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CHAPTER XVIII
THE EMERALD TAG

With the dignity of absolute self-renunciation Elinor took up the cramped, new existence in the little cottage at St. Mary's. To Cecil it was but a play, this strange life in the tiny rooms, where the great four-post bed seemed an elephant in a toy house, and the head on the carved chest appeared to be perpetually grinning at the incongruity of its surroundings. What cared the child for narrow quarters, while in the evenings he could lie as of old before the fire, and in sunny spring days could wander through the village streets, now loitering on the wharf to watch the lumber loading for the new house at Cecil Point and anon pausing at the smithy for a talk with the blacksmith as he hammered at his anvil?

For the first time in his life the boy was learning the meaning of democracy. The best gift money can offer its owners is the aloofness afforded by wide acres, and the servants who act as buffers to the multitude; but the eternal laws of compensation hold here as everywhere, and this aristocratic seclusion is bought at the expense of the feeling of kinship and sympathy with the average man.

Elinor realized this, and it reconciled her to much that was trying in her new lot. She felt that her own life was at an end, the last page turned, and finis written on that day when Giles Brent met her on the river path at St. Gabriel's and told her that the waters had closed over the head of Christopher Neville. On that day hope fell dead; but duty lives on after hope has died, and then there was always Cecil.

On him she lavished all her pent-up love, all the unsatisfied ambition of her heart. For him she planned and worked. He was to be Lord of the Manor, then Councillor, then perhaps in the far-off days Governor of the Province, and always an honor to the Calvert name. Already men were at work building the house at Cecil Point, and the wood-chopper's axe rang merrily among the giant trees that must fall to clear the fields and make them ready for their burden of wheat and maize and tobacco.

The superintendence of all this, combined with the keeping of the little house at St. Mary's, filled Elinor's days so full that she had scant time for grieving; but when Cecil was in bed and asleep, and Elinor sat by the fire alone with memory, then, indeed, the struggle was a bitter one, and often her head was bowed upon the table and the candle-light shone upon a figure shaken by a storm of tears and sobs. Yet each time, after the storm and stress came peace, as she betook herself to her closet and her beads. In nothing has the Catholic faith a stronger hold on men's hearts than in the tie its creed furnishes between the living and the dead, in the belief that the prayers of those who kneel before the altar do still reach forth to help and succor those who lie beneath the pavements of the church.

Elinor, too, had her private liturgy addressed to Christopher, which she recited as the bells tolled the hours of devotion. At matins she said, —

"May the coming day grant me opportunity to serve thee and honor thy name!"

At prime: "May thine innocence dawn upon those who doubt thee as the glory of the morning rises on the world of shadows!"

At vespers: "So ends another day which did separate thee and me."

And at complines: "I lay me down to sleep. May our souls meet in the world of dreams here and the world of spirits hereafter!"

Elinor never spoke to Father White of Neville, for she knew full well that to the priest he was accursed as a heretic if not as a murderer, and she felt that she could only talk of him with one who held him as she did.

Often in these lonely days did her heart yearn toward Peggy, who was known at St. Mary's to have been rescued from the ketch and to have made her home with the Huntoons; but something within her, whether pride or penance, forbade. She remembered the scorn in Peggy's voice as she reproached her with her doubts of Christopher, and she felt how idle it would be now to try to persuade the girl that her faith was as strong as her own. Some day, she told herself, when her prayer had been answered, her struggles rewarded, and she had shown forth Christopher's innocence to the world, then she would write in tender triumph and bid Peggy come to her and be her little sister for life.

The chief comfort of all to her troubled soul lay in this task she had set herself as her life-work, – the proving to the world of Neville's innocence. Baffled at every turn, she never gave up, but followed every hint of a clue and rejoiced to find here and there men and women who believed in Neville as earnestly as she.

Of all these friends in need, one was more helpful, more comforting, more sustaining than all the rest. Margaret Brent was like a granite cliff against which the waves beat mightily, but could not prevail. Had her nature sharp peaks, crevasses, and unsunned slopes? In times of storm one thought not of these, but of the rock's protection and the solid barrier against the fury of the tempest. The very bluntness of her shrewd comments on Elinor's conduct of life held a certain tonic. The people who help us most are those who make light of our achievements, and have faith in our possibilities.

