THE COURT OF THE ORPHAN
An hour before dusk found the company that had dined in the valley
making their way up the dry bed of a stream, through a gorge which
cleft a line of precipitous hills. On either hand the bank rose
steeply, giving no footing for man or beast. The road was a difficult
one; for here a tall, fern-crowned rock left but a narrow passage
between itself and the shaggy hillside, and there smooth and slippery
ledges, mounting one above the other, spanned the way. In places,
too, the drought had left pools of dark, still water, difficult to
avoid, and not infrequently the entire party must come to a halt while
the axemen cleared from the path a fallen birch or hemlock. Every
man was afoot, none caring to risk a fall upon the rocks or into
the black, cold water of the pools. The hoofs of the horses and the
spurs of the men clanked against the stones; now and then one of the
heavily laden packhorses stumbled and was sworn at, and once a warning
rattle, issuing from a rank growth of fern on the hillside, caused
a momentary commotion. There was no more laughter, or whistling, or
calling from the van to the rear guard. The way was arduous, and every
man must watch his footsteps; moreover, the last rays of the sun were
gilding the hilltops above them, and the level that should form their
camping-place must be reached before the falling of the night.
The sunlight had all but faded from the heights, when one of the
company, stumbling over a round and mossy rock, measured his length
upon the ground, amid his own oaths at his mishap, and the exclamations
of the man immediately in his rear, whose progress he had thus
unceremoniously blocked. The horse of the fallen man, startled by the
dragging at the reins, reared and plunged, and in a moment the entire
column was in disorder. When the frightened animals were at last
quieted, and the line re-formed, the Governor called out to know who it
was that had fallen, and whether any damage had been suffered.
“It was Mr. Haward, sir!” cried two or three; and presently the injured
gentleman himself, limping painfully, and with one side of his fine
green coat all stained by reason of contact with a bit of muddy ground,
appeared before his Excellency.
“I have had a cursed mishap,--saving your presence, sir,” he explained.
“The right ankle is, I fear, badly sprained. The pain, is exquisite,
and I know not how I am to climb mountains.”
The Governor uttered an exclamation of concern: “Unfortunate! Dr.
Robinson must look to the hurt at once.”
“Your Excellency forgets my dispute with Dr. Robinson as to the dose
of Jesuit bark for my servant,” said the sufferer blandly. “Were I _in
extremis_ I should not apply to him for relief.”
“I’ll lay my life that you are not _in extremis_ now,” retorted the
doctor. “If ever I saw a man with a sprained ankle keep his color so
marvelously, or heard him speak in so composed a tone! The pain must be
of a very unusual degree indeed!”
“It is,” answered Mr. Haward calmly. “I cannot possibly go on in this
condition, your Excellency, nor can I dream of allowing my unlucky
accident to delay this worshipful company in their ascent of the
mountains. I will therefore take my servant and ride slowly back to
the cabin which we left this afternoon. Doubtless the worthy pioneer
will give me shelter until my foot is healed, and I will rejoin your
Excellency upon your return through the valley.”
As he spoke, for the greater ease of the injured member, he leaned
against a towering lock. He was a handsome youth, with a trick of
keeping an unmoved countenance under even such a fire of laughter and
exclamation as greeted his announcement.
“And for this you would lose the passing of the Appalachian Mountains!”
cried Spotswood. “Why, man! from those heights we may almost see Lake
Erie; may find out how near we are to the French, how easily the
mountains may be traversed, what promise of success should his Majesty
determine to plant settlements beyond them or to hold the mountain
passes! There is service to be done and honor to be gained, and you
would lag behind because of a wrenched ankle! Zoons, sir! at Blenheim I
charged a whole regiment of Frenchmen, with a wound in my breast into
which you might have thrust your hand!”
The younger man shrugged his shoulders. “Beggars may not be choosers,”
he said coolly. “The sunlight is fast fading, and if we would be out of
this gorge before nightfall we must make no further tarrying. I have
your Excellency’s permission to depart?”
One of the gentlemen made a low-voiced but audible remark to his
neighbor, and another hummed a line from a love song. The horses moved
impatiently amongst the loose stones, and the rangers began to mutter
that night would be upon them before they reached a safer footing.
