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Amelia E. Barr - The Bow of Orange Ribbon

A >> Amelia E. Barr >> The Bow of Orange Ribbon




"Because some day you will be very sorry for these foolish words, my
dear love."

"Your dear love I am not."

"My dear love, give me a drink of wine, I am faint."

[Illustration: "I am faint"]

His faint whispered words and deathlike countenance moved her to human
pity. She rose for the wine, and, as she did so, called her mother; but
Neil had at least the satisfaction of feeling that she had ministered to
his weakness, and held the wine to his lips. From this time, he visited
her constantly, unmindful of her frowns, deaf to all her unkind words,
patient under the most pointed slights and neglect. And as most men rate
an object according to the difficulty experienced in attaining it,
Katherine became every day more precious and desirable in Neil's eyes.

In the meantime, without being watched, Katherine felt herself to be
under a certain amount of restraint. If she proposed a walk into the
city, Joanna or madam was sure to have the same desire. She was not
forbidden to visit Mrs. Gordon, but events were so arranged as to make
the visit almost impossible; and only once, during the month after her
marriage, had she an interview with her husband. For even Hyde's
impatience had recognized the absolute necessity of circumspection. The
landlord's suspicions had been awakened, and not very certainly allayed.
"There must be no scandal about my house, Captain," he said. "I merit
something better from you;" and, after this injunction, it was very
likely that Mrs. Gordon's companions would be closely scrutinized. True,
the "King's Arms" was the great rendezvous of the military and
government officials, and the landlord himself subserviently loyal; but,
also, Joris Van Heemskirk was not a man with whom any good citizen would
like to quarrel. Personally he was much beloved, and socially he stood
as representative of a class which held in their hands commercial and
political power no one cared to oppose or offend.

The marriage license had been obtained from the governor, but
extraordinary influence had been used to procure it. Katherine was under
age, and yet subject to her father's authority. In spite of book and
priest and ring, he could retain his child for at least three years; and
three years, Hyde--in talking with his aunt--called "an eternity of
doubt and despair." These facts, Hyde, in his letters, had fully
explained to Katherine; and she understood clearly how important the
preservation of her secret was, and how much toward allaying suspicion
depended upon her own behaviour. Fortunately Joanna's wedding day was
drawing near, and it absorbed what attention the general public had for
the Van Heemskirk family. For it was a certain thing, developing into
feasting and dancing; and it quite put out of consideration suspicions
which resulted in nothing, when people examined them in the clear
atmosphere of Katherine's home.

At the feast of St. Nicholas the marriage was to take place. Early in
November the preparations for it began. No such great event could happen
without an extraordinary housecleaning; and from garret to cellar the
housemaid's pail and brush were in demand. Spotless was every inch of
paint, shining every bit of polished wood and glass; not a thimbleful of
dust in the whole house. Toward the end of the month, Anna and Cornelia
arrived, with their troops of rosy boys and girls, and their slow,
substantial husbands. Batavius felt himself to be a very great man. The
weight of his affairs made him solemn and preoccupied. He was not one of
those light, foolish ones, who can become a husband and a householder
without being sensible of the responsibilities they assume.

In the midst of all this household excitement Katherine found some
opportunities of seeing Mrs. Gordon; and in the joy of receiving letters
from, and sending letters to, her husband, she recovered a gayety of
disposition which effectually repressed all urgent suspicions. Besides,
as the eventful day drew near, there was so much to attend to. Joanna's
personal goods, her dresses and household linen, her china, and wedding
gifts, had to be packed; the house was decorated; and there was a most
amazing quantity of delicacies to be prepared for the table.

In the middle of the afternoon of the day before the marriage, there was
the loud rat-tat-tat of the brass knocker, announcing a visitor. But
visitors had been constant since the arrival of Cornelia and Anna, and
Katherine did not much trouble herself as to whom it might be. She was
standing upon a ladder, pinning among the evergreens and scarlet berries
rosettes and bows of ribbon of the splendid national colour, and singing
with a delightsome cheeriness,--

"But the maid of Holland,
For her own true love,
Ties the splendid orange,
Orange still above!
_O oranje boven!_
Orange still above!"

"Orange still above! Oh, my dear, don't trouble yourself to come down! I
can pass the time tolerably well, watching you."

It was Mrs. Gordon, and she nodded and laughed in a triumphant way that
very quickly brought Katherine to her side. "My dear, I kiss you. You
are the top beauty of my whole acquaintance." Then, in a whisper,
"_Richard sends his devotion. And put your hand in my muff: there is a
letter._ And pray give me joy: I have just secured an invitation. I
asked the councillor and madam point blank for it. Faith, I think I am a
little of a favourite with them! Every one is talking of the bridegroom,
and the bridegroom is talking to every one. Surely, my dear, he imagines
himself to be the only man that will ever again commit matrimony.
_Oranje boven_, everywhere!" Then, with a little exultant laugh, "_Above
the Tartan_, at any rate. How is the young Bruce? My dear, if you don't
make him suffer, I shall never forgive you. Alternate doses of hope and
despair, that would be my prescription."

