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The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, a fiction by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 3 |
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_ CHAPTER III Although I was heir to a large estate, I had not much gold and silver nor many treasures in my possession. I never knew rightly why; but my mother, having control until I was come of age, and having, indeed, the whole property at her disposal, doubtless considered it best that the wealth should accumulate rather than be frittered away in trifles which could be of but passing moment to a boy. But I was well equipped enough as regarded comforts, and, as I said before, my education was well looked after. Through never having much regard for such small matters, it used to gall me not at all that my half-brother, who was younger and such a fair lad that he became them like a girl, should go clad in silks and velvets and laces, with a ready jingle of money in his purse and plenty of sweets and trinkets to command. But after I saw that little maid it went somewhat hard with me that I had no bravery of apparel to catch her sweet eyes and cause her to laugh and point with delight, as I have often seen her do, at the glitter of a loop of gold or a jewelled button or a flash of crimson sheen from a fold of velvet, for she always dearly loved such pretty things. And it went hard with me that I had not the wherewithal to sometimes purchase a comfit to thrust into her little hand, reaching of her nature for sweets like the hands of all young things. Often I saw my brother John win her notice in such wise, for he, though he cared in general but little for small folk, was ravished by her, as indeed was every one who saw her. And once my brother John gave her a ribbon stiff with threads of gold which pleased her mightily at the time, though, the day after, I saw it gleaming from the wet of the park grass, whither she had flung it, for the caprices of a baby are beyond those of the wind, being indeed human inclination without rudder nor compass. Then I did an ungallant and ungenerous thing, for which I have always held myself in light esteem: I gathered up that ribbon and carried it to my brother and told him where I had found it, but all to small purpose as regarded my jealousy, as he scarce gave it a thought, and the next day gave the little maid a silver button, which she treasured longer. As for me, I having no ribbons nor sweets nor silver buttons to give her, was fain to search the woods and fields and the seashore for those small treasures, without money and without price, with which nature is lavish toward the poor who love her and attend her carefully, such as the first flowers of the season, nuts and seed-vessels, and sometimes an empty bird's nest and a stray bright feather and bits of bright stones, which might, for her baby fancy, be as good as my brother's gold and silver, and shells, and red and russet moss. All these I offered her from time to time as reverently and shyly as any true lover; though she was but a baby tugging with a sweet angle of opposition at her black nurse's hand and I near a man grown, and though I had naught to hope for save a fleeting grasp of her rosy fingers and a wavering smile from her sweet lips and eyes, ere she flung the offering away with innocent inconstancy. Her father, Capt. Geoffry Cavendish, seemed to regard my devotion to his daughter with a certain amusement and good-will; indeed, I used to fancy that he had a liking for me, and would go out of his way to say a pleasant word, but once it happened that I took his kindness in ill part, and still consider that I was justified in so doing. A gentleman should not have pity thrust upon him unless he himself, by his complaints, seems to sue for it, and that was ever far from me, and I was already, although so young, as sensitive to all slights upon my dignity as any full-grown man. So when, one day, lying at full length upon the grass under a reddening oak with a book under my eyes and my pocket full of nuts if, perchance, my little sweetheart should come that way with her black nurse, I heard suddenly Captain Cavendish's voice ring out loud and clear, as it always did, from his practice on the quarter-deck, with something like an oath as of righteous indignation to the effect that it was a damned shame for the heir and the eldest son, and a lad with a head of a scholar and the arm of a soldier, to be thrust aside so and made so little of. Then another voice, smoothly sliding, as if to make no friction with the other's opinions, asked of whom he spoke, and that smoothly sliding voice I recognised as Mr. Abbot's, the attorney's, and Captain Cavendish replied in a fashion which astonished me, for I had no idea to whom he had referred--"Harry Maria Wingfield, the eldest son and heir of as fine and gallant a gentleman as ever trod English soil, who is treated like the son of a scullion by those who owe him most, and 'tis a damned shame and I care not who hears me." Then, before I had as yet fairly my wits about me, Mr. Abbot spoke again in that voice of his which I so hated in my boyish downrightness and scorn of all policy that it may have led me to an unjust estimate of all men of his profession. "But Col. John Chelmsford hath no meaning to deal otherwise than fairly by the boy, and neither, unless I greatly mistake, hath his wife." And this he said as if both Colonel Chelmsford and my mother were at his elbow, and for that manner of speaking I have ever had contempt, preferring downright scurrility, and Captain Cavendish replied with his quick agility of wrath, as precipitate toward judgment as a sailor to the masthead in a storm: "And what if she be? The more shame to