LITTLE RUSES, AND WAITING.
WHEN she had recovered somewhat of her calm again, Garde found herself
confronted by several difficulties with which she would be obliged to
cope. In the first place she had ruined Adam’s letter to Henry
Wainsworth, crumpling the sheets and permitting her tears to fall upon
their surfaces, till no one save herself, aided by love, could have
deciphered some of the sentences at all.
In the second place, if Henry had really intended to ask her hand in
marriage, as she could not avoid believing, there might be complications
in that direction at an early date. She could only resolve, upon this
point, that she must not, under any circumstances, permit Henry to make
his proposal, either orally or through the medium of another letter.
As to this letter, from Adam to Henry, it was certainly of a private
character, but Henry had asked her to read it, and now she could not
have disguised the fact that she had done so. She could not see how she
could possibly return it to Henry at all, under the circumstances. She
could not bear to think of letting him see the evidence of her emotions,
wrought upon it. Moreover, it was precious to her. She felt entitled to
own it. To her it meant far more than it possibly could to any other
person in the world. She resolved to make a fair copy of it, for Henry,
while she herself would retain the original—in Adam’s own writing.
Her third proposition was the most vital of them all. She could not
think of what she should do to repair the harm which she alone, after
all, had done, when she sent Adam away with that little word “Forever!”
How should she let him know of the infamous story which she had been
made to believe? How should she convince him, even supposing she could
reach him with a word, that the story had left no room in her mind for
doubt of its truth? How could she manage to persuade him that she had
loved him always; that she knew at last of the wrong she had done him;
that she begged his forgiveness; that she should wait for him even
longer than the fifty years of which he had spoken on that last
agonizing night?
He might not forgive her, she told herself. It might be too late
already. She knew not where he had gone, or what he had done. He too
might have thought of marriage with somebody else—to try to forget.
As a result of her brain cudgeling, to know what she would do to make
Adam aware that she had made a great mistake and desired his
forgiveness, she determined to write him a letter. Having decided, she
wrote at once. Had she waited a little longer, her letter might have
been more quiet in its reserve, but it could not then have been so
utterly spontaneous, nor expressive of the great love she bore him, kept
alive during all those months of doubt and agony.
As it was, the little outburst was sufficiently dignified; and it was
sweet, and frank. She told him that she had read his letter to Henry,
and that suddenly she had known of the great wrong she had done him. She
mentioned that a dreadful story had been fastened upon him, with all too
terrible semblances of truth and justice. She begged his forgiveness in
a hundred runes. Finally, when she had finished, she signed it
“Garde—John Rosella,” in memory of her walk with him through the woods,
from near Plymouth to Boston.
Not without blushes and little involuntary thrills of delight did she
add the name which confessed the tale of that wonderful walk, but she
felt that Adam would know, by this very confession, how deep for him
must be her love and trust and how contrite was the spirit in which she
desired his forgiveness.
This epistle having at length been disposed of to her satisfaction, she
made the fair copy of Adam’s letter to Henry and sent it to Wainsworth
at once, with a short note of explanation that some moisture having
fallen upon the original, making it quite illegible and indeed
destroying it utterly, for his use, she felt she could do no less than
to make this reparation. She likewise expressed the compliment she felt
it was to herself that Henry had desired her to know of this sad affair
in the life of his brother, but that she had been so affected by the
tale that she must beg him not to permit her to read any further letters
for some time to come.
This was a masterly composition, for poor Wainsworth destroyed the
proposing epistle he had written at such infinite pains, and for a time,
wholly abandoned any thought of speaking of marriage. He was exceedingly
mortified to think he had made such a blunder as to give her the letter
which he had guarded so cautiously. Timidity settled upon him,
especially as he noted another, altogether incomprehensible change in
Garde’s demeanor, when next they met.
Having despatched her letter to Adam, Garde felt a happiness grow and
expand in her bosom daily. She expected the wait to be a long one, till
a letter, or some other manner of a reply, could come from Adam.
Goodwife Phipps, of whom she had artfully contrived to get the rover’s
address, had assured her of the very great number of weeks that elapsed
between communications from William, in answer to the fond little flock
of letters which she was constantly launching forth to the distant
island across the sea. But when weeks became months, and time fled
onward inexorably, with never a sign or a word in return for what she
had written, she had many moments in which sad, vain regrets and
confirmed despair took possession of her thoughts.
She was a resigned, patient girl, however, with her impulses curbed, for
the sadness of the times, aside from her own little affairs, cast a
gloom upon the colony which seemed to deepen rather than to promise ever
to dissolve.
Her heart felt that the fifty years had passed many times over her head,
when, after a longer time than Mrs. Phipps had mentioned as sufficient
to bring even a delayed reply had passed, and nothing had come from Adam
Rust. Garde watched for the ships to come, one by one, her hopes rising
always as the white sails appeared, and then falling invariably, when no
small messenger came to her hand. She lived from ship to ship, and sent
her own little argosies of thought traveling wistfully across the seas,
hoping they might come to harbor in Adam’s heart at last and so convey
to him her yearning to hear just a word, or to see him just once again.
In the meantime, she could not endure the thought that either Henry
Wainsworth or Piety Tootbaker should even so much as think of her as if
they stood in Adam’s place. She therefore went to work with all her
maidenly arts, to render such a situation impossible, in the case of
either of the would-be suitors.
Thus she contrived to tell the faithful Henry that Prudence Soam was
very fond of him indeed. For this she had a ground work of fact. She
then conveyed to Prudence the intelligence that Henry was thinking upon
her most fondly. This also began soon to be true enough, for Henry had
been flattered, not a little, by the news he heard and did look at
Prudence with a new and wondering interest. He likewise underwent a
process of added intelligence in which he realized that Garde was not
for him, howsoever much he might have dreamed, or would be able to dream
in the future. It was remarkable, then, how soon the timid Henry and the
diffident Prudence began to understand one another. Prudence, who had
never had a sweetheart before, blossomed out with pretty little ways and
with catching blushes and looks of brightness in her eyes that made her
a revelation, not only to Henry but to Garde herself. And Henry became
really happy and almost bold.
For Piety, alas, there was no Prudence available. Garde racked her
brains for a plan to fit the case of Tootbaker’s state of mind. At
length, when John Soam began to talk to his wife about the colony
patriots again desiring that money which had never been used to send
David Donner abroad, for the purpose of sending somebody else, in the
spring, Garde knew exactly what to do.
She would manage to send Piety Tootbaker away to England. She went to
work in this direction without delay. Her success was not a thing of
sudden growth. It took no little time and persuasion to fire Piety with
an ambition to serve his country by going so far from his comfortable
home and his equally comfortable wooing, in which he believed he was
making actual progress.
For their agent extraordinary, to plead their cause at the Court of King
James, the colonists selected Increase Mather, a man at once astute,
agreeable and afflicted with religious convictions which had every
barnacle of superstition that ever lived, attached upon them. Piety
Tootbaker was to go as his clerk and secretary.
The preparations for sending Mather abroad were conducted with no small
degree of secrecy. Nevertheless Edward Randolph became aware of what was
being contemplated, for his hypocritical Puritan agents were everywhere
and in all affairs of state, or even of private business.
Permitting the scheme to ripen, Randolph waited until almost the moment
for Mather’s sailing. He then swooped down upon the enterprise and
attempted to arrest Mather, on the process of some sham prosecution. The
patriots, incensed almost to the point of rebellion, played cunning for
cunning. They delayed the departure of the ship, the captain of which
was a staunch “American,” and then hustled Mather aboard under cover of
darkness, and so sent him off on his mission.
For a week after Piety had gone, Garde felt such a sense of relief that
she almost persuaded herself she was happy in her long wait for Adam, or
for a word which might finally come. But the months again began their
dreary procession, and her fear that Adam was lost to her forever
deepened and laid its burden more and more upon her heart.
Yet there came a day when, a ship having arrived in the harbor, and her
hope having greeted it wistfully, only to flutter back to her own
patient bosom again, a letter did actually come to her hand.
