Heralds of Empire. Agnes C. Laut
among evil tongues—were raising a buzz that boded ill for the doctor. France had paid spies among the English, some said. Deliverance Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as pippins, reported that one day when she had gone for simples she had seen strange, dead things in the jars of M. Picot's dispensary. At this I laughed as Rebecca told it me, and old Tibbie winked behind the little Puritan maid's head; for my father, like the princes, had known that love of the new sciences which became a passion among gentlemen. Had I not noticed the mole on the French doctor's cheek? Rebecca asked. I had: what of it?
"The crops have been blighted," says Rebecca; though what connection that had with M. Picot's mole, I could not see.
"Deliverance Dobbins oft hath racking pains," says Rebecca, with that air of injury which became her demure dimples so well.
"Drat that Deliverance Dobbins for a low-bred mongrel mischief-maker!" cries old Tibbie from the pantry door.
"Tibbie," I order, "hold your tongue and drop an angel in the blasphemy box."
"'Twas good coin wasted," the old nurse vowed; but I must needs put some curb on her royalist tongue, which was ever running a-riot in that Puritan household.
It was an accident, in the end, that threw me across M. Picot's path. I had gone to have him bind up a splintered wrist, and he invited me to stay for a round of piquet. I, having only one hand, must beg Mistress Hortense to sort the cards for me.
She sat so near that I could not see her. You may guess I lost every game.
"Tut! tut! Hillary dear, 'tis a poor helper Ramsay gained when he asked your hand. Pish! pish!" he added, seeing our faces crimson; "come away," and he carried me off to the dispensary, as though his preserved reptiles would be more interesting than Hortense.
With an indifference a trifle too marked, he brought me round to the fur trade and wanted to know whether I would be willing to risk trading without a license, on shares with a partner.
"Quick wealth that way, Ramsay, an you have courage to go to the north. An it were not for Hortense, I'd hire that young rapscallion of a Gillam to take me north."
I caught his drift, and had to tell him that I meant to try my fortune in the English court.
But he paid small heed to what I said, gazing absently at the creatures in the jars.
"'Twould be devilish dangerous for a girl," he muttered, pulling fiercely at his mustache.
"Do you mean the court, sir?" I asked.
"Aye," returned the doctor with a dry laugh that meant the opposite of his words. "An you incline to the court, learn the tricks o' the foils, or rogues will slit both purse and throat."
And all the while he was smiling as though my going to the court were an odd notion.
"If I could but find a master," I lamented.
"Come to me of an evening," says M. Picot. "I'll teach you, and you can tell me of the fur trade."
You may be sure I went as often as ever I could. M. Picot took me upstairs to a sort of hunting room. It had a great many ponderous oak pieces carved after the Flemish pattern and a few little bandy-legged chairs and gilded tables with courtly scenes painted on top, which he said Mistress Hortense had brought back as of the latest French fashion. The blackamoor drew close the iron shutters; for, though those in the world must know the ways of the world, worldling practices were a sad offence to New England. Shoving the furnishings aside, M. Picot picked from the armory rack two slim foils resembling Spanish rapiers and prepared to give me my lesson. Carte and tierce, low carte and flanconnade, he taught me with many a ringing clash of steel till beads were dripping from our brows like rain-drops.
"Bravo!" shouted M. Picot in a pause. "Are you son o' the Stanhope that fought on the king's side?"
I said that I was.
"I knew the rascal that got the estate from the king," says M. Picot, with a curious look from Hortense to me; and he told me of Blood, the freebooter, who stole the king's crown but won royal favour by his bravado and entered court service for the doing of deeds that bore not the light of day.
Nightly I went to the French doctor's house, and I learned every wicked trick of thrust and parry that M. Picot knew. Once when I bungled a foul lunge, which M. Picot said was a habit of the infamous Blood, his weapon touched my chest, and Mistress Hortense uttered a sharp cry.
"What—what—what!" exclaims M. Picot, whirling on her.
"'Twas so real," murmurs Hortense, biting her lip.
After that she sat still enough. Then the steel was exchanged for cards; and when I lost too steadily M. Picot broke out: "Pish, boy, your luck fails here! Hillary, child, go practise thy songs on the spinet."
Or: "Hortense, go mull us a smack o' wine!"
Or: "Ha, ha, little witch! Up yet? Late hours make old ladies."
And Hortense must go off, so that I never saw her alone but once. 'Twas the night before I was to leave for the trade.
The blackamoor appeared to say that Deliverance Dobbins was "a-goin' in fits" on the dispensary floor.
"Faith, doctor," said I, "she used to have dumps on our turnstile."
"Yes," laughed Hortense, "small wonder she had dumps on that turnstile! Ramsay used to tilt her backward."
M. Picot hastened away, laughing. Hortense was in a great carved high-back chair with clumsy, wooden cupids floundering all about the tall head-rest. Her face was alight in soft-hued crimson flaming from an Arabian cresset stuck in sockets against the Flemish cabinet.
"A child's trick," began Hortense, catching at the shafts of light.
"I often think of those old days on the beach."
"So do I," said Hortense.
"I wish they could come back."
"So do I," smiled Hortense. Then, as if to check more: "I suppose, Ramsay, you would want to drown us all—Ben and Jack and Rebecca and me."
"And I suppose you would want to stand us all on our heads," I retorted.
Then we both laughed, and Hortense demanded if I had as much skill with the lyre as with the sword. She had heard that I was much given to chanting vain airs and wanton songs, she said.
And this is what I sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to a meeting-house psalm:
"Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting,
Which, clad in damask mantles, deck the arbours,
And then behold your lips where sweet love harbours,
My eyes perplex me with a double doubting,
Whether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses."
Barely had I finished when Mistress Hortense seats herself at the spinet, and, changing the words to suit her saucy fancy, trills off that ballad but newly writ by one of our English courtiers:
"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because--_Rebecca's_--fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause _Rebecca's_ rosier are?"
"Hortense!" I protested.
"Be _he_ fairer than the day
Or the _June-field coils of hay_;
If _he_ be not so to me,
What care I how _fine_ he be?"
There was such merriment in the dark-lashed eyes, I defy Eli Kirke himself to have taken offence; and so, like many another youth, I was all too ready to be the pipe on which a dainty lady played her stops. As the song faded to the last tinkling notes of the spinet her fingers took to touching low,