Before I could reply Mammy Jacks came to summon her. One of the blacks wanted her, and she broke off and went into the house.
She left me adrift on a full tide of wonder. What a woman, I thought! Nay, what a girl, for she was not more than twenty, if she were not still in her teens! If all the women on the Colonial side were like her, I thought, if but a tithe of her spirit and will were in them, the chances of poor old England in the strife which she had provoked were small indeed! I could compare the girl only to the tragic heroines of the Bible, to Judith, or to Jael, who set her hand to the nail and her right hand to the hammer. Very, very nearly had she driven the nail into my temple!
And yet she had, she must have a gentler side. She had broken down on that night, when she thought that the deed was done. I could not be mistaken in that; I had seen her fling herself in a passion of remorse on her father’s breast. And then how strong, how deep was the affection which she felt for that father! With what tenderness, with what tears and smiles and caresses had she flown to his arms on his return from the field!
She was a provoking, a puzzling, a perplexing creature; and alas, she began to fill far more of my thoughts than was her due. I was idle, and I could not thrust her from them. Because she did not come near me I dwelt on her the more. The chair at the other end of the veranda remained empty all that day and the next, and it was not until noon of the third day that I again had a word with her. Then, as she passed by me with her head high, she saw that something was lacking on the little table on which I took my meals, and she fetched it herself. I wished to bring on a discussion; and as she set the thing down, “Thank you,” I said politely. “But can I be sure that I am safe in eating this?”
She did not fire up as I expected. “You think that I may poison you?” she said, making no attempt to evade the point.
“Well, you told me,” I replied, somewhat taken back, “that you were prepared to do it again, you know?”
She sighed. “If I meant it then, I do not mean it now,” she said. “I have done all that I can. I leave the rest to God!”
Certainly she said the most singular things! However, what surprise I felt I hid, and I tried to meet her on her new ground. “That being so,” I said smoothly, “why should we not bury what is past—for the time? I have to live for a month under your roof, Miss Wilmer. We must see one another, we must meet hourly and daily whether we will or not. Cannot you forget for a month that I am an enemy?”
“No,” she answered with the utmost directness, “You are an enemy. Why should I pretend that you are not? We are rebels and we are proud of the name. You are of those who are paid to reduce us, to make war on us”—her color rose, her eyes dilated as she spoke—“to burn our towns, to waste our fields, to render our old homeless and our children motherless! And why? Because you are false to your traditions, false to your liberties, false to that freedom for which your forefathers died, and for which we are dying to-day!”
The spirit, the tone, the brooding fire in her eyes filled me with admiration. But I was wise enough to let no trace of this escape me. “I cannot admit that,” I said, “naturally.”