It was not particularly neat; it looked as if it might have been opened
before it came to her possession, but her heart bounded wildly when she
saw it, and her fingers trembled as she broke it open to read its
contents.
Then her joy vanished. The letter was from Piety Tootbaker. He
announced, as if to break the intelligence to her frankly, that the
voyage had made him so exceedingly ill that he had determined never to
trust himself upon the billows again. He would therefore reside
hereafter in England, which was “a pleasing countrie and much more
merrie than Boston.”
“I shall never, never get an answer to my letter,” said Garde to
herself, made sadder by the arrival of Piety’s letter, which proved that
letters could actually come from over the sea. “He will never, never
reply, I know.”
She was not far mistaken, for Adam had never received her letter. It had
fallen into the hands of Edward Randolph, who had constituted himself
censor of communications sent abroad from Massachusetts. Malignantly he
was keeping those love-scented sheets, against the day of his vengeance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
A TOPIC AT COURT.
IN the midst of a gay throng, in the production of which the Court of
King James lagged little, if any, behind that of his brother, Charles,
Adam Rust and Captain Phipps were prime favorites. Sir William, who had
adopted a cane, gave no promise that he would ever be at home with the
disciples of the minuet and the hunt, while Adam seemed a very part of
the social mechanism.
Richly dressed, ready with his wit and his sword, handsome, wealthy
enough to attract the soft glances of dames of all ages and degrees, he
was a puzzle to the blunt captain, who had marked a change that had come
upon him between going home from Jamaica and coming back again to help
in recovering the treasure.
Whitehall was ablaze with light and warmth, which were reflected from
myriad sparkling jewels and from rosy cheeks. The King had disappointed
his guests, nevertheless they were not at a loss to find amusement.
Ready as ever to entertain, either with a song for the ladies or a duel
with the men, Adam was pressed for a roundel to fit the merry hour. He
had found a glass which responded with a particularly musical tinkle to
the tap of his finger. He held it up before the admiring company and
rang it crisply. Catching the key from its mellifluous tintinnabulation
he began his song:
“Oh your jolliest girl is your cup of sack,
Your Mistress Sack, with her warm, brown eyes;
She’ll love you, and never she’ll turn her back,
Nor leave you a thought
In her meshes uncaught,
And never you’ll know if she lies.
“Then it’s drink, drink, drink,
And you’ll never have need to think;
And it’s fol de rol,
And who has use for a brain?
With your cup that loves your lip,
You need fear no faithless slip,
And your heart will never know the stabs of pain.
“Oh your languorous maid is your glass of wine,
Your Lady Amour, with her ruby kiss.
She suffers no rivals, or thinking—in fine,
She owns all your soul
And she takes for her toll
A payment in dull-witted bliss.
“Then drink, drink, drink, etc.
“Oh, your mistress for faith is your poison cup.
Your poison cup, with its juice of death.
She’ll hold you, ha! ha! till the Doomsday’s up,
In her passion’s embrace,
And so close to her face
That you’ll never get time for a breath.
“Then it’s drink, drink, drink,
And you never of love need think;
And it’s fol de rol,
For who has use for a heart?
With a cup that loves your lip,
You need fear no faithless slip,
Nor feel the pangs of any pains that dart.”
Not being at all certain that they knew what he meant, the company
applauded with great enthusiasm.
“But, my dear sir,” said a nobleman, with a head on him hardly bigger
nor less wrinkled than a last winter’s apple, and a stomach as big as a
tun, “you have not tasted a drink to-night. Demme, look at me, sir. I
love my sack and my wine. I know nothing of your poison cup, and I have
no wish to, demme. But, sir, I think you have no bowels for drinking.”
“My lord, you furnish the bowels and I will furnish the brains to know
about drinking,” said Adam. “By my faith, no drink ever yet went to your
head.”
“No, sir! I’m proud of it, demme,” said his lordship. “I have drunk up a
fortune, and where is it?—It’s gone.”
“Distill your breath and get it back,” suggested Rust.
“What’s that? Demme, you are laughing at me, sir.”
“Never!” said Adam, decisively. “Above all persons you make me sober.
Breathe toward our friend the Viscount. He has ever wished fortune to
wing in his direction.”
“The Viscount? Where? Demme, yes. My dear old chap, how are you?” and
turning, inconsequently, to a friend whose little eyes seemed to swim
around in the florid sea of his face, his lordship was deserted by the
rover. Sauntering through a cluster of friends who would have detained
him, Adam approached a window, where he sat himself down on a miniature
divan.
Here he had but a second to himself, for while somebody else was
preparing to sing to the company, a beautiful little lady, with eyes
that were fairly purple in their depths of blue, came and took the seat
beside him.
“Oh, Mr. Rust,” she said, “what a strange song that was. Why, but you
know nothing of wine and sack, and poison. Oh, why did you say poison?
That was dreadful. And why should you wish never to think of love? What
has poor little love ever done to you?”
“You must remember, Lady Violet,” said Adam, “that before I sang I had
not seen you, to speak a word, during the entire evening.”
Lady Violet blushed. “That hasn’t anything to do with anything,” she
said.
Adam replied: “That makes me equivalent to nothing.”
“It doesn’t,” the lady protested. “You mix me all up. I don’t believe
you know anything more about love than you do about drinking.”
“Do you counsel me to learn of these arts?”
“No, not of drinking—certainly not, Mr. Rust.”
“If we eliminate the drinking, that only leaves the love.”
“Oh, but I—I didn’t say that I—I don’t wish to counsel you at all. You
twist about everything I say.”
“And you twist about every man you meet,” retorted Adam.
“Oh, I do not!” she objected. “How rude you are to say so. I don’t even
like all the men I meet, and if I did——”
“You mean, then, that you twist only the ones like myself, that you
like.”
“I don’t! I——You make me say things I don’t want to say.”
“Then I shall make you say that you love me desperately,” said Adam,
complacently.
“Mr. Rust!” she gasped. “I—I—I——”
“If you are going to say it now, let me know,” Adam interrupted.
She was blushing furiously. She did love him, just about as Rust had
described, but he had never guessed it and was merely toying with the
one absorbing and universal topic of the court.
“I—I am not going to say anything of the kind!” she stammered.
“Then that proves my case,” Adam announced, judicially. “I cannot compel
you to say anything at all that is not already at the point of your
tongue.”
“You—you are very rude,” she said, helplessly.
“So I have been told by Lady Margaret,” Adam confessed. “Here she is
herself. Lady Margaret, we are having quite a discussion. Tell us, if a
man tries to make a lady say she loves him desperately, is he
necessarily rude?”
A superb young widow, who was gradually emerging from her mourning
black, and who had come to the gathering with her father, halted in
front of the two on the small divan and looked them over.
“Dear Lady Violet,” said the new comer, “your brother and Lord
Kilkrankie are looking for you everywhere.”
“Oh, thank you, so much,” said the confused little lady, and without
waiting for anything further she jumped up and fled from the scene. She
was vexed at and distrustful of Lady Margaret; but she could not remain
and give her battle.
The second lady took Violet’s seat, calmly. “What have you been saying
of love to that little, brainless child?” she said. “You haven’t been
making love to her, surely?”
“Oh no,” said Adam, “I was occupying my time till you should come along
and make love to me.”
“You wretch,” she said, with perfect calm. “You wouldn’t know love if
you saw it.”
“Is it so rare at Court?” he inquired. “Perhaps I should spend my time
better in looking at you.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “But tell me, what is your opinion, really,
of love.”
“It makes a poor fare for dinner, a poor coat in the winter, and a poor
comfort when you are dead,” said Rust. “It tricks the clever; it’s the
wandering Jew of emotions. If you wish me to do you an injury, bid me to
love you forthwith.”
“Where have you learned, that you speak with such wisdom?” said Lady
Margaret. “Surely not such a child as Violet——”
“You do yourself an injustice,” Adam interrupted.
“Adam,” she said, “this is the sort of thing you say to all the women.”
“And which of your friends would you ask me to neglect?” he asked. “A
woman’s judgment is the one thing I lack.”
