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CHAPTER XIX
THE ROLLING YEAR
"Is he better to-day?"
"Better in body; but for the mind I can see little betterment."
Elizabeth sighed at her husband's words. Months had gone by since Christopher Neville was borne into the house on his litter. Winter had thawed into spring, spring had bourgeoned and bloomed itself into summer, and summer had dropped its green mantle and taken on the dusky sadness of autumn with its intervals of Indian summer's hazy glory, and now winter was here again. Not last year's icy winter with the cruel chill of the north bearing down on the unpreparedness of the south; but a genial, soft, out-of-doors winter with roses blooming to deck the burial of the old year and welcome the birth of the new, to hearten the struggling and revive the sick.
"Surely," they said, "this weather must put new life into Neville."
It was only in the inner circle that they named him. To the outer world he was "the guest," or when need was, "Master John." Often when alone Huntoon asked himself what would happen if Brent caught wind of Neville's being alive, and made requisition upon Berkeley for his return. It would make an awkward entanglement, Huntoon admitted; but he vowed to himself that there should be a stiff fight before the prisoner was taken from Romney, and those who knew Huntoon's character and the look of his upper lip would have been slow to undertake the capture.
In the first months under the doctor's skilful treatment, the invalid had gained rapidly, and the household rejoiced. Then Nature cried a halt. The color came back to the pallid cheeks, strength to the limbs, but the old light in the eyes never returned. A lassitude marked all motions. A gentle thoughtfulness showed itself in word and deed; but they were as the words and deeds of a child dealing with the present alone. The blow from the bowsprit or the shock of the water or both together, falling on nerves so terribly overwrought, had unseated reason and dethroned memory, at least made a gap which the wandering mind was powerless to fill.
Neville dwelt much in the world of his childhood, fancied himself riding along English lanes, and pulling briar and eglantine in the valleys of Surrey and Somerset with Peggy by his side. Then his imagination led to a beautiful golden-haired girl who went robed in green holding herself like some stately palm.
He remembered watching her walking over close-cropped lawn, and dancing galliards on polished floors. It seemed to him that he had loved her in that strange far away world, and he could recall vaguely a pang of regret when he heard that she was married. Then a blank and nothing more till he found himself here in this hospitable home, with Peggy still beside him ministering to him without ceasing, and the circle of friendly faces about. He knew neither curiosity nor sadness. It was well with him, and he asked nothing but to stay as he was.
"That is the worst of the case," said Master Huntoon to his wife. "If Neville were discontented or unhappy, it would show that there was some half-conscious memory at work in his mind; as it is, I have little hope. And such a man! Faith, Brent must have been mad to believe anything evil of that broad, open brow. I have seen many criminals in my time, Betty, and I know the look of them; but there is another look – the look of a man who might commit a crime if the motive were strong enough – I know that too; and then there is yet another face that God keeps for the man who is to play a man's part in the world, to do and dare and bear bravely the worst Fate can lay upon him, and that is the face of Christopher Neville."
"Alas that his mind should have died before the body!"
"Nay, Betty, let us not give it up so easily. Memory may be gone and judgment even, and yet the vital spark linger. Thought is the breath of the soul. While that lasts there is life, and Christopher's thought is as beautiful and as pure as the heaven above us."
"Ay, that's God's truth."
"More than that, I have seen in him now and then a glimpse of recognition of earth as though the soul were shaking off its lethargy. Were the real world a less sad one for him, I might be tempted to try to call him back by mention of the Brents or Mistress Calvert."
"Oh, that woman!" exclaimed Elizabeth; "not a word from her in all these weeks."
"You forget. She counts him dead."
"Ay, but she might have written to Peggy."
"Yet when Peggy's aunt wrote it did not suit thee."
"I should say not. Such a letter! It was as well Christopher was dead, since he had brought such disgrace on the name, but Peggy might come back to her if she chose. Oh, but it was good to see the answer Peggy sent, and how she scorned aid or protection from any that doubted her brother's innocence."
"Perhaps Mistress Calvert feared a like rebuff, for she and Peggy did not part in love. Besides, thou must not forget that she has much to contend with. She is a Catholic and under the tutelage of Jesuit priests."
"'Tis well I know what their influence is. If I were Lord Baltimore, I would harry them all out of the province."
