She stared with scorn at the one black woman approaching her with
the silver tray, then she turned and stared at Nick Barry, sitting
half overcome with drink, lolling against the other. He cast a look
of utter sheepishness at her, and then straightened himself, and
rose like the other men, and Dick Barry motioned to both of the
black women to withdraw, which they did, slinking out darkly, both
with a fine rustle of silks. Then Madam Story saluted the other
women, though somewhat stiffly, and Dick Barry, who was never
lacking in a certain gloomy dignity, though they said him to be the
worse of the two brothers, stepped forward. "Madam," he said, "I
pray you to be seated." With that he led her with a courtly air to a
great carved chair, in which his father had been used to sit, and
she therein, somewhat mollified, her black length doubled on itself,
and that mourning coach on her forehead was a wonderful sight.
Then arrived Major Robert Beverly and another notable man, one of
the burgesses, whose name I do to this day conceal, in consequence
of a vow to that effect, and then two more. Then Major Beverly, who
was in fact running greater risks than almost any, inasmuch as he
was Clerk of the Assembly, and was betraying more of trust, after he
had saluted Madam Story conferred privately with Dick Barry, and my
Lord Estes, and Parson Downs, with this effect. Dick Barry, with
such a show of gallantry and seriousness as never was, prevailed
upon the three ladies to forgive him his discourtesy, but hinted
broadly that in an enterprise fraught with so much danger, it were
best that none but the ruder sex should confer together, and they
departed; Mistress Longman enjoining upon her husband to remain and
deport himself like a man of spirit, and Mistress Allgood whispering
with a sharp hiss into her goodman's alarmed ear, he nodding the
while in token of assent.
But Madam Tabitha Story paused on the threshold ere she departed,
standing back on her heels with a marvellous dignity, and waving one
long, black-draped arm. "Gentlemen of Virginia," said she, in a
voice of such solemnity as I had never heard excelled, "I beseech
you to remember the example which that hero who has departed set
you. I beseech you to form your proceedings after the fashion of
those of the immortal Bacon, and remember that if the time comes
when a woman's arm is needed to strike for freedom, here is one at
your service, while the heart which moves it beats true to liberty
and the great dead!"