THE COMING OF THE SHIP: THE DOCTOR’S PATIENT.
A selected reading from The Head of a Hundred. Edited by Maud Wilder Goodwin. Dr. Humphrey Huntoon, a young Englishman, in the early days of the colonies comes to this country in pique at the coldness of Elizabeth Romney, his sweetheart, who is above him in social station. The story is filled with charming pictures of colonial life and sentiment. In the opening part of this reading, Huntoon, in a burst of confidence, tells his old friend, the ship-captain, of his disappointment in love. In the second part a new ship comes from England.
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’TIS strange what lightness of spirit comes with the laying bare of a sore heart. Verily, a trouble half told is half healed. Here I, who had not been merry for months, found myself now smiling in the dark, as I talked of those pleasant days of old. Then, like a mourner ashamed that he hath forgot his grief, I caught up my melancholy once more.
“Well, well! All that is over and gone. If she loved me in those childish years (and I still think she did), she outgrew the foolishness soon enow. Yet, from time to time, as she grew into maidenhood, she let drop some word, some hint, as tho’ she would say, ‘Perhaps!’ but ere I could pry into the meaning of her words her eyes gathered merriment, like as if they were laughing at the poor fool who allowed himself to be cheated thus.
“Once, ere I went to Oxford, I rode beneath her window. She, leaning out of the casement, did drop a sprig of lad’s-love, which a moment before she had been holding to her lips; then, when I looked up, with my heart in my eyes, she slammed the window to, and a moment later I heard her calling her dog within.”
“Tush, tush, lad! A woman’s ways are like the maze at Hampton Court. If thou lose the clew, thou mayst wander round and round forever and be no nearer coming out. Why didst thou not ask her flat, would she have thee for her husband?”
“Why not, indeed. Ah, therein lies the root of all my bitterness! When I had finished my studies at Oxford and got my degree as a physician and chirurgeon in London, I found myself with a scanty portion of a thousand pounds. Yet had I none the less high hopes of carving my way to fame and fortune, as other men have done from still lower estate. This did I write to Sir William Romney, and in a packet I enclosed a letter to his daughter.
“Therein I told her anew what she knew of old, that I loved her. I asked her not to share the fortunes of a poor adventurer. I did but seek a pledge that she would grant me a year and a day, and a promise that if by that time I had aught of success to lay at her feet, she would look on my suit with favor.”
“It was done like thyself, Humphrey. What answer made she?”
“Answer! Oh, it makes me mad to think on’t! She might have said me nay, and yet I would have gone my way loving her like a knight of old, without hope of reward or return; but to be flouted and baited, and badgered and mocked, when I had offered her that poor thing, my heart—oh, it was ill done!”
The instinct of my body to keep pace with my restless and turbulent soul led me to stride up and down, striving to master the storm within me. When I took my seat again, Captain Chester drew me on to speak further.
“Perhaps,” he said, “the maid was but the mouthpiece of her father. I hear of him everywhere as a hard, cold man.”
“Oh! Ay, ay, ay,” I broke in, “I have said all that over and over to myself, like a madman, since ever I received Sir William’s cool note of dismissal, inclosing the daughter’s mocking lines; but whenever I would soothe my sore heart with the thought that she wrote it not of her own free will, my reason says: ‘’Tis false, and thou knowst it!’ She would brave a thousand fathers if she really loved, and her will was crossed. I know, of course, that her refusal jumped with her father’s wish.”
I was down for a week with that wretched James City fever. By day I shivered, and by night I burned with a consuming heat. Pory said it served me right that I, who had come hither hoping to fatten on the misfortunes of others, should myself fall a victim.
Thus he talked, like himself, and equally like himself he stayed by my bedside day and night, scarcely taking off his clothes, tending me as if I were a baby, and mixing doses of the bark, a sovran remedy, till he saw me well on the road to recovery.
My convalescence he cheered as he had cured my illness. One day (I was quite recovered then) my lively friend came bounding in, full of excitement.
“A ship lieth in the harbor,” cried he, “and she hath brought—what think ye?”
