The Cavaliers of Virginia Volume I Part 7

"Well, O'Reily, the officers are waiting on you; only prove to us that this is not another of your drunken reveries, and it shall turn out better for you than you now expect. Since it has been ascertained that this man Worley was not to be found among the slain, the Governor has issued his proclamation, offering two hundred pounds for his apprehension, dead or alive."

"Oh!" said O'Reily, as he was going out of the door, "but I'm afeard you'll find him rather in a state iv thribulation, I did some killen an im myself: Oh wasn't that a beauty iv a shelaleigh? Only to think of two hundred pounds; faix if I get it but I'll have it set in bra.s.s."

The officers in attendance, with Brian at their head, soon emerged from the Governor's stable amidst the shouts and cheers of the mult.i.tude. The unfortunate Roundhead commander was brought into courts suffering severely from thirst, and the effects of the contusion, produced by the violence of O'Reily's blow.

We will not detain the reader over revolting portions of the trial either now or hereafter; suffice it to say, therefore, in brief, that O'Reily received the interest of two hundred pounds ever afterwards for his capture of the Rebel Chief. Four of the ringleaders at the second, and final trial were condemned and speedily executed, and the others recommended to mercy. Thus was terminated this sanguinary conflict, the last convulsive throe of the Independent faction in the British dominions of North America.

As our tale is no farther directly connected with this ill-advised and hopeless insurrection, we proceed in the next chapter with the direct thread of our narrative, the princ.i.p.al personages of which were so directly concerned in the b.l.o.o.d.y affair just related, that we could not pa.s.s it over with any kind of regard to historical accuracy.

CHAPTER X.

During the whole of the day succeeding the insurrection, our hero lay in the most precarious and dangerous state; and the violent inflammatory action produced by several large sabre wounds so much unsettled his reason, that the surgeon was compelled still farther to deplete his already exhausted frame. Towards night his mind recovered its powers, but his strength was still gone, and he lay upon his couch in all the helplessness of infantile impotency; and toward evening, exhausted by the previous night of turmoil and strife, succeeded by a day of feverish restlessness, he at length fell asleep.

There was one never-wearying eye that watched the fitful slumbers of the invalid. Conscious, perhaps, that Bacon could never be more to her than a friend and protector, Wyanokee delighted in rendering him those quiet, but constant and indispensable services which his situation required.

Not a change of his ever-varying countenance, as the workings of a diseased and excited imagination, were from time to time portrayed upon his pale and already attenuated features, escaped her, while her own beautiful and expressive countenance, vividly displayed, in rapid and corresponding changes, her sympathy with the sleeping sufferer. If any one approached the door, her keen glance immediately arrested the intruder, her finger upon her lip, and a frown upon her brow, in her powerful and national pantomimic token of silence. If the eye of the sleeper opened for an instant in bewildered amazement at the difference between the real scene before him, and the one from which in sleeping fancy he had just escaped, her wild and imaginative susceptibilities were instantly on the alert.

The mind of the aboriginal, even when partially cultivated, is overcome with superst.i.tious reverence and awe, in the presence of one under the excitement of a diseased imagination. Such had been the state of feeling with Wyanokee during the whole of Bacon's mental hallucinations throughout the day, and now as she watched at his bed-side, during his uneasy slumbers, her keen perceptions were tremendously alive to each successive demonstration. There was one member of the family, however, who entered and departed from the room unchallenged--Virginia! At this moment she entered--her own tender sympathies wrought upon by all the late hara.s.sing events; although differing in their developments and cause in some respects, they were in no wise inferior in degree to those of her protegee. She moved with noiseless step and suppressed respiration until she stood over the couch of the wounded youth. Long and feelingly she gazed upon the sharp and pallid features; there was naught of pa.s.sion in that gaze--it was pure and heavenly in its origin, as in its motive. Her moistened eye, with a movement almost peculiar to the sick room, or the funeral chamber, turned slowly upon her attendant.

No melting and sympathizing tear softened the brilliant and penetrating eye which met her gaze; there was excitement, deep excitement, but not the mellowed emotion of regulated sympathy; in Wyanokee, the imagination controlled the heart--in Virginia, the heart subdued and softened the imagination.

