In the bedrooms were four-posters and the things of four-poster days. Wing-cheek chairs of cozy depths told of old-time fireside dreams; a work-table with attenuated legs called to mind the wearisome needlework of our foremothers; and a brass warming-pan carried us back to the times when only such devices could make tolerable the frigid winter beds of our ancestors.
One of the riverward bedrooms is the romantic centre of Westover. It now belongs to the little daughter of the house; but nearly two centuries ago it was the room of Evelyn Byrd. Doubtless, in a sense, it will always be hers. The soft toned panelled walls, the old fireplace opposite the door, and the cozy little dressing-room looking gardenward, all seem to speak of her; and the imaginative visitor can quite discern a graceful figure in colonial gown there in one of the deep window seats that look out upon the pleasance and the river.
Here the unfortunate colonial beauty lived and died with the grief that she brought from over the sea. Here she laid away the rich brocade, the old court gown of brilliant, bitter memories that was shown to us at Brandon. Through these windows she looked with ever more wistful eyes out upon the river, her thoughts hurrying with its waters toward the ocean and the lover beyond. And one day, it is said, a great ship from London came, and it touched at the pier before her windows, and Charles Mordaunt plead his cause with the stern father once more. But he plead in vain, and the ship and the lover sailed away. For a while longer, the colonial girl waited and looked out upon the river, then she too went away and the romance was over.
In the family circle at Westover to-day are Mrs. Ramsay, two sons, and the little daughter, Elizabeth. Among well-known families appearing in Mrs. Ramsay's ancestry are the Sears and the Gardiners of Massachusetts, she being a descendant of Lyon Gardiner of Gardiner's Island. She also claims kinship with the Randolphs and the Reeveses of Virginia, and a collateral and remote connection with the Byrds.
When we returned to the steamer pier after our visit at Westover, we found quite a wind on the river and the houseboat fretfully bumping the pilings. We hastened aboard, ran down stream before a stiff wind, and skurried back into our harbour in Herring Creek, where Gadabout settled to her moorings as contented as a duck in the marshes.
CHAPTER XX
AN OLD COURTYARD AND A SUN-DIAL
For some time that little anchorage was our watery home acre. We came to call it our sunrise harbour. The opening where creek and river met faced to the east; and it was well worth while, if the morning was not too chill, to have an eye on that opening when the sun came up. Breaking through the mist veil that hung over the James, he cast a golden pontoon across the river, and then came over in all his splendour. He made straight for the mouth of our little creek, flooding wood and marsh with misty glow, and fairly crowding his glory into the narrow channel.
One morning, quite in keeping with the splendid burst of dawn, a loud report rang out over the marshes like the sound of a sunrise gun. But it was no salute to the orb of day. Somebody was poaching. More shots followed; and ducks, quacking loudly, fluttered up out of the marshes. Later, when we were at breakfast, a long rowboat, containing a man and a pile of brush and doubtless some ducks with the fine flavour of the forbidden, came out from a break in the marshes and went hurriedly up the stream.
As we lay in our harbour, we found ourselves almost unconsciously listening for a sound that seemed to belong to those chill, gray days. At last, from somewhere high up in the air, it came ringing down to us—the stirring "honk, honk" of the wild goose. Though our eyes searched the heavens, we could see nothing of the living wedge of flight up there that was cleaving its way southward with the speed of the wind. But we felt the thrill of that wild, stirring cry and were satisfied.
Whether the geese brought it or not, bad weather came with them. Half a gale came driving the rain before it down the river. Gadabout lay with her bulkheads closed tight about her forward cockpit, and must have looked most dismal. But inside, dry and warm, she was a very cheery little craft. We listened quite contentedly to the uproar, looking out from our windows upon windswept marsh and scudding clouds and the fussy little wavelets of our harbour. It added to our sense of coziness to look through a stern window out upon the river where the waters piled and broke white, in their midst an anchored schooner with swaying masts, tipsy between wind and tide.