USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > Within a Jersey circle : tales of the past, grave and gay, as picked up from old Jerseyites > Part 3
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Not long after the brother and sister returned home
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their father, Elias, died leaving them equally interested in the paternal estate and both rich. Paul von Treder did not long delay following Phoebe to her home for the pur- pose of asking her father for her hand in marriage. He arrived on the very day of her father's funeral. Having come over with his own parents' full consent to settle and practise medicine in America and to marry Miss Vander veer if she would have him, he delayed not to make his plea to Phoebe's only guardian, her brother Henry. Of course, there was no possible objection on the brother's part.
"Phoebe," said Henry, "you are quite able to decide for yourself. You know what I think of Paul. He is the very finest and truest-hearted fellow I ever met. He is my brother already, whatever you say to him. Just please yourself, sister."
That balmy June evening was the beginning of a short but sweet reign of bliss for Phoebe, as she and Paul walked to and fro over the lovely green slope up the moun- tain side, all carpeted with buttercups and daisies, and looking out over a far-reaching landscape of unsurpassed beauty. For there they told each other the old thrilling story, which is ever new, and which, like fairy music, turns the whole world into a poetic paradise. When they returned the sun had long set. They went sauntering arm in arm down a narrow lane toward the house, pass- ing near a clump of trees which surrounded the colored people's burying ground. Paul, who did not know that the place was so used, stopped.
"What a curious light that is over there!" he remarked, looking among the trees. "Do you suppose any one is
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walking about there with a lighted candle, my sweet Phoebe ?"
"I do not think so," she answered, looking intently in the direction he indicated; "but neither can I see any light. That place, however, has long been -- "
Her words were interrupted by the most pitiful sound- ing wail that Paul had ever heard. For a moment they stood speechless and listened. Suddenly the young woman was startled as her companion caught her convulsively with one hand, and pointed into the darkness with the other, exclaiming with great excitement :
"See, my dearest Phoebe! See that most extraordinary moving flame! It now grows larger and brighter."
"It is-ach! himmel !" he cried, shrinking from a globe of fire, which he declared flew straight for his face-some- thing which his companion even then failed to see a ves- tige of. She shivered at a momentary recollection of the "corpse lights" her old nurse used to harrow her young soul by telling about, and, involuntarily tightening her hold of her companion's arm, she walked forward.
"Come!" she urged, "that sound is dismal and distress- ing to hear. Do let us hurry home to brother; he is one of the ancient magi, I think, for he can explain everything and no doubt will do so now. Come!"
The matter was merrily laughed off with the doctor, in rooms lit up with many bright candles and good cheer. Phoebe, however, said nothing about something she herself had seen. Upon arriving home she asked Harry, their slave foreman, where the big, crazy, hunchback negro, "Ethiopia," was. Harry, after looking, returned to say that the negro was safe behind the bars of his room.
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"Ethiopia," who had shown homicidal tendencies, was worked every day, and afterward fed and locked up for the night like a horse or an ox.
Phoebe was sorely puzzled, for, of course, the man could not have been in two places at the same time. In the light of her new and delicious life, which was filled to overflowing with the joy of her handsome and devoted lover's society, this fact, and almost everything else, was forgotten. For two months they visited friends far and near, riding on the doctor's fine horses, and enjoying that untrammeled lovers' bliss preceding an early wedding. Their marriage was arranged to take place in August.
Everything took on a gala appearance as the glad time approached for the nuptials of the universally beloved and pretty young mistress of the old Vanderveer mansion. The slaves, who simply worshiped their "Missy Phoebe," were granted very special privileges. A tent was provided for them in the rear garden, where old "Bandy," the Bed- minster fiddler, nightly discoursed dance-compelling music, and there they danced and sang for hours every evening. It was a gala time for all save one, who could only look out through his barred window and gnash his teeth in jealous rage-the dangerous hunchback, "Ethiopia."
When these festivities had gone on every night for a week, and the wedding was just three days distant, the demented creature howled so much as to drown the mu- sic, and not until he was beaten and even gagged and bound would he be quiet. After that there was not a re- bellious sound from his little room-cell, and nobody thought more of him until the evening preceding the wed-
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ding day. Then Harry, the foreman, called one of the boys.
