“Aunt Gainor,” I said, “I love that woman, and no other man shall have
her if I can help it.”
“If? if? Stuff! you can’t help it. Don’t be a fool! The sea is full of
fish. This is news indeed.”
“The land has but one Darthea,” said I. “I am a boy no longer, Aunt
Gainor. Thou hast made me tell thee, and, now it is out, I may as well
say I know all about my cousin. He as good as told me, and in a way I
did not like. The man thinks I am a boy to be scared out of going my own
way. I have told no one else; but if I can get her I will, and it is no
laughing matter.”
“I am sorry, Hugh,” she said. “I knew not it was so serious. It is hard
to realise that you are no more a boy, and must have the sorrows my sex
provides for you. I like her, and I would help you if I could, but you
are late.” And she went on shuffling the cards, while I took up a book,
being inclined to say no more.
That evening two letters came by the New York packet. One from my father
I put aside. It was dated outside, and was written two weeks later than
my mother’s, which I read first. I opened it with care.
“MY OWN DEAR SON: Thy last sweet letter was a great refreshment to me,
and the more so because I have not been well, having again my old ache in
the side, but not such as need trouble thee. I blush to hear the pretty
things thy letters say; but it is love that holds thy pen, and I must not
be too much set up in my own esteem. How much love I give thee in return
thou knowest, but to pay in this coin will never beggar us. I love thee
because thou art all I can desire, and again because thou lovest me, and
again for this same dear reason which is all I can say to excuse my
mother-folly. Thy father is well, but weary of this great town; and we
both long to be at home.”
Then there was more about my Aunt Wynne, and some woman-talk for her
friends about the new fashions, which do not concern her, she being not
of this world. “Am I not?” she says. “I love it all--the sea, even the
sea, and flowers, and our woods, and, dear me! also gay gowns. I hope
the last I got here will not disturb the Meeting, and my new muff,--very
big it is,--and a green joseph to ride in. I mean to ride with thee next
spring often--often.” And so on, half mother, half child, with bits of
her dear French, and all about a new saddle for me, and silver spurs.
The postscript was long.
“I saw last week a fair Quaker dame come out of Wales. I asked her about
the Wynnes. She knew them not, but told me of their great house, and how
it was a show-place people went to see, having been done over at great
cost; and how a year or two since coal was found on the estate, and much
iron, so that these last two years they were rich, and there was some
talk of making the present man a baronet. Also that the elder brother
is ill, nigh to death. It seems strange after what thy cousin said so
often. Thy father is away in Holland. I will tell him when he is come
back. Be cautious not to talk of this. I never liked the man.”
I sat back in my chair to read it all over again, first giving my aunt
my father’s letter. In a few minutes I heard a cry, and saw my aunt,
pale and shaken, standing up, the letter in her hand.
“My God!” I cried, “what is it? Is it my mother?”
“Yes, yes!” she said. “Be strong, my boy! She is--dead!”
For a moment I saw the room whirl, and then, as my Aunt Gainor sat down,
I fell on my knees and buried my face in her lap. I felt her dear old
hands on my head, and at last would have the letter. It was brief.
“MY SON: The hand of God has fallen heavily upon me. Thy mother
died to-day of a pleurisy which none could help. I had not even the
consolation to hear her speak, since, when I came from Holland, she was
wandering in talk of thee, and mostly in French, which I know not. I
seek to find God’s meaning in this chastisement. As yet I find it not.
It is well that we should not let bereavements so overcome us as to make
us neglect to be fervent in the business of life, or to cease to praise
Him who has seen fit to take away from us that which it may be we
worshipped as an idol. What more is to say I leave until I see thee. My
affairs are now so ordered that I may leave them. I shall sail in a week
for home in the ship in which I came out, and shall not go, as I did
mean, to the islands.”
It seemed to me, as I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said
as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my
father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his
dearest see the better part of him.
I have no mind to dwell on this sad calamity. I went to and fro, finding
neither possibility of repose nor any consolation. I saw as I rode, or
lay in my boat, that one dear face, its blue-eyed tenderness, its smile
of love. I could never thus recall to sight any other of those who, in
after-years, have left me; but this one face is here to-day as I write,
forever smiling and forever young.
And so time ran on, and nigh to Christmas day my father came home. The
weather was more mild than common, and his ship met no delay from ice.
