There was but one doubt as to the success of this curious scheme in my mind, and that was that Mistress Mary might not easily lend herself to such deception. However, Captain Tabor, with a skill of devising concerning which I have often wondered whether it may be more common in the descendants of those who settled in New England, who were in such sore straits to get their own wills, than with us of Virginia, provided a way through that difficulty.
"'Tis full easy," said he. "You say that the maid's sister will say naught against it—and you?"
"I will say naught against her safety," said I. "What think you I care for any little quibbles of the truth when that be in question?"
"Well," said Captain Tabor, "then must you and Mistress Catherine Cavendish show the goods to the maid, and say naught as to the means by which you came by them; tell her they are landed from the Golden Horn, as indeed they will be; let her think aught she chooses, that they are indeed her own, purchased for her by her sister or her lovers, if she choose to think so, and bid her display them with no ado to Madam Cavendish, if she value the safety of the others who are concerned in this. Betwixt the mystery and the fright and the sight of the trinkets, if she be aught on the pattern of any other maid, show them she will, and hold her tongue till she be out of her grandmother's presence."
"It can be but tried," said I.
Then the captain sprang out on deck, and ordered a boat lowered, and presently had set me ashore, and was himself, with a half-dozen sailors, fighting way down-stream.
I found my horse on the bank where I had left him, and by him, waiting anxiously, Catherine Cavendish. She listened with deepening eyes while I told her Captain Tabor's scheme, and when I had done looked at me with her beautiful mouth set and her face as white as a white flower on a bush beside her. "Mary shall show the goods," said she. "Such a story will I tell her as will make her innocent of aught save bewilderment, and as for you and me, we are both of us ready to burn for a lie for the sake of her."
I know not how Capt. Calvin Tabor managed his part to tranship those goods without discovery, but he had a shrewd head, and no doubt the captain of the Earl of Fairfax another, and by eight o'clock that May day the Golden Horn lay at her wharf discharging her cargo right lustily with such openness of zeal and shouts of encouragement and groans of labour 'twas enough to acquaint all the colony. And straightway to the great house they brought my Lady Culpeper's fallals, and clamped them in the hall where we were all at supper. Mistress Mary sprang to her feet, and ran to them and bent over them. "What are these?" she said, all in a quiver.
"The goods which you ordered, madam," spoke up one of the sailors, with a grin which he had copied from Captain Tabor, and pulled a forelock and ducked his head.
"The goods," said she, speaking faintly, for hers was rather the headlong course of enthusiasm than the secret windings of diplomacy.
"Art thou gone daft, sweetheart? The goods of which you gave the list this morning, which have but now come in on the Golden Horn," spake up Catherine, sharply. I marvelled as I heard her whether it be ease or tenderness of conscience which can appease a woman with the letter and not the substance of the truth, for I am confident that her keeping to the outward show of honesty in her life was no small comfort to Catherine Cavendish.
Madam Cavendish was at table that night, though moving with grimaces from the stiffness of her rheumatic joints, and she ordered that the sailors be given cider, the which they drank with some haste, and were gone. Then Madam Cavendish asked Mistress Mary, with her wonderful keenness of gaze, which I never saw excelled, "Are those the goods which you ordered by the Golden Horn?" But I answered for her, knowing that Madam Cavendish would pardon such presumption from me. "Madam, those are the goods. I have it from Capt. Calvin Tabor himself." I spoke with no roundings nor glossings of subterfuge, having ever held that all the excuse for a lie was its boldness in a good cause, and believing in slaying a commandment like an enemy with a clean cut of the sword.
Mistress Mary gave a little gasp, and looked at me, and looked at her sister Catherine, and well I knew it was on the tip of her tongue to out with the whole to her grandmother. And so she would doubtless have done had not her wonderment and suspicion that maybe in some wise Catherine had conspired to buy for her in England the goods of which she had cheated herself, and the terror of doing harm to her sister and me. But never saw I a maid go so white and red and make the strife within her so evident.
We were well-nigh through supper when the goods arrived, and Madam Cavendish ordered some of the slaves to open the cases, which they did forthwith, and all my Lady Culpeper's finery was displayed.
Never saw I such a rich assortment, and calling to mind my Lady Culpeper's thin and sour visage, I wondered within myself whether such fine feathers might in her case suffice to make a fine bird, though some of them were for her daughter Cate, who was fair enough. Nothing would do but Mistress Mary, with her lovely face still strange to see with her consternation of puzzlement, should severally display every piece to her grandmother, and hold against her complexion the rich stuffs to see if the colours suited her. Madam Cavendish was pleased to express her satisfaction with them all, though with some demur at the extravagance. "'Tis rich enough a wardrobe for my Lady Culpeper," said she, at which innocent shrewdness I was driven to hard straits to keep my face grave, but Mistress Catherine was looking on with a countenance as calm as the moon which was just then rising.
Madam Cavendish was pleased especially with one gown of a sky colour, shot with silver threads, and ordered that Mistress Mary should wear it to the ball which was to be given at the governor's house the next night.
When I heard that I started, and Catherine shot a pale glance of consternation at me, but Mistress Mary flushed rosy-red with rebellion.
"I have no desire to attend my Lord Culpeper's ball, madam," said she.
"Lord Culpeper is the representative of his Majesty here in Virginia," said Madam Cavendish, with a high head, "and no granddaughter of mine absents herself with my approval. To the ball you go, madam, and in that sky-coloured gown, and no more words. Things have come to a pretty pass." So saying, she rose and, leaning heavily on her stick, with her black maid propping her, she went out. Then turned Mistress Mary imperiously to us and demanded to know the meaning of it all. "Whence came these goods?" said she to Catherine.
"On the Golden Horn, sweetheart; 'tis the list you gave this morning," replied Catherine, without a change in the fair resolve of her face.
"Pish!" cried Mary Cavendish. "The list I gave this morning was my Lady Culpeper's, and you know it. Whence came these?" and she spurned at a heap of the rich gleaming things with the toe of her tiny foot.
"I tell you, sweetheart, on the Golden Horn," replied Catherine. Then she turned to me in a rage. "The truth I will have," she cried out. "Whence came these goods?"
"On the Golden Horn, madam," I said.
She stamped her foot, and her voice rang so shrill that the black slaves, carrying out the dishes, rolled alarmed eyes at her. "Think you I will be treated like a child?" she cried out. "What means all this?"
Then close to her went Catherine, and flung an arm around her, and leaned her smooth, fair head against her sister's tossing golden one. "For the sake of those you love and who love thee, sweetheart," she whispered.
But Mistress Mary pushed her away and looked at her angrily. "Well, what am I to do for their sakes?" she demanded.
"Seek to know no more than this. The goods came on the Golden Horn but now, and 'tis the list you gave this morning."
"But it was not my list, and I deceived my grandmother, and I will go to her now and out with the truth. Think you I will have such a falsehood on my soul?"
Catherine leaned closer to her and whispered, and Mary gave a quick, wild glance at me, but I know not what she said. "I pray thee seek to know no more than that the goods came but now in a boat from the Golden Horn, and 'tis the list you gave this morning," said Catherine aloud.
"They are not mine by right, and well you know it." Then a thought struck me, and I said with emphasis, "Madam, yours by right they are and shall be, and I pray you to have no more concern in the matter."
