III Farewell to Fincastle
General Clark had had a busy summer, travelling up and down the river, assisting the Governor at St. Louis in reducing his tumultuous domain to order, treating with Indians, conferring with Governor Harrison in his brick palace at Old Vincennes, consulting with his brothers, General Jonathan and General George Rogers Clark at the Point of Rock. Now, in mid-autumn, he was again on his way to Fincastle.
Never through the tropic summer had Julia been absent from his thoughts. A little house in St. Louis had been selected that should shelter his bride; and now, as fast as hoof and horse could speed him, he was hastening back to fix the day for his wedding.
October shed glory on the burnished forests. Here and there along the way shone primitive farmhouses, the homes of people. The explorer’s heart beat high. He had come to that time in his life when he, too, should have a home. Those old Virginia farmhouses, steep of roof and sloping at the eaves, four rooms below and two in the attic, with great chimneys smoking at either end, seemed to speak of other fond and happy hearts.
The valley of Virginia extends from the Potomac to the Carolina line. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the Kittatinnys on the other, and in the trough-like valley between flows the historic Shenandoah.
From the north, by Winchester, scene of many a border fray and destined for action more heroic yet, Clark sped on his way to Fincastle. Some changes had taken place since that eventful morning when Governor Spotswood looked over the Blue Ridge. A dozen miles from Winchester stood Lord Fairfax’s Greenway Court, overshadowed by ancient locusts, slowly mouldering to its fall. Here George Washington came in his boyhood, surveying for the gaunt, raw-boned, near-sighted old nobleman who led him hard chases at the fox hunt.
From the head spring of the Rappahannock to the head spring of the Potomac, twenty-one counties of old Virginia once belonged to the Fairfax manor, now broken and subdivided into a thousand homes. Hither had come tides of Quakers, and Scotch-Presbyterians, penetrating farther and farther its green recesses, cutting up the fruitful acres into colonial plantations.
“The Shenandoah, it is the very centre of the United States,” said the emigrants.
The valley was said to be greener than any other, its waters were more transparent, its soil more fruitful. At any rate German-Pennsylvanians pushed up here, rearing barns as big as fortresses, flanked round with haystacks and granaries. Now and then Clark met them, in loose leather galligaskins and pointed hats, sunning in wide porches, smoking pipes three feet long, while their stout little children tumbled among the white clover.
Here and there negroes were whistling with notes as clear as a fife, and huge Conestoga waggons loaded with produce rumbled along to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond. Every year thousands of waggons went to market, camping at night and making the morning ring with Robin Hood songs and jingling bells.
Yonder lived Patrick Henry in his last years, at picturesque Red Hill on the Staunton. Here in his old age he might have been seen under the trees in his lawn, buried in revery, or on the floor, with grandchildren clambering over him or dancing to his violin.
But Clark was not thinking of Patrick Henry, or Fairfax,—in fact he scarcely remembered their existence, so intent was his thought on his maid of the mountains, Julia Hancock.
The leaves were falling from elm and maple, strewing the path with gold and crimson. The pines grew taller in the twilight, until he could scarcely see the bypaths chipped and blazed by settlers’ tomahawks.
Sunset was gilding the Peaks of Otter as Clark drew rein at the little tavern near Fincastle.
“I was rented to the King of England by my Prince of Hesse Cassel,” the Hessian proprietor was saying. “I was rented out to cut the throats of people who had never done me any harm. Four pence three farthings a day I got, and one penny farthing went to His Royal Highness, the Prince. I fought you, then I fell in love with you, and when the war was over I stayed in America.”
Clark listened. It was a voice out of the Revolution.
After a hurried luncheon the tireless traveller was again in his saddle; and late that night in the moonlight he opened the gate at Colonel Hancock’s.
York had followed silently through all the journey,—York, no longer a slave, for in consideration of his services on the expedition the General had given him his freedom. But as a voluntary body-guard he would not be parted from his master.
“For sho’! who cud tek cah o’ Mars Clahk so well as old Yawk?”
“What if love-lorn swains from a dozen plantations have tried to woo and win my pretty cousin! The bronzed face of Lochinvar is bleaching,” said the teasing Harriet when she heard that the wedding date was really set. “One day, who knows, his skin may be white as yours.”
