Sir Christopher: A Romance of a Maryland Manor in 1644

"Huntoon – ? I wonder who his father is. Know you anything of his family?"

"No, save that his father was a physician once and won great reputation somehow, and his mother was a daughter of Sir William Romney, and heiress to a fortune, wherewith they bought wide tracts of land on the York River, and live, 'tis said, in more state than any in Virginia save Governor Berkeley himself."

"Ah, now I place him. He was head of Flower da Hundred at the time of the massacre, and since has risen to be a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. I would like to speak with this young man. Is that his knock at the door?"

"I – I think it may be," hesitated Peggy. "He brought a letter from his mother to my aunt, who knew her in their youth at home in Devonshire."

Hard upon her remarks a young man entered the room, and stood hesitating in the doorway as if loath to venture further without assurance of welcome.

He was a colty youth, with long legs and slim body, and hands and feet that had not learned the repose of maturity. He had also a shock of dark curls, and under arching brows a pair of merry blue eyes that danced when anything pleased him beyond the common, like the sun on Easter morning, while under their surface mirth lay steadfast depths which bade fair to endure when their dancing days were over.

Just now there was more of anxiety than mirth in them as they turned toward the slip of a girl by the hearth, as timid a glance as if she were the Shah of Persia and he a humble subject in terror of the bowstring.

"Come in!" vouchsafed Peggy, – but with some impatience in her voice, for she had not yet begun on the list of questions she had prepared for her other visitor.

"Governor Brent, this is Master Romney Huntoon. Master Huntoon, I have the honor to present you to Governor Brent." Both men bowed, the younger man lower.

"I fancy," said Brent, "that I am not wrong in taking you for the son of that Humphrey Huntoon whose good repute has travelled beyond the limits of his own province, and become familiar to us dwellers across the borders."

Romney Huntoon blushed with pleasure and secretly treasured up the words to say over to his mother; but he received them with some discomposure. To tell the truth, it is not an easy matter to meet a compliment for one's relative; the disclaimers wherewith a man may receive such for himself not quite fitting the situation, yet consanguinity seeming to demand a corresponding degree of modesty.

"My father will feel deeply honored," he murmured, and lost the end he had fashioned for his speech in watching a curl that had fallen forward over Peggy Neville's ear.

Brent was too much occupied with his own thoughts to heed the break in the young man's reply.

"You have been at St. Mary's for some days?" he asked.

"A week yesterday, your Excellency."

"And spent much time on the wharf?"

"The better part of every day, overlooking first the unloading of the tobacco, and then the getting aboard of the farm implements and household stuff I am to carry back to Romney."

"Hm! Perhaps, then, you were witness to the – the unpleasantness that fell out betwixt Captain Ingle and Reuben Early."

"Ay, sir – I saw the blow struck."

"Of your kindness, tell me how it all fell out. The village folk are so hot over the matter 'tis passing hard to get a clear story from any of them. Was Richard Ingle drunk or sober?"

"Why, not fully the one or the other, I should say; but more as one who has been in his cups overnight and is at odds with the world next morning."

"And Reuben Early – was he in liquor too?"

"Truth, I think Early was a bit the worse for beer, for he was continually dropping the sacks with which he was loading the vessel under Ingle's direction, and when one slipped into the water, instead of making excuse for himself, he threw up his silly cap and shouted, "God save the King and Prince Rupert!"

"Fool!"

"Ay, 'twas enough to anger any man, and it seemed to drive Ingle mad with passion. 'The King!' he cried; 'I'd have you know your King is no king; and as for Prince Rupert, if I had him here he should be flogged at the capstan!' Then turning to Early, whose mouth was agape at such treasonable utterances, he let fly a bucket he had in his hand, and hit Early full in the head, knocking him over like an ox. If Early had picked himself up and returned the blow I'd had some sympathy for him, but instead he went off whimpering and vowing he'd make complaint and have Ingle under arrest before night."

"A pestilent fellow that Ingle!" muttered Brent; "I'd have him in irons this day were it not for the trouble over seas; but with King and Parliament at loggerheads we must be civil with both and Ingle hath powerful friends in high places among the Roundheads. But of the quarrel – did you see Richard Ingle after?"

"Nay, but I believe he is still on The Reformation, though some say he was seen to board a ship that sailed yesterday for New Netherland, and 'tis known the Ingles are on good terms with Governor Stuyvesant, who hath the Dutch hatred of papists."

"For the matter o' that," said Brent, with some bitterness, "he need not have gone further afield than across the river. He would have found enough Catholic-haters in Virginia to protect him."

"We may be over zealous, your Excellency," the young man answered, "but we do not countenance evil-doers, and 'twere hard to find in Maryland a cavalier who has the King's cause more at heart than Sir William Berkeley."

"You say truth, Master Huntoon, and do well to maintain the honor of your province against all slander. My regards to Sir William Berkeley when you return – and when is that to be?"

"In two or three days at furthest now. The ketch is already loaded and I tarry only from hour to hour."

"May the ketch and all your other ventures come safe to shore!" said Brent, rising and taking the hand of Huntoon.

"Mistress Neville, I will see you again before my return to St. Gabriel's, and charge myself with any message you may wish to send."

With this adieu the Governor took his leave. The young people, who had risen with him, still stood facing each other in silence, now that they were alone.

"Why do you not take a chair once more?" asked Peggy, fingering the border of her flowered lawn apron.

"I have not been asked," Huntoon responded.

"I feared to detain you from business of more importance," murmured the little hypocrite.

"Mistress Neville," said Romney, "I have known you but seven days."

"Is it really so long?" asked Peggy, demurely looking out at him from behind the protecting curtain of her long lashes.

"So long!" exclaimed the youth. He was only twenty, and the power to receive and parry comes later to men than to girls.

Even Peggy Neville felt a twinge of compunction at his throwing himself thus upon her mercy. "They have been pleasant days," she continued, "and therefore by all the laws of life should have seemed short."

"Why, so they have!" the boy rushed on, – "short as a flash of lightning in the passing, long as July sunlight in the thinking over; and now they are drawing to an end, somehow a darkness seems to fall around me. When I think of sailing down the river, away from the sight of the huddle of cottages, from the great cross in the centre of the village, from the glimpse of this little window that gives on the wharf, my heart sinks."

"I wonder why," said Peggy; but this time she did not look at him.

"May I tell you?"

"No, no – of course not," the girl hastened to say in a quick, business-like voice. "'Tis no affair of mine to pry into the feelings of all the young men who come to St. Mary's. Besides, here comes my aunt, and she will be more concerned to bring out wine and seed-cake for your entertainment than to hear of your regrets at parting. However," the tease went on wickedly, "if it would relieve your mind to tell her I will bring the subject before her."

Romney stood still, and looked at her without a word. She had hurt him beyond the power of speech. This first love of his, which he had been cherishing by day and brooding over by night for a whole week, seemed to him to overshadow the world, and that she, the lady of his dreams, should be the one to make light of it was past bearing.

"'All the young men who come to St. Mary's,'" he repeated to himself as he strode down the street. "So to her I am no more than one of the crowd of gallants who hang about the corners and cast eyes at the girls in the little church o' Sundays. Oh, but I will make her give me a serious thought yet! She shall know that it is not a ball she holds in her hands, to be tossed about and caught and thrown away, but a man's heart."

Then, as he recalled that dimpling face and those eyelashes sweeping the rich red cheek, he smiled in spite of himself, and fell to thinking of a little song his mother had sung to him years ago, a song of another capricious damsel, mightily like this provoking Peggy, —

"He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,
Though oft she coyly said him nay;
Mayhap she let him kiss her thrice