A COLONIAL DINNER PARTY
Three days later the master of Verney Manor gave a dinner party.
At Jamestown, twenty miles away, the Assembly had just adjourned after a
busy session. A law debarring that "turbulent people" the Quakers from
further admittance into the colony, and providing cold comfort for those
already within its doors, was passed with acclamation, as was another
against Anabaptists, and a third concerning the hue and cry for
absconding servants and slaves. The selling rates for wines and strong
waters were fixed, a proper penalty attached to the planting of tobacco
contrary to the statute, a regulation for the mending of the highways
adopted, a fine imposed for non-attendance at church, the Navigation Act
formally protested against, the trainbands strengthened, an
appropriation made for the erection of new whipping-posts and pillories,
a cruel mistress deprived of the slave she had mistreated, a harborer of
schismatics publicly reproved, and a conciliatory message and present
sent to the up-river Indians--when the Assembly adjourned with the
consciousness of having nobly done its duty. The only measure upon which
there was not unanimity of opinion was one proposing the erection of
school-houses at convenient cross-roads, and the Governor's weight being
thrown into the balance against it, it was promptly quashed.
The burgesses from the fourteen counties filled the twenty houses that
constituted the town to suffocation. Up-river planters, too, had come
in, choosing the time the Assembly was in session to attend to their
interests in the "city." Several ships were in harbor, and their
captains, professing themselves tired of salt water, threw themselves
upon the hospitality of their friends ashore. The crowded population
overflowed into the houses of the neighboring planters, who, after the
manner of their kind, entertained profusely, giving jovial welcome and
good liquor to all comers. There was a constant jingling of reins along
the bridle paths, a constant passing of white-sailed sloops upon the
river, as gentlemen in riding coats and jack boots, or in laced coats
and silk stockings, fared to and fro between plantation and town. In the
intervals of business the worthy burgesses and their fellow planters
made merry. They were good times--for king's men--and it behooved every
loyal subject to follow (at a respectful distance) his Majesty's
example, and get all possible enjoyment from a laughing world. So there
were horse-races and cock-fights and bear-baitings, as well as dinners
and suppers, at which much sack and aqua vitae was drunk to king, church,
and reigning beauties. And if a quarrel sprung, full armed, from the
heated brains of young gallants, crossed rapiers did but add a piquancy,
a dash of cayenne, to life.
Popular with the elder gentlemen because of his excellent Madeira, quick
wit, jovial soul, and friendship with the Governor, and with the younger
by virtue of being father to Mistress Patricia Verney, Colonel Richard
Verney had no difficulty in securing a score of guests for a day's
entertainment at Verney Manor.
About ten in the morning of the appointed day the guests began to
arrive, some by water, some on horseback, Colonel Verney meeting each
arrival with a stately bow and a high-flown speech of welcome, and
handing him on to the hall where stood Sir Charles Carew and the ladies
of the household.
Upon a pillion behind her father, Major Miles Carrington,
Surveyor-General to the Colony, came Mistress Betty Carrington, bosom
friend to Mistress Patricia Verney. Her sweetly serious face, pensive
eyes, and smooth, dark hair, with her dress of sober silk and kerchief
of finest lawn, demurely crossed over her bosom, contrasted finely with
Patricia's radiant beauty, decked in shimmering satin and rich lace, and
heightened by a tinge of vermilion upon the smooth cheek, and a long
black patch beneath the left temple. The two met like friends whom weary
years have parted, and indeed they had not seen each other for nearly a
week.
All the guests, save one, had arrived. Colonel Verney fidgeted, sent a
servant wench to look at the kitchen clock, and dispatched his secretary
to an upstairs window, whence was visible a long stretch of what
courtesy called the highroad.
The secretary returned and whispered his master. "God be thanked!"
exclaimed the latter. "I feared that his machine had mired in the
Two-Mile Swamp, or had toppled into a gully coming through the Devil's
Strip. Gentlemen, the Governor's coach is in sight. Shall we adjourn to
the porch and there await his Excellency?"
A mighty straining, jingling and lumbering came with the breeze down the
road and proceeded from a pillar of dust which was approaching the house
with reasonable rapidity. Presently the road changed from a trough of
dust into a ribbon of greensward. The cloud dissipated itself, streaming
away like the tail of a comet, and a ponderous and much begilt coach,
drawn by six horses, their manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and
outriders in gorgeous livery at the heads of each pair, rolled, or
rather bumped into sight. With a seasick motion it undulated over the
green acclivities of the road, and finally drew up beside the great
horse-block at the gate.
Two lackeys sprang from their perch behind the vehicle, flung open the
door, and lowered a short flight of steps. A very stately gentleman,
richly dressed, with a handkerchief of point in one hand and a jeweled
snuff-box in the other, descended the steps, placing one shapely leg in
its maroon-colored stocking before the other with the mannered grace of
the leader of a Coranto.
