"Good-morning, sirs," she called, in a voice that charmed all the company, as they bowed low, save her husband, who gazed at her with astonishment and rage. But she did not heed his angry looks. Before her at the foot of the stairs there stood a gallant youth by the name of Harry Fairleigh. He alone held her eyes. Where had she seen that strong face tanned by the ocean wind? In an instant she knew. He was the embodiment of a dream—her boy lover grown older—the cherished girlhood vision of her true mate. The Revolution had brought him to America again and Fate led him to her very doorstep. Something seemed to be swaying her. She caught his eyes and read in them that he knew her. As he came forward to kiss her hand, she seemed filled with an awful joy,—a feeling that tortured and hurt as it swept over her,—for she knew that he had come too late.
The islanders welcomed the British gladly. Soon General Howe's brother arrived with an additional force of twenty thousand men, and General Clinton, repulsed at Charleston, hurried north with a re-enforcement of three thousand more, making the combined forces somewhere near thirty-three thousand. At the Rose and Crown Tavern near New Dorp, the Black-Horse at Richmond, the Ship near Prince's Bridge, and in farmhouses from end to end of the island hundreds of the soldiers had their quarters. In that month of July the interest of the colonists was centred on Staten Island. Every Tory maid who dreamt of scarlet coats and golden epaulets thought with envy of those fortunate fair ones surrounded by such multitudes of would-be admirers. Many a modern household descended from loyalist settlers retains tokens of that gala period. Now it is a chair that some visiting genius made when off duty, perhaps a paste buckle, or a miniature which witnessed some story woven in a summer month before the wheels of the Revolution began to move swiftly.
No longer could Mrs. Billop complain of lacking company. Her husband, under the influence of his foreign guests, was becoming a changed man, and the fame of his hospitality was known even in New York. All through the war there was a constant stream of visitors. Among the famous ones could be mentioned Major André, General Knyphausen, Sir Henry Clinton, and General Robertson. Many times Fairleigh would ride over from Richmond to take part in some festivity. His manly beauty always made him a noted figure, and his admirers called him the English Apollo. Billop, by some strange intuition, seemed to hate him, and longed to forbid him the house. One night his rage obtained mastery over his prudence, and he rushed into his garden, where a dance was in progress, and demanded that he stop his minuet with Mrs. Billop and leave the company. Those were days of hot words and flashing steel, and soon the moon shone on the glint of crossing swords. The wife, terrified that harm should come to the young soldier on her account, threw herself between the combatants, and, in the face of her husband's threats, it is said that she promised to dance with Fairleigh again at some future time. But she reckoned not with war. Soon the drum and fife notes sounded in every part of the island, and the gallant young soldier marched away with his regiment, carrying what was left of the heart of the beautiful Mrs. Billop.
On the bloody field of Monmouth Fairleigh fell in the thick of the fight, and Mrs. Billop's promise was never to be fulfilled in life. Evil days fell upon the Bentley manor. Christopher Billop was dragged away to Burlington to languish chained to the jail floor, if we are to believe Elias Boudinot's stern order to the keeper of the jail, written in November, 1779. In one of the rooms General Howe met the peace envoys after the disastrous battle of Long Island, and later the Billops were forced to flee, as the property was declared confiscated by the new government.
Years afterwards, when the house was in the hands of aliens, the story goes that one of the new-comers was startled on a July night by the appearance of two ghostly figures that seemed to come out of the boxwood grotto and dance a stately minuet along the garden paths. Every year, it is said, they still come back. When the trees are in their fullest foliage and the earth carpeted with flowers, the shades of the unhappy wife and the laughing-eyed soldier she could have loved haunt the neglected garden, and with only a sighing wind for music, they bow and sway through the tangled paths until the morning stains the dreary faces of the decaying castles across the water.
Major André's Last Love