Then so saying, I hastened out and went through the moonlight to the wharf to seek Captain Tabor and the captain of the Earl of Fairfax, who had come with his goods to see to their safety. Both men were pacing back and forth, smoking long pipes, and Captain Watson, of the Earl of Fairfax, a small and eager-spoken man, turned on me the minute I came within hearing. "Where be my Lady Culpeper's goods?" said he; "'tis time they were here and I on my way to the ship. Devil take me if I run such a risk again for any man."
Then I made my errand known. I had some fifty pounds saved up from the wreck of my fortunes; 'twas a third more than the goods were worth. Would he but take it, pay the London merchant who had furnished them, and have the remainder for his trouble?
"Trouble, trouble!" he shouted out, "trouble! By all the foul fiends, man, what am I to say to my Lady Culpeper? Have you ever had speech with her that you propose such a game with her?"
Captain Tabor burst out with a loud guffaw of laughter. "You have not seen the maid for whom you run the risk, Dick," said he. "'Tis the fairest—"
"What care I for fair maids?" demanded the other. "Have I not a wife and seven little ones in old England? What think you a dimple or a bright eye hath of weight with me?"
"Time was, Dick," laughed Captain Tabor.
"Time that was no longer is," answered the other, crossly; then to me, "Send down my goods by some of those black fellows, and no more parleying, sir."
"But, sir," I said, "'twill be a good fifteen pound for MistressWatson and the little ones when the merchant be paid."
"Go to," he growled out, "what will that avail if I be put in prison? What am I to say to my Lady Culpeper for the non-deliverment of her goods? Answer me that." Then came Captain Tabor to my aid with his merry shrewdness. "'Tis as easy as the nose on thy face, Dick," said he. "Say but to my lady that you have searched and the goods be not in the hold of the Earl of Fairfax, and must have miscarried, as faith they have, and say that next voyage you will deliver them and hold thyself responsible for the cost, as you well can afford with Master Wingfield's money."
"Hast ever heard my Lady Culpeper's tongue?" demanded the other. "'Tis easy to advise. Would you face her thyself without the goods in hand, Calvin Tabor?"
"Faith, and I'd face a dozen like her for fifteen pound," declared Captain Tabor. Then, with another great laugh. "I have it; send thy mate, send thy deaf mate, Jack Tarbox, man."
"But she will demand to see the captain."
"Faith, and the captain will be on board the Earl of Fairfax seeing to a leak which she hath sprung, and cannot leave her," said Tabor.
"But in two days' time the governor sails in my ship for England."
"Think ye the governor will concern himself about my lady's adornments when he be headed for England and out of reach of her complaints?"
"But how to dodge her for so long?"
"Dick," said the other, solemnly, "much I have it in mind that a case of fever will break out upon the Earl of Fairfax by to-morrow or next day."
"Then think you that my lady will allow her lord the governor to sail?"
"Dick," laughed Captain Tabor, "governors be great men and you but a poor sailor, but when it comes to coin in wifely value, thy weight in the heart of thy good Bridget would send the governor of Virginia higher than thy masthead. None but my Lady Culpeper need have hint of the fever."
"I have a sailor ailing," said the other, doubtfully, "but he hath no sign of fever."
"'Tis enough," cried the other, gayly. "His fever will rage in twelve hours enough to heat the 'tween decks."
"But," said Captain Watson, speaking angrily, and yet with a certain timidity, as men will do before a scoffing friend and their own accusing conscience, "you ask me to forswear myself."
"Nay, that I will not," cried the other. "By the Lord, I forgot thy conscience, good Dick. Well, I have enough from my ancestors of Plymouth to forswear and forswear again, and yet have some to spare. I—I will go to my Lady Culpeper with the tale and save thy soul thy scruples, and thy ears the melody of her tongue. I will acquaint her with the miscarriage of the goods, and whisper of the sick sailor, and all thou hast to do is to loiter about Jamestown, keeping thy Bridget well in mind the while, and load thy ship with the produce of the soil which the beggars of Virginia give of their loyalty to His Majesty King Charles, and then to take on board my Lord Culpeper and set sail."
"'Tis a fearful risk," groaned the other, "though I am a poor man, and I will admit that my Bridget—"
"'Tis a fearful risk for you, Captain Tabor, and through you for my mistress," I interrupted, for I did not half like the plan.
"Our ships lay alongside, and I am hailed by a brother mariner in distress both at the prospect of the displeasure of a great and noble lady and the suspicion of his honesty; but for that latter will I vouch with my own, and, if needs be, will give surety that the list of goods which she ordered shall be delivered next voyage," said Calvin Tabor.
"Her tongue, you know not her tongue," groaned the other.
"Even that will I dare for thee, Dick, for thee and that fair little maid who is dabbling her pretty fingers in that flaming pudding with which only the tough ones of a man should meddle," said Captain Tabor. "And as for risk for me, my sailormen be as much in the toils for Sabbath-breaking as their captain, should yesterday's work leak out; and not a man of them knoweth the contents of those cases, though, faith, and I heard them marvelling among themselves at the weight of feathers and silken petticoats, and I made port in the night-time before, and not a soul knew of it nor the unlading, save those which be bound to keep the secret for their own necks, and, and—well, Captain Tabor be not averse to somewhat of risk; it gives a savour to life." So saying, he rolled his bright-blue eyes at me and Captain Watson with such utter good-nature and dare-deviltry as I have never seen equalled.
It was finally agreed that Captain Tabor's plan should be carried out, and I wended my way back to Drake Hill with a feeling of triumph, to which I of late years had been a stranger. I know of nothing in the poor life of a man equal to that great delight of being of service to one beloved.
I reflected with such ever-increasing joy that it finally became an ecstasy, and I could almost, it seemed, see the colours of it in my path; how, had it not been for me, Mary Cavendish might have been in sore straits; and I verily believe I was as happy for the time as if she had been my promised sweetheart and was as proud of myself.
When about half-way to Drake Hill I heard afar off a great din of bells and horns and voices, which presently came nearer. Then the road was filled up with the dancing May revellers, and verily I wondered not so much at those decrees against such practices before the Restoration, for it was as if the savages which they do say are underneath the outer gloss of the best of us had broke loose, and I wondered if it might not be like those mad and unlawful orgies which it was said the god Pan led himself in person through Thessalian groves. Those honest country maids, who in the morning had advanced with rustic but innocent freedom, with their glossy heads crowned with flowers, and those lusty youths, who were indeed something boisterous, yet still held in a tight rein by decency, had seemingly changed their very natures, or rather, perhaps, had come to that pass when their natures could be no longer concealed. Along the road in the white moonlight they stamped as wantonly as any herd of kine; youths and maids with arms about each other, and all with faces flushed with ale-drinking, and the maids with tossing hair and draggled coats, and all the fresh garlands withered or scattered. And the old graybeard who was Maid Marion was riotously drunk, and borne aloft with mad and feeble gesturings on the shoulders of two staggering young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers, only upheld from collapse in the mire by mutual upholdings, until they seemed like some monstrous animal moving with uncouth sprawls of legs as multifold as a centipede, and wavering drunkenly from one side of the road to the other, lurching into the dewy bushes, then recovering by the joint effort of the whole.