[Illustration: "Don't trouble yourself to come down"]

Katherine shook her head.

"Take notice, in particular, that I don't understand nods and shakes and
sighs and signs. What is your opinion, frankly?"

"On my wedding day, as I left Richard, this he said to me: 'My honour,
Katherine, is now in your keeping.' By the lifting of one eyelash, I
will not stain it."

"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 Dick, and
tell him how exactly proper you are. Really, you have more perfections
than any one woman has a right to."

"To-morrow, 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 Katharine's favourite song, she left the busy
house.

Before daylight the next morning, Batavius had every one at his post.
The ceremony was to be performed in the Middle Kirk, and he took care
that Joanna kept neither Dominie de Ronde nor himself waiting. He was
exceedingly gratified to find the building crowded when the wedding
party arrived. Joanna's dress had cost a guinea a yard, his own
broadcloth and satin were of the finest quality, and he felt that the
good citizens who respected him ought to have an opportunity to see how
deserving he was of their esteem. Joanna, also, was a beautiful bride;
and the company was entirely composed of men of honour and substance,
and women of irreproachable characters, dressed with that solid
magnificence gratifying to a man who, like Batavius, dearly loved
respectability.

Katherine looked for Mrs. Gordon in vain; she was not in the kirk, and
she did not arrive until the festival dinner was nearly over. Batavius
was then considerably under the excitement of his fine position and fine
fare. He sat by the side of his bride, at the right hand of Joris; and
Katherine assisted her mother at the other end of the table. 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 Batavius, 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 neighbours," said Joris cheerily, "I will sing you a
song; and every one knows the tune to it, and every one has heard their
vaders and their moeders sing it,--sometimes, perhaps, on the great
dikes of Vaderland, 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 Pope and to Spain?
No, no, no, no!

"'Our ships are on every sea,
Our honour 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 spade,--
The spade and the pike and the main,
And the heart and the hand and the blade;
Is there mercy for merciless Spain?
No, no, no, no!'"

By this time the enthusiasm was wonderful. The short, quick denials came
hotter and louder at every verse; and it was easy to understand how
these large, slow men, once kindled to white heat, were both
irresistible and unconquerable. Every eye was turned to Joris, who stood
in his massive, manly beauty a very conspicuous figure. His face was
full of feeling and purpose, his large blue eyes limpid and shining;
and, as the tumult of applause gradually ceased, he said,--

[Illustration: "Listen to me!"]

"My friends and neighbours, no poet am I; but always wrongs burn in the
heart until plain prose cannot utter them. Listen to me. If we wrung the
Great Charter and the right of self-taxation from Mary in A.D. 1477; if
in A.D. 1572 we taught Alva, by force of arms, how dear to us was our
maxim, 'No taxation without representation,'--

"Shall we give up our long-cherished right?
Make the blood of our fathers in vain?
Do we fear any tyrant to fight?
Shall we hold out our hands for the chain?
No, no, no, no!"

Even the women had caught fire at this allusion to the injustice of the
Stamp Act and Quartering Acts, then hanging over the liberties of the
Province; and Mrs. Gordon looked curiously and not unkindly at the
latent rebels. "England will have foemen worthy of her steel if she
turns these good friends into enemies," she reflected; and then,
following some irresistible impulse, she rose with the company, at the
request of Joris, to sing unitedly the patriotic invocation,--

"O Vaderland, can we forget thee,--
Thy courage, thy glory, thy strife?
O Moeder Kirk, can we forget thee?
No, never! no, never! through life.
No, no, no, no!"

The emotion was too intense to be prolonged; and Joris instantly pushed
back his chair, and said, "Now, then, friends, for the dance. Myself I
think not too old to take out the bride."

Neil Semple, who had looked like a man in a dream during the singing,
went eagerly to Katherine as soon as Joris spoke of dancing. "He felt
strong enough," he said, "to tread a measure in the bride dance, and he
hoped she would so far honour him."

"No, I will not, Neil. I will not take your hands. Often I have told you
that."

"Just for to-night, forgive me, Katherine."

"I am sorry that all must end so; I cannot dance any more with you;"
and then she affected to hear her mother calling, and left him standing
among the jocund crowd, hopeless and distraught with grief. He was not
able to recover himself, and the noise and laughter distracted and made
him angry. He had expected so much from this occasion, from its
influence and associations; and it had been altogether a disappointment.
Mrs. Gordon's presence troubled him, and he was not free from jealousy
regarding the young dominie. He had received a call from a church in
Haarlem; and the Consistory had requested him to become a member of the
Coetus, and accept it. Joris had interested himself much in his favour;
Katherine listened with evident pleasure to his conversation. The fire
of jealousy burns with very little fuel; and Neil went away from
Joanna's wedding-feast hating very cordially the young and handsome
Dominie Lambertus Van Linden.

