“ 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
Barberie 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. Francois 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 Barberie 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 chateau
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 Barberie 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 Barberie, 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.