I stood well back to let them pass, being in that mood of self-importance, by reason of my love and the service rendered by it, that I could have seen the whole posse led to the whipping-block with a relish, when suddenly from their tipsy throats came a shout of such import that my heart stood still. "Down with the king!" hallooed one mad reveller, in a voice of such thickness that the whole sentence seemed one word; then the others took it up, until verily it seemed to me that their heads were not worth a farthing. Then, "Down with the governor! down with Lord Culpeper!" shouted that same thick voice of the man who was leading the wild crew like a bell-wether. He forged ahead, something more steady on his legs, but all the madder of his wits for that, with an arm around the waist of a buxom lass on either side, and all three dancing in time. Then all the rest echoed that shout of "Down with the governor!" Then out he burst again with, "Down, down with the tobacco, down with the tobacco!" But the volley of that echo was cut short by five horsemen galloping after the throng and scattering them to the right and left. Then a great voice of authority, set out with the strangest oaths which ever an imagination of evil compassed, called out to them to be still if they valued their heads, and cursed them all for drunken fools, and as he spoke he lashed with his whip from side to side, and his face gleamed with wrath like a demon's in the full light, and I saw he was Captain Noel Jaynes, and well understood how he had made a name for himself on the high seas. After him rode the brothers, Nicholas and Richard Barry, two great men, sticking to their saddles like rocks, with fair locks alike on the head of each flung out on the wind, and then came Ralph Drake rising in his stirrups and laughing wildly, and last Parson Downs, but only last because the road was blocked, for verily I thought his plunging horse would have all before him under his feet. They were all past me in a trice like a dream, the May revellers scattering and hastening forward with shrieks of terror and shouts of rage and peals of defiant laughter, and Captain Jaynes' voice, like a trumpet, overbearing everything, and shouts from the Barry brothers echoing him, and now and then coming the deep rumble of expostulations from the parson's great chest, and Ralph Drake's peals of horse-laughter, and I was left to consider what a tinder-box this Colony of Virginia was, and how ready to leap to flame at a spark even when seemingly most at peace, and to regard with more and more anxiety Mary Cavendish's part in this brewing tumult.
After the shouting and hallooing throng had passed I walked along slowly, reflecting, as I have said, when I saw in the road before me two advancing—a woman, and a man leading a horse by the bridle, and it was Mary Cavendish and Sir Humphrey Hyde.
And when I came up with them they stopped, and Humphrey addressed me rudely enough, but as one gentleman might another when he was angered with him, and not contemptuously, for that was never the lad's way with me. "Master Wingfield," he said, standing before me and holding his champing horse hard by the bits, "I pray you have the grace to explain this matter of the goods."
I saw that Mistress Mary had been acquainting him with what had passed and her puzzlement over it.
"There is naught to explain, Sir Humphrey," said I. "'Tis very simple: Mistress Mary hath the goods for which she sent to England."
"Master Wingfield, you know those are my Lady Culpeper's goods, and I have no right to them," cried Mary. But I bowed and said, "Madam, the goods are yours, and not Lady Culpeper's."
"But I—I lied when I gave the list to my grandmother," she cried out, half sobbing, for she was, after all, little more than a child tiptoed to womanhood by enthusiasm.
"Madam," said I, and I bowed again. "You mistake yourself; MistressMary Cavendish cannot lie, and the goods are in truth yours."
She and Sir Humphrey looked at each other; then Harry made a stride forward, and forcing back his horse with one hand, grasped me with the other. "Harry, Harry," he said in a whisper. "Tell me, for God's sake, what have you done."
"The goods are Mistress Mary Cavendish's," said I. They looked at me as I have seen folk look at a page of Virgil.
"Were they, after all, not my Lady Culpeper's?" asked Sir Humphrey.
"They are Mistress Mary Cavendish's," said I.
Mary turned suddenly to Sir Humphrey. "'Tis time you were gone now, Humphrey," she said, softly. "'Twas only last night you were here, and there is need of caution, and your mother—"
But Humphrey was loth to go. "'Tis not late," he said, "and I would know more of this matter."
"You will never know more of Master Wingfield, if that is what you wait for," she returned, with a half laugh, "and, Humphrey, your sister Cicely said but this morning that your mother was over-curious. I pray you, go, and Master Wingfield will take me home. I pray you, go!"
Sir Humphrey took her hand and bent low over it, and murmured something; then, before he sprang to his saddle, he came close to me again. "Harry," he whispered, "she should not be in this business, and I would have not had it so could I have helped it, and, I pray you, have a care to her safety." This he spoke so low that Mary could not hear, and, moreover, she, with one of those sudden turns of hers that made her have as many faces of delight as a diamond in the sun, had thrown an arm around the neck of Sir Humphrey's mare, and was talking to her in such dulcet tones as her lovers would have died for the sake of hearing in their ears.
"Have no fears for her safety," I whispered back. "So far as the goods go, there is no more danger."
"What did you, Harry?"
"Sir Humphrey," I whispered back, while Mary's sweet voice in the mare's delicate ear sounded like a song, "sometimes an unguessed riddle hath less weight than a guessed one, and some fish of knowledge had best be left in the stream. I tell thee she is safe." So saying, I looked him full in his honest, boyish face, which was good to see, though sometime I wished, for the maid's sake, that it had more shrewdness of wit in it. Then he gave me a great grasp of the hand, and whispered something hoarsely. "Thou art a good fellow, Harry, in spite of, in spite of—" then he bent low over Mary's hand for the second time, and sprang to his saddle, and was off toward Jamestown on his white mare, flashing along the moonlit road like a whiter moonbeam.
Then Mary came close to me, and did what she had never before done since she was a child. She laid her little hand on my arm of her own accord. "Master Wingfield," said she, softly, "what about the goods?"
"The goods for which you sent to England are yours and in the great house," said I, and I heard my voice tremble.
She drew her hand away and stood looking at me, and her sweet forehead under her golden curls was all knitted with perplexity.
"You know, you know I—lied," she whispered like a guilty child.
"You cannot lie," I answered, "and the goods are yours."
"And not my Lady Culpeper's?"
"And not my Lady Culpeper's."
Mary continued looking at me, then all at once her forehead cleared.
"Catherine, 'twas Catherine," she cried out. "She said not, but well I know her; she would not own to it—the sweetheart. Sure a falsehood to hide a loving deed is the best truth of the world. 'Twas Catherine, 'twas Catherine, the sweetheart, the darling. She sent for naught for herself, and hath been saving for a year's time and maybe sold a ring or two. Somehow she discovered about the plot, what I had done. And she hath heard me say, that I know well, that I thought 'twas a noble list of Lady Culpeper's, and I wished I were a governor's wife or daughter, that I could have such fine things. I remember me well that I told her thus before ever the Golden Horn sailed for England, that time after Cicely Hyde slept with me and told me what she had from Cate Culpeper. A goodly portion of the goods were for Cate. 'Twas Catherine. Oh, the sweetheart, the darling! Was there ever sister like her?"
It was an industrious household at Drake Hill both as to men and women folk. The fields were full of ebony backs and plying arms of toil at sunrise, and the hum and whir of loom and spinning-wheels were to be heard in the negro cabins and the great house as soon as the birds.
Madam Judith Cavendish was a stern task-mistress, and especially for these latter duties. Had it not been for the stress of favour in which she held me, I question if my vocation as tutor to Mistress Mary would have had much scope for the last year, since her grandmother esteemed so highly the importance of a maid's being versed in all domestic arts, such as the spinning and weaving of flax and wool, and preserving and distilling and fine needlework. She set but small store by Latin and arithmetic for a maid, not even if she were naturally quick at them, as was Mistress Mary; and had it not been that she was bent upon keeping me in her service at Drake Hill, I doubt not that she would have clapped together the maid's books, whether or no, and set her to her wheel. As it was, a goodly part of every day was passed by her in such wise, but so fond was my pupil of her book that often I have seen her with it propped open, for her reference, on a chair at her side.