"Here, Tom," he called, handing the boy a yellow striped mug of cider, "take this up to 'Ethiopia' and tell him to drink Miss Phoebe's health. We musn't forget nobody to-night."
Soon Tom came back with the news that "Ethiopia had done gone and broke out."
About 8 o'clock that evening Paul von Treder, excus- ing himself to Phoebe and two of her intended brides- maids of the morrow, said he would walk up and meet the doctor, who was a little late in returning from a pro- fessional call at Eli Smith's, who lived about a mile away. Phoebe kissed him and fondly followed him with her eyes till he turned to take the lane. Then, just as he was about disappearing, he looked back and they waved to each other a little adieu. Then he was gone.
In less than an hour, uttering a heartbreaking wail of woe, Phoebe fell senseless across the bleeding breast of her lover. He had been brought back to her door a corpse.
When it became known on the Vanderveer estate, in those days of long ago, that Phoebe Vanderveer's hand- some and much respected sweetheart, Paul von Treder, had been murdered, a thrill of horror vibrated in every heart. It was regarded as such a diabolical deed that noth- ing but the blood of the assassin could satisfy the cry for vengeance. Nobody stopped to ask who did it.
"Where is 'Ethiopia?' " the slaves demanded, seizing, one his cutlass, another an axe, and the others whatever came handy, and one and all started out to find the power- ful but demented black man.
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Dr .. Vanderveer, who had come upon the scene almost in time to see the murderous blow struck, saw the terrible black hunchback diving into the wood just after his victim fell. The doctor feared the worst and sprang to aid his friend who had uttered that short, sharp shout of surprise and pain which invariably escapes the man who is fatally struck with blade or bullet. Being slightly and gently raised, von Treder spoke:
"The hunchback negro-stabbed me;" he gasped. "He crept-up behind me!"
"He stabbed me," repeated the young man and falling back he expired in the doctor's arms.
"Now, Harry," the doctor said to his managing negro, after his friend's body had been brought home, "we know that 'Ethiopia' has committed this awful crime. The big brute is a maniac and should not have been allowed at large. That cannot be helped now. But we must get hold of him as quickly as possible. Then we'll hand him over to the jailers and let the law punish him."
The colored man mumbled something incoherent, end- ing in "po'r Missy Phoebe," and left, as the doctor sus- pected, in tears. But once outside that room, black Harry was king. Law indeed! No law was needed but his, he said, for the blacks, whom he ruled with an imperial rod of iron. There was a dangerous gleam in his big brown eyes, as he armed himself and started with a dozen of his men, to find "Ethiopia." A significant part of the equip- ment of the hunting party was a detachment with pickaxes and shovels. That night the big hunchback negro breathed his last. He was buried where he fell, his hands still red with the blood of his innocent victim, Paul von Treder.
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The shock almost killed Phoebe Vanderveer. She showed no outward signs of grief, but seemed dazed or paralyzed. For months she took no account of time or circumstance, whether it was night or day, or time to eat or drink or time to sleep. She would eat a little when repeatedly urged to do so. She would lie down upon her bed and close her eyes at night, but she slept only a very little, if any at all. All through the night, at intervals, as through the day, she would rise and walk as if in a dream to the place where the blood-stained corpse of her lover was laid that fatal night.
With unstinted, loving sympathy from her brother and from every colored person on the estate, and with as many women of the latter as she desired to attend her, Phoebe managed to live, or, more correctly, to exist in spite of the sincere wish of her broken heart that she might be permitted to lay down the burden and rejoin her lost love. This despondency eventually culminated in an ill- ness that seemed a complete collapse of both body and mind. At the beginning Dr. Vanderveer had called in the best medical aid. When a critical stage was reached and the patient lay at the point of death, the physician in charge called in Dr. Cornelius C. Suydam, of Lesser Cross Roads. Heroic treatment recommended by the latter was adopted, and the patient got well, at least, physically.
