DAVID’S COERCION.
DAVID DONNER came in from that interview in the garden an angered
fanatic. The bitter cold of the night had entered into his soul, with
all the heaped-up threats which Randolph had hurled at his head.
These threats had not been fired at David loudly nor fiercely. Randolph
had told him of Garde’s insubordination, of her charges and of her
repudiation of her promise. He had shown that whether her allegations as
to Hester Hodder were true or false, they had nothing to do with
Massachusetts politics. He had then opened up with his main battery—a
recital of the power he had steadily accumulated, during the past year,
and of his intention to use it, immediately, if Donner and Garde now
failed in the slightest particular to keep their share of the bargain.
Donner became nearly crazed. For a year he had dwelt with fondness upon
the topic of the charter and of how he had saved it, until nothing else
could get foothold in his mind. Indeed he had become mildly insane upon
the subject. He had counted the days, and finally the hours waiting for
the final ratification of the contract with Randolph, whose influence
with King James had exceeded even that which he had exercised when
Charles sat upon the throne. To reflect that now, at the eleventh hour,
the mere whim of a silly girl could destroy this whole fabric and sweep
away their jealously guarded liberty and independence, at a single
breath, nearly made a maniac of the old man.
Hester Hodder was as nothing. A hundred such women, with their dead
babes, would have been as nothing, compared to the safety of the
charter. What had Garde been born for, if she was not to save the day,
when her promise was made and when she alone stood between ruin and the
colony? What was her girlish folly, that it should stand in the path
forbidding the colony its existence? What should be her very life, when
the matter against it weighed so ponderously?
Thinking what his compatriots would say, if they should learn of this
latest turn of affairs, Donner wrung his hands in agony, and then
clenched them in rage. For twenty years the charter had fluttered
between life and death. For the last year it had gained in strength till
it seemed that all danger had passed. No religious fanaticism, no zeal
of inquisitions ever possessed a man’s soul, heart and brain more
thoroughly than his patriotism possessed Grandfather Donner.
When he went into the house, his trembling, bony hands were as cold as
those of a skeleton. He was half crying, with his utter vexation and
fear for the charter, and yet he ground his teeth, in his anger and
stubborn determination to compel his grandchild to adhere to her
promise. When he came to where Garde was awaiting his return indoors,
she mistook the mad light in his eyes for righteous indignation at
Randolph’s perfidy, of which she believed he had become apprised.
“Oh, Grandther,” she said, running trustingly toward him and beginning
already to cry, from her stress of emotions. “I am so glad you have come
back to protect me!”
“Protect you? Protect you?” he almost screamed, clutching her by the
shoulders, so fiercely that the cold and the pain which he caused seemed
to penetrate her through and through. “What madness have you committed?
What have you done? The charter,—the charter—the charter!—you shall save
the charter! Do you hear me? You shall keep your promise and save the
colony!” He shook her till the girl was gasping. She could think of
nothing but a hideous nightmare.
“Oh, he hasn’t told you, Grandther,” she cried. “If you knew the truth
you would turn him from the door! I have seen poor Hester and her baby.
I cannot bear to think of him—I should die!”
“You—you—you traitor!” stammered the old man, in his mania. “You—you
betray the colony! You are mad, mad! You promised. You made your own
conditions. You have deceived me. You would play us false, now—now, when
our liberties are taking heart. But you shall not! What? You come home
here with this silly story, you—you, the daughter of a Donner—and ready
to tear up the charter for your silly notions. No—no! no! no!—you shall
marry this man! You shall keep this your bargain! The charter—you shall
save the charter!”
“Oh, but, Grandther, the story is true,” said Garde, wringing her hands.
“He is the one that is false. And I thought you would hold me too
precious for such a thing as——”
“Enough!” commanded the crazed old man. “My word—the colony’s word—has
been given. The bargain shall be kept. This has gone too far already. To
think that for one moment you would so jeopardize the charter! I am
stricken with shame at your want of honor at this crisis of our
liberties!”
Garde still failed to believe she heard her grandfather correctly. She
still hoped his impatience would abate sufficiently for her to tell of
what she had seen. It could not be possible that a Puritan, so
high-minded and strict for moral conduct, could know what she knew and
still insist upon this infamous marriage. To her, at that moment, it was
virtue and honor that were all important to be saved, the charter and
the colony that had become insignificant.
“If you had touched that little dead baby,” she said. “If you had heard
Hester begging, Grandther—oh, you would have kept your promise,—you
would never coerce me in this terrible——”
“Stop! stop!” cried Donner, madly, angered almost beyond control by this
appeal, which was so unbearably remindful of her mother. “I have not
coerced you, never! You made your promise freely. The honor of the
colony, and more than that, the safety of the charter, now hang upon
your faith in keeping your own agreement. And you shall keep it—for the
family pride—for the colony’s good name! This story—what is the
woman?—what is her child?—what is anything, when our liberty and
independence tremble in the balance? No more—I’ll hear no more of
this,—not a word!”
Garde brushed a wisp of her red-black hair from her forehead. Her great
brown eyes were fastened wide open by amazement. Her lips alone
contained any color. How red they seemed against the white of her oval
face! Her eyebrows seemed like two curved black brands on her brow. She
looked at her grandfather in silence. It was positively incredible that
he had said what she had heard, she thought. If Hester and her child and
“everything” were held of so little worth, why—what of herself? Had it
come to this? Was it admittedly and shamelessly a sacrifice of her very
soul, to a creature only waiting to have his way first before destroying
the charter later?
To the pure, natural mind of the girl, Randolph had become as
translucent as water, in his plotted perfidies. It appeared impossible
that any man could still believe in his lies. She would have spoken of
this, but the sight of the fanatical old man before her, sealed her
lips. She recognized the light in his eyes at last. At any other moment
her pity would have fluttered forth to him, yearningly, her little
mother instinct would have taken her on the wings of concern to smooth
the care-channeled wrinkles from his brow, but now all these tenderer
emotions had fled away, in fear and awe. She said nothing further. There
was nothing left to say, nothing that would have any weight against
mania. At length even her gaze fell before the wild look with which
David Donner confronted her, insanely.
“Now then,” said the old man, at length, in a voice made raucous by his
recent passions, “you may go to bed and prepare your mind for
obedience.”
“Good night, dear Grandther,” said Garde, by force of habit, and with
nothing more, she passed from the room.
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