And I laughed, though maybe with some slight bitterness, for I was but human, and that outburst of loving gratitude toward another, and another whom I held in slight esteem, when it was I who had given the child my little all, and presently, when my term was expired, would have to return to England without a farthing betwixt me and starvation, and maybe working my way before the mast to get there at all, had a sting in it. 'Twas a strange thing that anything so noble and partaking of the divine as the love of an honest man for a woman should have any tincture of aught ignoble in it, and one is caused thereby to decry one's state of mortality, which seems as inseparable from selfish ends as the red wings of a rose from the thorny stem which binds it to earth. Truly the longer I live the more am I aware of the speck which mars the completeness of all in this world, and ever the desire for a better, and that longing which will not be appeased groweth in my soul, until methinks the very keenness of the appetite must prove the food.
"Was there ever one like her?" repeated Mary Cavendish, and as she spoke, up she sprang and ran to her sister and flung a fair arm around her neck, and drew her head to her bosom, and leaned her cheek against it, and then looked at me with a sidewise glance which made my heart leap, for curious meanings, of which the innocent thing had no reckoning, were in it.
I know not what I said. Truly not much, for the mockery of it all was past my power of dealing with and keeping my respect of self.
I got my fowling-piece from the peg on the wall, and was forth and ranging the wooded shores, with my eyes intent on the whirring flight of the birds, and my mind on that problem of the times which always hath, and doth, and always will, encounter a man who lives with any understanding of what is about him, but not always as sorely as in my case, who faced, as it were, an army of difficulties, bound hand and foot. But after a while the sport in which I was fairly skilled, and that sense of power which cometh to one from the proving of his superiority over the life and death of some weaker creation, and the salt air in my nostrils, gave me, as it were, a glimpse of a farther horizon than the present one of Virginia in 1682, and mine own little place in it. Then verily I could seem to see and scent like some keen hound a smoothness which should later come from the tangled web of circumstances, and a greatness which should encompass mine own smallness of perplexity.
When I was wending my way back to Drake Hill, with my gun over shoulder and some fine birds in hand, I met Sir Humphrey Hyde.
We were near Locust Creek, and the great house stood still and white in the sunlight, and there was no life around it except for the distant crawl of toil over the green of the tobacco fields and the great hum of the bees in the flowering honey locusts which gave, with the creek, the place its name. Sir Humphrey was coming from the direction of the house, riding slowly, stooping in the saddle as if with thought, and I guessed that he had been to see to the safety of the contraband goods. When he saw me he halted and shouted, in his hearty, boyish way, "Halloo, halloo, Harry, and what luck?" as if all there was of moment in the whole world, and Virginia in particular, was the shooting of birds on a May morning. But then his face clouded, and he spoke earnestly enough. "Harry, Harry," he said, in a whisper, though there was no life nearer than the bees, and they no bearers of secrets, except those of the flowers, "I pray thee, come back to the hall with me, and let us consult together."
I followed him back to the house, and he sprang from his saddle, had a shutter unhasped in a twinkling, knowing evidently the secret of it, and we were inside, standing amongst the litter of casks and cases in the great silent desertion of the hall of Locust Creek. Then he grasped me hard by both hands, and cried out, "Harry, Harry Wingfield, come to thee I must, for, convict though thou be, thou art a man with a head packed with wit, and Ralph Drake is half the time in his cups, and Parson Downs riding his own will at such a hard gallop that 'twill surprise me not if he leave his head behind, and as for Dick and Nick Barry, and Captain Dickson, and—and Major Robert Beverly, and all the others, what is it to them about this one matter which is more to me than the whole damned hell-broth?"
"You mean?" I said, and pointed to the litter on the hall floor.
"Yes," and then, with a great show of passion, "My God, Harry Wingfield, why, why did we gentlemen and cavaliers of Virginia allow a woman to be mixed in this matter? If, if—these goods be traced to her—"
"And, faith, and I see no reason why they should not be, with a whole colony in the secret of it," I said, coldly.