The Heart's Highway Part 12

"A blessing and not a curse?"

"As I understood it, though I know not why she should have blessed me."

"They say she is a white witch, and worketh good instead of harm, and yet--" said Mistress Mary, and her voice trembled, showing her fear, and I could see the negroes rolling eyes of wide alarm at me, for they were much affected by all hints of deviltry.

"I pray you, Madam, to have no fear," I said, and thought within myself that never should she know of what had happened on my way thither.

"They say that her good deeds work in the end to mischief," said Mary, "and, and--'tis sure no good whatever can come from unlawful dealing with the powers of evil even in a good cause. I wish the witch-woman had neither cursed thee nor blessed thee, Harry."

I strove again to rea.s.sure her, and said, as verily I begun to believe, that the old dame's words whether of cursing or blessing were of no moment, but presently Mistress Mary declared herself afraid of riding alone shut within her sedan chair, and would alight, and have one of the slaves lead my horse, and walk with me, taking my arm the remainder of the way.

I had never known Mistress Mary Cavendish to honour me so before, and knew not to what to attribute it, whether to alarm as she said, or not. And I knew not whether to be enraptured or angered at my own rapture, or whether I should use or not that authority which I had over her, and which she could not, strive as best she could, gainsay, and bid her remain in her chair.

But being so sorely bewildered I did nothing, but let her have her way, and on toward Drake Hill we walked, she clinging to my arm, and seemingly holding me to a slow pace, and the slaves with the chairs, and my horse, forging ahead with ill-concealed zeal on account of that chanting proclamation of Margery Key, which, I will venture to say, was considered by every one of the poor fellows as a special curse directed toward him, instead of a blessing for me.

As we followed on that moonlight night, she and I alone, of a sudden I felt my youth and love arise to such an a.s.sailing of the joy of life, that I knew myself dragged as it were by it, and had no more choosing as to what I should not do. Verily it would be easier to lead an army of malcontents than one's own self. And something there was about the moonlight on that fair Virginian night, and the heaviness of the honey-scents, and the pressure of love and life on every side, in bush and vine and tree and nest, which seemed to overbear me and sweep me along as on the crest of some green tide of spring. Verily there are forces of this world which are beyond the overcoming of mortal man so long as he is enc.u.mbered by his mortality.

Mary Cavendish gathered up her blue and silver petticoats about her as closely as a blue flower-bell at nightfall, and stepped along daintily at my side, and the feel of her little hand on my arm seemed verily the only touch of material things which held me to this world. We came to a great pool of wet in our way, and suddenly I thought of her feet in her little satin shoes. "Madam, you will wet your feet if you walk through that pool in your satin shoes," I said, and my voice was so hoa.r.s.e with tenderness that I would not have known it for my own, and I felt her arm tremble. "No," she said faintly. But without waiting for any permission, around her waist I put an arm, and had her raised in a twinkling from the ground, and bore her across the pool, she not struggling, but only whispering faintly when I set her down after it was well pa.s.sed. "You--you should not have done that, Harry."

Then of a sudden, close she pressed her soft cheek against my shoulder as we walked, and whispered, as though she could keep silent no longer, and yet as if she swooned for shame in breaking silence: "Harry, Harry, I liked the way you thrust them aside when they were rude with you, to do me a service, and Harry, you are stronger, and--and--than them all."

Then I knew with such a shock of joy, that I wonder I lived, that the child loved me, but I knew at the same time as never I had known it before, my love for her.

"Mistress Mary," I said, "I but did my duty and my service, which you can always count upon, and I did no more than others would have done. Sir Humphrey Hyde--"

But she flung away from me at that with a sudden movement of amazement and indignation and hurt, which cut me to the quick.

"Yes," she said, "yes, Master Wingfield, truly I believe that Sir Humphrey Hyde would do me any service that came in his way, and truly he is a brave lad. I have a great esteem for Humphrey--I have a greater esteem for Humphrey than for all the rest--and I care not if you know it, Master Wingfield."

So saying she called to the bearers of her chair, and would have a slave a.s.sist her to it instead of me, and rode in silence the rest of the way, I following, walking my horse, who pulled hard at his bits.

