GARDE’S EXTREMITY.
HAD prayers been able to reach him and summon him back to Boston, Adam
would have been there long before the fever overtook him at Jamaica.
Garde, more alone than she had ever been in her life, had appealed to
the stars, to the wind, to the tides of the sea, to convey her yearnings
to Adam and to bid him hasten to her side. She was alone because she,
only, distrusted Randolph. She was alone because she felt no longer the
slightest companionship with her grandfather, because even Wainsworth
and Tootbaker respected the provisional betrothal she had made with
Randolph and because not to Prudence nor even to Goody Dune had she felt
she could confide her cares and the breaking of her heart, under the
present painful circumstances.
Her distrust of Randolph had grown, despite the fact that, in a measure,
the threats against the charter had ceased and a pseudo peace contented
the patriots with the thought that their difficulties had been finally
remedied by the alliance to which they all now looked forward with
abnormal interest and confidence.
Garde had maintained her right of immunity from the attentions of
Randolph, consistently and steadfastly. She had never given him the
single glance, at Meeting, or elsewhere, for which he was becoming
crazed. The light of malice that burned in his eyes was a thing that
Garde felt, occultly. It was a threat to break her will, some day; it
was tigerish in its animal hunger. No creature of prey ever lay in wait
for its victim more ready to pounce, to overpower and to drag away to
its den the coveted object of its greed and passion.
But the months had winged heavily away on their somber-colored pinions,
and the moment for which Garde had hoped, when she set the one year’s
time of probation had never come—the moment of Adam’s return. The second
Christmas, so joyless with the Puritans, was far off, with the other
departed days of winter. The snow had melted; the tender shoots of grass
were returning, in hordes, like little green armies; the first buds were
breaking the cold, dank soil and peeking forth, while still close
wrapped, as if to say: “Is it time?” And only Garde would have pushed
them back, only Garde, usually so joyous in the returning of warmth and
beauty, would have held to the edge of the mantle of snow, to retain it
where it lay.
Her heart was beating like a lead clapper, that tolled against the bell
of her soul, day and night, for the fear that was on her of the coming
week, when her year of respite would end. Already her grandfather looked
at her with fanatical eagerness in his eyes, and rubbed his shaking
hands with delight. He had no eyes to see that she was pale, that she
started at sounds as she had never done before, fearing that Randolph
had come a few days too soon, to claim and to carry her off. The old
man’s one idea was the safety of the charter. To secure this, no
sacrifice could have been too great. But as a matter of fact, David
Donner had no conception of the sacrifice which he was requiring. Such
zealots rarely have.
In despair, three days before her dreaded hour should arrive, Garde
hastened like a child, afraid of an ogre, to Goody Dune. The evening was
cold, for the sky was overcast, the wind was blowing from the north and
a few scattered speckles of snow flew spitefully through the air.
“B-u-h-h—it’s cold! B-u-h-h—it’s cold!” said the jackdaw, when Garde
came in at the door. The bird was echoing the past winter’s history of
what poor old Goody had suffered, alone in her hut.
“Well, dearie,” said the old woman, who was evidently making
preparations to go out, on some mission of her own, “you look as if you
too are in need of some of the simples you gathered in the summer.”
“It is nothing simple that I need,” said Garde. “I have come for wisdom
and help. Oh, Goody, I don’t know what I shall do. I wish so I had come
to you sooner!”
“You must stop trembling first,” said Goody. “Here, take this cup of
tea. It is going to be a bitter night.”
She had prepared the drink for herself, to fortify her meager warmth of
body against the wind, into which she expected to go on an errand,
presently.
“It is not from the cold; it is inside that I am trembling,” confessed
the girl. But she took the cup, obediently. “If you can do nothing to
help me, I could wish the cold would never let me go back to my home!”
“There, there, drink the tea,” said Goody, after giving her one
penetrative glance. For young women to feel that terrible demi-mania of
desiring self-destruction was not new to Goody Dune. She had gone
through the stages herself. She knew almost exactly the conditions which
universally promote the emotion in the young of her sex.
