Maud Wilder Goodwin

“ Little did Elinor Calvert know or care about the effect of fighting on national character as she stood at the door of her cottage in the little hamlet of St. Mary's, holding her boy by the hand. Her heart had room for only one thought,—terror,—not so much for herself as for her child. "But surely," she thought, "none could be so cruel as to harm him!" and she looked down on his yellow curls and drew him closer, and folded her cloak about him as though that feeble shelter could avail anything against men with hearts of steel and arms of iron. ”

“ Ralph Ingle turned as they passed him. "I must watch that man," he thought. "He who takes a child by the hand takes the mother by the heart."
"Wait," said Cecil at the door. "I must doff my finery, for who knows when I may need it to receive another tenant?"
"Prudent lad! I will do the same, lest I catch the fever and then thou must needs seek a new tenant. But, Cecil, promise me one thing."
"Ay, a dozen if you wish."
"Promise me that, whatever tenants thou mayst have hereafter, thou wilt like me best." ”

“ Whoever the guilty one is, we must leave him to God, and I believe in my heart his suffering is greater than mine, or than any that ever Christopher Neville knew."
"Think you all souls are as sensitive as thine?" asked Ingle, gazing with reverence into the face so near and yet so infinitely far away.
"I know not; but I can conceive no nature so base that it would not writhe to see its just censure borne by another; and to be so sunk in sin as to feel nothing,—why, that would be most pitiable of all." ”

“ Oh, be a man, be a man, I pray thee, and give her back scorn for scorn!"
"She has shown me no scorn,—only a sad, half-sick listlessness, as though she too had got a death-wound at my hands. It is that which has cut me to the heart as no pride or wrath or disdain had had power to do."
Peggy shivered. Her brother noticed it. "What a brute I am," he murmured, "to keep thee standing here in the cold night air. 'Tis of a piece with my selfishness. Get thee in and know that thou hast brought something like comfort to the heart of a sorrow-stricken man. Good-night, and God bless thee!" ”

“ Oh, little Peggy! women do not own the only minds superior to evidence. From across the hall a young man is watching every expression of your face, feeling sure that your brother is innocent because you think him so—confident that Governor Brent is a cold, hard man, eager to believe evil of a friend, and vowing that as for him, Romney Huntoon, his sword, his honor, his life itself are at the service of Christopher Neville, with whom he has scarcely spoken, and of Christopher's sister Peggy whom he has known for a matter of ten days. ”

“ The placidity had stiffened into obstinacy, as a water-drop stiffens into an icicle. The nostrils were slightly pinched, and the lines which bigotry draws around the mouth were already defining themselves in dim outline. No one can determine to believe evil of another without planting in his own soul the seeds of deterioration. Mary Brent had no sooner said in her [146] heart, "Christopher Neville is a murderer," than she began to desire his punishment, and having banished him from the circle of her sympathy, she was fain to justify herself by seeking, and secretly wishing proof of his guilt. ”

“ Now, what is a poor maid to do under such distracting confusions?"
"Mistress Neville, you are a coquette."
Peggy raised her eyebrows till they arched like a rainbow.
"I'd rather be a tailor and make coats for the moon than fit myself to your humors."
"Every man knows best what trade fits him; and now you have spoken of it, the goose doth seem your proper symbol.
"Yes," Romney went on, growing more and more nettled, "the moon changes but every quarter, while to meet the changes of your whims a man must be on tip-toe every hour." ”

“ So amazed was the invader that he made no attempt to stir, but stood looking at the woman before him with ashen face and dropped jaw.
"Dick Ingle," said Margaret, still with pistol levelled, "you have pursued me for years, first with your unwelcome love and then with malignant hate; you have lied about me to Thomas White; you have tried to ruin my life. Now you say you have killed my brother. Is there any reason why I should not kill you? Nay, do not move so much as a hair, or you are a dead man. I know how to shoot, and I have no hesitation in taking life. ”

“ Neville stood, looking coldly at the intruder. He was jealous, for he saw the light of a new interest dawning in Elinor Calvert's face, and he saw the hot, passionate light of love at first sight as clear as day in Ralph Ingle's eyes.
For the first time he was conscious with angry protest that he was growing old. His cast-down glance fell upon his grizzled mustachios, and he inwardly cursed the sign of age. "The conceited stripling!" he muttered, as he looked at the bowing golden curls. "I know I am not just. I have no ambition to be just. I hate him. ”

“ In her dreams it seemed to Peggy that she was standing on a ladder in an English orchard. Romney was shaking the tree and for every apple that fell claiming a kiss, while she from her vantage ground of the ladder pelted him with the red apples instead.
The dream brought a smile to the pale young lips.
"It is well," said Mistress Huntoon to herself, watching her; "she sleeps and she smiles. Youth will do the rest." After bending an instant over the sleeper she left her and slipped down the staircase into the hall. Romney was walking up and down. ”

