The Hearts Highway | Page 8

Then I ventured to address her, riding close to her side, that the captain
and the sailors should not hear, and think that I held her in slight
respect and treated her like a child, since I presumed to call her to
account for aught she chose to do.
"Madam," said I as low as might be, "do you remember the day?"
"And wherefore should I not?" asked she with a toss of her gold locks
and a pout of her red lips which was childishness and wilfulness itself,
but there went along with it a glance of her eyes which puzzled me, for
suddenly a sterner and older spirit of resolve seemed to look out of
them into mine. "Think you I am in my dotage, Master Wingfield, that I
remember not the day?" said she, "and think you that I am going deaf
that I hear not the church bells?"
"If we miss the service for the unlading of the goods, and it be
discovered, it may go amiss with us," said I.
"Are you then afraid, Master Wingfield?" asked she with a glance of
scorn, and a blush of shame at her own words, for she knew that they
were false.
I felt the blood rush to my face, and I reined back my horse, and said no
more.
"I pray you have the goods that you know of unladen at once, Captain
Tabor," said she, and she made a motion that would have been a stamp
had she stood.
Calvin Tabor laughed, and cast a glance of merry malice at me, and
bowed low as he replied:
"The goods shall be unladen within the hour, Mistress," said he, "and if
you and the gentleman would rather not tarry to see them for fear of
discovery--"
"We shall remain," said Mistress Mary, interrupting peremptorily.
"Then," said Captain Calvin Tabor with altogether too much of
freedom as I judged, "in case you be brought to account for the work
upon the Sabbath, 'The Golden Horn' hath wings for such a wind as

prevails to-day as will outspeed all pursuers, even should they borrow
wings of the cherubim in the churchyard."
I was glad that Mistress Mary did not, for all her youthfulness of
temper, laugh in return, but answered him with a grave dignity as if she
herself felt that he had exceeded his privilege.
"I pray you order the goods unladen at once, Captain Tabor," she
repeated. Then the captain coloured, for he was quick-witted to scent a
rebuff, though he laughed again in his dare-devil fashion as he turned to
the sailors and shouted out the order, and straightway the sailors so
swarmed hither and thither upon the deck that they seemed five times
as many as before, and then we heard the hatches flung back with claps
like guns.
We sat there and waited, and the bell over in Jamestown rang and the
long notes died away with sweet echoes as if from distant heights. All
around us the rank, woody growth was full of murmurs and movements
of life, and perfumes from unseen blossoms disturbed one's thoughts
with sweet insistence at every gust of wind, and always one heard the
lapping of the sea-water through all its countless ways, for well it loves
this country of Virginia and steals upon it, like a lover who will not be
gainsaid, through meadows and thick woods and coarse swamps, until
it is hard sometimes to say, when the tide be in, whether it be land or
sea, and we who dwell therein might well account ourselves in a
Venice of the New World.
I waited and listened while the sailors unloaded the goods with many a
shout and repeated loud commands from the captain, and Mistress
Mary kept her eyes turned away from my face and watched persistently
the unlading, and had seemingly no more thought of me than of one of
the swamp trees for some time. Then all at once she turned toward me,
though still her eyes evaded mine.
"Why do you not go to church, Master Wingfield?" said she in a sweet,
sharp voice.
"I go when you go, Madam," said I.
"You have no need to wait for me," said she. "I prefer that you should
not wait for me."
I made no reply, but reined in my horse, which was somewhat restive
with his head in a cloud of early flies.
"Do you not hear me, Master Wingfield?" said she. "Why do you not

proceed to church and leave me to follow when I am ready?"
She had never spoken to me in such manner before, and she dared not
look at me as she spoke.
"I go when you go, Madam," said I again.
Then, suddenly, with an impulse half of