CHAPTER XIV.
OVERTURES FROM THE ENEMY.
AGAINST his long journey across the Atlantic, David Donner made preparations that consumed no small amount of time. A sufficient quantity of money had been subscribed by the patriots who were so concerned for the charter, but this was one of the least important details of Donner’s contemplated venture. As a matter of fact, the Puritans had acquired the arts of procrastination patiently and laboriously, for this had proved their most efficient weapon of defense, in those days of struggling against the Stuart dynasty, and therefore the cream of the putting-off science permeated the very being of David Donner. He nursed his preparations till they grew and flourished.
Two ships bound for England sailed without him. He was quite calm as he contemplated further events of a like nature. At length his fellow-citizens, eager to have him at his work, expostulated with him, mildly. His answer astounded them all. He said he had reasons for believing that Edward Randolph was beginning to feel inclined toward more kindliness of spirit with regard to the Colony and the men who had built it there in the wilderness. Randolph had made overtures of friendship to him. He appeared to be a more agreeable person than any one of them had heretofore believed.
Randolph, indeed, was fairly wooing the old man’s regard. He had begun by nodding, pleasantly, when he and Donner passed in the streets. He had followed this up by halting at Donner’s gate and admiring his flowers, for which the old man had a secret passion.
“If I could dissuade him from his evil purposes,” said David to his colleagues, “if I could win his favor for the charter, and so enlist his services with us, instead of against us, I should be of vastly more service to Massachusetts by remaining here than I could be if I were to go to the Court of Charles.”
Nevertheless the governors held the promise of David Donner sacred. He would go as agreed, unless he could shortly furnish something substantial as a result of this coy flirtation of Randolph’s to gain his good opinion.
It had been observed that Randolph had been a regular attendant at South Church for several Sundays. This new departure of his had been at first regarded with suspicion. Coupled with his attention to David, however, it began to look honest and therefore hopeful.
Grandfather Donner was pothering about in his garden, on one of these mornings, when Randolph paused at the gate, as he had frequently done, and asked leave of the old man to present him with a small rose-tree, having even then a beautiful rose upon it, to plant in some sunny corner of the place.
No olive branch of peace could have opened Donner’s heart more effectually than did this simple matter.
“Come in, friend,” said he. “Come in.”
“It has always seemed a pity to me,” said Randolph, “that men whose political ideas may happen to differ should not be friendly in other particulars, with no more thought of their daily affairs than they would have of the clothing upon their backs.”
“Just so,” said David, who thought the time propitious for missionary work at home, “but I should think, however, that with your youth and earnestness you might have a great future before you, as one of us, working as we work, hoping as we hope, and helping to build this new commonwealth on a rock of solidity and unity.”
“I have thought of that,” said the heavy-browed visitor. “But how would a man proceed to accomplish a result so remote from one like myself?”
“Would you plant it here, or next to the wall?” said David, holding the rose-tree in his hand and looking about for a suitable place in which to tuck its roots.
“I would plant it here, by all means,” said Randolph.
Donner began to dig in the earth with a knife. “Well,” said he, “I should say you would do best to get married and adopt our ways, and labor with us to maintain our government and rights.”
Randolph’s deep-set eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He said: “You may not be surprised to know that I have had such an ambition as this. Could I look for your encouragement and support, if I entertained the idea of marrying, here among your people, and making my life with your lives?”
“Why, to be sure, friend. I would be the first to welcome the attachment of your heart and your interests among us. And have you looked with favor upon some one of our young women?”
Randolph noted with pleasure that the rose-tree was firmly planted and the earth about it patted and pressed down almost affectionately. “It would hardly be fair,” he said, “to give one flower, only to ask for another.”
“Would you have some of my poor flowers?” said the old man, innocently. “Why you shall, then, anything you like.”
“I spoke of my hopes that I have dared to entertain,” said the visitor. “I referred to the fairest flower in all Boston, indeed in all Massachusetts.”
Donner looked up at him quickly. He rose to his feet, having been down on one knee to plant the rose. “Have I understood you aright?” he said.
“It has slipped from my tongue unguardedly,” said the younger man. “Your encouragement of my hopes led me to this confidence. But I feel I can speak to you almost as if you were in the attitude of a father. I can come to you where I could not come to any other man in Boston. I have seen Mistress Merrill, in the simplicity and piety of her life, and this has made me wish to become one of you, working with you and living your lives. Can you not encourage me so far as this?”
David Donner was all but rendered speechless. Such a thought as that Garde had grown up and blossomed had never entered his mind. But not only to find that this was so, but also to have Edward Randolph—the enemy—desiring this alliance, this was more than he could think of, for a moment. He had egged the man on, while he had some vague idea of some other young woman in mind—some other man’s daughter, or granddaughter,—he had been ready to abet such an arrangement, gladly, for the good of the colony, but to find that it was Garde that Randolph wanted—this was indeed a bolt from a clear sky.
“Friend,” he said, finally, “I shall have to think this over.”
“I feared it would sound abrupt,” said the visitor, “yet it is not a sudden fancy with me. It has been my constant thought for many weeks. I have even foreseen difficulties. I have worked so many years apparently against the interests most dear to the colonists.”
Donner nodded at him, for this sounded frank. But the old man’s thoughts were afield, wandering, for the proposition came home to him with tremendous significance.
“But,” resumed Randolph, “any man can conceive that an agent must do, to the best of his ability, that which he honestly believes to be his duty, howsoever unpleasant the task imposed upon him may finally appear.”
“True,” said David, still vaguely.
“I have done my work as well as I could,” the man went on. “I have accumulated matter of vast significance. I am almost sorry that I have done so thoroughly well, the task appointed me, and still all this work might make me the better fitted for citizenship among you, if I follow out your suggestion.”
Donner was not insensible of the threat which this artful speech implied, the threat that all this accumulated matter and knowledge would be used against the colony and the charter, if this man were not made one of their number. But Garde was not to be lightly weighed in the balance. Randolph’s frankness partially disarmed the old man; and the life of the charter, he felt, was the life of their independence, their manhood, their very being. The tiny roots and tendrils of American patriotism grew from the very hearts of those early fathers of liberty.
“This is a matter which would much concern Mistress Merrill,” said Donner. “I made the error of trying to coerce her mother. I shall never coerce Garde.”
“I trust not,” replied his guest. “And yet I hope you will think upon the matter and mayhap speak to Mistress Merrill in this regard, for although I am in a conflict, ’twixt my duty to my King and the high regard which I have been constrained to place with you and your people, through Mistress Merrill, yet I fear I am eager to be remiss with Charles, rather than a traitor to my own heart.”
“I will think upon it,” said David, slowly.
Randolph thanked him, spoke of the rose again and went his way. He was a gardener himself, and having planted his seed, knew enough not to dig it up to see if it had yet begun to sprout.
David Donner sat down to think, not of Garde and not of all that Randolph’s visit signified, but of Garde’s mother and his harshness when her heart had burgeoned with aspirations for itself, and of the pain and wretchedness he had brought to all concerned. He thought of the mad little elopement into which he had driven his daughter, which had ended so disastrously to the honest but poverty-overtaken father of her child. Then he thought of the home-coming, the birth of Garde and the death of the forlorn little mother. He could hear again her faint words of forgiveness; he could see again her wan smile on her faded lips; he could still feel the weak, white hands that raised to slip themselves about his neck and which, when he had put them down, he folded on her breast, still forever.
“I have never coerced little Garde,” he said aloud, “never, Ruth, never.”