Dr. Suydam, who was somewhat younger than Dr. Vanderveer and had studied with him, had a large prac- tise and was a man of note. Six feet four inches in height and weighing about 250 pounds, he was acknowledged to be about the handsomest man, as well as the most splen- did horseman, anywhere in Bedminster Township. Rich
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or poor patients were all alike to him. Wherever his aid was asked, near or far, he pointed his horse's head and in the shortest possible time, generally by a course straight across as the crow flies, he was where he was wanted. At the bedside he combined the consummate skill of the physician with a woman's gentleness. Having been born in affluence, of a highly respected old Somerset family, he was immensely popular and much sought after. And yet, like his professional neighbor, Dr. Vanderveer, he was a bachelor.
During Phoebe Vanderveer's convalescence Dr. Suy- dam, on one plea or another, had found himself frequently calling at the Vanderveer homestead, where, naturally enough, he was made particularly welcome. He had heard, of course, in a general way about the tragic end of Phoebe's love affair, and was honestly moved to great pity for the suffering she had undergone. Affairs like hers are always appealing to people of sentiment, particu- larly when the surviving party of the drama is as inter- esting as Phoebe Vanderveer was. Pity is proverbially near akin to love; and, behold, before the doctor had a suspicion of the fact, he was hopelessly in love with Miss Vanderveer.
As soon as that developed into an unmistakable truth in the doctor's mind, he felt called upon to declare him- self, like the honest and true-hearted gentleman that he was. And as he did when called professionally, he arose and made a bee line for the Vanderveer mansion and pro- posed to the fair Phoebe that she should become his wife.
Thus much has filtered down through devious tradition. But how the proposal was received or what the final an-
-
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swer to the physician was can only be inferred from sub- sequent events in the doctor's life. These were thought remarkable enough, even when considered apart from their romantic origin. They were considered so strange that they were written in the book of the chronicles of Bed- minster Township. But how immensely more interest- ing are extraordinary actions on the part of a man, if we see in them the desperate consequences of a woman's "No!"
Hitherto Dr. Suydam had lived in the old family home- stead with his aged mother, a sister and several slaves inherited from his father. About the time mentioned, the mother having died, his sister went to live with a married sister and he was left alone with the blacks. Soon they began to hang their heads in heaviness and look exceed- ingly sad at being left by the mistresses they loved.
"Away with the lot of you; out of my sight!" the doc- tor, out of patience, one day exclaimed, and he bound every one of them out to service elsewhere. Living now entirely alone, he turned morose and sulky. Patients sent for him, but he answered the messengers without opening the door that he would not come. He declared that he had gone out of practise. Some few poor people came and begged so hard for him to prescribe that he relented, but when he had attended them he told them they must never come again. One of his rich patients, for being too per- sistent after a flat refusal, received part of a pail of water on his head as a prescription.
The doctor fed his own horses, milked his own cow, cooked his meals, and, in fact, did all his housekeeping for himself. Occasionally he saddled his fastest horse in
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the night and rode long journeys, never once stopping to speak to mortal man. Sometimes he hitched up a pair of his roadsters to a bolster wagon without springs, and sit- ting on a rough board laid across it, he would drive like a very jehu all around his former haunts. But the greater part of his time he spent shut up in his house reading the Bible and studying, especially, passages referring to fa- miliar spirits and the casting out of devils.
Bleeding was common in medical practice in those days. Every now and again the doctor would slit the vein in his own arm and bleed himself copiously. Sometimes he bandaged the arm carelessly and more than once the vein opened again. Not infrequently that occurred when he was out on his wild rides, and the result was that he him- self and the horse or vehicle was often marked with blood to the terror of people who saw him. This often placed his life in imminent danger; but he seemed perfectly in- different whether he lived or died. There was only one man with whom he would hold any converse and that was Dr. McDowell, the man who had been invited there to take up the fine practise that the hermit doctor had so unac- countably thrown away.
One day he took Dr. McDowell more closely than usual into his confidence. In the matter of dishwashing, for example, Dr. Suydam had a plan which was all his own. He had bought a great three-bushel basket and a whole lot of plates and dishes for table use. As he used these be put them away in the big basket. When the re- ceptacle was full he carried it to the river which passed near his house, dumped them all in and washed the whole pile at once.
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"Do you see that large box doctor?" the visitor was asked one day. "Well, that box has two compartments ; both are full of evil spirits-little devils! I'm not afraid of them; oh, no! I know every one of them by name. I don't fear them, though they are my deadly enemies. They raise their trap-doors and come out at night, going round the house screaming and blaspheming horribly, and trying all the time to tempt me to do evil things. But I won't! I won't!"