“I know that Adam has never returned,” she said, slowly. “You have had
no word, even. I have seen that in your eyes. But, dear me, have you no
abiding faith and hope, child? In the spring——”
“Oh it isn’t that, Goody!” broke in Garde. “I could wait—I could wait
for him fifty years, patiently—yes, patiently. I love him. But you don’t
know what has happened. I have never told you. What was the use! They
made me promise;—and if Adam knew—he might never come back. No—he would
not come back. And I love even the very places where his shadow fell, in
the forest—and the log he was sitting on. I love the gate where his
hands rested—I love everything he ever touched!” Her hands pressed upon
her bosom, where, beneath her frock, she wore the brooch from
Hispaniola.
Goody had never seen her in such a mood. She had never heard such
passion from her lips. But by the memory of her own heart-break, she
caught at the sinister cry of something promised.
“And have you given yourself in promise to somebody else?” she asked,
quietly, but somewhat severely.
“Grandther forced me. What could I do?” said Garde, feverishly. “What
could anybody do, with the charter being taken away? If I could save it,
I ought to save it! But he will never, never keep his word! He is
deceiving them all,—I feel it! I know it! He is a wicked man! But you
will tell me what to do. You must tell me what to do!”
“Sit down, dearie,” said the old woman, calmly. “You must tell me all
about it. I cannot prescribe, even simples, until you let me know what
you are driving at, you know. Now who is this he, through whom you are
to save the charter?”
“I don’t know how it ever happened,” said Garde. “He was always known to
be the enemy of the colony, but he did something to Grandther, who has
never been the same man since Mr. Randolph——”
“Edward Randolph!” interrupted Goody, with a sudden vehemence, the like
of which she had never before betrayed to Garde. “Did you say Edward
Randolph? Have you promised to marry him, to save the charter? There,
there, sit down and tell me your story, quietly. Only, do make haste.”
Garde wondered, momentarily, at the old woman’s abrupt outburst. It
served to give her a new hold on herself, for it broke her own morbid
thought and excitement. She told Goody what had happened to mar her
happiness almost before Adam’s kiss had ceased to burn on her fingers.
She told it brokenly, incoherently, for she knew all the details of the
story so vividly that she could not realize that Goody was not also in
possession of the entire fabric of thoughts and struggles which had
brought about her grandfather’s cherished end. However, Goody Dune was a
woman, and quick-minded and astute at that. She patched as rapidly as
Garde gave her the irregular fragments of the tale. She had shut her
mouth tightly at the end of her own outburst, and it seemed to Garde her
lips had grown harder since. Her eyes were certainly snapping crisply.
Goody was aroused.
“Come with me,” she presently said, interrupting Garde’s outpourings
again. “When you came I was starting to go where it would be well for
you to follow, before the hour grows later.”
“But, Goody, won’t you tell me what to do?” said Garde, in anguish.
“You will know what to do, when you go home,” said the old woman,
somewhat grimly. “I know Edward Randolph by his works.”
She led the way out into the gathering twilight without further delay.
Garde shivered a little, as the cold wind struck her again, but she
followed, eagerly, with wonder in her heart and a little awe of Goody,
in her tortured mind. What could the old woman mean? Where could she now
be hastening?
Goody proceeded with a straightness that argued familiarity with the
route, and fixity of purpose in her mind. She went by alleys that led
down toward the water, where fisher-folk had builded little shanties on
the rocks above the roar of the harbor breakers.
“I am taking you to see another young woman,” she said. “She was pretty
too, and she had no parents. Her mother died five years ago, and her
father, James Hodder, was lost in the storm, last spring. She was an
easy prey, you see. Poor Hester! and only fifteen.”
Garde looked at the old woman in wonder. All this half muttered preface
to something coming, served to make her heart beat so hard that she
could hear it, painfully.
“What is it about her?” she asked, breathlessly.
