Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency

by John Pendleton Kennedy

Whilst this epoch of happiness was in progression, the political heaven began to be darkened with clouds. The troubles came on with harsh portents; war rumbled in the distance, and, at length, broke out in thunder. Mildred had, in the meantime, grown up to the verge of womanhood,—a fair, ruddy, light-haired beauty, of exceeding graceful proportions, and full of the most interesting impulses. Henry trod closely upon her heels, and was now shooting through the rapid stages of boyhood. Both had entwined themselves around their parents' affections, like fibres that conveyed to them their chief nourishment; and the children were linked to each other even, if that where possible, by a stronger band.

The war threw Lindsay into a perilous predicament. His estates were large, and his principles exposed him to the sequestration which was rigidly enforced against the royalist party. To avoid this blow, or, at least, to mitigate its severity, he conveyed the estate of the Dove Cote to Mildred; assigning, as his reason for doing so, that, as it was purchased with moneys belonging to his wife, he consulted and executed her wish, in transferring the absolute ownership of it to his daughter. The rest of his property was converted into money, and invested in funds in Great Britain. As soon as this arrangement was made, about the second year of the war, the Dove Cote became the permanent residence of the family; Lindsay preferring to remain here rather than to retire to England, hoping to escape the keen notice of the dominant party, and to find, in this classic and philosophical privacy, an oblivion of the rude cares that beset the pillow of every man who mingled in the strife of the day.

He was destined to a grievous disappointment. His wife, to whom he was romantically attached, was snatched from him by death, just at this interesting period. This blow, for a time, almost unseated his reason. The natural calm of such a mind as Lindsay's is not apt to show paroxysms in grief. Its sorrow was too still and deep for show. The flight of years, however, brought healing on their wings; and Mildred and Henry gradually relumed their father's countenance with flashes of cheerful thought, that daily grew broader and more abiding; till, at last, sense and duty completed their triumph, and once more gave Lindsay to his family, unburdened of his grief, or, if not unburdened, conversing with it only in the secret hours of self-communion.

His hopes of ease and retirement were disappointed in another way. The sequesterment of the Dove Cote was not sufficient to shut out the noise nor the intrigues of the war. His reputation, as a man of education, of wealth, of good sense, and especially as a man of aristocratic pretensions, irresistibly drew him into the agitated vortex of politics. His house was open to the visits of the tory leaders, no less than to those of the other side; and, although this intercourse could not be openly maintained without risk, yet pretexts were not wanting, occasionally, to bring the officers and gentlemen in the British interest to the Dove Cote. They came stealthily and in disguise, and they did not fail to involve him in the insidious schemes and base plottings by which a wary foe generally endeavors to smoothe the way of invasion. The temporary importance which these connections conferred, and the assiduous appeal which it was the policy of the enemy to make to his loyalty, wrought upon the vanity of the scholar, and brought him, by degrees, from the mere toleration of an intercourse that he at first sincerely sought to avoid, into a participation of the plans of those who courted his fellowship. Still, however, this was grudgingly given—as much from the inaptitude of his character, as from a secret consciousness, at bottom, that it was contrary to the purpose that had induced him to seek the shelter of the woods. Unless, therefore, the spur was frequently applied to the side of his reluctant resolution, his zeal was apt to weary in its pace, or, to change my figure for one equally appropriate, to melt away in the sunny indolence of his temper.

I have said that, during the tenderer years of the children, and up to the period of the loss of their mother, they had received the most unremitting attention from their parents. The bereavement of his wife, the deep gloom that followed this event, and the now engrossing character of the war, had in some degree relaxed Lindsay's vigilance over their nurture, although it had in no wise abated his affection for them; on the contrary, perhaps this was more concentrated than ever. Mildred had grown up to the blossom-time of life, in the possession of every personal attraction. From the fanciful ideas of education adopted by her father, or rather from the sedulous care with which he experimented upon her capacity, and devoted himself to the task of directing and waiting upon the expansion of her intellect, she had made acquirements much beyond her years, and altogether of a character unusual to her sex. An ardent and persevering temper had imparted a singular enthusiasm to her pursuits; and her air, though not devoid of playfulness, might be said to be habitually abstracted and self-communing.

As the war advanced, her temper and situation both enlisted her as a partisan in the questions which it brought into discussion; and, whilst her father's opinions were abhorrent to this struggle for independence, she, on the other hand, unknown to him, was casting her thoughts, feelings, affections, and hopes upon the broad waters of rebellion; and, if not expecting them to return to her, after many days, with increase of good, certainly believing that she was mingling them with those of patriots who were predestined to the brightest meed of glory.

A father is not apt to reason with a daughter; the passions and prejudices of a parent are generally received as principles by the child; and most fathers, counting upon this instinct, deem it enough to make known the bent merely of their own opinions, without caring to argue them. This mistake will serve to explain the wide difference which is sometimes seen between the most tenderly attached parent and child, in those deeper sentiments that do not belong to the every-day concerns of life. Whilst, therefore, Mr. Lindsay took no heed how the seed of doctrine fructified and grew in the soil where he desired to plant it, it in truth fell upon ungenial ground, and either was blown away by the wind, or perished for want of appropriate nourishment.

As the crisis became more momentous, and the discussion of national rights more rife, Mildred's predilections ran stronger on the republican side; and, at the opening of my story, she was a sincere and enthusiastic friend of American independence,—a character (however it may be misdoubted by my female readers of the present day, nursed as they are in a lady-like apathy to all concerns of government, and little aware, in the lazy lap of peace, how vividly their own quick sensibilities may be enlisted by the strife of men) neither rare nor inefficient amongst the matrons and maidens of the year seventy-six, some of whom—now more than fifty years gone by—are embalmed in the richest spices and holiest ointment of our country's memory.

It is, however, due to truth to say, that Mildred's eager attachment to this cause was not altogether the free motion of patriotism. How often does some little under-current of passion, some slight and amiable prepossession, modest and unobserved, rise to the surface of our feelings, and there give its direction to the stream upon which floats all our philosophy! What is destiny but these under-currents that come whencesoever they list, unheeded at first, and irresistible ever afterwards!

My reader must be told that, before the war broke out, this enthusiastic girl had flitted across the path of Arthur Butler, then a youth of rare faculty and promise, who combined with a gentle and modest demeanor an earnest devotion to his country, sustained by a chivalrous tone of honor that had in it all the fanciful disinterestedness of boyhood. It will not, therefore, appear wonderful that, amongst the golden opinions the young man was storing up in all quarters, some fragments of this grace should have made a lodgment in the heart of Mildred Lindsay.