There was something touchingly beautiful in the moral development of these two young and innocent hearts. There was a mutual instinctive understanding of each, with regard to the position of the other, in relation to the wounded youth before them; yet it had never been admitted even to their own consciousness, because they had never a.n.a.lyzed their own feelings, and circ.u.mstances as yet had never openly betrayed them to each other. As they mutually exchanged glances, something like an electric thrill pa.s.sed chilly through their veins, but it was only for an instant; the reasoning faculties of the mind examined it not--they were not in a situation to examine it--imagination controlled the whole mental organization of the one, and the tenderest and purest emotions of the heart that of the other. Virginia came to relieve the faithful and indefatigable Indian maiden, and as the only practicable means, sent her under some pretext to her mother. She now occupied a seat near the foot of the couch, in full view of the sleeper's countenance, faintly illuminated by the subdued rays of a shaded lamp. She had watched the varying and magnetic vibration of muscle and nerve for nearly an hour, when the eyes of the sleeping youth slowly and wildly opened upon her in a bewildered stare, and at length he spoke.

"The senses are not the only vehicles for communicating pa.s.sing events to the mind," said he, his voice already hollow and sepulchral from the previous excitement of the brain. Virginia understood him not, but supposed that his mind was again wandering, but it was not so; his mental perceptions were preternaturally clear, as they sometimes are after painful cerebral excitements.

She made him no answer, hoping that he would again close his eyes to repose. But he continued, "How else can we gain knowledge of things which have transpired when all the senses are shut up in profound slumber? Just now I slept deeply, but not soothingly, and I thought I was on the brink of destruction, from which none but you could save me; and that Wyanokee persisted in attempting the rescue, and the more she struggled the more irremediable became my difficulties. At length you appeared upon the scene, leaning upon your mother's arm; and she carried away Wyanokee while you redeemed me from destruction. This is indeed no farther true than that you have taken the place of your attendant, and that your mild sympathizing countenance is far more genial to my present weakened state, than her wild and startling glances. But does it not seem as if my mental perceptions had caught a glimpse of pa.s.sing events without the intervention of the animal senses?"

Virginia put her finger upon her lip and shook her head, to remind her charge that strict silence was enjoined. For this there were other motives acting upon her perturbed feelings besides the injunction of the surgeon, had they been wanting.

The invalid closed his eyes, and in a short time seemed to sleep more calmly and soundly than he had yet done. It being the portion of the night through which Virginia had insisted upon watching, she moved quietly to a couch by the window looking upon the river, and the blue hills beyond, and threw herself upon it and gazed out at the enchanting scene. Her own flower garden lay beneath the window, stretching away towards the river, and ornamented midway with a tasteful little summer-house designed by herself, and decorated by the hands of the ingenious youth who now lay so helpless before her. The air was balmy and serene; and redolent of the richest perfumes of fruits and flowers just bursting into maturity with the advancing summer. Millions of stars twinkled in the high cerulean arch of heaven, and were reflected back from the broad expanse of waters beneath, with an enchanting brilliancy. The murmuring waters of the Powhatan rippled along the sandy sh.o.r.e with a melancholy monotony, indescribably soothing to her hara.s.sed and troubled mind. The various noises of the busy world around were one by one sinking into silence. Occasionally the profound stillness which succeeded, disturbed by the distant bark of a watch-dog, or the more rural cackling of geese, faded away in the distance so imperceptibly as to leave the mind at a loss to know whether they were real sounds, or those a.s.sociations with the scene which the imagination often conjures up to bewilder us on such occasions. Her eyes were half closed for a moment under these soothing and seducing influences, and the next, quickly opened to catch the fiery track of some darting meteor as it winged its way through the starry heavens, or to follow the humbler lights borne through the air by myriads of fire flies which brilliantly floated upon the transparent atmosphere. A wild and startling note from some beast of prey, as it roamed through the trackless and unsubdued forests beyond the river, occasionally struck upon her ear, and ever and anon she turned her eyes toward her sleeping charge, and all the painful and hara.s.sing feelings of the last few days returned. It was like awaking from a delicious dream, to the stern reality of some pressing and constantly obtrusive misfortune. Her previous life had been tranquil and unruffled; until now her spirits buoyant and elastic. Suddenly the scene had changed, and all the unmarked and unrecorded pleasures of her youthful years were lost in the cares and troubles of the present. She imagined herself the most irremediably wretched being in existence. So new was unhappiness to her, that the slight cloud which now hung between her and the happiness she had enjoyed seemed fearfully dark and lowering.

