THE MOTHER
Dame Kingswell, the widow of that good merchant of Bristol whom Queen
Elizabeth had knighted in her latter days, sat in her chamber and looked
down upon a pleasant garden beneath the window. She was alone. Her
garments, though of rich materials, were sombre in hue. She wore no
personal ornaments save two rings on her left hand, and a chain of gold,
bearing a small cross of the same metal, at her breast. Her thick hair
was snow-white. In her youth it had been as black as her husband's had
been flaxen. Her complexion held scarcely more colour than her hair. On
her knees a book of devotional poetry, splendidly illuminated about the
margins, lay open. But her thin hands were folded over the page, and her
gaze was upon the shrubbery of the garden. The time was early evening.
The sunlight was mellow gold. The hedges, shrubs, and fountain on the
lawns threw eastward shadows.
The chamber in which the widow sat was large and scantily furnished. A
few portraits, by masters of the brush, hung along the walls. A
prayer-desk, with a red hassock before it, stood in a corner.
A light rapping sounded on the door. The lady turned her eyes from the
bright garden below her window. She saw the door open, and a beautiful
girl in cloak and hat enter the room. The stranger advanced quickly, in
a whispering of silks, and in her glowing hands took the widow's
bloodless fingers.
"My dear," said the elder woman, kindly, "I fear my memory is flitting.
I do not recall your winsome face. Can it be that you are one of Sir
Felix Brown's lasses, grown to such a fine young lady in London?"
The girl sank on her knees and kissed the pale hands lightly and
prettily.
"My name is Beatrix Kingswell," she murmured.
The good dame was sorely puzzled. She tried, in vain, to connect this
lovely creature with any branches of the late knight's family.
"Then you are a kinswoman of mine?" she queried. "Pray do not kneel
there, my dear. Come sit in the window and tell me who you are."
But the stranger did not move.
"I am your daughter," she said. "And--oh, do not swoon, my
mother--Bernard is at the door, awaiting your permission to enter."
The widow closed her eyes for a second, leaning back in her chair. She
recovered herself swiftly and clutched the skirts of the girl, who was
now standing, ready to run to the door and admit her husband.
"What story is this?" she cried, incredulous. "I have no daughter. And
Bernard, my son, has lain dead in a far land these weary months."
"Nay, dear madam," replied the girl. "Nay, he is not dead. But let me go
to the door, and you will see him with your own eyes. He waits at your
threshold, happy and well."
The older woman maintained her hold of her visitor's gown. "And who are
you, to bring me word of my son's return?" she asked, with a ring of
shrewdness and suspicion in her voice. Dimly, she feared that she was
affording sport to some heartless person; for this sudden tale of her
son's safety, brought by this gay young lady, had broken upon her
pensive reveries like an impossible scene out of a play.
"I am his wife," replied Beatrix. With an effort, she pulled her skirts
away from the clutching fingers, and sped to the door. Throwing it open,
she admitted Bernard. The youth sprang to where his mother sat, and
caught her up from her chair against his breast. With a glad,
inarticulate cry, she slipped her arms around his neck and clung
hysterically.
Five days after the arrival of the _Heart of the West_, the _Cristobal_
sailed into port. By that time the story of her capture was well known
in the town, and a crowd of citizens gathered on the docks to welcome
her. Master Kingswell put her up for sale. In the end, he bought her
himself, for something more than she was worth. Every penny of the money
Beatrix gave to the brave fellows who had fought and sailed their ship
so valorously on her eventful wedding-day. Only that rugged and wayward
master mariner, John Trowley, failed to show himself for a share of the
gold. He had not the courage to run a chance of another meeting with
Lady Kingswell.
Of the future of Bernard, Beatrix, and the lad Ouenwa, something is
written in the old records in an exceeding dry vein. Of the fate of the
little fort on Gray Goose River, little is known. Some chroniclers
maintain that the French overpowered it; others are as certain that the
settlers moved to Conception Bay, and there established themselves so
securely that, even to-day, descendants of those Triggets and those
Donnellys cultivate their little crops, cure their fish, and sail their
fore-and-afters around the coast to St. John's.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Brothers of Peril, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts