CHAPTER XVII
ROMNEY
It was on the afternoon of the day after the collision with The Lady Betty that The Reformation rounded the last headland that shut Romney from the view. The river ran cobalt blue between its brown banks, bare but for the patches of snow that lay here and there in unsunned hollows. The sky arched above far and clear, save where a group of fleecy clouds bunched together like a flock of white sheep on the horizon.
The sunlight fell full on the western front of Romney as it stood in stalwart bulk against the black forest behind it, its wings outspread on either side like some wild bird sheltering its young. A stout stockade enclosed house and grounds, and ended on either side of the little wharf running out into the river.
In the doorway of the house stood a woman, her hand raised to shelter her eyes as she scanned the river to the southward. Mistress Huntoon was still beautiful, though the radiance of youth was gone. The pencilled eyebrow and the transparent curve of the delicate nostril, the lambent flame in the eyes, yet remained, and, above all, that indefinable attraction which hovers about some women from the cradle to the grave.
Just now she shivered a little as though she had been standing and looking long. Then she drew closer about her the cloak of gray paduasoy lined with yellow and held by carved clasps of polished marcasite.
"Will he never come?" she murmured. "'Tis nigh a week since he was to have reached home, and I cannot help worrying, for all his father laughs and bids me put away womanish fears and remember that the boy is well-nigh come to man's estate and better able than either of us to look after himself. Ah, what's that beyond the headland? A sail, a sail, Humphrey! Do you hear? a sail in the river! It must be Romney's, though it looks over large for The Lady Betty."
Her eager words brought her husband to her side, buttoning his doublet close as he shut the door behind him.
"Poor, poor little mother!" he said, as he laid a comforting arm about her shoulder, "we cannot let the lad go beyond the length of her apron string again, if she is to lead me such a life as this of last week. Why, we have had him die of seven separate deaths already. Let me see," and he began counting soberly on his fingers: "first, drowned in Chesapeake Bay; second, caught by pirates and carried off to the Bermudas; third, languishing in prison, for taking the part of Virginia in one of Master Claiborne's skirmishes between commonwealth and palatinate; fourth, stabbed in the streets of St. Mary's on a dark night and robbed of his gold; fifth, shot in a duel brought on by his hot temper 'so like his father's;' sixth, frozen to death on some lonely Maryland road; or last and worst of all, dead in love with some designing maid, wife, or widow there at St. Mary's and wholly forgetful of his duty to thee and me—ay, sweetheart?"
"Hush, Humphrey! Cease thy jesting and tell me is that The Lady Betty, or is it not?"
"Why, no, as I make out, 'tis too large for the ketch, deeper built, and with a prow more fit to buffet ocean waves. 'Tis more likely a merchant packet plying a regular trade with James City or St. Mary's; but come, let us signal her from the wharf and perhaps we may get some news of Romney."