I joined him off Chester Creek. He was grayer, older, I thought, but not
otherwise altered, having still his erect stature, and the trick I have
myself of throwing his head up and his shoulders back when about to meet
some emergent occasion. I saw no sign of emotion when we met, except
that he opened and shut his hands as usual when disturbed. He asked if
I were well, and of my Aunt Gainor, and then, amid the tears which were
choking me, if I were satisfied as to the business, and if the tea
had arrived. I said yes, and that the ship had been sent away without
violence. He said it was a silly business, and the king would soon end
it; he himself had been too hasty--with more to like effect.
It seemed to me while we talked as though he had just come from my
mother’s death-bed, whereas a long time had elapsed, and he had been
able to get over the first cruel shock. My own grief was still upon me,
and I wondered at his tranquillity. A little later he said:
“I see thou hast taken to the foolishness of black garments. This is thy
aunt’s doings.” In fact, it was her positive wish. I made no reply, but
only looked him in the face, ready to cry like a child.
“Why hast thou no answers, Hugh? Thy tongue used to be ready enough.
Thou hast thy mother’s eyes. I would thou hadst them not.”
This was as near as he ever came to speech of her, whom, to my
amazement, he never again mentioned. Was it a deeper feeling than I
knew, that so silenced him, or did he wish to forget her! I know not.
Some deal thus with their dead. He bade my aunt take away my mother’s
clothes, and asked no questions as to how she disposed of them; nor for
a month did he desire my return home.
What then passed between him and my Aunt Gainor I do not know; but he
said nothing more of my dress, although I wore mourning for six months.
Nor did he say a word as to my exactness and industry, which was
honestly all they should have been. At meals he spoke rarely, and then
of affairs, or to blame me for faults not mine, or to speak with cold
sarcasm of my friends.
Except for Jack, and my Aunt Gainor, and Wilson and Wetherill, of whom I
saw much, I should have been miserable indeed. Captain Wynne still came
and went, and his strange intimacy with my father continued. I
thought little of it then, and for my own part I liked to hear of his
adventurous life, but the man less and less; and so the winter of ‘73
and ‘74 went by with fencing and skating and books, which now I myself
ordered to suit me, or found in Mr. Logan’s great library, of which I
was made free.
In March my cousin left us for Canada and the army. Once I spoke before
him of the news in my mother’s postscript; but he laughed, saying he had
heard some such rumours, but that they were not true. They did not much
trouble a hungry beggar of a younger son with letters; still if there
had been such good news he should have heard it. He wished it might be
so and as to his brother, poor devil! he would last long enough to marry
and have children. Were the ducks still in the river! He said no more
to me of Darthea, or of what I was to do for him, but he found a way at
need, I am sure, to get letters to her, and that without difficulty. At
last, as I have said, he was gone to join Sir Guy. I was not sorry.
Mrs. Peniston, Darthea’s aunt, usually talked little, and then of
serious matters as if they were trivial, and of these latter as if they
were of the utmost importance. With regard to this matter of Darthea and
my cousin, she was free of speech and incessant, so that all the town
was soon assured of the great match Darthea would make. The fine house
at Wyncote grew, and the estate also. Neither Jack nor I liked all this,
and my friend took it sadly to heart, to my Aunt Gainor’s amusement
and Mrs. Ferguson’s, who would have Dr. Rush set up a ward in the new
hospital for the broken-hearted lovers of Darthea. When first Jack
Warder was thus badgered, he fell into such a state of terror as to what
the madcap woman would say next that he declined all society for a week,
and ever after detested the Tory lady.
I became, under the influence of this much-talked-of news, as mute as
Jack; but, while he had only a deep desire toward sadness, and to stay
away from her who had thus defeated his love, I, neither given over to
despair nor hope, had only a fierce will to have my way; nor, for some
reason or for none, did I consider Jack’s case as very serious,--my aunt
it much amused,--so little do we know those who are most near to us.
No sooner was the redcoat lover gone awhile than, as Miss Chew declared,
Darthea put off mourning for the absent. Indeed, the pretty kitten began
once more to tangle the threads of Jack’s life and mine. For a month
Jack was in favour, and then a certain captain, but never I, until one
day late in April. She was waiting among my aunt’s china for her return,
and had set the goggle-eyed mandarin to nodding, while, with eyes as
wide as his, she nodded in reply, and laughed like a merry child.
