From Kingdom to Colony Part 6

"Ah, Dot, but you are surely a spoiled child," said Mary, with a fond glance at the winsome face.

Dorothy shrugged her small shoulders. "So Aunt Penine is always saying; but all the aunts in the world could never come 'twixt my father and me."

Little 'Bitha, who had been crooning softly to herself, and improvising, after a fashion of her own,--

"The sea is blue, blue, blue, The sea is blue, and I love the sea,"

suddenly cried out, "Oh, Dot, look, look! What an ugly fish!"

They all looked, and saw a dead dogfish, its cruel teeth showing in the gaping jaws, go bobbing by, entangled in a mesh of floating seaweed.

"Him look like dead n.i.g.g.e.r," said Pashar, as he flung a pebble at it.

Old Leet scowled over his shoulder at his lively descendant.

"Dere'll be anudder, an' real true, dead n.i.g.g.e.r ter keep him company, ef ye don't sit still, an' quit gramp.u.s.s.in' 'bout de boat," he growled; and. Pashar became very quiet.

They were now drawing in nearer to the sh.o.r.e, where the strip of sand-beach lay down below the rocky headland, upon the highest point of which stood Spray House, the home of Nicholson Broughton and his daughter Mary.

The house--a low, rambling building, with gabled roof--was perched upon the highest of a series of greenstone and syenite ledges, whose natural jaggedness had no need to be strengthened by art to render them a safe bulwark against the encroaching seas, when the storms flashed blinding mists and glittering spray about the diamond-paned windows.

These looked off over the open water, and past the point of land intervening between Great Bay and Marblehead Rock. Upon the latter was an odd beacon,--being a discarded pulpit from one of the Boston churches, whence, after hearing much of the noise and commotion of men, it had been transferred to this barren rock, there to listen to the ceaseless tumult of the battling sea.

Inland from Spray House stood the many great warehouses; and back of these stretched the pasture-lands, breaking here and there into rough hills, showing fields of golden splendor, where the wood-wax, or "dyer's weed," was growing in luxuriant wildness.

Several small boats were drawn up on the beach; and anch.o.r.ed a little way out, and directly opposite the front windows of Spray House, were two goodly-sized schooners, and a brig, their topmasts now touched by the fiery gold of sunset.

"I wish you were coming home with me, Mary," said Dorothy, as Leet ran the boat's nose into the shingle, and Pashar leaped out to hold the stern.

"I wish so, too. But you know it will not be many days before father goes up to Boston, and he said I should abide with you until he returned."

"That will be fine," said Dorothy, her face aglow with pleasure, as Mary, after dropping a light kiss upon her check, arose to leave the boat. "Only, if I were you, I should coax him to let me go to Boston."

"I did ask him; but he goes on public matters, he said, and was like to have a quick and a rough trip." Mary was now standing upon the beach.

"Well, be he gone a long or a short time, we shall all be very happy to have you with us. That you know, surely." And Dorothy kissed her hand to her friend, as Leet pulled out again into the water and rowed toward the upper end of the bay, while Mary took her way across the beach to the thread-like path leading up to the plateau that formed the back dooryard of Spray House.

In the yard was Joe, the darkey serving-man, busy cutting more wood to increase the already generous pile stored in the building near by, while Agnes, his niece, was in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal.

In the long, low, oak-panelled "living-room" of the house, its windows facing the water, Mary found her father. He was standing--a tall, finely built man, nearly fifty--gazing through an open window. His st.u.r.dy legs were well apart, as with hands in his trousers' pockets he was jingling his keys and loose coin in a restless sort of way, while he hummed to himself.

Mary entered so softly, or else his thoughts were so absorbing, that he did not notice her until she stood close beside him and slipped a hand within his arm. Then he started, and the scowl left his brow as he turned the frank, blue-gray eyes, so like her own, down upon her upturned, smiling face.

"Ha, Pigsney!" he exclaimed, now smiling himself. "And have you had a pleasant water-trip?" He looked at her lovingly, while he caressed the blonde head that just reached to his broad shoulder.

"Yes," she replied hurriedly. "And I met Johnnie Strings, who has but just come from over Salem way. He says there are quant.i.ties of soldiers there, and that they are like to come this way and spread all over the town."

"You speak of them, sweetheart, as if they might be another epidemic of smallpox," he said grimly, "And so they are, so they are, if not indeed something worse." And the scowl came back to his face as he looked off over the water at his brig and schooners.

"But what does it all mean, father?" Mary asked anxiously. "Think you they will meet with opposition should they actually come down here?

Oh, it would be dreadful to have any fighting right here in our streets and before our very doors." The girl trembled, and her cheeks paled.

