XI

I have seen many beautiful things in my life, as happens to every

one living in a world which hath little fault as to its appearance,

if one can outlook the shadow which his own selfishness of sorrow

and disappointment may cast before him; but it seemed that evening,

when I saw Mary Cavendish dressed for the governor's ball, that she

was the crown of all. I verily believe that never since the world

was made, not even that beautiful first woman who comprehended in

herself all those witcheries of her sex which have been ever since

to our rapture and undoing, not even Eve when Adam first saw her in

Paradise, nor Helen, nor Cleopatra, nor any of those women whose

faces have made powers of them and given them niches in history,

were as beautiful as Mary Cavendish that night. And I doubt if it

were because she was beheld by the eyes of a lover. I verily believe

that I saw aright, and gave her beauty no glamour because of my

fondness for her, for not one whit more did I love her in that

splendour than in her plainest gown. But, oh, when she stood before

her grandmother and me and a concourse of slaves all in a ferment of

awe and admiration, with flashings of white teeth and upheavals of

eyes and flingings aloft of hands in half-savage gesticulation, and

courtesied and turned herself about in innocent delight at her own

loveliness, and yet with the sweetest modesty and apology that she

was knowing to it! That stuff which had been sent to my Lady

Culpeper and which had been intercepted ere it reached her was of a

most rich and wonderful kind. The blue of it was like the sky, and

through it ran the gleam of silver in a flower pattern, and a great

string of pearls gleamed on her bosom, and never was anything like

that mixture of triumph in, and abashedness before, her own

exceeding beauty and her perception of it in our eyes in her dear

and lovely face. She looked at us and actually shrank a little, as

if our admiration were something of an affront to her maiden

modesty, and blushed, and then she laughed to cover it, and swept a

courtesy in her circling shimmer of blue, and tossed her head and

flirted a little fan, which looked like the wing of a butterfly,

before her face.

"Well, how do you like me, madam?" said she to her grandmother, "and

am I fine enough for the governor's ball?"

Madam Cavendish gazed at her with that rapture of admiration in a

beloved object which can almost glorify age to youth. She called

Mary to her and stroked the rich folds of her gown; she straightened

a flutter of ribbon. "'Tis a fine stuff of the gown," she said, "and

blue was always my colour. I was married in it. 'Tis fine enough for

the governor's wife, or the queen for that matter." She pulled out a

fold so that a long trail of silver flowers caught the light and

gleamed like frost. No misgivings and no suspicions she had, and

none, by that time, had Mary, believing as she did that her sister

had bought all that bravery for her, and that it was hers by right,

and only troubled by the necessity of secrecy with her grandmother

lest she discover for what purpose her own money had been spent. But

Catherine eyed her with such exceedingly worshipful love,

admiration, and yet distress that even I pitied her. Catherine

herself that night did no discredit to her beauty, her dress being,

though it was an old one, as rich as Mary's, of her favourite green

with a rose pattern broidered on the front of it, and a twist of

green gauze in her fair hair, and that same necklace of green stones

which she had shown me in the morning around her long throat, and

her long, milky-white arms hanging at her sides in the green folds

of her gown, and that pale radiance of perfection in her every

feature that made many call her the pearl of Virginia, though, as I

have said before, she had no lovers. She and Mary were going to the

ball, and a company of black servants with them. As for me, balls

were out of the question for a convict tutor, and I knew it, and so

did they. But suddenly, to my great amazement, Madam Cavendish

turned to me: "And wherefore are you not dressed for the ball,

Master Wingfield?" she said.

I stared at her, as did also Catherine and Mary, almost as if they

suspected she had gone demented. "Madam," I stammered, scarce

thinking I had understood her rightly.

"Why are you not dressed for the ball?" she repeated.

"Madam," I said, "pardon me, but you are well acquainted with the

fact that I am not a welcome guest at the governor's ball."

"And wherefore?" cried she imperiously.

"Wherefore, madam?"

Mary and Catherine both looked palely at their grandmother, not

knowing what had come to her.

"Madam," I said, "do you forget?"

"I forget not that you are the eldest son and heir of one of the

best families in England, and as good a gentleman as the best of

them," she cried out. "That I do not forget, and I would have you go

to the ball with my granddaughters. Put on thy plum-coloured velvet

suit, Harry, and order thy horse saddled."

For the first time I seemed to understand that Madam Judith

Cavendish had, in spite of her wonderful powers of body and mind,

somewhat of the childishness of age, for as she looked at me the

tears were in her stern eyes and a flush was on the ivory white of

her face, and her tone had that querulousness in it which we

associate with childhood which cannot have its own will.