I stood in the doorway, and watched this delicious creature for a minute
while she amused herself--and me also, although she knew it not. “Say
No!” she cried out to the great china nobleman; quite a foot high he
was. But, despite her pretence at altering his unvaried affirmative, it
still went on. My lady walked all around him, and presently said aloud:
“No! no! It must be No! Say No!” stamping a foot, as if angry, and then
of a sudden running up to the mandarin and laughing. “He has a crack in
his head. That is why he says Yes! Yes! I must be a female mandarin, and
that is why I say No! No! I wonder does he talk broken China?”
At this moment she saw my tall black figure in a corner mirror, and made
some exclamation, as if startled; an instant later she knew it was I,
but as if by magic the laughing woman was no longer there. What I saw as
she came toward me was a slight, quiet nun with eyes full of tears.
I was used to her swift changes of mood, but what her words, or some of
them, meant I knew not; and as for this pitying face, with its sudden
sadness, what more did it mean? Major Andre said of her later that
Mistress Darthea was like a lake in the hills, reflecting all things,
and yet herself after all. But how many such tricksy ways, pretty or
vexing, she was to show some of us in the years to come did not yet
appear.
In a moment I seemed to see before me the small dark child I first knew
at school. Why was she now so curiously perturbed? “Mr. Wynne,” she
said, “you never come near me now--oh, not for a month! And to-day your
aunt has shown me a part of the dear mother’s letter, and--and--I am so
sorry for you! I am indeed! I have long wanted to say so. I wish I could
help you. I do not think you forget easily, and--and--you were so good
to me when I was an ugly little brat. I think your mother loved me. That
is a thing to make one think better of one’s self. I need it, sir. It
is a pretty sort of vanity, and how vain you must be, who had so much of
her love!”
“I thank thee,” I said simply. Indeed, for a time I was so moved that
say more I could not. “I thank thee, Miss Peniston. There is no one on
earth whom I would rather hear say what thou hast said.”
I saw her colour a little, and she replied quickly, “I am only a child,
and I say what comes to my lips; I might better it often if I stayed to
think.”
“No!” I cried. Whenever she got into trouble--and she was ready to note
the tenderness in my voice--this pretty pretext of the irresponsibility
of childhood would serve her turn. “No,” said I; “I like dearly to hear
my mother praised,--who could praise her too much?--but when it is thou
who sayest of her such true things, how shall I tell thee what it is to
me who love to hear thee talk--even nonsense?”
“I talk nonsense? Do I?”
“Yes, sometimes. I--want thee to listen to me. I have cared for thee--”
“Now please don’t, Mr. Wynne. They all do it, and--I like you. I want to
keep some friends.”
“It is useless. Darthea. I am so made that I must say my say. Thou
mayest try to escape, and hate it and me, but I have to say I love thee.
No, I am not a boy. I am a man, and I won’t let thee answer me now.”
“I do not want to. It would hurt you. You must know; every one knows.
It was his fault and my aunt’s, all this gossip. I would have kept it
quiet.”
“It will never be,” I broke out. “Thou wilt never marry that man!”
I knew when I said this that I had made a mistake. I had learned to
distrust Arthur; but I had too little that was of moment to say against
him to make it wise to speak as I had done. I was young in those days,
and hasty.
“Who?” says my lady, all on fire. “What man? Jack Warder? And why not? I
do not know what I shall do.”
“It is not my dear Jack,” I cried. “Why dost thou trifle with me?”
“Your dear Jack, indeed! How he blushes! _I_ might ask _him_. He never
would have the courage.”
“It is my cousin, Arthur Wynne, as thou well knowest. And thou art
wicked to mock at an honest gentleman with thy light talk. Thou dost not
know the man, this man, my cousin.”
“Only a boy would be so foolish or so unfair as to speak thus of one
behind his back, and to a woman too, who--” And she paused, confused and
angry.
I could not tell her what was only suspicion or hearsay as to my
cousin’s double statements concerning his father’s estate, or how either
she or we were deceived. I had, in fact, lost my head a little, and had
gone further than was wise. I would not explain, and I was too vexed to
say more than that I would say the same to his face. Then she rejoined
softly:
“Tell it to me. You are as mysterious as Miss Wynne; and have I not a
right to know?”
“No,” I said; “not now, at least. Thou mayest tell him if thou wilt.”
“If I will, indeed! Every one is against him--you and Mistress Wynne and
that impudent boy, Jack Warder, despite his blushes. Oh, he can be bold
enough. Isn’t he a dear fellow?”