“Mr. Haward! Mr. Haward!” said the Governor sternly. “It is in my mind
that you meditate inflicting a greater harm than you have received.
Let me tell you, sir, if you think to so repay a simple-minded
hospitality”--
Mr. Haward’s eyes narrowed. “I own Colonel Spotswood for Governor of
Virginia,” he said, speaking slowly, as was his wont when he was angry.
“His office does not, I think, extend farther than that. As for these
pleasant-minded gentlemen who are not protected by their rank I beg to
inform them that in my fall my sword arm suffered no whit.”
Turning, he beckoned to a negro who had worked his way from the
servants in the rear, along the line of rangers, to the outskirts of
the group of gentlemen gathered around the Governor and the injured
man. “Juba,” he ordered, “draw your horse and mine to one side. Your
Excellency, may I again remind you that it draws toward nightfall, and
that this road will be no pleasant one to travel in the dark?”
What he said was true; moreover, upon the setting out of the expedition
it had been laughingly agreed that any gentleman who might find his
spirits dashed by the dangers and difficulties of the way should be at
liberty at any time to turn his back upon the mountains, and his face
toward safety and the settlements. The Governor frowned, bit his lips,
but finally burst into unwilling laughter.
“You are a very young gentleman, Mr. Marmaduke Haward!” he cried. “Were
you a little younger, I know what ointment I should prescribe for
your hurt. Go your ways with your broken ankle; but if, when I come
again to the cabin in the valley, I find that your own injury has not
contented you, look to it that I do not make you build a bridge across
the bay itself! Gentlemen, Mr. Haward is bent upon intrusting his cure
to other and softer hands than Dr. Robinson’s, and the expedition must
go forward without him. We sorrow to lose him from our number, but we
know better than to reason with--ahem!--a twisted ankle. _En avant_,
gentlemen! Mr. Haward, pray have a care of yourself. I would advise
that the ankle be well bandaged, and that you stir not from the chimney
corner”--
“I thank your Excellency for your advice,” said Mr. Haward
imperturbably, “and will consider of taking it. I wish your Excellency
and these merry gentlemen a most complete victory over the mountains,
from which conquest I will no longer detain you.”
He bowed as he spoke, and began to move, slowly and haltingly, across
the width of the rocky way to where his negro stood with the two horses.
“Mr. Haward!” called the Governor.
The recreant turned his head. “Your Excellency?”
“It was the right foot, was it not?” queried his sometime leader. “Ah,
I thought so! Then it were best not to limp with the left.”
Homeric laughter shook the air; but while Mr. Haward laughed not,
neither did he frown or blush. “I will remember, sir,” he said simply,
and at once began to limp with the proper foot. When he reached the
bank he turned, and, standing with his arm around his horse’s neck,
watched the company which he had so summarily deserted, as it put
itself into motion and went slowly past him up its dusky road. The
laughter and bantering farewells moved him not; he could at will draw
a line around himself across which few things could step. Not far
away the bed of the stream turned, and a hillside, dark with hemlock,
closed the view. He watched the train pass him, reach this bend, and
disappear. The axemen and the four Meherrins, the Governor and the
gentlemen of the Horseshoe, the rangers, the negroes,--all were gone
at last. With that passing, and with the ceasing of the laughter and
the trampling, came the twilight. A whippoorwill began to call, and the
wind sighed in the trees. Juba, the negro, moved closer to his master;
then upon an impulse stooped, and lifting above his head a great rock,
threw it with might into one of the shallow pools. The crashing sound
broke the spell of the loneliness and quiet that had fallen upon the
place. The white man drew his breath, shrugged his shoulders, and
turned his horse’s head down the way up which he had so lately come.
The cabin in the valley was not three miles away. Down this ravine to
a level place of pines, through the pines to a strip of sassafras and
a poisoned field, past these into a dark, rich wood of mighty trees
linked together with the ripening grape, then three low hills, then
the valley and the cabin and a pair of starry eyes. It was full moon.
Once out from under the stifling walls of the ravine, and the silver
would tremble through the leaves, and show the path beneath. The trees,
too, that they had blazed,--with white wood pointing to white wood, the
backward way should be easy.