The elder noticed every thing, and he was angry at this new turn in
affairs. He felt as if Joris had purposely brought the dominie into his
house to further embarrass Neil; and he said to his wife after their
return home, "Janet, our son Neil has lost the game for Katherine Van
Heemskirk. I dinna care a bodle for it now. A man that gets the woman he
wants vera seldom gets any other gude thing."

"Elder!"

"Ah, weel, there's excepts! I hae mind o' them. But Neil won't be long
daunted. I looked in on him as I cam' upstairs. He was sitting wi' a law
treatise, trying to read his trouble awa'. He's a brave soul. He'll hae
honours and charges in plenty; and there's vera few women that are
worth a gude office--if you hae to choose atween them."

"You go back on your ain words, Elder. Tak' a sleep to yoursel'. Your
pillow may gie you wisdom."

And, while this conversation was taking place, they heard the pleasant
voices of Van Heemskirk's departing guests, as, with snatches of song
and merry laughter, they convoyed Batavius and his bride to their own
home. And, when they got there, Batavius lifted up his lantern and
showed them the motto he had chosen for its lintel; and it passed from
lip to lip, till it was lifted altogether, and the young couple crossed
their threshold to his ringing good-will,--

"Poverty--always a day's sail behind us!"

[Illustration: Tail-piece]

[Illustration: Chapter heading]




IX.

"_Now many memories make solicitous
The delicate love lines of her mouth, till, lit
With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
As here between our kisses we sit thus
Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
Speechless while things forgotten call to us_."


Joanna's wedding occurred at the beginning of the winter and the winter
festivities. But, amid all the dining and dancing and skating, there was
a political anxiety and excitement that leavened strongly every social
and domestic event. The first Colonial Congress had passed the three
resolutions which proved to be the key-note of resistance and of
liberty. Joris had emphatically indorsed its action. The odious Stamp
Act was to be met by the refusal of American merchants either to import
English goods, or to sell them upon commission, until it was repealed.
Homespun became fashionable. During the first three months of the year,
it was a kind of disgrace to wear silk or satin or broadcloth; and a
great fair was opened for the sale of articles of home manufacture. The
Government kept its hand upon the sword. The people were divided into
two parties, bitterly antagonistic to each other. The "Sons of Liberty"
were keeping guard over the pole which symbolized their determination;
the British soldiery were swaggering and boasting and openly insulting
patriots on the streets; and the "New York Gazette," in flaming
articles, was stimulating to the utmost the spirit of resistance to
tyranny.

And these great public interests had in every family their special
modifications. Joris was among the two hundred New York merchants who
put their names to the resolutions of the October Congress; Bram was a
conspicuous member of the "Sons of Liberty;" but Batavius, though
conscientiously with the people's party, was very sensible of the
annoyance and expense it put him to. Only a part of his house was
finished, but the building of the rest was in progress; and many things
were needed for its elegant completion, which were only to be bought
from Tory importers, and which had been therefore nearly doubled in
value. When liberty interfered with the private interests of Batavius,
he had his doubts as to whether it was liberty. Often Bram's overt
disloyalty irritated him beyond endurance. For, since he had joined the
ranks of married men and householders, Batavius felt that unmarried men
ought to wait for the opinions and leadership of those who had
responsibilities.

Joanna talked precisely as Batavius talked. All of his enunciations met
with her "Amen." There are women who are incapable of but one
affection,--that one which affects them in especial,--and Joanna was of
this order. "My husband" was perpetually on her tongue. She looked upon
her position as a wife and housekeeper as unique. Other woman might
have, during the past six thousand years, held these positions in an
indifferent kind of way; but only she had ever comprehended and properly
fulfilled the duties they involved. Madam Van Heemskirk smiled a little
when Joanna gave her advices about her house and her duties, when she
disapproved of her father's political attitude, when she looked injured
by Bram's imprudence.

"Not only is wisdom born with Joanna and Batavius, it will also die with
them; so they think," said Katharine indignantly, after one of Joanna's
periodical visitations.

A tear twinkled in madam's eyes; but she answered, "I shall not distress
myself overmuch. Always I have said, 'Joanna has a little soul. Only
what is for her own good can she love.'"

"It is Batavius; and a woman must love her husband, mother."

