The Heart's Highway Part 13

She stared with scorn at the one black woman approaching her with the silver tray, then she turned and stared at Nick Barry, sitting half overcome with drink, lolling against the other. He cast a look of utter sheepishness at her, and then straightened himself, and rose like the other men, and d.i.c.k Barry motioned to both of the black women to withdraw, which they did, slinking out darkly, both with a fine rustle of silks. Then Madam Story saluted the other women, though somewhat stiffly, and d.i.c.k Barry, who was never lacking in a certain gloomy dignity, though they said him to be the worse of the two brothers, stepped forward. "Madam," he said, "I pray you to be seated." With that he led her with a courtly air to a great carved chair, in which his father had been used to sit, and she therein, somewhat mollified, her black length doubled on itself, and that mourning coach on her forehead was a wonderful sight.

Then arrived Major Robert Beverly and another notable man, one of the burgesses, whose name I do to this day conceal, in consequence of a vow to that effect, and then two more. Then Major Beverly, who was in fact running greater risks than almost any, inasmuch as he was Clerk of the a.s.sembly, and was betraying more of trust, after he had saluted Madam Story conferred privately with d.i.c.k Barry, and my Lord Estes, and Parson Downs, with this effect. d.i.c.k Barry, with such a show of gallantry and seriousness as never was, prevailed upon the three ladies to forgive him his discourtesy, but hinted broadly that in an enterprise fraught with so much danger, it were best that none but the ruder s.e.x should confer together, and they departed; Mistress Longman enjoining upon her husband to remain and deport himself like a man of spirit, and Mistress Allgood whispering with a sharp hiss into her goodman's alarmed ear, he nodding the while in token of a.s.sent.

But Madam Tabitha Story paused on the threshold ere she departed, standing back on her heels with a marvellous dignity, and waving one long, black-draped arm. "Gentlemen of Virginia," said she, in a voice of such solemnity as I had never heard excelled, "I beseech you to remember the example which that hero who has departed set you. I beseech you to form your proceedings after the fas.h.i.+on of those of the immortal Bacon, and remember that if the time comes when a woman's arm is needed to strike for freedom, here is one at your service, while the heart which moves it beats true to liberty and the great dead!"

Nick Barry was chuckling in a maudlin fas.h.i.+on when the door closed behind her, and Parson Downs' great face was curving upward with smiles like a wet new moon, but the rest were sober enough in spite of some over-indulgence, for in truth it was a grave matter which they had met to decide, and might mean the loss of life and liberty to one and all.

Major Robert Beverly turned sharply upon me as soon as the women were gone, and accosted me civilly enough, though the memory of my convict estate was in his tone. "Master Wingfield," said he, "may I inquire--" "Sir," I replied, for I had so made up my mind, "I am with you in the cause, and will so swear, if my oath be considered of sufficient moment."

I know not how proudly and bitterly I said that last, but Major Beverly looked at me, and a kindly look came into his eyes. "Master Wingfield," he said, "the word of any English gentleman is sufficient," and I could have blessed him for it, and have ever since had remorse for my taking advantage of his dark closet of an old love for the hiding of the secret of the ammunition.

Then as we sat there, in a blue cloud of tobacco-smoke, through which the green bayberry candles gleamed faintly, and which they could not overcome with their aromatic breath of burning, the plot for the rooting up of the young crop was discussed in all its bearings.

I wondered somewhat to see Major Beverly, and still others of the burgesses who presently arrived, placing their lives in jeopardy with men of such standing as some present. But a common cause makes common confidence, and it might well have been, hang one, hang all.

Major Robert Beverly spoke at some length, and his speech was, according to my mind, both wise and discreet, though probably somewhat inflamed by his own circ.u.mstances. The greatest store of tobacco of any one in the colony had Major Robert Beverly, and a fair young wife who loved that which the proceeds could buy. And as he spoke there was a great uproar outside, and the tramp of horses and jingle of swords and spurs, and a whole troop of horse came riding into the grounds of Barry Upper Branch. And some of those in the hall turned pale and looked about for an exit, and some grasped their swords, and some laughed knowingly, and Major Beverly strode to the door, and behind him Parson Downs, and Capt. Noel Jaynes, and the Barry brothers, and some others, and I, pressing close, and there was a half-whispered conference between Major Beverly and the leader of the horse. Then Major Beverly turned to us. "Gentlemen,"

he said, "I am a.s.sured that in case of a rising we have naught to fear from the militia, who are in like case with the other sufferers from the proceedings of the government, being about to be disbanded in arrears of their pay. Gentlemen, I am a.s.sured by Capt. Thomas Marvyn that his men are with us in heart and purpose, and though they may not help, unless the worse come to the worse, they will not hinder."

