VI

I have always observed with wonder and amusement and a tender

gladness the faculty with which young creatures, and particularly

young girls, can throw off their minds for the time being the weight

of cares and anxieties and bring all of themselves to bear upon

those exercises of body or mind, to no particular end of serious

gain, which we call play and frivolity. It may be that faculty is so

ordained by a wise Providence, which so keeps youth and the bloom of

it upon the earth, and makes the spring and new enterprises

possible. It may be that without it we should rust and stick fast in

our ancient rivets and bolts of use.

That very next morning, after I had learned from Mary Cavendish,

supplemented by a sulky silence of assent from Sir Humphrey Hyde,

that she had, under presence of ordering feminine finery from

England, spent all her year's income from her crops on powder and

shot for the purpose of making a stand in the contemplated

destruction of the new tobacco crops, and thereby plunged herself

and her family in a danger which were hard to estimate were it

discovered, I heard a shrill duet of girlish laughs and merry

tongues before the house. Then, on looking forth, whom should I see

but Mary Cavendish and Cicely Hyde, her great gossip, and a young

coloured wench, all washing their faces in the May dew, which lay in

a great flood as of diamonds and pearls over everything. I minded

well the superstition, older than I, that, if a maid washed her face

in the first May dew, it would make her skin wondrous fair, and I

laughed to myself as I peeped around the shutter to think that Mary

Cavendish should think that she stood in need of such amendment of

nature. Down she knelt, dragging the hem of her chintz gown, which

was as gay with a maze of printed posies as any garden bed, and she

thrust her hollowed hands into the dew-laden green and brought them

over her face and rubbed till sure there was never anything like it

for sweet, glowing rosiness. And Cicely Hyde, who must have come

full early to Drake Hill for that purpose, did likewise, and with

more need, as I thought, for she was a brown maid, not so fair of

feature as some, though she had a merry heart, which gave to her

such a zest of life and welcome of friends as made her a favourite.

Up she scooped the dew and bathed her face, turning ever and anon to

Mary Cavendish with anxious inquiries, ending in trills of laughter

which would not be gainsaid in May-time and youth-time by aught of

so little moment as a brown skin. "How look I now?" she would cry

out. "How look I now, sweetheart? Saw you ever a lily as fair as my

face?" Then Mary, with her own face dripping with dew, with that

wonderful wet freshness of bloom upon it, would eye her with

seriousness as to any improvement, and bid her turn this way and

that. Then she would give it as her opinion that she had best

persevere, and laugh somewhat doubtfully at first, then in a full

peal when Cicely, nothing daunted by such discouragement in her

friend's eyes, went bravely to work again, all her slender body

shaking with mirth. But the most curious sight of all, and that

which occasioned the two maids the most merriment, though of a

covert and even tender and pitying sort, was Mary's black

serving-wench Sukey, a half-grown girl, who had been bidden to

attend her mistress upon this morning frolic. She was seated at a

distance, square in the wet greenness, and was plunging both hands

into the May dew and scrubbing her face with a fierce zeal, as if

her heart was in that pretty folly, as no doubt it was. And ever and

anon as she rubbed her cheeks, which shone the blacker and glossier

for it, she would turn the palms of her hands, which be so curiously

pale on a negro's hands, to see if perchance some of the darkness

had stirred. And when she saw not, then would she fall to scrubbing

again.

Presently up stood Mary and Cicely, and Cicely flashed in the sun a

little silver mirror which she had brought and which had lain

glittering in the grass a little removed, and looked at herself, and

saw that her brown cheeks were as ever, with the exception of the

flush caused by rubbing, and tossed it with her undaunted laugh to

Mary. "The more fool be I!" she cried out, "instead of washing mine

own face in the May dew, better had it been had I locked thee in the

clothes-press, Mary Cavendish, and not let thee add to thy beauty,

while I but gave my cheeks the look of fever or the small-pox. I

trow the skin be off in spots, and all to no purpose! Look at

thyself, Mary Cavendish, and blush that thou be so much fairer than

one who loves thee!"

And verily Mary Cavendish did for a minute seem to blush as she cast

a glance at herself in the mirror and saw her marvellous rose of a

face, but the next minute the mirror flashed in the grass and her

arms were about Cicely Hyde's neck. "'Tis the dearest face in

Virginia, Cicely," said she, in her sweet, vehement way, and laid

her pink cheek against the other's plain one. And Cicely laughed,

and took her face in her two hands and held it away that she might

see it.