XIII

It was dawn before we were abed, but I for one had no sleep, being strained to such a pitch of rapture and pain by what I had discovered. The will I had not, to take the joy which I seemed to see before me like some br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup of the G.o.ds, but not yet, in the first surprise of knowing it offered me, the will to avoid the looking upon it, and the tasting of it in dreams. Over and over I said to myself, and every time with a new strengthening of resolution, that Mary Cavendish should not love me, and that in some way I would force her to obey me in that as in other things, never doubting that I could do so. Well I knew that she could not wed a convict, nor could I clear myself unless at the expense of her sister Catherine, and sure I was that she would not purchase love itself at such a cost as that. There remained nothing but to turn her fancy from me, and that seemed to me an easy task, she being but a child, and having, I reasoned, but little more than a childish first love for me, which, as every one knows, doth readily burn itself out by its excess of wick, and lack of substantial fuel. And yet, as I lay on my bed with the red dawn at the windows, and the birds calling outside, and the scent of the opening blossoms entering invisible, such pangs of joy and ecstasy beyond anything which I had ever known on earth overwhelmed me that I could not resist them. Knowing well that in the end I should prove my strength, for the time I gave myself to that advance of man before the spur of love, which I doubt not is after the same fashion as the unfolding of the flowers in the spring, and the nesting of the birds, and the movement of the world itself from season to season, and would be as uncontrollable were it not that a man is mightier even than that to which he owes his own existence, and hath the power of putting that which he loves before his own desire of it.

But for the time, knowing well that I could at any time take up the reins to the bridling of myself, I let them hang loose, and over and over I whispered what Mary Cavendish had said, and over and over I felt that touch of delicate tenderness on my arm, and I built up such great castles that they touched the farthest skies of my fancy, and all the time braving the knowledge that I should myself dash them into ruins.

But when I looked out of my window that May morning, and saw that wonderful fair world, and that heaven of blue light with rosy and golden and green boughs blowing athwart it, and heard the whir of looms, the calls and laughs of human life, the coo of dove, the hum of bees, the trill of mock birds, outreaching all other heights of joy, the clangour of the sea-birds, and the tender rustle of the new-leaved branches in the wind, that love for me which I had seen in the heart of the woman I had loved since I could remember, seemed my own keynote of the meaning of life sounding in my ears above all other sounds of bane or blessing.

But the strength I had to act in discord with it, and thrust my joy from me, and I went to planning how I could best turn the child's fancy from myself to some one who would be for her best good. And yet I was not satisfied with Sir Humphrey Hyde, and wished that his wits were quicker, and wondered if years might improve them, and if perchance a man as honest might be found who had the keenness of ability to be the worst knave in the country. But the boy was brave, and I loved his love for Mary Cavendish, and I could think of no one to whom I would so readily trust her, and it seemed to me that perchance I might, by some praising of him, and swerving her thoughts to his track, lead her to think favourably of his suit. But a man makes many a mistake as to women, and one of the most frequent is that the hearts of them are like wax, to be moulded into this and that shape. That morning, when I met Mistress Mary at the breakfast table, she was pale and distraught, and not only did not speak to me nor look at me, but when I ventured to speak in praise of Sir Humphrey's gallant looks at the ball, she turned upon me so fiercely with encomiums of my Lord Estes, whom I knew to be not worthy of her, that I held my tongue. But when Sir Humphrey came riding up a little later, she greeted him with such warmth as at once put me to torture, and aroused that spirit of defence of her against myself which hath been the n.o.blest thing in my poor life.

So I left them, Mistress Catherine at the flax-wheel, and Mary out in the garden with Sir Humphrey, gathering roses for the potpourri jars, and the distilling into rosewater, for little idleness was permitted at Drake Hill even after a ball. I got my horse, but as I started forth Madam Cavendish called--a stiffly resolute old figure standing in the great doorway, and I dismounted and went to her, leading my horse, which I had great ado to keep from nibbling the blossoms of a rose tree which grew over the porch. "Harry," she said in a whisper, "where is Mary?"

"In the garden with Sir Humphrey Hyde," I answered.

Then Madam Cavendish frowned. "And why is she not at her lessons?"

she asked sternly.