“You are a heartless wretch!” she announced.
“On the contrary, I am a wretch of a thousand hearts,” he corrected.
“How long would you continue to love me if I had any less?”
“Adam! I don’t love you, and you know it.”
“That leaves a vacancy in my life which I shall fill at once,” he told
her. “Wait—perhaps I can catch the eye of the Countess.”
The Countess had one of the most catchable eyes imaginable. She came up
immediately.
“Margaret says she no longer loves me,” said the incorrigible Rust, “I
shall give her place to you.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
ILLNESS IN THE FAMILY.
SICK of the women, to all of whom he made love, openly, to avoid being
thought serious by any; weary of the specious show, which failed to
bring him the forgetfulness he craved, Adam left the assemblage early
and went to search out the beef-eaters, at their humble quarters.
Improvidents that they were, Pike and Halberd had soon dispersed the not
inconsiderable sum of money which Adam had divided between them, since
which time he had provided the pair with their lodgings, keep, clothing
and amusements.
The night being fine and the air soon reviving the rover’s livelier
moods of delight in sheer existence, he found himself loitering along,
stopping to look in the windows of the scattered shops still open for
the tag-ends of the day’s trading. It was only the little knick-knack
shops, old curio dens and lesser establishments that still had their
lights aglow, but it happened that these were the particular ones in
which Adam took an interest.
He stopped before one of the dingiest for fifteen minutes, carefully
scanning a considerable collection of violins which the window
contained. At length his eye lighted, he muttered something half
exclamatory and went into the shop at once. The dealer knew him and
nodded delightedly, glad to have him again in his place, as he had fully
expected when he placed the rare old fiddle which Rust had seen, in his
window.
Adam bought the instrument with all the eagerness of the confirmed
connoisseur and went his way contented.
When he came to the tavern where the beef-eaters made their abode, he
found little Pike dangerously ill with pleurisy and thinking of
shuffling off forlornly into his next existence.
The one thing which alone could transform Adam Rust into the cheerful
fellow he had been before his veneer of cynicism came upon him, was
illness in his family. He refused to let his beef-eaters think of dying.
They were his tie to everything he still held dear.
He pulled off his coat and went to work on Pike, whose spirits he raised
with songs, raillery and cheer, and whose fever he lowered with teas and
bitter drinks, which he steeped himself, from various herbs and roots,
the specific qualities of which he had known from the Indians.
The Court saw no more of the reckless Adam for a week. At the end of
this time he had coaxed the faithful Pike to something like his former
health again, when he announced his intention of going to Spain, to add
to his growing collection of violins. He therefore said good-by to Sir
William Phipps and went off with his beef-eaters both in charge.
Having learned that the Pyrenees afforded splendid possibilities for
building up depleted health and strength, the rover domiciled himself
and companions in a spot that was charmingly lonely. And William Phipps,
when Adam’s first letter arrived, wondered vaguely what manner of
violins his comrade was finding in the mountains.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
FOILED PURPOSES.
INCREASE MATHER met with a dignified and polite reception at the Court
of the King, for Sir William Phipps, with all his influence and
persuasiveness, prepared the way for the envoy extraordinary to approach
the master of the colonies.
Sir William even constituted himself another champion of downtrodden
Massachusetts, and added his importunities to those of Mather, to induce
James to re-establish the rights and territory of the colony and to give
it back its beloved charter.
“We love you much, Sir William,” said the King, with a firmness which
was never to be shaken, “but we cannot accede to your wishes. Anything
but this that you will ask shall be granted.”
Disappointed, but never disconcerted, Sir William conferred with Mather,
whom he was obliged to assure that nothing that either of them could say
to him now would beget an alteration of King James’s decision. Mather,
persistent, suave and convinced of the justice of his cause, determined
to remain in touch with the Court and the King’s retainers, until sheer
patience and persistence should win what persuasion could not.
Phipps, knowing only too well the disposition of the King, when once his
word was passed, determined that he could do more for his country if
present in the colony than he could by remaining in London. Reminding
the King that he had already granted him any other favor than the
restoration of the colony’s charter, he announced his desire to be
appointed Sheriff of New England.
Regretting to lose the hearty Captain from his company, James
nevertheless kept his word by complying with Sir William’s request. The
appointment was duly made and confirmed. Leaving Mather behind him,
Phipps returned to Boston and set about the administration of his
new-made duties, with more ardor than cunning, with more honesty than
diplomacy.
It is doubtful if William Phipps ever had a more aggravating experience,
in all his adventures, with mutineers and pirates, than he underwent at
the hands of Randolph and Governor Andros. He was not a man of finished
education. Born in Maine, in a family of twenty-one children, he had
been obliged to commence the round of shifting for himself at an early
age. He had apprenticed himself to a ship-carpenter at eighteen and then
had come to Boston four years later, when he went to work and taught
himself to read and to write.
Hampered now, by this lack of early opportunities, insulted, and finding
his most sincere efforts nullified and his plans constantly frustrated,
by the delays and artifices of the council under Andros, he was made
heartily sick of the whole situation.
His return to Boston, however, was not marked entirely by chagrin and
discouragement. He had his wife with him, and herein lay the greatest
happiness which ever came into his eventful life. He built her the “fair
brick house, in the Green Lane,” which he had promised, years before,
and he endeared many of the staunch patriots, who beheld his efforts to
help them, sadly, though with admiration.
Although Garde had never known how very intimate indeed had been the
relations of Captain Phipps and Adam, yet she was aware that they had
been much together. She had naturally learned, in common with all the
inhabitants of Boston, that Sir William had found the treasure he had
spent so many years in seeking, but she had never known that when she
sent Adam away he had gone to Hispaniola to join the searching
expedition. Therefore she was in ignorance of the fact that Adam was
wealthy.
But, after all, she was only concerned with Adam’s present whereabouts,
and the reasons why, after all these months and months of waiting—it
being now two full years since that last tragic meeting—he had never
relented sufficiently to write, or to send her a word.
As time had gone on, she had become more and more convinced, either that
Adam intended never to forgive her, or that he had married some one else
and therefore could not, in honor, think longer upon her. Her belief
inclined toward the first explanation. She confessed that she had done
him a great wrong, especially as she had never even so much as permitted
him to deny the story of the Indian child, but she argued that had she
been in his place and forgiveness had been so earnestly implored, she
could not have had the heart to refuse.
It was the one little sad privilege left her, to make up her mind she
would wait, till death, if need be, patiently, lovingly, till Adam
should one day know she loved him and that she was keeping herself
sacred for his claiming. And if he never did come to claim her, still
she would love him. If death came to take her, she would go to death as
a bride would go to church, to wait the coming of her love.
In the frame of mind which her vigil had begotten, fortified by her
sense of maidenly pride and diffidence, it was utterly impossible for
her to think of going either to Sir William Phipps, or to his wife, to
ask for information concerning Adam. She was aware that the Captain
doubtless knew of Adam’s whereabouts, his position in life and whether
or not he was married, but if Adam chose to remain silent, disdainful
and unforgiving, she would rather die than go to a stranger to ask about
him, or to send him anything further, in the way of a word or a letter.
As a matter of fact, Garde had attempted to send another little letter,
a year after the first one had gone, but it too had fallen into the
clutches of Randolph. The creature had destroyed it, as containing
nothing of importance to any of his machinations, for it merely asked
the rover if he had received the first epistle.
Thus Garde’s golden opportunity slipped away unused, and her life
narrowed down, more and more, to the simple duties of taking what care
she could of the white-haired old man, her grandfather, who rubbed his
thumb across the ends of his fingers endlessly, although he was slowly
being restored to his old-time activity of mind and body.
Utterly disheartened, by the futility of his desires and efforts to
serve his country in his capacity of Sheriff, Sir William Phipps was
glad to receive a letter that came from Increase Mather, informing him
that the time was drawing near for renewed labors to be attempted in
England. Responding to this, he deserted his useless office and sailed
for London in the midst of the winter season.
The opportunity of which Garde might have availed herself, to learn
something of Adam, was gone. She knew not what she had done, or what she
had lost.