"Ay, but thou art not Lord Baltimore nor called upon for the Christian task of harrying out of the land a band of brave men."
"Thou dost defend them?"
"Nay, there be few things in which they and I think alike; but this I do say: There is no chapter in her history to which the Church has better right to point with pride than this work of the Jesuits here in the West. At privations they have smiled, at danger they have laughed, at torture they have stretched out hands of blessing over their torturers. And who are they who have faced all these things for their religion? Not hardy pioneers full of love of adventure like many of our Virginia cavaliers, but delicately nurtured students, men for the chief part who prefer the cloister to the world, but have cheerfully sought these western wilds, moved only by love of God and man."
"Humphrey, thou dost love to argue, but answer me one question, Dost thou put trust in them?"
Huntoon shrugged his shoulders.
"Why, for the matter of that," he said, "the older I grow, the fewer men do I put full trust in. But, Betty, there is something else I have to talk of with thee."
"Ay," said his wife, laying down the purse she was netting, "and what is that?"
"Faith, I scarce like to speak of it lest it vex thee."
"The sooner I hear it, the less 'twill keep me on the rack."
"Why, then, I do suspect that Romney is in love."
"Verily!"
"Ay, verily, verily. At the first I thought 'twas but a boyish softness; but I have watched him close of late, and I fear it is a man's passion."
"Oh, mayhap 'tis thy fancy leads thee on to imagine all this. Romney is tougher than thou mayst credit. He can see a pretty face – ay, even for a year – and not lose his heart."
"But, Betty – "
"Well!"
"What if the maid lose hers with looking at him? He is a well-favored lad."
"Ay, he hath the look and bearing of the Romneys. But what hath put this fancy in thy head?"
"Oh, I have looked and listened and I am very swift to take in such things, swifter than thou, I dare venture; oft would I have spoken to thee of the matter ere this, but feared to stir lest thou take it too hard."
"Good Master Blind-as-a-Bat, once before I called thee by that name, and thou hast got no better eyes since. I have known this wondrous news of thine these twelve months more or less."
"And never told me?"
"Oft would I have spoken," answered Elizabeth, mockingly, "but feared lest thou take it too hard."
"The same old Betty!" cried Humphrey Huntoon, laughing, yet a trifle vexed, for the most amiable of men loves not to be made a jest of. "But there must be some deeper reason why thou shouldst have held thy peace on a matter touching us both so nearly. Faith, thou art like the fish Walton tells of, that closeth its mouth in August and openeth not till spring."
"Why, Humphrey, 'twas the first night of the Nevilles' coming, Romney did make a clean breast of his love for Peggy, and the next day we talked of it again. He told me all, – how he had asked her to marry him and got no answer; that is, none that suited him, for he swore she cared no more for him than for any gallant of St. Mary's save as he had befriended her brother; 'but, Mother,' he said, 'I spoke with her since she came to Romney and told her the matter was not to be opened for a year, that we were both too young, and meanwhile we were to be friends, and if she made any show of not being at ease with me, I would take myself off for the whole year, and that would be a great grief to you and my father.'"
"Ah!" said her husband, "the boy has the blood of the Huntoons in him. 'Twas spoken like a man, and Peggy – what said she?"
"She said nothing, only stretched out both hands and looked up at him in a way she has which would make a man in love with her that was cold before, and make her lover ready to live or die for another like it. Ever since they have been fast friends, though 'tis to thee rather than Romney she shows favor, and 'tis well I am a woman above jealousy."
While they were talking Neville entered.
"Is it not a pity, my good host, to be shut indoors when the sunshine lies on the river bank and the air is like mellow wine?"
"Hast thou spent the morning in the open?"
"Ay, Romney and I and Peggy have been sitting by the river bank. We made wreaths for her while she bound our wrists with withes and laughed to see us struggle with them. I did break mine full easily; but Romney could not for his life till Peggy did herself undo them."
"Where did you leave the two?" asked Elizabeth.
"They came up from the river with me, but turned in at the barn where the spinning-wheel stands. There! I ought not to have told, for Peggy was fain to surprise thee with a great skein of smooth flax."
"She is more like to surprise me with a knotted skein, and a snarl on the spindle that will take a week to unwind. Never was there such a careless, heedless, captivating being."
