THE PLOWSHARE.
It was summer in the year 1647, and over all the colony of Virginia
there was peace. Fortunate were its settlers to be cut apart from
their brethren in the isle of strife, where the deceitful king was
imprisoned in his palace of Hampton Court, and the London citizens
filled their streets with cries of "Parliament" and "Privilege." New
England remained untouched by this wave of feeling, of which indeed it
knew nothing, and its people went on planting their crops and gathering
the increase, happy to be removed from the oppression of a king and the
persecution of the Church.
Upon the south side of the Potomac, at no great distance from the sea,
stood a two-storey house overhung with wild vines, and approached by a
ladder-like flight of steps which rose between two borders of flowers.
Behind a plantation stretched in a straight mile, fringed on either
side by sweet-smelling bush, where purple butterflies played through
the long day and a silver stream laughed on its way to the sea.
The Grove, as this homestead was named, had quickly identified itself
among the successful colonial ventures. The day of small things was
rapidly nearing its close. Not only were the joint owners of the
plantation able to supply the neighbouring village with wheatmeal and
cheeses, but their export business to the Old World was growing more
profitable each season. The Virginian exporters, Viner and Woodfield,
were well-known to import merchants of Bristol, and faded invoices of
that firm were to be seen in more than one dusty counting-house a
century later, when change and chance demanded a winding-up of the
business of certain old-time traders across the seas.
This success was due not altogether to the energy of the partners who
gave their names to the undertaking. It was commonly reported that the
Lady of The Grove was in the main responsible for much of her husband's
prosperity. According to rumour, Mistress Woodfield was an excellent
housewife, clever at her needle, and with a better knowledge of simples
than any woman in the New World, if methinks somewhat over-inclined to
play the grand dame and careful against soiling her hands. With
Mistress Viner it was otherwise. She was never to be found taking her
ease in idleness, or retailing gossip concerning neighbours. Sloth, as
once she said when rebuking the governor--for she feared no man--is an
epidemic which claims more victims than the plague. Early in the
morning she walked her garden, inhaling the sweet air, noting what
progress had taken place during the night, ordering and arranging all
things; and should her husband long delay joining her, how
reproachfully she would call: "Geoffrey! Oh, slug! You are losing an
hour of life." At fall of evening she would walk in the plantation
beside her fair-haired lad, as she loved to call her lord and master,
planning fresh improvements, and never failing to note the beauty of
the life which slept around. Seldom did she speak of the past; never
did she trouble her mind concerning the future. All would be well she
knew. There could be no time so good as the present. "What do we want
with past or future?" she would exclaim, when she caught her Geoffrey
in retrospective or anticipatory mood. "Cold mirrors in which we see
our silent selves like blocks of wood or stone. It is this minute
which is our own glorious life." The cruellest, and falsest, thing
that any woman could say concerning Madeleine Viner was that the fair
mistress of The Grove had been seen wearing a sorrowful face.
The simple inscription, "An American Woman," was carved by her own
desire over Mistress Viner's burying-place at the dawn of the
eighteenth century;' and at a later date an unauthorised and unknown
hand cut upon the shaft of the wooden column which stood upon her
resting-place, and was destroyed by fire before Canada was wrested from
the French, the not unsuitable motto, "Ride, si sapis."
Over the fireplace of the principal room in The Grove a ring was set in
the hard oak woodwork. This ring contained a sigil engraved with the
arms of the Iden family, a chevron between three close helmets, and was
given a place of honour in the home because through its power Geoffrey
obtained a letter of recommendation and a subsequent patent of land
from that liberal-minded papist, Lord Baltimore, to whom the ring had
been delivered upon the safe arrival of the _Dartmouth_ in the Bay of
Chesapeake.
"Better men never bled for England than the men of Kent," said the
peer, when he had listened to Geoffrey's story. "Braver men ne'er fled
from her shores to save their loyal lives. The owner of this ring was
once my honoured friend. His name has for long been most famous for
devotion to the crown." The lord sighed and sadly added: "This Charles
shall learn to rue the day when he first cast aside the help of his old
loyalist families, and by oppression and persecution most intolerable
drove them from their homes. But now, with God's help, we purpose to
build up upon this continent a new people, greater and more
clear-sighted than the old, and the motto of that people shall be,
'Liberty of thought and freedom in religion.' Tell me now, how shall I
serve you?"
"I would settle, either in Maryland or in Virginia, and help to build
up that new American people of whom you speak," the young man answered.