The earth, rising sheer in darkness on either hand, shut in the bed
of the stream. In the warm, scented dusk the locusts shrilled in the
trees, and far up the gorge the whippoorwill called and called. The
air was filled with the gold of fireflies, a maze of spangles, now
darkening, now brightening, restless and bewildering. The small, round
pools caught the light from the yet faintly colored sky, and gleamed
among the rocks; a star shone out, and a hot wind, heavy with the smell
of the forest, moved the hemlock boughs and rustled in the laurels.
The white man and the negro, each leading his horse, picked their way
with caution among the pitfalls of the rocky and uneven road. With the
passing of the Governor and his train a sudden cure had been wrought,
for now Haward’s step was as firm and light as it had been before his
fall. The negro looked at him once or twice with a puzzled face, but
made no comment and received no enlightenment. Indeed, so difficult
was their way that they were left but scant leisure for speech. Moment
by moment the darkness deepened, and once Haward’s horse came to its
knees, crashing down among the rocks and awakening every echo.
The way, if hard, was short. The hills fell farther apart, the banks
became low and broad, and fair in front, between two slender pines,
shone out the great round moon. Leaving the bed of the stream, the two
men entered a pine wood, dim and fragrant and easy to thread. The moon
rose higher, and the light fell in wide shafts between trees that stood
well apart, with no vines to grapple one to another or undergrowth to
press about their knees.
There needed no watchfulness: the ground was smooth, the light was
fair; no motion save the pale flicker of the fireflies, no sound save
the sigh of the night wind in the boughs that were so high overhead.
Master and man, riding slowly and steadily onward through a wood that
seemed interminably the same, came at last to think of other things
than the road which they were traveling. Their hands lost grasp upon
the reins, and their eyes, ceasing to glance now here, now there, gazed
steadfastly down the gray and dreamlike vista before them, and saw no
longer hole and branch, moonlight and the white scars that the axe
had made for guidance. The vision of the slave was of supper at the
quarters, of the scraping of the fiddle in the red firelight, of the
dancing and the singing. The white man saw, at first, only a girl’s
face, shy and innocent,--the face of the woodland maid who had fired
his fancy, who was drawing him through the wilderness back to the cabin
in the valley. But after a while, in the gray stillness, he lost the
face, and suddenly thought, instead, of the stone that was to cover
his father’s grave. The ship that was to bring the great, dark, carven
slab should be in by now; the day after his return to Williamsburgh the
stone must be put in place, covering in the green sod and that which
lay below. _Here, lieth in the hope of a joyful resurrection_--
His mind left the grave in the churchyard at Williamsburgh, and
visited the great plantation of which he was now sole master. There
was the house, foursquare, high-roofed, many-windowed, built of dark
red brick that glowed behind the veil of the walnuts and the oaks.
There, too, were the quarters,--the home quarter, that at the creek,
that on the ridge. Fifty white servants, three hundred slaves,--and
he was the master. The honeysuckles in the garden that had been his
father’s pride, the shining expanse of the river, the ship--his ship,
the Golden Rose--that was to take him home to England,--he forgot
the night and the forest, and saw these things quite plainly. Then
he fell to thinking of London and the sweets that he meant to taste,
the heady wine of youth and life that he meant to drain to the lees.
He was young; he could spare the years. One day he would come back to
Virginia, to the dim old garden and quiet house. His factor would give
account, and he would settle down in the red brick house, with the
tobacco to the north and east, the corn to the west, and to the south
the mighty river,--the river silvered by the moon, the river that lay
just beyond him, gleaming through the trees--
Startled by the sudden tightening of the reins, or by the tearing of
some frightened thing through the canes that beset the low, miry bank,
the horse sprang aside; then stood trembling with pricked ears. The
white man stared at the stream; turned in his saddle and stared at the
tree trunks, the patches of moonlight, and the impenetrable shadow that
closed each vista. “The blazed trees!” he exclaimed at last. “How long
since we saw one?”
The slave shook his head. “Juba forgot to look. He was away by a river
that he knew.”
“We have passed from out the pines,” said Haward. “These are oaks. But
what is that water, and how far we are out of our reckoning the Lord
only knows!”
As he spoke he pushed his horse through the tall reeds to the bank of
the stream. Here in the open, away from the shadow of the trees, the
full moon had changed the night-time into a wonderful, silver day.