"Since the days of Elizabeth Romney," said Huntoon, who would listen to no word spoken in detraction of Peggy. His wife smiled and thrust out her chin at him.
"I must go and try if it be yet too late to rescue the poor wheel," she said, and passed out at the door and down the path which led to the barn.
At the entrance of the barn she paused and stood looking in at the picture which the doorway framed. Leaning against the rough wall stood Romney, his fingers idly sweeping the strings of a lute, while his eyes were fixed upon Peggy as she sat by the flax-wheel in the corner. Her little foot pressed the treadle, her round arms swayed this way and that with the moving skein, and her supple fingers hovered over distaff and spindle.
The last year had left time's mark on the young man. In youth these marks are generally an improvement, and before thirty, the years add more than they take away. It was hard to define the change which the passing months had brought to Romney, but where a year ago the passing stranger saw the lingering boyhood, to-day he marked the coming manhood. The mouth shut closer, the brows drew a little together as if set in a purpose known only to themselves. If the smile were rarer, it was also sweeter, for it had learned to show itself only when another smile appeared to call it forth. Just now it was playing freely about his lips as he watched the figure at the wheel.
When two are alone together, and a third is present, his name is Love. Peggy's mood was merry, and her mouth had lost for the time the wistful sadness that had hung round it ever since her coming to Virginia. Now it curved into the old-time dimples at the corner as she tossed back and forth the refrain of an old song of which Romney, in teasing humor, had begun the first verse. He sang to the music of his lute and she to the accompaniment of her whirring wheel.
With a mocking smile he thrummed and sang:
"'Pray, what are women like unto?
Believe me, and I'll tell you true:
Wine, wine, women and wine,
They are alike in rain or shine.'"
Peggy bridled, and Romney, still smiling, went on, —
"'Woman's a witch who plies her charm
As doth the wine to work man harm,
And when she sees his heart is sore,
She smiles and sparkles all the more.'"
Peggy dropped her lashes, leaned a bit more over the wheel till the curls shaded the round of her cheek as she took up the word, —
"'It is not woman is the wine,
But love, but love, oh, sweetheart mine!
Drink deep, and drinking thou shalt prove
How heart'ning is the draught of love.'
Is't not a silly verse?"
"Peggy! 'Tis a year last week since thou didst come to Romney."
"Ay – "
"And then we did forswear all talk of love for a twelvemonth. But the twelvemonth is ended. May I talk of it now?"
Peggy colored rose-red.
"Dost know what manner of thing love is?"
Peggy looked up but sidewise, and so looking took in a glimpse of Mistress Huntoon, and she ran to her as to a refuge.
"Come, thou dear hostess," she said, drawing her in at the wide door, "thou art just in time to answer a question of thy son's, 'What manner of thing is love?'"
Elizabeth Huntoon colored almost as red as Peggy had done but now. It was as though the question had turned back life's dial-point and her youth was before her again. She saw Humphrey bending over her in the window-seat at James City. She could recall the trembling of his fingers as they fastened her necklace. She could almost hear again the beating of her own heart. So real did all this seem that she stood stock still with her finger on her lips, like a statue of Memory, smiling to its own image in the past.
"Love!" she said at last, rousing herself, "why, I am fain to think the beauty of love is that none can describe it because it is different to each soul; nay, that it is different each hour to the same soul."
"Does it bring happiness?"
"In that it is like life, – brilliant as a field of poppies one day, sad as a grove of yew-trees the next."
"But how can one tell when one is – is in love?"
"Because when one is – is in love," mocked Elizabeth, "Love tells one."
"Wert thou sure?"
"Nay, I was of the blow hot, blow cold sort. When Humphrey shunned me, I fell a-dying for him; but when he sat casting sheep's eyes at me, I yawned in his face. I wanted to own him; yet I had no yearning to bear bonds myself. But sometimes storms clear the air better than sunshine; and when we met at the gate of death, as it seemed, in the massacre at Flower da Hundred yonder, I knew that in life or death he was mine and I his."
"Master Huntoon," cried Peggy, turning to Romney with a merry eye but a trembling lip, "thinkst, then, thou couldst get up a massacre? 'Tis evident nothing less will show a woman what manner of thing love is! Yet that would not serve either, for in such like times 'tis only the great things of life that we heed. If I could keep thee for such, thou wouldst suit me to the Queen's taste, but oh dear me! life is made up of such little things! When thou dost trip over the root of a tree, I hate thee for thy clumsiness; when thou dost turn a compliment, I long to take it from thy lips and say it to myself, – I know so well what manner of speech a girl would like."
