Gone now were the old times of rigid economy and stern simplicity among the Puritans. Men wore bright-coloured uniforms, lace ruffles and great powdered wigs, while the women, with their jewels, their patches, their high, red heels and long brocaded trains, were as gorgeously arrayed as the ladies of the English court. There used to be noble gatherings in Stephen’s big dining-room, when the greatest men in the land sat about his board and the tall wax tapers shone upon the officers’ red coats and jewelled orders, upon the ladies’ powdered hair and diamonds and upon the more soberly rich garb of the wealthy Massachusetts citizens. A throng of black-faced servants, themselves decked out in livery and powdered wigs, would wait upon the company and later conduct them into the long white-panelled drawing-room whose open windows looked out across the garden to the sea. Or, if it were winter, the guests would gather about the fireplace which, although much of the house was new, was the same rough stone one built by Master Simon’s hands. Amid this gay crowd of friends moved Stephen, quiet-mannered and simply clad, the only ornament upon his dark coat a diamond star given him by the King of France.
That was a time, also, when the garden bloomed in greater glory than it had ever known before. Those to whom Stephen had done good, and these were a countless legion, could give him nothing in return in the way of money or high office, for such rewards he did not want. But the royal Governors could send him costly fruit-trees from their English estates, poor sailors could bring him rare plants from foreign lands and his good friends of Hopewell could offer him the best they had of flower or fruit. The gardener used to say that Master Sheffield gave away so many plants and flowers that soon there would be nothing left, but that is the usual talk of gardeners. This one, with his acres of many coloured blossoms could not say, generous as Stephen was, that the danger of stripping the garden was a great or an immediate one.
One portion was left unaltered, that planted by Master Simon; for beehives still stood in a row beneath the old, old apple trees, and daffodils in Spring and hollyhocks in summer still bloomed in a riot of colour beside the white gate. The Queen’s garden, too, was untouched by any change and here Stephen came often to sit on the bench under the linden tree and to ponder upon the more and more grave problems that must be solved by those who had the welfare of New England at heart. Troubled times were these, with greater difficulties plainly still to come. It was here that he was sitting, one summer day, knitting his brows over a letter with a great, red seal, when there came an interruption that was to mean much to all his after life.
The creak of the opening gate announced a visitor, its hurried bang as it closed again told plainly that the newcomer was in haste. Looking up from his letter, Stephen saw before him the town constable, his good-natured face clouded with perplexity, his brass-tipped staff, the badge of his office, held stiffly before him, a sure sign that public duty was weighing the good man down. He was followed by a middle-aged woman whose dark, weatherbeaten countenance was lined with grief and whose hair, under her odd, close-fitting starched cap was threaded with grey. She bore in her arms a bundle of what seemed to be nothing but delicately embroidered garments but which, suddenly beginning to stir and turn, revealed itself as a dark-eyed baby of possibly a year old. The woman dropped a deep curtsey and then stood waiting in silence.
“Please, Master Sheffield,” began the distressed constable, “this woman is one of the exiles from Acadia, who, as we all have heard, were landed seven days ago in Boston and who have been wandering all through the Colony. She has somehow come this far, but there is no one in the town who can tell what to do with her. She understands no word we say and, when I speak to her, only curtseys, weeps or breaks into some foreign jargon of her own.”
“From Acadia?” repeated Stephen. His clear eyes clouded at the name, for he knew and bitterly regretted the policy that had led British troops into occupying the French-speaking province of Acadia, and into driving all the peaceable inhabitants into exile. Hurrying them on board ship, they had sent them off anywhere and everywhere, in wild haste to be rid of them, little caring whether families were separated or children and their parents were lost to each other forever. Stephen, very gently and kindly, spoke to the woman in her own tongue.
Such a flash of joy as lighted up her poor worn face when she heard speech that she could at last understand, and such a flood of voluble French as she poured out when Stephen had finished! The constable looked on in amazement and finally heaved a long sigh of relief.
“I might have known enough to come to Master Sheffield in the first place,” he exclaimed. “He always knows what is best to do!”
Stephen, after talking a few minutes with the woman, turned to him.
“I will take the poor creature into my service,” he said, “there is need of another helper in the kitchen and there seems naught else to do with her. She can live, with the baby, in the cottage across the field yonder, it has been empty this year past. Take her up to the house, if you please, good Master Constable, and tell the servants to give her a meal and something for the baby. And bid Jason, who was with me in France and can speak a few words of her tongue, to go with her and show her where she is to abide. It is a good child you have,” he added in French to the woman, “is it a granddaughter or a grandson?”