But again the soothing influences of the scene without imperceptibly stole upon her senses, and she fell into a slumber. Her imagination, now uncontrolled by the sterner qualities of mind, mingled the images retained from the stirring events of the last few days in the most fantastic forms. She saw her mother enter the garden with a slow and solemn step, clad in the habiliments of the grave.

Her form was aerial and graceful, and her features supernaturally beautiful and glorious. Presently this figure was met by another of colossal proportions, approaching the summer house from the opposite end of the garden; his step was grand and majestic, and his countenance stern and warlike. He was clad in complete armour, and his mailed heel as it struck the gravel, sent the blood cold to her heart, and at once convinced her of the reality of the scene. As the figures met they paused and seemed to hold communion for a time, and then pursued their way together; but when they returned to view, the relations of the parties were changed, the colossal figure was using the most violent gesticulation, to which his companion seemed to bow her head in meekness and submission, but not in conviction. At this the other suddenly sprang forward, seized his victim, and was about to leap the garden walls when an attempt to scream dispelled the illusion. Virginia opened her eyes and glanced around the room to a.s.sure herself of the reality of the scene before her. The wounded youth still slept soundly, and the lamp still threw its flickering shadows on the wall. By a slower and more cautious movement of the eyes she next examined the garden without; all was still and quiet as the grave, and gazing long and abstractedly upon the little arbour she again gave way to the exhaustion of her physical powers, and again the same figures rose upon her fancy. Now all doubt of their reality was discarded from the very circ.u.mstance of the former's having proved a delusion. She knew the other was a dream, but this she felt was truth, and she even went so far as to reason in her mind upon the strange coincidence of the dream, and the present real scene. The gigantic figure was now clad in the gray garb of the Recluse, his limbs manacled with chains, while her mother knelt apart in the att.i.tude of deep and unutterable wo. A crowd was gathered round as if to witness a public execution; soldiers and citizens, knights and n.o.bles mingled in the confused throng. The criminal was kneeling upon his coffin, the cap was drawn over his face, and the fatal word was given! She awoke with the sound of firearms still ringing in her ears, and the piercing shrieks of the female figure thrilling through her veins.

It may be readily imagined that her startled perceptions were by no means tranquillized on perceiving, as she opened her eyes, the shadows of moving figures upon the wall before her. In order to see from whom these reflections came she must turn her head and look in the direction of the opposite wall, but for her life she dared not move! Terror chained her to the couch. At length the shadows moved towards the door!

By a desperate effort she turned her head in that direction, and to her amazement beheld her mother dressed in white, exactly as she had seen her in her dream, slowly and steadily leaving the apartment. She clasped her hand to her forehead and endeavoured to recall her bewildered senses. The confused images of her slumbering and waking perceptions were so inextricably mingled together that for a time she was utterly at a loss to know whether the whole was real or a dream. Certainly the actors were the same, and the impressions continuous. She had not long lain in this bewilderment when she heard the door leading into the garden, just beneath her window, softly opened, and her mother in a few moments walked down the avenue in the very direction she had before seen her take.

Her eyes were intently riveted upon the movements of her parent, until they were hid from her view by the intervening trees and shrubbery.

But she removed them not--they were still fixed upon the spot where she had last seen her, until her white robes emerged here and there from the foliage, when her eyes instinctively followed her, straining her already weakened organs to catch the slightest change of position, and seemingly desirous to penetrate the sombre shadows of the night, whenever the figure upon which she gazed was lost to view. At length the door again softly opened beneath her window; and she saw the figure no more. But a very few moments elapsed, however, before another appeared upon the scene, of far more gigantic proportions and questionable business at that place and hour. It was the same figure which she had before seen a.s.sociated with the one which had just departed; and now that she really saw them in flesh and blood, she was more than ever at a loss to know which and how many of her visions of the night were real and which illusory.

