The silk well could she twist and twine,
And make the fine march-pine,
And with the needle work:
And she could help the priest to say
His matins on a holiday
And sing a psalm in kirk.
DOWSABEL.
With such attractions for old and young it will readily be believed
that the Rose Croft was a favourite resort of the inhabitants of St.
Mary's. The maidens gathered around Blanche as a May-day queen; the
matrons possessed in Mistress Alice a discreet and kind friend, and the
more sedate part of the population found an agreeable host in the
worthy official himself.
The family of the Lord Proprietary sustained the most intimate
relations with this household. It is true that Lady Baltimore, being
feeble in health and stricken with grief at the loss of her son, which
yet hung with scarcely abated poignancy upon her mind, was seldom seen
beyond her own threshold; but his Lordship's sister, the Lady Maria--as
she was entitled in the province--was a frequent and ever most welcome
guest. Whether this good lady had the advantage of the Proprietary in
years, would be an impertinent as well as an unprofitable inquiry,
since no chronicler within my reach has thought fit to instruct the
world on this point; and, if it were determined, the fact could neither
heighten nor diminish the sober lustre of her virtues. Suffice it that
she was a stirring, tidy little woman, who moved about with
indefatigable zeal in the acquittal of the manifold duties which her
large participation in the affairs of the town exacted of her--the Lady
Bountiful of the province who visited the sick, fed the hungry, clothed
the naked and chid the idle. She especially befriended such
nursing-mothers as those whose scanty livelihood withheld from them the
necessary comforts of their condition, and, in an equal degree,
extended her bounty to such of the colonists as had been disabled in
the military service of the province,--holding these two concerns of
population and defence to be high state matters which her family
connexion with the government most cogently recommended to her care.
Though it is reported of her, that a constitutional tendency towards a
too profuse distribution of nick-nacks and sweet-meats amongst her
invalids, gave great concern and embarrassment to the physician of the
town, and bred up between him and the lady a somewhat stubborn, but
altogether good-natured warfare. She was wont to look in upon the
provincial school-house, where, on stated occasions, she gave the young
train-bands rewards for good conduct, and where she was also diligent
to rebuke all vicious tendencies. In the early morning she tripped
through the dew, with scrupulous regularity, to mass; often
superintended the decorations of the chapel; gossiped with the
neighbours after service, and, in short, kept her hands full of
business.
Her interest in the comfort and welfare of the towns-people grew partly
out of her temperament, and partly out of a feudal pride that regarded
them as the liegemen of her brother the chief,--a relation which she
considered as creating an obligation to extend to them her countenance
upon all proper occasions: and, sooth to say, that countenance was not
perhaps the most comely in the province, being somewhat sallow, but it
was as full of benevolence as became so exemplary a spirit. She watched
peculiarly what might be called the under-growth, and was very
successful in worming herself into the schemes and plans of the young
people. Her entertainments at the mansion were frequent, and no less
acceptable to the gayer portion of the inhabitants than they were to
her brother. On these occasions she held a little court, over which she
presided with an amiable despotism, and fully maintained the state of
the Lord Proprietary. By these means the Lady Maria had attained to an
over-shadowing popularity in the town.
Blanche Warden had, from infancy, engaged her deepest solicitude; and
as she took to herself no small share of the merit of that nurture by
which her favourite had grown in accomplishment, she felt, in the
maiden's praises which every where rang through the province, an almost
maternal delight. Scarcely a day passed over without some manifestation
of this concern. New patterns of embroidery, music brought by the last
ship from _home_, some invitation of friendship or letter of counsel,
furnished occasions of daily intercourse between the patroness and the
maiden of the Rose Croft; and not unfrequently the venerable spinster
herself,--attended by a familiar in the shape of a little Indian girl,
Natta, the daughter of Pamesack, arrayed in the trinketry of her
tribe--alighted from an ambling pony at the Collector's door, with a
face full of the importance of business. Perchance, there might be an
occasion of merry-making in contemplation, and then the lady Maria
united in consultation with sister Alice concerning the details of the
matter, and it was debated, with the deliberation due to so interesting
a subject, whether Blanche should wear her black or her crimson velvet
boddice, her sarsnet or her satin, and such other weighty matters as
have not yet lost their claims to thoughtful consideration on similar
emergencies.
In the frequent interchange of the offices of good neighbourhood
between the families of the Proprietary and of the Collector, it could
scarce fall out that the Secretary should not be a large participator.
