University of Virginia Library

Prologue.

LEGEND FIRST.
THE LAST OF THE WASHINGTONS.

“I was born of a noble ancestry,” said a great man
who had risen from the kennel where Poverty hides its
hopeless face—“True, my parents were poor, but
three hundred years ago, the blood which flows in my
veins, coursed in the veins of Lords, Archbishops,
Counts, Dukes and Kings.”

Then another Great Man, who had listened to this
glorious boast made reply:

“I also come of a noble lineage,” he said, “My
parents it is true were rich, but three hundred years
ago, the blood which flows in my veins, coursed in the
veins—not of Count, Archbishop and King—but of
the Hewer and Digger, of the Serf and the Worker,
whose labors clothed the Lord, and gave bread to the
King.”

And the first great man laughed at the boast of the
second. There was great reason for this laughter.
Who would not sooner be descended from a King
although a robber and assassin, than from a ragged
Worker, who can boast no wealth save the heritage of
want and hunger? For a King, although his hands are
red with the blood of the innocent, and his fine apparel
purchased with the misery of countless hearts, is yet a
King; the head and fountain of all nobility. And a
Serf, although his hands are unstained with blood, and
his hard crust unpolluted by a single victim's tears, is
still a Serf; the foundation stone of the world, on
which Society is built; a very useful thing, but hidden
in the darkness, by the great edifice of Wealth and
Power.

Let us illustrate this question by a Legend of a far
distant age. Let us trace the Ancestry of a single
Great Man—whom we select from the crowd of
illustrious names—back to its very fountain, in this
dim Heraldry of the Past.

It has often come to me, clothed with strange and
peculiar details, this Legend of a long past age.

—The atmosphere of a luxurious chamber was
burdened with sighs and prayers.

It was a gorgeous apartment in the castle of a noble
race; no display of sumptuous grandeur was lacking
there, the walls were concealed by hangings of purple
and gold, the dome-like ceiling was supported by
marble columns. It was full of light and glitter, rich
with fine linen and gold, and yet Death was there.

He came not to strike the beautiful and the young;
no full bosom of a trembling woman was there, to
grow chill and dead at his kiss. His hand was
extended to palsy an aged head, whose wrinkled forehead—wet
with moisture—displayed the white hairs,
venerable with the snows of eighty years.

An old man was dying there.

Not sinking feebly into the wave of Death, his
senses wrapped in the fancies of delirium, nor yet with
his chilled lips moving with one impatient moan.

But sitting erect on his death-couch, the silken
coverlet thrown aside from his wasted chest, his hands
clasped, and his face, with the hair and beard, like
drifted snow, turned to the light. Beneath his thick
eyebrows, also snow-white, his grey eyes shone with
an unfaltering glance.

His gaze was centred on the light, and as the death-dew
began to glisten on his forehead, and the blueish
tint of the grave began to gather over the nails of his
long white fingers, the old man, supported by silken
pillows, never for one moment turned his eyes away.

At the foot of the couch stood an altar on which the
waxen candles burned with steady lustre. Their clear
light shone upon the Image of the Saviour, sculptured
in ivory, with his limbs nailed to the Cross, and a calm
Divinity of Despair writhing over his Divine face.

And at the foot of the bed beside the altar, was the
armor and sword of the dying man. He was the last
of his race. The sword was very bright; the armor
shone like a mirror. He had worn it in the days of

his young manhood—it had encased many a noble
form of his race before he was born—that sword had
flashed in the holy war of the crusade, and covered
itself with the blood of Civil War.

In his last moments, the old man, dying without an
heir, sternly conscious that the fatal hour of his house
was at hand—that the bright and bloody career of his
race was about to end forever in his death—this brave
old man, venerable with the trials of eighty years, gazed
steadily upon the armor and the sword. Sometimes
his glance wandered for a moment to the Divine Face,
but as suddenly returned to the warrior array, which
was piled up at the foot of the bed.

