CHAPTER XXXIV.
“It is the cry of women, good, my lord.”
Macbeth.
Agreeably with the promise of Bacon, the captured ladies were treated with a respect and deference which allayed in a great degree their many apprehensions. Still they could not refrain from expressions of the strongest indignation at an act so unusual, so violent, and so entirely at war with the established notions of chivalry at the time. As the reader will readily conjecture, our good friend, Mrs. Temple, was by no means the most patient under the wrongs she had endured, and resisting the kind attentions of those around her, she was vehement in her denunciations of her captors, and in her apprehensions of a thousand imaginary dangers.
“Oh my God!” she cried, “I know that they intend to murder us. To think of leaving a quiet home, and being exposed to such treatment as this. Oh, my precious husband, if he only knew what a situation his poor Betsey was in at this moment; but never mind, as sure as I am a living woman, he shall know it, and then we will see.”
“My dear Mrs. Temple,” said Mrs. Ballard, another of the captives, “do not give way to your feelings thus. It is useless, and will only serve to irritate these men.”
“Men! they are not men!” returned the excited old lady, refusing to be comforted. “Men never would have treated ladies so. They are base, cruel, inhuman wretches, and, as I said before, if I live, to get to Jamestown, Colonel Temple shall know of it too—so he shall.”
“But reflect, my dear friend, that our present condition is not affected by this very natural resolution which you have made, to inform your husband of your wrongs. But whatever may be the object of these persons, I feel assured that they intend no personal injury to us.”
“No personal injury, forsooth; and have we not sustained it already. Look at my head-tire, all done up nicely just before I left the hall, and now scarcely fit to be seen. And is it nothing to be hauled all over the country with a party of ruffians, that I would be ashamed to be caught in company with; and who knows what they intend?”
“I admit with you, my dear madam,” said Mrs. Ballard, “that such conduct is unmanly and inexcusable, and I care not who hears me say so. But still,” she added in a low voice, “we have the authority of scripture to make friends even of the mammon of unrighteousness.”
“Friends! I would die first. I who have been moving in the first circles, the wife of Colonel Temple, who, if he had chosen, might have been the greatest in the land, to make friends with a party of mean, sneaking, cowardly ruffians. Never—and I'll speak my mind freely too—they shall see that I have a woman's tongue in my head and know how to resent these injuries. Oh, for shame! and to wear swords too, which used to be the badge of gentlemen and cavaliers, who would rather have died than wrong a poor, weak, defenceless woman—much less to rob and murder her.”