"That is the truth: first and best of all, she must love him, Katherine;
but not as the dog loves and fawns on his master, or the squaw bends
down to her brave. A good woman gives not up her own principles and
thoughts and ways. A good woman will remember the love of her father and
mother and brother and sister, her old home, her old friends; and
contempt she will not feel and show for the things of the past, which
often, for her, were far better than she was worthy of."

"There is one I love, mother, love with all my soul. For him I would
die. But for thee also I would die. Love thee, mother? I love thee and
my father better because I love him. My mother, fret thee not, nor think
that ever Joanna can really forget thee. If a daughter could forget her
good father and her good mother, then with the women who sit weeping in
the outer darkness, God would justly give her her portion. Such a
daughter could not be."

Lysbet sadly shook her head. "When I was a little girl, Katherine, I
read in a book about the old Romans, how a wicked daughter over the
bleeding corpse of her father drove her chariot. She wanted his crown
for her own husband; and over the warm, quivering body of her father she
drove. When I read that story, Katherine, my eyes I covered with my
hands. I thought such a wicked woman in the world could not be. Alas,
_mijn kind!_ often since then I have seen daughters over the bleeding
hearts of their mothers and fathers drive; and frown and scold and be
much injured and offended if once, in their pain and sorrow, they cry
out."

"But this of me remember, mother: if I am not near thee, I shall be
loving thee, thinking of thee; telling my husband, and perhaps my little
children about thee,--how good thou art, how pretty, how wise. I will
order my house as thou hast taught me, and my own dear ones will love me
better because I love thee. If to my own mother I be not true, can my
husband be sure I will be true to him, if comes the temptation strong
enough? Sorry would I be if my heart only one love could hold, and ever
the last love the strong love."

Still, in spite of this home trouble, and in spite of the national
anxiety, the winter months went with a delightsome peace and regularity
in the Van Heemskirk household. Neil Semple ceased to visit Katherine
after Joanna's wedding. There was no quarrel, and no interruption to the
kindness that had so long existed between the families; frequently they
walked from kirk together,--Madam Semple and Madam Van Heemskirk, Joris
and the elder, Katherine and Neil. But Neil never again offered her his
hand; and such conversation as they had was constrained and of the most
conventional character.

Very frequently, also, Dominic Van Linden spent the evening with them.
Joris delighted in his descriptions of Java and Surinam; and Lysbet and
Katherine knit their stockings, and listened to the conversation. It was
evident that the young minister was deeply in love, and equally evident
that Katharine's parents favoured his suit. But the lover felt, that,
whenever he attempted to approach her as a lover, Katherine surrounded
herself with an atmosphere that froze the words of admiration or
entreaty upon his lips.

Joris, however, spoke for him. "He has told me how truly he loves thee.
Like an honest man he loves thee, and he will make thee a wife honoured
of many. No better husband can thou have, Katherine." So spoke her
father to her one evening in the early spring, as they stood together
over the budding snowdrops and crocus.

[Illustration: They stood together over the budding snowdrops]

"There is no love in my heart for him, father."

"Neil pleases thee not, nor the dominie. Whom is it thou would have,
then? Surely not that Englishman now? The whole race I
hate,--swaggering, boastful tyrants, all of them. I will not give thee
to any Englishman."

"If I marry not him, then will I stay with thee always."

"Nonsense that is. Thou must marry, like other women. But not him; I
would never forgive thee; I would never see thy face again."

"Very hard art thou to me. I love Richard; can I love this one and then
that one? If I were so light-of-love, contempt I should have from all,
even from thee."

"Now, I have something to say. I have heard that some one,--very like to
thee,--some one went twice or three times with Mrs. Gordon to see the
man when he lay ill at the 'King's Arms.' To such talk, my anger and my
scorn soon put an end; and I will not ask of thee whether it be true, or
whether it be false. For a young girl I can feel."

"O father, if for me thou could feel!"

"See, now, if I thought this man would be to thee a good husband, I
would say, 'God made him, and God does not make all his men Dutchmen;'
and I would forgive him his light, loose life, and his wicked wasting of
gold and substance, and give thee to him, with thy fortune and with my
blessing. But I think he will be to thee a careless husband. He will get
tired of thy beauty; thy goodness he will not value; thy money he will
soon spend. Three sweethearts had he in New York before thee. Their very
names, I dare say, he hath forgotten ere this."

"If Richard could make you sure, father, that he would be a good
husband, would you then be content that we should be married?"

"That he cannot do. Can the night make me sure it is the day? Once very
much I respected Batavius. I said, 'He is a strict man of business;
honourable, careful, and always apt to make a good bargain. He does not
drink nor swear, and he is a firm member of the true Church. He will
make my Joanna a good husband.' That was what I thought. Now I see that
he is a very small, envious, greedy man; and like himself he quickly
made thy sister. This is what I fear: if thou marry that soldier, either
thou must grow like him, or else he will hate thee, and make thee
miserable."

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