"What matters it to poor Cicely whether her own face be fair or not,

so long as it is dear to thee, and so long as she can see thine!"

she cried as passionately as a lad might have done, and I frowned,

not with jealousy, but with a curious dislike to such affection from

one maid to another, which I could never understand in myself. Had

Cicely Hyde had a lover, she would have said that fond speech to him

instead of Mary Cavendish, but lover she had none.

But all at once the two maids nudged one another, and turned their

faces, all convulsed with merriment, and I looked and saw that the

poor little black lass had crept on hands and knees to where the

mirror flashed in the grass, and was looking at her face therein

with such anxiety as might move one at once to tears and laughter,

to see if the dew had washed her white.

But Mary Cavendish ceased all in a minute her mirth, and went up to

the black child and took the mirror from her, and said, in the

sweetest voice of pity I ever heard, "'Tis not in one May dew nor

two, nor perchance in the dews of many years, you can wash your face

white, but sometime it will be."

Then the black wench burst into tears, and begged in that thick,

sluggishly sweet tongue of hers to know if ever the May dew would

wash her black away, and Mistress Mary answered as seriously as if

she were in the pulpit on the Sabbath day that it would sometime

most surely and she should see her face in the glass as fair as any.

Then the two maids, Mary Cavendish and Cicely Hyde, went into the

house, and left me, as I said before, to wonder at that spirit of

youth which can all in a minute disregard care and anxiety and risk

of death for the play of vanity. But, after all, which be stronger,

wars and rumours of wars or vanity? And which be older, and which

fathered the other?

After the house door had shut behind the maidens, I too went out,

but not to wash my grim man's face in May dew, but rather for a

stroll in the morning air, and the clearing of my wits for

reflection; for much I wondered what course I should take regarding

my discovery of the night before. I went down the road toward

Jamestown, and struck into the path to the wharf, the same that we

had taken the day before, but there were no masts of the Golden Horn

rising among the trees with a surprise of straightness. She had

weighed anchor and sailed away over night, and possibly before. The

more I reflected the more I understood that Mistress Mary Cavendish,

with her ready wit and supply of money through her inheritance from

her mother, might have concocted the scheme of bringing over

ammunition from England to enable us to make a stand against the

government; but the plot in the first of it could not have been hers

alone. Assuredly Ralph Drake was concerned in it, and Sir Humphrey

Hyde, and no one knew how many more. The main part for Mistress Mary

might well have been the furnishing of the powder and shot, for

Ralph Drake was poor, and lived, it was said, by his good luck at

cards; and as for Sir Humphrey Hyde, his mother held the reins in

those soft hands of hers, which would have been sorely bruised had

they been withdrawn too roughly.

