Hearts Afire - By J. D. Rawden Page 0,30
was Mistress Gordon, and she nodded and laughed in a triumphant way that very quickly brought Charlotte to her side. “My dear, I kiss you. You are the top beauty of my whole acquaintance.” Then, in a whisper, “Harleigh sends his devotion. And put your hand in my muff: there is a letter.
Charlotte shook her head.
“On my visit to Harleigh, as I left, this he said to me: “My honor, Charlotte, is now in your keeping.” By the lifting of one eyelash, I will not stain it.”
“Mistress Gordon, I am very much indebted to you.”
“My dear, you are perfectly charming. You always convince me that I am a better woman than I imagine myself. I shall go straight to Harleigh, and tell him how exactly proper you are. Really, you have more perfections than any one woman has a right to.”
“Tomorrow, if I have a letter ready, you will take it?”
“I will run the risk, child. But really, if you could see the way mine host of the 'King's Arms' looks at me, you would be sensible of my courage. I am persuaded he thinks I carry you under my new wadded cloak. Now, adieu. Return to your evergreens and ribbons.
“For your own true love, Tie the splendid orange, Orange still above!”
And so, lightly humming Charlotte's favorite song, Mistress Gordon left the busy house.
Before dinner the next day, Mistress Gordon had every one at his post. She was exceedingly gratified to find the building crowded when the festivities were to begin. The company was entirely composed of men of honor and substance, and women of irreproachable characters, dressed with that solid magnificence gratifying to a man who, like Joris Morgan, dearly loved respectability.
Charlotte looked for Mistress Gordon in vain; she was not in the crowd, and she did not surface until the festival dinner was nearly over. Sir Edward was then considerably under the excitement of his fine position and fine fare. He sat by the side of his bride to be, at the right hand of Joris. Peter Block, the first mate of the “Great Christopher,” was just beginning to sing a song,—a foolish, sentimental ditty for so big and bluff a fellow,—in which some girl was thus entreated,—
“Come, fly with me, my own fair love; My bark is waiting in the bay, And soon its snowy wings will speed To happy lands so far away, “And there, for us, the rose of love Shall sweetly bloom and never die.
Oh, fly with me! We'll happy be Beneath fair Java's smiling sky.”
“Peter, such nonsense as you sing,” said Joris Morgan, with all the authority of a skipper to his mate. “How can a woman fly when she has no wings? And to say any bark has wings is not the truth. And what kind of rose is the rose of love? Twelve kinds of roses I have chosen for my new garden, but that kind I never heard of; and I will not believe in any rose that never dies. And you also have been to Java; and well you know of the fever and blacks, and the sky that is not smiling, but hot as the place which is not heaven. No respectable person would want to be a married man in Java. I never did.”
“Sing your own songs, skipper. By yourself you measure every man. If to the kingdom of heaven you did not want to go, astonished and angry you would be that any one did not like the place which is not heaven.”
“Come, friends and neighbors,” said Joris cheerily, “I will sing you a song; and everyone knows the tune to it, and everyone has heard their fathers and their mothers sing it, —sometimes, perhaps, on the great dikes of the fatherland, and sometimes in their sweet homes that the great Hendrick Hudson found out for them. Now, then, all, a song for MOEDER HOLLAND.
“'We have taken our land from the sea, its fields are all yellow with grain, its meadows are green on the lea,—And now shall we give it to Spain? No, no, no, no!
“'We have planted the faith that is pure, That faith to the end we'll maintain; For the word and the truth must endure. Shall we bow to the ground and to Spain? No, no, no, no!
“'Our ships are on every sea, Our honor has never a stain, Our law and our commerce are free: Are we slaves for the tyrant of Spain? No, no, no, no!
“'Then, sons of Batavia, the