"Madam," I said, gently, "you know that it is not possible for me

to do as you wish, and also that my days of gayeties are past,

though not to my regret, and that I am looking forward to an evening

with my books, which, when a man gets beyond his youth, yield him

often more pleasure than the society of his kind."

"But, Harry," she said piteously, and still like a child, "you are

young, and I would not have--" Then imperiously again: "Get into

thy plum-coloured velvet suit, Master Wingfield, and accompany my

granddaughters."

But then I affected not to hear her, under pretence of seeing that

the sedan chairs were ready, and hallooed to the slaves with such

zeal that Madam Cavendish's voice was drowned, though with no

seeming rudeness, and Mary and Catherine came forth in their

rustling spreads of blue and green, and the black bearers stood

grinning whitely out of the darkness, for the moon was not up yet,

and I aided them both into the chairs, and they were off. I stood a

few moments watching the retreating flare of flambeaux, for runners

carrying them were necessary on those rough roads when dark, and the

breath of the dewy spring night fanned my face like a wing of peace,

and I regretted nothing very much which had happened in this world,

so that I could come between that beloved girl and the troubles

starting up like poisonous weeds on her path.

But when I entered the hall Madam Cavendish, having sent away the

slaves, even to the little wench who had been fanning her, with

verily I believe no more of consciousness as to what was going on

about her than a Jimson weed by the highway, called me to her in a

voice so tremulous that I scarce knew it for hers.

"Harry, Harry," she said, "I pray thee, come here." Then, when I

approached, hesitating, for I had a shrinking before some outburst

of feminine earnestness, which has always intimidated me by its fire

of helplessness and futility playing against some resolve of mine

which I could not, on account of my masculine understanding of the

requirements of circumstances, allow to melt, she reached up one

hand like a little nervous claw of ivory, and caught me by the

sleeve and pulled me down to a stool by her side. Then she looked at

me, and such love and even adoration were in her face as I never saw

surpassed in it, even when she regarded her granddaughter Mary, yet

withal a cruel distress and self-upbraiding and wrath at herself and

me. "Harry, Harry," she said, "I can bear no more of this." Then, to

my consternation, up went her silken apron with a fling to her old

face, and she was weeping under it as unrestrainedly as any child.

I did not know what to do nor say. "Madam," I ventured, finally, "if

you distress yourself in such wise for my sake, 'tis needless, I

assure, 'tis needless, and with as much truth as were you my own

mother."

"Oh, Harry, Harry," she sobbed out, "know you not that is why I

cannot bear it longer, because you yourself bear it with no

complaint?" Then she sobbed and even wailed with that piteousness of

the grief of age exceeding that of infancy, inasmuch as the weight

of all past griefs of a lifetime go to swell it, and it is enhanced

by memory as well as by the present and an unknown future. I knew

not what to do, but laid a hand somewhat timidly on one of her thin

silken arms, and strove to draw it gently from her face. "Madam

Cavendish," I said, "indeed you mistake if you weep for me. At this

moment I would change places with no man in Virginia."

"But I would have--I would have you!" she cried out, with the

ardour of a girl, and down went her apron, and her face, like an

aged mask of tragedy, not discoloured by her tears, as would have

happened with the tender skin of a maid, confronted me. "I would

have you the governor himself, Harry. I would have you--I would

have--" Then she stopped and looked at me with a red showing

through the yellow whiteness of her cheeks. "You know what I would

have, and I know what you would have, and all the rest of my old

life would I give could it be so, Harry," she said, and I saw that

she knew of my love for her granddaughter Mary. Then suddenly she

cried out, vehemently: "Not one word have I said to you about it

since that dreadful time, Harry Wingfield, for shame and that pride

as to my name, which is a fetter on the tongue, hath kept me still,

but at last I will speak, for I can bear it no longer. Harry, Harry,

I know that you are what you are, a convict and an exile, to shield

Catherine, to shield a granddaughter of mine, who should be in your

place. Harry Wingfield, I know that Catherine Cavendish is guilty of

the crime for which you are in punishment, and, woe is me, such is

my pride, such is my wicked pride, that I have let you suffer and

said never one word."

I put her hand to my lips. "Madam," I said, "you mistake; I do not

suffer. That which you think of as my suffering and my disgrace is

my glory and happiness."

"Yes, and why, and why? Oh, Harry, 'tis that which is breaking my

heart. 'Tis because you love Mary, 'tis because, I verily believe,

you have loved her from the first minute you set eyes on her, though

she was but a baby in arms. At first I thought it was Catherine, in

spite of her fault, but now I know it was for the sake of Mary that

you sacrificed yourself--for her sister, Harry, I know, I know,

and I would to God that I could give you your heart's desire, for

'tis mine also!"