Narrow above and belows the stream widened before him into a fairy
basin, rimmed with reeds, unruffled, crystal-clear, stiller than a
dream. The trees that grew upon the farther side were faint gray clouds
in the moonlight, and the gold of the fireflies was very pale. From
over the water, out of the heart of the moonlit wood, came the song
of a mockingbird, a tumultuous ecstasy, possessing the air and making
elfin the night.
Haward backed his horse from the reeds to the oak beneath which waited
the negro. “’Tis plain that we have lost our way, Juba,” he said,
with a laugh. “If you were an Indian, we should turn and straightway
retrace our steps to the blazed trees. Being what you are, you are more
valuable in the tobacco fields than in the forest. Perhaps this is the
stream which flows by the cabin in the valley. We’ll follow it down,
and so arrive, at least, at a conclusion.”
They dismounted, and, leading their horses, followed the stream for
some distance, to arrive at the conclusion that it was not the one
beside which they had dined that day. When they were certain of this,
they turned and made their way back to the line of reeds which they had
broken to mark their starting-point. By now the moon was high, and the
mockingbird in the wood across the water was singing madly. Turning
from the still, moonlit sheet, the silent reeds, the clear mimicker in
the slumbrous wood, the two wayfarers plunged into the darkness beneath
the spreading branches of the oak-trees. They could not have ridden far
from the pines; in a very little while they might reach and recognize
the path which they should tread.
An hour later, the great trees, oak and chestnut, beech and poplar,
suddenly gave way to saplings, many, close-set, and overrun with
grapevines. So dense was the growth, so unyielding the curtain of
vines, that men and horses were brought to a halt as before a fortress
wall. Again they turned, and, skirting that stubborn network, came upon
a swamp, where leafless trees, white as leprosy, stood up like ghosts
from the water that gleamed between the lily-pads. Leaving the swamp
they climbed a hill, and at the summit found only the moon and the
stars and a long plateau of sighing grass. Behind them were the great
mountains; before them, lesser heights, wooded hills, narrow valleys,
each like its fellow, each indistinct and shadowy, with no sign of
human tenant.
Haward gazed at the climbing moon and at the wide and universal dimness
of the world beneath; then turned to the negro, and pointed to a few
low trees growing at the eastern end of the plateau.
“Fasten the horses there, Juba,” he said. “We will wait upon this
hilltop until morning. When the light comes, we may be able to see the
clearing or the smoke from the cabin.”
When the horses had been tethered, master and man lay down upon the
grass. It was so still upon the hilltop, and the heavens pressed so
closely, that the slave grew restless and strove to make talk. Failing
in this, he began to croon a savage, mournful air, and presently,
forgetting himself, to sing outright.
“Be quiet!” ordered his master. “There may be Indians abroad.”
The song came to an end as abruptly as it lad begun, and the singer,
having nothing better to do, went fast asleep. His companion, more
wakeful, lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes upon the
splendor of the firmament. Lying so, he could not see the valleys nor
the looming mountains. There were only the dome of the sky, the grass,
and himself. He stared at the moon, and made pictures of her shadowy
places; then fell to thinking of the morrow, and of the possibility
that after all he might never find again the cabin in the valley. While
he laughed at this supposition, yet he played with it. He was in a mood
to think the loss of the trail of the expedition no great matter. The
woods were full of game, the waters of fish; he and Juba had only to
keep their faces to the eastward, and a fortnight at most would bring
them to the settlements. But the valleys folded among the hills were
many; what if the one he sought should still elude him? What if the
cabin, the sugar-tree, the crystal stream, had sunk from sight, like
the city in one of Monsieur Gralland’s fantastic tales? Perhaps they
had done so,--the spot had all the air of a bit of fairyland,--and the
woodland maid was gone to walk with the elves. Well, perchance for
her it would be better so. And yet it would be pleasant if she should
climb the hillside now and sit beside him, with her shy dark eyes and
floating hair. Her hair was long and fine, and the wind would lift it;
her face was fair, and another than the wind should kiss it. The night
would not then be so slow in going.
