Hearts Afire (10 page)

“So much better you look, Charlotte,” said Mother. “Where have you been all
the day? And did you see Mary
Blankaart
? And the
money, is it found yet?”

The family were at the supper-table; and
Joris
looked kindly at his truant daughter, and motioned to the vacant chair at his
side. She slipped into it, touching her father's cheek as she passed; and then
she answered, “At Mary
Blankaart's
I was not at all,
mother.”

“Where, then?”

“To Universal Store I went first, and with Mistress Gordon I have been all
the day.”

“Who sent you there, Charlotte?”

“No one, mother. When I passed the house, my name I heard, and Mistress
Gordon came out to me; and how could I refuse her? Much had we to talk of.”

Lysbet
Morgan saw her daughter's placid face, and
heard her open confession, with the greatest amazement. She looked at
Joris
, and was just going to express her opinion, when
Joris
rose, pushed his chair aside, and said, come with thy
father,
Charlotte
, and down the garden we will walk, and see if there
are dahlias yet, and how grow the gold and the white chrysanthemums.”

But all the time they were in the garden together,
Joris
never spoke of Mistress Gordon, nor of Charlotte's visit to her. About the
flowers, and the restless swallows, and the bluebirds, who still lingered,
silent and anxious, he talked.

“
Every one
speaks so highly of Sir Edward,” said
Charlotte; “so hard he tries to have many friends, and to be well spoken of.”

“That is his way,
Charlotte
; every man has his way.”

“And I like not the way of Sir Edward.”

“In business, then, he has a good name, honest and
prudent. He will make you a good husband.”

But, though
Joris
said nothing to his daughter
concerning her visit to Mistress Gordon, he talked long with
Lysbet
about it. “What will be the end, thou may see by the
child's face and air,” he said; “the shadow and the heaviness are gone. Like
the old Charlotte she is tonight.”

“And this afternoon comes here Sir Edward.
Scarcely he
believed me that Charlotte was out.
Joris
, what wilt
thou do about the young man?”

“His fair chance he is to have,
Lysbet
. That to
the Elder Van
Heemskirk
is promised.”

“The case now is altered. Sir Edward I like not. Little he thought of our
child's good name. With his sword he wounded her most. No patience have I with
the man. And his dark look thou should have seen when I said, “Charlotte is not
at home.” Plainly his eyes said to me, “Thou art lying.”

So the loving, anxious parents, in their ignorance, planned. Even then,
accustomed in all their ways to move with caution, they saw no urgent need of
interference with the regular and appointed events of life. A few weeks hence
Sir Edward called again on Charlotte. His arm was still useless; his pallor and
weakness so great as to win, even from
Lysbet
, that
womanly pity which is often irrespective of desert. She brought him wine, she
made him rest upon the sofa, and by her quiet air of sympathy bespoke for him a
like indulgence from her daughter. Charlotte sat by her small wheel, unplaiting
some flax; and Sir Edward thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever
seen. He kept angrily asking himself why he had not perceived this rare
loveliness before; why he had not made sure his claim ere rivals had disputed
it with him. He did not understand that it was love which had called this
softer, more exquisite beauty into existence. The tender light in the eyes; the
flush upon the cheek; the lips, conscious of sweet words and sweeter kisses;
the heart, beating to pure and loving thoughts,—in short, the loveliness of the
soul, transfiguring the meaner loveliness of flesh and blood, Sir Edward had
perceived and wondered at; but he had not that kind of love experience which
divines the cause from the result.

On the contrary, had
Harleigh
been watching
Charlotte, he would have been certain that she was musing on her lover. He
would have understood that bewitching languor, that dreaming silence, that
tender air and light and color which was the physical atmosphere of a soul
communing with its beloved; a soul touching things present only with its
intelligence, but reaching out to the absent with intensity of every loving
emotion.

For some time the conversation was general. But no one's interest was in
their words, and presently
Lysbet
Morgan rose and
left the room. Her husband had said, “Sir Edward was to have some
opportunities;” and the words of
Joris
were a law of
love to
Lysbet
.

Sir Edward was not slow to improve the favor. “Charlotte, I wish to speak to
you. I am weak and ill. Will you come here beside me?”

