University of Virginia Library

IX.—THE MANSION ON THE SCHUYLKILL.

Gliding one summer day over the smooth bosom of the Schuylkill, with
the white sail of my boat, swelling with the same breeze that ruffled the
pines of Laurel Hill, I slowly emerged from the shadow of an old bridge,
and all at once, a prospect of singular beauty lay before me, in the beams
of the setting sun.

A fine old mansion crowned the summit of a green hill, which arose on
the eastern shore, its grassy breast bared to the sunset glow. A fine old
mansion of dark grey stone, with its white pillars looking out from among
green trees. From the grassy bosom of the hill, many a white statue arose,
many a fountain dashed its glittering drops into light. There was an air
of old-time elegance and ease about that mansion, with its green lawn sloping
gently down—almost to the river's brink, its encircling grove of magnificent
trees, its statues and fountains. It broke on your eye, as you emerged from
the arches of the old bridge, like a picture from Italy.

Yet from the porch of that old-time mansion, a fairer view bursts upon
your eye. The arches of the bridges—one spanning the river in all the
paint and show of modern fancy, the other gloomy as night and the grave—
the sombre shades of Laurel Hill, hallowed by the white tombs of the dead,
with the Gothic Chapel rising among dark green trees—the Schuylkill, extending
far beyond bridge and Cemetry, its broad bosom enclosed on every
side by hills and trees, resting like some mountain lake in the last glow of
the setting sun—a fairer view does not bless the traveller's eye from the
Aroostook to the Rio Grande.

There is a freshness in the verdure—a beauty in that still sheet of water,
a grandeur in yonder sombre pines, waving above the rocks of Laurel Hill
—a rural magnificence in the opposite shore of the river, rising in one massive
hill, green with woods and gay with cottage and mansion,—a beauty, a
grandeur, a magnificence that at once marks the Falls of Schuylkill with an
ever-renewing novelty, an unfading charm.

The view is beautiful in the morning, when the pillars of the bridge, fling
their heavy shadows over the water; when the tree tops of Laurel Hill, undulate
to the breeze in masses of green and gold, while the Schuylkill rests
in the shade.

Beautiful at noon, when from the thick foliage on the opposite shore,
half-way up the massive hill, arises the blue smoke of the hidden “God of
Steam,” winding slowly upward to the cloudless sky.

Beautiful at twilight, when flashes of purple and gold change the view
every moment, and impart a gorgeous beauty, which does not cease when
the spires of Laurel Hill glow in the first beam of the uprising moon.

Ah, night, deep and solemn—the great vault above—below, and around,

the river glistening in the moonbeam, the bridges one mingled mass of light
and darkness—Laurel Hill a home for the dead in truth, with its white monuments
glaring fitfully into light, between the branches of the trees. There
is a sad and solemn beauty, resting on this scene at night.

It was at night, that a Legend of this old-time mansion, rushed upon my
soul.

I stood on the porch; and the bridge, the Cemetry melted all at once
away. I was with the past—back sixty years and more, into the dim
arcades of time. Nor bridge, nor cemetry were there, but in place of the
cemetry, one sombre mass of wild wood; where the bridge now spans the
river, a water-fall dashed and howled among rugged rocks. No blue smoke
of steam engine, then wound up from the green trees. A man who would
have dreamed of such a thing, would have been imprisoned as a madman.

Yet a strange wild beauty, rested upon this mansion, this river, these
hills in the days of the Revolution. A beauty that was born of luxuriant
forests, a river dashing tumultuously over its bed of rocks, hills lifting their
colossal forms into the sky. A beauty whose fields and flowers were not
crushed by the Juggernaut, “Improvement;” whose river all untramelled,
went singing on its way until it kissed the Delaware.

It was a night in the olden-time, when Washington held the huts and hills
of Valley Forge, while Sir William Howe enjoyed the balls and banquets
of Philadelphia.

A solitary light burned in the mansion—a tall, formal wax candle—casting
its rays around a quaint old fashioned room. A quaint, old fashioned
room, not so much remarkable for its dimensions, as for the air of honest
comfort, which hung about the high-backed mahogany chairs, the oaken
wainscot, the antique desk, standing in one corner; a look of honest comfort
which glowed brightly from the spacious fire-place, where portly logs of
hickory sent up their mingled smoke and flame.