With his long straggling hair and emaciated frame, the once erect, broad-shouldered, handsome, graciously man- nered doctor looked pitiful indeed. He was now such a nervous and physical wreck, that his uncouth look and jerkiness of manner suggested the movements of some big, moulting bird of ill omen.
"Hark!" he cried with raised finger and dilating eyes one night. "Hark! do you hear him, doctor? That's 'Darkness.' He's always out first and is rather a pleasant little devil; but he's soon followed by 'Doubt' and 'Des- pair,' and then the trouble begins. I call them the three double D's. There they go! Do you hear them? Aren't they enough to drive a man mad ?"
"Dear me! dear me!" the visiting doctor interrupted ; why do you indulge in such rank folly, Suydam? You are far too wise a man to thus deceive yourself. Those rat- tlings and squealings, you know, are made by common rats and not by any spirits. Why do you-"
"I won't! I won't!" the demented man shouted, seem- ing to forget his friend's presence and answering the de- mons again.
"Begone! you ugly little devil, Despair! I hear what
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you say: 'Marry for spite! Marry for spite!' you tell me. But I won't! I tell you I won't!"
The recital from time to time of these and many more details of Dr. Suydam's horrible condition to Phoebe Vanderveer, plunged her deeper and deeper into mental agony. At first she believed it was merely an original plan on the part of the doctor to bring pressure to bear upon her heart.
"Alas! alas!" she would complain. "What futility it is thus to press his suit upon a bride of heaven! Paul, my dear, etherealized husband, 'tis but a narrow stream that divides us-a mere thought, a passing breath. Soon it will be over; then forever and forever we shall be united !"
But though it was impossible for her to listen to the doctor's suit, the kind soul of Phoebe Vanderveer was burdened with great sorrow for the fate of the man who evidently gave up all earthly joys because he was denied the heart which she had not in her power or keeping to give him. This ever-increasing weight of woe, added to the unquenchable grief for Paul, in time so sapped the foundations of her reason that she became the picturesque prey of supercilious eccentricity in her later life. As long as she lived, however, in all her most fantastic vagaries and pitiful whims, it is pleasant to know that she had the loving forbearance, sympathy and indulgence of that splendid type of gentleman of the old school, her loyal brother, Dr. Henry Vanderveer.
Even after all was over, when Death in his peaceful guise came and took poor Phoebe to the man she loved, her brother, faithful to the last, remembering and respecting
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her little weakness as to her age and much to the disap- pointment of many curious ones of her sex, did not men- tion it on the tablet which he lovingly raised over her grave in Bedminster churchyard.
It is pleasant to relate that Dr. Suydam in time arose from his despair and once more "clothed and in his right mind," resumed his practise, married a very estimable lady, attained the highest place in his profession and died at a ripe old age, beloved and respected by every one who knew him.
DR. VANDERVEER'S ROMANCE.
SOMERSET COUNTY PHYSICIAN OF LONG AGO WON FIGHT AGAINST DEATH BUT LOST IN THE BATTLE OF LOVE.
One of the interesting tales of bygone days that were recalled by Mrs. Hugh Hartwell, of Somerville, when the writer met her recently at the old Van Nest homestead, where "Prince" George was born and brought up a fam- ily, was about a romance in the life of old Dr. Henry Vanderveer, of Pluckemin. It was a story that Mrs. Hartwell's grandmother, Mrs. Davenport Van Nest, never tired of telling, and one that my informant never wearied of hearing.
It will be remembered by readers of this series that Dr. Vanderveer lived and died a bachelor. This was not really surprising, when his many eccentricities were con- sidered. But, after all, it seems that it was not by any means through choice that he lived in celibacy. On the contrary, at least once in his life he appears to have made truly heroic efforts to join the noble army of benedicts. It was, of course, only another of his oddities that he de- layed this move until he was far advanced in life and that the lady of his choice, so far as age was concerned, might have been his great-granddaughter.