The Priest, a hard, stern man with shaven crown
and sombre apparel, colorless hands folded on his
breast, and a dead vacant eye, glaring from compressed
brows, stood near the bed, with the vessels of the Last
Sacrament, arranged on the table by his side. But the
old man did not heed him, nor turn his eyes for a
moment to a pale faced woman who stood near the
priest, and fixed her eyes upon her father's dying face,
and wept without ceasing.

It was his widowed daughter—his only child. Nay,
there was another child, a younger daughter, but no
one might speak her name, in this death-room, or the
old man would couple that name with his dying curse.

And beyond the altar, stand the servitors of his
house, watching with dumb agony the last struggle of
the dying Lord. Here are the soldiers who fought with
him, in the days of old, and here the retainers who
dwell on his broad lands, as their fathers have dwelt for
ages past.

The old man's lips moved—

“He prays!” cried the widowed daughter, in an accent
of joy, as her wasted face was bathed in tears.
“He may relent—”

“Never—” cried the Priest, with a scowl—“The
old man is conscious that the honour of his house dies
with him. His son fell in battle—you, Lady, are
widowed—childless. As for Alice—”

“My sister—”

More gloomily scowled the Priest—

“Do not breathe her name. Let the old man, even
your father, Lord Ralph of Wyttonhurst, die in peace.
Or wouldst thou have him go to the presence of his
God with a curse upon his soul?”

While the Priest and the woman by his side conversed
in whispers, a dead awe had fallen upon all the
other faces, which were clustered near the light, gazing
upon the shrunken form and white-beared face of the
dying Lord.

For the first time in an hour he spoke —

“Sword that my fathers bore to battle, you will rest
upon my bosom when I am dust. There will be no
hand to wield you when I am dead. Bury me —” he
said, without once turning his eyes — “with my armour
on, and my sword by my side. Let the banner
of Wyttonhurst be taken from the hall, and wrap it
about my coffin, so that all the world may know that
the House of my Fathers is dead.”

“Father —” said a low pleading voice, and the old
man felt a warm hand upon his chilled fingers.

“It is Mary —” he muttered, without turning his
gaze — “A true daughter of our race. She will soon
follow her father to the charnel. In all the world there
will not be left a human thing with a drop of our blood
in their veins.”

And as a single tear rolled down his wasted cheek,
he surrendered his thin hand — already damp with
death — to the clasp of his faithful child. Her soft
golden hair was already touched with grey; her cheeks
had been robbed of their warm hues by the hard and
bitter experience of life, and yet as she bent her face
near to the stern visage of her father, not a heart in the
dreary chamber but was touched by the sight.

“Faithful,” murmured the old Lord — “True to the
last.”

Even the leaden visage of the Priest relented, and
something like humanity lighted his dead eye-balls.

“But Father —” and shuddering as she spoke, the
widowed daughter enfolded him in her arms, and pressed
her lips to his clammy face — “By the memory of
that Saviour who smiles upon you now, I beseech you
forgive your wandering child — forgive — your lost
Alice! Do not, O, as the dread Hereafter already
rushes upon your fading sight, do not curse your own
flesh and blood.”

Without a word, the old man raised his death-stricken
arm, and gathering his failing strength for the
effort, thrust her arms from his neck, her face from his
cheek. His brow glowed with a stern, unforgiving
look; the lines of his face grew suddenly rigid, as with
the outward indications of an unrelenting Will.

“Forgive her?” the cold tone of the Priest fell like
ice upon the daughter's heart — “Did she not, child as
she was of the old man's heart, betrothed to a Lord of
noble lineage, forsake her father, her betrothed husband
— leave these very walls—to share the fate of a —”

“Low born peasant knave, who could not call one
rood of ground his own.”

“I know it —” the daughter exclaimed, as she confronted
the Priest. “Yet still she is of our own blood.
She is my sister. She is Alice of Wyttonhurst.”

A murmur pervaded the apartment, and the eyes of
the spectators was fixed upon the brave Woman, who
true to the holiest instincts of her nature, dared even
the anger of her dying father, in the attempt to wring
from his chilled lips only one word of blessing, one
accent of forgiveness.

