The Tory Lover 41

The Tory Lover 41

"They say that the Ranger has taken a mort o’ prizes, and sent them back

to France," announced the Newbury sailor. "Oh, Lord, yes, she’s scared

’em blue ever sence that night she went into Whitehaven! She took the

Drake sloop o’ war out o’ Carrickfergus that very next day."

 

"I knew there was business afoot!" cried the lieutenant proudly; but he

suddenly turned faint again, and they saw a new bright stain strike

through the clumsy bandages on his shoulder.

 

 

 

 

*XXXII*

 

*THE GOLDEN DRAGON*

 

"Give where want is silently clamorous, and men’s necessities, not their

tongues, do loudly call for thy mercies."

 

 

The less said of a dull sea voyage, the better; to Madam Wallingford and

her young companion their slow crossing to the port of Bristol could be

but a long delay. Each day of the first week seemed like a week in

passing, though from very emptiness it might be but a moment in

remembrance; time in itself being like money in itself,—nothing at all

unless changed into action, sensation, material. At first, for these

passengers by the Golden Dolphin, there was no hope of amusement of any

sort to shorten the eventless hours. Their hearts were too heavy with

comfortless anxieties.

 

The sea was calm, and the May winds light but steady from the west. It

was very warm for the season of year, and the discouragements of early

morning in the close cabin were easily blown away by the fresh air of

the quarter-deck. The captain, a well-born man, but diffident in the

company of ladies, left his vessel’s owner and her young companion very

much to themselves. Mary had kept to a sweet composure and

uncomplainingness, for her old friend’s sake, but she knew many

difficult hours of regret and uncertainty now that, having once taken

this great step, Madam Wallingford appeared to look to her entirely for

support and counsel, and almost to forget upon how great an adventure

they had set forth. All Mary’s own cares and all her own obligations

and beliefs sometimes rose before her mind, as if in jealous arraignment

of her presence on the eastward-moving ship. Yet though she might think

of her brother’s displeasure and anxiety, and in the darkest moments of

all might call herself a deserter, and count the slow hours of a

restless night, when morning came, one look at Madam Wallingford’s pale

face in the gray light of their cabin was enough to reassure the bravery

of her heart. In still worse hours of that poor lady’s angry accusation

of those whom she believed to be their country’s enemies, Mary yet found

it possible to be patient, as we always may be when Pity comes to help

us; there was ever a final certainty in her breast that she had not done

wrong,—that she was only yielding to an inevitable, irresistible force

of love. Love itself had brought her out of her own country.

 

Often they sat pleasantly together upon the deck, the weather was so

clear and fine, Mary being always at Madam Wallingford’s feet on a stout

little oaken footstool, busy with her needle to fashion a warmer

head-covering, or to work at a piece of slow embroidery on a strip of

linen that Peggy had long ago woven on their own loom. Often the hearts

of both these women, who were mistresses of great houses and the

caretakers of many dependents, were full of anxious thought of home and

all its business.

 

Halfway from land to land, with the far horizon of a calm sea unbroken

by mast or sail, the sky was so empty by day that the stars at night

brought welcome evidence of life and even companionship, as if the great

processes of the universe were akin to the conscious life on their own

little ship. In spite of the cruelty of a doubt that would sometimes

attack her, Mary never quite lost hold on a higher courage, or the

belief that they were on their way to serve one whom they both loved, to

do something which they alone could do. The thought struck her afresh,

one afternoon, that they might easily enough run into danger as they

came near land; they might not only fall an easy prey to some Yankee

privateer (for their sailing papers were now from Halifax), but they

might meet the well-manned Ranger herself, as they came upon the English

coast. A quick flush brightened the girl’s sea-browned cheeks, but a

smile of confidence and amusement followed it.

 

Madam Wallingford was watching her from the long chair.

 

"You seem very cheerful to-day, my dear child," she said wistfully.

 

"I was heartened by a funny little dream in broad daylight," answered

Mary frankly, looking up with something like love itself unveiled in her

clear eyes.

 

"It is like to be anything but gay in Bristol, when we come to land,"

answered Madam Wallingford. "I had news in Halifax, when we lay there,

that many of their best merchants in Bristol are broken, and are for a

petition to Parliament to end these troubles quickly. All their once

great trade with the colonies is done. I spent many happy months in

Bristol when I was young. ’T was a noble town, with both riches and

learning, and full of sights, too; it was a fit town for gentlefolk. I

sometimes think that if anything could give back my old strength again,

’t would be to take the air upon the Clifton Downs."

 

"You will have many things to show me," said Mary, with a smile. "You

are better already for the sea air, Madam. It does my heart good to see

the change in you."

 

"Oh, dear child, if we were only there!" cried the poor lady. "Life is

too hard for me; it seems sometimes as if I cannot bear it a moment

longer. Yet I shall find strength for what I have to do. I wonder if

we must take long journeys at once? ’T is not so far if Roger should be

at Plymouth, as they believed among the Halifax friends. But I saw one

stranger shake his head and look at me with pity, as I put my questions.