Phipps came to England at a moment when epochs were fairly in the
process of crystalization.
King James, the last of Britain’s Roman Catholic monarchs, had been
obliged to abdicate his throne and to flee to Ireland for his life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV.
MAKING HISTORY.
UNTHRONED and uncrowned as he was, James, for some inexplicable reason,
still entertained a wild idea that the colonies, the patriots of which
he had taken no pains to endear to his cause or himself, would still
remain loyal and contented to acquiesce in his dominion. He made all
haste to communicate with Sir William Phipps, as a representative of New
England whom he had always honored and esteemed. He offered to appoint
the Captain his Governor of all New England, with plenary powers, in
almost any direction, concerning the old charter and all.
Promptly and with the blunt wisdom which marked his course through life,
Phipps refused the honor. Catholicism had never appealed to his sense of
good government, and loyalty to the English throne, from which the
colonies had their being, was deeply ingrained in his nature. Gratitude
to James for past favors, to which he felt he was somewhat entitled, was
a large quality in Sir William, but between gratitude and folly he drew
a sturdy line.
With Increase Mather, Phipps went to work at once at the Court of
William of Orange, who with Mary ascended the British throne early in
1689. Intelligence as to the sinister machinations of Randolph and
Andros leaked through the censorship, and came to Mather and the
Captain. Their case was strengthened. The Prince of Orange was bound, by
all the faith of his Protestant principles, to grant what release he
might to the American colonies from the oppressors placed in power by
the Stuarts.
The new King’s declaration of his sway was conveyed in haste to the
American shores. It was taken overland from Virginia to Massachusetts.
The spirit of the Puritans, which had simmered so long, began to make
the sounds of boiling.
Andros, mighty in his sovereignty, arrested the messenger who had
fetched the news, but the news had leaped from lip to lip, and the torch
had been applied to combustible thought.
In March, John Winslow confirmed the declaration of the new monarchs.
The people now gathered together their all-but-forgotten muskets and
pikes. Against the flood-tide coming toward him, Governor Andros reared
a barricade of threats. The frigate “Rose” was lying in the harbor,
bristling with guns that showed like so many sinister, black fangs. Her
decks were alive with soldiers. The Governor demanded the submission and
disarmament of the people, on pain of death. He declared his intention
of employing the cannon and arsenal of the frigate forthwith, if the
angry disturbances did not immediately cease.
On the 18th of April the patriots were prepared with their answer. The
captain of the frigate, with nearly all of his officers, had come
ashore, to hold a conference with Andros and Randolph. The Puritans
suddenly swooped down upon them and captured every Jack of the lot. The
frigate was thus put out of action at one clever stroke.
Now rolled the alarm of beaten drums through the martial city of Boston.
In their old Indian-fighting regalia, the citizens swarmed from their
houses into the streets. They set up their ensign on Beacon Hill, at the
edge of the Common, they fired a signal gun for action, and falling upon
Randolph and many of the council, which Andros had collected about him,
they rushed them to jail and took possession of the town.
The proclamation of King William was read, with loud acclaim. The
excited populace surged in the narrow, crooked highways. The leaders
demanded of Andros that he surrender both his office and himself. The
man refused and fled to his stronghold, whence he defied the patriots
and continued to the last to declare his power, though like water now
fast escaping from his grasp.
Surrounding their ex-master they made him a prisoner, not a refugee, and
at length he gave in and was captured and sent to confinement, along
with the others of his recent government.
With an instinct for conventions, the citizens were soon assembled.
Howsoever great had been their heat in their moment of rebellion and
triumph, they were calm enough to be wise when the time arrived to
declare for themselves. They reinstated Bradstreet and the Council of
’86. They declared the old Government in force and their former charter
_ipso facto_ restored, unimpaired by the interim of nearly three years
of maladministration.
William and Mary received the report of all these swiftly terminated
proceedings with a favor which was not unblended with astonishment.
Admiring the Protestant spirit, which it had become their own special
province to uphold, they lost no time in confirming the entire course of
actions, even to the temporary resumption of their old charter
privileges and powers, by the patriots across the sea. And there, for a
time, they were contented to permit the matter to rest. The affairs of
England they had found so completely engrossing that they had no time to
spare toward regranting a specific charter to Massachusetts.
Increase Mather, suspicions of privileges and liberties not absolutely
signed, sealed and delivered, remained at his post, working continuously
and sedulously to obtain that monarchical support and confirmation of
the colony’s prerogatives which his many compatriots had sent him to
secure.
Sir William Phipps, on the other hand, realized the busy state of mind
in which William and Mary had been so abruptly plunged, and he therefore
deferred further work with Mather for a time more suitable. Then, when
he learned that the French Catholics in America had formed alliances
with the Indians and were already overrunning the Protestant territory
and committing daily depredations, he made up his mind once more to
return to the field of action, in which he might be able to render more
effective service than he could by remaining in England.
He arrived in the summer of that fateful year, ’89, and offered himself
to Bradstreet at once. The period of warfare in which he thereupon
engaged was one of great length and of much bitterness.
Alternating defeat and victory left the advantages with the French and
Indians, so far as hopes of ultimate success were concerned. The
colonists had to make such long, tedious marches that decisive victories
for their arms were almost impossible. The enemy gained in confidence,
audacity and numbers.
In despair the General Court finally offered two sloops of war, free,
together with all the profits of plunder which might result from the
enterprise, to any man who would undertake to reduce to ashes Penobscot,
St. John’s and Port Royal, the seats of the French and Indian power. The
offer attracted Phipps, who foresaw, in the execution of the task, an
infinite amount of adventure and action.
He enlisted men for the undertaking. Yet matters grew worse with such
alarming rapidity that before the enterprise could be placed in
readiness for work, it became necessary to raise a small fleet of
vessels prepared for war-like operations. Thus seven sloops and seven
hundred men, under command of Sir William, sailed away to the North on
their sinister errand.
Port Royal, secure and arrogant, in her fancied isolation from attack,
was surprised and taken. The French were routed with great loss. The
town was looted until hardly so much as a sauce-pan was left by the
thorough-going warriors of New England. The plunder, while not
enormously valuable, nevertheless was sufficient to help materially in
meeting the expenses of the venture. But its indirect effect on the
colonists was not so happy. Cupidity is so often the jackal that follows
righteous indignation.
The Puritans foresaw opportunities to punish the enemy, at the enemy’s
own expense. A second expedition, to go against Quebec, was planned, the
patriots expecting in confidence that, like the first, it would surely
succeed, if Phipps were at its head, and that the plunder would more
than repay the initial expenses of the expedition.
Sir William, having expressed his doubts of the wisdom of this
over-ambitious scheme, nevertheless commanded the fleet once more as it
sailed away, eager for further conquest.
The enterprise was doomed to failure from the first. It dragged out
interminably, it developed jealousies, it was ill-planned. Such a
bedraggled, failure-smitten lot of lame-duck sloops returned to Boston
that the council were simply appalled. They had expended so much of
their meager hoard of funds on the venture, that the treasury was
practically bankrupted.
Blame rained upon the head of Phipps, for not having succeeded against
impossible conditions. Driven to extremities, by the woeful lack of
plunder, the colony-fathers were obliged, for the first time in their
history, to issue paper currency. The notes ranged in value from
denominations of two shillings up to ten pounds.
Still an undimmed patriot, ready to serve his country in whatsoever
direction an opportunity was afforded, Williams Phipps gave his gold for
the colony’s bills, absorbing thus a very considerable sum. His example
induced investments in the paper from all directions. Nevertheless the
currency soon came tumbling down in value, till a pound in paper was
worth less than three-fourths of its face.
The sailors, and other working people, lost heavily, in these times of
trouble and weakened confidence. Yet eventually the money was all
redeemed at par by the Massachusetts government.
Sir William, weary of being reviled for his pains, returned to England
once again and resumed his labors with Increase Mather, to secure to the
colony a definite charter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
OLD ACQUAINTANCES.