"The lessons are set for the afternoon, and this morning she is gathering rose leaves, Madam," I answered; but that Madam Cavendish knew as well as I, having in truth so ordered the hours of the lessons.

"But," she said, hesitating, then she stopped, and looked at me with an angry indecision, and then at the garden, where the top of Mary's golden head was just visible above the pink mist of the roses, and Sir Humphrey's fair one bending over it. "Harry," she said, frowning, and yet with a piteous sort of appeal. "Why do you not go out into the garden and help to gather the rose leaves?" Then, before I could answer, as if angry with herself at her own folly, she called out to Mary's little black maid, Sukey, to bid her mistress come in from the garden and spin. But before the maid started I said low in Madam Cavendish's ear: "Madam, think you not that the sweet air of the garden is better for her after the ball, than the hot ball and the labour at the wheel?" And she gave one look at me, and called out to Sukey that she need not speak to her mistress, and went inside to her own work and left me to go my way.

I was relieved in my mind that she did not ask me whither, since, if she had, I should have been driven to one of those broadsides of falsehood in a good cause for which I regret the necessity, but admit it, and if it be to my soul's hurt, I care not, so long as I save the other party by it.

I was bound for Barry Upper Branch, and rode thither as fast as I could, for I contemplated asking the Barry brothers to aid me in the removal of Mistress Mary's contraband goods, and was anxious to lose no more time about that than I could avoid.

I was set upon Major Robert Beverly's tomb as a most desirable hiding place for them, and knowing that there was a meeting of the a.s.sembly that evening at the governor's, to discuss some matters in private before he sailed for England, Major Beverly being clerk, I thought that before the moon was up would be a favourable time for the removal, but I could not move the goods alone, remembering how those st.u.r.dy sailors tugged at them, and not deeming it well to get any aid from the slaves.

So I rode straight to Barry Upper Branch, and a handsome black woman in a flaunting gown, with a great display of beads, and an orange silk scarf twisted about her head, came to parley with me, and told me that both the brothers were away, and added that she thought I should find them at the tavern.

The tavern was a brick building abounding in sharp slants of roof, and dimmed in outline by a spreading cloud of new-leaved branches, and there was one great honey-locust which was a marvel to be seen, and hummed with bees with a mighty drone as of all the spinning-wheels in the country, and the sweetness of it blew down upon one pa.s.sing under, like a wind of breath. And before the tavern were tied, stamping and shaking their heads for the early flies, many fine horses, and among them Parson Downs' and the Barry brothers', and from within the tavern came the sound of laughter in discordant shouts, and now and then a s.n.a.t.c.h of a song. Then a great hoa.r.s.e rumble of voice would cap the rest, telling some loose story, then the laughter would follow--enough, it seemed, to make the roof shake--and all the time the hum of the bees in the honey-locust outside went on. Verily at that time in Virginia, with all the spirit of the people in a ferment of rebellion against the established order of things, being that same ferment which the ardour of Nathaniel Bacon had set in motion, and which, so far as I see now, was the beginning of an epoch of history, there was nothing after all, no plotting nor counterplotting, no fierce inveighing against authority, nor reckless carousing on the brinks of precipices, which could for a second stay the march of the mightiest force of all--the spring which had returned in its majesty of victory, for thousands of years, and love which had come before that.

I tied my horse with the others, with a tight halter, for he was apt to pick quarrels, having always a theory that such discomforts as flies or a long weariness of standing were in some fashion to be laid to the doors of other horses, and indeed made always of his own kind his special scapegoat of the dispensation of Providence. 'Tis little I know about that great mystery of the animal creation and its relation toward the human race, but verily I believe that that fine horse of mine, from his propensity for kicking and lashing out from his iron-bound hoofs at whatever luckless steed came within his reach whenever the world went not to his liking, could not see an inch beyond the true horizon limit of the horse race, and attributed all that happened on earth, including man, to the agency of his own sort. Sure I was, from the backward glance of viciousness which he cast at the other stamping steeds as soon as I dismounted, that he concluded with no hesitation they had in some way led me to ride him thither instead of to his snug berth in the Cavendish stables, with his eager nose in his feed trough.

