"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Old Esther Dudley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

1839

TWICE-TOLD TALES

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

THE HOUR HAD COME- the hour of defeat and humiliation- when Sir
William Howe was to pass over the threshold of the Province House, and
embark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself,
on board the British fleet. He bade his servants and military
attendants go before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of
the mansion, to quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his
bosom as with a death throb. Preferable, then, would he have deemed
his fate, had a warrior's death left him a claim to the narrow
territory of a grave within the soil which the King had given him to
defend. With an ominous perception that, as his departing footsteps
echoed adown the staircase, the sway of Britain was passing forever
from New England, he smote his clinched hand on his brow, and cursed
the destiny that had flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him.

"Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage,
"that the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the
floor should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was
faithful to his trust."

The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.

"Heaven's cause and the King's are one," it said. "Go forth, Sir
William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a Royal Governor in
triumph."

Subduing, at once, the passion to which he had yielded only in
the faith that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious
that an aged woman, leaning on a gold-headed staff, was standing
betwixt him and the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt
almost immemorial years in this mansion, until her presence seemed
as inseparable from it as the recollections of its history. She was
the daughter of an ancient and once eminent family, which had fallen
into poverty and decay, and left its last descendant no resource
save the bounty of the King, nor any shelter except within the walls
of the Province House. An office in the household, with merely nominal
duties, had been assigned to her as a pretext for the payment of a
small pension, the greater part of which she expended in adorning
herself with an antique magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther
Dudley's gentle blood were acknowledged by all the successive
Governors; and they treated her with the punctilious courtesy which it
was her foible to demand, not always with success, from a neglectful
world. The only actual share which she assumed in the business of