above nearer cousins, from her babyhood. The modulations of her voice
seem always to bring me close to the sound of the voice that went into
silence when Geoffrey Meade, her father's young kinsman, was killed
long ago.
The Meades, old-time planters in Virginia, have been very poor since the
distant war of the sixties, and it has been one of my luxuries to give
Sally a lift over hard places. Always with instant reward, for the
smallest bit of sunlight, going into her prismatic spirit, comes out a
magnificent rainbow of happiness. So when the idea came that they might
let me have the girl to take abroad that summer, her friend, the girl
spirit in me, jumped for joy. There was no difficulty made; it was one
of the rare good things too good to be true, that yet are true. She did
more for me than I for her, for I simply spent some superfluous idle
money, while she filled every day with a new enjoyment, the reflection
of her own fresh pleasure in every day as it came.
So here we were prowling about the south of England with "Westward Ho!"
for a guide-book; coaching through deep, tawny Devonshire lanes from
Bideford to Clovelly; searching for the old tombstone of Will Cary's
grave in the churchyard on top of the hill; gathering tales of
Salvation Yeo and of Amyas Leigh; listening to echoes of the
three-hundred-year-old time when the great sea-battle was fought in the
channel and many ships of the Armada wrecked along this Devonshire
coast. And always coming back to sleep in the fascinating little "New
Inn," as old as the hills, built on both sides of the one rocky ladder
street of Clovelly, the street so steep that no horses can go in it, and
at the bottom of whose breezy tunnel one sees the rolling floor of the
sea. In so careless a way does the Inn ramble about the cliff that when
I first went to my room, two flights up from the front, I caught my
breath at a blaze of scarlet and yellow nasturtiums that faced me
through a white-painted doorway opening on the hillside and on a tiny
garden at the back.
The irresponsible pleasure of our first sail the next afternoon was
never quite repeated. The boat shot from the landing like a high-strung
horse given his head, out across the unbordered road of silver water,
and in a moment, as we raced toward the low white clouds, we turned and
saw the cliffs of the coast and the tiny village, a gay little pile of
white, green-latticed houses steeped in foliage lying up a crack in the
precipice. Above was the long stretch of the woods of Hobby Drive.
Clovelly is so old that its name is in Domesday Book; so old, some say,
that it was a Roman station, and its name was Clausa Vaillis. But it is
a nearer ancientness that haunts it now. Every wave that dashes on the
rocky shore carries a legend of the ships of the Invincible Armada. As
we asked question after question of our sailor, handsomer than ever
to-day with a red silk handkerchief knotted sailor-fashion about his
strong neck, story after story flashed out, clear and dramatic, from his
answers. The bunch of houses there on the shore? Yes, that had a
history. The people living there were a dark-featured, reticent lot,
different from other people hereabouts. It was said that one of the
Spanish galleons went ashore there, and the men had been saved and had
settled on the spot and married Devonshire women, but their descendants
had never lost the tradition of their blood. Certainly their speech and
their customs were peculiar, unlike those of the villages near. He had
been there and had seen them, had heard them talk. Yes, they were
distinct. He laughed a little to acknowledge it, with an Englishman's
distrust of anything theatrical. A steep cliff started out into the
waves, towering three hundred feet in almost perpendicular lines. Had
that a name? Yes, that was called "Gallantry Bower." No; it was not a
sentimental story--it was the old sea-fight again. It was said that an
English sailor threw a rope from the height and saved life after life of
the crew of a Spaniard wrecked under the point.
"You know the history of your place very well," said Sally. The young
man kept his eyes on his steering apparatus and a slow half-smile
troubled his face and was gone.
"I've had a bit of an education for a seaman--Miss," he said. And then,
after apparently reflecting a moment, "My people live near the Leighs of
Burrough Court, and I was playmate to the young gentlemen and was given
a chance to learn with them, with their tutors, more than a common man
is likely to get always."
At that Sally's enthusiasm broke through her reserve, and I was only a
little less eager.
"The Leighs! The real, old Leighs of Burrough? Amyas Leigh's
descendants? Was that story true? Oh!--" And here manners and
curiosity met and the first had the second by the throat. She stopped.