Colonel Verney met him with a low bow and smiling face, after which the
two embraced, for they were old friends.
"My dear Governor!"
"My dear Colonel!"
"I am charmed to welcome your Excellency to my poor house."
"My dear Colonel, I am charmed to be here. Gad! the possession of the
only chariot in the Colony is a burdensome honor! I thought dinner would
be over, and the stirrup cup in order while I was creeping, like a snail
with his house on his back, over these 'fair and pleasant roads'--as I
call them in my book, eh, Dick! But you have a goodly company, I see;
Ludwell, Fitzhugh, Carey, Anthony Nash, mine ancient enemy Lawrence,
Wormeley, Carrington our Puritan convert and his pretty daughter, young
Peyton, and that pretty fellow, your nephew or cousin, is he? Odzooks!
he is much what I was at his age, begotten of Delilah and Lucifer, hand
of iron in glove of velvet, eh, Dick! I hear he is hail-fellow-well-met
with the King and with Buckingham and Killigrew and their wild set. Ah,
boys will be boys! 'We have heard the chimes at midnight,' eh, Dick?"
And the Governor in high good humor skipped up the steps with the
agility of youth, bent low with sugared compliments over the hands of
his hostesses and of Mistress Betty Carrington, and gave courteous
greeting to the assembled gentlemen, after which the company flowed back
into the grateful twilight of hall and "great room," where the weather,
the state of the crops, and the last horse-race engaged them until the
announcement of dinner.
With a flourish of his costly handkerchief, the Governor offered his arm
to the young mistress of the house, and led the way to the dining-room,
where old Humfrey, the butler, marshaled the guests to their seats.
Mistress Betty Carrington had for her cavalier Sir Charles Carew, to
whose honeyed words she listened with a species of awe, wondering in her
innocent soul if all the wild tales they told of this very fine,
smooth-tongued, handsome gentleman could be true.
Doctor Anthony Nash made a long and fluent grace wherein much latinity
was aired, a neat allusion made to the _jus divinum_, and an anathema
hurled against those "who break down the carved work of the sanctuary."
Then was uncovered the mighty saddle of mutton, reposing in the dish of
honor, the roast pig, the haunch of venison, the sirloin of beef, the
breast of veal, the powdered goose, the noble dish of sheepshead and
bluefish, and the pasty in which was entombed a whole flock of pigeons.
These _pieces de resistance_ were flanked by bowls of oysters, by rows
of wild fowl skewered together, by mince pies and a grand salad, while
upon the outskirts of the damask plain were stationed trenchers piled
with wheat bread, platters of pease and smoking potatoes, cauliflower
and asparagus, and a concoction of rice and prunes, seasoned with mace
and cinnamon and a pinch of assafoetida. A great silver salt-cellar
stood in the centre of the table, and smaller receptacles of the same
metal held pepper and spices. Silver flagons of cider and ale were
placed at intervals, the Madeira, Fayal and Rhenish awaiting upon the
sideboard the moment when, the cloth drawn and the ladies gone, a
gentlemanly carousal should be inaugurated.
The company drew their Russian leather chairs closer to the table,
spread over their silken knees the fringed damask napkins, and for a
space little was to be heard but the sound of knife and spoon (forks
there were none), for the morning ride had sharpened appetites. The
servants passed from chair to chair; the master, seconded by his
daughter and sister, pricked his guests on to fresh attacks, pressing a
third slice of mutton on one, a fresh helping of capon upon another,
protesting that a third ate as though it were a fast day, and that a
fourth drank as though the October were sea-water.
When the cloth was drawn and the banquet put on, tongues were loosened.
The Governor quoted passages from his "Lost Lady" to Patricia, lifting
her lovely flushed face from the carving of a tart with wonderfully
constructed towering walls. Behind a second turreted marvel of pastry,
Mistress Lettice and Mr. Frederick Jones sighed and ogled with antique
grace. Sir Charles Carew, fingering his cherries, told a piquant little
court anecdote to Mistress Betty Carrington, and was lazily amused at
the blush and veiled eyelids with which the young lady received it.
Young Mr. Peyton, on her other side, looked very black.
The wine was put on and the toast to King and Church drunk standing,
after which the ladies dipped their white fingers into the basin of
perfumed water, dried them on the silver-fringed napkin, and sailed to
the door, through which, after the profoundest of courtesies on the one
side and the lowest of bows upon the other, they vanished, leaving the
gentlemen to wine and wassail.
Colonel Verney drank to the Governor; the Governor to Colonel Verney;
Sir Charles to the author of the "Lost Lady" and the "Discourse and View
of Virginia," so tickling the Governor's vanity thereby that he became
altogether charming. Mr. Peyton toasted Mistress Betty Carrington, and
Mr. Frederick Jones, Mistress Lettice Verney, "fairest and most discreet
of ladies." They drank to Captain Laramore's next voyage, to Mr.
