CHAPTER IV.
The Barn Frolic.
If Rhoda doubted James’s chivalric attitude toward her, she had reason to change her mind before the day was over. Her escort was all attention, and when it became evident that Becky Lowe had lost her wager, Lettice cast a merry glance at Rhoda, giving her a nod of approval. In spite of the fact that Becky was a neighbor, Lettice felt that she must champion her uncle’s guest. As they stepped aboard the little vessel which was to take them on their short sail, she whispered to Patsey, “We must make Rhoda have a good time.” And Patsey gave a responsive smile.
Patsey had been a little jealous of Rhoda on Joe’s account, but the evident devotion of his Cousin James rather relieved her feelings in that direction, and she confessed to herself that Joe had paid Rhoda only such attentions as were becoming that he should show to a visitor in his father’s house.
“Now what are we going to do?” asked Becky, when they were all safely aboard the graceful sailboat which, with canvas set, was speeding toward Love Point.
“We’re going to Kent Island, you know,” Lettice told her. “We are not going anywhere else first, are we, Birket?” She turned to address a very young gentleman at her side.
“No, miss,” he returned, “so Joe Hopkins says. I was over at the Ringgold’s, and Joe asked me to come along.”
“But you didn’t come without knowing where we were going, did you, Birket?”
The young man murmured something unintelligible, and gave his attention to the jib-boom which threatened to annihilate Rhoda, who was not used to a sailing vessel.
“You don’t go sailing up your way much, do you, Miss Kendall?” Becky said. “We all down here go about on the water as much as we do on the land.”
“We don’t have to,” Rhoda returned, a trifle defiantly. She was on the defensive since her late talk with James. She had scarcely spoken to the young man since they had started from home, but had managed to seat herself near Patsey and Joe.
“No, they don’t have to up there,” spoke up James.“They have good roads, and go straight at a thing instead of driving over roundabout ways for miles to a place not a mile off, as we have to do. I tell you that is a fine harbor they have there at Boston, Miss Rhoda! Ever been there, Becky?”
“No, you know I haven’t!” she returned with some vexation.
“And it’s a beautiful coast,” James went on; “rocky, you know; not sandy like ours. It certainly seems right pretty after our level country, where we go miles on a stretch without so much as one little hill to break the monotony.”
Becky was silenced for the time, but she had shafts in reserve. She resented the presence of this fair-haired Northern girl. What business had she down there usurping Becky’s own right to an admirer? Lettice watched the manœuvres of Miss Becky with sly glances at Patsey. Lettice herself was entirely heart-free. She was too young to be greatly troubled by affairs of sentiment, although she had twice imagined herself violently in love; once with a young gentleman who had passed an evening at her uncle’s, and who had made himself particularly agreeable to her; even now she liked to think about him, wondering if she should ever see him again. He was from New York, she remembered, and she became so absorbed in her recollections of him, that she did notnotice the youthful cavalier who stood waiting to help her ashore.
“Lettice is going to stay where she is,” laughed Becky; “she doesn’t care to dance, you know, nor does she care for supper.”
“Don’t I?” cried Lettice, on her feet at once. “I do care. Your hand, Birk, and I’ll be ashore before any one;” which indeed she was, and stood laughing to greet the others as each made the landing.
A supper of oysters, crabs, biscuits, and such-like Maryland dainties, was eaten merrily enough. Rhoda was a little reserved, but chatted pleasantly with Patsey, Joe, and the one or two whom she knew; Lettice was full of fun, and was as sportive as a kitten, ready to go crabbing, or to row out into the creek whose waters reflected a gorgeous sunset sky, to tease her Cousin Joe, or her Brother James, till finally she dropped down on the sands in quite a thoughtful mood, listening to Becky’s lazy voice as she inquired of Rhoda, “Do you go fox-hunting, Miss Kendall?”
“No, I do not,” was the reply. “I ride sometimes, but we are not much given to the chase.”
“Oh!” Becky lifted her eyebrows. “It’s veryexciting, and we all think it’s great fun. Shall you stay long enough to go this fall when the season begins?”
“I hardly know; it will depend upon my father’s plans. He is in Washington now.”
“Is he getting ready to fight?”
“I hope not,” Rhoda returned severely.
“Oh, don’t you want war? We all do; we think it must come. Isn’t it funny, Mr. Dean? Miss Kendall doesn’t approve of the war.”
“That’s because she’s from Massachusetts,” Mr. Dean made reply, having reasons of his own for wanting to please Miss Becky.
Rhoda bit her lip, but James came to the rescue. “Look here,” he said; “it seems to me that it’s pretty early to be flinging at Massachusetts. The war’s hardly begun, and if she wants to be cautious, what’s that to us? I think her Revolutionary record will stand investigation. We know well enough how she gave everything to the cause; her men didn’t spare themselves, neither did her women. I say it’s too early, Dean, to criticise.” He had moved closer to Rhoda, and she looked up at him gratefully. “Perhaps we are the ones who are wrong, after all,” James continued.
