Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“ Think you that one heart can outweigh two, and the misery of one be of any account before that of three?"
Then suddenly she looked sharply at her sister and cried out angrily:
"Catherine Cavendish, I know what this means. 'Tis but another device to part us. You love him not. You have hated him from the first. You have hated him, and he is no more guilty than you be. 'Tis but a trick to turn me from him. Fie, think you that will avail? Think you that a sister's heart counts with a maid before her lover's? Little you know of love and lovers to think that." ”

“ All around us the rank, woody growth was full of murmurs and movements of life, and perfumes from unseen blossoms disturbed one's thoughts with sweet insistence at every gust of wind, and always one heard the lapping of the sea-water through all its countless ways, for well it loves this country of Virginia and steals upon it, like a lover who will not be gainsaid, through meadows and thick woods and coarse swamps, until it is hard sometimes to say, when the tide be in, whether it be land or sea, and we who dwell therein might well account ourselves in a Venice of the New World. ”

“ Those great fields of Major Robert Beverly's lay before us in the full moonlight, overlapping with the lusty breadth of the new leaves gleaming with silver dew, and upon them we fell. We hacked and cut, we tore up by the roots. In a trice we were bedlam loosened—that is, the ruder part of us. Some of us worked with no less fury, but still with some sense of our own dignity as destroyers over destruction. But the rabble who had swelled our ranks were all on fire with rage, and wasted themselves as well as the tobacco. They filled the air with shouts and wild screams and peals of laughter. ”

“ She was as slender as a reed in this marshy country of Virginia, and her voice was a sweet whisper, like the voice of one in a wind, and she had a curious gracefulness of leaning toward one she loved when in his presence, as if, whether she would or no, her heart of affection swayed her body toward him. Always, in thinking of my mother, I see her leaning with that true line of love toward my stepfather or my brother John, her fair hair drooping over her delicate cheeks, her blue eyes wistful with the longing to give more and more for their happiness. ”

“ For some little time I did not think of Mary Cavendish, so hedged about was I as to my freedom of thought and love by my physical ills, for verily after a man has been out of consciousness with a wound, it is his body which first struggles back to existence, and his heart and soul have to follow as they may.
So I lay there knowing naught except the weary pain of my wounds, and that sense of stiffness which forbade me to move, and the fretful heat of that fierce west sunbeam, and the buzzing swarm of flies, for some little time before the memory of it all came to me. ”

“ Harry, Harry, I know that you are what you are, a convict and an exile, to shield Catherine, to shield a granddaughter of mine, who should be in your place. Harry Wingfield, I know that Catherine Cavendish is guilty of the crime for which you are in punishment, and, woe is me, such is my pride, such is my wicked pride, that I have let you suffer and said never one word. ”

“ I said to myself that now Mary Cavendish was farther from me than ever before. Some dignity of wretchedness there might be in the fate of a convict condemned unjustly, but none in the fate of a man who sat in the stocks for all the people to gaze and laugh at.
I said to myself that that cruelest fate of any—to be made ridiculous in the eyes of love—was come to me, and love henceforth was over and gone. And thinking so, those grinning and jibing faces multiplied, and the air rang with laughter, and I trow I was in a high fever all night. ”

“ We were near Locust Creek, and the great house stood still and white in the sunlight, and there was no life around it except for the distant crawl of toil over the green of the tobacco fields and the great hum of the bees in the flowering honey locusts which gave, with the creek, the place its name. Sir Humphrey was coming from the direction of the house, riding slowly, stooping in the saddle as if with thought, and I guessed that he had been to see to the safety of the contraband goods. When he saw me he halted and shouted, in his hearty, boyish way, "Halloo, halloo, Harry, and what luck?" ”

“ Oh, Harry, was there ever one like that girl? All the spirit of daring of a man she has, and yet is she full of all the sweet ways of a maid. Faith, she would draw sword one minute and tie a ribbon the next. She would have followed Bacon to the death, and sat up all night to broider herself a kerchief. Comrade and sweetheart both she is, and was there ever one like her for beauty? Harry, Harry, saw you ever such a beauty as Mary Cavendish? ”

“ And Cicely laughed, and took her face in her two hands and held it away that she might see it.
"What matters it to poor Cicely whether her own face be fair or not, so long as it is dear to thee, and so long as she can see thine!" she cried as passionately as a lad might have done, and I frowned, not with jealousy, but with a curious dislike to such affection from one maid to another, which I could never understand in myself. Had Cicely Hyde had a lover, she would have said that fond speech to him instead of Mary Cavendish, but lover she had none. ”

