"Madam," I said, "one deception opens the way for a whole flock,"
and I spoke with something of a double meaning, but she only cried
out, with apparently no understanding of it, that things had come to
a cruel pass, and back to the house she went; and I presently
followed her to get my gun, having a mind to shoot a few wild fowl,
since my pupil was at her wheel. And there the two sat, keeping up
that gentle drone of industry which I have come to think of as a
note of womanhood, like the hum of a bee or the purr of a cat or the
call of a bird. They sat erect, the delicate napes of their necks
showing above their muslin kerchiefs under their high twists of
hair, for even Mary had her golden curls caught up that morning on
account of the flax-lint, and from their fair, attentive faces
nobody would have gathered what stress of mind both were in. Of a
surety there must be a quieting and calming power in some of the
feminine industries which be a boon to the soul.
But, as I passed through the hall, up looked Mary, and her beautiful
face flashed out of peace into a sunlight of love and enthusiasm.
"Oh," she cried out, "oh, was there ever anyone like my sweetheart
Catherine? To think what she hath done for me, to think, to think!
And she, dear heart, loving the king! But better she loves her
little sister, and will stand by her in her disloyalty, for the love
of her. Was there ever any one like her, Master Wingfield?"
And I laughed, though maybe with some slight bitterness, for I was
but human, and that outburst of loving gratitude toward another, and
another whom I held in slight esteem, when it was I who had given
the child my little all, and presently, when my term was expired,
would have to return to England without a farthing betwixt me and
starvation, and maybe working my way before the mast to get there at
all, had a sting in it. 'Twas a strange thing that anything so noble
and partaking of the divine as the love of an honest man for a woman
should have any tincture of aught ignoble in it, and one is caused
thereby to decry one's state of mortality, which seems as
inseparable from selfish ends as the red wings of a rose from the
thorny stem which binds it to earth. Truly the longer I live the
more am I aware of the speck which mars the completeness of all in
this world, and ever the desire for a better, and that longing which
will not be appeased groweth in my soul, until methinks the very
keenness of the appetite must prove the food.