CHAPTER XXII.
DAVID’S COERCION.
DAVID DONNER came in from that interview in the garden an angered fanatic. The bitter cold of the night had entered into his soul, with all the heaped-up threats which Randolph had hurled at his head.
These threats had not been fired at David loudly nor fiercely. Randolph had told him of Garde’s insubordination, of her charges and of her repudiation of her promise. He had shown that whether her allegations as to Hester Hodder were true or false, they had nothing to do with Massachusetts politics. He had then opened up with his main battery—a recital of the power he had steadily accumulated, during the past year, and of his intention to use it, immediately, if Donner and Garde now failed in the slightest particular to keep their share of the bargain.
Donner became nearly crazed. For a year he had dwelt with fondness upon the topic of the charter and of how he had saved it, until nothing else could get foothold in his mind. Indeed he had become mildly insane upon the subject. He had counted the days, and finally the hours waiting for the final ratification of the contract with Randolph, whose influence with King James had exceeded even that which he had exercised when Charles sat upon the throne. To reflect that now, at the eleventh hour, the mere whim of a silly girl could destroy this whole fabric and sweep away their jealously guarded liberty and independence, at a single breath, nearly made a maniac of the old man.
Hester Hodder was as nothing. A hundred such women, with their dead babes, would have been as nothing, compared to the safety of the charter. What had Garde been born for, if she was not to save the day, when her promise was made and when she alone stood between ruin and the colony? What was her girlish folly, that it should stand in the path forbidding the colony its existence? What should be her very life, when the matter against it weighed so ponderously?
Thinking what his compatriots would say, if they should learn of this latest turn of affairs, Donner wrung his hands in agony, and then clenched them in rage. For twenty years the charter had fluttered between life and death. For the last year it had gained in strength till it seemed that all danger had passed. No religious fanaticism, no zeal of inquisitions ever possessed a man’s soul, heart and brain more thoroughly than his patriotism possessed Grandfather Donner.
When he went into the house, his trembling, bony hands were as cold as those of a skeleton. He was half crying, with his utter vexation and fear for the charter, and yet he ground his teeth, in his anger and stubborn determination to compel his grandchild to adhere to her promise. When he came to where Garde was awaiting his return indoors, she mistook the mad light in his eyes for righteous indignation at Randolph’s perfidy, of which she believed he had become apprised.
“Oh, Grandther,” she said, running trustingly toward him and beginning already to cry, from her stress of emotions. “I am so glad you have come back to protect me!”
“Protect you? Protect you?” he almost screamed, clutching her by the shoulders, so fiercely that the cold and the pain which he caused seemed to penetrate her through and through. “What madness have you committed? What have you done? The charter,—the charter—the charter!—you shall save the charter! Do you hear me? You shall keep your promise and save the colony!” He shook her till the girl was gasping. She could think of nothing but a hideous nightmare.
“Oh, he hasn’t told you, Grandther,” she cried. “If you knew the truth you would turn him from the door! I have seen poor Hester and her baby. I cannot bear to think of him—I should die!”
“You—you—you traitor!” stammered the old man, in his mania. “You—you betray the colony! You are mad, mad! You promised. You made your own conditions. You have deceived me. You would play us false, now—now, when our liberties are taking heart. But you shall not! What? You come home here with this silly story, you—you, the daughter of a Donner—and ready to tear up the charter for your silly notions. No—no! no! no!—you shall marry this man! You shall keep this your bargain! The charter—you shall save the charter!”
“Oh, but, Grandther, the story is true,” said Garde, wringing her hands. “He is the one that is false. And I thought you would hold me too precious for such a thing as——”
“Enough!” commanded the crazed old man. “My word—the colony’s word—has been given. The bargain shall be kept. This has gone too far already. To think that for one moment you would so jeopardize the charter! I am stricken with shame at your want of honor at this crisis of our liberties!”
Garde still failed to believe she heard her grandfather correctly. She still hoped his impatience would abate sufficiently for her to tell of what she had seen. It could not be possible that a Puritan, so high-minded and strict for moral conduct, could know what she knew and still insist upon this infamous marriage. To her, at that moment, it was virtue and honor that were all important to be saved, the charter and the colony that had become insignificant.
“If you had touched that little dead baby,” she said. “If you had heard Hester begging, Grandther—oh, you would have kept your promise,—you would never coerce me in this terrible——”
“Stop! stop!” cried Donner, madly, angered almost beyond control by this appeal, which was so unbearably remindful of her mother. “I have not coerced you, never! You made your promise freely. The honor of the colony, and more than that, the safety of the charter, now hang upon your faith in keeping your own agreement. And you shall keep it—for the family pride—for the colony’s good name! This story—what is the woman?—what is her child?—what is anything, when our liberty and independence tremble in the balance? No more—I’ll hear no more of this,—not a word!”
Garde brushed a wisp of her red-black hair from her forehead. Her great brown eyes were fastened wide open by amazement. Her lips alone contained any color. How red they seemed against the white of her oval face! Her eyebrows seemed like two curved black brands on her brow. She looked at her grandfather in silence. It was positively incredible that he had said what she had heard, she thought. If Hester and her child and “everything” were held of so little worth, why—what of herself? Had it come to this? Was it admittedly and shamelessly a sacrifice of her very soul, to a creature only waiting to have his way first before destroying the charter later?
To the pure, natural mind of the girl, Randolph had become as translucent as water, in his plotted perfidies. It appeared impossible that any man could still believe in his lies. She would have spoken of this, but the sight of the fanatical old man before her, sealed her lips. She recognized the light in his eyes at last. At any other moment her pity would have fluttered forth to him, yearningly, her little mother instinct would have taken her on the wings of concern to smooth the care-channeled wrinkles from his brow, but now all these tenderer emotions had fled away, in fear and awe. She said nothing further. There was nothing left to say, nothing that would have any weight against mania. At length even her gaze fell before the wild look with which David Donner confronted her, insanely.
“Now then,” said the old man, at length, in a voice made raucous by his recent passions, “you may go to bed and prepare your mind for obedience.”
“Good night, dear Grandther,” said Garde, by force of habit, and with nothing more, she passed from the room.