Mr. Kempwood stopped and asked if he might smoke. I said yes, and after he lit a long cigarette, which he put in an interesting holder, he went on with: “Can’t you see the old lady and the old man being married? The ceremony took place in the small parlour at the left as one enters. . . . Probably some servants looked on. Perhaps the room was lit by candles, dozens of them, flickering high, then low, and casting shadows. . . . My, what a house, what memories she put in it.” Mr. Kempwood paused, knocked off his ash, and then said: “Do you know houses have souls? They have the thoughts that their owners attach to their walls. Haven’t you seen lovely houses and heard people say: ‘Horrible place; I hate going there. . . . They are all so sarcastic.’ You see--before one knows it--the house absorbs the spirit of the people who live in it, and one thinks of the home as horrible. Now, Madam Jumel (you won’t quite understand this, Natalie, and it’s difficult to explain) didn’t have much chance, and she wasn’t always good. In fact, she was far from it. And she came to this house, which had belonged to the Roger Morris family, who had kept it fine and splendid, and she turned it to a mad-house before she died, and left it in possession of three quarrelling sets of heirs, who dragged their claims through the courts for years and years, and whose descendants are still bickering. For those who had lost felt that they had been cheated, and so they kept on bickering.”
“Don’t you think that a man who evades fighting leaves a stain?” I asked.
“Roger Morris?” said Mr. Kempwood.
I nodded.
“Yes, but if the reasons for his not fighting were sufficient, his evading it was right. . . . You see, his wife’s family, the Philipse, and the Robinsons--I believe the Robinsons had a country place still in existence at Dobbs Ferry, that has staged some interesting history, too--they all owned property,” he went on, “and if Captain Morris had sided with the King, where his sympathies probably lay, his property and that of all his connection might have been burned by the ‘Liberty Boys.’ . . . He had a family and a wife to care for. The Beverly Robinsons and their clan were not used to poverty. He could not drag them to it. We’ll say he left for that reason.”
“Why did they burn houses?” I asked.
“Because they thought their owners sympathized with England. . . . They must have had a good time!” Mr. Kempwood stopped and shook his head. “Imagine,” he said, “a mob of a hundred men, all carrying sticks and throwing stones and some of them swinging tin lanterns--from which gleamed the feeble light of candles. Probably they catcalled, sang, and whistled as they tramped along the street, and little girls in long quilted skirts ran after them, and little boys--in homespun breeches--joined the moving throng, adding their shrill voices, whistles, sticks, and stones. Then perhaps they would pause before a house and call, ‘Master Benson, we’ll greet you immedjet’--and others, ‘Come forth, yuh dog!’ while the wag of the crowd would sing a song of King George. Then perhaps a window would slide up, and a man who wore a nightcap would stick a head out and ask for mercy. . . . But I doubt whether he got it, for crowds are cruel. . . . Perhaps his wife and little girls would come out of the house, carrying what little they could, and crying. . . . And then the man, sullen and angered, would be put through a mock trial, for the benefit of the jeering crowd. . . . And back of him a house would blaze, and the things he had loved would vanish in smoke. . . . A fire looks pretty against a black night sky. The blazing red which vanishes in sullen smoke. . . . The light. . . . See it?”
I said I did.
“But they had to burn those houses, didn’t they?” I asked.
“No,” he answered; “George Washington didn’t want them to. They did more harm than good, for often they burned the houses of the innocent, and a mob spirit--uncontrolled--has no business in war. Anything is done better under direction of a man who sees things coolly and takes them quietly.”