But no accent of forgiveness came — stern, cold and
unrelenting he gazed upon the armour, the sword and
the image of the Dying Redeemer, murmuring with his
husky voice, a curse upon Alice, his Lost Daughter.

And when the Priest was encircled by white-robed
children with silver censers swinging in their little
hands — when the words of the Last Sacrament
trembled from his lips, rolling in full deep melody
through the dreary chamber — while the daughter knelt
by the bed, and the servitors were bowing their heads
against the floor — still, with a stern resolve upon his
forehead, the old Lord, sat erect on his couch, coupling
with a curse the name of the younger daughter, Alice.

Shall we leave this scene, where Death is clad in
grandeur and vengeance? In order to comprehend it
more fully, shall we behold death, rudely clad in misery
and chains?

In a cell, sunken far below the surface of the earth —
with a huge mass of walls and chambers between its
arched ceiling and the light of the stars—an Executioner,
torch in hand, came to look upon his victim.

He stood in the centre of the damp cell, his pale face,
with cold eyeballs and thin severe lips, standing out
from his black cowl. For the Executioner did not
appear in the form of a Headsman with a sharp axe in
his brawny hand, but as a Monk with the cold sneer on
his withered lips, a calm scorn in his impassible eyes.

Above him frowned the arch of the cell — around
him, brooded the shadows, through whose darkness the
moisture on the thick walls, shone with a pale dreary
lustre.

At his feet, crouching on a rude seat — a solid block
of stone — was his Prisoner or victim, chained by the
wrists and ancles to the floor.

The light of the torch disclosed him, as bowing his
head between his hands — they rested on his knees —
he seemed to be lost to all consciousness in a miserable
repose.

“One year of night and silence, will wither the
bravest form! A year ago, across the threshold he
stepped, with a bold and agile stride, and as the door
grated behind him, a smile flashed over his features.
Look upon him, now —”

Nearer to the couching form, the spectator held his
light. But the Prisoner did not move.

It was pitiable to see him, as he sat upon the hard
stone, irons upon his wrist, and chains extending from
his ancles to the massy ring in the centre of the floor.

It was but the wreck of a man. A muscular form,
broad in the chest, majestic in the stride, wrecked suddenly
into a living skeleton, whose fleshless arms and
gaunt outlines, the rays which fluttered about him could
not altogether hide. Such was the Prisoner of that cell,
whose Night was Eternal.

Once his hands wandered amid tangled masses of dark
hair, streaked with grey. It was a large head, but the
pale face could not be seen, for the chained hands
veiled it from the light.

“For one year he has not beheld the light of day. A
morsel of coarse bread, a cup of water, thrust through the
door of his cell — such has been his food for a year. He
cannot last much longer —”

The Prisoner moved; his chains aroused the echoes
of the cell. A miserably wasted face, with eyes hollow
and wild, glowed in the light. There was a broad
forehead, marked eyebrows, but the eyes were sunken
in their sockets, the cheeks hollow, the lips — parting in
an idiotic smile — chill and colorless.

He turned his face from the light, as though its glare
smote his eyeballs with deadly anguish — and then
shading his sight with his chained hands looked vacantly
into the impassible face of his Gaoler.

Do you feel that picture, in all its details? Far above
this solitary wretch, arise the walls, the corridors, the
huge roof and slender spires of this immense edifice;
and far above, the light of the midnight stars shines upon
the Cross, until it glitters like a brighter star above the
venerable pile.

Far above, there are free fields, and wide forests, the
fields white with snow and the forests desolate with
winter — yet still they are free.

And here, in the cell, which resembles a coffin, with
its low ceiling and narrow walls, a living man withers
inch by inch to death and feels that his voice is drowned

by the impenetrable stone that shut him in. Feels that
this cell is not merely the Prison of his Body but the
Coffin of his Soul. He is shut off, forever, from society
and the sympathies of mankind. When he dies no
tear will moisten his cold face. Not one pitying eye
will look into the recesses of his accursed grave.