He turned upon his side, and looked along the grassy summit to the
woods upon the opposite slope and to the distant mountains. Dull
silver, immutable, perpetual, they reared themselves to meet the
moonbeams. Between him and those stern and changeless fronts, pallid as
with snows, stretched the gray woods. The moon shone very brightly, and
there was no wind. So unearthly was the quiet of the night, so solemn
the light, so high and still and calm the universe around him, that awe
fell upon his soul. It was well to lie upon the hilltop and guess at
the riddle of the world; now dimly to see the meaning, now to lose it
quite, to wonder, to think of death. The easy consciousness that for
him death was scores of years away, that he should not meet the spectre
until the wine was all drunken, the garlands withered, and he, the
guest, ready to depart, made these speculations not at all unpleasing.
He looked at his hand, blanched by the moonlight, lying beside him upon
the grass, and thought how like a dead hand it seemed, and what if he
could not move it, nor his body, nor could ever rise from the grass,
but must lie there upon the lonely hilltop in the untrodden wilderness,
until that which had ridden and hunted and passed so buoyantly through
life should become but a few dry bones, a handful of dust. He was of
his time, and its laxness of principle and conduct; if he held within
himself the potential scholar, statesman, and philosopher, there were
also the skeptic, the egotist, and the libertine. He followed the
fashion and disbelieved much, but he knew that if he died to-night
his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop. He wondered,
somewhat grimly, what it would do when so much that had clothed it
round--pride of life, love of pleasure, desire, ambition--should
be plucked away. Poor soul! Surely it would feel itself something
shrunken, stripped of warmth, shiveringly bare to all the winds of
heaven. The radiance of the moon usurped the sky, but behind that veil
of light the invisible and multitudinous stars were shining. Beyond
those stars were other stars, beyond those yet others; on and on went
the stars, wise men said. Beyond them all, what then? And where was the
place of the soul? What would it do? What heaven or hell would it find
or make for itself? Guesswork all!
The silver pomp of the night began to be oppressive to him. There was
beauty, but it was a beauty cold and distant, infinitely withdrawn
from man and his concerns. Woods and mountains held aloof, communing
with the stars. They were kindred and of one house; it was man who
was alien, a stranger and alone. The hilltop cared not that he lay
thereon; the grass would grow as greenly when he was in his grave; all
his tragedies since time began he might reenact there below, and the
mountains would not bend to look.
He flung his arm across his eyes to shut out the moonlight, and tried
to sleep. Finding the attempt a vain one, and that the night pressed
more and more heavily upon him, he sat up with the intention of shaking
the negro awake, and so providing himself with other company than his
own thoughts.
His eyes had been upon the mountains, but now, with the sudden
movement, he faced the eastern horizon and a long cleft between the
hills. Far down this opening something was on fire, burning fiercely
and redly. Some one must have put torch to the forest; and yet it did
not burn as trees burn. It was like a bonfire ... it was a bonfire in a
clearing! There were not woods about it, but a field--and the glint of
water--
The negro, awakened by foot and voice, sprang up, and stood bewildered
beside his master. “It is the valley that we have been seeking, Juba,”
said the latter, speaking rapidly and low. “That burning pile is the
cabin, and ’t is like that there are Indians between us and it! Leave
the horses; we shall go faster without them. Look to the priming of
your gun, and make no noise. Now!”
Rapidly descending the hill, they threw themselves into the woods at
its base. Here they could not see the fire, but now and then, as they
ran, they caught the glow, far down the lines of trees. Though they
went swiftly they went warily as well, keeping an eye and ear open
and muskets ready. But there was no sound other than their own quick
footfalls upon the floor of rotting leaves, or the eager brushing of
their bodies through occasional undergrowth; no sight but the serried
trees and the checkered light and shade upon the ground.
They came to the shallow stream that flashed through the valley, and
crossing it found themselves on cleared ground, with only a long strip
of corn between them and what had been a home for English folk. It was
that no longer: for lack of fuel the flames were dying down; there was
only a charred and smoking pile, out of which leaped here and there a
red tongue.
Haward had expected to hear a noise of savage triumph, and to see dark
figures moving about their handiwork. There was no noise, and the
moonlight showed no living being. The night was changelessly still and
bright; the tragedy had been played, and the mountains and the hills
and the running water had not looked.