I sat me down on a glittering ridge of rock near the river-bank, and

watched the blue run of the water, and twisted the matter this and

that way in my mind, for I was sorely perplexed. Never did I feel as

then the hamper of my position, for a man who was held in such

esteem as I by some and contempt by others, and while having voice

had no authority to maintain it, was neither flesh nor fowl nor

slave nor master. Madam Cavendish treated me in all respects as the

equal of herself and her family--nay, more than that, she

deferred to me in such fashion as I had never seen in her toward any

one, but Catherine treated me ever with iciness of contempt, which I

at that time conceived to be but that transference of blame from her

own self to a scapegoat of wrong-doing which is a resort of ignoble

souls. They will have others not only suffer for their own sin, but

even treat them with the scorn due themselves. And not one man was

there in the colony, excepting perhaps Sir Humphrey Hyde and Parson

Downs and the brothers Nicholas and Richard Barry, which last were

not squeamish, and would have had me as boon companion at Barry

Upper Branch, having been drawn to me by a kindred boldness of

spirit and some little passages which I had had with the Indians,

which be not worth repeating. I being in such a position in the

colony, and considering the fact that Madam Cavendish and Catherine

were staunch loyalists, and would have sent all their tobacco to the

bottom of the salt sea had the king so ordained, and regarded all

disaffection from the royal will as a deadly sin against God and the

Church, as well as the throne, and knowing the danger which Mary

Cavendish ran, I was in a sore quandary. Could I have but gone to

those men whom I conceived to be in the plot, and talked with them

on an equal footing, I would have given my right hand. But I

wondered, and with reason, what hearing they would accord me, and I

wondered how to move in the matter at all without doing harm to

Mistress Mary, yet feared greatly that the non-movement would harm

her more. As I sat there I fell to marvelling anew, as I had

marvelled many times before, at that yielding on the part of the

strong which makes the power of those in authority possible. At the

yielding of the weak we marvel not, but when one sees the bending of

staunch, true men, with muscles of iron and hearts of oak, to

commands which be manifestly against their own best interests, it is

verily beyond understanding, and only to be explained by the working

of those hidden springs of nature which have been in men's hearts

since the creation, moving them along one common road of herding to

one common end. As I sat there I wondered not so much at the plot

which was simply to destroy all the young tobacco plants, that there

be not an over-supply and ruinous prices therefor next year, as at

the fact that the whole colony to a man did not arise and rebel

against the order of the king in that most infamous Navigation Act

which forbade exportation to any place but England, and load their

ships for the Netherlands, and get the full worth of their crops.

Well I knew that some of the burgesses were secretly in favour of

this measure, and why should one man, Governor Culpeper, for the

king, hold for one minute the will of this strong majority in

abeyance?

I reasoned it out within myself that one cause might lie in that

distrust and suspicion of his neighbour as to his good-will and

identical interest with himself which is inborn with every man, and

in most cases strengthens with his growth. When a movement of

rebellion against authority is on foot, he eyes all askance, and

speaks in whispering corners of secrecy, not knowing when he strikes

his first blow whether his own brother's hand will be with him

against the common tyrant, or against himself.

Were it not for this lamentable quality of the human heart, which

will prevent forever the perfect concerting of power to one end,

such a giant might be made of one people that it could hold all the

world and all the nations thereof at its beck and call. But that

cannot be, even in England, which had known and knows now and will

know again that division of interest and doubts, every man of his

brother's heart, which weaken the arm against the common foe.

But, reflecting in such wise, I came no nearer to the answer to my

quandary as to my best course for the protection of Mary Cavendish.

I sat there on that rock glittering like frost-work in the May

sunlight and watched the river current until it seemed to me that my

rock and all Virginia were going out on the tide to sea and back to

England, where, had I landed then, I would have lost my head and all

my wondering with it, and my old astonishment, which I had had from

a boy, was upon me, that so many things that be, according to the

apparent evidence of our senses are not, and how can any man ever be

sure that he is on sea or land, or coming or going? And comes there

not to all of us some day a great shock of knowledge of the slipping

past of this world, and all the history thereof which we think of so

much moment, and that we only are that which remains? But then

verily it seemed to me that the matter of the tobacco plot and Mary

Cavendish's danger was of more moment than aught else in the

century.

"Master Wingfield," said a voice so gently and sweetly repellent and

forbidding, even while it entreated, that it shivered the air with

discord, and I looked around, and there stood Catherine Cavendish.

She stood quite near the rock where I sat, but she kept her head

turned slightly away as if she could not bear the sight of my face,

though she was constrained to speak to me. But I, and I speak the

truth, since I held it unworthy a man and a gentleman to feel aught

of wrath or contempt when he was sole sufferer by reason of any

wrong done by a woman, had nothing but that ever recurrent surprise

and unbelief at the sight of her, to reconcile what I knew, or

thought I knew, with what she seemed.

I rose and stepped from my rock to the green shore, and she moved a

little back with a slight courtesy. "Good-morning, Mistress

Catherine," I said.

"What know you of what my sister hath done and the cargo that came

yesterday on the Golden Horn?" she demanded with no preface and of a

sudden; her voice rang sharp as I remembered it when she first spoke

to me by that white hedge of England, and I could have sworn that

the tide had verily borne us thither, and she was again that sallow

girl and I the blundering lout of a lad.

"That I cannot answer you, madam," said I, and bowed and would have

passed, but she stood before me. So satin smooth was her hair that

even the fresh wind could not ruffle it, and in such straight

lines of maiden modesty hung her green gown--always she wore

green, and it became her well, and 'twas a colour I always

fancied--that it but fluttered a little around her feet in the

marsh grass, but her face looked out from a green gauze hood with an

expression that belied all this steadfastness of primness and

decorum. It was as if a play-actress had changed her character and

not her attire, which suited another part. Out came her slim arm, as

if she would have caught me by the hand for the sake of compelling

my answer; then she drew it back and spoke with all the sharp

vehemence of passion of a woman who oversteps the bounds of

restraint which she has set herself, and is a wilder thing than if

she had been hitherto unfettered by her will.