The one now before her eyes was clad in his usual, half puritanical, half military tunic, and as usual he was fully armed, but the weapons hung quietly by his side; his arms were folded upon his breast, and his whole carriage and demeanour was subdued, sad, and melancholy. He stood leaning against the vine-clad column of the arbour, with his eyes intently fixed upon the spot where the preoccupant of the scene had disappeared. His chest heaved with emotion, which ever and anon found vent in laboured respirations of unspeakable misery.

At this moment a fierce watch-dog sprung at the intruder with savage ferocity, and to one less accustomed to danger in all its shapes, would doubtless have proved a formidable foe; but in an instant a heavy blow from his iron sheathed sabre laid the animal struggling at his feet. He stood leaning upon his weapon for an instant, and then moved slowly away until he came near the river, when he laid his hand upon the palisade running along the foot of the garden, and leapt upon the beach like a youth of twenty. In a short time Virginia saw his boat upon the water, his gigantic form rising and bending to his work with desperate and reckless efforts, the frail bark gliding over the smooth waters, "like a thing of life," until it faded away in the distance to a mere speck.

Her eye followed the receding object as it became more and more indistinct, until a mere undefined point was left upon the retina, her own voluntary powers sinking more deeply in repose from the intentness with which she pursued the single object.

How long she slept she knew not, but when she awoke the horizontal rays of the rising sun were beaming through the parted curtains, and the misty drapery from the river was rolling over the hills, and pouring through the intervening valleys in thousands of fantastic forms, weaving, here a rich festoon round the summit of one blue hill, and there spreading out a curtain of mellow tints before another.

The cool and invigorating morning breeze from the river, joined to the effects of her last refres.h.i.+ng and uninterrupted sleep, completely dispelled the shadowy illusions of the night, and she arose comparatively cheerful and happy. She was frightened when she cast her eyes upon the couch of the sufferer and found him awake, to think how much and how long she had neglected him. There was one indefatigable and untiring nurse watching by the bed-side, however! She had stolen in unperceived during the night, and now sat upon an humble seat at the foot of the couch; her eye as brilliant as if it was not subject to the ordinary fatigues of humanity. The invalid too had slept soundly, and awakened this morning refreshed and invigorated, and with all his inflammatory symptoms much abated.

With all these cheering influences around her, Virginia's countenance would have been soon clad in her wonted smiles, had it not been for an unbidden scene which every now and then was conjured up before her imagination, in which those near and dear to her were princ.i.p.al actors.

But these, painful and inexplicable as they seemed to her, were far from being well defined in her own mind. For her life, she could not separate the real evidences of her drowsy senses from the vivid images of her imagination. She was firmly impressed, however, with the belief, that some parts of them were true and real transactions! She firmly believed that she had seen her mother and the Recluse during the night--not together certainly, but near the same spot and in quick succession; and she as firmly believed that she had seen the latter disable the watch-dog, mount over the palisade, and hurry away in his boat. So much was indeed true; her mother had actually visited the wounded youth during the night, and she had actually walked in the garden, and the Recluse was actually there, but no meeting took place, except in the imagination of the worn-out maiden.

She entered the breakfast room with these various impressions, real and imaginary, curiously mingled and confused, and bearing upon her own countenance an expression of embarra.s.sment not less surprising to her mother, who was the first person she encountered. Twenty times she was on the point of asking her mother whether she had walked in the garden during the night, but as often a strange embarra.s.sment came over her, resulting partly from what she thought she had seen, and partly from words dropped by the Recluse in her hearing--the whole confused, unarranged and undigested--the latter perhaps being entirely unrecognised by her consciousness, but still operating imperceptibly upon her conduct. She was not a little astonished, therefore, when her mother came directly to the point occupying her own thoughts at the moment, saying, as she approached her, and affectionately smoothed down the cl.u.s.tering ringlets upon her brow. "You slept upon your post last night, my dear daughter? Nay--no excuses--there needs none. You wanted rest, little less than he whom you watched."

