39 The Outcast’s Return

The coach-and-six swung rapidly forward in the beautiful sunshine, and I looked about at the peaceful country, the neat farm-houses, the stone fences, and the cultivated fields. The wilderness is fine in a way of its own, and the inhabited country in another, also its own. It is not for me to preach the beauty of one to the exclusion of the other, particularly when I see both.

Yet it took my eyes a long time to grow used to the sight of houses and fences and men working in the fields. I was coming home after nearly fifteen years in the wilderness, and habit was still strong upon me. It was hard for me to believe that no danger lurked in the wood ahead; and our driver, as he swung his great whip and cracked it over his horses with a sound like a rifle shot, seemed to me to approach it with criminal carelessness. I felt instinctively for my rifle, but the weapon was not there, and I laughed softly to myself.

“Yonder is Philadelphia!” exclaimed Winchester.

We were on top of the coach, and rising to my full height, at the imminent risk of being pitched into the road on my head, I gazed at the tips of Philadelphia’s church spires shining in the late afternoon sun. Yes, it was our great town, the old town in which so much of my boyhood had been spent, and of which I had so many memories.

I did not wish to speak, and Winchester, understanding, was silent. Fate had decreed to me a life full of striking contrasts so far, but none greater than this. We had come at once from the wilderness by the way of old Fort Duquesne, where we took the coach for Philadelphia, and now we were at the heart of our civilization. It was like a sudden trip from a different world.

But I was not to enter Philadelphia at once. Another and greater duty awaited me. The driver, obedient to my request, stopped at a point where a small road led off from the main line of travel.

“I leave thee here, Jerry,” I said to the driver—he was Jerry Goddard, a veteran of the Pennsylvania line, and I had known him at once, though he did not know me—“and here’s one of Mr. Hamilton’s new dollars for thee, Jerry, to drink to the memory of the old days.”

He took the money and stared at me. Then he shook his head. He could not remember—I had not told him my name. He blew his horn, and the coach swung forward at a lively rate, driver and horses alike eager for their supper in Philadelphia. I saw him looking back at me from the top of the next rise, but I had not moved from the roadside, and he was compelled to go on, his curiosity ungratified.

Then I turned into the narrow road and walked toward a grove of trees which looked black and impenetrable at the distance. Yes, it was I, John Lee, I said to myself as doubts arose; John Lee in a sober suit of gray, though his hat was cocked and there were silver buckles on his shoes; John Lee, of Philadelphia, not the wild hunter who carried his life, night and day, on the touch of his trigger—that seemed now to be another man.

The wood thinned out as I approached. Then the slate roof of the house and the red of the brick walls appeared through the trees. A western window blazed like fire in the light of the setting sun. It was at once a joy and a pain to see that nothing was changed. Well, Jasper had been a good tenant, and he was past blame now.

There was a field on my right, and a man who had been at work in it was riding his horse home, the harness rattling about him. I wondered if he knew me, and half feared, half wished, that he would call my name. But he did not turn his face, and rode on, unnoticing.

The road, well kept I observed, led straight to the gates of the little park in which the manor-house stood. All about me was neat and thrifty, and I said to myself again that Jasper had been a good tenant. I stopped a moment at the park gate of iron with the brass filigree work at the top which my grandfather had brought from England, and of which he was so proud. The same old griffins stared at me from the tops of the stone posts beside the gate, and I found myself staring back at them as I used to do when I was a child. Then, passing my hand inside the gate, I pressed the spring that opened it and entered the park, walking along the shell avenue between the great elms. They looked smaller to me than when I last saw them, yet in truth they were larger; fifteen years makes a difference in perspective. The catalpa trees in front of the house were in fresh and full bloom, great masses of white that almost hid the building.

The park, though showing the same care and neatness that marked the fields, was deserted. All seemed to be prepared for human life, but human life itself was lacking. A dog came at last from behind one of the outbuildings and looked at me. Then, without opening his mouth, he trotted back to his covert. “I am not of sufficient importance to be barked at now,” I said, with a sort of self-pity.

