"--Well, Jessica, go in;
Perhaps, I will return immediately;
Do as I bid you,
Shut doors after you: Fast bind, fast find;
A proverb never stale, in thrifty mind."
Merchant of Venice.
The decision, with which la demoiselle Barbérie had dismissed her suitor,
was owing to some consciousness that she had need of opportunity to
reflect on the singular nature of the events which had just happened, no
less than to a sense of the impropriety of his visiting her at that hour,
and in a manner so equivocal. But, like others who act from feverish
impulses, when alone the maiden repented of her precipitation; and she
remembered fifty questions which might aid in clearing the affair of its
mystery, that she would now gladly put. It was too late, however, for she
had heard Ludlow take his leave, and had listened, in breathless silence,
to his footstep, as he passed the shrubbery of her little lawn. François
reappeared at the door, to repeat his wishes for her rest and happiness,
and then she believed she was finally alone for the night, since the
ladies of that age and country, were little apt to require the assistance
of their attendants, in assuming, or in divesting themselves of, their
ordinary attire.
It was still early, and the recent interview had deprived Alida of all
inclination for sleep. She placed the lights in a distant corner of the
apartment, and approached a window. The moon had so far changed its
position, as to cast a different light upon the water. The hollow washing
of the surf, the dull but heavy breathing of the air from the sea, and the
soft shadows of the trees and mountain, were much the same. The Coquette
lay, as before, at her anchor near the cape, and the Shrewsbury glittered
towards the south, until its surface was concealed by the projection of a
high and nearly perpendicular bluff.
The stillness was profound, for, with the exception of the dwelling of the
family who occupied the estate nearest the villa, there was no other
habitation within some miles of the place. Still the solitude of the
situation was undisturbed by any apprehension of danger, or any tradition
of violence from rude and lawless men. The peaceable character of the
colonists, who dwelt in the interior country, was proverbial, and their
habits simple; while the ocean was never entered by those barbarians, who
then rendered some of the seas of the other hemisphere as fearful as they
were pleasant.
Notwithstanding this known and customary character of tranquillity, and
the lateness of the hour, Alida had not been many moments in her balcony,
before she heard the sound of oars. The stroke was measured, and the noise
low and distant, but it was too familiar to be mistaken. She wondered at
the expedition of Ludlow, who was not accustomed to show such haste in
quitting her presence, and leaned over the railing to catch a glimpse of
his departing boat. Each moment she expected to see the little bark issue
from out of the shadows of the land, into the sheet of brightness which
stretched nearly to the cruiser. She gazed long, and in vain, for no barge
appeared, and yet the sound had become inaudible. A light still hung at
the peak of the Coquette, a sign that the commander was out of his vessel.
The view of a fine ship, seen by the aid of the moon, with its symmetry of
spars, and its delicate tracery of cordage, and the heavy and grand
movements of the hull as it rolls on the sluggish billows of a calm sea,
is ever a pleasing and indeed an imposing spectacle. Alida knew that
more, than a hundred human beings slept within the black and silent mass,
and her thoughts insensibly wandered to the business of their daring
lives, their limited abode, and yet wandering existence, their frank and
manly qualities, their devotion to the cause of those who occupied the
land, their broken and interrupted connexion with the rest of the human
family, and finally to those weakened domestic ties, and to that
reputation for inconstancy, which are apparently a natural consequence of
all. She sighed, and her eye wandered from the ship to that ocean on which
it was constructed to dwell. From the distant, low, and nearly
imperceptible shore of the island of Nassau, to the coast of New-Jersey,
there was one broad and untenanted waste. Even the sea-fowl rested his
tired wing, and slept tranquilly on the water. The broad space appeared
like some great and unfrequented desert, or rather like a denser and more
material copy of the firmament by which it was canopied.
