The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

When her young sister had dismounted and had gone up the steps, she kissed her, and the two entered the hall, clinging together in a way which was pretty to see. I never saw such love betwixt two where there was not full sympathy, and that was lacking always and lacked more in the future, through the difference in their two temperaments gotten from different mothers.

Madam Cavendish was still in her bedchamber, and the two sisters and I dined together in the great hall. Then, after the meal was over, I went forth with my book of Sir William Davenant's plays, and sought a favourite place of mine in the woods, and stayed there till sundown. Then, rising and going homeward when the mist floated over the marshlands like veils of silver gauze, and the frogs chorused through it in waves of sound, and birds were circling above it, calling sweetly with fluting notes or screaming with the harsh trumpet-clang of sea-fowl, I heard of a sudden, just as the sun sank below the western sky, a mighty din of horns and bells and voices from the direction of Jamestown. I knew that the sports which a certain part of the community would have on a Sabbath after sundown, when they felt so inclined, had begun. Since the king had been restored such sports had been observed, now and then, according to the humour of the governor and the minister and the others in authority. Laws had been from time to time set forth that the night after the Sabbath, the Sabbath being considered to cease at sundown, should be kept with decorum, but seldom were they enforced, and often, as now, a great din arose when the first gloom overspread the earth. However, that night was the 30th of April, the night before May day; and there was more merrymaking in consequence, though May was not here as in England, and even in England not what it had been in the first Charles's reign.

But they kept up their rollicking late that night, for the window of my chamber being toward Jamestown, and the wind that way, I could hear them till I fell asleep. At midnight I wakened suddenly at the sound of a light laugh, which I knew to be Mary Cavendish's. There was never in the maid any power of secrecy when her humour overcame her. She laughed again, and I heard a hushing voice, which I knew to be neither her sister's nor grandmother's, but a man's.

I was up and dressed in a trice, and sword in hand, and out of my window, which was on the first floor, and there was Mistress Mary and Sir Humphrey Hyde. I stepped between them and thrust aside Sir Humphrey, who would have opposed me. "Go into the house, madam," said I to her, and pointed to the door, which stood open. Then while she hesitated, half shrinking before me, with her old habit of obedience strong upon her, yet with angry wilfulness urging her to rebellion, forth stepped her distant cousin Ralph Drake from behind a white-flowering thicket, and demanded to know what that cursed convict fellow did there, and had he not a right to parley with his cousin, and was her honour not safe with her kinsman and he an English gentleman? I perceived by Ralph Drake's voice that he had perchance been making gay with the revellers at Jamestown, and stood still when he came bullyingly toward me, but at that minute Mistress Mary spoke.

"I will not have such language to my tutor, Cousin Ralph," said she, "and I will have you to understand it. He is a gentleman as well as yourself, and you owe him an apology." So saying, she stamped her foot and looked at Ralph Drake, her eyes flashing in the moonlight. But Ralph Drake, whose face I could see was flushed, even in that whiteness of light, flung away with an oath muttered under his breath, and struck out across the lawn, his black shadow stalking before him.

Then Mistress Mary turned and bade me goodnight in the sweetest and most curious fashion, as if nothing unusual had happened, and yet with a softness in voice as if she would fain make amends for her cousin's rough speech, and fluttered in through the open door like a white moth, and left me alone with Sir Humphrey Hyde.

Sir Humphrey was but a lad to me, scarcely older than Mistress Mary, for all his great stature. He stood before me scraping the shell walk with the end of his riding whip. Both men had ridden hither, and I at that moment heard Ralph Drake's horse's hard trot.

"If you come courting Mistress Mary Cavendish, 'tis for her guardians, her grandmother, and elder sister to deal with you concerning the time and place you choose," said I, "but if it be on any other errand—"

"Good God, Harry," broke in Sir Humphrey, "do you think I am come love-making in such fashion, and with Ralph Drake in his cups, though I swear he fastened himself to me against my will?"

I waited a moment. Sir Humphrey had been much about the place since he was a mere lad, and had had, I believe, a sort of boyish good-will toward me. Not much love had he for books, but I was accounted a fair shot, and had some knowledge of sports of hunting and fishing, and had given him some lessons, and he had followed me about some few years before, somewhat to the uneasiness of his mother, who could not forget that I was a convict.