CHAPTER XXI.
RANDOLPH’S COURTSHIP.
GARDE fled home as if some unthinkable fate were in pursuit. She was haunted by the look she had seen in the eyes of that girl-mother, back in the hut. She could hear the young thing still begging her not to rob her of the man who had taken her all and given her an ineradicable shame in exchange.
Yet beneath every other emotion, Garde felt a sense of exultation. The estimate of her instinct was confirmed—Randolph was perfidy itself. Not a soul among the Puritans, she believed, could do aught but support her against this man. And if only she could wrench herself free, how gladly would she welcome the penance of waiting years for Adam, in payment for her act, which she felt was disloyalty, in consenting to the provisional betrothal into which she had been forced!
Her grandfather now would have to be the first to protect her from the dread fate which had come so near, she thought. To confuse politics and the personal affairs of her narrow life is the privilege of the sex to which Garde belonged. She planned, as she darted through the wind-swept streets. She would tell it all to Grandfather Donner, and then he should save her the ordeal of meeting Edward Randolph in any manner whatsoever. She gave no thought to the charter, nor to what the man with the power he wielded would do in revenge to their liberties, now that he would find himself baffled, at the end of his term of waiting.
She yearned for Adam. She could tell him, now, what she had been driven to do, whereas before this she had always wished him to come, yet had shrunk from the thought of confessing what she had permitted to be done. Yes, she could lay it all bare before him now, and fairly scourge herself with her own reproaches, joyously. What an exquisite pleasure it would be to ask his forgiveness thus, and not at first receive it, and then at last be taken home to his arms and his love! For her thoughts, her heart-beats, her soul’s longings had all been constant to him, and to him alone. She would like to tell him all this. And she would let him kiss her, now. For through what hours had she wished, when she had thought they might never meet in that way again, that his kiss had been placed upon her lips that day of their parting. She almost frightened herself with the thought of how that one kiss on her fingers might have been his only kiss. But the next moment she tingled with ecstasy, to think she was free and that some day he would come back, and then she would know how to love him and to cherish him as never before she could have known.
Thus glowing one moment, with love’s own reveries, and chilling the next, with sudden reminders of what had just been and what might still be, she reached her grandfather’s house, where she had been staying with the old man for the past year, with only rare visits to the Soams. She went in by the kitchen door. This apartment being dark, she passed through to the dining-room, which was lighted but unoccupied, hence she continued on to the parlor, where she fancied she heard voices. Entering here, she could have fallen to the floor in sheer astonishment and fright.
She found herself confronting her grandfather and Edward Randolph himself.
“Ah, here she is, you see,” said David Donner, rubbing his hands together, delightedly. “I thought she couldn’t be far away. My child, Mr. Randolph has come to have a little chat. Natural enough, I should think.” He chuckled with pleasure, adding: “Dear me, I mustn’t forget to cover my rose, on a night like this.” With fatuous smiles, that ill suited his grim old visage, he quitted the room, in a sprightly, playful manner, and left Garde facing Randolph, alone.
“Good evening, Mistress Merrill,” said the man, fastening the hungry gaze of his deep-set eyes upon her face. “I am glad to see you looking so well.”
“Good evening, sir, and thank you,” said Garde, in a voice scarcely audible. She had become suddenly pale. She trembled. She looked at the man as one fascinated by a baleful point of light.
“It seemed but reasonable that I should call and see you, since our betrothal is so soon to end in our marriage,” said Randolph, moving slowly toward her, as if to prolong his own anticipation of standing where he could reach her at last. “I have been very patient, have I not, my pretty sweetheart?”
“You—have been very—patient,” echoed Garde, helplessly and panting like a spent doe, to catch her breath.
“And I have kept my word,” he went on, still slowly approaching. “Massachusetts has her charter, and now—I have my wife.”
He put out his hand, like a talon, to clutch her fast.
One convulsive shiver seemed to break the spell which had held Garde enthralled. She leaped away, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering, her frame shaken with emotion.