“Sooth, I know not. How should I? And if I did, ‘twere cruel to spoil thy sport by saying so. What is this wondrous cargo?”
“Why, twenty maids, come out with one that is already betrothed to Babcock, the blacksmith!”
“Well, what of it?”
“What of it, man! Why, ‘twould be the making of the colony could we get twenty score in place of one. Ay, I say, ‘twould be the making of this colony. A shipload of good wives were the best cargo England could send us.”
“And thou wouldst choose the handsomest for thyself, by right of thine office, I dare be sworn.”
“Nay, not I. I have ever had too poor luck at play to throw dice with Fate for such heavy stakes.” With this he ran out, laughing.
When he was gone, I stretched my head forth from the window of my lodging. Yonder in the river, a tall ship lay black against the shining water. I could see the sailors in their glazed hats and loose, flapping breeches, casting anchor to the time of their harsh song. Skiffs and canoes were plying busily betwixt the ship and the shore. One curious thing I noted, that, whereas only one went out in each canoe, two came back; and then, as mine ear caught the ringing of the church bells, and mine eyes marked the gallants who had gone of late ill-clad and worse shaven, now tricked out in bands of fine lawn and ruffles at their wrists, a sudden light brake on me, and I realized that all this was because the twenty maids were come, and straightway these bachelors, who till now had been quite content in their single estate, must set their silly hearts on being married.
“Ho! there, Master John!” I shouted, as I caught sight of Pory’s grizzled head and pointed beard under my window. “Read me this riddle: ‘What is that which flies when pursued, and pursues when fled from?’”
“A maid.”
“Verily, thou art a shrewd fellow to have guessed it. Come up, therefore, and tell me all thou knowest which thou mayst do, and yet be gone in five minutes.”
“That my civility may the more brightly shine against the foil of thine uncivil words, I will come, and, to heap coals of fire on thy head, I will tell thee of the scene on shipboard. The choosing of husbands and wives went on as merrily as the choosing of partners for a country-dance. It was a busy market, I can tell thee.”
“A market—how meanest thou?”
“Why, ‘tis thus they manage it, by bargain and sale; and belike ‘tis as good an arrangement as any, since when the husband hath paid down his hundred pound of tobacco for a wife, he is bound to make himself believe he hath a bargain, and the wife, seeing he hath set so high an estimate on her worth, in honor must strive to live up to his valuation.”
“And was every one of the twenty maids married thus?”
“Ay, all but one, and she remained without a partner from choice, which thou wouldst have declared impossible. Many offered for her, though she wore her veil and coverchief close and would not show her features. But she would look at none, and went off at the last to lodge with her friend—one that was taken to wife by Miles Cary. I was somewhat struck with curiosity over the conduct of the one unwed maid, and I searched out her name in the ship’s register, where she is set down as Elizabeth Devon. Now, fare thee well! for my five minutes are over, and if I told thee more, ‘twould be what I know not, and, ergo—lies.”
After my nimble-witted friend was gone his way, I sat for long, looking down into the street and watching the bridal couples as they passed from under Parson Buckle’s blessing to their new homes. All this billing and cooing and setting up of new households made me feel but the more lonely and doleful. So I went not abroad that day, tho’ I was well enow to be out, but sat reading and studying with no other comforter than my pipe. But, to say truth, the pipe is no mean consoler, and there is no friend that doth so adapt himself to thine every mood, so partake, as it were, the very shade and subtlety of thy thought and feeling, as tobacco. Well, as I sat thus, the day wore on to evening. The flame in my pipe was expiring with a final flicker, when a knock sounded at my door.
“Come in!” I called, and Miles Cary entered.
“Why, how now, Cary! Art thou come to complain of thy bride of half-a-dozen hours? Hath she beaten thee over the head with the new broomstick, and thou art ashamed of thy black eye, and come to get it healed by stealth after dark?”
“Nay, ‘tis nowt that,” answered the burly yeoman, as he stood awkwardly twirling his Monmouth cap on the end of his finger.
I saw that my jests were less amusing to him than to me; so putting off my jibing tone, I asked him seriously if aught were ailing in his household.
“Ay, ‘tis the friend of my wife.” He grinned with sheepish pleasure over the last word.
