The Heart

It was finally agreed that Captain Tabor's plan should be carried

out, and I wended my way back to Drake Hill with a feeling of

triumph, to which I of late years had been a stranger. I know of

nothing in the poor life of a man equal to that great delight of

being of service to one beloved.

I reflected with such ever-increasing joy that it finally became an

ecstasy, and I could almost, it seemed, see the colours of it in my

path; how, had it not been for me, Mary Cavendish might have been in

sore straits; and I verily believe I was as happy for the time as if

she had been my promised sweetheart and was as proud of myself.

When about half-way to Drake Hill I heard afar off a great din of

bells and horns and voices, which presently came nearer. Then the

road was filled up with the dancing May revellers, and verily I

wondered not so much at those decrees against such practices before

the Restoration, for it was as if the savages which they do say are

underneath the outer gloss of the best of us had broke loose, and I

wondered if it might not be like those mad and unlawful orgies which

it was said the god Pan led himself in person through Thessalian

groves. Those honest country maids, who in the morning had advanced

with rustic but innocent freedom, with their glossy heads crowned

with flowers, and those lusty youths, who were indeed something

boisterous, yet still held in a tight rein by decency, had seemingly

changed their very natures, or rather, perhaps, had come to that

pass when their natures could be no longer concealed. Along the road

in the white moonlight they stamped as wantonly as any herd of kine;

youths and maids with arms about each other, and all with faces

flushed with ale-drinking, and the maids with tossing hair and

draggled coats, and all the fresh garlands withered or scattered.

And the old graybeard who was Maid Marion was riotously drunk, and

borne aloft with mad and feeble gesturings on the shoulders of two

staggering young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers,

only upheld from collapse in the mire by mutual upholdings, until

they seemed like some monstrous animal moving with uncouth sprawls

of legs as multifold as a centipede, and wavering drunkenly from one

side of the road to the other, lurching into the dewy bushes, then

recovering by the joint effort of the whole.

I stood well back to let them pass, being in that mood of

self-importance, by reason of my love and the service rendered by

it, that I could have seen the whole posse led to the whipping-block

with a relish, when suddenly from their tipsy throats came a shout

of such import that my heart stood still. "Down with the king!"

hallooed one mad reveller, in a voice of such thickness that the

whole sentence seemed one word; then the others took it up, until

verily it seemed to me that their heads were not worth a farthing.

Then, "Down with the governor! down with Lord Culpeper!" shouted

that same thick voice of the man who was leading the wild crew like

a bell-wether. He forged ahead, something more steady on his legs,

but all the madder of his wits for that, with an arm around the

waist of a buxom lass on either side, and all three dancing in time.

Then all the rest echoed that shout of "Down with the governor!"

Then out he burst again with, "Down, down with the tobacco, down

with the tobacco!" But the volley of that echo was cut short by five

horsemen galloping after the throng and scattering them to the right

and left. Then a great voice of authority, set out with the

strangest oaths which ever an imagination of evil compassed, called

out to them to be still if they valued their heads, and cursed them

all for drunken fools, and as he spoke he lashed with his whip from

side to side, and his face gleamed with wrath like a demon's in the

full light, and I saw he was Captain Noel Jaynes, and well

understood how he had made a name for himself on the high seas.

After him rode the brothers, Nicholas and Richard Barry, two great

men, sticking to their saddles like rocks, with fair locks alike on

the head of each flung out on the wind, and then came Ralph Drake

rising in his stirrups and laughing wildly, and last Parson Downs,

but only last because the road was blocked, for verily I thought his

plunging horse would have all before him under his feet. They were

all past me in a trice like a dream, the May revellers scattering

and hastening forward with shrieks of terror and shouts of rage and

peals of defiant laughter, and Captain Jaynes' voice, like a

trumpet, overbearing everything, and shouts from the Barry brothers

echoing him, and now and then coming the deep rumble of

expostulations from the parson's great chest, and Ralph Drake's

peals of horse-laughter, and I was left to consider what a

tinder-box this Colony of Virginia was, and how ready to leap to

flame at a spark even when seemingly most at peace, and to regard

with more and more anxiety Mary Cavendish's part in this brewing

tumult.