"Nay, nay, la.s.s," and he patted her shoulder rea.s.suringly; "cross no bridges until you come to them." Then he added rather impatiently, "What does Johnnie Strings mean by telling such tales to affright women-folk?"

"We--Dorothy Devereux and I--met him, and we made him talk. But he did not seem to want to tell us all he knew about it."

"And quite right," said her father, smiling again. "Lord pity the man who is fool enough to tell women--and girls, at that--all he knows of such matters, in days like these."

Mary looked up at him a little reproachfully, but he only bent and kissed her, as he said, now quite gravely: "I've much on my mind this night, my child, and I have to ask if you can be ready soon after supper to drive with me to the house of neighbor Devereux, and to stop there a few days with Dorothy. I have certain matters to talk over with him, and will pa.s.s the night there; and before daylight I must be on my way to Boston."

CHAPTER V

On Riverhead Beach, at the extreme southwest end, the Devereux family kept sundry boats, for greater convenience in reaching the town proper, without going around the Neck, by the open seaway; and some distance from the boat-house was their home, the way being along the sh.o.r.e and across the thriftily planted acres and through the woodland.

The same low stone house it was that had withstood the pirates' raid over one hundred years before. But the forests were now gone, although a n.o.ble wood still partially environed it. And beyond this were sloping hills and gra.s.sy meadows, through which ran a stream of pure, sweet water, wandering on through the dusk of the woods until it found the sea.

Here fed the flocks and herds of Joseph Devereux, the grandson of John and Anne.

There had been some additions to the original building, but these were low and rambling, like the older portion. And before it, broader of expanse and to the vision than in the early days, stretched the sea, a far-reaching floor of gla.s.s or foam, to melt away in the pearly dimness of the horizon.

The hush of lingering twilight was over the place, and now and then the note of a thrush or robin thrilled sweet on the golden-tissued air.

But from the vine-draped door of the low stone dairy came sounds less inviting, uttered by Aunt Penine, the widowed sister-in-law and housekeeper of Joseph Devereux, as she goaded her maids at their evening work.

In sharp contrast with her, both as to person and manner, was her invalid sister Lettice, who was sitting on the porch before the open door, with little 'Bitha, her orphaned grandchild, hanging lovingly about her.

Opposite these sat Joseph Devereux, smoking his evening pipe; and crouched on the stone step, her curly head resting against his knee, was Dorothy, now gentle and subdued.

There was an irresistible charm about the girl's wilfulness that blended perfectly with the sacred innocence of her childish nature.

She was impetuous, laughter-loving, and somewhat spoiled; but she was possessed of a high spirit, strong courage, and a pure, tender heart.

Her father's idol and chief companion she had always been since, in his sixtieth-odd year, she was laid in his strong arms,--vigorous as those of a man half his own age. And he was looking into her baby face, so like his own, when he heard that she was all he had left of his faithful wife.

He had lost many children; and such sorrow, softening still more a never hard heart, had made him dotingly fond of those left to him,--his twenty-seven-year-old son John and the wilful Dot.

The girl's education had been beyond that of most maids in those times, as had also that of her only friend, Mary Broughton; and for much the same reason. Both girls had been carefully trained by their fathers; and Aunt Penine, at Nicholson Broughton's request, had taught Mary housewifery in all its branches, at the same time she was undertaking the like portion of her niece's education.

But this was an art in which Mary far exceeded Dot; and Aunt Penine lectured her niece unceasingly, while seeming to find nothing but praise for Mary's efforts.

It was pretty sure to be something of this sort: "Dorothy, Dorothy!

Ye'll ne'er be a good b.u.t.ter-maker; ye beat it so, the grain will be broke. Why cannot ye take it this way?" and Aunt Penine would show her. "See how fine Mary does it! Ye have too hot a hand."

Dot would give her head a toss, and remind her aunt that it was not she herself who had the fashioning of her small hand, nor the regulating of its temperature. And then Aunt Penine would be very sure to go to her brother-in-law with complainings of his daughter's disrespectful tongue, and it would end in Dot being persuaded by her father to beg Aunt Penine's pardon, which she would do in a meek tone, but with a suspicious sparkle in her eyes. And after that she was very likely to be found at the stables, saddling her own mare, Brown Bess, for a wild gallop off over the country.

Aunt Penine was one who never seemed to remember that she had ever been young herself; and this made her all the more unbending in her disapproval of Dorothy's flow of spirits, and of the indulgence shown her by her father.

She was now coming across the gra.s.s from the dairy,--a tall, lithe figure, from which all the roundness of youth (had she ever possessed anything so weak) had given way to the spareness of middle age. Her hair, still plentiful, was of a dull, l.u.s.treless black; her complexion sallow, with paler cheeks, somewhat fallen in; and she had a pair of small gray eyes that seemed like twinkling lights set either side a very long, sharp nose.