Stephen Dean gave a low whistle. “Whew!” he exclaimed, “I thought you were hot foot for war.”
“So I am; but that isn’t saying that I’m infallible, is it? If we get whipped, maybe we’ll wish we hadn’t been quite so peart in stirring up old England—Hallo! there’s a boat coming in. It’s your father, Miss Rhoda, and Uncle Tom, and a stranger.”
The small vessel containing the new arrivals now gracefully approached the landing, and in a moment Rhoda was welcoming her father, Joe was rapidly putting questions, while before Lettice, who was standing shyly apart, was bowing the young gentleman of her dreams. “Fair Miss Lettice, this is a very happy meeting,” said young Mr. Robert Clinton. “I am fortunate to have arrived in time for a jubilee. What is the occasion? a birthday?”
“No special occasion; it is but one of the frolics we often have. Mr. Sam Osborne has built a new barn, and the young people in the neighborhood are going to have a dance there this evening. We have just been having a crab supper.”
“Am I too late for scraps?”
“No, there is an abundance left. I will orderBounce to get you all something.”
“Don’t run away.”
“I will come back. I must see if my father sent me a message.” She approached her Uncle Tom, having stopped to bid Bounce serve the gentlemen with the best that was left of the feast.
“Free trade and sailor’s rights! that is the cry,” her uncle was saying, and on the other side, Mr. Kendall replied, “As our great Josiah Quincy says, sir, ‘we’re not going to be kicked into a war.’ Sailor’s rights, indeed! Where is your navy?”
“There,” Mr. Hopkins waved his hand toward the blue Chesapeake dotted with the white sails of her schooners and clippers.
Mr. Kendall smiled sarcastically. “And your marines?”
“Here,” returned Mr. Hopkins, indicating the party of sunburnt young men before them. “Think you, sir, that we shall endure the heel of England upon our necks? You may be willing meekly to accept her abuse for the sake of the profit that will accrue from swallowing her insults, but we of the South are of a different mould.”
“Your John Randolph is not so eager to voiceyour cry of free trade and sailor’s rights.”
“But our Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun do voice it.”
“Politics! Politics!” cried Lettice. “Just a short rest from them, Uncle Tom. Will you and Mr. Kendall partake of some refreshments, and leave politics till another time? It seems to me that you will find it vastly more agreeable to discuss a devilled crab. Uncle Tom, did you bring me any message from my father?”
“His love, and he will see you before we are ordered off.”
“Ordered off! Oh, Uncle Tom, you are really going to join the troops?”
“Yes.”
“What is the news from Canada, father?” Rhoda asked.
“What might have been expected,” he returned; “Hull has surrendered.”
“Oh, do you mean General William Hull?”
“That’s the man.”
Rhoda cast a triumphant glance at James who had joined them, and the lad flushed angrily. “Is that really true, or is it only a report?” he asked his uncle.
“Too true,” he answered; “but,” laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “we shall have need of you yet, Jamie. We are disgusted, but not defeated,for another Hull has given us a glorious victory on the sea to offset our defeat on land.”
“What’s that, sir? We haven’t heard the news yet.”
“You might have heard it fast enough, if you had been a little nearer to Baltimore, for they fired salutes in honor of the news, and every ship in the harbor ran up her flag. Captain Isaac Hull has taken theGuerrièreas a prize into Boston, and the whole country is jubilant.”
“TheGuerrière? Dacres’s ship? Then Hull has won his hat,” James cried. “Hurrah for Hull and the oldConstitution!”
“What’s that about a hat?” Lettice asked.
“Why, Dacres and Hull laid a wager of a hat, each declaring that he would whip the other if they ever met on the high seas, and old Hull has won.” And James struck up a song written by Mr. Francis Hopkinson and called “The Favorite New Federal Song,” although we know it now as “Hail Columbia.”
“And you, sir?” said Lettice to Mr. Clinton, who, with a devilled crab in one hand and a sandwich in the other, was about to throw himself at her feet. “You, Mr. Clinton, what do you thinkof this war question?”
“It’s all nonsense!” he exclaimed with an amused glance at her. “Surely, Miss Lettice, a pretty girl doesn’t need to bother her head about loans, taxes, navies, and war news.”
Lettice regarded him gravely. “I am not so sure about that,” she rejoined. “I don’t really know all about it, but I don’t think the British have any right to steal our sailors.”
“And what do you think of the letters-of-marque and reprisal? And will you favor me with your opinion on carrying trade and the constructive blockade?”
Lettice looked bewildered, and Mr. Clinton laughed. “I did but tease you, fair demoiselle. ’Tis not for ladies to bother their heads about such things; what concerns them more is a question of a becoming gown or a new dancing step. What, by the way, is this that I hear of a dance in a barn? May I hope to have the honor?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“The first?”
“That is promised,” returned Lettice, reluctantly.
“The second, then?”
“That, too.”
“The third, then?”