It has been mentioned that a stunted growth of oaks and pines covered much
of the sandy ridge that formed the cape. The same covering furnished a
dark setting to the waters of the Cove. Above this outline of wood, which
fringed the margin of the sea. Alida now fancied she saw an object in
motion. At first, she believed some ragged and naked tree, of which the
coast had many, was so placed as to deceive her vision, and had thrown its
naked lines upon the back-ground of water, in a manner to assume the shape
and tracery of a light-rigged vessel. But when the dark and symmetrical
spars were distinctly seen, gliding past objects that were known to be
stationary, it was impossible to doubt their character. The maiden
wondered, and her surprise was not unmixed with apprehension. It seemed as
if the stranger for such the vessel must needs be, was recklessly
approaching a surf, that, in its most tranquil moments, was dangerous to
such a fabric, and that he steered, unconscious of hazard, directly upon
the land. Even the movement was mysterious and unusual. Sails there were
none; and yet the light and lofty spars were soon hid behind a thicket
that covered a knoll near the margin of the sea. Alida expected, each
moment, to hear the cry of mariners in distress, and then, as the minutes
passed and no such fearful sound interrupted the stillness of the night,
she began to bethink her of those lawless rovers, who were known to abound
among the Carribean isles, and who were said sometimes even to enter and
to refit, in the smaller and more secret inlets of the American continent.
The tales, coupled with the deeds, character, and fate of the notorious
Kidd, were then still recent, and although magnified and colored by vulgar
exaggerations, as all such tales are known to be, enough was believed, by
the better instructed, to make his life and death the subject of many
curious and mysterious rumors. At this moment, she would have gladly
recalled the young commander of the Coquette, to apprize him of the enemy
that was nigh; and then, ashamed of terrors that she was fain to hope
savored more of woman's weakness than of truth, she endeavored to believe
the whole some ordinary movement of a coaster, who, familiar with his
situation, could rot possibly be either in want of aid, or an object of
alarm. Just as this natural and consoling conclusion crossed her mind, she
very audibly heard a step in her pavilion. It seemed near the door of the
room she occupied. Breathless, more with the excitement of her
imagination, than with any actual fear created by this new cause of alarm,
the maiden quitted the balcony, and stood motionless to listen. The door,
in truth, was opened, with singular caution, and, for an instant, Alida
saw nothing but a confused area in the centre of which appeared the
figure of a menacing and rapacious freebooter.
"Northern lights and moonshine!" growled Alderman Van Beverout, for it was
no other than the uncle of the heiress, whose untimely and unexpected
visit had caused her so much alarm. "This sky-watching, and turning of
night into day, will be the destruction of thy beauty, niece; and then we
shall see how plenty Patroons are for husbands! A bright eye and a
blooming cheek are thy stock in trade, girl; and she is a spendthrift of
both, who is out of her bed when the clock hath struck ten."
"Your discipline would deprive many a beauty of the means of using her
power," returned la demoiselle, smiling, as much at the folly of her
recent fears, as with affection for her reprover. "They tell me, that ten
is the witching time of night, for the necromancy of the dames of Europe."
"Witch me no witches! The name reminds one of the cunning Yankees, a race
that would outwit Lucifer himself, if left to set the conditions to their
bargain. Here is the Patroon, wishing to let in a family of the knaves
among the honest Dutchmen of his manor; and we have just settled a dispute
between us, on this subject, by making the lawful trial."
"Which, it may be proper to hope, dearest uncle, was not the trial by
battle?"
"Peace and olive-branches, no! The Patroon of Kinderhook is the last man
in the Americas, that is likely to suffer by the blows of Myndert Van
Beverout. I challenged the boy to hold a fine eel, that the blacks have
brought out of the river to help in breaking our morning fasts, that it
might be seen if he were fit to deal with the slippery rogues. By the
merit of the peaceable St. Nicholas! but the son of old Hendrick Van
Staats had a busy time of it! The lad griped the fish, as the ancient
tradition has it that thy uncle clenched the Holland florin, when my
father put it between my fingers, within the month, in order to see if the
true saving grace was likely to abide in the family for another
generation. My heart misgave me for a moment; for young Oloff has the fist
of a vice, and I thought the goodly names of the Harmans, and Rips,
Corneliuses, and Dircks of the manor rent-roll were likely to be
contaminated by the company of an Increase or a Peleg; but just as the
Patroon thought he had the watery viper by the throat, the fish gave an
unexpected twist, and slid through his fingers by the tail. Flaws and
loop-holes! but that experiment has as much wisdom as wit in it!"
