The Bow of Orange Ribbon - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best book club books of all time txt) 📗

Van Heemskirk's departing guests, as, with snatches of song and merry laughter, they convoyed Batavius and his bride to their own home. And, when they got there, Batavius lifted up his lantern and showed them the motto he had chosen for its lintel; and it passed from lip to lip, till it was lifted altogether, and the young couple crossed their threshold to his ringing good-will,--


"Poverty--always a day's sail behind us!"



IX.

"Now many memories make solicitous
The delicate love lines of her mouth, till, lit
With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
As here between our kisses we sit thus
Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
Speechless while things forgotten call to us."

Joanna's wedding occurred at the beginning of the winter and the winter festivities. But, amid all the dining and dancing and skating, there was a political anxiety and excitement that leavened strongly every social and domestic event. The first Colonial Congress had passed the three resolutions which proved to be the key-note of resistance and of liberty. Joris had emphatically indorsed its action. The odious Stamp Act was to be met by the refusal of American merchants either to import English goods, or to sell them upon commission, until it was repealed. Homespun became fashionable. During the first three months of the year, it was a kind of disgrace to wear silk or satin or broadcloth; and a great fair was opened for the sale of articles of home manufacture. The Government kept its hand upon the sword. The people were divided into two parties, bitterly antagonistic to each other. The "Sons of Liberty" were keeping guard over the pole which symbolized their determination; the British soldiery were swaggering and boasting and openly insulting patriots on the streets; and the "New York Gazette," in flaming articles, was stimulating to the utmost the spirit of resistance to tyranny.

And these great public interests had in every family their special modifications. Joris was among the two hundred New York merchants who put their names to the resolutions of the October Congress; Bram was a conspicuous member of the "Sons of Liberty;" but Batavius, though conscientiously with the people's party, was very sensible of the annoyance and expense it put him to. Only a part of his house was finished, but the building of the rest was in progress; and many things were needed for its elegant completion, which were only to be bought from Tory importers, and which had been therefore nearly doubled in value. When liberty interfered with the private interests of Batavius, he had his doubts as to whether it was liberty. Often Bram's overt disloyalty irritated him beyond endurance. For, since he had joined the ranks of married men and householders, Batavius felt that unmarried men ought to wait for the opinions and leadership of those who had responsibilities.

Joanna talked precisely as Batavius talked. All of his enunciations met with her "Amen." There are women who are incapable of but one affection,--that one which affects them in especial,--and Joanna was of this order. "My husband" was perpetually on her tongue. She looked upon her position as a wife and housekeeper as unique. Other woman might have, during the past six thousand years, held these positions in an indifferent kind of way; but only she had ever comprehended and properly fulfilled the duties they involved. Madam Van Heemskirk smiled a little when Joanna gave her advices about her house and her duties, when she disapproved of her father's political attitude, when she looked injured by Bram's imprudence.

"Not only is wisdom born with Joanna and Batavius, it will also die with them; so they think," said Katharine indignantly, after one of Joanna's periodical visitations.

A tear twinkled in madam's eyes; but she answered, "I shall not distress myself overmuch. Always I have said, 'Joanna has a little soul. Only what is for her own good can she love.'"

"It is Batavius; and a woman must love her husband, mother."

"That is the truth: first and best of all, she must love him, Katherine; but not as the dog loves and fawns on his master, or the squaw bends down to her brave. A good woman gives not up her own principles and thoughts and ways. A good woman will remember the love of her father and mother and brother and sister, her old home, her old friends; and contempt she will not feel and show for the things of the past, which often, for her, were far better than she was worthy of."

"There is one I love, mother, love with all my soul. For him I would die. But for thee also I would die. Love thee, mother? I love thee and my father better because I love him. My mother, fret thee not, nor think that ever Joanna can really forget thee. If a daughter could forget her good father and her good mother, then with the women who sit weeping in the outer darkness, God would justly give her her portion. Such a daughter could not be."

Lysbet sadly shook her head. "When I was a little girl, Katherine, I read in a book about the old Romans, how a wicked daughter over the bleeding corpse of her father drove her chariot. She wanted his crown for her own husband; and over the warm, quivering body of her father she drove. When I read that story, Katherine, my eyes I covered with my hands. I thought such a wicked woman in the world could not be. Alas, _mijn kind!_ often since then I have seen daughters over the bleeding hearts of their mothers and fathers drive; and frown and scold and be much injured and offended if once, in their pain and sorrow, they cry out."