Ah, the reality of death like this, would chill the
heart of the bravest man that ever dared death on the
battle-field.

— The wasted man looked up, and murmured two
syllables, that may seem to us, but feeble and
incoherent —

“Wife — child —” he said, and bowed himself to
his chains again.

Then the cold sneer of his Executioner, was lengthened
out in measured words:

“A serf — a hewer of wood and drawer of water —
you dared to love the lady of a noble house. A man of
no name, born to hew and dig, as your fathers before
you were born, you dared to open the Book of God,
and read its pages for yourself. But the strong arm of
the Church, came suddenly down upon your head. The
wife whom you had dared to take to yourself was
doomed to the silence and secrecy of a convent — and
you — miserable man! Do you remember your
sentence — as it fell from the lips of your Judges, only
a year ago —”

The Prisoner moved not, but a groan was heard.

“Eternal seclusion from the face of man.” This was
the word pronounced upon your head by the Church
and the Law. `Only once a year, you shall be permitted
to see the face of a human being. The hand
of mercy will be extended to you, in case you renounce
at once your wife, and the heresy which you have
wrung from the pages of the Book of God.' I am here
to offer that mercy — say that the lady Alice is no longer
wife of yours — say that you believe no longer your
damnable heresy but in our Church — and you shall
live!”

It seemed as if the sneering tone and contemptuously
offered mercy of the Monk, had roused the wasted man
into a new life.

“You come too late,” he sadly said, raising his
hollow eyes — “That which you call my heresy, has
been my only stay, my unfaltering hope, through the
endless Night of this living grave. Shall I renounce it
now, and lie basely, as I am about to go into the presence
of my God? Alice — renounce her? Wherefore? We
will soon be joined again, where there are neither locks
nor bolts; not much of Church or King; nothing but
children whose Father is the living God.”

Not very boldly did he speak these words. Faltering
in every accent, his eyes vacant and dreary all the while,
his hands trembling in their chains, he spoke with great
difficulty, pausing for breath between every word.

“You come too late,” and he bowed his head without
a groan.

For a long while he was silent, while the Monk
holding the torch above his wasted form, looked upon
him with the same impassible scorn. At last, startled
by the breathless stillness of his prisoner, he went to
him, and shook him by the shoulder, but the Prisoner
moved not, nor uttered one moan. The Monk rudely
raised his head from his fettered hands, and saw at once
that he was Dead.

He too was the last of his race, the last Peasant of
his name. Or had he yet a child? No wife — no
child?

Yet even as the light flashed vividly upon his wasted
form, and tinted with a red glare his motionless eye-balls,
there was something upon his face, which spoke
of Peace. A smile hung around his chilled lips; there
was no sorrow in the solitary tear which bathed his
check.

The sneer passed from the spectator's face. He could
not but look with something like pity upon the dead
man. As he suffered the head to fall once more upon
the hands, a bright object escaped from the rags which
bound the shrunken chest, and fluttered to the floor.

The Monk raising it, beheld a dingy piece of parchment,
on which, in the rude yet nervous old English
character, certain strange words were written:

These words (whose orthoepy we have modernized)
were all that the strip of parchment contained, but the
Monk pondered upon them for a long time, wondering
from what strange book they could have been taken.

And ere many hours were passed, a slab was lifted
from the prison floor, and the unshrouded corse of the
prisoner, hurled into the cavity which yawned beneath.

He was forgotten — lost in the great abyss of the past.
And yet perchance, his blood did not altogether die, his
spirit altogether fade, as they placed the stone upon his
breast, and left him to his long repose.

Turn we once more, to the gorgeons chamber of the
ancient baronial hall. The last sacrament has been

said — the breath of incense yet lingers in the air.
Around the room still gather the servitors of the noble
house; the Priest kneels by the bed; the widowed
daughter above is absent from the scene.

