From Kingdom to Colony Part 40

Mary spoke suddenly, as though impelled by a hasty resolution, and there was a look in her blue eyes that made a fitting accompaniment to her words; but she kept them averted from Dorothy, who had turned and was coming slowly toward her.

"Dorothy," she repeated, as the girl drew close to her, "where is that ruby ring?"

Dorothy came to a stop, and every drop of blood seemed to find its way to her face.

"Eh,--ring,--what ring?" She glanced at her hands, and then at Mary's face, still turned partially away from her.

"That ruby ring I gave you back, and advised that you throw it into the fire or into the sea, and with it all thought of the dastardly giver."

Dorothy did not reply, and Mary now looked at her as she said slowly and distinctly, "If you cannot tell, I can. It is over your heart, hanging about your neck on a chain."

The girl gave a gasp, and Mary saw her face paling, only to flush again, while the dark eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Dot," she cried, astonished and angry, "how can you love such a man?"

Dorothy threw herself on her knees and hid her face in Mary's lap, sobbing as if the words had broken a seal set to keep this knowledge from even her own heart.

"I don't know, Mary, but I do--I do love him, and have, for always.

And now he has gone--gone away, thinking I hate him, and I may never see him again."

Mary put her arms around the little form, and used all her efforts to soothe the pa.s.sionate outburst. She could not but feel that she had been wise in thus forcing Dorothy to open her heart, for not only did she know the girl would feel better for having spoken, but she herself had a new and most important fact to guide her own future action.

CHAPTER XXVI

Mary felt that she must lose no time in making her husband as wise as herself with respect to Dorothy's real sentiments, and in having him understand that he could not bring any harm to the young Britisher without making his sister all the more unhappy.

She wondered what Jack would say--as to the effect it would have upon his temper and actions. But she was determined upon this,--that if he showed resentment or anger, she would a.s.sert herself in Dorothy's defence, feeling as she did that it was too late to do other than submit to what fate had brought about, and all the more especially, since Dorothy had confessed to loving this man.

"I could almost wish he had been killed outright the morning I made him tumble over the rocks," she said to herself, "or that he had fallen into the sea, never to be seen again." Then, realizing that this was little short of murder, she shrank from such musings, shocked to find herself so wicked.

There came still another burden of sorrow when she imparted the whole truth to her husband.

He listened with a brooding face, only the unusual glitter in his eyes showing how it stirred him. Then, after a long silence, while he appeared to be turning the matter in his mind, he exclaimed, not angrily, but with nothing showing in his voice save bitter self-reproach: "Blind fool that I've been, seeking to keep my little sister a child in thought. And right here, under my very eyes, has she become a woman, both in love and suffering!"

He sprang to his feet and began to pace back and forth, his wife watching him with troubled eyes. Presently he came and looked down into her face.

His own was pale, but it had a set, determined expression, as though the struggle were over, and he had turned his back upon all the hopes he had builded for his beloved sister,--upon what might have been, but now never to be.

"Sweetheart," he said, "there is one other we are bound in honor to take into our confidence, to tell all we know of this sad matter, and that is Hugh Knollys. He is not like to return here this many a day; still it is possible he may, or that I may be sent to the neighborhood of Boston before the summer comes. But whichever way I see him, I shall have to tell him the truth. Poor old Hugh!"

"Why, John!" But Mary's eyes filled with a look bespeaking full knowledge of what he was to say, although she had never suspected it until now.

He told her of all that pa.s.sed between Hugh and himself that night, so many months ago. And when he finished, she could only sigh, and repeat his own words, "Poor Hugh!"

"Aye, poor Hugh, indeed, for I know the boy's heart well. It will be a dreadful thing for him to face, and with his hands tied, as are my own, against doing aught to the Britisher because his welfare matters so much to Dot."

Then he added almost impatiently: "I wish the child would let me talk with her. She must, before I go away, else I'll speak without her consent. So long as we are situated as now, it may do no harm to let the matter drift along; but if I have to leave home--"

"Oh, Jack, don't speak of such a thing," Mary interrupted. And rising quickly, she laid her hand on his shoulder as though to hold him fast.

