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."
"No, no, she would never talk of her trials; 't was not her way,"
protested Madam Wallingford, and a shadow crossed her face. "'T was her
only happiness to forget such things. I can see her sitting in the sun
with a fescue in her hand, teaching the little children. They needed
bravery in those old days; nothing can haunt us as their fear of sudden
assault and savage cruelty must have haunted them."
Mary thought quickly enough of that angry mob which had so lately
gathered about her old friend's door, but she said nothing. The Sons of
Liberty and their visit seemed to have left no permanent discomfort in
Madam's mind. "No, no!" said the girl aloud. "We have grown so
comfortable that even war has its luxuries; they have said that a common
soldier grows dainty with his food and lodging, and the commanders are
daily fretted by such complaints."
"There is not much comfort to be had, poor fellows!" exclaimed Madam
Wallingford rebukingly, as if she and Mary had changed sides. "Not at
your Valley Forge, and not with the King's troops last year in Boston.
They suffered everything, but not more than the rebels liked."
Mary's cheeks grew red at the offensive word. "Do not say 'rebels'!" she
entreated. "I do not think that Mistress Hetty Goodwin would side with
Parliament, if she were living still. Think how they loved our young
country, and what they bore for it, in those early days!"
"'T is not to the purpose, child!" answered the old lady sharply. "They
were all for England against France and her cruel Indian allies; I meant
by 'rebels' but a party word. Hetty Goodwin might well be of my mind;
too old to learn irreverence toward the King. I hate some of his
surrounders,--I can own to that! I hate the Bedfords, and I have but
scorn for his Lord Sandwich or for Rockingham. They are treating our
American Loyalists without justice. Sir William Howe might have had
five thousand men of us, had he made proclamation. Fifty of the best
gentlemen in Philadelphia who were for the Crown waited upon him only to
be rebuffed."
She checked herself quickly, and glanced at Mary, as if she were sorry
to have acknowledged so much. "Yes, I count upon Mr. Fox to stand our
friend rather than upon these! and we have Mr. Franklin, too, who is
large-minded enough to think of the colonies themselves, and to forget
their petty factious and rivalries. Let us agree, let us agree, if we
can!" and Madam Wallingford, whose dignity was not a thing to be lightly
touched, turned toward Mary with a winning smile. She knew that she
must trust herself more and more to this young heart's patience and
kindness; yes, and to her judgment about their plans. Thank God, this
child who loved her was always at her side. With a strange impulse to
confess all these things, she put out her frail hand to Mary, and Mary,
willingly drawing a little closer, held it to her cheek. They could
best understand each other without words. The girl had a clear mind,
and had listened much to the talk of men. The womanish arguments of
Madam Wallingford always strangely confused her.
"Mr. Franklin will ever be as young at heart as he is old in years,"
said the lady presently, with the old charm of her manner, and all
wistfulness and worry quite gone from her face. She had been
strengthened by Mary's love in the failing citadel of her heart. "'Tis
Mr. Franklin's most noble gift that he can keep in sympathy with the
thoughts and purposes of younger men. Age is wont to be narrow and to
depend upon certainties of the past, while youth has its easily gathered
hopes and quick intuitions. Mr. Franklin is both characters at once,--as
sanguine as he is experienced. I knew him well; he will be the same man
now, and as easy a courtier as he was then content with his thrift and
prudence. I trust him among the first of those who can mend our present
troubles.
"I beg you not to think that I am unmindful of our wrongs in the
colonies, Mary, my dear," she added then, in a changed voice. "'T is
but your foolish way of trying to mend them that has grieved me,--you
who call yourselves the Patriots!"
Mary smiled again and kept silence, but with something of a doubtful
heart. She did not wish to argue about politics, that sunny day on the
sea. No good could come of it, though she had a keen sense that her
companion's mind was now sometimes unsettled from its old prejudices and
firm beliefs. The captain was a stanch Royalist, who believed that the
rebels were sure to be put down, and that no sensible man should find
himself left in the foolish situation of a King's antagonist, or suffer
the futility of such defeat.
"Will Mistress Davis look like her mother, do you think?" Mary again
bethought herself to return to the simpler subject of their
conversation.