“Is that the unwed maid, Elizabeth Devon, of whom Master Pory spake?”
“Yes; her arm was hurt on the ship in the storm, and methinks it must have been ill-treated, for, in place of mending it grows ever worse; yet have we had a hard task to persuade her to see the leech, and even now am I come without her consent. I fear me she is o’er-headstrong; but my Kate will have nowt said to her save wi’ cap in hand, and she gives more attention to her friend than to her husband.”
“Well, well, that is but natural. Grumble not, Cary; but remember that thy courtship must be done after marriage, and be content to bear awhile with coolness.”
I took up my box as I spake, and we went out into the night together. As we walked through the town, I marvelled much that all should be changed of a sudden. ‘Twas no longer a camp, but a village. For good or evil, the first English homes had been planted here in the heart of the wilderness.
We stopped before Cary’s cottage, and I marked its shining neatness. The stepping-stone in front of the door was polished as smooth as marble, and the floor within, for all it was but of logs rudely smoothed with an axe, was clean and neatly set in order.
As I stepped into the kitchen, which served for hall and parlor and dining-room all in one, I was greeted by the mistress of the house with a deep-bobbing courtesy which brought her short skirt down over her bright stockings, and almost hid the high heels and pointed toes of her wedding slippers.
“Is thy friend badly hurt?” said I.
“Ay, sir, she suffers much, but she bears it ever with so brave a heart and so cheerful a face that none would guess it to look at her.”
“Hast thou bandages and swathing-cloths at hand?”
“Nay, not rightly at hand, but a plenty in the sea-chest, which hath not yet been opened. Wilt thou lend a hand—Miles?”
I could but smile to watch the coquetry with which the name was spoken, and to see how a soft tone and glance oiled the wheels of life and made the half-sulky husband her willing slave.
Foreseeing that the uncording of the chest would be a matter of time, I stepped to the door of the nearer chamber (the house boasted but two), and finding it ajar, I bowed my head to its low proportions and entered.
The room had been filled with flowers, in honor of the home-coming of the bride. ‘Tis wonderful to me how thoughtful and tender to women these rough fellows oft be. The window-sash, its panes filled with oiled paper, was swung open and the night wind blew the perfume of wildrose and honeysuckle in my face. I can feel it still. A single candle shed a dim light around and threw a yellow ray on a wooden armchair close to the table.
As I turned me toward this chair, suddenly my heart stopped beating. If the thing had not been so wildly impossible, I could have sworn it was Elizabeth Romney herself sitting there. The maid, whoever she was, had the same delicate curve of ear and throat, the same droop of the eyelid, the very trick of the hand lying open palm upward on the knee.
I brushed my hand across my eyes and looked again. My God!—Incredible!—It could not be!—yet what a likeness!
Then I told myself that I was going mad from dwelling too long on one thought. I must speak and break the spell. As I opened my lips, a sudden searching conviction fell upon me like a lightning flash that this was indeed she, the one woman in the world to me.
I gasped out: “Elizabeth!”
The maiden turned, and for the first time caught sight of me standing thus in the doorway. She gave one low cry of “Thou!”
After that one word we faced each other in blank silence. The folk in books have ever some pat speech ready for such a moment; but in real life ‘tis not so. How could I speak when my brain was whirling like a millwheel, and my voice choked in my throat? I stood still and looked upon her, and the longer I looked, the harder I found it to believe my eyes were not playing me a trick.
Yet ‘twas but the truth they told me. There she sat—she that had been brought up to be tended and waited upon, and compassed about with luxuries, now sick and suffering, with only a wooden armchair to rest upon, and a cottage roof to shelter her. How, in God’s name, had it come to pass?
Her face was deadly pale, for all she had been three months on the sea; and now, as she gazed at me, she grew even whiter, and swayed as though she would fall in a swoon. But all the while she kept her eyes fixed steadfastly on mine. They were eyes never to be forgotten by one who had seen them once. I have heard folks praise the brilliancy of her glance and the curling length of her eye-lashes; but, to her lover, there lay a subtler charm in the tender trouble of her eye-brows, bending slightly downward toward the inner corner. I noted it now as distinctly as the drowning man counts the bubbles in the water.
