Atlantic Monthly by - (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

There was something so manly in George’s speech, that, but for its final fling and personality, every man in the room would have crowded round him to shake hands; but what man ever coolly heard his judgment impeached?

Sally swallowed a great round sob; but being, like all women, an actress in her way, bowed as calmly to Mr. George as if he only said adieu, after an ordinary call.

Aunt Poll snuffled, and followed George to the door; Uncle Zekle drew himself up straight, and looked after him, his clear blue eyes sparkling with two rays,—one of honest patriotic wrath, one of affection and regret for George; while Long, from the corner, eyed all with a serpent’s wisdom in his gaze, oracularly uttering, as the door shut,—

“Well, that ‘are feller is good grit!”

“All the worse for us!” growled Eliashib Sparks, the biggest of the three, surprising Sally into a little hysterical laugh, and surprised himself still more at this unexpected sequence to his remark.

“Pooty bad! George is a clever fellow!” ejaculated Zekle. “He han’t got the rights on’t, but I think he’ll come round by’n by.”

“I do’no’,” said Long, meditatively; “he’s pooty stiff, that ‘are feller. He’s sot on dooty, I see; an’ that means suthin’, when a man that oughter be called a man sez it. Wimmin-folks, now, don’t sail on that tack. When a gal sets to talkin’ about her dooty, it’s allers suthin’ she wants ter do and han’t got no grand excuse for’t. Ye never see a woman’t didn’t get married for dooty yet; there a’n’t nary one on ‘em darst to say they wanted ter.”

“Oh! Mister Long!” exclaimed Sally.

“Well, Sally, it’s nigh about so; you han’t lived a hunderd year. Some o’ these days you’ll get to know yer dooty.”

Sally turned red, and the three young men sniggered. Forgive the word, gentle and fair readers! it means what I mean, and no other word expresses it; let us be graphic and die!

Just then the meeting-house bell rang for nine o’clock; and every man got up from his seat, like a son of Anak, bowed, scraped, cleared his throat to say “Goodnight,” did say something like it, and left.

“Well, Sally, I swear you’re good at signallin’,” broke out Long, as soon as the youths were fairly out of sight and sound; “you hev done it for George Tucker!”

Sally gave no answer, but a brand from the back-log fell, blazed up in a shaft of rosy flame, and showed a suspicious glitter on the girl’s round, wholesome cheek. Aunt Poll had gone to bed; Zekle was going the nightly rounds of his barns, to see to the stock; Long Snapps was aware of opportunity, the secret of success.

“Sally,” said he, “is that feller sparkin’ you?”

Sally laughed a little, and something, perhaps the blaze, reddened her face.

“I don’t know,” said the pretty hypocrite, demurely.

“H’m! well, I do,” answered Long; “and you a’n’t never goin’ to take up with a Tory? don’t think it’s yer dooty, hey?”

“No indeed!” flashed Sally. “Do you think I’d marry a Britisher? I’d run away and live with the Indians first.”

“Pooty good! pooty good! you’re calk’lating to make George into a rebel, I ‘xpect?”

Long was looking into the fire when he said this; he did not see Sally’s look of rage and amazement at his unpleasant penetration.

“I’m sure I don’t care what George Tucker thinks,” said she, with a toss of her curly head.

“H’m!” uttered Long, meditatively, “lucky! I ‘xpect he carries too many guns to be steered by a woman; ‘tis a kinder pity you a’n’t a man, Sally; mebbe you’d argufy him round then; it’s plain as the Gulf you can’t crook his v’yage; he’s too stiff for wimmin-folks, that is a fact!”

Oh, Long Snapps! Long Snapps! how many wives, in how many ports, went to the knowledge of feminine nature that dictated that speech? Sally set her lips. From that hour George Tucker was a doomed man; but she said nothing more audible than “Goodnight.” Long looked at her, as she lit the tallow dip by the fire, and chuckled when he heard her shut the milk-room door in the safe distance. He was satisfied.

The next afternoon, Sally was weeding onions in the garden;—heroines did, in those days;—the currant-bushes had but just leafed out; so George Tucker, going by, saw her; and she, who had seen him coming before she began to weed, accidentally of course, looked up and gave him a very bright smile. That was the first spider-thread, and the fly stepped into it with such a thrill!

Of course he stopped, and said,—

“What a pleasant day!”—the saving phrase of life. Then Sally said something he couldn’t hear, and he leaped the low fence without being asked, rather than request her to raise her voice; he was so considerate! Next he remembered, just as he turned to go away, that there were some white violets down in the meadow, that Sally always liked. Couldn’t she spend time to walk down there across lots and get some? Sally thought the onions could not be left. Truth to tell, her heart was in her mouth. She had been playing with edge-tools; but just then she smelt a whiff of smoke from Long Snapps’s pipe, and the resolve of last night came back; her face relented, and George, seeing it, used his utmost persuasiveness; so the result was, that Sally washed her hands at the well, and away they went, in the most serene silence, over fences, grass-lots, and ditches, through bits of woodland, and fields of winter-green, till they reached the edge of the great meadow, and sat down on a log to rest. It was rather a good place for that purpose. An old pine had fallen at the feet of a majestic cluster of its brethren, so close that the broad column of one made a natural back to part of the seat. The ground was warm, dry sand, strown with the fine dead leaves of past seasons, brown and aromatic. A light south wind woke the voices of every bough above, and the melancholy susurrus rose and fell in delicate cadences; while beyond the green meadow, Westbury River, a good-sized brook, babbled and danced as if there were no pine-tree laments in the world.