As Elinor compared Margaret with her sister Mary, she felt how unenlightened her former judgments had been. Mary Brent's virtues were for times of sunshine. Hospitality, tranquillity, pious observances, marked her placid progress through the world; but when the final test came, it laid bare under these qualities narrowness of mind and bigotry of soul and that hardness which sometimes underlies suavity. Her white eyelids, with their light lashes, never quivered as she pronounced Neville guilty and bade Elinor renounce him and his memory. Elinor would not? Then they were best apart, and she would not undertake to dissuade her cousin from her plan of taking up her abode at Cecil Point. When she bade Cecil good-bye, a brief spasm seemed to tear her heart; but it passed, leaving the face as unruffled as ever, and it was with a feeling of relief that Elinor turned from her to the wilderness.

At first sight the cottage at St. Mary's had seemed impossible for one of Elinor Calvert's birth and upbringing; but outward things had no power to trouble her now, and she set to work with a certain sense of pleasurable independence to brighten the little house for Cecil's sake.

Her chief helper was Bride, an old nurse of Cecil's who had come to the new land with her boy and who now proved herself as reliable in the kitchen as in the nursery. She was a picturesque figure enough in her short stuff gown with bright stockings and heavy shoes, a white kerchief folded above her checked apron, and a ruffled cap covering her gray hair.

Her only wish was to serve her mistress, her only joy to prepare good things for Cecil to eat, her only terror fear of these strange blacks whom people seemed to take into their houses as if they were human beings like the white folk, instead of uncanny creatures of whom any deviltry might be expected.

"Do ye think, Master Cecil, the black would come off if ye touched one?" she asked.

"I know not; I never tried. Come here, Lysander! There, stand still while I rub you with this white cloth. See, Bride, the cloth is not black, no more than if you rubbed it on a black cow or any other beast."

"Ay, it's beasts they are, and not men at all, and it's none of them I be wanting about my kitchen. Let them bring water from the well and leave it at the door, and then be off out of my sight before one of them casts the evil eye on me. And the females are worse than the males; they're like black witches."

"Bride!"

"Ay, my bairn!"

"Ye remember the murder of Father Mohl?"

"Am I like to forget it?"

"Well, I've been thinking 'twas not like a man to kill a priest like that. Do you think it might have been a black witch that was riding through the forest on a broomstick, and did it with a witch knife, – you know they have them that they copy from real ones."

"What's this talk of witches and witch knives?" It was Ralph Ingle who spoke. He stood leaning against the door, his hair falling light against his suit of huntsman's green with leather trimmings, in his hands a string of wild ducks.

"Oh, Master Ingle!" cried Cecil, jumping up and down and clapping his hands, "you have been shooting again and when, oh, when will you take me with you as you did promise?"

"When Mistress Neville grants her gracious permission; and, Cecil, do you think ever you could gain her consent to another thing?"

"What thing?"

"To her accepting me as a tenant at Cecil Point."

Cecil shook his yellow curls and set his mouth in droll imitation of his mother's determined look.

"Cannot be! Mother says we shall never have a tenant at the Point."

"Not till the sea gives up its dead," said Elinor, coming to the door and laying her arm about Cecil's shoulder.

At Mistress Calvert's approach Ingle bent forward with that unconscious deference which is the most subtle flattery, as though the soul stood at attention before its superior.

"Say no more, I pray you," said Elinor, "though I know you do speak but out of kindness and deep thoughtfulness for me. You have been hunting," she added, striving to turn the conversation.

"Ay, and have brought the spoils to lay at your feet," adding under his breath, "where my heart still lies."

Elinor colored and shook her head, but, feeling that refusal were ungracious, she took the ducks from his hand, stroked the plumage, and bade Cecil carry them to Bride.

Ingle watched Cecil disappear with the birds over his arm, then he leaned across the door near Elinor.

"You are more beautiful than ever," he said.

"I have outgrown the age of flatteries, Master Ingle. Beauty belongs to youth and joy, and both have left me forever."

"One type of beauty belongs to these. At St. Gabriel's yonder you were beautiful like a great lady of the court. To-day you are beautiful like the Blessed Virgin."

"Hush! You speak something akin to blasphemy."

"Nay, not a whit. Did not the old masters paint Our Lady from the women around them, and none so fair as you?"

"A pretty model for a sacred figure I should make, with my homespun apron and a bunch of keys in my hand."

"They might be the keys of Heaven if the hand were in mine."

"Master Ingle, I have told you more than once that I could listen to no such talk from you."

"Your word is law," said Ingle, bowing low. Then with a swift turn of the tide of talk, "I must tell you how narrow an escape these ducks had from becoming food for some dirty red man instead of lying in state on your table. I shot them on the river a day or two since. Father White asked me to go with him as interpreter on a mission among the Patuxents. We took a boat and two chests, one containing clothing along with bread and butter and cheese and corn, and another containing bottles of wine for the eucharist and holy water for baptism. But in the night the savages broke into the tent where that dolt of a servant slept, and stole the sacramental wine and our chest of clothing and all the food save one pat of butter and a cheese-cake.