ADAM RUST failed, even in the intricacies of collecting violins and the
pursuit of health for the old beef-eaters, to find the depths of
forgetfulness she sought, but which could not come to a nature such as
his had always been. Indeed seclusion, away from the gaiety of Court and
his fellow-beings seemed rather to develop the old, half-forgotten
memories in his brain, whereon had once been shadowed the sufferings of
King Philip, his Indian foster-father, and all his race of hunted
people.
The beef-eaters, also, were not absolutely contented, away from their
own country and the haunts wherein they were wont to brag, to drink and
to swagger. Yielding at last to their importunities, Adam returned with
the pair to London.
Once in the foggy capital again, he was soon pounced upon, by old
associates, with whom he found it exhilarating once again to consort. A
treatise on rare violins and their makers, over which he had labored and
pondered for months, or even years, was now neglected.
He sharpened his wits, had a look at his sword and brightened up his
disused tinsel of conversation. He soon began to believe the greatest
forgetfulness, after all, is where the Babel of tongues is loudest, and
that the most absolute solitude is to be found in the midst of the
largest throng.
The social functions of the new King were fewer, less brilliant and not
to be compared, in point of popularity, with those of James. The Dukes,
the Marchionesses and lesser lights were therefore constrained to make
the more of their private parties. There was, in consequence, no stint
of hunting, drinking and dancing—all as condiments poured about the
omniprevalent piece de resistance—making love.
At the Duchess of Kindlen’s, Adam found the set he had known
particularly well. He was welcomed back to their circle as a long-lost
fixture without whose presence no one was at all able to explain how
they had managed to go on existing. They fitted him back in his niche
with a promptness which might have been flattering, had he not been
aware that they wished merely to feed upon him as a new entertainer, or
an old one refurbished.
He was not surprised to learn that Lady Violet had been married in his
absence. He was duly informed of this event, which he described as an
irreparable calamity in his life, by Lady Margaret, who was more of a
brilliant blossom of feminine charm and enticements than even before.
“But you, my dear Lady Margaret,” he said, “you have been true to my
memory? You have never learned to love another?”
“I never learned to love you, Adam,” she said.
“Then it must have been a matter of spontaneous combustion,” he
concluded. “You always did manage your compliments adroitly.”
“Confirmed villain,” she answered, “a woman would be mad who loved such
a bubble of flattering reflections as you have always been.”
“I was not accusing you of sanity,” he told her frankly. “I was merely
inquiring whether or not you have learned to love somebody else, in my
absence.”
“And if I had, what then?”
“I should wish to pause for reflection, before determining whether I
should be more sorry for the other fellow or for myself.”
“Fiend!” she said, mildly, “you shall never know.”
“Know what?—know where to place my sympathy?”
“You shall never know whether I have learned to love another, or not.”
“Well, neither will you—that one’s consolation.”
“But at least I shall know how I feel toward you, Adam Rust.”
“So shall I,” said the cheerful Adam. “I have always known. If you
should say you were dying, I should know you were dying to run away with
me, forthwith. It’s not your fault, you can’t help it.”
“I never dreamed of such a thing in my life!” she said.
“Then you ought at once to consult a physician for a bad case of
insomnia. I thought your eyes looked a bit weary.”
“You vile thing!” she answered. “Ted never said such a thing as that in
his life.”
“Then you have been trying to learn to love Ted? I thought you had a
faithless look about you—all except about your eyes. Alas, from the way
you talk I know you must be married already to this Ted.”
“I’m not!” she said, unguardedly. “I refused only to-night to set the
day.”
“This was a thoughtfulness toward me I had not expected,” said Rust,
complacently. “But you are betrothed, and this was unkind.”
“Unkind to whom?” she demanded.
“To Ted—and to me.”
“You will like Ted,” she told him, more artfully.
“At the other end of a duel, yes—immensely.”
“He’s a terrible swordsman,” she said, to urge him on.
“Yet how poorly he fenced with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You won. You got him—poor devil.”
“Wretch! Ted at least would never pick on a woman.”
“If it’s Ted Suffle,” said Rust, “I saw him pick on his teeth, to-night,
and that is worse——in company.”
“His tooth aches terribly!” said Lady Margaret, defending poor Suffle
gallantly.
“He indulges in too much sweets,” Adam remarked, unmoved. “Treat him the
way you do me and he’ll soon be better.”
“I wish Ted could hear the way you talk to me,” she said.
“If he could hear the things you say to me, he would demand that duel
quicker,” Rust responded. “Tell me something outrageous to say to the
fellow, so that he will be obliged to challenge.”
“Nonsense,” she said, looking at him slyly, “don’t be silly. You
wouldn’t fight a duel over me.”
“Ah, but think what a lot of ladies would think me a hero,” he replied
with enthusiasm. “And I might also be banished from the country. You can
never tell where luck and lightning will strike next.”
“Go away, Adam,” she said. “You are perfectly monstrous.”
“I’ll go and have a look at Ted,” he answered, calmly. “If he is a
gentleman he will probably insult me without delay.”
To Lady Margaret’s utter dismay and astonishment, he sauntered off at
once and actually went to where Suffle was standing, and had himself
presented.
“I have asked for this honor,” he said, “the sooner to offer my best
congratulations on your betrothal. Lady Margaret has told me a little
about it. She is the happiest girl I have ever seen in all my life.”
“You are a good chap to say so,” said Suffle. “Do you know, I fancied I
should like you, Mr. Rust, the moment I saw you.”
“I should like to give you my friendship as a wedding present,” Adam
told him, honestly, knowing at once that Suffle was a fellow he could
really somewhat like. Then he added, more equivocally: “I have known
Lady Margaret so long that I shall take great happiness in seeing the
consummation of this happy event.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI.
JUGGLING WITH FIRE.
LADY MARGARET was a beautiful woman. The next time he met her, Adam
realized that this was true. He stood looking down upon her, where she
sat on a low divan which was made to throw two persons very close
together, and into which he had avoided squeezing. The young woman
looked up at him winningly, a slumberous passion in her garnet-brown
eyes. Her creamy white bosom rose and fell in a calm voluptuousness, the
twin beauties of which were more than suggested.
Rust could not recall that he had ever seen shoulders more superb, nor a
throat more delightfully round and built upward in curves to the perfect
chin at the top. In contrast with her lustrously dark eyes and her
almost black eyebrows, spanning her forehead with their dainty arches,
her old-gold hair was an amazing crown of loveliness.
She had led him away from the company, “to look for Ted,” with an art
which had for once deceived the crafty rover completely. Now, as he
looked upon her, assuming a coldness it was utterly impossible to feel,
and be a man, he noted a beauty in her bare arms which made him think of
the perfect lines of a tiger’s paw. He could have suggested nothing to
make them more splendid.
Indeed she was well-nigh matchless as a creation of nature and polite
society. Her shimmering satin gown clung to her form as if ardently. Her
pretty gold-slippered feet and her slender ankles, in red silk,
open-work stockings, defied a glance to ignore them.
“Adam,” she said, smiling up at him archly, “I wish you were a girl—just
for a few moments, you know.”
“You would suffer by the contrast between us,” said Rust.
“You would know what a—what a bore he is,” she went on, regardless of
his comment. “And it would serve you right.”
“You doubtless mean the King,” he replied. “Your expedients are cruel.
Make anything out of me—a camel, if you like,—but not a girl.”
“I mean Ted,” she said, a little desperately. “You know I mean Ted. You
know what a bore he is.”
“Then you have spoiled him since morning.”
“You have no right to be the only man who isn’t a bore,” she went on.
“You’ll be telling me I am the only man you ever loved, in a moment,” he
answered. “I can feel it coming.”
“And if I did,” she said with a passionate glance, “what then?”
Adam was frightened, as he had never been before in his life. He took
out his handkerchief and flecked a bit of dust from his boot,
nonchalantly.
“I should advise you to be bled for fever,” he said. “And I should know
the old affection you had for me once had departed forever. Couldn’t you
break my heart in some simpler way, dear Lady Margaret?”