"Why not, sweetheart?" he said, compelled to smile at her anxiety. "We know what we have to face in these distracting times; we knew it when we married. Matters grow worse with every week, each day almost. But we must be brave, my darling, and you will best hold me to my duty by keeping a stout heart, no matter whether I go or stay. And go I am pretty sure to, the same as every other man in the town, for we may look, any day, for a battle somewhere about Boston."

Mary clung to him shudderingly, but was silent.

Hugh Knollys had been all this time at Cambridge, where troops were mustering from every part of the land; and many men from Marblehead were there or in the neighborhood.

They had heard from him but once, and then through Johnnie Strings, who, after this last trip--now over a month since--had returned to Cambridge with a very indefinite notion as to when he would come back to the old town.

The pedler also reported having seen Aunt Penine, who was quartered near Boston, at the house of some royalist relatives of her brother's wife,--he himself having left his home in Lynn and taken up arms for the King.

Mistress Knollys was also away, for she had closed her homestead and gone to stop with an only sister living at Dorchester,--doing this for safety, and before the soldiers left the Neck.

A decided feeling of impending war was now sharpened and well defined, and all were waiting for the actual clash of arms.

Late in February, His Majesty's ship "Lively," mounting twenty guns, arrived in the harbor and came to anchor off the fort; and her officers proceeded to make themselves fully as obnoxious as had the hated soldiers.

They diligently searched all incoming vessels that could by any pretext be suspected; and where they found anything in the nature of military stores, these were confiscated.

One vessel, carrying a chest of arms destined for the town, was, although anch.o.r.ed close to the "Lively," boarded one night by a party of intrepid young men under the lead of one Samuel R. Trevett, who succeeded in removing the arms, which they concealed on sh.o.r.e.

Later on in the month a body of troops landed one Sunday morning on Homans' Beach; and after loading their guns, the soldiers took up their march through the town.

The alarm drums were beaten at the door of every church to warn the worshippers, and it was not long before the hitherto quiet streets were thronged with an excited crowd of indignant citizens, gathered in active defence of their rights.

They suspected the object of the enemy to be the seizure of several pieces of artillery secreted at Salem. But in this--or whatever was their purpose--they were baffled, meeting with such determined opposition as to be forced to march back to the sh.o.r.e and re-embark, with no more disastrous result to either side than the usual number of b.l.o.o.d.y faces and bruised fists, such as had distinguished the sojourn of the regulars upon the Neck.

Aside from these two events, the days in the old town pa.s.sed much as before, despite the ever-increasing certainty of war,--this leading the townsfolk to go armed night and day, and to keep close watch from the outlooks for any sudden descent the enemy might seek to make.

The last vestige of snow was gone from the shaded nooks amid the trees on the hills,--the land, swept dry and clear of all signs of winter, was waiting for the sun to warm the brown earth into life; and in the hollows of the woods, the tender shoots of the first wild flowers were already showing, where the winds had brushed away the fallen leaves of the year before.

It was the twenty-first of April, and the expected battle had come at last, for Lexington was two days old. The news was brought into town before the morning of the twentieth, and had resulted in the sudden departure of many of the younger men for the immediate scene of action.

Among these was John Devereux; and Mary was to accompany her husband to the town, in order that she might be with him until the very last moment.

The parting between father and son was full of solemnity, for each felt it to be the last time they would meet on earth.

"G.o.d bless and keep you, my dear boy," said Joseph Devereux, showing more of his natural vigor than for many weeks past, as he fixed his large eyes upon the handsome young face, pale, but filled with resolution and high purpose. "G.o.d bless and keep you in the struggle in which I know you will do your part unflinchingly. Never be guilty of aught in the future, as you have never in the past, to stain the good name you bear."

Fearing that which he deemed a reflection upon his manhood, the young man did not reply in words, but threw his arms about his father's neck in a way he had not done since boyhood; and the old man alone knew how something wet still lay upon his withered cheek after his son had left him.

The last person to whom Jack said farewell was his sister. She had stolen away to her own room, and there he found her weeping.

"Little Dot," he said in a choking voice, opening his arms to her as he paused just across the threshold.

She looked up, and with a low cry--half of pain, half joy--fled to him; and with this the shadow, almost estrangement, that had come between them was swept away forever.