“But I do not even know Mr. Randolph,” she said, mildly. “I have not been taught to trust or to respect him.”
“But if we have done him injustice,” said David, eagerly, “surely we must welcome an opportunity to correct it. He has worked against us, it is true. He could overthrow our charter, but he chooses rather to become one of our number. If I go abroad, I may fail at the Court of Charles. If we can save our charter here at home, it will be the grandest thing we have ever done. And you can do it, my child—you can do this great thing! You will, I feel you will!”
Garde was a little terrified. The old man’s anxiety was almost dreadful to see. Had he been laying bare a steel crow-bar in his nature, she could not have comprehended more thoroughly the stubbornness which she felt opposition to him now would discover in her grandfather.
“This comes to me so suddenly,” she said, “that I cannot at once think upon it.”
“But you can think what it means to the colony!” said the man, passionately. “You would wish to save the charter! Mr. Randolph has become my friend. I have found that my former estimate of his character was false. He can take away our charter in a moment—his work is done. But he also can save us! He shall save us! Are you a daughter of this commonwealth—a daughter of a patriot? You can save the charter. Oh, what a glorious honor! You will let me take your answer back?”
Garde’s color had gone again, not to return. This was a moment that frightened her heart. No one could have lived there as she had done and not be saturated with the hopes and fears of the colonists, not be trembling for the government, the independence, the manhood they had builded up on those stern rocks. In her first baby utterances she had lisped the word “Charter.” For ten years their charter had been their Holy Grail to those American men and women of Massachusetts. The air was pregnant with patriotism. The Charter had hung trembling in the balance month after month, ever since Cromwell’s son had abdicated the English throne and Charles had sat in power once again. Garde could not have been the true daughter of America she was, had she not thrilled first with the possibilities of this fateful moment, before her soul shivered at the price she would have to pay to perform this splendid-seeming deed.
Sense of duty had been bred and ingrained in the children of that hour. It held a sway well-nigh incredible in youthful minds. It fell athwart Garde’s thought with appalling weight. And yet her soul leaped to Adam’s arms for protection, as her heart bounded to his with love. She felt as if she could crash through the window and run away, to the woods,——anywhere, to escape even the contemplation of this thing. Had it not been for her knitting she felt she must have done something dreadful. As it was she seemed to tie herself into the pattern—the wilder self—and so to gain a sense of calmness.
“I could hardly answer this so soon,” she said. “Haste first leaves no time for thought after.”
“Thought, child?” demanded the old man, on whom her calmness acted as her mother’s had before her. “Can you wish to hesitate, when the whole state stands breathless for your answer?”
“And did you hold me so lightly that you said, ‘Yes,’ the moment this was presented to you?” said Garde. “Grandther, I was but a young girl this morning. What has a moment done to make me such a woman as this?”