Before I entered the tavern, out burst Parson Downs, and caught hold of me, with a great shout of welcome. Half-drunk he was, and yet with a marvellous steadiness on his legs, and a command of his voice which would have done him credit in the pulpit. It was said that this great parson could drink more fiery liquor and not betray it than any other man in the colony, and Nick Barry, who was something of a wag, said that the parson's wrestlings with spirits of another sort had rendered him powerful in his encounters with these also. Be that as it may, though I doubt not Parson Downs had drunk more than any man there, no sign of it was in his appearance, except that his boisterousness was something enhanced, and his hand on my shoulder fevered. "Good day, good day, Master Harry Wingfield," he shouted.

"How goes the time with ye, sir? And, I say, Master Wingfield, what will you take for thy horse there? One I have which can beat him on any course you will pick, with all the creeks in the country to jump, and the devil himself to have a shy at, and even will I trade and give thee twenty pounds of tobacco to boot. 'Tis a higher horse than thine, Harry, and can take two strides to one of his; and mine hath four white feet, and thine but one, which, as every one knoweth well, is not enough. What say you, Harry?"

"Your reverence," I said, laughing, "the horse is not mine, as you know."

"Nay, Harry," he burst forth, "that we all know, and you know that we all know, is but a fable. Doth not Madam Cavendish treat you as a son, and are you not a convict in name only, so far as she is concerned? I say, Harry, you can ride my horse to the winning on Royal Oak Day, at the races. What think you, Harry?"

"Your reverence," I said, "I pray you to give me time," for well I knew there was no use in reasoning with the persistency to which frequent potations had given rise.

Up to my horse he went with that oversteadiness of the man in his cups, who moves with the stiffness of a tree walking, as if every lift of a heavy foot was the uplifting of a root fast in the ground, and went to stroking his head; when straightway, my horse either not liking his touch or the smell of his liquored breath, and judging as was his wont that the fault must by some means lie with his own race, straightway lashed out a vicious hind leg like a hammer, and came within an ace of the parson's own valuable horse--not the one which he proposed trading for mine--and the wind of the lash frighted the parson's horse, and he in his turn lashed out, and another horse at his side sprang aside; and straightway there was such a commotion in the tavern yard as never was, and slaves and white servants shouting, and forcing rearing horses to their regular standing, and I stroking my beast, and striving as best I could to bring his pure horse wits to comprehend the strong pressure and responsibility of humanity for the situation; and the Barry brothers and Captain Jaynes came running forth, Captain Jaynes swearing in such wise that it was beyond the understanding of any man unversed in that language of the high seas; and Nick Barry, laughing wildly, and d.i.c.k, glooming, as was the difference with the two brothers when in liquor. And the landlord, one John Halpin, stood in his tavern doorway with his eyebrows raised, but no other sign of consternation, knowing well enough that all this could not affect his custom, and being one of the most toughly leather-dried little men whom I have ever seen, and his face so hardened into its final lines of experience, that it had no power of changing under new ones. And behind him stood peering, some with wide eyes of terror, and some with ready laughs at nothing, the few other roisters in the tavern at that hour. 'Twas not the best time of day for the meeting of those choice spirits for the discussion of the other spirits which be raised, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, from the grape and the grain, for the enhancing of the joy of life, and defiance of its miseries; but the Barrys and Captain Jaynes and the parson were nothing particular as to the time of day.

When the horses were something quieted, I, desiring not to unfold my errand in the tavern, got hold of Parson Downs by his mighty arm, and elbowed d.i.c.k Barry, who cursed at me for it, and cut short Captain Jaynes's last string of oaths, and hallooed to Nick Barry, and asked if I could have a word with them. Captain Jaynes, though, as I have said, being in the main curiously well disposed toward me, swore at first that he would be d.a.m.ned if he would stop better business to parley with a d.a.m.ned convict tutor; but the end of it was that he and the Barry brothers and Parson Downs and I stood together under that mighty humming locust tree, and I unfolded my scheme of moving the powder and shot from Locust Creek to Major Robert Beverly's tomb. Noel Jaynes stared at me a second, with his hard red face agape, and then he clapped me upon the shoulder, and shouted with laughter, and swore that it should be done, and that it was a burning h.e.l.l shame that the goods had been put where they were to the risk of a maid of beauty like Mary Cavendish, and that he and the Barrys would be with me that very night before moonrise to move them.

