The Loyalist. James Francis Barrett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ child dared to express the very thoughts which were of late intruding themselves upon his mind, but which he dared not permit to cross the seal of his lips? She was correct, he thought, in her reasoning, but bold in her denunciation. No one else had dared to address such sentiments to him. And now he was confronted with a young lady of quick wit and ready repartee who spoke passionately the identical reflections of his more mature mind. Clearly her reasoning was not without some consistency and method.

      "I am afraid that you are a little Tory." He could not allow this girl to think that she had impressed him in the least.

      "Because I am frank in the expression of my views?" She turned and with arched eyebrows surveyed him. "Pardon me, if you will, but I would have taken no such liberty with any other person. You gave me that privilege when you forbade my alluding to your former brilliant exploits."

      "But I did not want you to become a Tory."

      He spoke with emphasis.

      "I am not a Tory I tell you."

      "But you are not a Whig?"

      "What, an ordinary shop maid!"

      "They are true patriots."

      "But of no social standing."

      "Tell me why all the Mischienza ladies courtesied to me after so courtly a fashion," he asked.

      "They like it. It is part of their life. You must know that nothing pleases a woman of fashion more than to bow and courtesy before every person of royalty, and to count those who precede her out of a room."

      "Surely, Margaret, you are no such menial?" He compressed his lips as he glanced at her sharply. He had never before called her by her first name nor presumed to take this liberty. It was more a slip of the tongue than an act of deliberate choice, yet he would not have recalled the word. His concern lay in her manner of action.

      "And why not a menial?" Evidently she took no notice of his presumption, or at least pretended not to do so. "Piety is by no means the only motive which brings women to church. Position in life is precisely what one makes it."

      "Does social prestige appeal to you then?"

      "I love it." She did not talk to him directly for her attention was being centered upon the activities on the floor. "I think that a woman who can dress with taste and distinction possesses riches above all computation. See Mrs. Reed, there. How I envy her!"

      "The wife of the President of the Council?" he asked apprehensively, bending forward in the direction of the floor.

      "The same. She enjoys a position of social eminence. How I hate her for it." She tapped the floor with her foot as she spoke.

      "You mean that you dislike her less than you envy her position?"

      Just then her young squire came up and she gave him her hand for a minuet, excusing herself to the Governor as graciously as possible.

      Scarcely had she disappeared when he began to muse. What a fitting companion she would make for a man of his rank and dignity! That she was socially ambitious and obsessed with a passion for display he well knew. She was not yet twenty but the disparity in their ages—he was about thirty-seven and a widower with three sons—would be offset by the disparity of their stations. No one in the city kept a finer stable of horses nor gave more costly dinners than he. Everybody treated him with deference, for no one presumed to question his social preëminence. The Whigs admired him as their dashing and perhaps their most successful General. The Tories liked him because of his aristocratic display and his position in regard to the Declaration of Independence. Why not make her his bride?

      She possessed physical charms and graces in a singular degree. She dressed with taste; her wardrobe was of the finest. Aristocratic in her bearing, she would be well fitted to assume the position of the first lady of the town. Peggy, moreover, possessed a will of her own. This was revealed to him more than once during their few meetings, and if proof had been wanting, the lack was now abundantly supplied. She would make an ideal wife, and he resolved to enter the lists against all suitors.

      Her mind was more mature than her years, he thought. This he gleaned from her animated discussion of the alliance. And there was, after all, more than an ounce of wisdom in her point of view. Mischief brewed in the proposed help from a despotic power. His own signal victory ended the war if only the Colonists would enter into negotiations or give an attentive ear to the liberal proposals of Lord North. The people did not desire complete independence and he, for one, had never fully endorsed the Declaration. Her point of view was right. Better to accept the overtures of our kinsmen than to cast our lot with that Catholic and despotic power.

      His musings were arrested by the arrival of an aide, who announced that he was needed at headquarters. He arose at once to obey.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

I

       Table of Contents

      Stephen awoke late the next morning. As he lay with eyes closed, half asleep, half awake, the image of his partner of the evening sweetly drifted into his dreamy brain, and called up a wealth of associations on which he continued to dwell with rare pleasure. But the ominous suggestion that her heart could not possibly be free, that perhaps some gay officer, or brilliant member of Howe's staff, or a gallant French official, many of whom had now infested the town, was a favored contestant in the field, filled his mind with the thoughts of dread possibilities, and chased away the golden vision that was taking shape. He sat upright and, pulling aside the curtains of the little window that flanked his bed, he peered into the garden behind the house. The birds were singing, but not with the volume or rapture which is their wont in the early morning. The sun was high in the heavens and flung its reflecting rays from the trees and foliage; whence he concluded that the morning was already far advanced and that it was well past the hour for him to be astir.

      And what a day it was! One of those rare July days when the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky though varied in color, seem to blend in one beautiful and harmonious whole. The cypress and the myrtle, emblems of deeds of virtue and renown, had already donned their summer dress. The many flowers bowed gently under the weight of the flitful butterfly, or the industrious bee, or tossed to and fro lightly in the arms of the morning breeze. Overhead maples, resplendent in their fabric of soft and delicate green, arched themselves like fine-spun cobwebs, through which filigree the sun projected his rays at irregular and frequent intervals, lending only an occasional patch of sunlight here and there to the more exposed portions of the garden.

      But nature had no power to drive Marjorie's image from his mind. Try as he would, he could not distract his attention to the many problems which ordinarily would have engaged thoughts. What mattered it to him that the French fleet was momentarily expected, or that the Continental Congress was again meeting in the city, or that he had met with certain suspicious looking individuals during the course of the day! There was yet one who looked peculiarly suspicious and who was enveloped, as far as his knowledge was concerned, in a veil of mystery of the strangest depth. She, indeed, was a flower too fair to blush unseen or unattached. His own unworthiness confounded him.

      Nevertheless he was determined to call on her that very day, in response to her generous invitation СКАЧАТЬ