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The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, a fiction by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 19 |
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_ CHAPTER XIX When I came to a consciousness of myself again, the first thing of which I laid hold with my mind as a means whereby to pull my recollections back to my former cognisance of matters was a broad shaft of sunlight streaming in through the west window of the prison in Jamestown. And all this sunbeam was horribly barred like the body of a wasp by the iron grating of the window, and had a fierce sting of heat in it, for it was warm though only May, and I was in a high fever by reason of my wounds. And another thing which served to hale me back to acquaintance with my fixed estate of life was a great swarm of flies which had entered at that same window, and were grievously tormenting me, and I was too weak to disperse them. All my wounds were dressed and bandaged and I was laid comfortably enough upon a pallet, but I was all alone except for the flies which settled upon me blackly with such an insistence of buzzing that that minor grievance seemed verily the greatest in the world, and for the time all else was forgot. For some little time I did not think of Mary Cavendish, so hedged about was I as to my freedom of thought and love by my physical ills, for verily after a man has been out of consciousness with a wound, it is his body which first struggles back to existence, and his heart and soul have to follow as they may. So I lay there knowing naught except the weary pain of my wounds, and that sense of stiffness which forbade me to move, and the fretful heat of that fierce west sunbeam, and the buzzing swarm of flies, for some little time before the memory of it all came to me. Then indeed, though with great pain, I raised myself upon my elbow, and peered about my cell, and called aloud for some one to come, thinking some one must be within hearing, for the sounds of life were all about me: the tramp of horses on the road outside, the even fall of a workman's hammer, the sweet husky carol of a slave's song, and the laughter of children at play. So I shouted and waited and shouted again, and no one came. There was in my cell not much beside my pallet, except a little stand which looked like one from Drake Hill, and on the stand was a china dish like one which I had often seen at Drake Hill, with some mess therein, what, I knew not, and a bottle of wine and some medicine vials and glasses. I was not ironed, and, indeed, there was no need of that, since I could not have moved. Between the wound in my leg and various sword-cuts, and a general soreness and stiffness as if I had been tumbled over a precipice, I was well-nigh as helpless as a week-old babe. I called again, but no one came, and presently I quit and lay with the burning eye of the sun in my face and that pestilent buzz of flies in my ears, and my weakness and pain so increasing upon my consciousness, that I heeded them not so much. I shut my eyes and that torrid sunbeam burned red through my lids, and I wondered if they had found out aught concerning Mary Cavendish, and I wondered not so much what they would do with me, since I was so weak and spent with loss of blood that nothing that had to do with me seemed of much moment. But as I lay there I presently heard the key turn in the lock, and one Joseph Wedge, the jailor, entered, and I saw the flutter of a woman's draperies behind him, but he shut the door upon her, and then without my ever knowing how he came there, was the surgeon, Martyn Jennings, and he was over me looking to my wounds, and letting a little more blood to decrease my fever, though I had already lost so much, and then, since I was so near swooning, giving me a glass of the Burgundy on the stand. And whilst that was clouding my brain, since my stomach was fasting, and I had lost so much blood, entered that woman whom I had espied, and she was not Mary, but Catherine Cavendish, and there was a gentleman with her who stood aloof, with his back toward me, gazing out of the window, and of that I was glad since he screened that flaming sunbeam from me, and I concerned myself no more about him. But at Catherine I gazed, and motioned to her to bend over me, and whispered that the jailor might not hear, what had become of Mary. Then I saw the jailor had gone out, though I had not seen him go, and she making a sign to me that the gentleman at the window was not to be minded, went on to tell me what I thirsted to know; that she and Mary and Sir Humphrey had escaped that night with ease, and she and Mary had returned to Drake Hill before midnight, and had not been molested. If Mary were suspected she knew not, but Sir Humphrey was then under arrest and was confined on board a ship in the harbour with Major Beverly, and his mother was daily sending billets to him to return home, and blaming him, and not his jailors, for his disobedience. She told me, furthermore, that it was Cicely Hyde who had led the militia to our assembly at Laurel Creek that night, and was now in a low fever through remorse, and though she told me not, I afterward knew why that mad maid had done such a thing--'twas because of jealousy of me and Mary Cavendish, and she pulled down more upon her own head thereby than she wot of. All this Catherine Cavendish told me in a manner which seemed strangely foreign to her, being gentle, and yet not so gentle as subdued, and her fair face was paler than ever, and when I looked at her and said not a word, and yet had a question in my eyes which she was at no loss to interpret, tears welled into her own, and she bent lower and whispered lest even the stranger at the window should hear, that Mary "sent her dear love, but, but--" I raised myself with such energy at that that she was startled, and the gentleman at the window half turned. "What have they done with her?" I cried. "If they dare--" "Hush," said Catherine. "Our grandmother hath but locked her in her chamber, since she hath discovered her love for thee, and frowns upon it, not since thou art a convict, but since thou hast turned against the King. She says that no granddaughter of hers shall wed a rebel, be he convict or prince. But she is safe, Harry, and there will no harm come to her, and indeed I think that if they in authority have heard aught of what she hath done, they are minded to keep it quiet, and--and--" Then to my exceeding bewilderment down on her knees beside me went that proud maid and begged my pardon for her scorn of me, saying that she knew me guiltless, and knew for what reason I had taken such obloquy upon myself. Then the gentleman at the window turned when she appealed to him, and came near, and I saw who he was--my half-brother, John Chelmsford. _ |
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