Then the parson, who had a poetical turn, especially when in his cups, added, quite gravely, that no safer place could there be for powder than the tomb of love whose last sparks had died out in ashes; and d.i.c.k Barry cried with an oath that it would serve Robert Beverly rightly for his action against them in the Bacon rising, for though he was to the front with the oppressed people in this, his past foul treachery against them was not forgot, and well he remembered that when he was in hiding for his life--

But then his brother hushed him and said, with a shout of dry laughter, that the past was past, and no use in dwelling upon it, but that when it came to a safe hiding-place for goods which were to set the kingdom in a blaze, and maybe hang the ringleaders, he knew of none better than the tomb of a first wife, which, when the second was in full power, was verily back of the farthest back door of a man's memory.

So it was arranged that the four were to meet me that very night after sunset and before moonrise, and move the goods, and I mounted and rode away, with Parson Downs shouting after me his proposition to trade horses, and even offering ten pounds to boot when he saw the splendid long pace of my thoroughbred flinging out his legs with that freest motion of anything in the world, unless it be the swift upward cleave of a bird when the fluttering of wing wherewith he hath gained his impetus hath ceased, and nothing except that invincible rising is seen.

XIV

The first man my eyes fell upon was Parson Downs, lolling in a chair by the fireless hearth, for there was no call for fire that May night. His bulk of body swept in a vast curve from his triple chin to the floor, and his great rosy face was so exaggerated with merriment and good cheer that it looked like one seen in the shining swell of a silver tankard. When Nick Barry finished a roaring song, he stamped and clapped and shouted applause till it set off the others with applause of it, and the place was a pandemonium. Then that same coloured woman who had parleyed with me the other day, and was that night glowing like a savage princess--as in truth she may have been, for she had a high look as of an unquenched spirit, in spite of her degradation of body and estate--went about with a free swinging motion of hips, bearing a tray filled with pewter mugs of strong spirits. Around this woman's neck glittered row on row of beads, and she wore a great flame-coloured turban, and long gold eardrops dangled to her shoulders against the glossy blackness of her cheeks, and bracelets tinkled on her polished arms, which were mighty shapely, though black. In faith, the wench, had she but possessed roses and lilies for her painting, instead of that duskiness as of the cheek of midnight, had been a beauty such as was seldom seen. Her dark face was instinct with mirth and jollity, and, withal, a fierce spark in the whitening roll of her eyes under her flame-coloured turban made one think of a tiger-cat, and roused that knowledge of danger which adds a tingle to interest. A man could scarce take his eyes from her, though there were other women there and not uncomely ones. Another black wench there was, clad as gayly, but sunk in a languorous calm like a great cat, with Nick Barry, now his song was done, lolling against her, and two white women, one young and well favoured, and the other harshly handsome, both with their husbands present, and I doubt not decent women enough, though something violent of temper. As I entered, Mistress Allgood, one of them, begun a harangue at the top of a shrill voice, with her husband plucking vainly at her sleeve to temper her vehemence.

Mistress Allgood was long and lean, and gaunt, with red fires in the hollows of her cheeks and a compelling flash of black eyes under straight frowning brows. "Gentlemen," said she--"be quiet, John Allgood, my speech I will have, since thou being a man hath not the tongue of one. I pray ye, gentlemen listen to my cause of complaint.

Here my goodman and me did come to this oppressed colony of Virginia, seven years since, having together laid by fifty pound from the earnings of an inn called the Jolly Yeoman in Norfolkshire, in which for many years we had run long scores with little return, and we bought a small portion of land and planted tobacco, and set out trees. Then came the terror of the Indians, and Governor Berkeley, always in wait for the word of the king, and doing nothing, and once was our house burned, and we escaped barely with our lives, and then came Nat Bacon, and blessings upon him, for he made the beginning of a good work. And then did the soldiers riding to meet him, so trample down our tobacco fields with horse hoofs, that the leaves lay in a green pumice, and that crop lost. And then this Navigation Act, which I understand but little of except that it be to fill the king's pockets and empty ours, has made our crops of no avail, since we but sent the tobacco as a gift to the king, so little we have got in return. And look, look!" she shrieked, "I pray ye look, and sure this is the best I have, and me always going as well attired as any of my station in England. I pray ye look! Sure 'tis past mending, and the st.i.tches and the cloth go together, as will the colony, unless somewhat be done in season to mend its state." So saying, up she flung her arm, and all the under side of the body of her gown was in rags, and up she flung the other, and that was in like case.