"And I what answer a man would go on his knees for."
"Ah, there thou art again. When thou didst kneel, I saw thee first dust the floor with thy kerchief."
"I never did, Peggy, I swear I never did, though I had on my peach-blow breeches and blue hose."
"Well, 'twas as bad, for thou didst look as if to see where the dust was least. Oh, I could scarce help bursting into laughter."
"The devil!" exclaimed poor Romney, looking toward his mother with despair in his eyes, but his mother only smiled.
"Tell me, thou dear, wise Mistress Huntoon, can a woman truly love and yet be fain to laugh at herself and her love and her lover?"
"Some women can, Peggy, women like thee and me; and, truth to tell, I believe their laughing love is as well worth having as the sighs of those who must pull a long face and grow pale and go about solemnly breathing out prayers and poems; but if thou wilt have my judgment in thy case, little one, I think thou art as one who uses the beads of a rosary to play marbles before the world, yet in the closet will string them once more and murmur Pater Nosters and Ave Marias as piously as any nun.
"Never mind! By and by thou wilt make a little shrine for them and they will grow more sacred, and then little by little thou wilt forget that thou couldst once laugh and make merry over them. Kiss me and say, dost not feel it so?"
No answer.
"But Romney must wait patiently for the stringing of the beads and the building of the shrine, and not try to bless the rosary till the play is over. As for thee, Peggy, trouble not thy head over the future, and for the present cease to twitch at that skein which thou art snarling past all hope of disentangling."
"How stupid of me! and I was going to make it such a lovely skein for a surprise," and Peggy's nervous fingers began to work with the refractory thread.
"I came to talk of lighter things when I was drawn into this discourse of love," said Elizabeth. "I wanted to tell thee, Peggy, of a plan we have for a day not far off when this graceless boy of ours comes to man's estate. If we were at home in England we should keep this twenty-first birthday of his with state and ceremony, but here in the wilds our festivities must needs be primitive. We have thought of a barbecue in the forest for the tenants and a dance in the house for the friends and neighbors. For a dance, folk twenty miles away count themselves neighbors."
"A dance!" Peggy's eyes lighted and then fell with a sudden sadness upon her black dress. Romney's glance followed hers and he said quietly, —
"Let us not attempt it, Mother. We are none of us in the mood."
"Perhaps we all need it the more on that account. Even to the world Peggy's year of mourning is over, and there will be less questioning if she takes her place in the world once more; and among ourselves, where it is a question of Christopher, surely the best service we can do him is to bring what gayety of heart we can into his life."
"You speak wisdom, Mistress Huntoon; but your words bring home to me something I have often of late wished to speak of with you. I – we – cannot longer trench upon even your inexhaustible hospitality."
"Hush!" said Elizabeth, interrupting her with the quick impulsive tears starting to her eyes. "Little Peggy, it has been the one drop of sadness in our cup that we have had no daughter. Now we happen to have taken a fancy to you, though you do snarl flax. Nay, never blush and look at Romney; it is a daughter we want, though she be not our son's wife. We love you for yourself, and we love Christopher for himself. So speak no word further of parting, but rather play the daughter of the house and help me in planning the dance."
"Oh, may I really? Do you think I ought?"
"I do indeed think you both may and ought. It is more than any one woman can undertake alone. I must go into the house at once to begin."
"And I will follow as soon as this is unsnarled," said Peggy.
"And I will wait to practise kneeling to the Queen's taste," said Romney, with a look which brought a surge of red to Peggy's cheek.
"Heigh-ho!" sighed his mother as she walked toward the house, "it is one thing to sigh for the moon; another to get it."
CHAPTER XX
A BIRTHNIGHT BALL
It was the evening of Romney's dance. Lights blazed from every window of the Huntoon mansion, and outside the moon hung her yellow lantern in honor of the merry-making.
Already the guests were gathering. At the wharf lay a flock of white-sailed boats, billing together like a covey of friendly swans. Around the door huddled a motley group of men and boys, holding the bridle of horse and donkey, and in the midst, the centre of observation, stood the lumbering yellow coach with a crest on the panel of its door, the state carriage of the Governor of the province and used only on occasions of ceremony.
