The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth CenturyFreeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
History
The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century
Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
"'Twas the morris dancers and the May-pole; 'tis the first of May,
as you know, madam," said Mary in her sweet voice, made clear and
loud to reach her grandmother's ear; then up she went to kiss her,
and the old woman eyed her with pride, which she was fain to conceal
by chiding. "You will ruin your complexion if you go out in such a
wind without your mask," she said, and looked at the maiden's roses
and lilies with that rapture of admiration occasioned half by memory
of her own charms which had faded, and half by understanding of the
value of them in coin of love, which one woman can waken only in
another.
For Catherine, Madam Cavendish had no glance of admiration nor word,
though she had tended her faithfully all the day before and half the
night, rubbing her with an effusion of herbs and oil for her
rheumatic pains. Yet for her, Madam Cavendish had no love, and
treated her with a stately toleration and no more. Mary understood
no cause for it, and often looked, as she did then, with a
distressful wonder at her grandmother when she seemed to hold her
sister so slightingly.
"Here is Catherine, grandmother," said she, "and she has had a
narrow escape from being pressed as Maid Marion by the morris
dancers." Madam Cavendish made a slight motion, and looked not at
Catherine, but turned to me with that face of anxious kindness which
she wore for me alone. "Saw you aught of the Golden Horn this
morning, Master Wingfield?" asked she, and I replied truthfully
enough that I had not.
Then, to my dismay, she turned to Mary and inquired what were the
goods which she had ordered from England, and to my greater dismay
the maid, with such a light of daring and mischief in her blue eyes
as I never saw, rattled off, the while Catherine and I stared aghast
at her, such a list of women's folderols as I never heard, and most
of them quite beyond my masculine comprehension.
Madam Cavendish nodded approvingly when she had done. "'Tis a wise
choice," said she, "and as soon as the ship comes in have the goods
brought here and unpacked that I may see them." With that she rose
stiffly, and, beckoning Catherine, who looked as if she could
scarcely stand herself, much less serve as prop for another, she
went out, tapping her stick heavily on one side, on the other
leaning on her granddaughter's shoulder.
VIII
I looked at Mistress Mary and she at me. We had withdrawn to the
deepness of a window, while the black slaves moved in and out,
bearing the breakfast dishes, as reasonably unheeded by us as the
cup-bearers in a picture of a Roman banquet in the time of the
Caesars which I saw once. Mistress Mary was pale with dismay, and
yet her mouth twitched with laughter at the notion of displaying,
before the horrified eyes of Madam Cavendish, those grim adornments
which had arrived in the Golden Horn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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