She rose slowly, and stood beside him; but, when he tried to take her hands,
she clasped them behind her back.

“So?” he asked; and the blood surged over his white face in a crimson tide
that made him for a moment or two speechless. “Why not?”

“Blood-stained are your hands. I will not take them.”

The answer gave him a little comfort. It was, then,
only a moral qualm. He had even no objection to such a keen sense of purity in
her; and sooner or later she would forgive his action, or be made to see it
with the eyes of the world in which he moved.

“Charlotte, I am very sorry I had to guard my honor with my sword; and it
was your love I was fighting for.”

“My honor you cared not for, and with the sword I could not guard it. Of me
cruel and false words have been said by everyone. On the streets I was ashamed
to go.”

“Your honor is my honor. They that speak ill of you, sweet Charlotte, speak
ill of me. Your life is my life. O my precious one, my wife!”

“Such words I will not listen to. Plainly now I tell you, your wife I will
never be,—never, never, never!”

“I will love you, Charlotte, beyond your dream of love. I will die rather
than see you the wife of another man. For your bow of ribbon, only see what I
have suffered.”

“And, also, what have you made another to suffer?”

“Oh, I wish that I had slain him!”

“Not your fault is it that you did not murder him.”

“An affair of honor is not murder, Charlotte.”

“Honor!—Name not the word. From a dozen wounds your
enemy was bleeding; to go on fighting a dying man was murder, not honor. Brave
some call you: in my heart I say, “Sir Edward was a savage and a coward.”

“Charlotte, I will not be angry with you.”

“I wish that you should be angry with me. Because some day you will be very
sorry for these foolish words, my dear love.”

“Your dear love I am not.”

“Tis true.”

“My dear love, give me a drink of wine, I am faint.”

His faint whispered words and deathlike countenance moved her to human pity.
She rose for the wine, and as she did so, called her mother; but Sir Edward had
at least the satisfaction of feeling that she had ministered to his weakness,
and held the wine to his lips. From this time, he visited her constantly,
unmindful of her frowns, deaf to all her unkind words, patient under the most
pointed slights and neglect. And as most men rate an object according to the
difficulty experienced in attaining it, Charlotte became every day more
precious and desirable in Sir Edward's eyes.

In the meantime, without being watched, Charlotte
felt herself to be under a certain amount of restraint. If she proposed a walk
into the city, mother or father was sure to have the same desire. She was not
forbidden to visit Mistress Gordon, but events were so arranged as to make the
visit almost impossible; and only once, during the month after seeing
Harleigh
, had she an interview with him. For even
Harleigh's
impatience had recognized the absolute necessity
of circumspection. The landlord's suspicions had been awakened, and not very
certainly allayed. “There must be no scandal about my house,
Harleigh
,” he said. “I merit something better from you;”
and, after this injunction, it was very likely that Mistress Gordon's
companions would be closely scrutinized. True, the “King's Arms” was the great
rendezvous of the military and government officials, and the landlord himself
subserviently loyal; but, also,
Joris
Morgan was not
a man with whom any good citizen would like to quarrel. Personally he was much
beloved, and socially he stood as representative of a class which held in their
hands commercial and political power no one cared to oppose or offend.

At the feast of Harvest Thanksgiving. Early in November the preparations for
it began. No such great event could happen without an extraordinary
housecleaning; and from garret to cellar the housemaid's pail and brush were in
demand. Spotless was every inch of paint, shining every bit of polished wood
and glass; not a thimbleful of dust in the whole house. In the midst of all
this household excitement Charlotte found some opportunities of seeing Mistress
Gordon; and in the joy of receiving letters from, and sending letters to, her
beloved
Harleigh
, she recovered a gayety of
disposition which effectually repressed all urgent suspicions.

In the middle of the afternoon of the day before the
feast, there was the loud rat-tat-tat of the brass knocker, announcing a
visitor. But visitors had been constant since the day of the feast was
approaching, and Charlotte did not much trouble herself as to whom it might be.
She was standing upon a ladder, pinning among the evergreens and scarlet
berries rosettes and bows of ribbon of the splendid national color, and singing
with a delightsome
cheeriness,“
But
the maid
of Holland, For her own true love, Ties the splendid orange, Orange still
above! Orange still above!”