In front of that fire were three persons, whose attitude and gestures presented
a strange, an effective picture. On the right, in a spacious arm-chair,
lined with cushions, sat a man of some seventy years, his spare form
wrapped in a silk dressing gown, his grey hair waving over his prominent
brow to his shoulders, while his blue eyes, far sunken in their sockets,
lighted up a wan and withered face.

At his feet, knelt a beautiful woman, whose form swelling with the full
outlines of mature womanhood, was enveloped in a flowing habit of easy
folds and snow-white hue. Around that face, glowing with red on the
cheek and lip, and marble-white on the brow, locks of golden hair fell
in soft undulations, until they floated around the neck and bosom. Her
blue eyes—beaming with all a woman's love for a trembling old man, that
man her father—were fixed upon his face with a silent anxiety and
tenderness.

The old man's gaze was rivetted to the countenance of the third figure in
this scene, who sat opposite, on the left side of the fire.

A man of some fifty years, with strongly marked features, thick grey eye-brows,
hooked nose like an eagle's beak, thin lips and prominent chin.
His head was closely enveloped in a black silk cap, which concealing his
hair, threw his wrinkled forehead boldly into the light. A gown or tunic
of faded dark velvet, fell from his shoulders to his knees. His head was
bent down, while his eyes rested upon the uncouth print of an old volume,
which lay open across his knees.

That volume was intituled—“Ye Laste Secret of Cornelius Agrippa,
now first translated into English. Anno. Dom. 1516.

The man who perused its pages, was none other than the “Astrologer”
or “Conjurer” who at this time of witchcraft and superstition, held a
wonderful influence over the minds of the people, in all the country, about
Philadelphia.

He had been summoned hither to decide a strange question. Many
years ago, while dwelling in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, with his
young wife, Gerald Morton—so the old man of seventy was named—had
been deprived of his only son, a boy of four years, by some unaccountable
accident. The child had suddenly disappeared. Years passed—a daughter
was born—the wife died, but no tidings reached the father's ears of his
lost son.

To night a strange infatuation had taken possession of his brain.

His son was living! He was assured of this, by a voice that whispered
to his soul.

He was doomed to die, ere morning dawned. Ere he gave up the
Ghost, he wished to learn something of his child, and so—with a superstition
shared by the intelligent as well as the illiterate of that time—he had
summoned the Astrologer.

“The child was born before midnight January 12, 1740?” said the
Astrologer. “Four years from the night of his birth, he disappeared?”

The old man bowed his head in assent.

“I have cast his Horoscope,” said the Astrologer. “By this paper, I
know that your son lives, for it threatens his life, with three eras of danger.
The first, Jan. 12, 1744. The second, Jan. 12, 1778. The third—
a date unknown—”

“He is in danger, then to night,” said Mr. Morton; “For to night is the
Twelfth of January, 1778?”

The Astrologer rose and placed a chafing dish on the carpet, near the
antique desk, which was surmounted by an oval mirror. Scattering spices
and various unknown compounds upon the dish, the Astrologer applied a
light, and in a moment, one portion of the room, was enveloped in rolling
clouds of fragrant smoke.

“Now Amable,” said he, in a meaning tone, “This charm can be tried

by a pure virgin and by her alone. Would'st thou see thy brother, at this
moment? Enter this smoke and look within the mirror: thou shalt behold
him!”

A deep silence prevailed. Gerald Morton leaned forward with parted
lips. Amable arose; clasping her hands across her bosom, she passed toward
the mirror, and her form was lost in the fragrant smoke.

A strange smile passed over the Astrologer's face. Was it of scorn or
malice, or merely an expression of no meaning?

“What dost thou see?”

A tremulous voice, from the bosom of the smoke-cloud, gave answer.

“A river! A rock! A mansion!”

“Look again—what seest thou now?”

The old man half-rose from his arm-chair. That strange smile deepened
over the Astrologer's face.

A moment passed—no answer!

All was still as the grave.

Amable did not answer, for the sight which she beheld, took from her,
for a moment, the power of utterance. She beheld her father's mansion,
rising above the Schuylkill, the river and the rocks of Laurel Hill white
with snow. The silver moon from a clear cold sky shone over all. Along
the ascent to the mansion, came a man of strange costume, with a dark eye
and bold countenance. A voice whispered—this is your brother, maiden.