“It was all your fault for going away,” she told him. “You knew I liked
you before you went away.”
“Oh yes,” he responded gaily, “but I saw that your passionate love for
me was waning, so I went away to kindle it over again.”
“Do be serious for a moment,” she murmured, vexed with his calmness and
his raillery. “You know Ted is a dreadful bore.”
“Then since you have given him the love that once was mine, my cue is to
become a bore instanter.”
“You would never know it, if I loved you madly,” she said, looking up
into his face with her declaration centered in her eyes.
“Yes, I would,” he corrected, placidly. “If you loved me madly you would
tell me about it; you know you would.”
Her breath came fast. Her bosom rose and fell rapidly. “You wouldn’t
believe me if I did,” she said.
“If you told me you loved me madly,” said Adam, “I should know you
didn’t. So please let me go on with my fond delusions.”
She was silent a moment. He could feel her burning gaze on his face.
“Adam,” she said presently, “do sit down.” She moved to make half room
enough for him on the divan.
“What, and make you stand?” he replied. “Never!”
She placed her hand on the arm of the seat, where she knew his fingers
would return when he had finished scratching at a tiny white speck on
his coat-lappel. He observed her motion and thrust his fist in his
pocket.
“Oh, I am dying,” she presently whispered, after another silence.
“How interesting,” Adam cheerfully commented. “What are you dying for, a
glass of water, or a new set of diamonds?”
“You know what I am dying for,” she said, tremulously, in a voice hardly
above a whisper. “You said if I were dying, you—you would know what
for.”
“Oh, did I?” Adam mused. He was pale behind his calm. His hands were
perspiring, coldly. “Yes, of course. I said you would be dying to run
away with me. And now you would try to prove that this was all wrong. My
dear Lady Margaret, this is unkind.”
She arose from her seat. She was driven to her wits’ end for anything to
say.
“Silly boy,” she answered, as she came toward him, and then she quickly
added: “Oh, Adam, would you mind just clasping this strap?”
The strap was a narrow bit of finery which crossed her bare shoulder.
She had artfully loosened the golden clasp and now came to present
shoulder, strap, clasp and all for re-arrangement.
“There is nothing I can do with greater ease,” said Rust, “There you
are,—done already.” He had performed his office with amazing dexterity
and with a touch so fleeting that she would never have known when it
alighted.
“Oh, you haven’t done it right, my dear foolish Adam,” she said, with a
delicious little chuckle. “I’ll put my arm across your shoulder, so.
Now, make it right, do, Adam, please.”
She dropped her exquisite arm on his shoulder as she spoke and edged
closer. She turned so that her face was so near to his that he could
feel how glowing warm she was. Her breath fanned against his cheek,
hotly. The man felt a sense of intoxication stealing upon him. Yet he
was fixing the clasp as briefly as before, when she made a movement with
her slipper.
“Oh, I am falling,” she said in a little cry, and throwing both arms
about him, to support herself, she was clasped close to his breast, for
a moment, before he could seem to re-establish her balance. In that
brief time a mad horde of thoughts ran riotously through his brain. She
was beautiful; she loved him; she had fascinated something in him
always. Could he not be happy, loving her and having her love in return?
Why not run away with her—to the Continent—anywhere—and fill the aching
void in his nature with love and caresses!
His heart was beating furiously. He trembled. A fever leaped into his
brain. Through his arms shot a galvanic contraction, as they halted in
the act of closing about the superb, slender figure he was holding. It
seemed as if he must kiss her, on her lips, her throat—her shoulder!
“Adam, I am dying!” she whispered to him again, as he held her.
“Don’t die standing up,” he said, with a sudden recovery of the mastery
over himself. “Sit down and do it calmly.”
He swayed her aside, and there was nothing she could do but to take the
seat she had occupied before.
“How provoking of me to trip on my gown,” she said, looking up at him
sullenly. “Do you think we shall have snow to-morrow?”
“I shall pray against a precipitation of icebergs,” said Adam. “There is
nothing suggestive of love in ice.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII.
A BEEF-EATER PASSES.
THE rigors of the London winter pursued the beef-eaters relentlessly,
tapping them remindfully on the shoulder, now and again, with a cold, or
a spell of bronchitis, and then, under cover of a fog, some deadly
affliction fastened upon the pair all at once. The rover found them,
after an absence from their quarters of two days, so ill that first one
and then the other was crawling from his bed to minister to his comrade,
so that both grew rapidly worse.
Adam looked at the two of them ruefully, when at length he came to where
they were. He had never known them ill in this manner before. They cared
nothing for eating; they slept but little. Their eyes were bright. They
were perfectly cheerful, in a feeble sort of way. After the Sachem had
come they declared they wanted for nothing, provided he would talk to
them, sing a little and let them lie there and see him, or hear him play
on his favorite violin.
He brought them every comfort which money could buy. He cooked for them,
served them and ate at their board—which was a board indeed, reaching
from one bed to the other, where they could easily get at what he spread
on its surface for their pleasure. But the choice wines he fetched, and
the fruits and the delicate bits of game and fish, remained almost
wholly untasted.
Adam was soon at a loss to know what to do. He tried to get at their
symptoms.
“Pike, you rogue,” he said, “I want to know where you feel bad. You are
ill, you know; now where is the pain?”
“By my sword-stroke,” said Pike, in a worn-down voice, “I have no pain.
I may be tired, to-day, but to-morrow, bring me a pirate and I shall eat
him without the trouble of slicing him first.”
“Tired, that’s it,” agreed Halberd. “I’m a bit tired myself, this
afternoon, but by cock’s crow to-morrow I could enjoy pulling the tail
out of a lion and beating the beast to death with the bloody end of it.”
“Well, doesn’t your stomach ache, or your head hurt you?” insisted Adam.
“When you cough like that, doesn’t it hurt your chest?”
“No, I like it, for the tickling,” said Halberd.
The two old scamps were afraid of being taken across the channel to
Spain again, or down into France, or perhaps across to Morocco. After
three days of his “tinkering” unsuccessfully, with his faithful
companions, Adam called in a doctor.
The worthy physician promptly bled the two patients. Little Pike became
quieter, if possible, than before. Halberd, on the contrary, was
somewhat wrought up in his feelings.
“By my steel!” said he, when the doctor had departed, “this puny Sir
Nostrum has let more of my juice with his nonsense than ever was taken
by swordsman out of my carcass. Faith! I’ll pulp the fellow, and he
comes again!”
Adam laughed, for Halberd suddenly got back a monstrous appetite. He
likewise abounded in pains, which he permitted the Sachem to soothe; and
he otherwise improved past all belief. He had been a little ill, and his
sympathy with Pike had made his ailment mischievous.
Pike, however, had no such rally in him. He put in his time smoothing
the coverlet with slow, feeble movements, while he lay there looking at
Adam with dumb affection until one could almost fancy he was wagging a
tail, with weak, joyful jerks.
He got the Sachem to sing him the love song of the many seas, for Pike
had once had a heart full of love for a maiden himself, and while the
experience was nothing jollier than a funeral on the day set for the
wedding, nevertheless he liked the lively song, with all its various
maids and misses mentioned, for he conceived them all to be the
self-same girl, after all, simply transported to different climes.
While Adam was singing and playing, with the merriest spirit he could
conjure, the wistful old Pike had the impudence to close his eyes and
die.
A faint smile lingered on his face; whether as a result of his joke on
Adam and Halberd, or his pleasure derived from the song, could never be
known.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII.
A WOMAN SCORNED.
SIR WILLIAM PHIPPS and Increase Mather, together with the other Puritan
patriots who made up the small band of charter-hunters at the Court of
William and Mary, worked consistently, if not harmoniously, toward their
end.
They found their monarch disposed to permit them to do about as they
pleased, when at length he comprehended their situation and the needs of
Massachusetts. His attorney-general was ordered to draw up a charter, on
the broad lines suggested by the American council. No sooner did they
get it into their hands, however, than they fell into heated discussions
over trifling divergencies which they found between it and the older
charter, which they had come to regard with almost idolatrous awe and
reverence.