“ In those dark days of her early widowhood Elinor received a letter from her husband's kinsman, Lord Baltimore.
"I know your pride too well," he wrote, "to offer you any help; but you must not deny my right to provide for my godson. Money with me is scarce, but land is plenty, and I offer you in Cecil's name a grant of seven thousand acres in Maryland. It is covered with virgin forest. Like the old outlaw you must needs store your grain in caves and stable your horses and cattle under the trees; wherefore I shall counsel Cecil to name his manor Robin Hood's Barn. ”

“ To love cautiously is not to love at all. For thee, thy punishment—the hardest, I believe, for a just man—shall be to see too late the wrong thou hast done; the friendship lightest held where it should have been strongest, the faith withheld where the hand should have been outstretched in aid, the life sacrificed that should have been a bulwark to the state,—all this will be laid at thy door—"
[235]
Then,—with a sudden break,—"God forgive me! What a hypocrite I am! My sin is heavier than thine. I knew him, I loved him, and I failed him. Death holds no bitterness like this." ”

“ CANDLEMAS EVE "Couthin Marget, dost think the ground-hog can see his shadow when he comes out of his hole to-morrow?"
"I fear it, Cecil. See how bright the west is!"
It was Candlemas Eve at St. Mary's. All day Cecil had been in the woods gathering snowdrops for the shrine of the Virgin, and binding bay-leaves into wreaths to decorate Our Lady's Chapel. Now, at sunset, he was resting with his head against Margaret Brent's knee under the great mulberry-tree on the bluff. ”

“ Still in the distance hovered the two phantom ships gray against the universal grayness, yet dimly discernible, the smaller boat settling lower and lower like some despairing animal feeling death near at hand yet struggling to the last.
"It is the end," said Ralph Ingle. "The man is drowned, and his boat is sunk. Whatever he has done, he has made the fullest atonement man can make."
"Yes," said Brent, uncovering his head. "I think that we have seen the end of this unhappy business. A life has been given for a life. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." ”

“ But sometimes storms clear the air better than sunshine; and when we met at the gate of death, as it seemed, in the massacre at Flower da Hundred yonder, I knew that in life or death he was mine and I his."
"Master Huntoon," cried Peggy, turning to Romney with a merry eye but a trembling lip, "thinkst, then, thou couldst get up a massacre? 'Tis evident nothing less will show a woman what manner of thing love is! Yet that would not serve either, for in such like times 'tis only the great things of life that we heed. ”

“ The years of suffering, of waiting, of toil and danger threatening to end in ignominious death were weighed in the balance against the minutes when he had held Elinor Calvert close to his heart, and lo the years flew up light as thistledown, not worthy to be compared with the weight of glory of those transcendent moments when they stood together, he and she, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, no word said, because all was understood, and they two alone in the round world of a kiss. ”

“ I have known this wondrous news of thine these twelve months more or less."
"And never told me?"
"Oft would I have spoken," answered Elizabeth, mockingly, "but feared lest thou take it too hard."
"The same old Betty!" cried Humphrey Huntoon, laughing, yet a trifle vexed, for the most amiable of men loves not to be made a jest of. "But there must be some deeper reason why thou shouldst have held thy peace on a matter touching us both so nearly. Faith, thou art like the fish Walton tells of, that closeth its mouth in August and openeth not till spring." ”

“ Something always goes wrong when Ralph Ingle is about. Trust him not with thy little finger, much less thy hand in marriage."
"Listen, then, Margaret, and thou wilt rejoice with me and understand the better my lightness of spirit this night when I tell thee that yester morning Ralph Ingle renounced me, told me I was too cold for any love save for a dead man,—God help me, that is true,—then suddenly, as if carried beyond his own control, he seized me in his arms and kissed me, and then flung through the doorway. ”

“ Peggy smiled a watery, tearful smile as she heard the five guns. How little, she thought, had she imagined under what circumstances that salute would be fired when Captain Ingle lightly promised it at St. Mary's!
But her hostess would give her no time for thought. She led her swiftly up the winding stair to the little white bedroom, and in a trice she had set black Dinah at work heating the sheets with the great brass warming-pan. Susan was fetching water hot and cold, and she herself was loosening the lacings with which Peggy's own numb fingers fumbled in vain. ”

“ Ingle watched Cecil disappear with the birds over his arm, then he leaned across the door near Elinor.
"You are more beautiful than ever," he said.
"I have outgrown the age of flatteries, Master [282] Ingle. Beauty belongs to youth and joy, and both have left me forever."
"One type of beauty belongs to these. At St. Gabriel's yonder you were beautiful like a great lady of the court. To-day you are beautiful like the Blessed Virgin."
"Hush! You speak something akin to blasphemy."
"Nay, not a whit. Did not the old masters paint Our Lady from the women around them, and none so fair as you?" ”

