Part 8

"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; Mistress Mary 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?"

X

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 did I 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--"