It took but a few minutes to break through the rustling corn and reach
the smouldering logs. Once before them, there seemed naught to do but
to stand and stare at the ruin, until a tongue of flame caught upon a
piece of uncharred wood, and showed them the body of the pioneer lying
at a little distance from the stone that had formed his doorstep. At a
sign from Haward the negro went and turned it over, then, let it sink
again into the seared grass. “Two arrows, Marse Duke,” he said, coming
back to the other’s side. “An’ they’ve taken his scalp.”
Three times Haward made the round of the yet burning heap. Was it only
ruined and fallen walls, or was it a funeral pyre as well? To know, he
must wait for the day and until the fire had burned itself out. If the
former were the case, if the dead man alone kept the valley, then now,
through the forest and the moonlight, captives were being haled to some
Indian village, and to a fate more terrible than that of the man who
lay there upon the grass with an arrow through his heart.
If the girl were still alive, yet was she dead to him. He was no
Quixote to tilt with windmills. Had a way to rescue her lain fair
before him, he would have risked his life without a thought. But the
woods were deep and pathless, and only an Indian could find and keep a
trail by night. To challenge the wilderness; to strike blindly at the
forest, now here, now there; to dare all, and know that it was hopeless
daring,--a madman might do this for love. But it was only Haward’s
fancy that had been touched, and if he lacked not courage, neither did
he lack a certain cool good sense which divided for him the possible
from that which was impossible, and therefore not to be undertaken.
Turning from the ruin, he walked across the trampled sward to the
sugar-tree in whose shade, in the golden afternoon, he had sung to his
companions and to a simple girl. Idle and happy and far from harm had
the valley seemed.
“Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.”
Suddenly he found that he was trembling, and that a sensation of
faintness and of dull and sick revolt against all things under the
stars was upon him. Sitting down in the shadow of the tree, he rested
his face in his hands and shut his eyes, preferring the darkness within
to that outer night which hid not and cared not, which was so coldly at
peace. He was young, and though stories of such dismal things as that
before him were part of the stock in trade of every ancient, garrulous
man or woman of his acquaintance, they had been for him but tales; not
horrible truths to stare him in the face. He had seen his father die;
but he had died, in his bed, and like one who went to sleep.
The negro had followed him, and now stood with his eyes upon the
dying flames, muttering to himself some heathenish charm. When it was
ended, he looked about him uneasily for a time; then bent and plucked
his master by the sleeve. “We cyarn’ do nothin’ here, Marse Duke,” he
whispered. “An’ the wolves may get the horses.”
With a laugh and a groan, the young man rose to his feet. “That is
true, Juba,” he said. “It’s all over here,--we were too late. And it’s
not a pleasant place to lie awake in, waiting for the morning. We’ll go
back to the hilltop.”
Leaving the tree, they struck across the grass and entered the strip
of corn. Something low and dark that had lain upon the ground started
up before them, and ran down the narrow way between the stalks. Haward
made after it and caught it.
“Child!” he cried. “Where are the others?”
The child had struggled for a moment, desperately if weakly, but at the
sound of his voice she lay still in his grasp, with her eyes upon his
face. In the moonlight each could see the other quite plainly. Raising
her in his arms, Haward bore her to the brink of the stream, laved her
face and chafed the small, cold hands.
“Now tell me, Audrey,” he said at last. “Audrey is your name, isn’t it?
Cry, if you like, child, but try to tell me.”
Audrey did not cry. She was very, very tired, and she wanted to go to
sleep. “The Indians came,” she told him in a whisper, with her head
upon his breast. “We all waked up, and father fired at them through the
hole in the door. Then they broke the door down, and he went outside,
and they killed him. Mother put me under the bed, and told me to stay
there, and to make no noise. Then the Indians came in at the door,
and killed her and Molly and Robin. I don’t remember anything after
that,--maybe I went to sleep. When I was awake again the Indians were
gone, but there was fire and smoke everywhere. I was afraid of the
fire, and so I crept from under the bed, and kissed mother and Molly
and Robin, and left them lying in the cabin, and came away.”
She sighed with weariness, and the hand with which she put back her
dark hair that had fallen over her face was almost too heavy to lift.
“I sat beside father and watched the fire,” she said. “And then I heard
you and the black man coming over the stones in the stream. I thought
that you were Indians, and I went and hid in the corn.”
Her voice failed, and her eyelids drooped. In some anxiety Haward
watched her breathing and felt for the pulse in the slight brown wrist;
then, satisfied, he lifted the light burden, and, nodding to the negro
to go before, recommenced his progress to the hill which he had left an
hour agone.