Wormeley's success in vine planting, to Major Carrington's conversion.
They drank confusion to Quakers, Independents, Baptists and infidels, to
the heathen on the frontier and the Papists in Maryland, the Dutch on
the Hudson and the French on the St. Lawrence,--"Quebec in exchange for
Dunkirk!" In short, there were few things in heaven or earth but
justified draughts of Madeira.
The room filled with a blue and fragrant mist proceeding from twenty
pipe-bowls. Mr. Peyton sang a pretty song of his own composing. The
company applauded. Sir Charles Carew, in a richly plaintive tenor voice,
sang a lyric of Rochester's. Several of the gentlemen looked askance
(the clergyman had left the room with the ladies), but on the Governor's
crying out "Excellent!" they considered themselves over-squeamish, and
clapped loudly.
Sir Charles, being dry after his song, drank to Hospitality,--"A duty,"
he said, smiling, "that you gentlemen make so paramount that you must
wonder at the omission of 'Thou shalt be hospitable' from the
Decalogue."
"Faith, sir!" cried Mr. Peyton, "God is too good a Virginian not to
consider such a commandment superfluous."
The Governor commenced a story which all present, but one, had heard a
dozen times. It mattered the less, as it was a good one. Sir Charles
capped it with a better. The Governor told a weird tale of Lunsford's
men, the "babe-eating" regiment. Sir Charles recounted a little
adventure of His Grace of Buckingham with a quack astrologer, a Court
lady, and an orange girl, which made the company die of laughter.
"Rat me! but you tell a story well, sir!" said the Governor, wiping his
eyes.
"I serve King Charles the Second, your Excellency."
"And so have to live by your wit, eh, sir?"
"Precisely, your Excellency."
"Emigrate to Virginia, man! to the land of good eating, good drinking,
good fighting, stout men, and pretty women--who make angelic wives." And
the Governor, who loved his own wife with chivalric devotion, kissed a
locket which he wore at his neck. "Come to Virginia where we need loyal
men and true. Lord! we all thought the millennium was come with the
king, but damme! if it doesn't seem as far off as ever! Not that his
Majesty is to blame," he added quickly, as though fearing that his words
might be taken as an aspersion upon Charles's ability to conduct the
millennium single-handed. "The naughty spirit of the age sets itself
against the Lord's Anointed. The Puritan snake is but scotched, not
killed. It's the old prate of freedom of conscience, government by the
people, and the like disgusting stuff (no offense to you, Major
Carrington) that makes the trouble of the times both here and at home. I
sigh for the good old days when, for eleven sweet years, no Parliament
sat to meddle in affairs of state, when Wentworth kept down faction and
the saintly Laud built up the Church which he adorned." And the Governor
buried his woes in the Rhenish.
"Sir William Berkeley's loyalty is proverbial," said Sir Charles
suavely. "The King knows that while he is at the helm in Virginia, the
colony is on the high road to that era of peace and prosperity which his
majesty so ardently desires--for his tax-paying people. And I have
thought more than once of late that I might do worse than to dispose of
my majority in the 'Blues,' bid the Court adieu, and obtaining from his
Majesty a grant of land, retire here to Virginia to pass my days on my
own land and amid a little court of my own, in the patriarchal fashion
you gentlemen affect. Under certain circumstances it is a course I might
possibly pursue." He glanced at his kinsman, whose countenance showed
high approval of a plan which dovetailed nicely with one of his own
making.
"Can you guess the 'certain circumstances' which are to give us the
pleasure of his confounded company?" whispered Mr. Peyton to Mr. Carey.
"An easy riddle, Jack. Damn the insolent, smooth-spoken knave of hearts,
and confound the women! They all drop to a court card."
"Not Mistress Betty Carrington. _She_ looks below the surface."
"Humph! What does she see below thine? An empty gourd with a few
madrigals and sonnets, and fine images, conned from the 'Grand Cyrus,'
rattling about like dried seeds?"
"Hush, thou green persimmon! the Governor is speaking."
The governor rose with care to his feet. His wig was awry, his cravat of
fine mechlin under one ear. Benevolent smiles played like summer
lightning across his flushed face. He raised his tankard slowly and with
attentive steadiness. "Gentlemen," he said in a high voice, "we have
eaten and we have drunken. Dick Verney's wine is as old as the hills and
as mellow as sunlight. It groweth late, gentlemen, and some of you have
miles to travel, and it takes cool heads to ride the 'planter's pace.'
