University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Dowsabel.

With such attractions for old and young it will
readily be believed that the Rose Croft was a favourite
resort of the inhabitants of St. Mary's. The
maidens gathered around Blanche as a May-day
queen; the matrons possessed in Mistress Alice a
discreet and kind friend, and the more sedate part of
the population found an agreeable host in the worthy
official himself.

The family of the Lord Proprietary sustained the
most intimate relations with this household. It is
true that Lady Baltimore, being feeble in health and
stricken with grief at the loss of her son, which yet
hung with scarcely abated poignancy upon her mind,
was seldom seen beyond her own threshold; but his
Lordship's sister, the Lady Maria—as she was entitled

in the province—was a frequent and ever most
welcome guest. Whether this good lady had the advantage
of the Proprietary in years, would be an
impertinent as well as an unprofitable inquiry, since
no chronicler within my reach has thought fit to instruct
the world on this point; and, if it were determined,
the fact could neither heighten nor diminish
the sober lustre of her virtues. Suffice it that she
was a stirring, tidy little woman, who moved about
with indefatigable zeal in the acquittal of the manifold
duties which her large participation in the affairs
of the town exacted of her—the Lady Bountiful of
the province who visited the sick, fed the hungry,
clothed the naked and chid the idle. She especially
befriended such nursing-mothers as those whose
scanty livelihood withheld from them the necessary
comforts of their condition, and, in an equal degree,
extended her bounty to such of the colonists as had
been disabled in the military service of the province,
—holding these two concerns of population and defence
to be high state matters which her family connexion
with the government most cogently recommended
to her care. Though it is reported of her,
that a constitutional tendency towards a too profuse
distribution of nick-nacks and sweet-meats amongst
her invalids, gave great concern and embarrassment
to the physician of the town, and bred up between
him and the lady a somewhat stubborn, but altogether
good-natured warfare. She was wont to look
in upon the provincial school-house, where, on stated
occasions, she gave the young train-bands rewards
for good conduct, and where she was also diligent
to rebuke all vicious tendencies. In the early
morning she tripped through the dew, with scrupulous
regularity, to mass; often superintended the
decorations of the chapel; gossiped with the neighbours
after service, and, in short, kept her hands full
of business.

Her interest in the comfort and welfare of the
towns-people grew partly out of her temperament,
and partly out of a feudal pride that regarded them
as the liegemen of her brother the chief,—a relation
which she considered as creating an obligation to
extend to them her countenance upon all proper occasions:
and, sooth to say, that countenance was
not perhaps the most comely in the province, being
somewhat sallow, but it was as full of benevolence
as became so exemplary a spirit. She watched peculiarly
what might be called the under-growth, and
was very successful in worming herself into the
schemes and plans of the young people. Her entertainments
at the mansion were frequent, and no less
acceptable to the gayer portion of the inhabitants
than they were to her brother. On these occasions
she held a little court, over which she presided with
an amiable despotism, and fully maintained the state
of the Lord Proprietary. By these means the Lady
Maria had attained to an over-shadowing popularity
in the town.

Blanche Warden had, from infancy, engaged her
deepest solicitude; and as she took to herself no small
share of the merit of that nurture by which her

favourite had grown in accomplishment, she felt, in
the maiden's praises which every where rang through
the province, an almost maternal delight. Scarcely
a day passed over without some manifestation of
this concern. New patterns of embroidery, music
brought by the last ship from home, some invitation
of friendship or letter of counsel, furnished occasions
of daily intercourse between the patroness and
the maiden of the Rose Croft; and not unfrequently
the venerable spinster herself,—attended by a familiar
in the shape of a little Indian girl, Natta, the daughter
of Pamesack, arrayed in the trinketry of her tribe—
alighted from an ambling pony at the Collector's
door, with a face full of the importance of business.
Perchance, there might be an occasion of
merry-making in contemplation, and then the lady
Maria united in consultation with sister Alice concerning
the details of the matter, and it was debated,
with the deliberation due to so interesting
a subject, whether Blanche should wear her black
or her crimson velvet boddice, her sarsnet or her
satin, and such other weighty matters as have not
yet lost their claims to thoughtful consideration on
similar emergencies.