"I did not sleep so soundly as you imagine, my dear mother; I saw you, methought, either sleeping or waking, and to speak truly, I scarcely know which state I was in;" and as she spoke she cast a searching glance at her mother, but her countenance was calm and unruffled as she replied, "You must have been sleeping, my dear Virginia, I stooped over you and kissed your cheek as you slept."

"And did you not walk in the garden?"

"Yes I did! is it possible you saw me and spoke not?"

"I did see you, dear mother, but I was afraid to speak."

"Afraid to speak! Oh! you were afraid of waking Nathaniel?"

"No! no! I was frightened at the appearance of your companion in the garden."

"My companion in the garden! my poor child, you must indeed have dreamed; I had no companion in the garden."

Mr. Fairfax coming in at this moment, Virginia hastily took her chair at the head of the table, and busily commenced her duties at the table, her thoughts all the while occupied upon any thing else.

"What a strange being is that Recluse," said Mr. Fairfax, with apparent _non chalance_, "have you ever seen him, my dear?" addressing his wife.

Virginia dropped the plate she was in the act of handing to her father and was seized with, to her parents, the most unaccountable embarra.s.sment. She endeavoured to make some excuse in order, as she supposed, to hide her mother's inevitable confusion. But the latter calmly replied, "No, my dear, I have never seen him. I have always had some curiosity to behold him, but now that he has proved himself such a public benefactor, I shall not be satisfied till the wish is gratified.

Nathaniel had before excited us much by his account of him, but now I suppose the whole city will be eager to pay him their respects."

Virginia stared at her mother during this speech in the most undisguised astonishment, until she saw the calm serenity of her countenance--the expression of truth and sincerity, which had never deceived her, so strongly portrayed there, when she was again lost in bewilderment, which lasted throughout the meal. Her parents, however, were too much engaged with their own subject of discourse to observe her unusual abstraction, and the meal therefore and the dialogue came to a close without any farther development pertaining to our narrative.

CHAPTER XI.

"The eager pack from couples freed, Dash through the bush, the briar, the brake, While answering hound, and horn, and steed, The mountain echoes startling wake."

_The Wild Huntsman_.

A few days after the events recorded in the last chapter, the denizens of the ancient city were roused betimes by the sounds of the hunter's horn, the echoing chorus of the eager hounds, and the neighing of the fiery steeds, as they were led forth to the gallant pastime of the chase. The river and overhanging hills were enveloped in an impenetrable veil of mist, and the dew settled in a snowy cloud, upon the hair and castors of the Cavaliers as they issued from their doors, rubbing their eyes and preparing to mount the mettled coursers which pawed the earth and blew thick volumes of smoke from their expanded nostrils. These preparations for the enlivening sports of the field were not confined to a small number of the civic youth, or to the keener sportsmen among their elders--all the gentry of the town and colony, with few exceptions, were a.s.sembled on the occasion.

Sir William Berkley with his numerous guests, Gideon Fairfax, with his fellows of the Council, the members of the House of Burgesses, now princ.i.p.ally occupying the hotel of the "Berkley Arms," Frank Beverly, Philip Ludwell, Charles Dudley, with the Harrisons, the Powells, &c. all now came curvetting into the public square, dressed in their gay hunting jerkens and neat foraging caps, some with bugles swinging from their shoulders, and others with firearms suspended at their backs.

A stately gray-headed old negro, known by the cognomen of Congo, was in command of some half score of more youthful footmen of his own colour, in the livery of the Governor, each of whom held the leashes of a pair of hounds.

These, from time to time as old Congo wound a skilful blast upon his bugle, opened a deafening chorus, which echoed through the surrounding forests, and awakened from their slumbers the drowsy citizens of the town. Many a damsel peeped from her lattice to catch a glimpse of the gay Cavaliers as they wheeled into the place of rendezvous in parties of tens and twenties, all noisy and boisterous; some with the antic.i.p.ation of the promised sports, and others from the more artificial stimulus of a morning julep. The sound of Congo's bugle had reverberated through the silent streets in signal blasts to the grooms of the gentry at a much earlier hour of the morning, so that many of the high-born damsels inhabiting the purlieus of this little court, were also on the alert.