He was from England, too, and just off the sea"—

 

"There is one thing I am certain of,—Roger is not dead," said Mary. "We

are sure to find him soon," she added, in a different tone, when she had

spoken out of her heart for very certainty. The mother’s face took on a

sweet look of relief; Mary was so strong-hearted, so sure of what she

said, that it could not help being a comfort.

 

"Our cousin Davis will be gathering age," Madam Wallingford continued,

after a little while. "I look to find her most sadly changed. She had

been married two years already when I made my first voyage to England,

and went to visit her."

 

Mary looked up eagerly from her work, as if to beg some further

reminiscences of the past. Because she loved Madam Wallingford so well

it was pleasant to share the past with her; the old distance between

them grew narrower day by day.

 

"I was but a girl of seventeen when I first saw Bristol, and I went

straight to her house from the ship, as I hope we may do now, if that

dear heart still remains in a world that needs her," said the elder

woman. "She is of kin to your own people, you must remember, as well as

to the Wallingfords. Yes, she was glad of my visit, too, for she was

still mourning for her mother. Being the youngest child, she had been

close with her till her marriage, and always a favorite. They had never

been parted for a night or slept but under the same roof, until young

Davis would marry her, and could not be gainsaid. He had come to the

Piscataqua plantations, supercargo of a great ship of his father’s; the

whole countryside had flocked to see so fine a vessel, when she lay in

the stream at Portsmouth. She was called the Rose and Crown; she was

painted and gilded in her cabin like a king’s pleasure ship. He

promised that his wife should come home every second year for a long

visit, and bragged of their ships being always on the ocean; he said she

should keep her carriage both on sea and on land. ’T was but the

promise of a courting man, he was older than she, and already very

masterful; he had grown stern and sober, and made grave laws for his

household, when I saw it, two years later. He had come to be his

father’s sole heir, and felt the weight of great affairs, and said he

could not spare his wife out of his sight, when she pleaded to return

with me; a woman’s place was in her husband’s house. Mother and child

had the sundering sea ever between them, and never looked in each

other’s face again; for Mistress Goodwin was too feeble to take the

journey, though she was younger than I am now. He was an honest man and

skillful merchant, was John Davis; but few men can read a woman’s heart,

which lives by longing, and not by reason; ’t is writ in another

language.

 

"You have often heard of the mother, old Mistress Goodwin, who was taken

to Canada by the savages, and who saw her child killed by them before

her eyes? They threatened to kill her too because she wept, and an

Indian woman pitied her, and flung water in her face to hide the tears,"

the speaker ended, much moved.

 

"Oh, yes. I always wish I could remember her," answered Mary. "She was

a woman of great valor, and with such a history. ’T was like living two

lifetimes in one." The girl’s face shone with eagerness as she looked

up, and again bent over her needlework. "She was the mother of all the

Goodwins; they have cause enough for pride when they think of her."

 

"She had great beauty, too, even in her latest age, though her face was

marked by sorrow," continued Madam Wallingford, easily led toward

entertaining herself by the listener’s’ interest, the hope of pleasing

Mary. "Mistress Godwin was the skillful hostess of any company, small

or great, and full of life even when she was bent double by her weight

of years, and had seen most of her children die before her. There was a

look in her eyes as of one who could see spirits, and yet she was called

a very cheerful person. ’T was indeed a double life, as if she knew the

next world long before she left this one. They said she was long

remembered by the folk she lived among in Canada; she would have done

much kindness there even in her distress. Her husband was a plain, kind

man, very able and shrewd-witted, like most Goodwins, but she was born a

Plaisted of the Great House; they were the best family then in the

plantation. Oh yes, I can see her now as if she stood before me,—a small

body, but lit with flame from no common altar of the gods!" exclaimed

Madam Wallingford, after a moment’s pause. "She had the fine dignity

which so many women lack in these days, and knew no fear, they always

said, except at the sight of some savage face. This I have often heard

old people say of her earlier years, when the Indians were still in the

country; she would be startled by them as if she came suddenly upon a

serpent. Yet she would treat them kindly."

 

"I remember when some of our old men still brought their guns to church

and stood them in the pews," said Mary; "but this year there were only

two poor huts in the Vineyard, when the Indians came down the country to

catch the salmon and dry them. There are but a feeble few of all their

great tribe; ’t is strange to know that a whole nation has lived on our

lands before us! I wonder if we shall disappear in our own turn? Peggy

always says that when the first settlers came up the river they found

traces of ancient settlement; the Vineyard was there, with its planted

vines all run to waste and of a great age, and the old fields, too,

which have given our river neighborhoods their name. Peggy says there

were other white people in Barvick long ago; the old Indians had some

strange legends of a folk who had gone away. Did Mistress Goodwin ever

speak of her captivity, or the terrible march to Canada through the

snow, when she was captured with the other Barvick folk, Madam?" asked

Mary, with eagerness to return to their first subject. "People do not

speak much of those old times now, since our own troubles came on."