How could one deal with a woman like this? I hesitated, and as I did
so, not having ready anything but sad reproaches of her levity, my aunt
appeared in the doorway.
“Are you two children quarrelling?” she said, in her outspoken way. “You
will have time to repent. Here has been your father, sir, to-day, and
his affairs in Jamaica are all in a nice pickle, and you and the
old clerk are to up and away in the packet for Kingston, and that
to-morrow.”
“Indeed!” I cried. I was not sorry.
“I envy you,” said my lady, as demure as you please. “You will fetch
me a feather fan, and come back soon. I hate all those cornets and
captains, and now I shall have no one but Jack.”
My aunt looked on amused. Her news was true indeed, and with no chance
to talk to any one, except to say a mere good-by to Jack, I spent the
evening with my father and our head clerk over the business which took
me away so hastily. At early morning on a cold day at the close of
April, 1774, we were gliding down the Delaware with all sail set.
The voyage was long, the winds contrary. I had ample leisure to reflect
upon my talk with Darthea. I was sure she must have known she was to me
not as other women. Except for the accident of this chance encounter,
I might long have waited before finding courage to speak. I had made
nothing by it, had scarce had an answer, and should, like enough, have
fallen back into the coldness of relation, by which she had so long kept
me at a distance. I had been foolish and hasty to speak of my cousin at
all; it did but vex her.
Of my errand in Jamaica there is little to be said. My father’s letters
were of business only. Of these long months and of what went on at home
I heard but little from him, and with my request to have the gazettes
he had evidently no mind to comply; nor were the chances of letters
frequent. I heard, indeed, from my aunt but twice, and from Jack thrice;
but he said nothing of Darthea. Years after I found in his record of
events:
“Hugh left us the last of April. It may be he cares too much for that
wayward witch, Darthea.”
I should say that it was at this time or soon after my dear friend began
to keep a somewhat broken diary of events. What he says of former years
was put on paper long afterward.
“If I did but know,” writes Jack, “that he is seriously taken, I should
understand, alas! what not to do. But as to some things Hugh is a silent
man. I think, as Mr. Wilson says, some men are made for friends, and
some for lovers. I fear the latter is not my role. Is there--can there
be--such a thing as revering a woman too much to make successful love?
I think I see what Darthea is more truly than does my dear Hugh. There
must come a day when she will show it. Sometimes I can hardly trust
myself with her; and I yearn to tell her that I alone know her, and that
I love her. I must watch myself. If it really be that Hugh cares for
her, and yet I were to be the fortunate man, how could I face him again,
having had the advantage of his long absence? It seems strange that I
should ask myself if I am more her lover than his friend. He does not
talk of her to me.
“It is now September, ‘74, and Hugh must soon return. Mr. Gage is
fortifying Boston Neck, and we have had the mischievous Boston Port
Bill, and Virginia up in a rage, which I do not understand. We, who
have our commerce crippled by foolish laws, may well be on the side of
resistance; but why the planters should put in peril their only tobacco
market I see less well. A Continental Congress is to meet here on the
fifth day of this month, and already the town is alive with gentlemen
from the South and North.
“No doubt Darthea has letters from Mr. Arthur Wynne. I think Mr. Wilson
judges that man correctly. He says he is selfish, and more weak as
to morals than really bad, and that he will be apt to yield to sudden
temptation rather than to plan deliberate wickedness. Why should he
have need to plan at all! Mistress Wynne says he does not like Hugh. How
could any not like my Hugh, and how do women see the things which we do
not?
“It is sad to see my father’s state of mind. Yesterday he was with me to
visit Mr. Hancock, very fine in a purple velvet coat with gold buttons,
and a flowered waistcoat. He is our correspondent in Boston. My father
came home a hot Whig; and tomorrow is Meeting-day, and he will be most
melancholy, and all for the king if this and that should happen. John
Wynne can turn Mm which way he likes. If my Hugh remains of a Whig
mind--and who less like to change?--he will have a hot time with his
father, I fear.”
Is it any wonder I. his friend, loved this man? He seemed so gentle
that all but I, even James Wilson, misunderstood him. No more obstinate
fellow ever was or will be. I ought to say “determined,” for there was
always a reason of head or heart for what he would or would not do,
and I really think that in all his noble life he had but one hour of
weakness, of which by and by I may have to tell.