CHAPTER VII

I

"For still my mem'ry lingers on the scenes And pleasures of the days beyond recall."

Peggy's voice, timid, soft though pretty, died away into an enraptured silence which seemed to endure for the longest while before the room burst into a generous measure of applause. She was very well accompanied on the clavichord by Miss Rutteledge and on the harp by Monsieur Ottow, Secretary to the French Minister. The evening had been delightful; the a.s.sembly brilliant in quality, and unaffectedly congenial and diverting.

The music had contributed much to the pleasures of the function, for the Shippens' was one of the few homes in the city where such a resource was at all possible.

"Major! Major Franks! What do you think of my little girl? Do you think 'twould be well for her to cultivate such a voice?"

Mrs. Shippen turned sideways. There was gratification, genuine, complacent gratification, visible in every line of her smiling face.

"Splendid! Splendid! Of course. Madame, she sings very prettily,"

replied the Major, gathering himself from the state of partial repose into which he had fallen.

He sat up.

"And do you know, Major," went on the fond mother, "she never had a tutor, except some of our dear friends who made this their home during the winter."

"You mean the British?"

"Of course they did not make so free with everybody in the city, with only a few, you know. It was for General Howe himself that Margaret first made bold enough to sing."

"She does very well, I am sure," was the reply.

The little group again lapsed into silence as Peggy responded with an encore, this selection being a patriotic air of a lighter vein. The Major again lapsed into an easy att.i.tude, but Mrs. Shippen was visibly intent upon every motion of the singer and followed her every syllable.

"How much does music contribute to one's pleasure!" she remarked when the conversation began to stir.

"It is charming," Mr. Anderson observed.

"And do you know that we inherited that clavichord? It is one of the oldest in the country."

"It appears to be of rare design," remarked Mr. Anderson, as his eyes pierced the distance in a steady observance of it.

"It belonged to Mr. Shippen's father," she boasted. "This house, you know, was the home of Edward Shippen, who was Mayor of the city over an hundred years ago. It was then, if I do say it, the most pretentious home in the city. My husband was for disposing of it and removing to less fashionable quarters, but I would not hear of it. Never!"

Major Franks surveyed the great room deliberately.

"'Twould make a fine castle!" he commented as he half turned and crossed one knee over the other. He felt that this would be his last visit if he continued to take any less interest, yet even that apparently caused him no great concern.

And yet, a great house it was, the quondam residence of Edward Shippen, the progenitor of the present family, a former Mayor of the city, who had fled thither from Boston where he had suffered persecution at the hands of the Puritans who could not allow him to be a Quaker. It stood on an eminence outside the city. It was well surrounded, with its great orchard, its summer house, its garden smiling with roses, and lilies; bordered by rows of yellow pines shading the rear, with a s.p.a.cious green lawn away to the front affording an un.o.bstructed view of the city and the Delaware sh.o.r.e. It was a residence of pretentious design and at the time of its construction was easily the most sumptuous home in the city.

The Shippens had been the leaders of the fashionable set, not alone in days gone by, the days of colonial manners when diversions and enjoyments were indulged in as far as the austerities of the staid old Quaker code would allow; but also during the days of the present visitation of the British, when emulation in the entertainment of the visitors ran riot among the townsfolk. Small wonder that the present lord of the manor felt constrained to write to his father that he should be under the necessity of removing from this luxurious abode to Lancaster, "for the style of living my fashionable daughters have introduced into my family and their dress will I fear before long oblige me to change the scene." Yet if the truth were told, the style of living inaugurated by the ambitious daughters was no less a heritage than a part of the discipline in which they had been reared.

If the sudden and forced departure of the dashing as well as the eligible British Officers from the city had totally upset the cherished social aspirations of the mother of the Shippen girls, the advent of the gallant and unmarried Military Governor had lifted them to a newer and much higher plane of endeavor. The termination of a matrimonial alliance with the second in command of the patriotic forces not less than the foremost in rank of the city gentry, would more than compensate for the loss of a possible British peerage. Theirs was a proud lineage to boast of and a mode of unfeigned comfort and display. And it took but the briefest possible time for the artful mother to discern that her clever and subtle devices were beginning to meet with some degree of success.

The present function was wholly her affair, and while it was announced as a purely informal gathering, the manner and the scheme of the decorations, the elegance and the care with which the women dressed, the order, the appointments, the refreshments, not to mention the distinguished French visitors, would permit no one to surmise that, even for a moment. Care had been taken to issue invitations to the representative members of the city's upper cla.s.s, more especially to the newly arrived French Officers and their wives, as well as the commissioned members of the Continental Army. There were the Shippen girls, their persistent friend, Miss Chew, as well as Miss Franks, whose brother was now attached to the staff of General Arnold, and a dozen other young ladies, all attractive, and dressed in the prevailing elegance of fashion; the hair in an enormous coiffure, in imitation of the fashions of the French, with turbans of gauze and spangles and ropes of pearls, the low bodices with the bow in front, the wide sashes below. It was an altogether brilliant a.s.sembly, with the Military Governor the most brilliant of all.

"Tell me, Major," asked Mrs. Shippen in measured and subdued language as she leaned forward in an apparently confidential manner, "does General Arnold visit often?"

"Oh, yes!" replied the Major at once, "he is very generous with his company."

Her face fell somewhat.

"Now, isn't that strange? I was told that he made a practice of calling at no home outside of ours."

He uncrossed his leg and shifted in his chair rather uneasily.

"Quite true." He saw at once that he had made an unhappy remark. "But of course he makes no social calls, none whatsoever. You must know that the affairs of state require all of his time, for which duty he is obliged to visit many people on matters of pure business."

"Oh!"

She appeared satisfied at this explanation.

"It seems as if we had known him all our lives. He feels so perfectly at home with us."

"Exactly."

"You have met him often with us, haven't you, Marjorie?"

"I first met him at the Military Ball through Peggy," Marjorie replied navely.

"But you must have met him here. He has been here so often," she insisted.

"Then I vow our General has felt the smite of your fair daughter's charms," remarked Mr. Anderson.

Marjorie breathed a sigh of relief at the timely interruption.

"Do you really think so?" asked Mrs. Shippen, with no attempt to conceal her impatience.

"Unquestionably.

'Smiles from reason flow, To brute denied, and are of love the food.'

So sang the bard, and so sing I of His Excellency."

"But his age! He cannot now be thinking of matrimony."

"Age, my dear Mrs. Shippen, is a matter of feeling, not of years. The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate all disparity. Before it age, rank, lineage, distinction dissolve like the slowly fading light of the sun at eventide. The General is bent on conquest; that I'll wager. What say you, Major? A five pound note?"