“ Surely no face of woman was ever like Mary Cavendish's, as she sat there beside me, with such an exaltation of love, which made it like the face of an angel. Not one word she said, but looked at me, and I knew that after that she was mine forever, in spite of my love, which would fain shield her from me lest I be for her harm, and I realised that love, when it is at its best, is past the consideration of any harm, being sufficient unto itself for its own bliss and glory. ”

“ I know that, my poor Harry, but what is that to us?"
"I cannot let thee wed a convict; a man with his honour stained, dear heart," I said.
Then she fixed her blue eyes upon mine with such a look as never I saw in mortal woman. She knew at that time what sentence had been fixed upon me for my share in the tobacco riot, but I did not know, and then and there she formed such a purpose, as sure no maid, however great her love for a man, formed before.
"Wait and see what manner of woman she is who loves thee, Harry," she said. ”

“ Of a surety there must be a quieting and calming power in some of the feminine industries which be a boon to the soul.
But, as I passed through the hall, up looked Mary, and her beautiful face flashed out of peace into a sunlight of love and enthusiasm.
"Oh," she cried out, "oh, was there ever anyone like my sweetheart Catherine? To think what she hath done for me, to think, to think! And she, dear heart, loving the king! But better she loves her little sister, and will stand by her in her disloyalty, for the love of her. Was there ever any one like her, Master Wingfield?" ”

“ Truly, after all, a man's vanity is his point of vantage, and I wonder greatly if that be not the true meaning of the vulnerable spot in Achilles's heel. Some slight dignity, though I had not so understood it, I had maintained in the midst of my misfortunes. To be a convict of one's free will, to protect the maid of one's love from grief, was one thing, but to sit in the stocks, exposed to the jibes of a common crowd, was another. ”

“ XVII Mary Cavendish raised her voice high until it seemed to me like a silver trumpet, and cried out with a wave of her white arm to them all: "On to Laurel Creek, I pray you! Oh, I pray you, good people, on to Laurel Creek, and cut down my tobacco for the sake of Virginia and the honour of the Colony."
It needed but a puff of any wind of human will to send that fiery mob leaping in a new direction. Straightway, they shouted with one accord: "To Laurel Creek, to Laurel Creek! Down with the tobacco, down with the governor, down with the king! ”

“ Indeed I have often wondered whether a woman, when she is in pursuit of any given end, can progress by other methods than an ant, which hath no power of circuitousness, and will climb over a tree with long labour and pain rather than skirt it, if it come in her way. Straight at her purpose she went. "Harry, Harry," she said, still in that sharp whisper, "you will not, you cannot—she is but a child."
Then, before I could reply, out ran Mary Cavendish herself, and was close at my side, turning an angry face upon her sister.
"Catherine," she cried out, "how dare you? I am no child. ”

“ The musicians in the gallery were sawing away for their lives on violins, and working breathlessly at the hautboys, and all that gay company of Virginia's best, spinning about in a country dance of old England. Such a brave show of velvet coats, and breeches, and flowered brocade waistcoats, and powdered wigs, and feathers, and laces, and ribbons, and rich flaunts of petticoats revealing in the whirl of the dance clocked hose on slender ankles, and high-heeled satin shoes, would have done no discredit to the court. But of them all, Mistress Mary Cavendish was the belle and the star. ”

“ A man or woman who is but a bond slave to love and incapable of aught but the longing for it, is but a poor lover.
"I tell thee, Harry, cut down the plants on Laurel Creek!" she cried again, and I answered to appease her, not daring violent contradiction lest I rouse her to some desperate act, this wild, young maid with Nathaniel Bacon's hair in the locket against her heart, and as fiery blood as his in her veins, that it should come in good time, but that I was under the leadership of others and not my own. ”

“ There is in all youth and imperfection a stage wherein it turns at bay to protect its helplessness with a vain show of inadequate claws and teeth, and Catherine Cavendish had reached it, and I also, in my different estate as a boy.
Catherine towered over me with her slender height, her sallow hair falling in silky ringlets over her dull cheeks, and when she spoke her voice rang sharp where mine would have growled with hoarseness. ”