It was thus the next morning, the morning of the day of my Lord Culpeper's ball. It was a warm morning, and the doors and windows of the hall were set wide open, and all the spring wind and scent coming in and dimity curtains flying like flags, and the gold of Mistress Mary's hair tossing now and then in a stronger gust, and she and Catherine cramming down their flax baskets, lest the flax take wings to itself and fly away. Both Mary and Catherine were at their flax-wheels, but Madam Cavendish was in the loom-room with some of the black women. Mary had her Latin book open, as I have said before, on a chair at her side, but Catherine span with her fair face set to some steady course of thought, though she too was fond of books. Never a lesson had she taken of me, holding me in such scorn, but I questioned much at the time, and know now, that she was well acquainted with whatever knowledge her sister had got, having been taught by her mother and then keeping on by herself with her tasks. When I entered the hall, having been to Jamestown after breakfast and just returned, both maids looked up, and suddenly one of the wheels ceased its part in the duet, and Catherine was on her feet and her thread fallen whither it would. "Master Wingfield," said she, "I would speak with you."
"Madam, at your service," said I, and followed her, leading out on the green before the house. "What means this, what means this, sir?" she began when she was scarcely out of hearing of her sister.
"What did you about the goods? Did you, did you—?"
She gasped for further speech, and looked at me with such a haughtiness of scorn as never I had seen. It is hard for any man to be attacked in such wise by a woman, and be under the necessity of keeping his weapons sheathed, though he knoweth full well the exceeding convincing of them and their fine point to the case in hand. I bowed.
"Did you, did you—" she went on—"did you purchase those goods yourself for my sister? Did you?"
I bowed again. "Madam," said I, "whatever I have, and my poor flesh and blood and soul also, are at the service of not only your sister but her family."
I marvelled much as I spoke thus to see no flush of shameful consciousness overspread the maid's face, but none did, and she continued speaking with that sharpness of hers, both as to pale look and voice, which wounded like cold steel, which leaves an additional sting because of the frost in it. "Know you not, sir," said she, "that we cannot suffer a man in your position, a—a—to purchase my sister's wardrobe?" Then, before I knew what she was about to do, in went her hand to a broidered pocket which hung at her girdle, and out she drew a flashing store of rings and brooches, and one long necklace flashing with green stones. "Here, take these," she cried out. "I have no money, but such an insult I will not suffer, that my sister goes clad at your expense to the ball to-night. Take these; they are five times the value of the goods."
I would in that minute have given ten years of my life had Mistress Catherine Cavendish been a man and I could have felled her to the ground, and no man knowing what I believed I knew could have blamed me. The flashes of red and green from those rings and gewgaws which she held out seemed to pass my eyes to my very soul.
"Take them," she said. "Why do you not take them, sir?"
"I have no need of jewels, madam," I said, "and whatever the servant hath is his master's by right, and his master doth but take his own, and no discredit to him."
She fairly wrung her hands in her helpless wrath, and the gems glittered anew. "But, but," she stammered out, "know you the full result of this, Harry Wingfield? She, my sister Mary, thinks that I—I—sent to England for the goods for her; she knows that I have some acquaintance with what she hath done, and she—she is blessing me for it, and I cannot deny what she thinks. I—I—cannot tell her what you, you have done, lest, lest—" To my great astonishment she stopped short with such a flame of blushes as I had never seen on her face before, and I was at a loss to know what she might mean, but supposed that she considered that the shame of Mistress Mary's wearing finery which had been paid for out of a convict's purse would be more than she could put upon her, and yet that she dared not inform her, lest she refuse to wear the sky-blue robe to the governor's ball, and so anger Madam Cavendish.
"Madam," I said, "your sister is but blessing you for what you would have done, and wherefore need you fret?"
"God knows I would," she broke out, passionately. "Every jewel I possess, the very gown from my back, would I have sold to save her this, had I but known. Why did she not tell me, why did not she tell me? Oh, Harry, I pray you to take these jewels."
"I cannot take them, madam," I said. Yet such was her distress I was sorry for her, though I believed it to be rooted and grounded in falsity, and that she had no need to regard with such disapprobation her sister's being indebted to an English gentleman who gave her in all honour the best he had. Yet could I not yield and take those jewels, for more reasons than one; not only should I have lost the dear delight of having served Mary Cavendish, but I had a memory of wrong which would not suffer me to touch those rings, nor to allow that innocent maid to be benefited by them, since I cannot say what dark suspicions seized me when I looked at them.
"My God!" she said, "was ever such a web of falsehood as this? Here must I hear my sister's blessings upon me for what I have done, and I knowing all the time that 'twas you, and yet she must not know." Then again that flame of red overspread her face and neck to the meet of her muslin kerchief, and I knew not why.
"Madam," I said, "one deception opens the way for a whole flock," and I spoke with something of a double meaning, but she only cried out, with apparently no understanding of it, that things had come to a cruel pass, and back to the house she went; and I presently followed her to get my gun, having a mind to shoot a few wild fowl, since my pupil was at her wheel. And there the two sat, keeping up that gentle drone of industry which I have come to think of as a note of womanhood, like the hum of a bee or the purr of a cat or the call of a bird. They sat erect, the delicate napes of their necks showing above their muslin kerchiefs under their high twists of hair, for even Mary had her golden curls caught up that morning on account of the flax-lint, and from their fair, attentive faces nobody would have gathered what stress of mind both were in. Of a surety there must be a quieting and calming power in some of the feminine industries which be a boon to the soul.
But, as I passed through the hall, up looked Mary, and her beautiful face flashed out of peace into a sunlight of love and enthusiasm.
"Oh," she cried out, "oh, was there ever anyone like my sweetheart Catherine? To think what she hath done for me, to think, to think! And she, dear heart, loving the king! But better she loves her little sister, and will stand by her in her disloyalty, for the love of her. Was there ever any one like her, Master Wingfield?"
And I laughed, though maybe with some slight bitterness, for I was but human, and that outburst of loving gratitude toward another, and another whom I held in slight esteem, when it was I who had given the child my little all, and presently, when my term was expired, would have to return to England without a farthing betwixt me and starvation, and maybe working my way before the mast to get there at all, had a sting in it. 'Twas a strange thing that anything so noble and partaking of the divine as the love of an honest man for a woman should have any tincture of aught ignoble in it, and one is caused thereby to decry one's state of mortality, which seems as inseparable from selfish ends as the red wings of a rose from the thorny stem which binds it to earth. Truly the longer I live the more am I aware of the speck which mars the completeness of all in this world, and ever the desire for a better, and that longing which will not be appeased groweth in my soul, until methinks the very keenness of the appetite must prove the food.
"Was there ever one like her?" repeated Mary Cavendish, and as she spoke, up she sprang and ran to her sister and flung a fair arm around her neck, and drew her head to her bosom, and leaned her cheek against it, and then looked at me with a sidewise glance which made my heart leap, for curious meanings, of which the innocent thing had no reckoning, were in it.
