Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
“None,” answered Haward. “I go myself to Fair View to-morrow, and then
I shall ask you to drink with me again.”
As he spoke he held out his hand. MacLean looked at it, sighed, then
touched it with his own. A gleam as of wintry laughter came into his
blue eyes. “I doubt that I shall have to get me a new foe,” he said,
with regret in his voice.
When he had bowed to the lady and to her father, and had gone out
of the room and down the lilac-bordered path and through the gate,
and when the three at the window had watched him turn into Duke of
Gloucester Street, the master of Westover looked at the master of
Fair View and burst out laughing. “Ludwell hath for an overseer the
scapegrace younger son of a baronet; and there are three brothers of an
excellent name under indentures to Robert Carter. I have at Westover a
gardener who annually makes the motto of his house to spring in pease
and asparagus. I have not had him to drink with me yet, and t’other day
I heard Ludwell give to the baronet’s son a hound’s rating.”
“I do not drink with the name,” said Haward coolly. “I drink with the
man. The churl or coward may pass me by, but the gentleman, though his
hands be empty, I stop.”
The other laughed again; then dismissed the question with a wave of his
hand, and pulled out a great gold watch with cornelian seals. “Carter
swears that Dr. Contesse hath a specific that is as sovereign for the
gout as is St. Andrew’s cross for a rattlesnake bite. I’ve had twinges
lately, and the doctor lives hard by. Evelyn, will you rest here while
I go petition Æsculapius? Haward, when I have the recipe I will return,
and impart it to you against the time when you need it. No, no, child,
stay where you are! I will be back anon.”
Having waved aside his daughter’s faint protest, the Colonel
departed,--a gallant figure of a man, with a pretty wit and a heart
that was benevolently gay. As he went down the path he paused to
gather a sprig of lilac. “Westover--Fair View,” he said to himself,
and smiled, and smelled the lilac; then--though his ills were somewhat
apocryphal--walked off at a gouty pace across the buttercup-sprinkled
green toward the house of Dr. Contesse.
Haward and Evelyn, left alone, kept silence for a time in the quiet
room that was filled with late sunshine and the fragrance of flowers.
He stood by the window, and she sat in a great chair, with her hands
folded in her lap, and her eyes upon them. When silence had become more
loud than speech, she turned in her seat and addressed herself to him.
“I have known you do many good deeds,” she said slowly. “That gentleman
that was here is your servant, is he not, and an exile, and unhappy?
And you sent him away comforted. It was a generous thing.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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