them that they have not enough wit to see what they do! I tell thee this poor Harry hath a harder time of it than any slave on my plantation in Virginia, I--" But then I was on my feet, and, facing them both with my head flung back and my face, I dare say, red and white with wrath, and demanding hotly what that might be to them, and if my treatment at the hands of my stepfather and my own mother was not between them and me, and none else, and, boy as I was, I felt as tall as Captain Cavendish as I stood there. Captain Cavendish stared a moment and reddened and frowned, and then his gaunt face widened with his ever ready laugh which made it passing sweet for a man. "Tush, lad," he cried out, "and had I known how fit thou were to fight thy own battles I had not taken up the cudgels for thee, and I crave thy pardon. I had not perceived that thy sword-arm was grown, and henceforth thou shall cross with thy adversaries for all me." Then he laughed again, and I stared at him still grimly but softened, and he and Mr. Abbot moved on, but the attorney, in passing, laid his great white hand on my black mane of hair as if he would bless me, and I shrank away from under it, and when he said in that voice of his, "'Tis a gallant lad and one to do good service for his king and country," I would that he had struck me that I might have justly hit back. When they had passed back on the turf I lay with my boyish heart in a rage with the insults, both of pity and of praise, which had been offered me; for why should pity be offered unless there be the weakness of betrayal of suffering to warrant it, and why should there be praise unless there be craving for it, through the weakness of wronged conceit? Be that as it may, my book no longer interested me, and finally I rose up and went away after having deposited all my nuts on the grass in the hope that the little maid might chance that way and espy them. It was both a great and a sad day for me when I came to go to Cambridge, great because of my desire for knowledge and the sight of the world which has ever been strong within me, and, being so strong, should have led to more; and sad because of my leaving the little maid without a chance of seeing her for so long a time. She was then six years old, and a wonder both in beauty and mind to all who beheld her. I saw much more of her in those days, for my mother, whose heart had always been sore for a little girl, was often with Captain Cavendish's wife, for the sake of the child, though the two women were not of the best accord one with another. Often would I notice that my mother caressed the child, with only a side attention for her mother, though that was well disguised by her soft grace of manner, which seemed to include all present in a room, and I also noticed that Madam Rosamond Cavendish's sweet mouth would be set in a straight line with inward dissent at some remark of the other woman's. Madam Rosamond Cavendish was, I suppose, a beauty, though after a strange and curious fashion, being seemingly dependent upon those around her for it, as a chameleon is dependent for his colour upon his surroundings. I have seen Madam Cavendish, when praised by one she loved, or approached by the little maid, her daughter, with an outstretch of fair little arms and a coercion of dimples toward kisses, flash into such radiance of loveliness that, boy as I was, I was dazzled by her. Then, on the other hand, I have seen her as dully opaque of any meaning of beauty as one could well be. But she loved Captain Cavendish well, and I wot he never saw her but with that wondrous charm, since whenever he cast his eyes upon her it must have been to awaken both reflection and true life of joy in her face. She was so small and exceeding slim that she seemed no more than a child, and she was not strong, having a quick cough ready at every breath of wind, and she rode nor walked like our English women, but lay about on cushions in the sun. Still, when she moved, it was with such a vitality of grace and such readiness that no one, I suspect, knew how frail she was until she sickened and died the second year of my stay in Cambridge. When I returned home I found in her stead Madam Judith Cavendish, the mother of Captain Cavendish, who had come from Huntingdonshire. She was at that time well turned of threescore, but a woman who was, as she had always been, a power over those about her. She looked her age, too, except for her figure, for her hair was snowy white, and the lines of her face fixed beyond influence of further smiles or tears. My imagination has always been a mighty factor in my estimation of the characters of others, and I have often wondered how true to facts I might be, but verily it seemed to me that after Madam Cavendish arrived at Cavendish Court the influence of that great strength of character, which, when it exists in a woman, intimidates every man, no matter who he may be, made itself evident in the very king's highway approaching Cavendish Court, and increased as the distance diminished, according to some of my mathematical rules. There were in her no change and shifting to new lights of beauty or otherwise at the estimation of those around her; she rather controlled, as it were, all the domestic winds. Captain Cavendish bowed before his superior on his own deck, though I believe there was much love betwixt them, and, as for the little maid, she tempered the wilfulness which was then growing with her growth by outward meekness at least. I used to think her somewhat afraid of her grandmother, and disposed to cling for protection and mother-love to her elder sister Catherine. Catherine, in those two years, had blossomed out her beauty; her sallowness and green pallor had become bloom, though not rosy, rather an ineffable