King James, however, was too honorable a monarch to resort to trickery so infamous. Instead he commended the captain in the highest terms, made him an intimate of his court, knighted him Sir William Phipps and invited him to become an Englishman and reside with them there for the remainder of his life.
Phipps received his honors modestly. He was too patriotic to desert America and bluntly said so to his King. He and Adam received, as their share of the treasure, the one tenth agreed upon, amounting to thirty thousand pounds, of which sum all that the Captain could prevail upon Rust to accept was a third, a sum, the rover said, far in excess of the needs of his retinue and himself.
CHAPTER XLI.
FATE’S DEVIOUS WAYS.
At Boston it was not a matter of many months before Henry Wainsworth and piety Tootbaker, having been made aware that Garde was no longer provisionally betrothed to Randolph, resumed their former hopes and attentions, as to attending Meeting and paying sundry little visits to the Soams, when Garde could be expected to be seen.
Garde had become a subdued little person, wishing only that she might not be seen by any one as she came and went on her simple rounds of daily life. Her grandfather had recovered so that once more he pothered about in his garden and read in his Bible and busied himself with prattle, more childish than wise.
The old man saw little of his compatriots. He lived as one only partially awake from a recent dread. He never discussed the colony’s politics, for his friends, when they came to see him, spared him the ordeal which invariably resulted from a mention of the word charter. On this topic he was quite mad. Almost galvanically, the word produced in his brain a mania, half fear, half fury, in which he seemed to conceive that Garde was the author of woes to which nothing could ever give expression. In such a mood, he was savagery itself, toward the patient girl.
Gradually, so gradually that she could not have said when the impression commenced to grow upon her, Garde discovered that Henry Wainsworth was exceedingly kind, thoughtful and soothing, in her joyless existence. There was something kindred in his own isolation, and in his very bashfulness, or timidity, for it kept him so often silent, when he was with her alone. She had always respected Henry. His patient devotion could not but touch her at length. It was not so much a flattery as it was a faithfulness, through all the discouragements she had given him always.
This line of thought having been awakened in her breast, she noted more of the little, insignificant signs which go to make up the sum of a man’s real regard—the regard on which a woman can safely rely as one to endure and to grow.
In the soreness of her heart, it was almost sweet to think of Henry’s quiet attentions. It was calming. It lent a little spot of warmth and color to her otherwise cheerless life. She could never love him, as she had loved Adam—nay, as she loved him still,—but the dreariness of her present days might find relief in a new sort of life. Out of the duties, which as a housewife she would experience daily, surely a trust, an esteem for Henry, great enough almost to be called a love, would come, with the years.