Then, so saying, this old woman, who had in her such a majesty of

character and pride that it held folk aloof at a farther distance

than loud swaggerings of importance of men high in office, drew down

my head to her withered shoulder and touched my cheek with a hand of

compassionate pity and blessing, as if I had been in truth her son,

and caught her breath again and again with a sobbing sigh. All that

I could say to comfort her I said, assuring her, as was indeed the

truth, that no woman could justly estimate the view which a man

might take of such a condition as mine, and how the power of service

to love might be enough to content one, and he stand in no need of

pity, but she was not much consoled. "Harry," she said, "Harry, thou

art like a knight of olden times about whom a song was written,

which I heard sung in my girlhood, and which used to bring the

tears, though I was never too ready with them. Woe be to me that I,

knowing what I know, have yet not the courage to sacrifice my pride

and my unworthy granddaughter, and see you free. Oh, Harry, that

thou shouldst sit at home when thou art fitted by birth and breeding

to go with the best of them! Harry, I pray thee, put on thy

plum-coloured suit and go to the ball."

"Dear Madam Cavendish," I said, half laughing, for she seemed more

and more like a child, "you know that it cannot be, and that I have

no desire for balls."

"But I would have thee go, Harry."

"But I am not asked," I said.

"What matters that? 'Tis almost with open doors, since it is a

farewell of my Lord Culpeper before sailing for England. Harry, go,

and--a--and--I swear if any exception be taken to it, I--I--will

tell the truth."

"Dear madam, it cannot be," I said, "and the truth is to be

concealed not only for your sake, but for that of others."

Then she broke out in another paroxysm of childish wailing that

never was such a wretched state of matters, such a wretched old

woman handicapped from serving one by her love for another. "Harry,

I cannot clear thee unless I convict my own granddaughter

Catherine," she said, piteously, "and if I spared her not, neither

her nor my pride, what of Mary? Catherine hath been like a mother to

the child, and she loves her better than she loves me. 'Twould kill

her, Harry. And, Harry, how can I give Mary to thee, and thou under

this ban? Mary Cavendish cannot wed a convict."

"That she cannot and shall not," I said; "she shall wed a much

worthier man and be happy, and sure 'tis her happiness that is the

question."

But Madam Cavendish stared at me with unreasoning anger, not

understanding, since she was a woman, and unreasoning as a woman

will be in such matters. "If you love not my granddaughter, Harry

Wingfield," she cried out, "'tis not her grandmother will fling her

at your head. I will let you know, sir, that she could have her pick

in the colony if she so chose, and it may be that she might not

choose you, Master Harry Wingfield."

I laughed. "Madam Cavendish," I said, rising and bowing, "were I a

king instead of a convict, then would I lay my crown at Mary

Cavendish's feet; as it is, I can but pave, if I may, her way to

happiness with my heart."

"Then you love her as I thought, Harry?"

"Madam," I said, "I love her to my honour and glory and never to my

discontent, and I pray you to believe with a love that makes no

account of selfish ends, and that I am happier at home with my books

than many a cavalier who shall dance with her at the ball."

"But, Harry," she said, piteously, "I pray thee to go."

I laughed and shook my head, and went away to my own quarters and

sat down to my books, but, at something past midnight, Madam

Cavendish sent for me in all haste. She had gone to bed, and I was

ushered to her bedroom, and when I saw her thin length of age scarce

rounding the coverlids, and her face frilled with white lace, and

her lean neck stretching up from her pillows with the piteous

outreaching of a bird, a great tenderness of compassion for

womanhood, both in youth and beauty and age and need, beyond which I

can express, came over me. It surely seems to me the part of man to

deal gently with them at all times, even when we suffer through

them, for there is about them a mystery of helplessness and

misunderstanding of themselves which should give us an exceeding

patience. And it seems to me that, even in the cases of those women

who are perhaps of greater wit and force of character than many a

man, not one of them but hath her helplessness of sex in her heart,

however concealed by her majesty of carriage. So, when I saw Madam

Cavendish, old and ill at ease in her mind because of me, and

realised all at once how it was with her in spite of that clear head

of hers and imperious way which had swayed to her will all about her

for near eighty years, I went up to her, and, laying a gentle hand

upon her head, laid it back upon the pillow, and touched her poor

forehead, wrinkled with the cares and troubles of so many years, and

felt all the pity in me uppermost. "'Tis near midnight, and you have

not slept, madam," I said. "I pray you not to fret any longer about

that which we can none of us mend, and which is but to be borne as

the will of the Lord."