Ours was a fine mansion—nay, it has been called a great one—of red brick, three stories in the centre with a two-story wing on either side and a handsome portico, the pillars, wreathed with vines, framing the main entrance in the centre. Some of the leaves from the roses blooming on the vines had fallen on the floor of the portico, but there was naught else to see. Here was still the same fresh cleanliness and the same lack of human presence.

I lifted the heavy brass double knocker, and then, taking second thought with myself, I pushed the door; it opened easily, and I entered the house in which I was born. Here, too, there was no change. The great hall, wainscotted with polished mahogany, and the mahogany balustrade of the grand staircase, looked neither blacker nor older than when I left. This balustrade, carved by hand to represent baskets of fruit and flowers, was another object of my grandfather’s pride, and there just above the floor was the little notch which I had cut to show my youthful prowess, and for which I received a just punishment.

I pushed open a door on the right-hand side of the hall and entered a room that had been my father’s, a large, light apartment. It was precisely as it had been in his day, each piece of furniture in the old position, and there on the wall hung the famous portrait of my grandfather, Geoffrey Lee, painted in London by Sir Godfrey Kneller, a heavy but handsome man in a velvet coat, ornamented with silver lace and buttons, the face clear and strong and surmounted by the large, flowing wig of the period—a fine, courtly man, whose firm character showed in every feature. It was he who built Stoneham, our house, and created the estate; and here was I, the last of the race, upon which I had brought disgrace, staring into his eyes. But he did not reproach me nor did he commend.

The face of my father, painted by a lesser artist, was not so strong, but more benignant; and there, too, was my mother, a slender woman with mild blue eyes.

I sat by the table in the centre of the room, how long I know not, in that strange silence, until I heard a step behind me as light as that of a cat; and then old Godfrey, faithful old Godfrey Landale, was beside me. He seized my hand, and the tears that ran down his withered cheek fell upon it.

“It is you, Master John! It is you at last!” he said. “I have been waiting for you!”

“Through all these years, Godfrey?”

“Through all these years.”

“And through all the disgrace, Godfrey?”

“It was a lie, Master John. I never believed it.”

“No, Godfrey,” I said, “you did not believe it, and you would not have believed it had I been guilty, which I was not.”

Then we both fell silent, for our memories were heavy upon us. He had always been an old man to me, but seen now by the older eyes which diminish effects, his age did not sit more heavily upon him than fifteen years before.

“There have been no changes here, Godfrey,” I said at last.

“The other one made them,” he said, “but when I heard of his death I put everything back as it was.”

I knew that he was speaking of Jasper, but Godfrey would never recall him by name. He always spoke of him as the “other one.”

He brought me my supper there presently, and insisted upon serving it with his own hands, watching me with jealous care. He asked me no questions. Whether he knew aught of the fifteen years I could not say, but he seemed to have no curiosity.

“Do you wish to see any of the others, Master John?” he said presently.

“Is Sam still here?” I asked.

Sam was the black coachman. He left the room and returned soon with Sam, a gigantic man who cried like a baby at sight of me, and yet stared at me curiously, as if he were not quite sure that I was I. Then I told them both to say nothing of my presence until I bade them. I was not yet sure of my position. The estate was mine; though escheated from me once, it had come back to me as Jasper’s heir, and surely they could not take it from me again, after my work in the West, which General Wayne had been kind enough to call good. But Winchester was to come on the morrow and tell me the news. I wondered what effect the arrival of the traitor, John Lee, would have upon Philadelphia. Perhaps this great town of fifty thousand people, occupied with many things, had long since forgotten him! It was likely.

After Godfrey and Sam went out I took from my pocket an envelope of pale blue, sealed with red wax, and stamped with the arms of the Carews. It was inscribed to John Lee, Esq., and the letter inside, written in a small, clear hand, was but a line or two; it said:

I beg to remind you of your promise that we should see you in Philadelphia, and to tell you that we hold you to it.

             Y’s,
             Rose Carew.