"Yes, no doubt; they had the same brave eyes and yet strangely timid
look. 'T is a delicate, frail, spirited face. Our cousin Davis would
be white-headed now; she was already gray in her twenties, when I last
saw her. It sometimes seems but the other day. They said that Mistress
Goodwin came home from Canada with her hair as white as snow. Yes,
their eyes were alike; but the daughter had a Goodwin look, small
featured and neatly made, as their women are. She could hold to a
purpose and was very capable, and had wonderful quickness with figures;
't is common to the whole line. Mistress Hetty, the mother, had a
pleasing gentleness, but great dignity; she was born of those who long
had been used to responsibility and the direction of others."
Mary laughed a little. "When you say 'capable,' it makes me think of
old Peggy, at home," she explained. "One day, not long ago, I was in
the spinning room while we chose a pattern for the new table linen, and
she had a child there with her; you know that Peggy is fond of a little
guest. There had been talk of a cake, and the child was currying favor
lest she should be forgotten.
"'Mrs. Peggy,' she piped, 'my aunt Betsey says as how you 're a very
capering woman!'
"'What, what?' says Peggy. 'Your aunt Betsey, indeed, you mite! Oh, I
expect 't was capable she meant,' Peggy declared next moment, a little
pacified, and turned to me with a lofty air. 'Can't folks have an
English tongue in their heads?' she grumbled; but she ended our high
affairs then, and went off to the kitchen with the child safe in hand."
"I can see her go!" and Madam Wallingford laughed too, easily pleased
with the homely tale.
"Ah, but we must not laugh; it hurts my poor heart even to smile," she
whispered. "My dear son is in prison, we know not where, and I have
been forgetting him when I can laugh. I know not if he be live or dead,
and we are so far from him, tossing in the midseas. Oh, what can two
women like us do in England, in this time of bitterness, if the
Loyalists are reckoned but brothers of the rebels? I dreamed it was all
different till we heard such tales in Halifax."
"We shall find many friends, and we need never throw away our hope,"
said Mary Hamilton soothingly. "And Master Sullivan bade me remember
with his last blessing that God never makes us feel our weakness except
to lead us to seek strength from Him. 'T was the saying of his old
priest, the Abbe Fenelon."
They sat silent together; the motion of the ship was gentle enough, and
the western breeze was steady. It seemed like a quiet night again; the
sun was going down, and there was a golden light in the thick web of
rigging overhead, and the gray sails were turned to gold color.
"It is I who should be staying you, dear child," whispered Madam
Wallingford, putting out her hand again and resting it on Mary's
shoulder, "but you never fail to comfort me. I have bitterly reproached
myself many and many a day for letting you follow me; 't is like the
book of Ruth, which always brought my tears as I read it. I am far
happier here with you than I have been many a day at home in my lonely
house. I need wish for a daughter's love no more. I sometimes forget
even my great sorrow and my fear of our uncertainty, and dread the day
when we shall come to land. I wish I were not so full of fears. Yet I
do not think God will let me die till I have seen my son."
Mary could not look just then at her old friend's fragile figure and
anxious face; she had indeed taken a great charge upon herself, and a
weakness stole over her own heart that could hardly be borne. What
difficulties and disappointments were before them God only knew.
"Dear child," said Madam Wallingford, whose eyes were fixed upon Mary's
unconscious face, "is it your dreams that keep your heart so light? I
wish that you could share them with the heavy-hearted like me! All this
long winter you have shown a heavenly patience; but your face was often
sad, and this has grieved me. I have thought since we came to sea that
you have been happier than you were before."
"'T was not the distresses that we all knew; something pained me that I
could not understand. Now it troubles me no more," and Mary looked at
the questioner with a frank smile.
"I am above all a hater of curious questions," insisted the lady. But
Mary did not turn her eyes away, and smiled again.
"I can hold myself to silence," said Madam Wallingford. "I should not
have spoken but for the love and true interest of my heart; 'twas not a
vulgar greed of curiosity that moved me. I am thankful enough for your
good cheer; you have left home and many loving cares, and have come with
me upon this forced and anxious journey as if it were but a holiday."
Mary bent lower over her sewing.
"Now that we have no one but each other I should be glad to put away one
thought that has distressed me much," confessed the mother, and her
voice trembled. "You have never said that you had any word from Roger.
Surely there is no misunderstanding between you? I have sometimes
feared-- Oh, remember that I am his mother, Mary! He has not written
even to me in his old open fashion; there has been a difference, as if
the great distance had for once come between our hearts; but this last
letter was from his own true heart, from his very self! The knowledge
that he was not happy made me fearful, and yet I cannot brook the
thought that he has been faithless, galling though his hasty oath may
have been to him. Oh no, no! I hate myself for speaking so dark a
thought as this. My son is a man of high honor." She spoke proudly,
yet her anxious face was drawn with pain.
