward, from the mainroad, across the hedge and paling fence, they saw, first the vast lawnwith its comely trees, then the long east front of the house, with itstwo little entrance-porches, the row of windows in each of its twostories, the dormer windows projecting from the sloping roof, thebalustraded walk on the roof-top; at both ends the green and brown andyellow hints of what lay north of the house, between it and theforest, and west of the house, between it and the Hudson,--thebox-hedged gardens, the terraces breaking the slope to the river, thedeer paddock enclosed by high pickets, the great orchard. The Hudsonwas nearer to the house then than now, and its lofty further bank,rich with growth of wood and leaf, was the backing for the westwardview. To the east, which the riders put behind them in facing themanor-house, were the hills of the interior.
"Not a sign of light from the house, and the shutters all closed, asif it were a tomb! It looks as cold and empty as one. I'll soon makeit warm and live enough inside at least!" said Elizabeth, and turnedwestward from the highway into the short road that ran between themansion and the north bank of the Neperan, by the grist-mill and thegate and the stables, down a picturesque descent to a landing wherethat stream entered the Hudson.
She proceeded towards the gate, where, being near the southeast cornerof the house, one could see that the south front was to the east frontas the base to the upright of a capital L turned backward; that thesouth front resembled the east in all but in being shorter and havinga single porched entrance, which was in its middle.
As the party neared the gate, there arose far northward a sound ofmany horsemen approaching at a fast gallop. Elizabeth at once reinedin, to listen. Major Colden and Cuff followed her example, bothlooking at her in apprehension. The
"They've turned up the road to Mile Square, whoever they are," saidElizabeth, and led the way on to the gate, which Cuff, dismounting,quickly opened, its fastening having been removed and not replaced."Lead your horse to the door, Cuff. Then take off the portmanteaus andknock, and tie the horses to the post."
She rode up to the southern door in the east front, and was thereassisted to dismount by the major, while Cuff followed in obedience.Colden, as the sound of the distant galloping grew fainter andfainter, showed more relief than he might have felt had he known thata second troop was soon to come speeding down in the track of thefirst.
Elizabeth, in haste to escape the wind, stepped into the little porchand stood impatiently before the dark, closed door of the house of herfathers.