Then such a cheer went up from the conspirators in the hall of Barry Upper Branch, and the troop of horse outside, as it seemed, might have been heard across the sea which divided us from that tyranny which ruled us, and Nick Barry shouted to some of his black slaves, and presently every man of the soldiers was drinking cider made from the apples of Virginia, and with it, treason to the king and success to the rebels.

XV

I had not formed my plan of taking part in the coming insurrection without many misgivings lest I should by so doing bring harm upon the Cavendishes. But on discussing the matter in all its bearings with Major Robert Beverly, whom I had ever held to be a man of judgment, he a.s.sured me that in his opinion there could no possible ill result come to such a household of women, especially when the head of it was of such openly-avowed royalist leanings. Unless, indeed, he admitted, the bringing over of the arms and the powder was to be traced to Mistress Mary Cavendish. This he said, not knowing the secret of his first wife's tomb, and I feeling, as indeed I was, an arch deceiver. But what other course is left open to any man, when he can s.h.i.+eld the one he loves best in the whole world only at the expense of some one else? Can he do otherwise but let the other suffer, and even forfeit his sense of plain dealing? I have lived to be an old man, and verily nothing hath so grown in the light of my experience as the impossibility of serving love except at a loss, not only to others, but to oneself. But that truth of the greatest importance in the whole world hath also grown upon me, that love should be served at whatever cost. I cared not then, and I care not now, who suffered and who was wronged, if only that beloved one was saved.

I went home that night from Barry Upper Branch riding a horse which d.i.c.k Barry lent me, on learning that I had come thither without one, though not in what mad fas.h.i.+on, and Sir Humphrey rode with me until our roads parted. Much gaming was there that night after we left; we leaving the Barrys and my Lord Estes and Drake and Captain Jaynes and many others intent upon the dice, but Humphrey and I did not linger, I having naught to stake, and he having promised his mother not to play. "Sometimes I wish that I had not so promised my mother," he said, looking back at me over his great boyish shoulder as he rode ahead, "for sometimes I think 'tis part of the estate of a man to put up stakes at cards, and to win or lose as beseems a gentleman of Virginia and a cavalier. But, sure, Harry, a promise to a man's mother is not to be broke lightly, and indeed she doth ask me every night when I return late, and I shall see her face at the window when I ride in sight of the great house; but faith, Harry, I would love to win in something, if not in hearts, in a throw of the dice. For sure I am a man grown, and have never had my own will in aught that lies near my heart." With that he gave a great sigh, and I striving to cheer him, and indeed loving the lad, replied that he was but young, and there was still time ahead, and the will of one's heart required often but a short corner of turning. But he was angry again at me for that, and cried out I knew not for all I was loved in return, the heart of a certain maid as well as he who was despised, and spurred his horse and rode on ahead, and when we had come to the division of the road, saluted me shortly, and was gone, and the sound of his galloping died away in the distance, and I rode home alone meditating.

And when I reached Drake Hill a white curtain fluttered athwart a window, and I caught a gleam of a white arm pulling it to place, and knew that Mistress Mary had been watching for me--I can not say with what rapture and triumph and misgivings.

It was well toward morning, and indeed a faint pallor of dawn was in the east, and now and then a bird was waking. Not a slave on the plantation was astir, and the sounds of slumber were coming from the quarters. So I myself put my borrowed horse in stable, and then was seeking my own room, when, pa.s.sing through the hall, a white figure started forth from a shadow and caught me by the arm, and it was Catherine Cavendish. She urged me forth to the porch, I being bewildered and knowing not how, nor indeed if it were wise, to resist her. But when we stood together there, in that hush of slumber only broken now and then by the waking love of a bird, and it seemed verily as if we two were alone in the whole world, a sense of the situation flashed upon me. I turned on my heel to reenter the house. "Madam," I said, "this will never do. If you remain here with me, your reputation--"

"What think you I care for my reputation?" she whispered. "What think you? Harry Wingfield, you cannot do this monstrous thing. You cannot be so lost to all honour as to let my sister--You cannot, and you a convict--"

Then, indeed, for the first time in my life and the last I answered a woman as if she were a man, and on an equal footing of antagonism with me. "Madam," I replied, "I will maintain my honour against your own." But she seemed to make no account of what I said. Indeed I have often wondered whether a woman, when she is in pursuit of any given end, can progress by other methods than an ant, which hath no power of circuitousness, and will climb over a tree with long labour and pain rather than skirt it, if it come in her way. Straight at her purpose she went. "Harry, Harry," she said, still in that sharp whisper, "you will not, you cannot--she is but a child."

Then, before I could reply, out ran Mary Cavendish herself, and was close at my side, turning an angry face upon her sister.

