I truly think that if Parson Downs had informed me that I was to be
put to the rack or lose my head it would not have so cut me to the
heart. Something there was about a gentleman of England being set in
the stocks which detracted not only from the dignity of the
punishment, but that of the offence. I would not have believed they
would have done that to me, and can hardly believe it now. Such a
punishment had never entered into my imagination, I being a
gentleman born and bred, and my crime being a grave one, whereas the
stocks were commonly regarded for the common folk, who had committed
petty offences, such as swearing or Sabbath-breaking. I could not
for some time realise it, and lay staring at Parson Downs, while he
tried to force the Burgundy upon me and stared in alarm at my
paleness.
"Why, confound it, Harry," he cried, "I tell thee, lad, do not look
so. Hadst thou killed Rob Waller instead of wounding him, it would
have been thy life instead of thy pride thou hadst forfeited."
"I wish to God I had!" I burst out, yet dully, for still I only half
realised it all.
"Nay, Harry," declared the parson, "thy life is of more moment than
thy pride, and as to that, what will it hurt thee to sit in the
stocks an hour or so for such a cause? 'Twill be forgot in a week's
time. I pray thee have some Burgundy, Harry, 'twill put some life
into thee."
"'Twill never be forgot by me," said I, and indeed it never has
been, and I know not why it seemed then, and seems now, of a finer
sting of bitterness than my transportation for theft.
Presently I, growing fully alive to the state of the matters,
wrought up myself into such a fever of wrath and remonstrance that
it was a wonder that my wounds did not open. I swore that submit to
such an indignity I would not, that all the authorities in the
Colony should not force me to sit in the stocks, that I would have
my life first, and I looked about wildly for my own sword or
pistols, and seeing them not, besought the parson for his. He strove
in vain to comfort me. I was weakened by my wounds, and there was, I
suppose, something of fever still lingering in my veins for all the
bleeding, and for a space I was like a madman at the thought of the
ignominy to which they would put me. I besought that the
lieutenant-governor should be summoned and be petitioned to make my
offence a capital one. I strove to rise from my couch, and the vague
thought of finding a weapon and committing some crime so grave that
the stocks would be out of the question as a punishment for it, was
in my fevered brain.
"As well go to a branch of a locust-tree blown by the May wind with
honey for all seeking noses, as to Chichely," said Parson Downs.
"And as for the burgesses, they are afraid of their own necks, and
some of us there be would rather have thee sit in stocks than lose
thy life, for we hold thy life dear, Harry, and some punishment it
must be for thee, for thou didst shoot a King's officer, though with
a damned poor aim, Harry."
Then I said again, with my heart like a drum in my ears, that I
wished it had been better, though naught I had against Robert
Waller, and as I learned afterward he had striven all he dared for
my release, but the militia, being under some suspicion themselves,
had to act with caution in those days.
Presently, while the parson was yet with me, my brother John came
in, and verily, for the first time, I realised that we were of one
blood. Down on his knees beside me he went.
"Oh, my God, Harry," he cried, "I have done all that I could for
thee, and vengeance I will have of some for this, and they shall
suffer for it, that I promise thee. To fix such a penalty as this
upon one of our blood!"
"John," I whispered, grasping his hand hard, "I pray thee--"
But he guessed my meaning. "Nay, Harry," he cried, "better this, for
if I went back to our mother and told her that thou wert dead, after
her long slight of thee and the long wrong we have all done thee, it
would be a sorer fate for her than the stocks for thee."
But I pleaded with him by the common blood in our veins to save me
from this ignominy, and my fever increased, and he knew not how to
quiet me. Then in came Catherine Cavendish, and what she said had
some weight with me.
"For shame!" she said, standing over me, with her face as white as
death, but with resolution in her eyes, "for shame, Harry Wingfield!
Full easy it is to be brave on the battlefield, but it takes a hero
to quail not when his vanity be assailed. Have not as good men as
thou, and better, sat in the stocks? And think you that it will make
any difference to us, except as we suffer with you? And 'tis harder
for my poor sister than for thee, but she makes no complaint, nor
sheds a tear, but goes about with her face like the dead, and such a
look in her eyes as never I saw there before. And she told me to say
to thee that she could not come to-day, but that she would make
amends, and that thou hadst no cause to overworry, and I know not
what she meant, but this much I do know, a brave man is a brave man
whether it be the scaffold or the stocks, and--and--thou
hast gotten thyself into a fever, Harry."
With that she bade my brother John get some cool water from the
jailer, and she bathed my head and arranged my bandages with that
same skill which she had showed at the time when I was bruised by
the mad horse, and my brother looked on as if only half pleased, yet
full of pity. And Catherine, as she bathed my head, told me how
Major Beverly and Sir Humphrey were yet confined on shipboard, and
Dick Barry was in the prison not far from me, and Nick and Ralph
Drake were in hiding, but my Lord Estes was scot-free on account of
his relationship to Governor Culpeper and had been to Drake Hill,
but Mary would not see him. And she said, furthermore, that her
grandmother did not know that I was to be set in the stocks, and
they dared not tell her, as she was grown so feeble since the
riot--at one time inveighing against me for my disloyalty, and
saying that I should never have Mary, though I was cleared of my
disgrace and no more a convict, and at another time weeping like a
child over her poor Harry, who had already suffered so much and was
now in prison.
Catherine in that way, which none but a woman hath, since it
pertains both to love and authority, brought me to my senses, and I
grew both brave and shamed at the same time, and yet after she had
gone, never was anything like the sting of that ignominy which was
prepared for me on the morrow. Many a time had I seen men in the
stocks, and passed them by with no ridicule, for that, it seemed to
me, belonged to the same class of folk as the culprits, but with a
sort of contempt which held them as less than men and below pity
even. The thought that some day I, too, was to sit there, had never
entered my head. I looked at my two feet upholding the coverlid, and
pictured to myself how they would look protruding from the boards of
the stocks. I recalled the faces of all I had ever seen therein, and
wondered whether I would look like this or that one. I remembered
seeing them pelted by mischievous boys, and as the dusk thickened,
it seemed alive with jeering faces and my ears rang with jibes. I
said to myself that now Mary Cavendish was farther from me than ever
before. Some dignity of wretchedness there might be in the fate of a
convict condemned unjustly, but none in the fate of a man who sat in
the stocks for all the people to gaze and laugh at.
I said to myself that that cruelest fate of any--to be made
ridiculous in the eyes of love--was come to me, and love
henceforth was over and gone. And thinking so, those grinning and
jibing faces multiplied, and the air rang with laughter, and I trow
I was in a high fever all night.