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Updated: August 10, 2024
"I was only putting the common sense of it. It's for you to choose." Here Grey broke in. "I protest against this craziness. Your first duty is to your comrades and to this lady. If you desert us we lose our best musket, and you have as little chance of reaching the Tidewater as the moon. Arc you so madly enamoured of death, Mr. Garvald?"
You are new to the country, or you would know that it is the old cry of the landless and the lawless. Every out-at-elbows republican makes it a stick to beat His Majesty." "Are you a republican, Mr. Garvald?" she asked. "Now that I remember, I have seen you in Whiggamore company." "Why, no," I said. "I do not meddle with politics.
"So you're a merchant," he said. "It's not for me to call down an honest trade, but we could be doing with fewer merchants in these parts. They're so many leeches that suck our blood. Are you here to make siller?" I said I was, and he laughed. "I never heard of your uncle's business, Mr. Garvald, but you'll find it a stiff task to compete with the lads from Bristol and London.
Weak as I was, I had the fierce satisfaction that our errand had not been idle. I replied with the password, and a big fellow strode out from a stockade. "Mr. Garvald!" he said, staring. "What brings you here? Where are the rest of you?" He looked at Shalah and then at me, and finally took my arm and drew me inside.
I could not but admire his handsome eager face, and admit with a bitter grudge that you would look long to find a comelier pair. All this did not soothe my temper, and after an hour of it I was in desperate ill-humour with the world. I had just reached the conclusion that I had had as much as I wanted, when I heard Elspeth's voice calling me. "Come hither, Mr. Garvald," she said.
One or two of the sober ones looked a little embarrassed, but the leader, who I guessed was the youth from Gracedieu, was brave enough. "The gentlemen of Virginia," he said loudly, "being resolved that the man Garvald is an offence to the dominion, have summoned the Free Companions to give him a lesson. If he will sign a bond to leave the country within a month, we are instructed to be merciful.
For a little the life of Virginia seemed unspeakably barren, and I quickened at the wild vista which Shalah offered. I might be a king over a proud people, carving a fair kingdom out of the wilderness, and ruling it justly in the fear of God. These western Indians were the stuff of a great nation. I, Andrew Garvald, might yet find that empire of which the old adventurers dreamed.
"I am a merchant like the others," I said; "only my ships run from Glasgow instead of Bristol." "A very pretty merchant," he said quizzically. "I have heard that hawks should not pick out hawks' eyes. What do you propose to gain, Mr. Garvald?" "Better business," I said.
For me, Andrew Garvald, the prosaic trader, coming out of the darkness into this strange company, the foundations of the world had been upset. All my cares and hopes, my gains and losses, seemed in that moment no better than dust. Love had come to me like a hurricane. From now I had but the one ambition, to hear that voice say to me and to mean it truly, "My dear and only love."
I asked her bluntly wherein I had offended. "Offended!" she cried, "Why should I take offence? I see you once in a blue moon. You flatter yourself strangely, Mr. Garvald, if you think you are ever in my thoughts." "You are never out of mine," I said dismally. At this she laughed, something of the old elfin laughter which I had heard on the wet moors.
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