Mary laid down her piece of linen, and clasped her hands together
strongly in her lap. There was something deeply serious in her
expression, as she gazed off upon the sea.
"It is all right now," she said presently, speaking very simply, and not
without effort. "I have been grieved for many weeks, ever since the
first letters came. I had no word at all from Roger, and we had been
such friends. The captain wrote twice to me, as I told you; his letters
were the letters of a gentleman, and most kind. I could be sure that
there was no trouble between them, as I feared sometimes at first," and
the bright color rushed to her face. "It put me to great anxiety; but
the very morning before we sailed a letter came from Roger. I could not
bring myself to speak of it then; I can hardly tell you now."
"And it is all clear between you? I see,--there was some
misunderstanding, my dear. Remember that my boy is sometimes very
quick; 't is a hasty temper, but a warm and true heart. Is it all clear
now?"
Mary wished to answer, but she could not, for all her trying, manage to
speak a word; she did not wish to show the deep feeling that was moving
her, and first looked seaward again, and then took up her needlework.
Her hand touched the bosom of her gown, to feel if the letter were there
and safe. Madam Wallingford smiled, and was happy enough in such a
plain assurance.
"Oh yes!" Mary found herself saying next moment, quite unconsciously,
the wave of happy emotion having left her calm again. "Oh yes, I have
come to understand everything now, dear Madam, and the letter was
written while the Ranger lay in the port of Brest. They were sailing
any day for the English coast."
"Sometimes I fear that he may be dead; this very sense of his living
nearness to my heart may be only-- The dread of losing him wakes me
from my sleep; but sometimes by day I can feel him thinking to me, just
as I always have since he was a child; 't is just as if he spoke," and
the tears stood bright in Madam Wallingford's eyes.
"No, dear, he is not dead," said Mary, listening eagerly; but she could
not tell even Roger Wallingford's mother the reason why she was so
certain.
*XXXIII*
*THEY COME TO BRISTOL*
"The wise will remember through sevenfold births the love of those who
wiped away their falling tears."
Miss Mary Hamilton and the captain of the Golden Dolphin walked together
from the busy boat landing up into the town of Bristol. The tide was
far down, and the captain, being a stout man, was still wheezing from
his steep climb on the long landing-stairs. It was good to feel the
comfort of solid ground underfoot, and to hear so loud and cheerful a
noise of English voices, after their four long weeks at sea, and the
ring and clank of coppersmiths' hammers were not unpleasant to the ear
even in a narrow street. The captain was in a jovial temper of mind; he
had some considerable interest in his cargo, and they had been in
constant danger off the coast. Now that he was safe ashore, and the
brig was safe at anchor, he stepped quickly and carried his head high,
and asked their shortest way to Mr. Davis's house, to leave Mary there,
while he made plans for coming up to one of that well-known merchant's
wharves.
"Here we are at last!" exclaimed the master mariner. "I can find my way
across the sea straight to King's Road and Bristol quay, but I'm easy
lost in the crooked ways of a town. I 've seen the port of Bristol,
too, a score o' times since I was first a sailor, but I saw it never so
dull as now. There it is, the large house beyond, to the port-hand
side. He lives like a nobleman, does old Sir Davis. I 'll leave ye
here now, and go my ways; they 've sarvents a plenty to see ye back to
the strand."
The shy and much occupied captain now made haste toward the merchant's
counting-room, and Mary hurried on toward the house, anxious to know if
Madam Wallingford's hopes were to be assured, and if they should find
Mistress Davis not only alive and well, but ready to welcome them. As
she came nearer, her heart beat fast at the sight of a lady's trim head,
white-capped, and not without distinction of look, behind the panes of a
bowed window. It was as plain that this was a familiar sight, that it
might every day be seen framed in its place within the little panes, as
if Mary had known the face since childhood, and watched for a daily
greeting as she walked a Portsmouth street at home. She even hesitated
for a moment, looking eagerly, ere she went to lift the bright knocker
of the street door.
In a minute more she was in the room.
"I am Mary Hamilton, of Berwick," said the guest, with pretty eagerness,
"and I bring you love and greeting from Madam Wallingford, your old
friend."