     To Captain John Lee,
       at Cincinnati, on the Ohio.

It had reached me at Cincinnati, and if I had felt any weakening of my resolve this would have roused my courage. I had not seen Miss Carew immediately upon my return to Wayne’s army, and I had sent Winchester to tell her of Jasper’s death, which I said had occurred under the tomahawk of the savages; in truth, I saw her only once before her return to the East, and I did not have the heart to speak to her of Jasper. Major Carew, however, had talked of him with deep regret, and mourned him as one of the best of men.

I went to sleep that night in my own bedroom, in the high brass bed upon which I climbed by means of a little ladder, drawing the curtains around me, and about the middle of the night I awoke with a strange, oppressive feeling as if I were suffering from a nightmare. I sprang from the bed, sure in my semi-somnolent condition that enemies were upon me. I grasped at a weapon, and then remembered with a foolish little laugh that none was there. I opened the window, letting the free, fresh air flow in, and again I laughed at myself. I, a son of the wilderness, who slept under the trees, had not been in a curtained bed in fifteen years. I would not tell Godfrey of this. I must accustom myself gradually to bedrooms.

I slept the remainder of the night in front of the window, and Winchester came to see me early the next day.

“This Philadelphia of yours,” he said, “is a fine and bustling town. I saw the President himself out driving, and the streets are full of macaronis. There’s life here.”

“I mean to see a little of it,” I said.

The desire to see this old town with which my early years were united was so strong, now that I was near, that I would have risked everything to go there. Then, too, Rose Carew had asked me to come. But she could scarce do less for a broken man to whom she owed so much. It struck me for the first time what a trifle her letter was. She might have said more to one who had saved her from the savages.

But I let Winchester see nothing of these thoughts. He was manifestly in high spirits, and I sympathized with him. His wife was with the Carews on High Street, and both anticipated a period of gaiety in Philadelphia. He brought letters from General Wayne and other influential men in the West, and despite some coldness which then existed among us toward the English people—due rather to trouble over the Northwestern posts than to memories of the Revolutionary War—there could be no doubt of his kind reception. I felt for a little while a strange sort of jealousy of Winchester. He, a foreigner, could enjoy himself in my native town, while I was debarred, and debarred unjustly. I had looked in the mirror again that morning and found myself yet young, without a wrinkle or a gray hair, and I felt that I could have sported it with the gayest macaroni of them all. But the feeling of envy disappeared in a few moments. One could not hold it in the presence of Winchester.

“Have they heard of my arrival in Philadelphia?” I asked, “or am I wholly forgotten?”

Now, I wished him to reply that I was not forgotten. I preferred persecution to oblivion.

“You are not forgotten,” he replied, “and your arrival is known. I heard it mentioned by two or three persons, but only casually, and not in a way that had meaning.”

He was to return to the city in the afternoon, and would see me again on the morrow. Meanwhile I would remain at Stoneham.

“Bring me a newspaper,” I said to him as he departed, and he nodded.

I was hungry for the sight of the Gazette or the Advertiser, merely to see familiar names, and the old routine of news, or perhaps there would be something about myself, showing how the town was likely to take me.

But when Winchester came the next day he was taciturn and evasive. I asked him for the newspaper, but he shrugged his shoulders and said that he had forgotten it. “At any rate, there is nothing in those little sheets but advertisements of sales, notices of arrivals at the port, and other uninteresting trifles,” he said. I saw him a half hour later talking in a low voice to Godfrey, and when he noticed me he seemed confused and troubled. I inferred at once that my affairs were going badly, and I determined that he should not burn his fingers to help me.

“Winchester,” I said, “it was wrong for me to come here. My presence in Philadelphia will not be taken well.”

He pursed his lips and replied slowly, and, as I saw, with caution:

“’Tis past human wisdom, Lee, to tell about such matters, but having come, I would even go through with the business. ’Tis not in your nature, I think, to retreat now.”

No, it was not my intent to withdraw, but I felt a great sinking of the spirits, of which, however, I did not tell Winchester.

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