For William Berkeley, gentlemen, Governor of Virginia by the grace of
God and his Majesty, King Charles the Second, it takes more than Dick
Verney's wine to fluster him. I call a final toast. I drink again to our
loving friend and host, the worshipful Colonel Richard Verney, to his
beauteous daughter and sister, to his man-servant and his maid-servant,
his ox and his ass, and the stranger which is within his gates." He
smiled benignly at a reflection of Sir Charles in a distant mirror.
"Gentlemen, the devil, you see, can quote scripture. Let the cup go
roun', go roun', go roun'."
The toast was drunk with fervor, and the party broke up.
The Governor, with Colonel Ludlow and Captain Laramore, was to sleep at
Verney Manor, and Mistress Betty Carrington was left by her father to
bear Patricia company for a day or two. One by one the remainder of the
company rode or sailed away, those who had an even keel beneath them
being in much better case than their brethren on horseback.
When the last sail showed a white speck in the distance, Patricia and
Betty came out upon the porch and sat them down, one on either side of
the Governor, with whom they were great favorites. Colonel Ludlow and
Captain Laramore were at dice at a table within the hall, and Colonel
Verney had excused himself in order to hear the evening report from his
overseers. Sir Charles Carew, very idle and purposeless-looking, lounged
in a great chair, and studied the miniature upon his snuff-box. The
Governor, whom the wine had mellowed into a genial softness, a kind of
sunset glow, alternately puffed wide rings of smoke into the air, and
paid compliments to the young ladies. The evening breeze had sprung up,
rustling the leaves of the trees, and bringing with it the sound of the
water. In the western sky crimson islets forever shifted shapes in a sea
of gold. A rosy light suffused the earth. In it the water turned to the
pink of a shell, the marshes became ethereal and far away, earth and sky
seemed one. The flashing wings of gull and curlew were like fairy sails
faring to and fro.
"If I had wings," said Patricia dreamily, her hands clasped over her
knees, "I would fly straight to that highest island of cloud. The one,
Betty, that looks like a field of daffodils, with those beautiful peaks
rising from it, and the violet light in the hollows. I would set up my
standard there, Sir William, and the island should be mine, and I would
rule the fairies that must inhabit it, with a rod of iron--as you rule
Virginia," she ended with a laugh.
The Governor laughed with her. "You would have no such stiff-necked folk
to deal with, my love, as have I."
"No, they should all be good Cavaliers and Churchmen--no Roundheads, no
servants--and if Indians on neighboring isles threatened we would pray
for a wind and sail away from them, around and around the bright blue
sky."
"And when you are gone to take possession of your castle in the air what
will poor Virginia do?" gallantly demanded the governor.
"Oh, she would still exist! But I am not going to-night. The princess of
the castle in the air is engaged to his Excellency the Governor of
Virginia for a game of chess. In the mean time here comes my father, who
shall entertain your Excellency while Betty and I go for a walk. Come,
Lady-bird."
The two graceful figures twined arms and moved off down the walk. Sir
Charles looked after them a moment, then, with a "Permit me, sir," to
the Governor, he snapped the lid of his snuff-box and started down the
steps. The Governor laughed. "We will excuse you, sir," he said
graciously. "Dick," to Colonel Verney, as the young gentleman hastened
after the ladies, "that fine spark is to be your son-in-law, eh?"
"It is the wish of my heart, William."
"Humph!"
"He has birth and breeding. His father was my good friend and kinsman,
and as loyal a Cavalier as ever gave life and lands for the blessed
Martyr. He died in my arms at Marston Moor, and with his last breath
commended his son to me. My dear wife was then expecting the birth of
our child, of Patricia. I can see him now as he smiled up at me (he was
ever gay) and said, 'If it's a girl, Dick, marry her to my boy.' Well!
he died, and his brother took the boy, and my wife and I came over seas,
and I never saw the lad from that day to this, when he comes at my
invitation to visit us."
"Well, he is a very pretty fellow! And what does Patricia say to him?"
"Patricia is a good daughter," said the Colonel sedately, "and is
possessed of sense beyond the average of womenkind. She knows the
advantages this match offers. Sir Charles Carew can give her a title,
and a name that's as old as her own. He is a man of parts and
distinction, has served the King, is familiar with the courts of Europe.
I do not pin my faith to the tales that are told of him. His father was
a gallant gentleman, and I am not the man to believe ill of his son.
Moreover, if, as he hath half promised, he will come to Virginia, he
will throw off here the vices of the Court, the faults of youth, and
become an honest Virginia gentleman, God-fearing, law-abiding,
reverencing the King, but not copying him too closely--such an one as
thou or I, William. The king should give him large grants of land, and
so, with what Patricia will have when I am gone, there will be laid the
foundation of a great and noble estate, which, please God, will belong
in the fair future of this fair land to a great and noble family sprung
from the union of Verney and Carew. Patricia, trust me, sees all this
with my eyes."
"Humph!" said the Governor again.