Sudden as a flood in the Roanoke came Julia’s tears. Relenting, the lively, light-hearted Harriet covered her cousin’s curls with kisses.
“The carriage and horses are at your service. Hunt, fish, lounge as you please,” said Colonel Hancock, “for I must be at the courthouse to try an important case.”
With thousands of acres and hundreds of negroes, it was the dream of Colonel Hancock to one day drop these official cares and retire altogether into the privacy of his plantation. Already, forty miles away, at the very head spring of the Roanoke river, he was building a country seat to be called “Fotheringay,” after Fotheringay Castle.
Back and forth in the gorgeous October weather rode Clark and Julia, watching the workmen at Fotheringay.
Now and then the carriage stopped at an orchard. Passers were always at liberty to help themselves to the fruit. Peaches so abundant that they fed the hogs with them, apples rosy and mellow, grapes for the vintage, were in the first flush of abundance. What a contrast to that autumn in the Bitter Root Mountains!
Then late in November to Fincastle came Governor Lewis and his brother Reuben, on their way to the west. He, too, had been to Washington on business concerning St. Louis.
“The great success of York among the Mandans has decided Reuben to take Tom along,” laughed Lewis, as Reuben’s black driver dismounted from the carriage—the same family chariot in which Meriwether had brought his mother from Georgia, now on the way to become the state coach of Louisiana.
Black Tom beamed, expansively happy, on York who had been “tuh th’ Injun country” where black men were “Great Medicine.”
“Ha, Your Excellency,” laughed the teasing Harriet, “the beauty of Fincastle dines with us to-night,—Miss Letitia Breckenridge.”
“Wait and the Governor will court you,” some one whispered to the charming Letitia.
“I have contemplated accompanying my father to Richmond for some time,” replied Letitia. “If I stay now it will look like a challenge, therefore I determine to go.”
Governor Lewis underwent not a little chafing when two days after his arrival the lovely Letitia was gone,—to become the wife of the Secretary of War in John Quincy Adams’s cabinet.
“Miss Breckenridge is a very sweet-looking girl,” wrote Reuben to his sister, “and I should like to have her for a sister. General Clark’s intended is a charming woman. When I tell you that she is much like my sweetheart you will believe I think so.”
“What are you doing?” Clark asked of Julia, as she sat industriously stitching beside the hickory fire in the great parlour at Fincastle.
“Working a little screen to keep the fire from burning my face,” answered the maiden, rosy as the glow itself. Much more beautiful than the little Sacajawea, stitching moccasins beside the fire at Clatsop, she seemed to Clark; and yet the feminine intuition was the same, to sew, to stitch, to be an artist with the needle.
“The mistletoe hung in Fincastle hall,
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall,
And the planter’s retainers were blithe and gay,
A-keeping their Christmas holiday.”
There was sleighing at Fincastle when the wedding day came, just after New Year’s, 1808. The guests came in sleighs from as far away as Greenway Court, for all the country-side knew and loved Judy Hancock.
Weeping, soft-hearted Black Granny tied again the sunny curls and looped the satin ribbons of her beloved “Miss Judy.” The slaves vied with one another, strewing the snow with winter greens that no foot might touch the chill.
The wainscoted and panelled walls glowed with greenery. Holly hung over the carved oaken chimneys, and around the fowling pieces and antlers of the chase that betokened the hunting habits of Colonel Hancock. Silver tankards marked with the family arms sparkled on the damask table cloth, and silver candlesticks and snuffers and silver plate. Myrtleberry wax candles gave out an incense that mingled with the odour of hickory snapping in the fireplace.
“Exactly as her mother looked,” whispered the grandmother when Judy came down,—grandmother, a brisk little white-capped old lady in quilted satin, who remembered very well the mother of Washington.
The stars hung blazing on the rim of the Blue Ridge and the snow glistened, when out of the great house came the sound of music and dancing. There were wedding gifts after the old Virginia fashion, and when all had been inspected Clark handed his bride a small jewel case marked with her name.
The cover flew open, revealing a set of topaz and pearls, “A gift from the President.”
Out into the snow went these wedding guests of a hundred years ago, to scatter and be forgotten.