"Nay, nay, Harry," she cried out, with a pitiful strength of anger.

"I doubt if it be the will of the Lord. I doubt if it be not the

devil--Catherine, Catherine--Harry, my brain reels when I

think that she should have done it--a paltry ring, and to let

you--"

"It may be that she had not her wits," I said. "Such things have

been, I have heard, and especially in the case of a woman with

jewels. It may be that she knew not what she did, and in any case I

pray you to think no more of it, dear madam." And all the time I

spoke I was smoothing her old forehead under the flapping frills of

her cap.

One black woman was there in the room, sitting in the shadow of the

bed-curtains, fast asleep and making a strange purring noise like a

cat as she slept.

Suddenly Madam Cavendish clutched hard at my hand. "Harry," she

said, "I sent for you because I have lain here fretting lest Mary

and Catherine get not home in safety with only the black people to

guard them. I fear lest the Indians may be lurking about."

"Dear Madam Cavendish," I said, "you know that we stand in no more

danger from the Indians."

"Nay," she persisted, "we can never tell what plans may be brewing

in such savage brains. I pray thee, Harry, ride to meet them and see

if they be safe."

I laughed, for the danger from Indians was long since past, but said

readily enough that I would do as she wished, being, in fact, glad

enough of a gallop in the moonlight, with the prospect of meeting

Mary. So in a few minutes I was in the saddle and riding toward

Jamestown. The night was very bright with the moon, and there was a

great mist rising from the marshy lands, and such strangely pale and

luminous developments in the distances of the meadows, marshalling

and advancing and retreating, like companies of spectres, and

lingering as if for consultation on the borders of the woods, with

floating draperies caught in the boughs thereof, that one might have

considered danger from others than Indians. And, indeed, I often

caught the note of an owl, and once one flitted past my face and my

horse shied at the evil bird, which is thought by the ignorant to be

but a feathered cat and of ill omen, and indeed is considered by

many who are wise to have presaged ill oftentimes, as in the cases

of the deaths of the emperors Valentinian and Commodus. Be that as

it may, I, having a pistol with me, shot at the bird, and, though I

was as good a shot as any thereabouts, missed, and away it flew,

with a great hoot as of laughter, which I am ready to swear I heard

multiplied in a trice, as if the bird were joined by a whole

company, and my horse shied again and would have bolted had I not

held him tightly. Now, this which I am about to relate I am ready to

swear did truly happen, though it may well be doubted. I had come

within a short distance of Jamestown when I reached two houses of a

small size, not far apart, not much removed from the fashion of the

negro cabins, but inhabited by English folk. In the one dwelt a man

who had been transported for a grievous crime, whether justly or not

I cannot say, but his visage was such as to condemn him, and he was

often in his cups and had spent many days in the stocks, and had

made frequent acquaintance with the whipping-post, and with him

dwelt his wife, an old dame with a tongue which had once earned her

the ducking-stool in England. As I passed this house I saw over the

door a great bunch of dill and vervain and white thorn, which is

held to keep away witches from the threshold if gathered upon a May

day. And I knew well the reason, for not many rods distant was the

hut where dwelt one Margery Key, an ancient woman, who had been

verily tied crosswise and thrown in a pond for witchcraft and been

weighed against the church Bible, and had her body searched for

witch-marks and the thatch of her house burned. I know not why she

had not come to the stake withal, but instead she had fled to

Virginia, where, witches being not so common, were treated with more

leniency. It may have been that she had escaped the usual fate of

those of her kind by being considered by some a white witch, and one

who worked good instead of ill if approached rightly, though many

considered that they who approached a white witch for the purpose of

profiting by her advice or warning, were of equal guilt, and that it

all led in the end to mischief. Be that as it may, this old dame

Margery Key dwelt there alone in her little hut so over-thatched and

grown by vines, and scarce showing the shaggy slant of its roof

above the bushes, that it resembled more the hole of some timid and

wary animal than a human habitation. And if any visited her for

consultation it was by night and secretly, and no one ever caught

sight of her except now and then the nodding white frill of her cap

in the green gloom of a window or the painful bend of her old back

as she gathered sticks for her fire in the woods about. How she

lived none knew. A little garden-patch she had, and a hive or two of

bees, and a red cow, which many affirmed to have the eye of a demon,

and there were those who said that her familiars stole bread for her

from the plantation larders, and that often a prime ham was missed

and a cut of venison, with no explanation, but who can say? Without

doubt there are strange things in the earth, but we are all so in

the midst of them, and even a part of their workings, that we can

have no outside foothold to take fair sight thereof. Verily a man

might as well strive to lift himself by his boot-straps over a

stile.