“I told my Cousin Joe that I would give him that, but—”
“Since he is your cousin, perhaps I can persuade him to exchange places with me, if you will allow.”
“Oh! ye-es,” Lettice replied, trying to cover her first exclamation of eagerness by a little show of reluctance. “If you like, you can settle it with Cousin Joe. I don’t care.”
Her uncle was watching her amusedly. “Don’t go over to the enemy, Letty,” he said as she passed him.
“No fear of that,” she replied, laughing, but with a little fluttering at heart. What was the use of a girl’s bothering about politics, after all, she thought; even James had said that perhaps a war was not right, and—yes, of course she was what her father was, but that didn’t mean she could not have friends on the other side. Look at Mr. Kendall and her Uncle Tom, they were brothers-in-law and friends, yet they didn’t agree. So she put all disturbing questions aside, and danced her prettiest with this new gallant, feeling that she was the envy of the older girls, for no one was led out more gracefully than she, though all the neighborhood was famous for its good dancers. Thetobacco barn with its big floor was a fine place for a dance, and the courtseyings and dippings and bowings went on till all hours. The fashion of round dances had not yet reached the place, and more stately measures were used.
“Across there, where you see the lights twinkling, is Annapolis,” Lettice told Mr. Clinton on their homeward voyage. She had turned a cold shoulder on Birket Dean, and was listening with evident pleasure to the newcomer’s low-spoken words. “It was from there theConstitutionsailed, only last month; we saw her go out. I wonder what will be the next news,” she said in one of the pauses of the conversation.
“Still troubling your pretty head with such matters?” returned Mr. Clinton, smiling at her. “Rather let us speak of yonder moon sailing so serenely across the heavens.” And he began to quote poetry to her, till she did indeed forget war’s alarms.
Lounging at Rhoda’s feet, James every now and then turned his curly head toward the slim girl figure. She was very kind to him on this homeward trip, and they did not once get into an argument.
Joe and Patsey sat suspiciously close together.They were both very quiet. “If I were going to be married at Christmas, I wonder if I should find no more to talk about than Joe and Patsey,” Lettice thought. But she did not know that the wedding day was an indefinite matter, and that Joe had just informed his sweetheart that he should, in a few days, take command of one of his father’s clippers, and that his business would be to harass English vessels whenever he could. “I’d like to meet that wretched thief who stole Pat Flynn,” he said; “I’d make him suffer for it.” But Patsey was silent. Privateering for her Joe! The uncertainty of the sea was bad enough, but add to that the dangers of warfare, and it was too much. The girl’s heart was very full; she could only let her hand lie in Joe’s strong clasp, and be thankful for the present, for the future seemed suddenly to slip into an impenetrable cloud.
At first Joe had urged an immediate marriage, but Patsey shook her head. “You’ll be back by Christmas?” she faltered.
“Surely, unless—” His clasp on Patsey’s hand tightened, and he had no further words.
The little craft rounded Love’s Point and turned into the waters of the Chester River. “Your uncle promises me some rare sport during the shootingseason down here. The country is a very paradise, not only because of its delights, but because of the angelic beings who dwell here,” Mr. Clinton remarked sentimentally to Lettice.
“Angels?” laughed Lettice. “Do you perhaps mean ghosts? The darkies are dreadfully afraid of them, and won’t go near our graveyard.”
“Have you a special graveyard of your own?”
“Yes, haven’t you? Ours is such a quiet, dim little corner of the plantation. It is all moss-grown, and the trees are so thick and green there.”
“Will you show it to me some day?”
“Yes, if you like; but I don’t believe I’d care to go there at night myself.”
“Not if I were with you? Surely, you’d not be afraid then.”
“You couldn’t keep off haunts,” returned Lettice. “Don’t let’s talk of them, it makes me creepy. I like the place in the daytime, when the sun shines in between the leaves and flickers down on the headstones. It is pleasant to go there then, and lie in the long grass, only I always like to have Lutie, even then.”
“And who is Lutie?”
“My maid. She belonged to my mother, andwas given to me when I was born.”
“And your mother?”
“She lies in the graveyard; so does my little sister. My eldest brother’s headstone is there, too.” Lettice gave a sigh; she always did when she spoke of this brother; a wild young fellow who had been a trial to his family, and who one day set off for Norfolk with a set of roistering fellows, as feather-brained as himself, and had fallen overboard. A stone to his memory had been set up in the family burying-ground, although his body had never been recovered. This loss was the shock which hastened his mother’s death, and the family rarely spoke of him.
Just then the old darkey who had been playing such tunes as “Cooney in de Holler” and “Jim along o’ Josey” struck up a plaintive melody on his fiddle. They were nearing home. Overhead a waning moon was low in the heavens, athwart which, now and then, sped a meteor; all was still, save for the lapping of waves against the sides of the boats or the sound of the light breeze in the sails. One could not realize that soon from shore to shore would reverberate the cannon’s booming, and that terror would overspread the fair and quiet land.