"And to me, it seemeth better, now that Providence has brought all the
colonies under one government, that these prejudices should be forgotten.
We are a people, sprung from many nations, and our effort should be to
preserve the liberality and intelligence, while we forget the weaknesses,
of all."
"Bravely said, for the child of a Huguenot! But I defy the man, who brings
prejudice to my door. I like a merry trade, and a quick calculation. Let
me see the man in all New-England, that can tell the color of a
balance-sheet quicker than one that can be named, and I'll gladly hunt up
the satchel and go to school again. I love a man the better for looking to
his own interests, I; and, yet common honesty teaches us, that there
should be a convention between men, beyond which none of reputation and
character ought to go."
"Which convention shall be understood, by every man, to be the limits of
his own faculties; by which means the dull may rival the quick of thought.
I fear me, uncle, there should be an eel kept on every coast, to which a
trader comes!"
"Prejudice and conceit, child, acting on a drowsy head; 'tis time thou
seekest thy pillow, and in the morning we shall see if young Oloff of the
Manor shall have better success with thy favor, than with the prototype of
the Jonathans. Here, put out these flaring candles, and take a modest lamp
to light thee to thy bed. Glaring windows, so near midnight give a house
an extravagant name, in the neighborhood."
"Our reputation for sobriety may suffer in the opinion of the eels,"
returned Alida, laughing, "but here are few others, I believe, to call us
dissipated."
"One never knows--one never knows--" muttered the Alderman, extinguishing
the two large candles of his niece, and substituting his own little
handlamp in their place. "This broad light only invites to wakefulness,
while the dim taper I leave is good as a sleeping draught. Kiss me, wilful
one, and draw thy curtains close, for the negroes will soon rise to load
the periagua, that they may go up with the tide to the city. The noise of
the chattering black guards may disturb thy slumbers!"
"Truly, it would seem there was little here to invite such active
navigation," returned Alida, saluting the cheek of her uncle at his order.
"The love of trade must be strong, when it finds the materials of
commerce, in a solitude like this."
"Thou hast divined the reason, child. Thy father Monsieur de Barbérie had
his peculiar opinions on the subject, and doubtless he did not fail to
transmit some of them to his offspring. And yet, when the Huguenot was
driven from his château and his clayey Norman lands, the man had no
distaste, himself, for an account-current, provided the balance was in his
own favor. Nations and characters! I find but little difference, after
all, in trade; whether it be driven with a Mohawk for his pack of furs, or
with a Seigneur, who has been driven from his lands. Each strives to get
the profit on his own side of the account, and the loss on that of his
neighbor. So rest thee well, girl; and remember that matrimony is no more
than a capital bargain, on whose success depends the sum-total of a
woman's comfort--and so once more, good night."
La belle Barbérie attended her uncle, dutifully to the door of her
pavilion, which she bolted after him; and then, finding her little
apartment gloomy by the light of the small and feeble lamp he had left,
she was pleased to bring its flame in contact with the wicks of the two
candles he had just extinguished. Placing the three, near each other, on a
table, the maiden again drew nigh a window. The unexpected interview with
the Alderman had consumed several minutes, and she was curious to know
more of the unaccountable movements of the mysterious vessel.
The same deep silence reigned about the villa, and the slumbering ocean
was heaving and setting as heavily as before. Alida again looked for the
boat of Ludlow; but her eye ran over the whole distance of the bright and
broad streak, between her and the cruiser, in vain. There was the slight
ripple of the water in the glittering of the moon's rays, but no speck,
like that the barge would make, was visible. The lantern still shone at
the cruiser's peak. Once, indeed, she thought the sound of oars was again
to be heard, and much nearer than before; and yet no effort of her quick
and roving sight could detect the position of the boat. But to all these
doubts succeeded an alarm which sprang from a new and very different
source.