On the shore, in front of the house, a great bonfire flamed up, a beacon that could be seen far out on the river. Above the fire stretched two parallel bars supported on forked stakes. On one of the bars hung a huge moose figuring in place of the ox that would have adorned a barbecue in England. On the other bar hung a string of wild birds, duck, heron, and bittern, alternating with raccoon, squirrel, and possum. On the ground around the fire sat a throng of Indians and negroes interspersed with white servants, eagerly watching the game hissing on the spit. In the centre, Philpotts crouched, resting on his heels and holding out his hands to the cheerful blaze.
"I tell you, Cupid," he said, turning to a negro seated beside him, "this is a sight for sore eyes, yet would I give more than all, if one I wot of could get the good of it with the rest of us."
Cupid answered by raising his eyebrows in question and jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a lighted window against which Neville's figure was outlined.
"Ay," answered Philpotts, as if he had spoken, "it's my master I was thinking of. It's my very life I'd give to see him himself again. You did never see such a man as he was in his prime, Cupid, and that's not long since. My brother knew him when he was little more than a boy, and he says he was the bravest and the blithest lad in all the shire of Somerset. But he fell in love, Cupid. He fell in love, and that's how all a man's troubles begin."
Cupid grinned so widely that all his shining row of white teeth showed against the blackness of his face like a row of candles.
"Massa Romney he no tink so. See!"
Following Cupid's eyes, Philpotts saw Master Romney standing on the terrace below the little white bedroom, and flinging roses against the window, from which Peggy was leaning and laughingly dodging the flowers as they struck.
"Come down, mistress mine. Thou art late, and the company is half gathered already."
"Go away, then, and do not break my window, and then leave me to thy mother's reproof."
With the words she shut to the casement and flung down a rose which had landed on the sill. Romney stooped, picked it up, kissed it, and thrust it into the breast of his coat.
Philpotts and Cupid looked at each other and burst into a shout of laughter.
"Come, Cupid, we must in and help about the horses. Youth will be youth, and fools will fall in love while the world lasts."
Within the house the girls were hastily donning their finery, shaking out their skirts, and making ready to flutter down to the foot of the stairway where their escorts awaited them, while such of the men as had ridden made use of the time to unloop the tails of their coats, prudently fastened back for their ride over forest trails.
"Girls, have any of you seen this Maryland maid who is staying with Mistress Huntoon?" asked Mistress Nancy Lynch, as they came down the stair, buttoning their gloves.
"Why," answered Polly Claiborne, "once I caught a glimpse of her standing on the terrace with Romney. I thought no great things of her. She was too brown, and but for a pretty trick of the eyes she had no claims."
"Yet they say at the chapel of ease the parson can scarce go on with the service for gazing on her, and when in the litany he comes to 'Have mercy upon us' he looks straight at her in the Huntoon pew."
"Well, there is one lucky thing, all the men are dead set against Maryland now. I dare say the poor thing will have scarce a partner at the ball."
"You would not care to dance with a girl from Maryland, would you, Captain Snow?" said Mistress Polly, leaning over the railing to where the young officer stood smoothing back his cuffs.
"Not while Virginia holds her own as she does to-night. You have promised me the first reel, remember. Faith! 'tis as fine a hall as ever I saw for dancing."
"Ay, that it is!" echoed Nancy Lynch, and straightway the whole bevy of girls and men fell to echoing the praises of the house, and voting it the finest in the province, next to the Governor's.
On the outside Romney was but a settler's house, noteworthy only in size and fine proportion; within, it was an English mansion, for all the furnishings of Romney Hall in Devonshire had been brought over and placed as nearly as possible in their relative position in the new house.
Chairs and tables of black carved oak stood about. On the south side of the great hall hung a tapestry worked by the maids of Mary of Scotland in her captivity; in the corner stood a great bronze vase, wrought by a famous Florentine of an earlier day. Over the mantel breast scowled a portrait of Sir William Romney, and opposite him his wife smiled down, as if she wished she were alive, and could take part in the festive scene in the hall, lighted by the many candelabra and sconces and the hissing, sparkling, high-flaming fire on the broad hearth.
