The Heart

She stared with scorn at the one black woman approaching her with

the silver tray, then she turned and stared at Nick Barry, sitting

half overcome with drink, lolling against the other. He cast a look

of utter sheepishness at her, and then straightened himself, and

rose like the other men, and Dick Barry motioned to both of the

black women to withdraw, which they did, slinking out darkly, both

with a fine rustle of silks. Then Madam Story saluted the other

women, though somewhat stiffly, and Dick Barry, who was never

lacking in a certain gloomy dignity, though they said him to be the

worse of the two brothers, stepped forward. "Madam," he said, "I

pray you to be seated." With that he led her with a courtly air to a

great carved chair, in which his father had been used to sit, and

she therein, somewhat mollified, her black length doubled on itself,

and that mourning coach on her forehead was a wonderful sight.

Then arrived Major Robert Beverly and another notable man, one of

the burgesses, whose name I do to this day conceal, in consequence

of a vow to that effect, and then two more. Then Major Beverly, who

was in fact running greater risks than almost any, inasmuch as he

was Clerk of the Assembly, and was betraying more of trust, after he

had saluted Madam Story conferred privately with Dick Barry, and my

Lord Estes, and Parson Downs, with this effect. Dick Barry, with

such a show of gallantry and seriousness as never was, prevailed

upon the three ladies to forgive him his discourtesy, but hinted

broadly that in an enterprise fraught with so much danger, it were

best that none but the ruder sex should confer together, and they

departed; Mistress Longman enjoining upon her husband to remain and

deport himself like a man of spirit, and Mistress Allgood whispering

with a sharp hiss into her goodman's alarmed ear, he nodding the

while in token of assent.

But Madam Tabitha Story paused on the threshold ere she departed,

standing back on her heels with a marvellous dignity, and waving one

long, black-draped arm. "Gentlemen of Virginia," said she, in a

voice of such solemnity as I had never heard excelled, "I beseech

you to remember the example which that hero who has departed set

you. I beseech you to form your proceedings after the fashion of

those of the immortal Bacon, and remember that if the time comes

when a woman's arm is needed to strike for freedom, here is one at

your service, while the heart which moves it beats true to liberty

and the great dead!"