The existence of the inlet, which united the ocean with the waters of the
Cove, was but little known, except to the few whose avocations kept them
near the spot. The pass being much more than half the time closed, its
varying character, and the little use that could be made of it under any
circumstances, prevented the place from being a subject of general
interest, with the coasters. Even when open the depth of its water was
uncertain, since a week or two of calms, or of westerly winds, would
permit the tides to clean its channel, while a single easterly gale was
sufficient to choke the entire inlet with sand. No wonder, then, that
Alida felt an amazement which was not quite free from superstitious alarm
when, at that hour and in such a scene, she saw a vessel gliding, as it
were unaided by sails or sweeps, out of the thicket that fringed the ocean
side of the Cove, into its very centre.
The strange and mysterious craft was a brigantine of that mixed
construction, which is much used, even in the most ancient and classical
seas of the other hemisphere, and which is supposed to unite the
advantages of both a square and of a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, but which
is nowhere seen to display the same beauty of form, and symmetry of
equipment, as on the coasts of this Union. The first and smallest of its
masts had all the complicated machinery of a ship, with its superior and
inferior spars, its wider reaching, though light and manageable yards, and
its various sails, shaped and arranged to meet every vicissitude and
caprice of the winds; while the latter, or larger of the two, rose like
the straight trunk of a pine from the hull, simple in its cordage, and
spreading a single sheet of canvas, that, in itself, was sufficient to
drive the fabric with vast velocity through the water. The hull was low,
graceful in its outlines, dark as the raven's wing, and so modelled as to
float on its element like a sea-gull riding the billows. There were many
delicate and attenuated lines among its spars, which were intended to
spread broader folds of canvas to the light airs, when necessary; but
these additions to the tracery of the machine, which added so much to its
beauty by day, were now, seen as it was by the dimmer and more treacherous
rays of the moon, scarcely visible. In short, as the vessel had entered
the Cove floating with the tide, and it was so singularly graceful and
fairy-like in form, that Alida, at first, was fain to discredit her
senses, and to believe it no more than some illusion of the fancy. Like
most others, she was ignorant of the temporary inlet, and, under the
circumstances, it was not difficult to lend a momentary credence to so
pleasing an idea.
But the delusion was only momentary. The brigantine turned in its course,
and, gliding into the part of the Cove where the curvature of the shores
offered most protection from the winds and waves, and perhaps from curious
eyes, its motion ceased. A heavy plunge in the water was audible even at
the villa, and Alida then knew that an anchor had fallen into the bay.
Although the coast of North America offered little to invite lawless
depredation, and it was in general believed to be so safe, yet the
possibility that cupidity might be invited by the retired situation of her
uncle's villa, did not fail to suggest itself to the mind of the young
heiress. Both she and her guardian were reputed to be wealthy; and
disappointment, on the open sea, might drive desperate men to the
commission of crimes that in more prosperous moments would not suggest
themselves. The freebooters were said to have formerly visited the coast
of the neighboring island, and men were just then commencing those
excavations for hidden treasures and secreted booty, which have been, at
distant intervals, continued to our own time.
There are situations in which the mind insensibly gives credit to
impressions, that the reason in common disapproves. The present was one in
which Alide de Barbérie, though of a resolute and even a masculine
understanding, felt disposed to believe there might be truth in those
tales, that she had hitherto heard, only to deride. Still keeping her eye
on the Motionless vessel, she drew back into her window and wrapped the
curtain round her form, undecided whether to alarm the family or not, and
acting under a vague impression that, though so distant, her person might
be seen. She was hardly thus secreted, before the shrubbery was violently
agitated, a footstep was heard in the lawn beneath her window, and then
one leaped so lightly into the balcony, and from the balcony into the
centre of the room, that the passage of the figure seemed like the
flitting of some creature of supernatural attributes.