So Geoffrey Viner obtained favour in the eyes of Lord Baltimore by the
power of the ring; and when the patent for the land issued, he and
Woodfield forgot their former dreams of power, and, exchanging sword
for axe, felled the big trees and cleared away the bush, that they
might plough the virgin soil and plant their seed. As for stern Hough,
he remained in Boston, to fight Satan, since he might no longer fight
the French, and to preach the gloomy doctrine that he loved; and there
he lived to a great age, and there suddenly died one winter morning in
a bitterly cold church--for the religious feeling of the community
would allow no physical comfort to the worshipper--with a Bible between
his hands and a strained smile upon his face, as the preacher dilated
upon a psalm-singing Heaven reserved for the elect, and a burning fiery
furnace for all else. Hough had been a good man, according to the
light which he had received, and doubtless the psalm-singing Heaven was
his.
It was evening. Geoffrey and Madeleine walked hand in hand through
their plantation, inhaling fragrance from the dewy blooms. Rain had
fallen during the afternoon, but when the sun broke out, to bid the
settlers good e'en, the country became a fairy-land. A sleepy bird
piped on a distant branch. A pale evening star rose in the east where
warm vapours were swimming in a silent sea. The peace was perfect in
that true Arcadia. Wars were yet to horrify the province, but the
shadow was not yet. For the present the sword was buried, and the
earth brought forth fruit plenteously.
"If only I might have my wish!" exclaimed Madeleine, breaking a long
silence.
Her husband looked at her, pressing her fingers within his, but
answered nothing.
"I would have the whole world like this," she went on. "Geoffrey, we
would not, if we could, seek to conceive a world more beautiful than
ours. Yet how we spoil it by not knowing how to live! Were it my
world I would banish all hypocrisy, all disputings over religion, all
lust for power, and try to teach my people how to love--how to love,
and nothing else."
"Making us perfect before our time," said Geoffrey, watching tenderly
the evening lights playing across her hair.
"No, husband. We shall not attain perfection here. But it is from
this country that a light shall proceed to spread throughout the world.
Are we not already showing others how to live? What people before us
have ever dared to permit independence in thought and freedom in
religion? We have already stripped the Church of its mysteries. We
believe that a man may rise to God without a priest. We are going to
grow very great on this side of the seas, and fly very high, and our
motto shall always be Peace. Then we shall destroy all weapons of war,
and break up armies, and settle down in brotherly love, each man upon
his own plot of ground----"
"Envying that of his neighbour," broke in her husband gently.
"Ah, Geoffrey! Scoffer! But mayhap 'tis a foolish dream. Could we
but live in love, it might follow that the wolf would be ashamed to
hunt the lamb, and would feed upon grass, and thus it might happen that
our kine would lack. It is best as God ordains. The panther must
remain fierce, the bind-weed choke the flower, the rose grow its thorn,
and the berry retain its poison. But would you walk in my garden,
husband?"
"And see the devil changed into a monk?" asked Geoffrey, with a smile.
"There is no devil in my garden," cried Madeleine joyously. "The snake
has no bite, and the devil is dead of idleness. The angels show
themselves among my roses."
"They are here," said Geoffrey simply. "Madeleine, sweet wife, before
we met I followed the promptings of the body; but through your eyes I
have seen the soul. It is not the soldier who wins life with his
sword. He does but strive in a vain shadow, until that happy day--ill
for him if it comes not--when there dawns upon his heart the light of
love, and his mind is inspired, and his ears hear the stirring of
wings, and his eyes are opened."
"What does he see, husband?" she asked caressingly.
"The sweet spirit of the woman who is sent to be his star."
They returned to their home in the sunset, and Madeleine was singing
softly as she swung her husband's arm. The young matron ran forward,
to be entranced and transfigured by the last sunrays, and kissed her
fingers to the departing orb with a blithesome cry:
"Wake us before the morning bell, bright sun, and come not in clouds as
you came to-day."
Upon entering the flower garden a resonant voice, alternating with
tremendous bursts of glee, destroyed the stillness of the evening.
Husband and wife looked at each other in complete understanding, and
Madeleine held a finger to her lips, and motioned Geoffrey to advance
on tip-toe. They pressed through a bower of roses, beneath a tangle of
creepers, through tall rye-grass, and as they advanced the great voice
came more strongly to their ears. At length they stood unseen within
sight of their house front, and, drawing close together, laughed
restrainedly.
Upon the topmost step, in a line with the entrance, sat a man of
immense bulk, holding a pretty fair-haired child upon his mighty knee;
and this child he was dancing up and down, shouting a quaint
accompaniment meantime. Around his head trailed the luxuriant vines,
covered with their fluffy white blooms, and the dainty humming-birds
went whirring by, chasing in sport the hivebound bees.
Leaning back, and heaving his knee up and down, the big man continued
to serenely bellow his nursery refrain:
"Ha! Pieter von Donck! Pieter von Donck! 'Tis as cunning an old
rogue as ever wore shoe-leather!"
"Funny man! Do it again," chirruped Geoffrey Viner the younger.