This vision, spreading before, in the smoke-darkened glass, filled the
maiden with wonder with awe.

Was it a trick of the Conjurer's art? Or did some Angel of God, lift
the veil of flesh, from that pure woman's eyes, enabling her to beheld a
sight denied to mortal vision? Did some strange impulse of that angellike
instinct, which in woman, supplies the place of man's boasted, reason,
warn Amable of approaching danger?

The sequel of the legend will tell us.

Still the old man, starting from his seat, awaited an answer.

At last the maiden's voice was heard—

“I behold—” she began, but her voice was broken by a shriek.

There was the sound of a hurried struggle, a shriek, a confused tread. In
a moment from the clouds of smoke, appeared a man of some thirty years,
whose muscular form was clad in the scarlet uniform of a British officer.
One arm held Amable by the waist, while the other wound around her neck.

The old man started aghast from his seat. That face, swollen with debauchery,
those disclosed eyeballs starting from the purple lids, those lips,
stamped with a brutal smile—he knew it well, and knew that it was not the
face of his son.

He beheld him, Captain Marcham, a bravo who had persecuted Amable
with his addresses and been repulsed with scorn.

He stood there, his laugh of derision, ringing through the chamber, while

Amable looked up in his brutal face, with a terror that hushed her
breath.

The Astrologer stood near the hearth, the strange smile which had crossed
his face, once or twice before, now deepening into a sneering laugh. One
hand, placed within his breast, fondled the heavy purse which he had received
for his treachery from the British Captain. He had despatched his
servants from the mansion on various errands, left the hall-door unclosed so
as to afford secure entrance to the Captain and his bravoes. Amable
was lost.

In a moment Gerald Morton, instinctively became aware that his child
was in the bravo's power.

“Spare my girl,” he said, in a quivering voice. “She never harmed
you!”

“O, I will spare the lovely lass,” sneered Marcham, “Trust me for that!
Old man you need not fear! You old rebels with pretty daughters, should
not make your country mansions places of rendezvous for rebels and traitors.
Indeed you should'nt. That is, if you wish to keep your pretty girls safe.”

“When was my house a rendezvous for a rebel or a traitor?” said the
old man, rising with a trembling dignity.

“Have you not given aid, succor, money, provisions, to those rebels who
now skulk somewhere about in the fields of White Marsh? Did not the
rebel officers meet here for council, not more than a month ago? Has not
Mister Washington himself rested here, and received information at your
hands? Old man—to be plain with you—Sir William thinks the air of
Walnut Street gaol would benefit your health. I am commanded to arrest
you as a—SPY!”

The old man buried his face in his white hands.

“There is a way, however,” said the Captain, leering at Amable, “Let
me marry this pretty girl, and—presto vesto! The order for your arrest
will disappear!”

With a sudden bound Amable sprang from his arms, and sank crouching
near the hearth, her blue eyes fixed on her father, with a look of speechless
agony.

The danger, in all its terrible details stared her in the face. On one side,
dishonor or the pollution of that coward's embrace—on the other, death to
her father by the fever and confinement of Walnut Street gaol.

It is very pretty now-a-days for certain perfumed writers and orators, to
prate about the magnanimity of Britain, but could the victims who were
murdered within the walls of the old Gaol by British power, rise some fine
moonlight night, they would form a ghastly band of witnesses, extending
from the prison gate to the doors of Independence Hall.

The old man, Amable, the bravo and Astrologer, all felt the importance
of this truth: British power, means cruelty to the fallen, murder to the
unarmed brave. They all remembered, that Paoli was yet red with the

blood of massacre, while Walnut Street goal, every morning sent its disfigured
dead to Potter's field.

Therefore the old man buried his face in his hands, therefore Amable
terrified to the heart, sank crouching by the fireplace, while the bravo looked
with his brutal sneer, upon both father and child.

“Come girl—no trifling,” exclaimed Marcham, as he approached the
crouching maiden. “You must go with me, or your good father rests in gaol
before daybreak. Take your choice my pretty lass?”

