I cast about in my mind what to say, being resolved not to betray Mary Cavendish, even did this man know what I could betray, and yet being resolved to have some understanding of what was afoot.
"A man of honour includes not maidens in plots, Sir Humphrey," said
I finally.
Sir Humphrey stammered and looked at me, and looked away again. Then suddenly spake Mistress Mary from her window overhead, set in a climbing trumpet-vine, and so loudly and recklessly that had not her grandmother and sister been on the farther side of the house they must have heard her. "'Tis not Sir Humphrey included the maid in the plot, but the maid who included Sir Humphrey," said she. Then she laughed, and at the same moment a mock-bird trilled in a tree.
"Why do you not tell Master Wingfield that the maid, and not you nor Cousin Ralph, is the prime mover in this mystery of the cargo of furbelows on the Golden Horn?" said she, and laughed again.
"I shield not myself behind a maiden's skirts," said Sir Humphrey, grimly.
"Then," cried Mary, "will I tell thee, Master Wingfield, what it means. He cannot betray us, Humphrey, for his tongue is tied with honour, even if he be not on our side. But he is on our side, as is every true Englishman." Then Mary Cavendish leaned far out the window, and a white lace scarf she wore floated forth, and she cried with a great burst of triumph and childish enthusiasm: "I will tell thee what it means, Master Wingfield, I will tell thee what it means; I am but a maid, but the footsteps of General Bacon be yet plain enough to follow in this soil of Virginia, and—and—the king gets not our tobacco crops!"
VI
I have always observed with wonder and amusement and a tender gladness the faculty with which young creatures, and particularly young girls, can throw off their minds for the time being the weight of cares and anxieties and bring all of themselves to bear upon those exercises of body or mind, to no particular end of serious gain, which we call play and frivolity. It may be that faculty is so ordained by a wise Providence, which so keeps youth and the bloom of it upon the earth, and makes the spring and new enterprises possible. It may be that without it we should rust and stick fast in our ancient rivets and bolts of use.
That very next morning, after I had learned from Mary Cavendish, supplemented by a sulky silence of assent from Sir Humphrey Hyde, that she had, under presence of ordering feminine finery from England, spent all her year's income from her crops on powder and shot for the purpose of making a stand in the contemplated destruction of the new tobacco crops, and thereby plunged herself and her family in a danger which were hard to estimate were it discovered, I heard a shrill duet of girlish laughs and merry tongues before the house. Then, on looking forth, whom should I see but Mary Cavendish and Cicely Hyde, her great gossip, and a young coloured wench, all washing their faces in the May dew, which lay in a great flood as of diamonds and pearls over everything. I minded well the superstition, older than I, that, if a maid washed her face in the first May dew, it would make her skin wondrous fair, and I laughed to myself as I peeped around the shutter to think that Mary Cavendish should think that she stood in need of such amendment of nature. Down she knelt, dragging the hem of her chintz gown, which was as gay with a maze of printed posies as any garden bed, and she thrust her hollowed hands into the dew-laden green and brought them over her face and rubbed till sure there was never anything like it for sweet, glowing rosiness. And Cicely Hyde, who must have come full early to Drake Hill for that purpose, did likewise, and with more need, as I thought, for she was a brown maid, not so fair of feature as some, though she had a merry heart, which gave to her such a zest of life and welcome of friends as made her a favourite. Up she scooped the dew and bathed her face, turning ever and anon to Mary Cavendish with anxious inquiries, ending in trills of laughter which would not be gainsaid in May-time and youth-time by aught of so little moment as a brown skin. "How look I now?" she would cry out. "How look I now, sweetheart? Saw you ever a lily as fair as my face?" Then Mary, with her own face dripping with dew, with that wonderful wet freshness of bloom upon it, would eye her with seriousness as to any improvement, and bid her turn this way and that. Then she would give it as her opinion that she had best persevere, and laugh somewhat doubtfully at first, then in a full peal when Cicely, nothing daunted by such discouragement in her friend's eyes, went bravely to work again, all her slender body shaking with mirth. But the most curious sight of all, and that which occasioned the two maids the most merriment, though of a covert and even tender and pitying sort, was Mary's black serving-wench Sukey, a half-grown girl, who had been bidden to attend her mistress upon this morning frolic. She was seated at a distance, square in the wet greenness, and was plunging both hands into the May dew and scrubbing her face with a fierce zeal, as if her heart was in that pretty folly, as no doubt it was. And ever and anon as she rubbed her cheeks, which shone the blacker and glossier for it, she would turn the palms of her hands, which be so curiously pale on a negro's hands, to see if perchance some of the darkness had stirred. And when she saw not, then would she fall to scrubbing again.
Presently up stood Mary and Cicely, and Cicely flashed in the sun a little silver mirror which she had brought and which had lain glittering in the grass a little removed, and looked at herself, and saw that her brown cheeks were as ever, with the exception of the flush caused by rubbing, and tossed it with her undaunted laugh to Mary. "The more fool be I!" she cried out, "instead of washing mine own face in the May dew, better had it been had I locked thee in the clothes-press, Mary Cavendish, and not let thee add to thy beauty, while I but gave my cheeks the look of fever or the small-pox. I trow the skin be off in spots, and all to no purpose! Look at thyself, Mary Cavendish, and blush that thou be so much fairer than one who loves thee!"