The Belle of Bowling Green

Every city has some locality to which its heroic and civic memories especially cling; and this locality in the city of New York is the historic acre of the Bowling Green. With that spot it has been throughout its existence, in some way or other, unfailingly linked; and its mingled story of camp and court and domestic life ought to make the Bowling Green to the citizens of New York all that the Palladium was to the citizens of ancient Troy. For as the Palladium held in one hand a pike, and in the other hand a distaff and spindle, so also, the story of the Bowling Green is one of the pike and the distaff. It has felt the tread of fighting men, and the light feet of happy maidens; and though showing a front of cannon, has lain for nearly three centuries at the open seaward door of the city, like a green hearthstone of welcome.

In the closing years of the eighteenth, and the early years of the nineteenth century, the Bowling Green was in a large measure surrounded by the stately homes of the most honourable and wealthy citizens; and though this class, before the war of 1812, had began to move slowly northward, it was some years later a very aristocratic quarter, especially favoured by the rich families of Dutch extraction, who, having dwelt for many generations somewhere around the Fort and the Bowling Green, were not easily induced to relinquish their homes in a locality so familiar and so dear to them.

Thus for nearly one hundred and forty years there had been Bloommaerts living in the old Beaver Path, and in Bloommaert’s Valley, or Broad Street, and when Judge Gerardus Bloommaert, in 1790, built himself a handsome dwelling, he desired no finer site for it than the Bowling Green. It was a lofty, roomy house of red brick, without extraneous ornament, but realising in its interior arrangements and furnishings the highest ideals of household comfort and elegance.

Sapphira, his only daughter, a girl of eighteen years old, was, however, its chief charm and attraction. No painting on all its walls could rival her living beauty; and many a young citizen found the road to the Custom House the road of his desire. For was there not always the hope that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Sapphira at the window of her home? Or meet her walking on the Mall, or the Battery, and perhaps, if very fortunate, get a smile or a word from her in passing.

All knew that they could give themselves good reasons for their devotions; they did not bow to an unworthy idol. Sapphira Bloommaert had to perfection every mystery and beauty of the flesh--dark, lambent eyes, hardly more lambent than the luminous face lighted up by the spirit behind it; nut-brown hair, with brows and long eyelashes of a still darker shade; a vivid complexion; an exquisite mouth; a tall, erect, slender form with a rather proud carriage, and movements that were naturally of superb dignity: “the airs of a queen,” as her cousin Annette said. But Sapphira had no consciousness in this attitude; it was as natural as breathing to her; and was the result of a perfectly harmonious physical and moral beauty, developed under circumstances of love and happiness. All her life days had been full of content; she looked as if she had been born smiling.

This was exactly what her grandmother Bloommaert said to her one morning, and that with some irritation; for the elder woman was anxious about many people and many things, and Sapphira’s expression of pleasant contentment was not the kind of sympathy that worry finds soothing.

“In trouble is the city, Sapphira, and over that bit of hair-work you sit smiling, as if in Paradise we were. I think, indeed, you were born smiling.”

“The time of tears is not yet, grandmother; when it comes, I shall weep--like other women.”

“Weep! Yes, yes; but one thing remember--deliverance comes never through tears. Look at Cornelia Desbrosses; dying she is, with her own tears poisoned.”

“I am sorry for Cornelia; I wish that she had no cause to weep,” and with these words she did not smile. It had suddenly struck her that perhaps it was not right or kind to be happy when there was so much fear and anxiety in her native city. The idea was new and painful; she rose and went with it to the solitude of her own room; and her mother after silently watching her exit, said:

“She is so gentle, so easily moved--was it worth while?”

“You think so? Give Sapphira a motive strong enough, and so firm she will be--so impossible to move. Oh, yes, Carlita, I know!”

“Indeed, mother, she obeys as readily as a little child. Our will is her will. She bends to it just like the leaves of that tree to the wind.”

“Very good! but there may come a day when to your will she will not bend; when a rod of finely tempered steel will be more pliant in your hand than her wish or will. We shall see. She is a very child yet, but times are coming--are come--that will turn children quickly into men and women. Our Gerardus, where is he?”

“He left home rather earlier than usual. He was sure there was important news.” Mrs. Bloommaert spoke coldly. Her mother-in-law always set her temper on edge with the claim vibrating through the two words “our Gerardus.” “There is so much talk and nothing comes of it but annoyance to ourselves,” she continued, “the cry has been war for five years. It comes not.”

“It is here. At the street corners I saw the bill-man pasting up news of it. In every one’s mouth I heard it. Alive was the air with the word war; and standing in groups, men were talking together in that passion of anger that means war, war, and nothing but war.”

“The blood of New York is always boiling, mother. When Gerardus comes he will tell us if it be war. I shall not be sorry if it is. When one has been waiting for a blow five long years, it is a relief to have it fall. Who is to blame? The administration, or the people?”

“As well may you ask whether it is the fiddle, or the fiddlestick, that makes the tune.”

“At any rate we shall give England a good fight. Our men are not cowards.”

“Carlita, all men would be cowards--if they durst.”

“Mother!”

“If they durst disobey the nobler instincts which make the lower ones face their duty.”

“Oh!”

“Carlita, you have no ideas about humanity.”

“I think mother I, at least, understand my husband and sons--as for Sapphira----”

“More difficult she will be--and more interesting. Peter and Christopher are all Dutch; they that run may read them, but in Sapphira the Dutch and French are discreetly mingled. She has tithed your French ancestors, Carlita--take good heed of her.”

“They were of noble strain.”

“Surely, that is well known. Now I must go home, for I know that Annette is already afraid, and there is the dinner to order. Pigeons do not fly into the mouth ready roasted, and Commenia is getting old. She is lazy, too; but so! The year goes round and somehow we do not find it all bad.”

As she finished speaking, Sapphira came hastily into the room. Her face was flushed, her eyes flashing, and she cried out with unrestrained emotion: “Mother! Mother! We must put out our flags! All the houses on the Green are flagged! Kouba has them ready. He will help me. And you too, mother? Certainly you will help? Kouba says we are going to fight England again! I am so proud! I am so happy! Come, come, mother!”

“My dear one, wait a little. Your father will be here soon, and----”

“Oh, no, no! Father may be in court. He is likely with the mayor. Perhaps he is talking to the people. We can not wait. We must put out the flags--the old one that has seen battle, and the new one that is to see it.”

“But Sapphira----”

“I have the flags ready, mother. Come quickly,” and without further parley she ran with fleet, headlong steps to the upper rooms of the house. Madame, her grandmother, smiled knowingly at her daughter-in-law.

“The will that is your will?” she asked; “where is it? You can see for yourself, Carlita.”

“The news seems to be true at last. You had better wait for Gerardus, mother. He will tell us all about it.”

“The news will find me out in Nassau Street.”

“Commenia can manage without you for one day.”

“There are strawberries to preserve. I like to manage my affairs myself. I have my own way, and some other way does not please me.”

“Well, then, I shall go to Sapphira. My hands are itching for the flags. I am sure you understand, mother.”

“Understand! If it comes to that, I made up my mind many years ago about those English tyrants--and I have not to make it over. I think about them and their ways exactly as I did when I sent my dear Peter with Joris Van Heemskirk’s troops to fight them. Gerardus was but a boy then--ten years old only--but he cried to go with his father. God be with us! Wives and mothers don’t forget, _O wee! O wee!_”