But this much I will say, that, as I was riding along, cogitating

something deeply in my mind as to the best disposal of the powder

and the shot which Mary Cavendish had ordered from England, I,

coming abreast of Margery Key's house, saw of a sudden a white cat,

which many affirmed to be her familiar, spring from her door like a

white arrow of speed and off down a wood-path, and my horse reared

and plunged, and then, with my holding him of no avail, though I had

a strong hand on the bridle, was after her with such a mad flight

that I had hard work to keep the saddle. Pell-mell through the wood

we went, I ducking my head before the mad lash of the branches and

feeling the dew therefrom in my face like a drive of rain, until we

came to a cleared space, then a great spread of tobacco fields,

overlapping silver-white in the moonlight, and hamlet of negro

cabins, and then Major Robert Beverly's house, standing a mass of

shadow except for one moonlit wall, for all the family were gone to

the governor's ball. Then, as I live, that white cat of Margery

Key's led me in that mad chase around Beverly's house, and when I

came to the north side of it I saw a candle gleam in a window and

heard a baby's wail, and knew 'twas where his infant daughter was

tended, and as we swept past out thrust a black head from the

window, and a screech as savage as any wild cat's rent the peace of

the night, and I believe that the child's black nurse took us, no

doubt, for the devil himself. Then all the dogs howled and bayed,

though not one approached us, and a great bat came fanning past,

like a winged shadow, and again I heard the owl's hoot, and ever

before us, like a white arrow, fled that white cat, and my horse

followed in spite of me. Then, verily I speak the truth, though it

may well be questioned, did that white cat lead us straight to the

tomb which Major Beverly had made upon his plantation at the death

of his first wife, and in which she lay, and 'twas on a rising above

the creek, and then the cat, with a wail which was like nothing I

ever heard in this world, was away in a straight line toward the

silver gleam of the creek, though every one knows well how cats hate

water, and had disappeared. But, though to this I will not swear, I

thought I saw a white gleam aloft, and heard a wail of a cat skyward

along with the owl-hoots. And then my horse stood and trembled in

such wise that I thought he would fall under me, and I dismounted

and stroked his head and tried as best I could to soothe him, and we

were all the time before the tomb, which was a large one. Then of a

sudden it came to me that here was the hiding-place for the powder

and shot, for what safer hiding-place can there be than the tomb of

the first wife, when the second hath reigned but a short time, and

is fair, and hath but just given her lord that little darling whose

cries of appealing helplessness I could hear even there? So I gave

the tomb-door a pull, knowing that I should not, by so doing,

disturb the slumbers of the poor lady within, and decided with

myself that it would be easy enough to force it, and mounted and

rode back as best I might to the road. And when I came to the little

dwelling of Margery Key a thought struck me, and I rode close,

though my horse shuddered as if with some strange fright of

something which I could not see. I bent in my saddle and looked in

the door, but naught could I see. Then I dismounted and tied my

horse to a tree near by, and entered the house and looked about the

sorry place as well as I could in the pale sift of moonlight,

and--the old woman was not there. But one room there was, with a

poor pallet in a corner and a chest against the wall and a stool,

and a kettle in the fireplace, with a little pile of sticks and a

great scattering of ashes, but no one there, and also, if I may be

believed, _no broom._ All this I tell for what it may be worth to

the credulity of them who hear; the facts be such as I have said.

But whether believing it myself or not, yet knowing that that white

cat, though it had been Margery Key in such guise, or her familiar

imp on his way to join her at some revel whither she had ridden her

broom, had done me good service, and, seeing the piteous smallness

of the pile of sticks on the hearth, and reflecting upon the

distressful bend of the old soul's back, whether she had sold

herself to Satan or not, I lingered a minute to break down a goodly

armful of brush in the wood outside and carry inside for the

replenishment of her store. And as I came forth, having done so, I

heard the door of the nearby house open, and saw two white faces

peering out at me, and heard a woman's voice shriek shrilly that

here was the devil seeking the witch, and though I called out to

reassure them, the door clapped to with a bang like a pistol-shot,

and my horse danced about so that I could scarcely mount. Then I

rode away, something wondering within myself, since I had been taken

for the devil, how many others might have been, and whether men made

their own devils and their own witches, instead of the Prince of

Evil having a hand in it, and yet that happened which I have

related, and I have told the truth.