On McDougal street, only a block or two away from . Abraham Van Nest's fine old homestead in ancient Green- wich, N. Y., lived a family named Angevin, a daughter of which, called Mary, was a beautiful and cultivated young woman, but extremely delicate. Mary was a niece of
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Mrs. Davenport Van Nest, and often visited the Abraham Van Nests, her near neighbors at old Greenwich. But her favorite visit was to her aunt at the old Van Nest homestead, in lovely Somerset. Here at the age of twenty she met Dr. Henry Vanderveer, who was then seventy.
One evening while she and her aunt sat by the open parlor window enjoying the cooling breeze, a man on horseback rode up the avenue. He was Dr. Vanderveer.
As the wonderfully preserved doctor appeared in the hall, with fine, erect form, tight-buttoned coat, shining top boots and gilded spurs, a step as firm and buoyant as most men have at thirty, and without a silver thread in his wavy hair, he was a striking figure. Holding his low-crowned silk hat and silver-headed riding whip in one hand, with the other he handed Mrs. Van Nest some nostrum that he had come to deliver. Then with apologies for his haste and with the usual polite conventionalisms, he was bowing himself out from the entrance hall, when his hostess stopped him.
"Doctor," she said, "I would like you to see my niece. Won't you step in for a moment?"
"Ah! how do you do?" the physician said with his most courtly bow when he was presented to Miss Angevin.
"My dear Mrs. Van Nest, your niece is very beautiful," he remarked on leaving. "We must relieve that cough of hers or she will die of consumption."
On a subsequent visit and while in consultation with the aunt the doctor stood a moment looking down in silence and tapping the floor with his foot.
"I-I-that is, Mrs. Van Nest," he said, haltingly, "you've known me a long time as being always sincere, and
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perhaps impetuous. The fact is, I'm an old fool, no doubt; but something tells me I shall marry this most lovely young creature! No such thought or consciousness ever before possessed me. Pray, my dear friend, be my con- fidant. As physician, I propose to attack and conquer what will otherwise steal away this incomparable bud of womanhood. If I succeed I shall ask her to be my wife."
Then commenced the duel between death and Dr. Vanderveer for a bride. Those who knew the doctor and his secret knew that he was a physician of deep and re- sourceful skill and they felt confident that his grim an- tagonist, though sure to win in the long run, would find a doughty opponent. The fight went on and the doctor seemed to be clearly winning until in the succeeding fall the fair prize had such a relapse that death seemed an easy victor. But the doctor, with unabated ardor, so effectually drove back his terrible antagonist that his pa- tient came again on her annual visit to Jersey, really better in health and more radiantly beautiful than ever.
Dr. Vanderveer was jubilant. At all times fastidious in dress, he now kept pace as it were with nature's re- freshing rejuvenation everywhere, and burst forth into full blossom in suit after suit of the most exquisite effects to be had in New York. Perhaps the most striking and for potent reasons his favorite suit included a blue swal- lowtail, silk-embroidered coat with brass buttons, yellow plush vest, ruffled shirt front and wristbands and drab shorts, or kneebreeches, with broad silver knee and shoe buckles. Miss Angevin had complimented him upon his appearance in this suit and so he wore it more than any
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other. He also chose it for the occasion of his first plain declaration of his love for his fair patient.
It must be admitted, despite the disparity of no less than fifty years in their ages, that when they came through the hall on their way to the garden, after that important conversation, they were a striking looking couple. What- ever had been her answer to the doctor's proposal it cer- tainly could not have been unfavorable, for they were dis- tinctly more joyous in each other's society than ever be- fore.
Dr. Vanderveer was a rich man, and now that he had declared himself a suitor for her hand, he loaded his fiancee with costly presents and sparkling trinkets.
As the summer merged into autumn, Mary again de- veloping unfavorable pulmonary symptoms, this being her weak point, and the doctor fearing phthisis, he determined and insisted on taking her to Niagara for her health. She assented, on the understanding that she should first be allowed a few days at home, in New York. He de- clared it to be an unnecessary delay, but took her to her home and arranged to call for her the following week.
Sad comment as it is on a beautiful girl's sense of honor, the truth must be told. And this is it: Long before Dr. Vanderveer could have reached home, Mary Angevin had arranged a meeting with a young man-a handsome young fellow he was admittedly, and of most engaging presence, but in all other respects an utter failure, if ever one lived. Soon they were together and rapturously he folded her in his arms, almost before a word was spoken.
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