"Father White was so pleased that the sacred vessels were untouched that he fell on his knees, giving thanks as though the whole affair were a great mercy; and for me, to tell the truth, when I found the ducks I did shoot for you were still there, I heeded no other loss."

Elinor came nearer to a smile than the last month had witnessed. There was consolation in knowing that there was still some one to whom she was first, whose only thought was the gratification of her tastes and fancies.

"They are in the nick of time," she said, "to garnish our supper to-night, when I do expect my cousin, Margaret Brent, who comes to spend some time under my roof. Perhaps you will join us."

"Thanks, fair hostess; but Mistress Margaret Brent and I agree not as well as I and her brother and sister. Besides, I did promise the Governor to be back this night at St. Gabriel's."

"Master Ingle?"

"Yes, Cecil."

"Will you pass by the road where Father Mohl was murdered?"

Ingle started. He loved not ghostly thoughts nor sad memories.

"Not I," he said hastily; "but by the main road."

"I am sorry."

"Why?"

"I wanted so much to have you look in the branches of the tree and see if by chance you saw any scrap of cloth that did look like the cloaking of a witch."

"Hush, Cecil!" cried Elinor, clasping her hands over the boy's mouth. "Drop no hint that might spread another calumny. We who are suffering from that dread scourge should see to it that we lay not the lash to the back of another. Whoever the guilty one is, we must leave him to God, and I believe in my heart his suffering is greater than mine, or than any that ever Christopher Neville knew."

"Think you all souls are as sensitive as thine?" asked Ingle, gazing with reverence into the face so near and yet so infinitely far away.

"I know not; but I can conceive no nature so base that it would not writhe to see its just censure borne by another; and to be so sunk in sin as to feel nothing, – why, that would be most pitiable of all."

"It would," answered Ingle, and stood musing a moment; then he moved slowly away, walking backward that he might keep Elinor in view till the last. "Good-bye," he said finally, and turning strode hastily toward the gate nearest St. Gabriel's.

Elinor stood long in the doorway gazing after him, and then when he had quite vanished, gazing on into vacancy like one who sees the unseen and holds converse with spirits.

"Come, Cecil," she said at last, shaking off her lethargy with an effort, "fetch a pitcher, and we will go down to the Governor's Spring and draw water fresher than that which flows in our well."

Nothing loath, Cecil slipped one hand in his mother's and with the other swung the earthen pitcher to and fro, to the imminent risk of its brown nose.

When they reached the spring the two seated themselves on the stone curb with which by Calvert's orders the spring had been walled about. From the gravelly bank above, a group of tiny rivulets tumbled over each other in a laughing cascade. Held for a moment in the stone basin, they wandered onward to water the dell shaded by its thick growth of sycamores, elms, and holly-trees.

Spring was misting all the foliage with green, not the rich verdure of summer, but a tender yellow, deepening here and there into the full green glory of unfolded leaves.

Cecil leaned far over the curb, and laughed at his reflection in the spring.

"Do thou lean too, Mother, with thy cheek near mine, that I may thee if thou dotht in truth look ath much like me ath folk say."

As he spoke Cecil gave a little tug at his mother's sleeve and drew her to the margin, where she too stooped and looked down smiling at the golden curls and rosy cheeks of her boy looking up at her from the water.

An instant later she caught another reflection, the face of a red man peering from the bushes over her shoulder. With an inward start she realized that they were on a by-path and beyond call of help.

"Come, Cecil," she cried, striving to speak lightly, though she was conscious that her voice shook. "Pick up thy pitcher, for we must be going. Make haste, too, lest Cousin Margaret be at the house before us."

"Nay, Mother, 'tith tho fair beautiful here," began Cecil, turning toward his mother with pleading in his voice.

As he turned, his eyes too caught the Indian's face even as it was withdrawn into the shadow.

"Why, 'tis the same native I did see on the wharf – "

"Never mind, Cecil, who or what it is, but make good speed for home and I will follow. There, give me the pitcher. Now, run!"

They reached the cottage door panting and out of breath just as Margaret Brent was dismounting from her donkey.

Elinor ran on still faster to greet her. It was the first time they had met since the midnight mass at St. Gabriel's. The older woman took her in her arms.

"So you could not go on living with Mary? Neither could I. She is a good woman, better belike than either you or I, yet – well, different. And when she has once made her decision, angels and archangels could not move her. Never mind, we must win the fight without her."

"Oh, Margaret, do you think there is any ray of light?"