"Catherine," she cried out, "how dare you? I am no child. Think you that I do not know my own mind? How dare you? You shall not come between Harry and me! I am his before the whole world. I will not have it, Catherine!"

Then Catherine Cavendish, awakening such bewilderment and dismay in me as I had never felt, looked at her sister, and said in a voice which I can hear yet: "Have thy way then, sister; but 'tis over thy own sister's heart."

"What mean you?" Mary asked breathlessly.

"I love him!" said Catherine.

I felt the hot blood mount to my head, and I knew what shame was. I turned to retreat. I knew not what to do, but Mary's voice stopped me. It rang out clear and pitiless, with that pitilessness of a great love.

"And what is that to me, Catherine?" she cried out. "Sure it is but to thy shame if thou hast loved unsought and confessed unasked. And if I had ten thousand sisters, and they all in love with him, as well they might be, for there is no one like him in the whole world, over all their hearts would I go, rather than he should miss me for but a second, if he loved me. Think you that aught like that can make a difference? Think you that one heart can outweigh two, and the misery of one be of any account before that of three?"

Then suddenly she looked sharply at her sister and cried out angrily:

"Catherine Cavendish, I know what this means. 'Tis but another device to part us. You love him not. You have hated him from the first. You have hated him, and he is no more guilty than you be.

'Tis but a trick to turn me from him. Fie, think you that will avail?

Think you that a sister's heart counts with a maid before her lover's? Little you know of love and lovers to think that."

Then to my great astonishment, since I had never seen such weakness in her before, Catherine flung up her hands before her face and burst into such a storm of wild weeping as never was, and fled into the house, and Mary and I stood alone together, but only for a second, for Mary, also casting a glance at me, then about her at the utter loneliness and silence of the world, fled in her turn. Then I went to my room, but not to sleep nor to think altogether of love, for my Lord Culpeper was to sail that day, and the next night was appointed for the beginning of the plant cutting.

XVI

I know not if my Lord Culpeper had any inkling of what was about to happen. Some were there who always considered him to be one who feathered his own nest with as little risk as might be, regardless of those over and under him, and one who saw when it behooved him to do so, and was blind when it served his own ends, even with the glare of a happening in his eyes. And many considered that he was in England when it seemed for his own best good without regard to the king or the colony, but that matters not, at this date. In truth his was a ticklish position, between two fires. If he remained in Virginia it was at great danger to himself, if he sided not with the insurgents; and on the other hand there was the certainty of his losing his governors.h.i.+p and his lands, and perhaps his head, if he went to tobacco-cutting with the rest of us. He was without doubt better off on the high sea, which is a sort of neutral place of nature, beyond the reach for the time, of mobs or sceptres, unless one falls in with a black flag. At all events, off sailed my Lord Culpeper, leaving Sir Henry Chichely as Lieutenant-Governor, and verily he might as well have left a weather-c.o.c.k as that well-intentioned but pliable gentleman. Give him but a head wind over him and he would wax fierce to order, and well he served the government in the Bacon uprising, but leave him to his own will and back and forth he swung with great bl.u.s.ter but no stability. None of the colony, least of all the militia, stood in awe of Sir Henry Chichely, nor regarded him as more than a figure-head of authority when my Lord Culpeper had set sail.

The morning of the day after the sailing, the people of Jamestown whom one happened to meet on the road had a strange expression of countenance, and I doubt not that a man skilled in such matters could have read as truly the signs of an eruption of those forces of human pa.s.sion in the hearts of men, as of an earthquake by the belching forth of smoke and fire from the mouth of a volcano.

Everybody looked at his neighbour with either a glare of doubt and wariness, or with covert understanding, and some there were who had a pale seriousness of demeanour from having a full comprehension of the situation and of what might come of it, though not in the least drawing back on that account, and some were all flushed and glowing with eagerness and laughing from sheer delight in danger and daring, and some were like stolid beasts of the field watching the eye of a master, ready at its wink to leap forth to the strain of labour or fury. Many of these last were of our English labourers, whom I held in some sort of pity, and doubt as to whether it were just and merciful to draw them into such a stew kettle, for in truth many of them had not a pound of tobacco to lose by the Navigation Act, and no more interest in the uprising than had the muskets stacked in Major Robert Beverly's first wife's tomb. Yet, I pray, what can men do without tools, and have not tools some glory of their own which we take small account of, and yet which may be a recompense to them?

Nevertheless, I saw with some misgivings these honest fellows plodding their ways, ready to leap to their deaths maybe at the word of command, when it did not concern their own interests in the least, and especially when they had not that order of mind which enables a man to have a delight in glory and in serving those broad ends of humanity which include a man to his own loss.

