Читать книгу Hansford: A Tale of Bacon's Rebellion - St. George Tucker - Страница 11

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“A man in all the world's new fashion planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;

One, whom the music of his own vain tongue,

Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;

A man of compliments.”

Love's Labor Lost.

“Well, Mr. Bernard,” said the old Colonel as they entered the room, “take a seat, and let's have a social chat. We old planters don't get a chance often to hear the news from Jamestown, and I am afraid you will find me an inquisitive companion. But first join me in a pipe. There is no greater stimulant to conversation than the smoke of our Virginia weed.”

“You must excuse me,” said Bernard, smiling, “I have not yet learned to smoke, although, if I remain in Virginia, I suppose I will have to contract a habit so general here.”

“What, not smoke!” said the old man, in surprise. “Why tobacco is at once the calmer of sorrows, the assuager of excitement; the companion of solitude, the life of company; the quickener of fancy, the composer of thought.”

“I had expected,” returned Bernard, laughing at his host's enthusiasm, “that so rigid a loyalist as yourself, would be a convert to King James's Counterblast. Have you never read that work of the royal pedant?”

“Read it!” cried the Colonel, impetuously. “No! and what's more, with all my loyalty and respect for his memory, I would sooner light my pipe with a page of his Basilicon, than subscribe to the sentiments of his Counterblast.”

“Oh, he had his supporters too,” replied Bernard, smiling. “You surely cannot have forgotten the song of Cucullus in the Lover's Melancholy;” and the young man repeated, with mock solemnity, the lines,

“They that will learn to drink a health in hell,

Must learn on earth to take tobacco well,

For in hell they drink no wine, nor ale, nor beer,

But fire and smoke and stench, as we do here.”

“Well put, my young friend,” said Temple, laughing in his turn. “But you should remember that John Ford had to put such a sentiment in the mouth of a Bedlamite. Here, Sandy,” he added, kicking a little negro boy, who was nodding in the corner, dreaming, perhaps, of the pleasures of the next 'possum hunt, “Run to the kitchen, Sandy, and bring me a coal of fire.”

“And, now, Mr. Bernard, what is the news political and social in the big world of Jamestown?”

“Much to interest you in both respects. It is indeed a part of my duty in this visit, to request that you and the ladies will be present at a grand masque ball to be given on Lady Frances's birth-night.”

“A masque in Virginia!” exclaimed the Colonel, “that will be a novelty indeed! But the Governor has not the opportunity or the means at hand to prepare it.”

“Oh, yes!” replied Bernard, “we have all determined to do our best. The assembly will be in session, and the good burgesses will aid us, and at any rate if we cannot eclipse old England, we must try to make up in pleasure, what is wanting in brilliancy. I trust Miss Temple will aid us by her presence, which in itself will add both pleasure and brilliancy to the occasion.”

Virginia blushed slightly at the compliment, and replied—

“Indeed, Mr. Bernard, the presence which you seem to esteem so highly depends entirely on my father's permission—but I will unite with you in urging that as it is a novelty to me, he will not deny his assent. I should like of all things to go.”

“Well, my daughter, as you please—but what says mother to the plan? You know she is not queen consort only, and she must be consulted.”

“I am sure, Colonel Temple,” said the good lady, “that I do as much to please Virginia as you can. To be sure, a masque in Virginia can afford but little pleasure to me, who have seen them in all their glory in England, but I have no doubt it will be all well enough for the young people, and I am always ready to contribute to their amusement.”

“I know that, my dear, and Jeanie can testify to it as well as I. But, Mr. Bernard, what is to be the subject of this masque, and who is the author, or are we to have a rehash of rare Ben Jonson's Golden Age?”

“It is to be a kind of parody of that, or rather a burlesque;” replied Bernard, “and is designed to hail the advent of the Restoration, a theme worthy of the genius of a Shakspeare, though, unfortunately, it is now in far humbler hands.”

“A noble subject, truly,” said the Colonel, “and from your deprecating air, I have no doubt that we are to be indebted to your pen for its production.”

“Partly, sir,” returned Bernard, with an assumption of modesty. “It is the joint work of Mr. Hutchinson, the chaplain of his excellency, and myself.”

“Oh! Mr. Bernard, are you a poet,” cried the old lady in admiration; “this is really an honour. Mr. Temple used to write verses when we were young, and although they were never printed, they were far prettier than a great deal of the lovesick nonsense that they make such a fuss about. I was always begging him to publish, but he never would push himself forward, like others with not half his merit.”

“I do not pretend to any merit, my dear madam,” said Bernard, “but I trust that with my rigid loyalty, and parson Hutchinson's rigid episcopacy, the roundhead puritans will not meet with more favour than they deserve. Neither of us have been long enough in the colony to have learned from observation the taste of the Virginians, but there is abundant evidence on record that they were the last to desert the cause of loyalty, and to submit to the sway of the puritan Protector.”

“Right, my friend, and she ever will be, or else old Henry Temple will seek out some desolate abode untainted with treason wherein to drag out the remainder of his days.”

“Your loyalty was never more needed,” said Bernard; “for Virginia, I fear, will yet be the scene of a rebellion, which may be but the brief epitome of the revolution.”

“Aye, you refer to this Baconian movement. I had heard that the demagogue was again in arms. But surely you cannot apprehend any danger from such a source.”

“Well, I trust not; and yet the harmless worm, if left to grow, may acquire fangs. Bacon is eloquent and popular, and has already under his standard some of the very flower of the colony. He must be crushed and crushed at once; and yet I fear the worst from the clemency and delay of Sir William Berkeley.”

