GREENWAY COURT.
Mindful of her age her son would not come to her suddenly and unheralded. He could not come immediately. He had to attend to the distribution of ordnance and stores, the departure of prisoners, the embarkation of troops, to say nothing of the courtesies of the hour—such as the selection of two beautiful horses as a present to De Grasse, who did not sail until Nov. 4. He was then summoned in haste to Eltham, the seat of his old friend Colonel Bassett, there to fold his tender arms around the dying form of Parke Custis and receive his last breath. Years before, he had thus comforted the sweet young sister, "Patsy Custis," in her last hour.
Martha Washington, the mother, and the wife and four children of Parke Custis (who was only twenty-eight years old) were all at Eltham, and with them Washington remained until the last tribute of respect was paid to the deceased. And that he might comfort his wife and help the young widow, he then and there adopted George Washington Parke Custis and Nellie Custis into his family.
From Eltham he proceeded immediately on pressing business with Congress at Philadelphia, and not until Nov. 11 did he reach Fredericksburg.
CHAPTER VII
"ON WITH THE DANCE, LET JOY BE UNCONFINED"
That was a great day when the news came to Fredericksburg—"Cornwallis has surrendered." "With red spurs" rode the couriers that carried the glad tidings, and the hearts of the people leaped with joy. Twenty-eight British captains had stepped forth from the lines and surrendered as many colors to the ragged Continentals. With instinctive magnanimity the conquerors had given a banquet to their captive officers, and Washington had saluted Cornwallis with a toast to the British army. Thus the brave honor the brave. And now—courtesies all rendered, the sword sheathed, the guns stacked—the great commander was coming home, first to his mother, attended by a brilliant retinue of French and American officers. When the soldier of his people laid his country's freedom at his mother's feet, if ever in this world a foretaste of heavenly joy be given to human beings, to Mary and George Washington alike this was the hour. Says Mr. Custis:—
"After an absence of nearly seven years, it was, at length, on the return of the combined armies from Yorktown, permitted to the mother again to see and embrace her illustrious son. So soon as he had dismounted, in the midst of a numerous and brilliant suite, he sent to apprise her of his arrival, and to know when it would be her pleasure to receive him. No pageantry of war proclaimed his coming, no trumpets sounded, no banners waved. Alone and on foot, the Marshal of France, the general-in-chief of the combined armies of France and America, the deliverer of his country, the hero of the age, repaired to pay his humble duty to her whom he venerated as the author of his being, the founder of his fortune and his fame. For full well he knew that the matron would not be moved by all the pride that glory ever gave, nor by all the 'pomp and circumstance' of power.