But our sailor looked up with a boyish laugh that illumined his dark
face.
"Is it so picturesque? I have been brought up so close that it seems
commonplace to me. Every one must be descended from somebody, you know."
"Yes, but Amyas Leigh!" went on Sally, flushed and excited, forgetting
the man in his story. "Why, he's my hero of all fiction! Think of it,
Cousin Mary--there are men near here who are his great--half-a-dozen
greats--grandchildren! Cousin Mary," she stopped and looked at me
impressively, oblivious of the man so near her, "if I could lay my hands
on one of those young Leighs of Burrough I'd marry him in spite of his
struggles, just to be called by that name. I believe I would."
"Sally!" I exclaimed, and glanced at the man; Sally's cheeks colored as
she followed my look. His mouth was twitching, and his eyes smouldered
with fun. But he behaved well. On some excuse of steering he turned his
back instantly and squarely toward us. But Sally's interest was
irrepressible.
"Would you mind telling me their names, Cary?" she asked. He had told us
to call him Cary. "The names of the Mr. Leighs of Burrough."
"No, Cary," I said. "I think Miss Meade doesn't notice that she is
asking you personal questions about your friends."
Cary turned on me a look full of gentleness and chivalry. "Miss Meade
doesn't ask anything that I cannot answer perfectly well," he said.
"There are two sons of the Leighs, Richard Grenville, the older, and
Amyas Francis, the younger. They keep the old names you see.
Richard--Sir Richard, I should say--is the head of the family, his
father being dead."
"Sir Richard Grenville Leigh!" said Sally, quite carried away by that
historic combination. "That's better than Amyas," she went on,
reflectively. "Is he decent? But never mind. I'll marry _him_, Cousin
Mary."
At that our sailor-man shook with laughter, and as I met his eyes
appealing for permission, I laughed as hard as he. Only Sally was
apparently quite serious.
"He would he very lucky--Miss," he said, restraining his mirth with a
respect that I thought remarkable, and turned again to his rudder.
Sally, for the first time having felt the fascination of breathing
historic air, was no longer to be held. The sweeping, free motion, the
rush of water under the bow as we cut across the waves, the wide sky and
the air that has made sailors and soldiers and heroes of Devonshire men
for centuries on end, the exhilaration of it all had gone to the girl's
head. She was as unconscious of Cary as if he had been part of his boat.
I had seen her act so when she was six, and wild with the joy of an
autumn morning, intoxicated with oxygen. We had been put for safety into
the hollow part of the boat where the seats are--I forget what they call
it--the scupper, I think. But I am apt to be wrong on the nomenclature.
At all events, there we were, standing up half the time to look at the
water, the shore, the distant sails, and because life was too intense to
sit down. But when Sally, for all her gentle ways, took the bit in her
teeth, it was too restricted for her there.
"Is there any law against my going up and holding on to the mast?" she
asked Cary.
"Not if you won't fall overboard, Miss," he answered.
The girl, with a strong, self-reliant jump, a jump that had an echo of
tennis and golf and horseback, scrambled up and forward, Cary taking his
alert eyes a moment from his sailing, to watch her to safety, I thought
her pretty as a picture as she stood swaying with one arm around the
mast, in her white shirt-waist and dark dress, her head bare, and brown,
untidy hair blowing across the fresh color of her face, and into her
clear hazel eyes.
"What is the name of this boat?" she demanded, and Cary's deep, gentle
voice lifted the two words of his answer across the twenty feet between
them.
"The Revenge" he said.
Then there was indeed joy. "The Revenge! The Revenge! I am sailing on
the Revenge, with a man who knows Sir Richard Grenville and Amyas Leigh!
Cousin Mary, listen to that--this is the Revenge we're on--this!" She
hugged the mast, "And there are Spanish galleons, great three-deckers,
with yawning tiers of guns, all around us! You may not see them, but
they are here! They are ghosts, but they are here! There is the great
San Philip, hanging over us like a cloud, and we are--we are--Oh, I
don't know who we are, but we're in the fight, the most beautiful fight
in history!" She began to quote:
And half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.
And then:
Thousands of their sailors looked down from the decks and laughed;
Thousands of their soldiers made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on till delayed
By the mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And towering high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.