“ Such beautiful girls, in their jewels and laces and brocades and high-heeled slippers! Such magnificent men, with rainbow colors in sashes and velvet coats, with ruffles of costly embroideries and buckles reflecting the light of the candles! Most gorgeous of all, Sir William Berkeley!
It quite took Peggy's breath away when this elegant courtier bowed before her and begged her hand for the pavan. Yet there he was, sweeping the floor before her with the white plumes of his hat and craving the honor of the dance. ”

“ Now, had Peggy been rosy and dimpling and happy as she was a fortnight ago, and as she must needs have been to arrest the wandering fancy of Romney Huntoon, his mother would have greeted her with as much coolness as Virginia hospitality permitted; but seeing a pale, tearful little face, weary and woe-begone, peeping out from the brown curls, the older woman felt her heart touched by a keen remembrance of herself as a young girl, a stranger in a strange land ”

“ How ready at the first whisper to sink from faith into doubt! To me God gave such chance as falls to the lot of few women to hold up the hands of my love, and the chance slipped from me, and I joined the ranks of them that doubted and turned aside.
"Is it too late now to repent? No, never too late for that. What consolation, what joy, what glory to feel that perhaps ages hence, when I have worked out the penance my sin demands in Purgatory, I may rise to the presence of the saints, where, for all the churchmen say, God must make a place for souls like Christopher's! ”

“ The blow from the bowsprit or the shock of the water or both together, falling on nerves so terribly overwrought, had unseated reason and dethroned memory, at least made a gap which the wandering mind was powerless to fill.
Neville dwelt much in the world of his childhood, fancied himself riding along English lanes, and pulling briar and eglantine in the valleys of [294] Surrey and Somerset with Peggy by his side. Then his imagination led to a beautiful golden-haired girl who went robed in green holding herself like some stately palm. ”

“ Little Peggy, it has been the one drop of sadness in our cup that we have had no daughter. Now we happen to have taken a fancy to you, though you do snarl flax. Nay, never blush and look at Romney; it is a daughter we want, though she be not our son's wife. We love you for yourself, and we love Christopher for himself. ”

“ There we will make our home till we can betake ourselves to Cecil Manor. The house of the Brents can never again be shelter for me or mine."
"Elinor! Have I deserved this?"
"Thou hast been a kind kinsman to me, Giles, and for the past I thank thee; but thou art a hard man, and my heart is bitter against thee for the part thou hast played in driving an innocent man to his death."
"I drive the poltroon!" muttered Brent. "Was he not drowned in a cowardly attempt to escape from a trial he dared not face?"
"No!" flamed Elinor.
"Thou dost speak as one who knows. Perhaps thou hast information. ”

“ Even as she spoke, something white rose to the surface and sank again, and Peggy knew it for Christopher's face with death in it, and but for Romney's strong arm around her, she, too, would have thrown herself into that cold grave.
"Let me go to him!" she shrieked aloud in her anguish of soul. "O Kit! Dead! Dead!"
The words seemed to fall dully on the surrounding [222] wall of fog. No sound; not even an echo answered. Away to the right a single sail flitted ghostlike, showing no hull to support it. On the left close at hand loomed the packet which had wrought so much harm. ”

“ For answer Mistress Huntoon pointed through the window to where Romney sat on the edge of the wharf vexing the placid breast of the York River by a volley of pebbles, flipped between his thumb and forefinger.
As the boy sat thus idly occupied, his hand full of pebbles, his head full of bitter thoughts, his heart of a curious numbness, he felt a light touch on his shoulder, but he did not turn. ”

“ Her figure was tall, and crowned by a head nobly proportioned and upheld by a white pillar of throat. Her features were heavily moulded, especially the lips and chin. The golden hair which swept her brow softened its marked width, yet the impression conveyed by the face might have been cold had it not been for the softness of the eyes under their fringe of dark lashes.
In spite of the flashes of gaiety which marked her intercourse with her son, the prevailing expression of Mistress Calvert's face was sad. ”

“ Here she paused, and added softly, with a mounting flush and a tender smile, "'Twas with Christopher Neville."
Margaret Brent looked up astonished.
"Yes, Cousin, I can speak his name, and mean to talk often of him with Cecil, to make the boy, so far as I can, in his image, so tender and true, so steadfast and faithful to death."
"Thou art a brave woman."
"Nay, I have been till now a very foolish one. Even now, as thou didst see, Cecil's words and all they called up cut to the quick like a two-edged knife; but this is wrong, and I know it. ”