"But this of me remember, mother: if I am not near thee, I shall be loving thee, thinking of thee; telling my husband, and perhaps my little children about thee,--how good thou art, how pretty, how wise. I will order my house as thou hast taught me, and my own dear ones will love me better because I love thee. If to my own mother I be not true, can my husband be sure I will be true to him, if comes the temptation strong enough? Sorry would I be if my heart only one love could hold, and ever the last love the strong love."

Still, in spite of this home trouble, and in spite of the national anxiety, the winter months went with a delightsome peace and regularity in the Van Heemskirk household. Neil Semple ceased to visit Katherine after Joanna's wedding. There was no quarrel, and no interruption to the kindness that had so long existed between the families; frequently they walked from kirk together,--Madam Semple and Madam Van Heemskirk, Joris and the elder, Katherine and Neil. But Neil never again offered her his hand; and such conversation as they had was constrained and of the most conventional character.

Very frequently, also, Dominic Van Linden spent the evening with them. Joris delighted in his descriptions of Java and Surinam; and Lysbet and Katherine knit their stockings, and listened to the conversation. It was evident that the young minister was deeply in love, and equally evident that Katharine's parents favoured his suit. But the lover felt, that, whenever he attempted to approach her as a lover, Katherine surrounded herself with an atmosphere that froze the words of admiration or entreaty upon his lips.

Joris, however, spoke for him. "He has told me how truly he loves thee. Like an honest man he loves thee, and he will make thee a wife honoured of many. No better husband can thou have, Katherine." So spoke her father to her one evening in the early spring, as they stood together over the budding snowdrops and crocus.

"There is no love in my heart for him, father."

"Neil pleases thee not, nor the dominie. Whom is it thou would have, then? Surely not that Englishman now? The whole race I hate,--swaggering, boastful tyrants, all of them. I will not give thee to any Englishman."

"If I marry not him, then will I stay with thee always."

"Nonsense that is. Thou must marry, like other women. But not him; I would never forgive thee; I would never see thy face again."

"Very hard art thou to me. I love Richard; can I love this one and then that one? If I were so light-of-love, contempt I should have from all, even from thee."

"Now, I have something to say. I have heard that some one,--very like to thee,--some one went twice or three times with Mrs. Gordon to see the man when he lay ill at the 'King's Arms.' To such talk, my anger and my scorn soon put an end; and I will not ask of thee whether it be true, or whether it be false. For a young girl I can feel."

"O father, if for me thou could feel!"

"See, now, if I thought this man would be to thee a good husband, I would say, 'God made him, and God does not make all his men Dutchmen;' and I would forgive him his light, loose life, and his wicked wasting of gold and substance, and give thee to him, with thy fortune and with my blessing. But I think he will be to thee a careless husband. He will get tired of thy beauty; thy goodness he will not value; thy money he will soon spend. Three sweethearts had he in New York before thee. Their very names, I dare say, he hath forgotten ere this."

"If Richard could make you sure, father, that he would be a good husband, would you then be content that we should be married?"

"That he cannot do. Can the night make me sure it is the day? Once very much I respected Batavius. I said, 'He is a strict man of business; honourable, careful, and always apt to make a good bargain. He does not drink nor swear, and he is a firm member of the true Church. He will make my Joanna a good husband.' That was what I thought. Now I see that he is a very small, envious, greedy man; and like himself he quickly made thy sister. This is what I fear: if thou marry that soldier, either thou must grow like him, or else he will hate thee, and make thee miserable."

"Just eighteen I am. Let us not talk of husbands. Why are you so hurried, father, to give me to this strange dominie? Little is known of him but what he says. It is easy for him to speak well of Lambertus Van Linden."

"The committee from the Great Consistory have examined his testimonials. They are very good. And I am not in a hurry to give thee away. What I fear is, that thou wilt be a foolish woman, and give thyself away."

Katherine stood with dropped head, looking apparently at the brown earth, and the green box borders, and the shoots of white and purple and gold. But what she really saw, was the pale, handsome face of her sick husband, its pathetic entreaty for her love, its joyful flush, when with bridal kisses he whispered, "_Wife, wife, wife!_"

Joris watched her curiously. The expression on her face he could not understand. "So happy she looks!" he thought, "and for what reason?" Katherine was the first to speak.

"Who has told you anything about Captain Hyde, father?"

"Many have spoken."

"Does he get back his good health again?"

"I hear that. When the warm days come, to England he is going. So