“No!” she cried. “No! Don’t touch me! Keep away! I loathe you! I know what you are! Keep away,—I can’t bear you!”
“What’s this?” said the man, scowling, till his great brow threw a sinister shadow as far down as his cheek bones. “Have a care, my dear Garde. We made our bargain a year ago. This is no time for kittenish pranks. Come back here where you were.”
His tone was authoritative. The gleam in his eyes was a warning against disobedience. But Garde could be no further frightened than he had made her by his mere presence. She stood there, alert for the first sign which would send her running, if need be, to jump through the window.
“I shall never touch you, nor go near you!” she said. “There is no bargain between us. I would rather die than to be your wife! I know what you are, I say. I have been to Hester Hodder’s, to-night! I have seen her. I know what you are!”
Randolph took hold of his lip and pinched it viciously. He glared at the girl in silence, for a moment. “This has nothing to do with me,” he said. “You have made some mistake.”
“I made a terrible mistake when I first submitted to this loathsome plan,” said Garde, gaining courage as she spoke. “I always distrusted you, despised you. Do you think I would trust a man to save our charter who wouldn’t save a woman’s honor—who would do what you have done? You may go—you may go away! I loathe you! I scorn you! Oh, I have found you out in time!”
“This is silly talk, Mistress Merrill,” said the man. “I know nothing of your Hester Hodder.”
Garde made a gesture expressive of disgust and impatience.
“But all this has no bearing on anything one way or the other,” Randolph continued. “You must not forget that I have as much power over the charter and the colony as ever—in fact, more. I have become the friend of these people, but you can make me their enemy with a very little of your nonsense. Come, now, let us be two sensible beings and not begin our union by quar——”
“If you have had any power to do us injury,” interrupted Garde, “we will find it done. You wouldn’t dare to trust yourself. I have a fear, such as I never had before, of the harm you have doubtless done this colony, darkly, in the year just passed.”
Garde had a way, fairly uncanny, of saying terrible truths, as if from some sort of inspiration, which came upon her unawares. Randolph had his pockets full of documents, at that moment, which lay there like a mine of explosives, ready to shatter the charter and government, almost at his whisper of command. His mind could conceive of nothing so exquisite in treachery, to these people that he hated, and in vengeance against Garde, for the attitude she had always assumed toward him, as to marry her first and then to destroy the charter afterward. This had been his dream for more than the year. He had waited for its climax as patiently as a cat will wait before a hole till the mouse shall reappear. Garde’s words were as so many poignards, only that they failed to strike him in a fatal spot. They stung him to greater fury than he had ever felt and to a hotter determination to humble the girl and to reduce Massachusetts to abject servility and despair.
The man saw that this was an ill time to threaten Garde. She was not made of the wax which his sophistries had substituted for the metal once in David Donner’s composition.
“You have entertained some strange ideas of me, Mistress Merrill, for which I am at a loss to account,” he said, more quietly. “I feel sure we merely misunderstand each other. Have I not shown, for a year, that my one wish is to prove myself a staunch friend of these good people and worthy of your esteem? I am willing to do anything further, if you can think of anything you would like to suggest, before we are married.”
“We shall never be married,” said the girl, self-possessed, now, and calm enough to be fairly judicial. “If you wish to win my respect, go and marry Hester Hodder, and let your child not be buried in shame.”
The man winced, but not visibly. He took his lip in his fingers again and pinched it till it was white. He realized that in her present frame of mind, Garde was utterly incorrigible. He only made matters worse by remaining where she was. He knew of a trick worth two of prolonging this interview. Yet he must retire in good order.
“I must tell you once more,” he said, “that I know nothing about this person of whom you speak. I regret that something has prejudiced your mind against me, especially when you insist upon doing me this wrong. Let me say good night, for I am sure I shall find you in an altered mood to-morrow.”
“Good night,” said Garde, icily.
The man smiled and went out, closing the door as if it had been the bars of a cage, which he had dared to enter, at the risk of frightening his prey to death.
He went out into the garden and called to David Donner.