The soft, lingering voice threw the words at us with a thrill and a leap
forward, just us the Revenge was carrying us with long bounds, over the
shining sea. We were spinning easily now, under a steady light wind, and
Cary, his hand on the rudder, was opposite me. He turned with a start as
the girl began Tennyson's lines, and his shining dark eyes stared up at
her.
"Do you know that?" he said, forgetting the civil "Miss" in his
earnestness.
"Do I know it? Indeed I do!" cried Sally from her swinging rostrum. "Do
you know it, too? I love it--I love every word of it--listen," And I,
who knew her good memory, and the spell that the music of a noble poem
cast over her, settled myself with resignation. I was quite sure that,
short of throwing her overboard, she would recite that poem from
beginning to end. And she did. Her skirts and her hair blowing, her eyes
full of the glory of that old "forlorn hope," gazing out past us to the
seas that had borne the hero, she said it.
At Flores in the Azores, Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a frightened bird, came flying from far away;
Spanish ships of war at sea, we have sighted fifty-three!
Then up spake Sir Thomas Howard
"'Fore God, I am no coward"--
She went on and on with the brave, beautiful story. How Sir Thomas would
not throw away his six ships of the line in a hopeless fight against
fifty-three; how yet Sir Richard, in the Revenge, would not leave behind
his "ninety men and more, who were lying sick ashore"; how at last Sir
Thomas
sailed away
With five ships of war that day
Till they melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven,
But Sir Richard bore in hand
All his sick men from the land,
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon--
And he laid them on the ballast down below;
And they blessed him in their pain
That they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
The boat sailed softly, steadily now, as if it would not jar the rhythm
of the voice telling, with soft inflections, with long, rushing meter,
the story of that other Revenge, of the men who had gone from these
shores, under the great Sir Richard, to that glorious death.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer
sea,
And not one moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons
came;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle thunder and
flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and
her shame;
For some they sunk, and many they shattered so they could fight no
more.
God of battles! Was ever a battle like this in the world before?
As I listened, though I knew the words almost, by heart too, my eyes
filled with tears and my soul with the desire to have been there, to
have fought as they did, on the little Revenge one after another of the
great Spanish ships, till at last the Revenge was riddled and helpless,
and Sir Richard called to the master-gunner to sink the ship for him,
but the men rebelled, and the Spaniards took what was left of ship and
fighters. And Sir Richard, mortally wounded, was carried on board the
flagship of his enemies, and died there, in his glory, while the
captains
--praised him to his face.
With their courtly Spanish grace.
So died, never man more greatly, Sir Richard Grenville, of Stow in
Devon.
The crimson and gold of sunset were streaming across the water as she
ended, and we sat silent. The sailor's face was grim, as men's faces are
when they are deeply stirred, but in his dark eyes burned an intensity
that reserve could not bold back, and as he still stared at the girl a
look shot from them that startled me like speech. She did not notice.
She was shaken with the passion of the words she had repeated, and
suddenly, through the sunlit, rippling silence, she spoke again.
"It's a great thing to be a Devonshire sailor," she said, solemnly. "A
wonderful inheritance--it ought never to be forgotten. And as for that
man--that Sir Richard Grenville Leigh--he ought to carry his name so
high that nothing low or small could ever touch it. He ought never to
think a thought that is not brave and fine and generous."
There was a moment's stillness and then I said, "Sally, my child, it
seems to me you are laying down the law a little freely for Devonshire.
You have only been here four days." And in a second she was on her usual
gay terms with the world again.
"A great preacher was wasted in me," she said. "How I could have
thundered at everybody else about their sins! Cousin Mary, I'm coming
down--I'm all battered, knocking against the must, and the little
trimmings hurt my hands."
Cary did not smile. His face was repressed and expressionless and in it
was a look that I did not understand. He turned soberly to his rudder
and across the broken gold and silver of the water the boat drew in to
shadowy Clovelly.
