Clotilde sighed heavily and turned to go in. It seemed to her that she cared little to hear of such progress when all the time her dear Master Sheffield was growing thinner and whiter and that terrible war was coming ever nearer. She felt as she often did when the clouds of a summer thunderstorm were hanging lower and lower above the house, when the light was of a weird unearthly brightness and the air so terrifyingly still that, frightened as she was, she almost prayed for the storm to break.
The Spring passed and the summer, while the rumblings and threatenings of war still sounded loud. Then, through the autumn and winter there was a lull, people began to look more cheerful, to talk of the possibility of a peaceful settlement, of England’s understanding that the struggle with the Colonies would be too long and bitter to be worth while. For the work that Stephen had done toward bringing the provinces together, those steady years of hopeful toil, had begun to bear fruit at last. Committees of Correspondence had been formed, the Continental Congress had met and the organisation of the Massachusetts minute-men had been copied by similar bands all up and down the sea-board. The friends of America in England, were pointing out to the headlong King George the Third that he was facing a nation with an army, instead of a handful of helpless rebels. So, for the winter at least, the King paused. And then came Spring again.
It was an evening in April after a clear warm day, full of the sweet scent of growing things. A dash of rain had pattered over the garden, to be followed, just at sunset, by long, level shafts of light that shone on fresh green grass and budding shrubs and trees. A robin, in the hedge of the Queen’s Garden, was singing so loudly that Clotilde came to the great open door to listen. The willow trees beyond the garden were yellow with young leaves and the line of daffodils by the gate had bloomed in a nodding row. Then suddenly as she stood there, the robin’s little voice was drowned by a wild, fierce jangling of bells in the village, and a tall red tongue of flame leaped up from behind the houses on the hill. A thudding of hoof-beats came madly down the lane and a man leaped from his horse and ran in through the white gate, leaving his animal standing with the bridle trailing over its head. With hurried feet he came up the path and mounted the stone steps two at a time.
“A letter for Master Sheffield,” he said, “and news, great news! The British troops and the minute-men had a running fight from Concord to Lexington and back again. The Americans were too much for the redcoats and the bells are pealing forth the tidings of our first victory. The people yonder in the town are burning the tavern sign of the ‘King’s Arms.’ The war has begun!”
With his letter in his hand he vanished into Stephen’s study, the door closing behind him.
“So this is the war at last!” thought Clotilde.
Her knees began suddenly to shake under her and she sat down upon the step since she could no longer stand. It had begun, and where would it end? Would it bring them liberty or only destruction? Would the death and ruin that were bound to come be kept back, or would the tide rise nearer and nearer, to sweep over dear Master Sheffield and Mother Jeanne, over Miles Atherton and herself? Would it roll its devastating way across Master Simon’s garden blooming so bright and fair in the last glories of the April sunshine?
Later she heard fuller tidings, for Miles came up from the town and, sitting on the steps beside her, gave an account of the battle in more glowing and excited words than she had ever thought to hear from his lips. The hero of the day, it seemed, was one Paul Revere, that mild-faced silversmith who had come only last October to set in place the silver knocker upon Stephen Sheffield’s front door. At his warning, as he galloped all night across the countryside, so Miles said, the minute-men had come tumbling out in an excited throng, half dressed but wholly ready for the work in hand. When the sun rose, the British soldiers had found themselves marching down what seemed to be a lane of unseen enemies whom they could not see to resist, so that the march became a run and the run a rout. It was a damp, hot Spring day and the King’s men, oppressed with their heavy, clumsy coats and high padded hats, had been soon spent with heat and fatigue, and had staggered and reeled as they ran finally into the arms of their waiting comrades at Lexington.
“Poor men!” was Clotilde’s one thought, which she spoke aloud. “Poor, brave men!”
“What?” exclaimed Miles. “Poor men? Why, Clotilde, you are not sorry for them? They were Britishers!”