Chapter 26

ALL ON A BRIGHT MARCH MORNING.

The March winds were blowing, and the daffydowndillies were nodding merry heads in the sunshine. The hawthorn hedges were dotted with the bright green of bursting buds; and behind this promise of cover from the prying eyes of predatory urchins, the small birds were busy house-building. The tall elms were still bare of leaves, but the rooks had framed their crazy nests, and were now busy following the ploughman, and waxing fat on succulent worms. The sedgy pools and ditches in the forest were noisy with the hoarse croaking of colonies of frogs. Lambs skipped in the farmers' meadows, and cropped the grass that had already lost the brown tinge of winter.

Spring was come, vouched for by the calendar, the place of King Sol in the blue heavens, and the changing aspect of reawakening nature.

By every token of a healthy youth and a glorious March morning, Johnnie's thoughts should have been light, fanciful, and centred round the fair image of Mistress Dorothy Dawe. Alas! they were dark as a midwinter night, and as gloomy as a funeral oration.

"'She only drove me to despair, When--she--un-kind--did--prove.'"

Johnnie hummed the last few bars of a popular madrigal in slow and dirge-like tones. "She" was still wayward and unkind, and "He" was setting out on the morrow in search of treasure to lay at a maiden's feet. The young fellow's visions of the Indies were no longer rosy, but drab as November skies. He was pledged to set his face westward ho! but the zest was gone out of the enterprise. He leaned over a gate, and watched the gulls fishing in the river.

Johnnie did not hear a light step coming down the meadow towards him; no sound disturbed his melancholy reflections. "Jack!" murmured a soft voice.

The young man started as though an arrow had struck him. His face flushed hotly, and a gleam of pleasure lighted up its gloom.

"Good morrow, Mistress Dorothy," he said. "I suppose thy father waits at the house? I will go to him at once."

He turned from the stile; but on his arm there was the flutter of a hand like to the flutter of a bird's wing, and he stopped. He turned to look at the river again, and the maiden's eyes followed his. There was silence whilst a man might have told ten score.

"The wings of the gulls flash like silver in the sunshine," ventured Dorothy.

"So I have thought."

A pause.

"Thou art leaving us to-morrow."

"That is why I have been watching the gulls for near an hour."

"I don't understand."

"Paignton Rob says that these white gulls are found all the world over. I shall see them a thousand leagues away--screaming round the ship; massing in white armies on the New World cliffs; fishing in the rivers. My last vision of home must have white gulls in it. Away yonder they will be fairy birds to me, calling up pictures of my ancestral homestead along Severn side. The forests there will not recall the forest here. How shall their stifling heat and towering palms, their gaudy birds and flowers, their roaring beasts and loathly reptiles, remind one of the cool, sweet glades, the scented bracken, the gnarled oaks, the leaping deer, and sweet-throated songsters of home? 'Tis the vision of the river, the tide, and the wheeling gulls that I shall see again in the land of 'El Dorado.'"

There was a sadness and pathos in the forester's voice that went straight to the heart of the forest maiden. The hand was on his arm again, fluttering, trembling. "I have been very wicked!" The fluty notes of a sweet voice were broken.

"Who says so?" demanded Johnnie harshly and loudly.

"I do; you do."

"I do not!"

"But I have hurt you."

"Why shouldn't you do so, if it pleases you? Women must aye be meddling with pins and barbs. If they be not pricking velvets or home-spun, they must be thrusting sharp points into those that love them best. Why shouldst thou differ from others of thy sex?"

The young man's voice was bitter; the barbs still rankled. They had been long in the wounds they had made, and there was fiery inflammation. How often had he told the maid that she was like none other of her sex; that she was peerless--stood alone! The memory of former passionate declarations flashed across the minds of them both, and both sighed down into silence.

"Wilt thou not forgive me?"

"Why didst thou flout me, Dolly?"

"Just a maid's foolish temper. Think how full of whimsies we women be. Men be not so; they have strength denied to us, the weaker vessel." (Johnnie's face was visibly softening. Dolly sighed with renewed hope, and went on.) "I was hurt because thou didst plan and resolve to go to the Indies without ever a word to me. I was not thought on. The Queen moves a finger, and straightway thou art fashioning wings to take thee to the ends of the earth. 'Twas thy duty so to do, but why treat me as a chit or child of no account? Thy head was ever bobbing against that of Master Jeffreys, or pouring plans into the one ear of Paignton Rob. 'Mum' was the word if ye did but catch the rustle of my gown. Thou hadst vowed to share thy life with me; yet there did ye sit, like conspirators, planning momentous issues in life, with never a chance for me to utter 'Yea' or 'Nay.' Was that just?"

"I told thee of my resolve as soon as I had made it firm."

"That was a day too late for my pride. The Dawes have some pride, Jack Morgan."

"They have reason for it, Mistress Dawe."

"Their friends should respect it."

"I was hoping to increase it. Why, thinkest thou, did I resolve to risk life and limb in the Indies, unless to gather wealth, that I might lay it at thy feet?"

"Nay; thou wert bitten by the flea of adventure, and must needs rush about the world to deaden the itching. Suppose that I had rather have thee remain at home, being but a plain maid, who would find contentment as a farmer's wife?"

The idea had not occurred to Johnnie, and he gasped in astonishment. Dolly saw his confusion, and wisely did not press her point. On the contrary, woman-like, she dropped the whole thread of the argument, and simply exclaimed a little plaintively,--

"I am sore wearied!"

"Wearied!" cried Johnnie, facing round. "Wearied of what?"

"I have walked from Newnham, and 'tis a trying journey with the wind buffeting one so rudely."

"I thought thou hadst ridden with thy father."

"I walked alone; I wanted to see thee alone. Why should we part ill friends, that have loved one another?"

The next moment a tearful maid was in a strong man's arms. All the wrongs on both sides, real and imaginary, were forgiven and forgotten. Two happy, laughing lovers sat and watched the gulls wheeling, dipping, rising in the spring sunshine.

"Thou hast rare roses in thy cheeks, sweetheart," said Johnnie.

"'Tis the wind," replied Dolly.

"'March wind!'" murmured the youth.

"'April showers!'" sobbed the maiden; for she thought of the morrow, and the tears came into the brave blue eyes.