In the frequent interchange of the offices of good
neighbourhood between the families of the Proprietary
and of the Collector, it could scarce fall out
that the Secretary should not be a large participator.
The shyness of the student and the habitual self-restraint
taught him in the seminary of Antwerp, in
some degree, screened from common observation

the ardent character of Albert Verheyden. The
deferential relation which he held to his patron threw
into his demeanour a reserve expressive of humility
rather than of diffidence; but under this there
breathed a temperament deeply poetical and a longing
for enterprise, that all the discipline of his school and
the constraint of his position could scarce suppress.
He was now at that time of life when the imagination
is prone to dally with illusions; when youth,
not yet yoked to the harness of the world's business,
turns its spirit forth to seek adventure in the domain
of fancy. He was thus far a dreamer, and dreamed
of gorgeous scenes and bold exploits and rare fortune.
He had the poet's instinct to perceive the
beautiful, and his fancy hung it with richer garlands
and charmed him into a worshipper. A mute worshipper
he was, of the Rose of St. Mary's, from the
first moment that he gazed upon her. That outward
form of Blanche Warden, and the motion and impulses
of that spirit, might not often haunt the Secretary's
dream without leaving behind an image that
should live for ever in his heart. To him the thought
was enchantment, that in this remote wild, far away
from the world's knowledge, a flower of such surpassing
loveliness should drink the glorious light in
solitude,—for so he, schooled in populous cities,
deemed of this sequestered province,—and with this
thought came breathings of poetry which wrought a
transfiguration of the young votary and lifted him
out of the sphere of this “working-day world.” Day
after day, week after week, and month after month,
the Secretary watched the footsteps of the beautiful
girl; but still it was silent, unpresuming adoration.
It entered not into his mind to call it love: it was
the very humbleness of devotion.

Meantime the maiden, unconscious of her own
rare perfections and innocent of all thought of this
secret homage, found Master Albert much the most
accomplished and gentle youth she had ever seen.
He had, without her observing how it became so,
grown to be, in some relation or other, part and
parcel of her most familiar meditations. His occasions
of business with the Collector brought
him so often to the Rose Croft that if they happened
not every day, they were, at least, incidents
of such common occurrence as to be noted
by no ceremony—indeed rather to be counted on
in the domestic routine. The Collector was apt
to grow restless if, by any chance, they were suspended,
as it was through the Secretary's mission
he received the tidings of the time as well as the
official commands of the Proprietary; whilst Albert's
unobtrusive manners, his soft step and pretensionless
familiarity with the household put no one out of the
way to give him welcome. His early roaming
in summer sometimes brought him, at sunrise, beneath
the bank of the Rose Croft, where he looked,
with the admiration of an artist, upon the
calm waters of St. Inigoe's Creek, and upon the
forest that flung its solemn shades over its farther
shores. Not unfrequently, the fresh and blooming
maiden had left her couch as early as himself, and

tended her plants before the dew had left the leaves,
and thus it chanced that she would find him in his
vocation; and, like him, she took pleasure in gazing
on that bright scene, when it was the delight of both
to tell each other how beautiful it was. And when,
in winter, the rain pattered from the eaves and the
skies were dark, the Secretary, muffled in his cloak,
would find his road to the Collector's mansion and
help the maiden to while away the tedious time.
Even “when lay the snow upon a level with the
hedge,” the two long miles of unbeaten track did
not stop his visit, for the Secretary loved the adventure
of such a journey; and Blanche often smiled to
see how manfully he endured it, and how light he
made of the snow-drift which the wind had sometimes
heaped up into billows, behind which the feather
of his bonnet might not be discovered while he
sat upon his horse.

In this course of schooling Blanche and Albert grew
into a near intimacy, and the maiden became dependent,
for some share of her happiness, upon the
Secretary without being aware. Master Albert had
an exquisite touch of the lute and a rich voice to
grace it, and Blanche found many occasions to tax
his skill: he had a gallant carriage on horseback,
and she needed the service of a cavalier: he was
expert in the provincial sport of hawking, and had
made such acquaintance with Blanche's merlin that
scarce any one else could assist the maiden in casting
off Ariel to a flight. In short, Blanche followed
the bent of her own ingenuous and truthful nature,

and did full justice to the Secretary's various capacity
to please her, by putting his talents in requisition
with an unchidden freedom, and without once pausing
to explore the cause why Master Albert always
came so opportunely to her thoughts. Doubtless, if
she had had the wit to make this inquiry the charm
of her liberty would have been broken, and a sentinel
would, ever after, have checked the wandering
of her free footstep.

The Collector, in regard to this intercourse, was
sound asleep. His wise head was taken up with
the concerns of the province, his estate, and the
discussion of opinions that had little affinity to the
topics likely to interest the meditations of a young
maiden. He was not apt to see a love-affair, even if
it lay, like a fallen tree, across his path, much less
to hunt it out when it lurked like a bird amongst the
flowers that grew in the shady coverts by the way-side.
The astuteness of the lady Maria, however,
was not so much at fault, and she soon discovered,
what neither Blanche nor Albert had sufficiently
studied to make them aware of their own category.
But the Secretary was in favour with the lady Maria,
and so, she kept her own counsel, as well as a good-natured
watch upon the progress of events.