It was a shock, after we had landed and I had walked down the quay a few
yards to inspect the old Red Lion Inn, the house of Salvation Yeo, to
come back and find Sally dickering with Cary. I had agreed that this
sail should be her "party," because it pleased the girl's proud spirit
to open her small purse sometimes for my amusement. But I did not mean
to let her pay for all our sailing, and I was horrified to find her
trying to get Cary cheaper by the quantity. When I arrived, Sally, a
little flustered and very dignified and quite evidently at the end of a
discussion as to terms, was concluding an engagement, and there was a
gleam in the man's wonderful eyes, which did much of his talking for
him.
"You see the boat is very new and clean, Miss," he was saying, "and I
hope you were satisfied with me?"
I upset Sally's business affairs at once, engaged Cary, and told him he
must take out no one else without knowing our plans. My handkerchief
fell as I talked to him and he picked it up and presented it with as
much ease and grace as if he had done such things all his life. It was a
remarkable sailor we had happened on. A smile came like sunshine over
his face--the smile that made him look as Geoffrey Meade looked, half a
century ago.
"I'll promise not to take any one else, ma'am," he said. And then, with
the pretty, engaging frankness that won my heart over again each time,
"And I hope you'll want to go often--not so much for the money, but
because it is a pleasure to me to take you--both."
There was mail for us waiting at the Inn. "Listen, Sally," I said, as I
read mine in my room after dinner. "This is from Anne Ford. She wants to
join us here the 6th of next month, to fill in a week between visits at
country-houses."
[Illustration: "You see, the boat is very new and clean, Miss," he was
saying.]
Sally, sitting on the floor before the fire, her dark hair loose and her
letters lying about her, looked up attentively, and discreetly answered
nothing. Anne Ford was my cousin, but not hers, and I knew without
discussing it, that Sally cared for her no more than I. She was made of
showy fibre, woven in a brilliant pattern, but the fibre was a little
coarse, and the pattern had no shading. She was rich and a beauty and so
used to being the centre of things, and largely the circumference too,
that I, who am a spoiled old woman, and like a little place and a little
consideration, find it difficult to be comfortable as spoke upon her
wheel.
"It's too bad," I went on regretfully. "Anne will not appreciate
Clovelly, and she will spoil it for us. She is not a girl I care for. I
don't see why I should he made a convenience for Anne Ford," I argued in
my selfish way. "I think I shall write her not to come."
Sally laughed cheerfully. "She won't bother us, Cousin Mary. It would be
too bad to refuse her, wouldn't it? She can't spoil Clovelly--it's been
here too long. Anne is rather overpowering," Sally went on, a bit
wistfully. "She's such a beauty, and she has such stunning clothes."
The firelight played on the girl's flushed, always-changing face, full
of warm light and shadow; it touched daintily the white muslin and pink
ribbons of the pretty negligee she wore, Sally was one of the poor girls
whose simple things are always fresh and right. I leaned over and patted
her rough hair affectionately.
"Your clothes are just as pretty," I said, "and Anne doesn't compare
with you in my eyes." I lifted the unfinished letter and glanced over
it. "All about her visit to Lady Fisher," I said aloud, giving a résumé
as I read. "What gowns she wore to what functions; what men were devoted
to her--their names--titles--incomes too." I smiled. "And--what is
this?" I stopped talking, for a name had caught my eye. I glanced over
the page. "Isn't this curious! Listen, my dear," I said. "This will
interest you!" I read aloud from Anne's letter.
"'But the man who can have me if he wants me is Sir Richard Leigh. He is
the very best that ever happened, and moreover, quite the catch of the
season. His title is old, and he has a yacht and an ancestral place or
two, and is very rich, they say--but that isn't it. My heart is his
without his decorations--well, perhaps not quite that, but it's
certainly his with the decorations. He is such a beauty, Cousin Mary!
Even you would admire him. It gives you quite a shock when he comes into
a room, yet he is so unconscious and modest, and has the most graceful,
fascinatingly quiet manners and wonderful brown eyes that seem to talk
for him. He does everything well, and everything hard, is a dare-devil
on horseback, a reckless sailor, and a lot besides. If you could see the
way those eyes look at me, and the smile that breaks over his face as if
the sun had come out suddenly! But alas! the sun has gone under now, for
he went this morning, and it's not clear if he's coming back or not.
They say his yacht is near Bideford, where his home is, and Clovelly is
not far from that, is it?'"
I stopped and looked at Sally, listening, on the floor. She was staring
into the fire.