It was not far away. He could see the bare summit above the treetops,
and in a little while they were upon its slope. A minute more and they
came to the clump of trees, and found the horses in safety, Haward
paused to take from the roll strapped behind his saddle a riding cloak;
then, leaving the negro with the horses, climbed to the grassy level.
Here he spread the cloak upon the ground, and laid the sleeping child
upon it, which done, he stood and looked at his new-found charge for a
moment; then turning, began to pace up and down upon the hilltop.
It was necessary to decide upon a course of action. They had the
horses, the two muskets, powder and shot. The earth was dry and warm,
and the skies were cloudless. Was it best to push on to Germanna, or
was it best to wait down there in the valley for the return of the
Governor and his party? They would come that way, that was certain, and
would look to find him there. If they found only the ruined cabin, they
might think him dead or taken by the Indians, and an attempt to seek
him, as dangerous, perhaps, as fruitless, might be made. He decided
that he would wait. To-morrow he would take Juba and the horses and the
child and go down into the valley; not back to the sugar-tree and that
yet smouldering pyre, but to the woods on this side of the stream.
This plan thought out, he went; and took his seat beside the child. She
was moaning in her sleep, and he bent over and soothed her. When she
was quiet he still kept her hand in his, as he sat there waiting for
the dawn. He gave the child small thought. Together he and Juba must
care for her until they could rejoin the expedition: then the Governor,
who was so fond of children, might take her in hand, and give her for
nurse old Dominick, who was as gentle as a woman. Once at Germanna
perhaps some scolding _Hausfrau_ would take her, for the sake of the
scrubbing and lifting to be gotten out of those small hands and that
slender frame. If not, she must on to Williamsburgh and the keeping of
the vestry there. The next Orphan Court would bind her to some master
or mistress who might (or might not) be kind to her, and so there would
be an end to the matter.
The day was breaking. Moon and stars were gone, and the east was dull
pink, like faded roses. A ribbon of silver mist, marking the course of
the stream below, drew itself like a serpent through the woods that
were changing from gray to green. The dank smell of early morning rose
from the dew-drenched earth, and in the countless trees of the forest
the birds began to sing.
A word or phrase which is as common and familiar as our hand may, in
some one minute of time, take on a significance and present a face so
keen and strange that it is as if we had never met it before. An Orphan
Court! Again he said the words to himself, and then aloud. No doubt
the law did its best for the fatherless and motherless, for such waifs
and strays as that which lay beside him. When it bound out children,
it was most emphatic that they should be fed and clothed and taught;
not starved or beaten unduly, or let to grow up ignorant as negroes.
Sometimes the law was obeyed, sometimes not.
The roses in the east bloomed again, and the pink of their petals
melted into the clear blue of the upper skies. Because their beauty
compelled him Haward looked at the heavens. The Court of the Orphan!...
_When my father and my mother forsake, me, the Lord taketh me up_.
Haward acknowledged with surprise that portions of the Psalter did
somehow stick in the memory.
The face of the child was dark and thin, but the eyes were large and
there was promise in the mouth. It was a pity--
He looked at her again, and suddenly resolved that he, Marmaduke
Haward, would provide for her future. When they met once more, he
should tell the Governor and his brother adventurers as much; and if
they chose to laugh, why, let them do so! He would take the child to
Williamsburgh with him, and get some woman to tend her until he could
find kind and decent folk with whom to bestow her. There were the new
minister of Fair View parish and his wife,--they might do. He would
give them two thousand pounds of sweet-scented a year for the child’s
maintenance. Oh, she should be well cared for! He would--if he thought
of it--send her gifts from London; and when she was grown, and asked in
marriage, he would give her for dowry a hundred acres of land.
As the strengthening rays of the sun, shining alike upon the just
and the unjust, warmed his body, so his own benevolence warmed his
heart. He knew that he was doing a generous thing, and his soul felt
in tune with the beamy light, the caroling of the birds, the freshness
and fragrance of the morning. When at last the child awoke, and, the
recollection of the night coming full upon her, clung to him, weeping
and trembling, he put his arm around her and comforted her with all the
pet names his memory could conjure up.