The father raised his face from his hands. He was lividly pale, yet his
blue eyes shone with unusual light. His lip quivered, while his teeth,
closely clenched, gave a wild and unearthly aspect to his countenance.

All hope was over!

The intellect of the old man was, for a moment, threatened with ruin,
utter and withering, as the dark consciousness of his helplessness pressed
like lead upon his brain.

At this moment a footstep was heard, and lo! A man of singular costume
came through the feathery clouds of smoke, and stood between the
bravo and the father.

A man of almost giant height, with a war-blanket folded over his breast,
a wampum belt about his waist, glittering with tomahawk and knife, while
his folded arms enclosed a rifle.

The aquiline nose, the bold brow, the head destitute of hair, with a single
plume rising from the crown, the eagle-nose and clear full eye—there was
quiet majesty in the stranger's look. He was an Indian, yet his skin was
bronzed, not copper-colored; his eye was sharp and piercing, yet blue as a
summer sky.

For a moment he surveyed the scene. The Captain shrank back from
his gaze. The old man felt a sudden hope dawning over his soul. The
young woman looked up, and gazed upon the Indian's stern visage without
a fear.

There was a pause like the silence of the grave.

At last advancing a step, the Indian handed a paper to Gerald Morton.
He spoke, not in the forest-tongue, but in clear bold English, with a deep,
gutteral accent.

“The American Chief sends this to his father. He bade me deliver it,
and I have done his bidding.”

Then wheeling on his heel, he confronted the Captain:

“Give me that sword. The sword is for the brave man, not for the
coward. A brave man seeks warriors to display his courage: a coward
frightens old men and weak women. Will the coward in a red coat give
me the sword, or must I take it?”

There was a withering scorn in the Red-Man's tone. The British officer
stood as if appalled by a ghost.

“Your brothers are tied, as cowards should be tied, who put on the warrior's

dress to do a coward's work,” exclaimed the Indian. “My warriors
came on them, captured them and tied them together like wolves in a pack.
Come! We are waiting for you. To-night you must go to Valley Forge.”

There was something so strange in the clear English of this stern Indian,
that the bravo stood spell-bound, as though it was but the voice of a dream.

At this moment, two savage forms drew near, through the smoke, which
rolling away from the door, now hung coiled in wreaths near the ceiling.
Without a word, the Briton was led from the room. He made no resistance,
for the tomahawk of an Indian has an unpleasant glitter. As he disappeared,
his face gathered one impotent scowl of malice, like a snake that hisses
when your foot is on its head. The Astrologer skulked slowly at his heels.

The Indian was alone with father and daughter.

He looked from one to the other, while an expression of deep emotion
came over his bronzed face.

At last flinging down his rifle, he extended one hand to the old man, one
to the crouching woman.

“Father!” he groaned in a husky voice: “Sister! I have come at last!”

As though a strange electric impulse throbbed from their hearts and joined
them all together, in a moment the old man, his daughter and the Indian
lay clasped in each other's arms.

For some few moments, sobs, tears, broken ejaculations! At last the
old man bent back the Indian's head, and with flashing eyes, perused his
image in his face. The daughter too, without a fear, clung to his manly
arm, and looked tenderly up into his blue eyes.

“Father, sister! It is a long story, but I will tell it in a few words. A
white man, whom you had done wrong, stole me from your house thirty-three
years ago. He was an outcast from his kind and made his home in
the wigwam of the Indian. While the warriors taught me to bend the bow
and act a warrior's part, he learned me the tongue of my father. I grew up
at once a white man and an Indian. But, two moons ago, the white man,
whose name we never knew, but who was called the Grey-hawk, told me
the secret of my father's name. Then, he died. I was a warrior; a chief
among warriors. I came toward the rising of the sun to see my father and
my sister. One day I beheld the huts of Valley Forge—I am now a warrior
under the American chief. My band have done him service for many a day;
he is a Man. Father, I see you! Sister, I love you! But ask no more!
for never will the White Indian forsake his forest to dwell within walls—never
will the Chief lay down his blanket, to put on the dress of the white race!”

The Sister looked tenderly into her brother's face. The old man, as if
his only wish had been fulfilled, gazed long and earnestly on the bronzed
countenance of his child. He murmured the name of the man whom he
had darkly, terribly wronged. Then with a prayer on his lips, he sank
back in the arm chair.