I was the first to find my voice, and I hated myself that it sounded hard and stern, when I was mad to fling myself at her feet and entreat her to trust herself to me. But that abominable diffidence of mine, which is so akin to pride, made me seem in her eyes, I doubt not, like a pragmatical schoolmaster chiding a recreant child.
“Elizabeth Romney!—am I dreaming, or is it indeed thou—come on the ship with the maids?”
An angry flush swept over the whiteness of her cheek and rose to meet the hair that curled in childish rings round her little ears.
“Thou art thinking, perhaps, that I, too, like these others, am come three thousand miles in search of a husband?”
I knew not what to say, and so I said nowt.
“Well, believe ‘t if you will!” she flung out, her eyes one blaze of wrath; “but believe not that thou art such a husband as I would seek—not though thou wert the only man on this side of the ocean, and though all the tobacco in Virginia were the price in thine hand.”
“I am not likely to believe that, Mistress Betty,” I answered bitterly. “Yet would I rather believe anything than that this journey is a mad prank of thine without rhyme or reason. Wild and venturesome thou hast ever been, but never unmindful of thy sex or thy station.”
“Which means that now I have shown myself unmindful of both. I thank thee, Humphrey Huntoon; but till I seek thy counsel, do thou keep thy censure!”
I know not what we might have spoken further, for anger was hot in both our hearts; but at that instant Dame Cary and her good man came in, bearing a roll of linen and a whale-oil lamp, which, vile smelling as it was, gave a brighter light than the candle.
As it shone on the maiden’s face, the look of illness and suffering was more plain to be seen; and I cursed myself for a fool that I had forgotten all this time the arm I had been called to tend. I took the linen from Dame Cary’s hand and tore it into strips.
“Will you be good enough to let me see the hurt?” I asked, in a constrained voice. Without a word, she threw back her short cape and showed me the right arm wound round and round with clumsy swathings, which I straightway set to work to unwind. It was well that my calling had trained the fingers to work coolly.
I went near to breaking out into oaths when I laid bare the arm and saw how great a bungler had had charge of the hurt there on the ship. As it was, that which had been so ill done must be undone.
The doing of this cruel kindness went near to break my heart, yet she who suffered bore it without a groan. The free hand grasped the arm of the chair more closely, and the face was set in the look of one who would die ere look or sound of weakness be wrung from her. Only the sharper drawing down of the eyebrow marked the strain and stress of suffering.
At length, after a time which seemed to me longer than any month I have known since, the poor arm was rebound in a pair of splints hastily made from barrel staves. As I swathed it in band over band of linen, I turned to Dame Cary—I dared not trust my voice to address that other. “Your friend,” quoth I, “hath an excellent courage.”
“That hath she!” broke in Miles Cary, who had the true English love of bravery, and who, as he stood by, holding the lamp while I worked, had been greatly stirred by the sight of the maid’s endurance. “Had we but a company of soldiers like her, we had no need of a stockade round about James City.”
“Ay,” put in his wife, “but ye should have seen her on the sea! In that great storm when her arm was broke, she was the only one of us that screamed not, nor wailed, nor wished herself on land; but went about cheering and encouraging all.”
Methought I saw a glance of warning pass from the girl in the chair to the woman in waiting, for she straightway brake off her discourse, and spake quite sharply to her husband, bidding him go before with the light, that we might follow without breaking our necks.
So they went out and I walked behind them stupidly as far as the door. There I found my wits, and, turning back, I stepped close to the armchair.
“The doctor,” quoth I, in a low voice, “craves pardon for the hurt he could not help.”
“The doctor,” she replied, also speaking very soft, “is pardoned in advance, for he hath but done his duty. For the friend, ‘tis another matter. I cannot soon forget that he has failed me.”
“Yet he, too, hath but thy good at heart, and that thou wilt some day confess; and so must I leave thee. Good-night, madam!”
I spoke the last words in a louder tone, and, bowing low, I passed out of the chamber.
Maud Wilder Goodwin.
XVIII