“
Orange still above! Oh, my dear, don't trouble yourself to come down! I
can pass the time tolerably well, watching you.”

It was Mistress Gordon, and she nodded and laughed in
a triumphant way that very quickly brought Charlotte to her side. “My dear, I
kiss you. You are the top beauty of my whole acquaintance.” Then, in a whisper,
“
Harleigh
sends his devotion. And put your
hand in my muff: there is a letter.

Charlotte shook her head.

“On my visit to
Harleigh
, as I left, this he said
to me: “My honor, Charlotte, is now in your keeping.” By the lifting of one
eyelash, I will not stain it.”

“Mistress Gordon, I am very much indebted to you.”

“My dear, you are perfectly charming. You always convince me that I am a
better woman than I imagine myself. I shall go straight to
Harleigh
,
and tell him how exactly proper you are. Really, you have more perfections than
any one woman has a right to.”

“Tomorrow, if I have a letter ready, you will take it?”

“I will run the risk, child. But really, if you could see the way mine host
of the 'King's Arms' looks at me, you would be sensible of my courage. I am
persuaded he thinks I carry you under my new wadded cloak. Now, adieu. Return
to your evergreens and ribbons.

“For your own true love, Tie the splendid orange, Orange still above!”

And so, lightly humming Charlotte's favorite song, Mistress Gordon left the
busy house.

Before dinner the next day, Mistress Gordon had every one at his post. She
was exceedingly gratified to find the building crowded when the festivities were
to begin. The company was entirely composed of men of honor and substance, and
women of irreproachable characters, dressed with that solid magnificence
gratifying to a man who, like
Joris
Morgan, dearly
loved respectability.

Charlotte looked for Mistress Gordon in vain; she was not in the crowd, and
she did not surface until the festival dinner was nearly over. Sir Edward was
then considerably under the excitement of his fine position and fine fare. He
sat by the side of his bride to be, at the right hand of
Joris
.
Peter Block, the first mate of the “Great Christopher,” was just beginning to
sing a song,—a foolish, sentimental ditty for so big and bluff a fellow,—in
which some girl was thus entreated,—

“
Come, fly with me, my own fair love;
My
bark is waiting in the bay, And soon its snowy wings will
speed To happy lands so far away, “And there, for us, the rose of love Shall
sweetly bloom and never die.
Oh, fly with me! We'll happy be
Beneath
fair Java's
smiling sky.”

“Peter, such nonsense as you sing,” said
Joris
Morgan, with all the authority of a skipper to his mate. “How can a woman fly
when she has no wings? And to say any bark has wings is not the truth. And what
kind of rose is the rose of love? Twelve kinds of roses I have chosen for my
new garden, but that kind I never heard of; and I will not believe in any rose
that never dies. And you also have been to Java; and well you know of the fever
and blacks, and the sky that is not smiling, but hot as the place which is not
heaven. No respectable person would want to be a married man in Java. I never
did.”

“Sing your own songs, skipper. By yourself you measure every man. If to the
kingdom of heaven you did not want to go, astonished and angry you would be
that any one did not like the place which is not heaven.”

“Come, friends and neighbors,” said
Joris
cheerily, “I will sing you a song; and everyone knows
the tune to it, and everyone has heard their fathers and their mothers sing it,
—sometimes, perhaps, on the great dikes of the fatherland, and sometimes in
their sweet homes that the great
Hendrick
Hudson
found out for them. Now, then, all, a song for MOEDER HOLLAND.
“
'We have taken our land from the sea, its fields are all yellow with grain,
its meadows are green on the lea,—
And
now shall we
give it to Spain? No, no, no, no!
“'We have planted the faith that is pure,
That
faith
to the end we'll maintain; For the word and the truth must endure. Shall we bow
to the ground and to Spain? No, no, no, no!
“'Our ships are on every sea,
Our
honor has never a
stain, Our law and our commerce are free: Are we slaves for the tyrant of
Spain? No, no, no, no!
“'Then, sons of Batavia, the spade
,—
The spade and the
pike and the main, And the heart and the hand and the blade; Is there mercy for
merciless Spain? No, no, no, no!'“