Then the other woman, who was a strapping la.s.s, and had been a barmaid ere she came to Virginia in search of a husband, where she had found one Richard Longman afraid not to do her bidding and wed her, since he was as small and mild a man as ever was, joined in: "I say with Mistress Allgood," she shrieked out, and flung her own buxom arms aloft with such disclosures that a roar of laughter spread through the hall, and her husband blushed purple, and a protest gurgled in his throat. But at that his wife, who verily was a shrew, seized upon him by both of his little shoulders, and shook him until his face wagged like a rag baby with an utter limpness of helplessness, and shouted out, amid peals of laughter that seemed to shake the roof, that here was a pretty man, here forsooth was a pretty man. Here was her own husband, who let his own lawful wife go clad in such wise and lifted not a finger! Yes, lifted not a finger, and had to be dragged into the present doings by the very hair of his head by his wife, and that was not all. Yes, that was not all.

Then, with that, up she flung one stout foot, and lo, a great hole was in the heel of her stocking, and the other, and then she flirted the hem of her petticoat into sight, and that was all of a fringe with rags. "Look, look!" she shrieked out. "I tell ye, Thomas Longman, I will have them look, and see to what a pa.s.s that cursed Navigation Act and the selling of the tobacco for naught, hath brought a decent woman. How long is it since I had a new petticoat?

How long, I pray? Oh, Lord, had the men of this colony but the spirit of the women! Had but brave Nat Bacon lived!" With that, this woman, who had been perchance drinking too much beer for her head, though she was well used to it, burst into a storm of tears, and sprang to her feet, and cried out in a wild voice like a furious cat's: "Up with ye, I say! And why do ye stop and parley? And why do ye wait for my Lord Culpeper to sail? I trow the women be not afraid of the governor, if the men be! Up with ye, and this very night cut down the young tobacco-plants, and cheat the king of England, who reigns but to rob his subjects. Who cares for the Governor of Virginia? Who cares for the king? Up with ye, I say!"

With that she s.n.a.t.c.hed a sword from a peg on the wall and swung it in a circle of flame around her head, and what with her glowing eyes and streaming black locks, and burning beauty of cheeks, and cat-like shriek of voice, she was enough to have made the governor, and even the king himself, quail, had he been there, and all the time that mild husband of hers was plucking vainly at her gown. But the men only shouted with laughter, and presently the woman, with a savage glare at them, sank into her chair again, and Mistress Allgood went up to her, and the two whispered with handsome, fiercely wagging heads. Then entered another woman, after a clatter of horse's hoofs in the drive, and she had a presence that compelled all the men except one to their feet, though there was about her that foolishness which, in my mind, doth always hamper the extreme of enthusiasm. This woman, Madam Tabitha Story, was a widow of considerable property, owning a plantation and slaves, and she had, as was well known, gone mad with zeal in the cause of Nathaniel Bacon, and had furnished him with money, and would herself have fought for him had she been allowed. But Bacon, though no doubt with grat.i.tude for her help, had, as I believe is the usual case with brave men, when set about with adoring women, but little liking for her. It was, in faith, a curious sight she presented as she entered that hall of Barry Upper Branch with the men rising and bowing low, and the other women eyeing her, half with defiant glares as of respectability on the defence, and half with admiration and comradeship, for she was to the far front in this rebellion as in the other. Madam Story was a woman so tall that she exceeded the height of many a man, and she was clad in black, and crowned with a great hat feathered with sable like a hea.r.s.e, and her skin was of a whiteness more dazzling against the black than any colour. Her face had been handsome had it not been so elongated and strained out of its proper lines of beauty, and her forehead was of a wonderful height, a smooth expanse between bunches of black curls, and in the midst was set that curious patch which she had worn ever since Bacon's untimely death, it being, as I live, nothing more nor less than a mourning coach and four horses, cut so cunningly out of black paper that it was a marvel of skill.