The shyness of the student and the habitual self-restraint taught him
in the seminary of Antwerp, in some degree, screened from common
observation the ardent character of Albert Verheyden. The deferential
relation which he held to his patron threw into his demeanour a reserve
expressive of humility rather than of diffidence; but under this there
breathed a temperament deeply poetical and a longing for enterprise,
that all the discipline of his school and the constraint of his
position could scarce suppress. He was now at that time of life when
the imagination is prone to dally with illusions; when youth, not yet
yoked to the harness of the world's business, turns its spirit forth to
seek adventure in the domain of fancy. He was thus far a dreamer, and
dreamed of gorgeous scenes and bold exploits and rare fortune. He had
the poet's instinct to perceive the beautiful, and his fancy hung it
with richer garlands and charmed him into a worshipper. A mute
worshipper he was, of the Rose of St. Mary's, from the first moment
that he gazed upon her. That outward form of Blanche Warden, and the
motion and impulses of that spirit, might not often haunt the
Secretary's dream without leaving behind an image that should live for
ever in his heart. To him the thought was enchantment, that in this
remote wild, far away from the world's knowledge, a flower of such
surpassing loveliness should drink the glorious light in solitude,--for
so he, schooled in populous cities, deemed of this sequestered
province,--and with this thought came breathings of poetry which
wrought a transfiguration of the young votary and lifted him out of the
sphere of this "working-day world." Day after day, week after week, and
month after month, the Secretary watched the footsteps of the beautiful
girl; but still it was silent, unpresuming adoration. It entered not
into his mind to call it love: it was the very humbleness of devotion.
Meantime the maiden, unconscious of her own rare perfections and
innocent of all thought of this secret homage, found Master Albert much
the most accomplished and gentle youth she had ever seen. He had,
without her observing how it became so, grown to be, in some relation
or other, part and parcel of her most familiar meditations. His
occasions of business with the Collector brought him so often to the
Rose Croft that if they happened not every day, they were, at least,
incidents of such common occurrence as to be noted by no
ceremony--indeed rather to be counted on in the domestic routine. The
Collector was apt to grow restless if, by any chance, they were
suspended, as it was through the Secretary's mission he received the
tidings of the time as well as the official commands of the
Proprietary; whilst Albert's unobtrusive manners, his soft step and
pretensionless familiarity with the household put no one out of the way
to give him welcome. His early roaming in summer sometimes brought him,
at sunrise, beneath the bank of the Rose Croft, where he looked, with
the admiration of an artist, upon the calm waters of St. Inigoe's
Creek, and upon the forest that flung its solemn shades over its
farther shores. Not unfrequently, the fresh and blooming maiden had
left her couch as early as himself, and tended her plants before the
dew had left the leaves, and thus it chanced that she would find him in
his vocation; and, like him, she took pleasure in gazing on that bright
scene, when it was the delight of both to tell each other how beautiful
it was. And when, in winter, the rain pattered from the eaves and the
skies were dark, the Secretary, muffled in his cloak, would find his
road to the Collector's mansion and help the maiden to while away the
tedious time. Even "when lay the snow upon a level with the hedge," the
two long miles of unbeaten track did not stop his visit, for the
Secretary loved the adventure of such a journey; and Blanche often
smiled to see how manfully he endured it, and how light he made of the
snow-drift which the wind had sometimes heaped up into billows, behind
which the feather of his bonnet might not be discovered while he sat
upon his horse.
In this course of schooling Blanche and Albert grew into a near
intimacy, and the maiden became dependent, for some share of her
happiness, upon the Secretary without being aware. Master Albert had an
exquisite touch of the lute and a rich voice to grace it, and Blanche
found many occasions to tax his skill: he had a gallant carriage on
horseback, and she needed the service of a cavalier: he was expert in
the provincial sport of hawking, and had made such acquaintance with
Blanche's merlin that scarce any one else could assist the maiden in
casting off Ariel to a flight. In short, Blanche followed the bent of
her own ingenuous and truthful nature, and did full justice to the
Secretary's various capacity to please her, by putting his talents in
requisition with an unchidden freedom, and without once pausing to
explore the cause why Master Albert always came so opportunely to her
thoughts. Doubtless, if she had had the wit to make this inquiry the
charm of her liberty would have been broken, and a sentinel would, ever
after, have checked the wandering of her free footstep.
The Collector, in regard to this intercourse, was sound asleep. His
wise head was taken up with the concerns of the province, his estate,
and the discussion of opinions that had little affinity to the topics
likely to interest the meditations of a young maiden. He was not apt to
see a love-affair, even if it lay, like a fallen tree, across his path,
much less to hunt it out when it lurked like a bird amongst the flowers
that grew in the shady coverts by the wayside. The astuteness of the
lady Maria, however, was not so much at fault, and she soon discovered,
what neither Blanche nor Albert had sufficiently studied to make them
aware of their own category. But the Secretary was in favour with the
lady Maria, and so, she kept her own counsel, as well as a good-natured
watch upon the progress of events.