“Tell me; what is his ground of quarrel?” asked Temple.

“Why, simply that having taken up arms against the Indians without authority, and enraging them by his injustice and cruelty, the governor required him to disband the force he had raised. He peremptorily refused, and demanded a commission from the governor as general-in-chief of the forces of Virginia to prosecute this unholy war.”

“Why unholy?” asked the Colonel. “Rebellious as was his conduct in refusing to lay down his arms at the command of the governor, yet I do not see that it should be deemed unholy to chastise the insolence of these savages.”

“I will tell you, then,” replied Bernard. “His avowed design was to avenge the murder of a poor herdsman by a chief of the Doeg tribe. Instead of visiting his vengeance upon the guilty, he turned his whole force against the Susquehannahs, a friendly tribe of Indians, and chased them like sheep into one of their forts. Five of the Indians relying on the boasted chivalry of the whites, came out of the fort unarmed, to inquire the cause of this unprovoked attack. They were answered by a charge of musketry, and basely murdered in cold blood.”

“Monstrous!” cried Temple, with horror. “Such infidelity will incense the whole Indian race against us and involve the country in another general war.”

“Exactly so,” returned Bernard, “and such is the governor's opinion; but besides this, it is suspected, and with reason too, that this Indian war is merely a pretext on the part of Bacon and a few of his followers, to cover a deeper and more criminal design. The insolent demagogue prates openly about equal rights, freedom, oppression of the mother country, and such dangerous themes, and it is shrewdly thought that, in his wild dreams of liberty, he is taking Cromwell for his model. He has all of the villainy of the old puritan, and a good deal of his genius and ability. But I beg pardon, ladies, all this politics cannot be very palatable to a lady's taste. We will certainly expect you, Mrs. Temple, to be present at the masque; and if Miss Virginia would prefer not to play her part in the exhibition, she may still be there to cheer us with her smiles. I can speak for the taste of all gallant young Virginians, that they will readily pardon her for not concealing so fair a face beneath a mask.”

“Ah, I can easily see that you are but lately from England,” said Mrs. Temple, delighted with the gallantry of the young man. “Your speech, fair sir, savours far more of the manners of the court than of these untutored forests. Alas! it reminds me of my own young days.”

“Well, Mr. Bernard,” said the Colonel, interrupting his wife in a reminiscence, which bid fair to exhaust no brief time, “you will find that we have only transplanted old English manners to another soil.

“'Cœlum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.'”

“I am glad to see,” said Bernard, casting an admiring glance at Virginia, “that this new soil you speak of, Colonel Temple, is so favourably adapted to the growth of the fairest flowers.”

“Oh, you must be jesting, Mr. Bernard,” said the old lady, “for although I am always begging Virginia to pay more attention to the garden, there are scarcely any flowers there worth speaking of, except a few roses that I planted with my own hands, and a bed of violets.”

“You mistake me, my dear madam,” returned Bernard, still gazing on Virginia with an affectation of rapture, “the roses to which I refer bloom on fair young cheeks, and the violets shed their sweetness in the depths of those blue eyes.”

“Oh, you are at your poetry, are you?” said the old lady.

“Not if poetry extends her sway only over the realm of fiction,” said Bernard, laying his hand upon his heart.

“Indeed, Mr. Bernard,” said Virginia, not displeased at flattery, which however gross it may appear to modern ears, was common with young cavaliers in former days, and relished by the fair damsels, “I have been taught that flowers flourish far better in the cultivated parterre, than in the wild woods. I doubt not that, like Orlando, you are but playing off upon a stranger the sentiments, which, in reality, you reserve for some faithful Rosalind whom you have left in England.”

“You now surprise me, indeed,” returned Bernard, “for do you know that among all the ladies that grace English society, there are but few who ever heard of Rosalind or her Orlando, and know as little of the forest of Ardennes as of your own wild forests in Virginia.”

“I have heard,” said the Colonel, “that old Will Shakspeare and his cotemporaries—peers he has none—have been thrown aside for more modern writers, and I fear that England has gained nothing by the exchange. Who is now your prince of song?”

“There is a newly risen wit and poet, John Dryden by name, who seems to bear the palm undisputed. Waller is old now, and though he still writes, yet he has lost much of his popularity by his former defection from the cause of loyalty.”

“Well, for my part, give me old wine, old friends and old poets,” said the Colonel. “I confess I like a bard to be consecrated by the united plaudits of two or three generations, before I can give him my ready admiration.”

“I should think your acquaintance with Horace would have taught you the fallacy of that taste,” said Bernard. “Do you not remember how the old Roman laureate complains of the same prejudice existing in his own day, and argues that on such a principle merit could be accorded to no poet, for all must have their admirers among cotemporaries, else their works would pass into oblivion, before their worth were fairly tested?”

“I cannot be far wrong in the present age at least,” said Temple, “from what I learn and from what I have myself seen, the literature of the present reign is disgraced by the most gross and libertine sentiments. As the water of a healthful stream if dammed up, stagnates and becomes the fruitful source of unwholesome malaria, and then, when released, rushes forward, spreading disease and death in its course, so the liberal feelings and manners of old England, restrained by the rigid puritanism of the Protectorate, at last burst forth in a torrent of disgusting and diseased libertinism.”

Bernard had not an opportunity of replying to this elaborate simile of the good old Colonel, which, like Fadladeen, he had often used and still reserved for great occasions. Further conversation was here interrupted by a new arrival, which in this case, much to the satisfaction of the fair Virginia, proved to be the genuine Hansford.