clear white like a lily. Her eyes, at once shy and antagonistic, had become as steady as stars in their estimation of self and others, and all her slender height was as well in her power of graceful guidance as the height of a young oak tree. Catherine, in those days, paid very little heed to me, for her one year of superior age seemed then threefold to both of us, except as she was jealously watchful that I win not too much of the love of her little sister. I have never seen such love from elder to younger as there was from Catherine Cavendish to her half-sister Mary after the little one had lost her mother. And all that the little maid did, whether of work or play, was with an eye toward the other's approbation, especially after the advent of her grandmother. Catherine had lovers, but she would have none of them. It seemed as if the maternal love of which most maids feel the unknown and unspelled yearning, and which, perchance, may draw them all unwittingly to wedlock, had seized upon Catherine Cavendish, and she had, as it were, fulfilled it by proxy by this love of her young sister, and so had her heart made cold toward all lovers. Be that as it may, though she was much sought after by more than one of high degree, she remained as she was. For the last part of my stay at Cambridge I saw but little of her, and not so much as I would fain have done of her sister. I was past the boyish liberty of lying in wait in the park for a glimpse of her; she was not of an age for me to pay my court, and there was little intimacy betwixt my mother and Madam Cavendish. But I can truly say that never for one minute did I lose the consciousness of her in the world with me, and that at a time when my love might well be a somewhat anomalous and sexless thing, since she was grown a little past my first conception of love toward her, and had not yet reached my second. But oh, the glimpses I used to catch of her at that time, slim-legged and swift, and shrilly sweet of voice as a lark, and as shyly a-flutter at the motion of a hand toward her, or else seated prim as any grown maiden, with grave eyes of attention upon her task of sampler or linen stitching! My heart used to leap in a fashion that none would have believed nor understood, at the blue gleam of her gown and the gold gleam of her little head through the trees of the park, or through the oaken shadows of the hall at Cavendish Court during my scant visits there. No maid of my own age drew, for one moment, my heart away from her. She had no rivals except my books, for I was ever an eager scholar, though it might have been otherwise had the state of the country been different. I can imagine that I might in some severe stress have had my mind, being a hot-headed youth, diverted by the feel of the sword-hilt. But just then the king sat on his throne, and there was naught to disturb the public peace except his multiplicity of loves, which aroused discussion, which salted society with keenest relish, but went no farther. I took high honours at Cambridge, though no higher than I should have done, and so no pride and no modesty in the owning and telling; and then I came home, and my mother greeted me something more warmly than she was wont, and my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, took me by the hand, and my brother John played me at cards that night, and won, as he mostly did. John was at that time also in Cambridge, but only in his second year, being, although of quicker grasp upon circumstances to his own gain than I, yet not so alert at book-lore; but he had grown a handsome man, as fair as a woman, yet bold as any cavalier that ever drew sword--the kind to win a woman by his own strength and her own arts. The night after I returned, there was a ball at Cavendish Court, the first since the death of Madam Rosamond, and my brother and I went, and my stepfather and my mother, though she loved not Madam Cavendish. And Mary Cavendish, at that time ten years old, was standing, when I first entered, with a piece of blue-green tapestry work at her back, clad in a little straight white gown and little satin shoes, and a wreath of roses on her head, from whence the golden locks flowed over her gentle cheeks, delicately rounded between the baby and maiden curves, with her little hands clasped before her; and her blue eyes, now downcast, now uplifted with utmost confidence in the love of all who saw her. And close by her stood her sister Catherine, coldly sweet in a splendid spread of glittering brocade, holding her head, crowned with flowers and plumes, as still and stately as if there were for her in all the world no wind of passion; and my brother John looked at her, and I knew he loved her, and marvelled what would come of it, though they danced often together. The ball went on till the east was red, and the cocks crew, and all the birds woke in a tumult, and then that happened which changed my whole life. Three weeks from that day I set sail for the New World--a convict. I will not now say how nor why; and on the same ship sailed Capt. Geoffry Cavendish, his mother Madam Judith Cavendish, his daughter Catherine, and the little maid Mary. And on the long voyage Captain Cavendish's old wound broke out anew, and he died and was buried at sea, and I, when I arrived in this kingdom of Virginia, with the dire uncertainty and hardship of the convict before me, yet with strength and readiness to bear it, was taken as a tutor by Madam Judith Cavendish for her granddaughter Mary, being by education well fitted for such a post, and she herself knowing her other reasons for so doing. And so it happened that Mistress Mary Cavendish and I rode to meeting in Jamestown that Sabbath in April of 1682. _ |
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