The new charter granted them many liberties and privileges which the old
one had not contained. Time even proved the new one to be the better
document for the colony, but despite these facts, and the further fact
that it restored to their dominion the provinces of Maine, New
Hampshire, and Nova Scotia, to the St. Lawrence River, they found much
at which to grumble.
However, they finally accepted what they had, with what show of
gratitude they were able to simulate. Their disaffection doubtless had
its purpose, and it might have been fruitful of the further concession
which they gained, namely, the privilege of nominating their own next
Governor.
Here, for once, they were quite unanimous. They requested that Sir
William Phipps be appointed. They knew that without the priceless
services which he had rendered the cause, during all his sojourn in
England, they might never have received a tithe of what was now secured
to their country with all possible stability.
The nomination of Captain Phipps was made complete by the King without
delay. He was constituted Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the
Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, and likewise
Captain-General of the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Weighted down with these new responsibilities, he went seeking for Adam
Rust, at the gay salon of the Duchess of Kindlen, noted in its day for
its scope and the liberties acceded to the guests who assembled in its
spacious halls.
Having heard from a mutual friend that Sir William would be looking him
up at the Duchess’, Adam repaired to the scene rather more early than
was his custom. He had seen but little of the captain for a matter of
several years. He was chiding himself upon the negligence by which this
had been made possible, when he arrived at the house.
The funeral of the faithful Pike, and the plight of the lorn old
Halberd, since losing his comrade, had depressed Adam’s spirits
immeasurably. Halberd had been following him about, dumbly, ever since
the dire event in the family. He said but little; he made no complaints
of his loneliness. He simply hung on Adam’s footsteps, like a homeless
old dog, whose one remaining instinct is faithfulness and undying
affection, waiting for his master when he came from the brightly-lighted
houses, pleased and excited whenever he could have the Sachem to talk
with on the topic of Pike’s many virtues and traits of character that
confirmed him in his fellow’s affections.
Adam had taken the lorn beef-eater into his own apartments, where he
could keep a more careful watch over his health and his negative
happiness. No friend among all his noble acquaintances had such a hold
on Adam’s heart as had this bragging old remnant of his retinue, and to
none did he drop the mask of frivolity as he did before this companion,
whom nothing could discourage nor alter.
Thus he had been glad to think of going no more where the Duchess, Lady
Margaret and the others assembled, with their tinsel show, their
thinly-plated talk, their gambling and amours, but had contemplated
going away with Halberd, into Nature’s simpler walks and profounder
beauties.
The garish glitter struck inharmoniously upon him, as he walked
impatiently through the brilliant rooms, in a search for Sir William
Phipps, who had not yet arrived. He presently found himself confronted
by Suffle, who, in turn, had been looking about for Lady Margaret.
“How do you do?” said Suffle, at once. “My dear Rust, I am charmed to
see you again. I have been wanting to see you, ’pon my word. Would you
mind just giving me a few minutes’ talk?”
“One of my greatest delights is derived from listening to a brilliant
conversationalist,” said Rust. “Where shall we go?”
“There is no one as yet in the dice-box,” said the other. “If you don’t
mind, we might stroll in there by ourselves.”
Saying, “I am yours to command,” Adam followed leisurely behind his
friend to the now empty room employed nightly for gambling.
“It’s rather a delicate business—what I have to say,” confessed Suffle,
by way of a preface, “but you are a frank, decent fellow, that a man can
talk to, well—openly—don’t you know.”
“Thanks,” said Adam. “If it is anything about Lady Margaret, let us be
sensible, by all means.”
“That’s devilish clever of you, old chap,” responded Suffle, evidently
much relieved already. “Of course you know how matters stand.”
“I would never be sure of where anything stood, that had a woman for an
element in its make-up.”
“Yes, I know. That’s clever, too—deucedly clever. Perhaps I had better
put it plainly.”
“Do, I beg of you.”
“Now—you are a frank, sensible man. Now—do you really like—you
know—love, you know—Lady Margaret,—just speaking as man to man,
sensibly, as you so cleverly said?”
“Would you force me to become either ungallant or a traitor?”
“Not at all, I——”
“Well, let us say that I am ungallant, since we are to be frank,” said
Rust. “I will even admit that I am ungallant.”
“Good,” said Suffle. “That’s what I thought—I mean, you know——”
“Yes, I know what you mean. Proceed.”
“Well, I feel very much relieved. You are a decent sort, Rust—a deucedly
decent sort. Now I am very fond of Lady Margaret. I have learned to be,
you know. My uncle requires me to marry her, don’t you see, or be cut
off with a brass farthing. So I have learned to be deucedly fond of her,
you know.”
“Very reasonable and like a man,” said Adam.
“Yes, I fancy so myself. I am coming to the point.”
“Then there is a point?”
“Oh dear me, yes. You see, as you don’t care for Lady Margaret, that
way, and I do——”
“Why then, to be sure, take her and let me give you my blessing,” Rust
interrupted. “I will do this with all my heart.”
“Thanks, old chap, but that is not quite the point,” Suffle assured him.
“The fact of the matter is, she rather likes you, Rust, you know. I’m
bound to admit she does, though God knows why, and we are two sensible
men, you know, and that is what I wanted to talk about.”
“You do me too great an honor,” Adam assured him. “But what would you
have me do?”
“Why—that’s just the point. Of course I wouldn’t like to ask you to
clear out of the country——”
“Don’t let modesty stand in your way, my dear Suffle. This favor would
be nothing—a mere trifle.”
“Oh no, now, I wouldn’t permit it,” said Suffle, magnanimously. “But you
are such a deucedly clever fellow, don’t you know, that I thought you
might be able to devise something, something to—well, you know.”
“Yes, oh yes,” said Adam, pulling calmly at his long golden mustache. He
meditated for a moment and idly picked up a dice-box, placed in
readiness for the evening’s play upon the table. “Do you ever fripper
away your time with these? If you do, perhaps we might arrange a little
harmless device without much trouble.”
At one of the doors, the figure of Lady Margaret appeared and
disappeared as Suffle expressed his eagerness to know what the plan in
Adam’s head might be. Although she had glided swiftly from room to room
in search of Rust, Lady Margaret had frowned when she saw him in company
with her fiancé, and petulantly beating her fan in her fragrant little
palm, she had gone back around toward a secondary entrance, in which a
heavy curtain hung. She was vaguely wondering what the two could find to
talk about together, and to what extent they were gambling, that they
went at the dice thus early.
She now met Sir William Phipps, Governor-elect of New England, who had
finally arrived and who was scanning the gathering company for a sight
of Adam Rust.
“Oh, how well you are looking, Sir William,” she cried to Phipps,
delightedly.
“I am looking for a friend,” said the captain, with his customary
bluntness. “But thank you, Lady Margaret, thank you, heartily.”
“If you are looking for a friend, why, look over my head?” she said to
him, prettily. “Oh, you dear Colonial Governors are such delightfully
honest people. We all have to like you, really.”
“I have found some honest men in England,” said the Captain, with
conviction. “The Puritans are growing numerous among your people.”
Lady Margaret laughed, spontaneously enough. “And what about our women?”
she said. “Do you find them at all—well, charming?”
“Some are as bold as a pirate,” he said, without intending anything
personal. He could see many ropes and clusters of jewels, gleaming from
afar. “And some of them must have plundered many a good ship of her
treasure,” he added. “If I don’t put about and do some cruising, I shall
never speak that boy to-night.”
He bowed, somewhat jerkily, and sauntered off. Lady Margaret continued
on her way around toward that curtained door, on the other side of which
she had seen Rust and Suffle with the dice.
William Phipps spent no further time in conversing with the women,
beyond a word as he passed, so that finally he came to the gambling
apartment, where he found his protégé. Knitting his brows for a second,
in an ill-concealed annoyance, to see Adam Rust engaged in such a
pursuit as this, he stood there in the doorway, hoping to catch Adam’s
eye and so to admonish him silently for indulging even a moment’s whim
at this vice.
“One thousand more,” said Adam, somewhat hotly.