I believe the air, and the odor, and the crying wind drove the violets quite out of both the two heads that drooped silently over that pine log. If Sally had been nervous or poetical, she would have been glad to recollect them; but no such morbidness invaded her healthy soul. She sat quite still till George said, in a suppressed and rather broken tone,—

“I was sorry to vex you last night, Sally! I could not be sorry for any thing else.”

“You did grieve me very much, Mister George,” said Sally, affecting a little distance in her address, but sufficiently tender in manner.

“Well, I suppose you don’t see it the way I do,” returned George; “and I am very sorry, for I had rather please you than any body else.”

This was especially tender, and he possessed himself of Sally’s little red hand, unaware or careless that it smelt of onions; but it was withdrawn very decidedly.

“I think yon take a strange way of showing your liking!” sniffed the damsel.

George sat astounded. Another tiny spider-thread stopped the fly; a subtle ray of blue sped sideways out of Sally’s eye, that meant,—“I don’t object to be liked.”

“I wish with all my heart I knew any good way to please you,” he fervently ejaculated.

“I should think any way to please people was a good way,” retorted Sally, saying more with her eyes than with her voice,—so much more, that in fact this fly was fast. A little puff of wind blew off Sally’s bonnet; she looked shy, flushed, lovely. George stood up on his feet, and took his hat off.

“Sally!” said he, in the deepest notes of his full, manly voice, “I love you very much indeed; will you be my wife?”

Sally was confounded. I rejoice to say she was quite confounded; but she was made of revolutionary stuff, and what just now interfered with her plans and schemes was the sudden discovery how very much indeed she loved George Tucker; a fact she had not left enough margin for in her plot.

But, as I said, she was made of good metal, and she answered very low,—

“I do like you, George; but I never will marry a Britisher and a Tory.”

A spasm of real anguish distorted the handsome face, bent forward to listen.

“Do you mean that, Sally? Can’t you love me because we don’t think alike?”

Sally choked a little; her tones fell to a whisper. George had to sit down close to her to hear.

“I didn’t say I didn’t love you, George!”—A blissful pause of a second; then in a clear, cold voice,—“But my mind’s set. I can’t marry a Britisher and a Tory, if I died sayin’ so.”

George gasped.

“And I cannot turn traitor and rebel, Sally. I can not. I love you better than any thing in the world; but I can’t do a wicked thing; no, not even for you.”

He was pale as death. Sally’s secret heart felt proud of him, and never had she been so near repenting of her work in the good cause before; but she was resolute.

“Very well!” replied she, coolly, “if you prefer the king to me, it’s not my fault; when your side beats, you can take your revenge!”

The thorough injustice of this speech roused her lover’s generous indignation.

“If you can think that way of me, Sally, it is better for us both to have me go! Good night!” And away strode the loyal fellow, never looking back to see his sweetheart have a good cry on the pine-log, and then an equally comfortable fit of laughter; for she knew very well how restless Mister George would be, all alone by himself, and how much it meant that they both loved each other, and both knew it.

Sally’s heart was stout. A sort of Yankee Evangeline, she would not have gone after Gabriel; she would have staid at home and waited for him to the end of time; doing chores and mending meanwhile, but unmarried, in the fixed intention of being her lover’s sixth wife possibly, but his wife at last.

So she went home and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse, George Tucker never went to bed.

“Hooraw!” roared Long Snapps, trundling in to dinner, the next day; “they’re wakin’ up down to Bostin! Good many on ‘em’s quit the town. Them ‘are Britishers is a-gettin’ up sech a breeze; an’ they doo say the reg’lars is comin’ out full sail, to cair’ off all the amminition in these parts, fear o’ mutiny ‘mongst the milishy!”

“Come along!” shouted Zekle, “let ‘em come! like to see ‘em takin’ our powder an’ shot ‘thout askin’! Guess they’ll hear thunder, ef they stick their heads inter a hornet’s nest.”

“Dredful suz!” exclaimed Aunt Poll, pulling turnips out of the pot with reckless haste, and so scalding her brown fingers emphatically; “be they a-comin’ here? will they fetch along the batterin’ rams?”

“Thunder an’ dry trees,” ejaculated Zekle, “what does the woman—”; but at that instant Long made for the door, and flung it open, thereby preventing explanations.

“Goin’ to Concord, George?” shouted he to George Tucker, who in a one-horse wagon and his Sunday-best clothes was driving