I know not what I said. Truly not much, for the mockery of it all was past my power of dealing with and keeping my respect of self.
I got my fowling-piece from the peg on the wall, and was forth and ranging the wooded shores, with my eyes intent on the whirring flight of the birds, and my mind on that problem of the times which always hath, and doth, and always will, encounter a man who lives with any understanding of what is about him, but not always as sorely as in my case, who faced, as it were, an army of difficulties, bound hand and foot. But after a while the sport in which I was fairly skilled, and that sense of power which cometh to one from the proving of his superiority over the life and death of some weaker creation, and the salt air in my nostrils, gave me, as it were, a glimpse of a farther horizon than the present one of Virginia in 1682, and mine own little place in it. Then verily I could seem to see and scent like some keen hound a smoothness which should later come from the tangled web of circumstances, and a greatness which should encompass mine own smallness of perplexity.
When I was wending my way back to Drake Hill, with my gun over shoulder and some fine birds in hand, I met Sir Humphrey Hyde.
We were near Locust Creek, and the great house stood still and white in the sunlight, and there was no life around it except for the distant crawl of toil over the green of the tobacco fields and the great hum of the bees in the flowering honey locusts which gave, with the creek, the place its name. Sir Humphrey was coming from the direction of the house, riding slowly, stooping in the saddle as if with thought, and I guessed that he had been to see to the safety of the contraband goods. When he saw me he halted and shouted, in his hearty, boyish way, "Halloo, halloo, Harry, and what luck?" as if all there was of moment in the whole world, and Virginia in particular, was the shooting of birds on a May morning. But then his face clouded, and he spoke earnestly enough. "Harry, Harry," he said, in a whisper, though there was no life nearer than the bees, and they no bearers of secrets, except those of the flowers, "I pray thee, come back to the hall with me, and let us consult together."
I followed him back to the house, and he sprang from his saddle, had a shutter unhasped in a twinkling, knowing evidently the secret of it, and we were inside, standing amongst the litter of casks and cases in the great silent desertion of the hall of Locust Creek. Then he grasped me hard by both hands, and cried out, "Harry, Harry Wingfield, come to thee I must, for, convict though thou be, thou art a man with a head packed with wit, and Ralph Drake is half the time in his cups, and Parson Downs riding his own will at such a hard gallop that 'twill surprise me not if he leave his head behind, and as for Dick and Nick Barry, and Captain Dickson, and—and Major Robert Beverly, and all the others, what is it to them about this one matter which is more to me than the whole damned hell-broth?"
"You mean?" I said, and pointed to the litter on the hall floor.
"Yes," and then, with a great show of passion, "My God, Harry Wingfield, why, why did we gentlemen and cavaliers of Virginia allow a woman to be mixed in this matter? If, if—these goods be traced to her—"
"And, faith, and I see no reason why they should not be, with a whole colony in the secret of it," I said, coldly.
"Nay, none but me and Nick and Dick Barry, and the parson since yesterday, and Major Beverly and Capt. Noel Jaynes and you and the captain and sailors on the Golden Horn, who value their own necks. As God is my witness, none beside, Harry."
I could scarcely help laughing at the length of the list and the innocence of the lad. "Her sister Catherine, Sir Humphrey," said I.
"Hath she told her, Harry?"
"And the captain of the Earl of Fairfax."
"The governor's ship? Well, then, let us go through Jamestown proclaiming it with a horn," he gasped out, and made more of the two last than his own long list.
"Nay, the two last are as safe as we," said I. "Mistress Catherine holds her sister dearer than herself, and as for the captain of the governor's ship, lock a man's tongue with the key of his own interest if you wish it not to wag. But these goods must be moved from here."
"That is what I well know, Harry," he said, eagerly. "All night didI toss and study the matter. But where?"
"Not in any place on Madam Cavendish's plantation," I said, and did not say, as I might have, for 'twas the truth, that I had also tossed and studied, but as yet to no result.
"No, nor on mine, though I swear to thee, were I the only one to consider, I would have them there in a twinkling, but I cannot put my mother and sister in jeopardy even for—"
"Barry Upper Branch?"
"Nick and Dick swear they will not run the risk; that they have but too lately escaped with their lives, and are too close watched, and as for the parson, 'tis out of the question, and Ralph Drake hath no hiding-place, and as for the others, they one and all refuse, and say this is the safest place in the colony, it being a household of women, and Madam Cavendish well known for her loyalty."
He looked at me and I at him, and again the old consideration, as I saw his handsome, gallant young face that perchance Mary Cavendish might love him and do worse than to wed him, came over me.
"I will find a place for the goods," said I.
"You, Harry?"
"Yes, I," I said.
"But where, Harry?"
"Wait till the need for them come, lad." Then I added, for often in my perplexity the wish that the whole lot were at the bottom of the river had seized me, "There is need of them, I suppose?"
But Sir Humphrey said yes, with a great emphasis to that.
"There is sure to be fighting," he said, "and never were powder and shot so scarce. 'Tis well the Indians are quiet. This poor Colony of Virginia hath not enough powder to guard her borders, nor, were it not for her rich soil, enough of food to feed her children since the Navigation Act.
"Oh, God, Harry, if but Nathaniel Bacon had lived!"
"Amen," I said, and felt as I said it, that if indeed that hero were alive, this plot for the destroying of the young tobacco plants might be the earthquake which threw off a new empire; but as it were, remembering the men concerned, who had none of the stuff of Bacon in them, I wondered if it would prove aught more than a wedge in the scheme of liberty.
"There are those who would be ready to say that we gentlemen of Virginia, like Bacon, are all ready to shelter ourselves behind women's aprons," said Sir Humphrey Hyde, with a shamed glance at the goods, referring to that stationing of the ladies of the Berkeley faction, all arrayed in white aprons, on the earthworks before the advance of the sons and husbands and brothers in the Bacon uprising.
"And if you hear any man say that, shoot him dead, Sir Humphrey Hyde," I said, for, through liking not that story about Bacon, I was fiercer in defence of it.
"Faith, and I will, Harry," cried Sir Humphrey, "and Bacon was a greater man than the king, if I were to swing for it; but, Harry, you cannot by yourself move these. What will you do?"
But I begged him to say no more, and started toward the window, the door being fast locked as Mistress Mary had left it, when suddenly the boy stopped me and caught me by the hand, and begged me to tell him if I thought there might be any hope for him with Mary Cavendish, being moved to do so by her sending him away so peremptorily the night before, which had put him in sore doubt. "Tell me, Harry," he pleaded, and the great lad seemed like a child, with his honest outlook of blue eyes, "tell me what you think, I pray thee, Harry; look at me, and tell me, if you were a maid, what would you think of me?"
Loving Mary Cavendish as I did, and striving to look at him with her eyes, a sort of tenderness crept into my heart for this simple lover, who was as brave as he was simple, and I clapped a hand on his fair curls, for though he was so tall I was taller, and laughed and said, "If I were a maid, though 'tis a fancy to rack the brain, but, if I were a maid, I would love thee well, lad."
"My mother thinketh none like me, and so tells me every day, and says that I am like my father, who was the handsomest man in England; but then mothers be all so, and I know not how much of it to trust, and my sister Cicely loves Mary so well herself that she is jealous, and often tells me—" then the lad stopped and stared at me, and I at him, perplexed, not dreaming what was in his mind.
"Tells you what, Sir Humphrey?" said I.