“ I whispered back. "So far as the goods go, there is no more danger."
"What did you, Harry?"
"Sir Humphrey," I whispered back, while Mary's sweet voice in the mare's delicate ear sounded like a song, "sometimes an unguessed riddle hath less weight than a guessed one, and some fish of knowledge had best be left in the stream. I tell thee she is safe." So saying, I looked him full in his honest, boyish face, which was good to see, though sometime I wished, for the maid's sake, that it had more shrewdness of wit in it. ”

“ So out of the Beverly plantation we swept; those on horseback at a gallop and those on foot tramping after, and above the tumult came that farthest-reaching cry of the world—the cry of a little child frantic with terror.
Then they were for going to another large plantation belonging to one Richard Forster, who had gone in Ralph Drake's party, when all of a sudden the horses of us who were leading swerved aside, and there was Mistress Mary Cavendish on her Merry Roger, and by her side, pulling vainly at her bridle, her sister Catherine. ”

“ And there the two sat, keeping up that gentle drone of industry which I have come to think of as a note of womanhood, like the hum of a bee or the purr of a cat or the call of a bird. They sat erect, the delicate napes of their necks showing above their muslin kerchiefs under their high twists of hair, for even Mary had her golden curls caught up that morning on account of the flax-lint, and from their fair, attentive faces nobody would have gathered what stress of mind both were in. ”

“ Looking at my mother caressing my brother instead of myself, I entered so fully into her own spirit of tenderness that I no longer rebelled nor wondered. The knowledge of the weakness of one's own heart goes far to set one at rights with all others.
When I first saw Mary Cavendish she was, as I said before, a little baby maid of two and I a loutish lad of fourteen, and I was going through the park of Cavendish Hall, which lay next ours, one morning in May, when all the hedges were white and pink, and the blue was full of wings and songs. ”

“ When we had passed the negro huts, swarming with black babies shining in the sun as sleek as mahogany, and all turning toward us with a marvellous flashing of white eyeballs and opening of red mouths of smiles, all at once, like some garden bed of black flowers, at the sight of our gay advance, we reached the great house, and Mistress Catherine stood in the door clad in a green satin gown which caught the light with smooth shimmers like the green sheath of a marsh lily. ”

“ And I remember that I bore myself with a wary outlook for affronts to my newly fledging dignity, and concealed all that was stirring in me to new life, whether of nobility or natural emotion, as if it were a dire shame, and whenever I had it in my heart to be tender, was so brusque that I seemed to have been provided by nature with an armour of roughness like a hedgehog. ”

“ But Sir Humphrey shook his head.
"If but Nat Bacon were alive!" he sighed. "No leader have we, Harry. Oh, Harry, if thou wert not a convict! Captain Jaynes is sure out of his element in defending the rights of the oppressed, and should be on his own quarter-deck with his cutlass in hand and his rapscallions around him, slaying and robbing, to be in full feather. Naught can he do here. Lord, hear those women shriek! Why did they let women come hither, Harry? Sure Nick Barry is in his cups. Not thus would matters have been were Bacon alive. ”

“ As we came up with Mary, she looked at us over her shoulder with a brightness of triumph and withal something of merriment, like a child successful in mischief, and laughed, and waved her hand in which, as I live, she held a sword which had long graced the hall at Drake Hill, and I believe she meditated cutting the tobacco herself.
Then a great cheer went up for her, in which we, in spite of our misgivings, joined. Something so wonderful and innocent there was in the fresh enthusiasm of the maid. ”

“ Verily there are forces of this world which are beyond the overcoming of mortal man so long as he is encumbered by his mortality.
Mary Cavendish gathered up her blue and silver petticoats about her as closely as a blue flower-bell at nightfall, and stepped along daintily at my side, and the feel of her little hand on my arm seemed verily the only touch of material things which held me to this world. We came to a great pool of wet in our way, and suddenly I thought of her feet in her little satin shoes. ”

“ For Mary was shrieking that she would not go, and I knew that Humphrey did not know the way, and could not find it and launch the boat in time with that struggling maid to encumber him, for already the door trembled as if to fall.
"I tell you they will not harm a wounded man," I cried. "If you leave me I am in no more worse case than now, and if you remain, think of your sister. You know what she hath done to abet the rebellion. 'Twill all come out if she be found here. Oh, Catherine, if you love her, I pray thee, go." ”