The old man in the same position in which we last
beheld him, crosses his hands upon his breast, and
gazes upon the woman, the sword, and Holy Image.
There is a glassier light in his eye, the moisture starts
more brightly from his forehead; his hands are blue with
the death-chill.

The same ray which warms his face, glistens upon
the woman, and the rich purple hangings of the death-chamber.

— Gaze upon this scene, compare it with the miserable
death, which but a moment since took place, far
down in the dreary atmosphere of the coffin-like cell.

It is indeed a widely different scene. Here death is
invested with the splendors of rank, and grows less
terrible under the weight of purple and gold — there, a
ghostly thing of rags and famine appears in lurid torch-light;
and a face withered, not by age nor disease, but
by the pang of persecution, rests between hands which
are heavy with a felon's chains.

It was near the daybreak hour, when the dawn began
to steal through the curtained windows, that a woman's
form stole through the silent watchers and advanced to
the bedside.

“Father,” she whispered, and placed his chilled
fingers upon a little hand — not her own — which did
not shrink from the old man's dying grasp.

He turned and gazed upon his widowed daughter.

“I am dying,” he faltered; “Alice—” he murmured
the name of his lost daughter, but seemed to
hesitate as the curse hung on his lips.

“She died to-night,” said the faithful Daughter —
“Died in the Convent, amid the Nuns, who could not
but weep as they saw her glide so pale and brokenhearted
into the arms of death. She died but —”

Once more she placed this little hand within his own.

“Behold her child!”

It was a brown-haired boy, not more than four years
old, who looked with a vague wonderment into the old
man's face. He was coarsely attired, like the child of
a peasant, but his eyes were round and bright, his
warm cheek full of health.

The stern Baron looked upon that wondering child,
as though he would have killed him with the last
glance of his glassy eyes. But the boy clung to his
withered breast, crept tremblingly up the side of the
high couch, and wound his little arms around the
gaunt limbs of the dying man.

“Have you a Mother, child — a Father —” gasped
the Baron, as his senses began to wander in the mists
of death.

The Boy looked upon him with a vacant stare.
“Father”—“Mother” — these words sounded as an unknown
language in his ears. They had torn him,
when a babe, from his mother's breast. He had never
seen his Father's face. Therefore with his large black
eyes dilating with a stare of child-like wonder, he gazed
vacantly into the death-stricken face of the great Baron.

“Had I but a child like thee —” the old man gasped
— “To wear my sword, and bear my banner forth to
battle! Curses, curses upon the child who fled from
my roof with a low-born peasant! Had she but wedded
one of her own rank, her child might have taken the
name of our House. A peasant's wife! Thy name,
my pretty one — it is pleasant to feel thy kindly eyes
upon me — thy name!”

The Boy in his clear silvery voice uttered a name —

“The peasant's child!” cried the old man with an
oath that came with his last breath — “The child of
Alice and her peasant husband!” with the last impulse
of his strength — while death came coldly over every
sense — he dashed the boy aside, and fell back stiff and
dead.

A wonderful thing it was to see that little child
crouching on the silken coverlet, his rosy cheeks and
great dark eyes, contrasting so strongly with the dead
eyeballs and fallen jaw of the great Lord.

A peasant's child, pressing the downy pillow of a
dead Lord! Even in death the old man's face seemed
to sneer at the thought, and the frightened boy crept
slowly from his side.

And yet in distant ages — from this drear night of
the fifteenth century, when we stand beside the deathbed
of a Lord — the name of that Peasant Boy, may be
a nobler name, than all the Wyttonhursts of the English
Island. Aye nobler than Lancaster or Plantagenet,
nobler than all the names inscribed on the blood red
scroll of British Heraldry —

For the child, trembling on the death-couch of the
Baron, the Son of the Peasant, who died alone in his
dungeon coffin, was named Lawrence Washington.

Could that dying Baron have looked into the future,
through the mists of three centuries, he might have
seen a descendant of that peasant child, in the person
of — George Washington