"That, that—oh, confound it, Harry, there is no harm in saying it, for you as well as I know the folly of it, and that 'tis but the jealous fancy of a girl. Faith, but I think my sister Cicely is as much in love with Mary Cavendish as I. 'Tis but—my sister Cicely, when she will tease me, tells me 'tis not I but you that Mary Cavendish hath set her heart upon, Harry."
I felt myself growing pale at that, and I could not speak because of a curious stiffness of my lips, and I heard my heart beat like a clock in the deserted house. Sir Humphrey was looking at me with an anxiety which was sharpening into suspicion. "Harry," he said, "you do not think—"
"'Tis sheer folly, lad," I burst out then, "and let us have no more of it. 'Tis but the idle prating of a lovesick girl, who should have a lover, ere she try to steal a nest in the heart of one of her own sex. 'Tis folly, Sir Humphrey Hyde."
"So said I to Cicely," Sir Humphrey cried, eagerly, too interested in his own cause to heed my slighting words for his sister. "'Tis the rankest folly, I told her. Here is Harry Wingfield, old enough almost to be Mary's father, and beside, beside—oh, confound it, Harry," the generous lad burst out. "I would not like you for a rival, for you are a good half foot taller than I, and you have that about you which would make a woman run to you and think herself safe were all the Indians in Virginia up, and you are a dark man, and I have heard say they like that, but, but—oh, I say, Harry, 'tis a damned shame that you are here as you are, and not as a gentleman and a cavalier with the rest of us, for all the evidence to the contrary and all the government to the contrary, 'tis, 'tis the way you should be, and not a word of that charge do I believe. May the fiends take me if I do, Harry!" So saying, the lad looked at me, and verily the tears were in his blue eyes, and out he thrust his honest hand for me to grasp, which I did with more of comfort than I had had for many a day, though it was the hand of a rival, and the next minute forth he burst again: "Say, Harry, if it be true that thou art out of the running, and I believe it must be so, for how could?—say, Harry, think you there is any chance for me?"
"I know of no reason why there should not be, Sir Humphrey," I said.
"Only, only—that she is what she is, and I but myself. Oh, Harry, was there ever one like that girl? All the spirit of daring of a man she has, and yet is she full of all the sweet ways of a maid. Faith, she would draw sword one minute and tie a ribbon the next. She would have followed Bacon to the death, and sat up all night to broider herself a kerchief. Comrade and sweetheart both she is, and was there ever one like her for beauty? Harry, Harry, saw you ever such a beauty as Mary Cavendish?"
"No, and never will," cried I, so fervently and so echoing to the full his youthful enthusiasm that again that keen look flashed into his eyes. "Harry," he stammered out, "you do not—say, for God's sake, Harry, you are a man if you are a—a—, and every day have you seen that angel, and—and—Harry, may the devil take me if I would go against thee if she—you know I would not, Harry, for I remember well how you taught me to shoot, and, and—I love thee, Harry, not in such fool fashion as my sister loveth Mary, but I love thee, and never would I cross thee."
"Sir Humphrey," said I, "it is not what you would, nor what I would, nor what any other man would, but what be best for Mary Cavendish, and her true happiness of life, that is to consider, whether you love her, or I love her, or any other man love her."
"Faith, and a score do," he said, gloomily. "There be my Lord Estes and her cousin Ralph, and I know not how many more. Faith, I would not have her less fair, but sometimes I would that a few were colour-blind. But 'tis different when it comes to thee, Harry. If she—"
"Sir Humphrey," I said, "were Mary Cavendish thy sister and I myself, and loving her and she me, and you having that affection which you say you have for me, would you yet give her to me in marriage and think it for her good?"
Then the poor lad coloured and stammered, and could not look me in the face, but it was enough. "Let there be no more talk betwixt you and me as to that matter, Sir Humphrey," I said. "There is never now nor at any other time any question of marriage betwixt Mistress Mary Cavendish and her convict tutor, and if he perchance had been not colour-blind and had learned to appraise her at her rare worth, the more had he been set against such. And all that he can do for thee, lad, he will do."
Sir Humphrey was easily pacified, having been accustomed from his babyhood to masterly soothing of his mother into her own ways of thought. Again, in spite of his great stature, he looked up at me like a very child. "Harry," he whispered, "heard you her ever say anything pleasant concerning me?"
"Many a time," I answered, quite seriously, though I was inwardly laughing, and could not for the life of me remember any especial favour which she had paid him in her speech. But I have ever held that a bold lover hath the best chance, and knowing that boldness depends upon assurance of favour, I set about giving it to Sir Humphrey, even at some small expense of truth.
"When, when, Harry?"
"Oh, many a time, Sir Humphrey."
"But what? I pray thee, tell me what she said, Harry."
"I have not charged my mind, lad."
"But think of something. I pray thee, think of something, Harry." He looked at me with such exceeding wistfulness that I was forced to cudgel my brains for something which, having a slight savour of truth, might be seasoned to pungency at fancy. "Often have I heard her say that she liked a fair man," I replied, and indeed I had, and believed her to have said it because I was dark, and seemingly inattentive to some new grace of hers as to the tying of her hair or fastening of her kerchief.
"Did she indeed say that, Harry, and do you think she had me in mind?" cried Sir Humphrey.
"Are you not a fair man?"
"Yes, yes, I am a fair man, am I not, Harry? What else? Sure you have heard her say more than that."
"I have heard her say she liked a hearty laugh, and one who counted not costs when his mind were set on aught, but rode straight for it though all the bars were up."
"That sure is I, Harry, unless my mother stand in the way. A man cannot bring his mother's head low, Harry, but sure if she forbid nor know not, as in this case of this tobacco plot, I stop for naught. Sure she meant me, then, Harry."
"And I have heard her say that she liked a young man, a man no older than she."
"Sure, sure she meant me by that, Harry, for I am the youngest of them all—not yet twenty. Oh, dear Harry, she had me in mind by that. Do you not think so?"
"I know of no one else whom she could have had in mind," I answered.
The lad was blushing with delight and confusion like a girl. He cast down his eyes before me; he stammered when he spoke. "Harry, if she but love me, I swear I could do as brave deeds as Bacon," he said. "I would die would she but carry about a lock of my hair on her bosom as she does his. I would, Harry. And you think I have some chance?"
My heart smote me lest I had misled him, for I knew with no certainty the maid's mind. "As much chance as any, and more than many, lad," I said, "and I will do what I can for thee."
"Harry," he said, then paused and blushed and twisted his great body about as modestly as a girl, "Harry."
"What, Sir Humphrey?"
"Once, once—I never told of it, and no one ever knew since I was alone, and it would have been boasting—but once—I—fought single-handed with that great Christopher Little, whom I met by chance when I was out in the woods, and 'twas two years since, and I, with scarce my full growth, and he pleading for mercy at the second round, with an eye like a blackberry and a nose like a gillyflower, and—and—Harry, you might tell her of it, and say not where you got the news, if you thought it no harm. And, Harry, you will mind the time when I killed the wolf with naught but an oak club for weapon, and she, maybe, hath not heard of that. And I should have been to the front with Bacon, boy as I was, had it not been for my mother—that you know well and could make her sure of. And, and—oh, confound it, Harry, little book wit have I in my head, and she is so clever as never was, and all I have to win her notice be in my hands and heels, for, Harry, you will remember the race I ran with Tom Talbot that Mayday; think you she knows of that? And—but she must know how I rode against Nick Barry last St. Andrew's, and, and—oh, Lord, Harry, what am I that she should think of me? But at all odds, whether it be me or you or any other man, see to it that these goods be moved and she not be drawn into this which is hatching, for it may be as big a blaze as Bacon started before we be done with it; but shall I not help thee, Harry, and when will you move them and where?"
