Standish of Standish Part 56

"Nay now, nay now, Barbara!--Here, come to the shaded side of the Fort, and sit you down where we two sat"--

"We two sat on the bench without your door the last parley that we had, good cousin."

"'Gentle tongues aye give the sharpest wounds,' and it is thou who provest the proverb true, Barbara."

"Nay, I'll sit me down and listen with all meekness to what thou hast to say, Captain Standish."

"Thanks for even so much courtesy, Barbara, for I have sought thee to say that I deserve none at thy hands. I, to whose protection and comforting thou hast come across the sea, have treated thee as no base-born churl hath warrant for treating the meanest of woman-kind. I, to pride myself upon gentle blood and knightly training, and then throw insult and taunt upon a woman's uns.h.i.+elded head! Nay, Barbara, had any man three days agone forecast my doing such a thing, I had hurled the lie in his teeth, and haply crammed it down with Gideon's hilt. Nay--the good sword may well be ashamed of his master; well may I look for him to s.h.i.+ver in my grasp when next I draw him"--

"Myles! Myles, I'll hear no more! Nay then, not a word, or I shall hold it proven that my wish is naught to thee, for all thy contrite sayings.

I fear me Priscilla is right, and thou 'rt truly ill. This hot sun hath touched thy head with some such distemper as sped poor Master Carver.

Sit thee down here beside me, and I'll fetch cool water from the spring to bathe thy temples."

"It needs not, cousin. My distemper is of the mind, the heart; nay, it is wounded honor, la.s.s, and there's no ill of body can sting a man so shrewdly as that. Say that I have thy pardon, Barbara, if thou canst say it in truth, and 't will be better than any med'cine in Fuller's chest."

"Why, certes, Myles, thou hast my forgiveness and over and over for any rough word thou mayst have said, and in sober sadness I mind not what they were, for all my thought hath been of my unkindness to thee. Myles, I never told thee, but when thy mother lay a-dying, and thou far away, fighting the Spaniards in Holland, she bade me care for thee even as she would have done, and fill a sister's place--and more, and I laid my hand in hers and promised sacredly, and so she rested content."

"And why didst never tell me this before, cousin?"

"I know not--nay, but that's not all out true, and I'll tell thee no lies, Myles. When next thou camest to our poor home at Man, thou didst see Rose, and from the first I knew well enow that there'd be no need of sister-care for one who found so sweet a wife."

"Ay, she was sweet,--sweet as her pretty name. Dost know, Barbara, when these bushes burgeon in early summer with their soft and fragrant bloom it ever minds me of that sweet and fragile Rose that lies beneath."

But Barbara was silent.

"Ah well, ah well, 't is a brief chapter strangely at odds with the rude life wherein it found itself, and now 't is closed, and better so for her. She could not have bloomed among these dreary sands and savage woods; it was not fitting."

He paced a few steps back and forward, and Barbara rose, her clear eyes full of a woman's n.o.ble and patient strength.

"And so, Myles, we are at peace again, and I at least will make it my endeavor that there shall be no such breach of charity in the future.'"

"Nay, Barbara, stay a little, I pray thee. I have somewhat to say, for which in advance I must ask thy patience and indulgence. Thou 'lt not be angered at me so soon again, Barbara?"

"Nay, I'll not be angered, cousin." But Barbara's voice was very sad.

"'T is this, and I thought of it all last night as we flitted in the moonlight across the bay, and what thou sayest of my mother's charge to thee fits my thought like hand and glove. Why should not we two wed, Barbara?"

He turned and looked at her, and stood amazed to see how the steadfast calm of her face broke up in a tempest of indignation, of grief, of outraged womanhood.

"Why, Barbara! Why, cousin! What is it, what have I said? What ails thee, dear? What works upon thee so cruelly?"

"That any man should dare fancy it of me--there, there, let be, let me pa.s.s, let me go!"

"Nay, then, I'll not let thee go. I'm but a rude bungler in these women-ways, and I've said or done somewhat that wounds thee sorely, and I'll not let thee go till 't is all outsaid and I have once more cleared myself of at least willful offense toward thee."

"Wilt keep me by force, sir?"

"Ay maid I will, for 't is only in bodily strength that I'm thy match, and so for the moment I will e'en use it. Sit thee here now and listen yet again, as I say, Why may not we two wed, cousin Barbara? Thou 'rt not mine own cousin, thou knowest, child; 't was thy father and mine were in that bond; and--now bear with me, Barbara--I've a shrewd suspicion that my mother bade thee be not a sister but a wife to me.

Truth now, did she not, maid?"

"She could not guide either my love or thine, so why would she try?"

"Nay, that's no answer, la.s.s, but we'll let the question go. There's not a woman alive, Barbara, so dear to me as thou; there's none I hold in greater reverence or trust; there's none with whom I would so gladly live out my days, and--though now I risk thy scorn,--there's none whose lineage I so respect"--

"What, the Henley lineage?" murmured Barbara, with face averted to hide a smile.

"Nay, thou 'rt all Standish, Barbara! Thou 'rt more Standish than I, for thou hast the eyes of those old portraits my poor father vainly tried to wrest from his cousin Alexander. Let me look at those eyes, Barbara!"

"And so because it suits thy convenience to make me thy wife, thou takst no heed of mine own fancies," said Barbara, not heeding this request.

"And I pray thee unhand me, for I promise to patiently abide till thou hast said thy say."

"Now there again thou dost me wrong, la.s.s, for as I told thee t' other day there's no bachelor here fit to wed with thee, there's none I'd give thee to, nor would I see thee wither away unwed."

"Gramercy cousin, but methinks that is a question I well might settle for myself."

"Why nay, sith there is no gentleman unwed among our company, save Allerton, whom I love as little as thou dost."

"I care not for any"--

"I know it, Barbara, I know it well. Thou 'rt that rare marvel, a woman sufficing unto herself, for as I believe, thou hast never fancied any man, though more than one hath fancied thee."

"'T is my cold heart," murmured Barbara with a little smile strangled in its birth.

"Nay," replied her cousin thoughtfully as he pulled at his moustache and gazed upon the ground at his feet. "Nay, I call thee not so much heartless as fancy-free. Thou 'rt kind and gentle, ay, and loving as my dear mother knew. I'm well content with thy heart for such as it is, Barbara, if thou 'lt but give it me."

"Nay, Myles, I'm deadly sure I've none to give, and out of nothing nothing comes."

"Thou ne'er canst love me, Barbara?"

"No more than I love thee now, Myles."

"With calm cousin-love thou meanest?"

"I am ill skilled at logic, Myles. I cannot set out my feelings in cla.s.s and order, as our chirurgeon doth his herbs and flowers."

"Well, Barbara, I'm grieved that thou lookest upon me so coldly, but I draw not back from my pet.i.tion. I'd liefer have thy calm tenderness than another's hot love, for I can trust thee as I trust mine own honor, and I know full well that thou 'lt ever be better than thy word. So take me, Barbara, for thy husband, and fulfill the dear mother's last desire, and give me the hope of teaching thee in the days to come to love me even as I love thee."

But for all answer Barbara only turned and laid her hands in his, and slowly raised the wonder of her eyes until they looked straight into his; and the man whose front had never quailed in face of death or danger grew pallid beneath his bronze, and trembled like a leaf in the wind.

"What!--Barbara!--Dost really love me, maid? Nay, cheat me not--speak!

Dost love me, sweetheart, already?"

But Barbara said never a word, nor did Myles ever know more of the secret of her life than in that one supreme moment he read in her steadfast eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.