Goody made no answer. She had reached the door of one of the huts, and
pushing it open she entered, Garde, pale and large-eyed, close behind
her.
“Ned—oh Ned!” came a half sob, half chortle of joy from somewhere in the
darkness of the place. Garde felt shivers go down her entire form.
“Not Ned yet, my love,” said Goody, in a voice so cooing that Garde
hardly knew it. “Presently, dear, presently. He is sure to come back
to-night. Dear me, we must have a light and see how we’re doing.”
Garde had heard a little moan which Goody’s cooing had not sufficed to
smother. Then there had been the sound of a stifled sob. Goody went to
the dying embers in the chimney-place, to get a light for a tallow dip
on which she had put her hand with unerring familiarity with the
furnishings of the place. The voice, with tears and patience in its
syllables, came again:
“He will come—back, to-night? He—didn’t come—last night. He hasn’t—come
for a—week.”
“Oh yes, he will surely come to-night,” crooned Goody, at the fireplace.
“But how is the little dollie?” Garde was leaning back against the door,
heavily. Her eyes were staring into the utter darkness with which the
place was filled. She felt the presence of a woman on a bed of
motherhood. She was ready to sink on the floor, with terrible
apprehensions. The woman on the bed made some heroic effort to calm
herself, and to answer Goody’s question.
“She’s sleeping,” she said. “She was so cold, but I have got her warm
again.”
The tallow dip now flared. Goody shielded it cautiously as it sputtered
and then she arose to her feet. Between her fingers the light spread,
throwing great, grotesque shadows of her hand on the walls, in one
direction and a larger adumbration of her head in the other. Garde saw
the couch, which she had known was in the corner. She also saw a white
face, too thin to be pretty, and all of a soul’s being and anguish
concentrated in two great eyes. Her own eyes were blazing with the
emotions by which she was possessed. As if there had been some great
affinity between them, the young woman on the couch was looking at Garde
the moment the dip illumined the room.
“Who’s that?” said the startled Hester on the couch.
“A friend, a friend, dear,” said Goody. “I brought her to see you. She
knows Edward.”
“She—she knows Ned?” said the wasted young mother, raising herself up,
abruptly. “Let me see her. Oh, oh,—you are so pretty! But you won’t take
him away from me—you won’t take him, please? He does really love me—he
didn’t mean what he said. He must love me, now. He hasn’t seen our
little baby, or he would love me more than anything in the world. You
wouldn’t take him away from me—now?”
As Hester sat there, propped up by one thin, white arm, brushing her
hair from her face and leaning eagerly toward her visitor, Garde could
only put her hand to her cheek and shake her head. Her bosom rose and
fell in the agitation which was shaking her whole being.
“Oh, I am so glad—oh, I knew you wouldn’t,” said the girl on the couch.
“You couldn’t have the heart, could you? See—see!”
Weakened as she was, she made a great effort to rally her strength and
dragged a little bundle forth from between the blankets and her own
throbbing bosom, where she had kept it partially warm. She was stifling
sobs all the time she was speaking. Her nerveless fingers sought in the
folds with instinctive tenderness, to uncover a tiny face, as immobile
as marble. “It’s our little child,” said the mother. “She looks so like
him. He would have to love me now—you see he couldn’t help it.”
Goody took the babe in her arms. Garde saw everything. She saw the tidy
poverty of the hut. She saw the ghost of the girlish beauty, which this
abandoned mother had once possessed. She saw the young creature tuck in,
next her bosom, ecstatically, a worn-out stocking—a man’s stocking.
Garde wanted to flee, but Goody brought her the babe—a little doll
indeed. Goody took her hand, for Garde seemed stricken with
helplessness, and placed it lightly on the tiny, white face of the
child. The girl drew it away with a shudder. The babe was dead.
“Go home, dearie,” said Goody, in a croon. “You will know what to do.
God makes few of the marriages laid at His door, but He does make some
of these. Hester has a right to believe He made her a wife—else why a
mother?”
Garde opened the door and ran out, glad, oh so glad it was cold!
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