"I want no help, lad," I said, and was indeed firmly set in my mind that he should know nothing about the disposal of the goods lest Mistress Mary come to grief through her love for him, and reasoning that ignorance was his best safeguard and hers.
We went forth from Locust Creek, I having promised that I would do all that I could to further his suit with Mary Cavendish, and when we reached the bend of the road, he having walked beside me, hitherto leading his horse, he was in his saddle and away, having first acquainted me anxiously with the fact that he was to wear that night to the governor's ball a suit of blue velvet with silver buttons, and asking me if I considered that it would become him in Mistress Mary's eyes. Then I went home to Drake Hill, passing along such a wonderful aisle of bloom of locust and peach and mulberry and honeysuckle and long trails of a purple vine of such a surprise of beauty as to make one incredible that he saw aright—bushes pluming white to the wind, and over all a medley of honey and almond and spicy scents seeming to penetrate the very soul, that I was set to reflecting in the midst of my sadness of renunciation of my love, and my anxiety for her if, after all, such roads of blessing which were set for our feet at every turn led not of a necessity to blessed ends, and if our course tended not to happiness, whether we knew it or not, and along whatever byways of sorrow.
I have seen many beautiful things in my life, as happens to every one living in a world which hath little fault as to its appearance, if one can outlook the shadow which his own selfishness of sorrow and disappointment may cast before him; but it seemed that evening, when I saw Mary Cavendish dressed for the governor's ball, that she was the crown of all. I verily believe that never since the world was made, not even that beautiful first woman who comprehended in herself all those witcheries of her sex which have been ever since to our rapture and undoing, not even Eve when Adam first saw her in Paradise, nor Helen, nor Cleopatra, nor any of those women whose faces have made powers of them and given them niches in history, were as beautiful as Mary Cavendish that night. And I doubt if it were because she was beheld by the eyes of a lover. I verily believe that I saw aright, and gave her beauty no glamour because of my fondness for her, for not one whit more did I love her in that splendour than in her plainest gown. But, oh, when she stood before her grandmother and me and a concourse of slaves all in a ferment of awe and admiration, with flashings of white teeth and upheavals of eyes and flingings aloft of hands in half-savage gesticulation, and courtesied and turned herself about in innocent delight at her own loveliness, and yet with the sweetest modesty and apology that she was knowing to it! That stuff which had been sent to my Lady Culpeper and which had been intercepted ere it reached her was of a most rich and wonderful kind. The blue of it was like the sky, and through it ran the gleam of silver in a flower pattern, and a great string of pearls gleamed on her bosom, and never was anything like that mixture of triumph in, and abashedness before, her own exceeding beauty and her perception of it in our eyes in her dear and lovely face. She looked at us and actually shrank a little, as if our admiration were something of an affront to her maiden modesty, and blushed, and then she laughed to cover it, and swept a courtesy in her circling shimmer of blue, and tossed her head and flirted a little fan, which looked like the wing of a butterfly, before her face.
"Well, how do you like me, madam?" said she to her grandmother, "and am I fine enough for the governor's ball?"
Madam Cavendish gazed at her with that rapture of admiration in a beloved object which can almost glorify age to youth. She called Mary to her and stroked the rich folds of her gown; she straightened a flutter of ribbon. "'Tis a fine stuff of the gown," she said, "and blue was always my colour. I was married in it. 'Tis fine enough for the governor's wife, or the queen for that matter." She pulled out a fold so that a long trail of silver flowers caught the light and gleamed like frost. No misgivings and no suspicions she had, and none, by that time, had Mary, believing as she did that her sister had bought all that bravery for her, and that it was hers by right, and only troubled by the necessity of secrecy with her grandmother lest she discover for what purpose her own money had been spent. But Catherine eyed her with such exceedingly worshipful love, admiration, and yet distress that even I pitied her. Catherine herself that night did no discredit to her beauty, her dress being, though it was an old one, as rich as Mary's, of her favourite green with a rose pattern broidered on the front of it, and a twist of green gauze in her fair hair, and that same necklace of green stones which she had shown me in the morning around her long throat, and her long, milky-white arms hanging at her sides in the green folds of her gown, and that pale radiance of perfection in her every feature that made many call her the pearl of Virginia, though, as I have said before, she had no lovers. She and Mary were going to the ball, and a company of black servants with them. As for me, balls were out of the question for a convict tutor, and I knew it, and so did they. But suddenly, to my great amazement, Madam Cavendish turned to me: "And wherefore are you not dressed for the ball, Master Wingfield?" she said.
I stared at her, as did also Catherine and Mary, almost as if they suspected she had gone demented. "Madam," I stammered, scarce thinking I had understood her rightly.
"Why are you not dressed for the ball?" she repeated.
"Madam," I said, "pardon me, but you are well acquainted with the fact that I am not a welcome guest at the governor's ball."
"And wherefore?" cried she imperiously.
"Wherefore, madam?"
Mary and Catherine both looked palely at their grandmother, not knowing what had come to her.
"Madam," I said, "do you forget?"
"I forget not that you are the eldest son and heir of one of the best families in England, and as good a gentleman as the best of them," she cried out. "That I do not forget, and I would have you go to the ball with my granddaughters. Put on thy plum-coloured velvet suit, Harry, and order thy horse saddled."
For the first time I seemed to understand that Madam Judith Cavendish had, in spite of her wonderful powers of body and mind, somewhat of the childishness of age, for as she looked at me the tears were in her stern eyes and a flush was on the ivory white of her face, and her tone had that querulousness in it which we associate with childhood which cannot have its own will.
"Madam," I said, gently, "you know that it is not possible for me to do as you wish, and also that my days of gayeties are past, though not to my regret, and that I am looking forward to an evening with my books, which, when a man gets beyond his youth, yield him often more pleasure than the society of his kind."
"But, Harry," she said piteously, and still like a child, "you are young, and I would not have—" Then imperiously again: "Get into thy plum-coloured velvet suit, Master Wingfield, and accompany my granddaughters."
But then I affected not to hear her, under pretence of seeing that the sedan chairs were ready, and hallooed to the slaves with such zeal that Madam Cavendish's voice was drowned, though with no seeming rudeness, and Mary and Catherine came forth in their rustling spreads of blue and green, and the black bearers stood grinning whitely out of the darkness, for the moon was not up yet, and I aided them both into the chairs, and they were off. I stood a few moments watching the retreating flare of flambeaux, for runners carrying them were necessary on those rough roads when dark, and the breath of the dewy spring night fanned my face like a wing of peace, and I regretted nothing very much which had happened in this world, so that I could come between that beloved girl and the troubles starting up like poisonous weeds on her path.
But when I entered the hall Madam Cavendish, having sent away the slaves, even to the little wench who had been fanning her, with verily I believe no more of consciousness as to what was going on about her than a Jimson weed by the highway, called me to her in a voice so tremulous that I scarce knew it for hers.