Early that morning the news spread that Colonel Kemp of the Gloucester militia and a troop of horse and foot had been sent secretly against some plant-cutters in Gloucester County who had arisen before us, and had taken prisoners some twenty-two caught in the act. The news of the sending came first, I think, from Major Robert Beverly, the Clerk of the a.s.sembly, who had withheld the knowledge for some time, inasmuch as he disliked the savour of treachery, but being in his cups that night before at Barry Upper Branch, out it came. 'Twas d.i.c.k Barry who told me. I fell in with him and Captain Jaynes on the Jamestown road that morning. "Colonel Kemp hath ridden against the rioters in Gloucester with foot and horse, by order of the general court, and Beverly hath been knowing to it all this time," he said gloomily. Then added that a man who served on two sides had no strength for either, and one who had raised his hand against Bacon had best been out of the present cause. But Captain Jaynes swore with one of his broadsides of mighty oaths that 'twas best as 'twas, since Beverly had some influence over the militia, and that he was safe enough not to turn traitor with his great store of tobacco at stake, and that should the court proceed to extremes with the Gloucester plant-cutters, such a flame would leap to life in Virginia as would choke England with the smoke of its burning.

We knew no more than the fact of the sending, but that afternoon came riding into Jamestown colonel Kemp with a small body of horse, having left the rest and the foot in Gloucester, there to suppress further disorder, and with him, bound to their saddles, some twenty-two prisoners, glaring about them with defiant faces and covered with dust and mire, and some with blood.

Something there was about that awful glow of red on face, on hand, or soaking through homespun sleeve or waistcoat, that was like the waving of a battle-flag or the call of a trumpet. Such a fury awoke in us who looked on, as never was, and the prisoners had been then and there torn from their horses and set free, had it not been for the consideration that undue precipitation might ruin the main cause. But the sight of human blood shed in a righteous cause is the spur of the brave, and goads him to action beyond all else. Quite silent we kept when that troop rode past us on their way to prison, though we were a gathering crowd not only of some of the best of Virginia, but some of her worst and most uncontrolled of indenture white slaves, and convicts, but something there must have been in our looks which gave heart to those who rode bound to their horses, for one and then another turned and looked back at us, and I trow got some hope.

However, before the night fairly fell, twenty of the prisoners, upon giving a.s.surance of penitence, were discharged, and but two, the ringleaders, were committed and were in the prison. The twenty-two, being somewhat craven-hearted, and some of them indisposed by wounds, were on their ways homeward when we were afield.

We waited for the moon to be up, which was an hour later that night.

I was all equipped in good season, and was stealing forth secretly, lest any see me, for I wished not to alarm the household, nor if possible to have any one aware of what I was about to do, that they might be acquit of blame through ignorance, when I was met in the threshold of an unused door by Mary Cavendish. And here will I say, while marvelling at it greatly, that the excitement of a great cause, which calls for all the enthusiasm and bravery of a man, doth, while it not for one moment alters the truth and constancy of his love, yet allay for the time his selfish thirst for it. While I was ready as ever to die for Mary Cavendish, and while the thought of her was as ever in my inmost soul, yet that effervescence of warlike spirit within me had rendered me not forgetful, but somewhat unwatchful of a word and a look of hers. And for the time being that sad question of our estates, which forbade more than our loves, had seemed to pale in importance before this matter of maybe the rising or falling of a new empire. Heart and soul was I in this cause, and gave myself the rein as I had longed to do for the cause of Nathaniel Bacon.

But Mary met me at the northern door, which opened directly on a locust thicket and was little used, and stood before me with her beautiful face as white as a lily but a brave light in her eyes.

"Where go you, Harry?" she whispered.

Then I, not knowing her fully, and fearing lest I disquiet her, answered evasively somewhat about hunting and Sir Humphrey. Some reply of that tenor was necessary, as I was, beside my knife for the tobacco cutting, armed to the teeth and booted to my middle. But there was no deceiving Mary Cavendish. She seized both my hands, and I trow for the minute, in that brave maiden soul of hers, the selfishness of our love pa.s.sed as well as with me.

"I pray thee, Harry, cut down the tobacco on Laurel Creek first,"

she whispered, "as I would, were I a man. Oh! I would I were a man!

Harry, promise me that thou wilt cut down first the tobacco on my plantation of Laurel Creek."

But I had made up my mind to touch neither that nor the tobacco on Drake Hill, lest in some way the women of the Cavendish family be implicated.

"There be enough, and more than enough, for to-night," I answered, and would have pa.s.sed, but she would not let me.

"Harry," she cried, so loud that I feared for listening ears, "if you cut not down my tobacco, then will I myself! Harry, promise me!"