The portrait bore a striking resemblance to the hostess, who stood under it in her gown of silver brocade over yellow satin, receiving her guests with that graciousness which made each one believe himself the one most desired, where all were welcome. Each girl felt that now she had come, the ball was sure to be a success; each man, that it was upon him Mistress Huntoon counted as her chief aid.
Just now she was listening with an air of absorbed interest to the talk of Sir William Berkeley, who dispensed his compliments upon just and unjust alike. True to the cavalier ideal, his theme was always "lovely woman." If the particular woman with whom he was talking was lovely she must like to be told so, if not, she must like it all the more.
In the case of Elizabeth Huntoon the strain upon his conscience was less than usual, and if she smiled at his elaborate flatteries, it was only after his back was turned.
"I trust, Madam," he was saying, "that I am to be favored with this white hand in the first measure – that is, if no other partner has been selected by the queen of the ball."
"Where the Governor asks there can be no other," answered Elizabeth, sweeping her best courtesy; "but I am only queen dowager to-night, and Your Excellency must honor some of the rising beauties by asking of them in the dance."
"Ay, after you," he said, tapping his gold snuff-box; "but when one is looking upon the sun, one has no mind to be put off with satellites." Then, breaking off and looking toward the staircase, he exclaimed, "In the name of Venus and Cupid, who is that?"
Following his eyes Elizabeth saw naughty Peggy, who should have been ready an hour ago, coming slowly down the winding stair, her figure showing lithe and erect against the oak panelling, her head thrown back, her nostrils dilated with the elation of a race-horse coming in sight of the grand stand.
For the last year she had drooped into a Yorkshire rose, but to-night she glowed in full Lancastrian splendor. Her cheeks were flushed with carnation, her lips redder still, and her eyes flashing with a sense of untried power and latent consciousness of crescent beauty. She was like a young empress looking down upon a roomful of men destined to be her subjects, though as yet they knew it not.
The girls looked up at her and instinctively fell to arranging their lovelocks, and wondering if they had not abandoned the mirror prematurely. The men looked up and straightway forgot themselves and their partners, or wondered only how soon they could civilly be rid of them.
"That girl not a beauty!" whispered Nancy reproachfully to Polly. "Why, then, where's the use of being beautiful. Look at the men!"
In truth, it was as if the company had seen a comet. All faces were turned upward, all eyes upon that figure which came slowly down the stair with as calm an assurance as if her life had been spent in courts.
"This satellite," said Elizabeth, with amused emphasis on the word, and drawing the girl toward her as she spoke, "is Mistress Peggy Neville, Your Excellency."
"I had never thought of her having a name," said the Governor, bowing low, "unless, indeed, it were Flora or Proserpine, or some of those goddesses who appeared now and then to man in old days to show him what goddesses were like. May I hope that Flora will tread the pavan with me later?"
Peggy blushed rosier than ever and courtesied to the ground. The twanging of the fiddles was in her ears celestial music, the candles were the lights of paradise, and this was life.
"Good-evening, Sir William!"
"Ah! Huntoon, I have not seen you since my return from England."
"How did you leave affairs there?"
"Badly enough. His Majesty is hard pressed. I urged upon him a temporary withdrawal to his dominions on this side of the water, and if things go much worse with him I believe he may consider of it."
"Come, gentlemen," broke in Elizabeth, "the fiddles are tuned, and the young people cannot brook waiting while you settle the fate of the nation."
In truth, to one little maid it did seem as though the dancing would never begin. What was the fun of having men struggle for the privilege of talking with her? Old ladies could talk. She could talk better at forty-eight than at eighteen; but to dance, to sway to the music, and feel the blood keeping time as it swept along; to promenade down the hall with all eyes fixed upon one; to wheel the gallants in the reel and feel the lingering pressure of fingers reluctant to let go their transient grasp; to feel the light of the candles reflected in one's eyes and the perfume of roses caught in her breath; to live and move and reign the princess of love, – this was the glorious privilege of youth and womanhood, the guerdon which kind Fate in atonement for many hard blows had flung at the feet of Peggy Neville.
At last the march began, – Sir William and Mistress Huntoon leading, the master of the house following with Lady Berkeley; and when Romney held out his hand to Peggy, she was glad to be alive. As she looked down at her gown she experienced that satisfaction which the young knights of old knew in donning their maiden armor, for is not dress the armor of the social battle?