"Harry, Harry," she said, "I pray thee, come here." Then, when I approached, hesitating, for I had a shrinking before some outburst of feminine earnestness, which has always intimidated me by its fire of helplessness and futility playing against some resolve of mine which I could not, on account of my masculine understanding of the requirements of circumstances, allow to melt, she reached up one hand like a little nervous claw of ivory, and caught me by the sleeve and pulled me down to a stool by her side. Then she looked at me, and such love and even adoration were in her face as I never saw surpassed in it, even when she regarded her granddaughter Mary, yet withal a cruel distress and self-upbraiding and wrath at herself and me. "Harry, Harry," she said, "I can bear no more of this." Then, to my consternation, up went her silken apron with a fling to her old face, and she was weeping under it as unrestrainedly as any child.
I did not know what to do nor say. "Madam," I ventured, finally, "if you distress yourself in such wise for my sake, 'tis needless, I assure, 'tis needless, and with as much truth as were you my own mother."
"Oh, Harry, Harry," she sobbed out, "know you not that is why I cannot bear it longer, because you yourself bear it with no complaint?" Then she sobbed and even wailed with that piteousness of the grief of age exceeding that of infancy, inasmuch as the weight of all past griefs of a lifetime go to swell it, and it is enhanced by memory as well as by the present and an unknown future. I knew not what to do, but laid a hand somewhat timidly on one of her thin silken arms, and strove to draw it gently from her face. "Madam Cavendish," I said, "indeed you mistake if you weep for me. At this moment I would change places with no man in Virginia."
"But I would have—I would have you!" she cried out, with the ardour of a girl, and down went her apron, and her face, like an aged mask of tragedy, not discoloured by her tears, as would have happened with the tender skin of a maid, confronted me. "I would have you the governor himself, Harry. I would have you—I would have—" Then she stopped and looked at me with a red showing through the yellow whiteness of her cheeks. "You know what I would have, and I know what you would have, and all the rest of my old life would I give could it be so, Harry," she said, and I saw that she knew of my love for her granddaughter Mary. Then suddenly she cried out, vehemently: "Not one word have I said to you about it since that dreadful time, Harry Wingfield, for shame and that pride as to my name, which is a fetter on the tongue, hath kept me still, but at last I will speak, for I can bear it no longer. Harry, Harry, I know that you are what you are, a convict and an exile, to shield Catherine, to shield a granddaughter of mine, who should be in your place. Harry Wingfield, I know that Catherine Cavendish is guilty of the crime for which you are in punishment, and, woe is me, such is my pride, such is my wicked pride, that I have let you suffer and said never one word."
I put her hand to my lips. "Madam," I said, "you mistake; I do not suffer. That which you think of as my suffering and my disgrace is my glory and happiness."
"Yes, and why, and why? Oh, Harry, 'tis that which is breaking my heart. 'Tis because you love Mary, 'tis because, I verily believe, you have loved her from the first minute you set eyes on her, though she was but a baby in arms. At first I thought it was Catherine, in spite of her fault, but now I know it was for the sake of Mary that you sacrificed yourself—for her sister, Harry, I know, I know, and I would to God that I could give you your heart's desire, for 'tis mine also!"
Then, so saying, this old woman, who had in her such a majesty of character and pride that it held folk aloof at a farther distance than loud swaggerings of importance of men high in office, drew down my head to her withered shoulder and touched my cheek with a hand of compassionate pity and blessing, as if I had been in truth her son, and caught her breath again and again with a sobbing sigh. All that I could say to comfort her I said, assuring her, as was indeed the truth, that no woman could justly estimate the view which a man might take of such a condition as mine, and how the power of service to love might be enough to content one, and he stand in no need of pity, but she was not much consoled. "Harry," she said, "Harry, thou art like a knight of olden times about whom a song was written, which I heard sung in my girlhood, and which used to bring the tears, though I was never too ready with them. Woe be to me that I, knowing what I know, have yet not the courage to sacrifice my pride and my unworthy granddaughter, and see you free. Oh, Harry, that thou shouldst sit at home when thou art fitted by birth and breeding to go with the best of them! Harry, I pray thee, put on thy plum-coloured suit and go to the ball."
"Dear Madam Cavendish," I said, half laughing, for she seemed more and more like a child, "you know that it cannot be, and that I have no desire for balls."
"But I would have thee go, Harry."
"But I am not asked," I said.
"What matters that? 'Tis almost with open doors, since it is a farewell of my Lord Culpeper before sailing for England. Harry, go, and—a—and—I swear if any exception be taken to it, I—I—will tell the truth."
"Dear madam, it cannot be," I said, "and the truth is to be concealed not only for your sake, but for that of others."
Then she broke out in another paroxysm of childish wailing that never was such a wretched state of matters, such a wretched old woman handicapped from serving one by her love for another. "Harry, I cannot clear thee unless I convict my own granddaughter Catherine," she said, piteously, "and if I spared her not, neither her nor my pride, what of Mary? Catherine hath been like a mother to the child, and she loves her better than she loves me. 'Twould kill her, Harry. And, Harry, how can I give Mary to thee, and thou under this ban? Mary Cavendish cannot wed a convict."
"That she cannot and shall not," I said; "she shall wed a much worthier man and be happy, and sure 'tis her happiness that is the question."
But Madam Cavendish stared at me with unreasoning anger, not understanding, since she was a woman, and unreasoning as a woman will be in such matters. "If you love not my granddaughter, Harry Wingfield," she cried out, "'tis not her grandmother will fling her at your head. I will let you know, sir, that she could have her pick in the colony if she so chose, and it may be that she might not choose you, Master Harry Wingfield."
I laughed. "Madam Cavendish," I said, rising and bowing, "were I a king instead of a convict, then would I lay my crown at Mary Cavendish's feet; as it is, I can but pave, if I may, her way to happiness with my heart."
"Then you love her as I thought, Harry?"
"Madam," I said, "I love her to my honour and glory and never to my discontent, and I pray you to believe with a love that makes no account of selfish ends, and that I am happier at home with my books than many a cavalier who shall dance with her at the ball."
"But, Harry," she said, piteously, "I pray thee to go."
I laughed and shook my head, and went away to my own quarters and sat down to my books, but, at something past midnight, Madam Cavendish sent for me in all haste. She had gone to bed, and I was ushered to her bedroom, and when I saw her thin length of age scarce rounding the coverlids, and her face frilled with white lace, and her lean neck stretching up from her pillows with the piteous outreaching of a bird, a great tenderness of compassion for womanhood, both in youth and beauty and age and need, beyond which I can express, came over me. It surely seems to me the part of man to deal gently with them at all times, even when we suffer through them, for there is about them a mystery of helplessness and misunderstanding of themselves which should give us an exceeding patience. And it seems to me that, even in the cases of those women who are perhaps of greater wit and force of character than many a man, not one of them but hath her helplessness of sex in her heart, however concealed by her majesty of carriage. So, when I saw Madam Cavendish, old and ill at ease in her mind because of me, and realised all at once how it was with her in spite of that clear head of hers and imperious way which had swayed to her will all about her for near eighty years, I went up to her, and, laying a gentle hand upon her head, laid it back upon the pillow, and touched her poor forehead, wrinkled with the cares and troubles of so many years, and felt all the pity in me uppermost. "'Tis near midnight, and you have not slept, madam," I said. "I pray you not to fret any longer about that which we can none of us mend, and which is but to be borne as the will of the Lord."