"Foolish child, waste no energy in wondering when light will come; but stumble on in the darkness as best you may. I have several scouts from Kent Fort scouring the trail between St. Mary's and St. Gabriel's. So far they have met with little success, except for one trifle, – one tiny straw, – yet it may show the set of the wind."

"What? Oh, what?"

"Why, Master Halfehead found by the side of the path, on the low bough of a bush not ten paces from where the priest's body hung, the tag of a point such as men use to lace hose and breeches together. It had a bit of the green point hanging to it still."

"But any might have worn that."

"Not such a tag as this. It was made of wrought gold and had an emerald brilliant set at the tip's end. That tiny green gem must be our guiding star."

"But how to follow it?"

"Listen! where there is one point there are two, and each point has two tags; therefore, somewhere in this province, there must be three tags of wrought gold with a tiny emerald at the tip. It is our business to find them."

"But if we find them, what then? Master Huntoon or Giles Brent or one of your scouts might have dropped this."

"Nay, I'd stake my life that if we find the tag we find the murderer – "

"What gives you such assurance?"

"Why, 'tis clear as day. The point was of stout ribbon, somewhat broader than the ordinary lacing. Now that could have been torn off only by some one running and not without the knowledge of the runner. Being of some value, it was well worth picking up or going back to search for, unless the runner had some reason for haste which made him willing to sacrifice the tag rather than stay to look for it."

"Oh, Margaret, how many shrewd ideas thou hast! Would I had a tithe of them!"

"Ideas come with wrinkles, my dear, and are bought at a cost of years beyond their value. As for shrewdness, 'tis a mean virtue at best, and not to be compared with warmth of heart like thine, that draws all toward thee like bees to the red clover. Yet shrewdness has its value. Therefore am I now full of interest in talk of points and lacings with every man I meet, and I leave not off the subject till I have learned with what manner of points the man and his brothers and his cousins and his wife's relatives do lace together hose and breeches. There, that is the whole of my budget of news."

"And thou art an angel to bring it; but having still some human nature, thou must needs eat, and Bride has set out the table with our best linen in honor of thy coming, and has cooked some rare ducks which Master Ingle did bring to the door this morning."

"Does Ralph Ingle come here often?"

"Why, yes and no. Never to stay long, yet often in going and coming for a brief converse at the door."

"Dost thou like him?"

"Faith, Margaret, I think I have no place in my heart warm enough for liking, save of old friends; but Cecil is overjoyed to see him, and Father White oft sends him here of an errand."

"'Tis easy to see why."

"Yes, thou art shrewd as ever, Margaret. Father White would be glad to see me wed now that he has returned to the bosom of Holy Church after long wandering. He accompanies the Father on his missions, and renders much service as interpreter. Ingle himself has given up all thought of marriage, but would fain be our true friend, and asked me this morning to consider of him as a tenant at Cecil Manor."

"Be thine own tenant, Cousin. Trust me, 'tis safer."

"Ay, so I think, and so I have decided. I am very ignorant, but the manor cannot be ready for habitation till next year, and ere a year is over I hope to learn much."

"And I will help thee. Count upon me. Ah, Cecil, how fares it with thee?"

"I do well, Couthin Margaret, yet I like not St. Mary's as well as St. Gabriel's, and in the summer 'twill be worth."

"In the summer thou and thy mother are to come to me at Kent Island. What fine breeches thou dost wear, Cecil!"

"Ay, they are my best, and donned for thee."

"And with such pretty points, knowst thou any other that wears points as fine?"

"Why, Couthin Giles hath points of azure silk with tags of silver, and Counthillor Neale wears rich ribbon points tipped with crystal, and the other day I saw an Indian, and on his blanket was fastened a single point of green silk, and – what think you? – the tag was of wrought gold with an emerald in the end. It made me laugh to see it worn like that. Oh, and, Mother, 'twas the same Indian we saw to-day in the butheth by the Governor's Spring. 'Twath that I strove to tell thee, but thou wouldtht not hear."

The two women looked at each other and turned pale.

"This Indian – who was he – did ever you see him before?"

"Nay, 'twas on the wharf, and he was selling tobacco and shells; none knew him, for I asked."

"Margaret, oh, Margaret, surely now we have found the guilty man."

"Not so fast, Elinor! The Indian got that point of a white man. The question is, was it before or after the murder."

The smile faded out of Elinor Calvert's face, and she drew a deep sigh.

"Only another blind lead," she murmured.

"Only another link in the chain," said Margaret. "Be of good cheer. You and I are not women to fail in an undertaking into which we have put our whole hearts. Depend upon it, we shall trace the owner of the emerald tag yet."