He was dead.

On his glassy eye and fallen jaw streamed the warmth of the fire, while
at his feet knelt the white-Indian, his bronzed face glowing in the same
beam, that revealed his sister's face, pale as marble and bathed in tears.

Months passed away. Winter with its ice and snow was gone. Laurel
Hill was green and shadowy with summer. The deer browsed quietly
along the lawn of the old mansion, and the river, which the Indian called
Manayong, went laughing and shouting over its rocky bed.

It was summer, and Sir William Howe had deserted Philadelphia, when
one day, there came a messenger to Congress, in the old State House, that
a battle had been fought near Monmouth. A battle in which Sir William
learned, that Freedom had survived the disease and nakedness and starvation
of Valley Forge.

On that summer day, a young woman sat alone in the chamber of the old
mansion, where her father had died six months before. Alone by the window,
the breeze playing with her golden hair, the sunlight—stealing ray by
ray through thick vines—falling in occasional gleams over her young face.

Her blue eye was fixed upon a miniature, which pictured a manly face,
with dark eyes and raven hair, relieved by the breast of a manly form, clad
in the blue uniform of the Continental Army. It was the Betrothed of
Amable; the war once over, freedom won, they were to be married. He
was far away with the army, but her voiceless prayers invoked blessings on
his head.

While the maiden sat there, contemplating her lover's picture, a form
came stealing from the shadows of the room: a face looked over her
shoulder.

It was the White-Indian in his war-blanket.

His face became terribly agitated as he beheld that picture.

At last the maiden heard his hard-drawn breath. She turned her head
and greeted him at first with a smile, but when she beheld the horror,
glooming over his face, she felt her heart grow cold.

“Whence come you, brother?”

“Monmouth!”

“Have you no message for me? No word from —

The Brother extended his hand, and laid the hilt of a broken sword gently
on her bosom.

He said no word, but she knew it all. She saw the blood upon the hilt;
she saw her brother's face, she knew that she was Widow and Virgin at
once.

It was a dark hour in that old Mansion on the Schuylkill.

A graveyard among the hills, a small space of green earth separated from
the forest by a stone wall. In the midst, a wild cherry tree, flinging its
shadow over a white tombstone and a new made grave.

Sunset steals through these branches, over the white tombstone, down
into the recesses of the new-made grave. What is this we see beside the
grave? A man in Indian attire, bending over a coffin, on whose plate is
inscried a single word—

Ah, do not lift the lid, ah, do not uncover that cold face to the light! Ah,
do not lift the lid, for then the breeze will play with her tresses; then the
air will kiss her cheek. Her marble cheek, now colorless forever.

The White-Indian knelt there, the last of his race, bending over the corse
of that fair girl. No tear in his eye, no sob in his bosom. All calm as
stone, he bent there above his dead. Soon the coffin was lowered; anon
the grave was filled. The star-beams looked solemnly down through the
trees, upon the grave of that fair girl.

The Indian broke a few leaves from the wild cherry tree, and went on
his way.

He was never seen on the banks of the Manayong again.

Long years afterward, in the far wilds of the forest, a brave General who
had won a battle over the Indian race, stood beside an oaken tree, contemplating
with deep sorrow, the corse of a friendly savage. He lay there,
stiff and cold, the wreck of a giant man, his bronzed face, lighter in hue
than the visages of his brother Indians. He lay there, with blanket and
wampum belt and tomahawk about him, the rifle in his grasp, the plume
drooping over his bared brow.

He had died, shielding the brave General from the tomahawk. Yes,
with one sudden bound, he sprang before him, receiving on his breast, the
blow intended for Mad Antony Wayne.

And Wayne stood over him—his eyes wet with a soldier's tears—sorrowing
for him as for a rude Indian.

Little did he think that a white man lay there at his feet!

Ah, who can tell the magic of those forests, the wild enchantment of the
chase, the savage witchery of the Indian's life? Here was a man, a white
man, who, bred to Indian life, had in his mature manhood, rejected wealth
and civilization, for the deep joy of the wigwam and the prairie, and now
lay stretched—a cold corse, yet a warrior corse—on the banks of the Miami;
AN Indian to the last.[4]