"I command you to tell me what I wish to know, Harry Wingfield,"

said she, and now her eyes fixed mine with no shrinking, but a

broadside of scorn and imperiousness.

"And I refuse to tell you, madam," said I.

Then indeed she caught my arm with a little nervous hand, like a

cramp of wire. "You shall tell me, sir," she declared. "This much I

know already. Yesterday the Golden Horn came in and was unladen of

powder and shot instead of the goods that my sister pretended to

order, and the cases are stored at Laurel Creek. This much do I

know, but not what is afoot, nor for what Mary had conference with

Sir Humphrey Hyde and Ralph last night, and you later on with Sir

Humphrey. I demand of you that you tell me, Harry Wingfield."

"That I cannot do, madam," said I.

She gave me a look with those great black eyes of hers, and how it

came to pass I never knew, but straight to the root of the whole she

went as if my face had been an open book.

Such quickness of wit I had often heard ascribed to women, but never

saw I aught like that, and I trow it seemed witchcraft. "'Tis

something about the young tobacco plants," quoth she. "The king

would not pass the measure to cease the planting, and the assembly

of this spring broke up with no decision. Major Beverly, who

is clerk of the assembly, hath turned against the government

since Bacon died, and all the burgesses are with him, and

Governor Culpeper sails for England soon, and what, is the

lieutenant-governor to hold the reins? There is a plot hatching to

cut down the young tobacco plants." I could but stare at her. "There

is a plot to cut down the young tobacco plants as soon as the

governor hath sailed," she said, "and my sister Mary hath sent to

England for arms, knowing that the militia will arise and there will

be fighting."

I still stared at her, not knowing in truth what to say. Then

suddenly she caught at my hands with hers, and cried out with that

energy that I saw all at once the fire of life beneath that fair

show of maiden peace and calm of hers, "Harry, Harry Wingfield, if

my grandmother, Madam Cavendish, knows this, my sister is undone; no

pity will she have. Straight to the governor will she go, though she

hobble on crutches to Jamestown! She would starve ere she would move

against the will of the king and his representative, and so would I,

but I will not have my little sister put to suffering and shame. God

save her, Harry Wingfield, but she might be thrown into prison, and

worse--I pray thee, save her, Harry! Whatever ill you have done,

and however slightingly I have held you for it, I pray you do this

good deed by way of amends, and I will put the memory of your

misdeeds behind me."

Even then my bewilderment at her mention of my misdeeds, when I

verily considered that she, as well as I, knew more of her own, was

strong, but I grasped her two little hands hard, then relinquished

them, and bowed and said, "Madam, I will save your sister at

whatever cost."

"And count it not?" said she.

"No more than I have done before, madam," said I, and maybe with

some little bitterness, for sometimes a woman by persistent goading

may almost raise herself to the fighting level of a man.

"But how?" said she.

"That I must study."

"But I charge you to keep it from Madam Cavendish."

"You need have no fear."

"May God forgive me, but I told Madam Cavendish that the Golden Horn

had not arrived," said she, "but what have they done with the rest

of the cargo, pray?"

I started. I had, I confess, not given that a thought, though it was

but reasonable that there was more beside those powder casks, if the

revenue from the crops had been so small.

But Catherine Cavendish needed but a moment for that problem.

"'Twill return," said she. "Captain Tabor hath but sailed off a

little distance that he may return and make port, as if for the

first time since he left England, and so put them off the scent of

the Sabbath unlading of those other wares." She looked down the

burnished flow of the river as she spoke, and cried out that she

could see a sail, but I, looking also, could not see anything save

the shimmer of white and green spring boughs into which the river

distance closed.

"'Tis the Golden Horn," said Catherine.

"I can see naught of white save the locust-blooms," said I.

"Locusts stand not against the wind in stiff sheets," said she.

"'Tis the sail of the Golden Horn; but that matters not. Harry,

Harry Wingfield, can you save my sister?"

"I know not whether I can, madam, but I will," said I.