Sir William pricked up his ears in amazement.
“Lost again!” Rust exclaimed. “The devil is in the dice!” His back was
toward the curtained door. There was a mirror, however, directly across
the room. Watching the glass he presently beheld the reflection of a
movement, where the tapestry swayed behind him. “Three thousand now, or
nothing!” he added, desperately.
The dice rattled out of the box in the silence that followed.
“It’s luck,” said Suffle, scooping up the dice to throw again.
“It’s sorcery!” exclaimed the rover, in evident heat. “Come, sir, I have
two thousand left. I’ll stake it all on a single throw!”
Phipps would have interfered, had it been in any place but a private
house, where the scandal would spread so swiftly. He twitched in
nervousness, as he gripped the cane with which he would have liked to
knock the dice-box endways.
The throw was completed.
“I’m done!” said Rust. “I’ve nothing more to stake!”
“Oh, come,” said Suffle, tauntingly, “play your sword, your—surely you
must have something you prize. What, no resources? Must we cease the
play so soon?”
“My sword? No!” said Adam, with temper. “But stay; since you speak so
slightingly of my sword, I have one more stake to offer.”
“By all means name it and play.”
“My stake, sir, is the Lady Margaret,” Adam growled at him, angrily.
“Betrothed to you, she loves me more. Come, sir, stake me a thousand
against my chances to win her and take her away from you, heart and
soul. A thousand, sir, and if you can win it—your field shall be open,
you shall hear nor fear no more from me!”
“By my faith,” said Suffle, rising, as Adam had done, “you hold this
lady lightly, that you prattle of her name like this. Better I should
run you through, for an arrant knave.”
“Bah!” said Rust, “you think more of your winnings than you do of your
lady. You hesitate and scold over a paltry thousand. Stake it, man, or
by my troth I shall tell her what valuation you put upon her worth.”
Lady Margaret’s face appeared for a second at the curtain. It was white
with rage.
“You insult this lady with your monstrous proposition,” cried Suffle.
“And you insult her worse, with your parsimony!” came the swift retort.
“It is calumny for you to say she loves you!” Suffle growled.
“Yet stake me, sir, or you shall see me get her and laugh at your
stinginess,” Rust flung at him banteringly. “Come, sir, one more moment
and I withdraw the offer.”
“Done!” said Suffle, “for by ’sdeath, my fortune shall prove you a liar!
Throw the dice.”
Adam threw and counted. “My luck has changed at last,” he said, in
triumph.
“We shall see,” retorted Suffle, and flinging the dice he sat down and
roared with laughter.
“Lost!” said Adam, tragically. “So be it. To the devil with you, sir;
and I wish you joy of your winnings.”
He strode from the table, met Sir William Phipps at the door, winked at
him merrily and so drew him out in the hall.
“What’s this? What’s this?” said the Governor, excitedly. “I come here
to see you, with news on my tongue, and find you—like this!”
“Tush, William,” said Adam, laughing boyishly, and as cool as a fish. “I
was betting in farthings. I must have lost a hundred. Did you think the
luck was all with Suffle?”
“But, sir, this—this lady?”
“There is more than one way to cure a woman of a heart’s distemper,”
said the young man, cheerfully. “Lady Margaret was just there, behind
the curtain. But this is wasting time. What is your news?”
Phipps looked at him in wonder, for a moment, then shaking his head,
sadly, he presently drew his hand down across his face, to his double
chin, as if to wipe out a smile, which had come out of his eyes and
traveled all over his countenance.
“Adam,” he said, “they have made me Governor of the colony, and I want
you to go home with me to Boston.”
Adam said nothing, for a moment, then he answered: “Let’s get out of
this. I want some fresher air to think it over in.”
They were soon walking out at the gate, arm in arm. The air was not only
fresh, it was bitter cold. When they turned to go down the street, Adam
having first looked about, without seeing what he sought, old Halberd
issued from a niche, where he had been dancing to keep himself warm, and
followed along behind his master.
“Well, now that you have thought it over,” said Phipps, at last, “what
do you say?”
Adam had thought it over, from a thousand standpoints. The magnet at
Boston had drawn him and drawn him so long that he felt his whole soul
was already across the Atlantic. Why fight his longing any further? Why
not at least go home, look the proposition in the face and perhaps be
disillusionized?
“I’m your man,” he said, as if to catch himself before he should alter
his mind. “When are you sailing?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX.
REVELATIONS.
WHEN the Andros government came to an end, Edward Randolph had
languished in jail for a brief time only. The Puritans were chiefly
angered at his master, whom they had finally put aboard a ship and sent
away from the country. Thus the more mischievous spirit, and author of
many of their wrongs, escaped to work his malignant will upon them for
years.
Randolph was so crafty, so insidious, and willing to remain so in the
background, that until it was quite too late to redeem their position,
the Puritans failed even to suspect him of the monstrous iniquities he
induced them to commit upon one another. The witchcraft persecutions,
which he fastened upon them, had not originated in his brain, fertile as
that organ was for the growth of things diabolical. He got his cue from
England, where thousands of persons perished, at the stake and
otherwise, convicted on fantastic testimony of practising arts that were
black and mysterious.
Randolph, realizing that Boston had been made too warm for active
operations, began his work in Salem. That center offered him exceptional
opportunities. The growth of the dread disease was appalling. History
which would convey an adequate idea of this criminal fanaticism should
be bound in charred human skin.
Boston was duly afflicted with the scourge. Randolph then returned,
quietly, and so manipulated his work and his dupes, from behind his own
scenes, that scores of old women were charged with and convicted of
witchcraft, in Randolph’s hope of wreaking his vengeance thus on
whatsoever old woman it might have been who had told Garde Merrill of
his affair with Hester Hodder. Having never been able to ascertain that
this person was Goody Dune, he was sweeping his net in all waters, to
make sure of his prey, in the same merciless spirit that Herod slew all
the male infants, to accomplish his terrible purpose.
When Governor Phipps, with Adam Rust and Increase Mather, arrived at
Boston, in the frigate “Nonsuch,” in May, 1692, the prisons were crowded
full of witches, for the smell of whose burning or rotting flesh scores
of fanatical maniacs were clamoring.
All Massachusetts had known that William Phipps, the Governor who had
risen so mightily from the ranks of the working men among them, was
coming. The name of the lane wherein his house had been built was
altered to Charter street, in his honor; the citizens beat their drums;
the disciples of gladness in the stomach arranged for a banquet; the
hordes marched in joy and with pomp and Puritan splendor, which lacked
nothing in ceremony, as Sir William was conducted to his house and then
to the public dinner. Even the fanatics waxed enthusiastic and developed
symptoms of being yet more greatly pursued and bewitched by the witches
whose incarceration they had already procured.
In the madness, confusion and excess of glee, two persons were more
inwardly stirred than all the others, not by the arrival of William
Phipps, but by that of Adam Rust. One was Garde, to whose ears and heart
the story of Adam’s return came swiftly flying. The other was Edward
Randolph, who saw an opportunity for deviltry for which he had waited so
long that he had almost despaired of ever tasting its bitter-sweet. With
his own eyes he beheld Adam Rust, and he grinned.
At the end of that long, fatiguing day, Rust retired to the privacy of
his tavern apartments, secured haphazard, during one of the moments less
filled than the others with pressing events. Here he sat him down for
the purpose of thinking. He wondered why he had come to Boston again,
and what he would do, now that at last he lived under the same sky with
Garde, hearing the same sounds she was hearing, breathing the same
fragrance of the Spring that stole to her. Should he try to see her?
Perhaps. But to speak to her—no, he thought he could make no advance in
this direction. But he could learn whether she had married, as of course
she must have done, long before, and then—well, something in him ought
to be satisfied—that something which had urged him so inexorably to
return and to make this moment possible.
In the midst of his reveries, he heard a knock upon his door. It was
poor old Halberd, doubtless, who had been so forlorn and so ill on the
ocean. He had left him asleep, but, no matter, he would be glad to see
him, privacy of thought notwithstanding.
“Come in,” he said. “Come in.”