"What do you think of that?" I asked. Sally was slow at answering; she
stared on at the burning logs that seemed whispering answers to the
blaze.
"Some girls have everything," she said at length. "Look at Anne. She's
beautiful and rich and everybody admires her, and she goes about to big
country-houses and meets famous and interesting people. And now this Sir
Richard Leigh comes like the prince into the story, and I dare say he
will fall in love with her and if she finds no one that suits her better
she will marry him and have that grand old historic name."
"Sally, dear," I said, "you're not envying Anne, are you?"
A quick blush rushed to her face. "Cousin Mary! What foolishness I've
been talking! How could I! What must you think of me! I didn't mean
it--please believe I didn't. I'm the luckiest girl on earth, and I'm
having the most perfect time, and you are a fairy godmother to me,
except that you're more like a younger sister. I was thinking aloud.
Anne is such a brilliant being compared to me, that the thought of her
discourages me sometimes. It was just Cinderella admiring the princess,
you know."
"Cinderella got the prince," I said, smiling.
"I don't want the prince," said Sally, "even if I could get him. I
wouldn't marry an Englishman. I don't care about a title. To be a
Virginian is enough title for me. It was just his name, magnificent Sir
Richard Grenville's name and the Revenge-Armada atmosphere that took my
fancy. I don't know if Anne would care for that part," she added,
doubtfully.
"I'm sure Anne would know nothing about it," I answered decidedly, and
Sally went on cheerfully.
"She's very welcome to the modern Sir Richard, yacht and title and all.
I don't believe he's as attractive as your sailor, Cousin Mary.
Something the same style, I should say from the description. If you
hadn't owned him from the start, I'd rather like that man to be my
sailor, Cousin Mary--he's so everything that a gentleman is supposed to
be. How did he learn that manner--why, it would flatter you if he let
the boom whack you on the head. Too bad he's only a common sailor--such
a prince gone wrong!"
I looked at her talking along softly, leaning back on one hand and
gazing at the fire, a small white Turkish slipper--Southern girls always
have little feet--stuck out to the blaze, and something in the leisurely
attitude and low, unhurried voice, something, too, in the reminiscent
crackle of the burning wood, invited me to confidence. I went to my
dressing-table, and when I came back, dropped, as if I were another
girl, on the rug beside her. "I want to show you this," I said, and
opened a case that travels always with me. From the narrow gold rim of
frame inside, my lover smiled gayly up at her brown hair and my gray,
bending over it together.
None of the triumphs of modern photographers seem to my eyes so
delicately charming as the daguerrotypes of the sixties. As we tipped
the old picture this way and that, to catch the right light on the image
under the glass, the very uncertainty of effect seemed to give it an
elusive fascination. To my mind the birds in the bush have always
brighter plumage than any in the hand, and one of these early
photographs leaves ever, no matter from what angle you look upon it,
much to the imagination. So Geoff in his gray Southern uniform, young
and soldierly, laughed up at Sally and me from the shadowy lines beneath
the glass, more like a vision of youth than like actual flesh and blood
that had once been close and real. His brown hair, parted far to one
side, swept across his forehead in a smooth wave, as was the
old-fashioned way; his collar was of a big, queer sort unknown to-day;
the cut of his soldier's coat was antique; but the beauty of the boyish
face, the straight glance of his eyes, and ease of the broad shoulders
that military drill could not stiffen, these were untouched, were
idealized even by the old-time atmosphere that floated up from the
picture like fragrance of rose-leaves. As I gazed down at the boy, it
came to me with a pang that he was very young and I growing very old,
and I wondered would he care for me still. Then I remembered that where
he lived it was the unworn soul and not the worn-out body that counted,
and I knew that the spirit within me would meet his when the day came,
with as fresh a joy as forty years ago. And as I still looked, happy in
the thought, I felt all at once as if I had seen his face, heard his
voice, felt the touch of his young hand that day--could almost feel it
yet. Perhaps my eyes were a little dim, perhaps the uncertainty of the
old daguerrotype helped the illusion, but the smile of the master of the
Revenge seemed to shine up at me from my Geoff's likeness, and then
Sally's slow voice broke the pause.