CHAPTER XIV
"Beauty is a witch—"
—Much Ado About Nothing.
I will tear the core out of many yellow pages of diffuse writing spiced with smug moral reflections.
Desire Michell had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops. Her father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter from England to the Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country." There he found a congregation, and they lived much respected. Their culture appeared to be far beyond that of their few, hard-working neighbors. Young Mistress Michell was reputed learned in the use of simples, among other arts, and to have been "of a beauty exceeding the custom among godly women, to so great degree that sorcery should have been suspected of her."
However, sorcery was not suspected; not even when her fame spread among near-dwelling Indian tribes who gave her a name signifying Water on which the Sun is Shining. Admiration was her portion, then, with all the suitors the vicinity held. But from fastidiousness or ambition she refused every proposal made to her father for her. She walked aloof and alone, until another sort of wooer came to the gate of the minister's house.
This man's full name was not given, apparently through the writer's cautious respect for place and influence. He was vaguely described as goodly in appearance, of high family, but not abundantly supplied with riches. However he chanced to come to the obscure settlement was not stated. He did come, saw Desire Michell, and fell as abjectly prostrate before her as any youth who never had left the village.
He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At first he was welcome at the minister's house. But a day came when Master Michell forbade him to cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized, that Sir Austin's suit had not been honorable to the maid.
Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the torment of not seeing Desire Michell. Their betrothal was made public, and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage in the spring.
Travel was slow in the winter, news trickled slowly across snowbound distances. With spring came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of his affair with an heiress recently come to New York from England. She was rich in gold and grants of land from the Crown. Her husband would be a man of weight and influence, it seemed.
Sir Austin had married her.