It was finally agreed that Captain Tabor's plan should be carried
out, and I wended my way back to Drake Hill with a feeling of
triumph, to which I of late years had been a stranger. I know of
nothing in the poor life of a man equal to that great delight of
being of service to one beloved.
I reflected with such ever-increasing joy that it finally became an
ecstasy, and I could almost, it seemed, see the colours of it in my
path; how, had it not been for me, Mary Cavendish might have been in
sore straits; and I verily believe I was as happy for the time as if
she had been my promised sweetheart and was as proud of myself.
When about half-way to Drake Hill I heard afar off a great din of
bells and horns and voices, which presently came nearer. Then the
road was filled up with the dancing May revellers, and verily I
wondered not so much at those decrees against such practices before
the Restoration, for it was as if the savages which they do say are
underneath the outer gloss of the best of us had broke loose, and I
wondered if it might not be like those mad and unlawful orgies which
it was said the god Pan led himself in person through Thessalian
groves. Those honest country maids, who in the morning had advanced
with rustic but innocent freedom, with their glossy heads crowned
with flowers, and those lusty youths, who were indeed something
boisterous, yet still held in a tight rein by decency, had seemingly
changed their very natures, or rather, perhaps, had come to that
pass when their natures could be no longer concealed. Along the road
in the white moonlight they stamped as wantonly as any herd of kine;
youths and maids with arms about each other, and all with faces
flushed with ale-drinking, and the maids with tossing hair and
draggled coats, and all the fresh garlands withered or scattered.
And the old graybeard who was Maid Marion was riotously drunk, and
borne aloft with mad and feeble gesturings on the shoulders of two
staggering young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers,
only upheld from collapse in the mire by mutual upholdings, until
they seemed like some monstrous animal moving with uncouth sprawls
of legs as multifold as a centipede, and wavering drunkenly from one
side of the road to the other, lurching into the dewy bushes, then
recovering by the joint effort of the whole.
I stood well back to let them pass, being in that mood of
self-importance, by reason of my love and the service rendered by
it, that I could have seen the whole posse led to the whipping-block
with a relish, when suddenly from their tipsy throats came a shout
of such import that my heart stood still. "Down with the king!"
hallooed one mad reveller, in a voice of such thickness that the
whole sentence seemed one word; then the others took it up, until
verily it seemed to me that their heads were not worth a farthing.
Then, "Down with the governor! down with Lord Culpeper!" shouted
that same thick voice of the man who was leading the wild crew like
a bell-wether. He forged ahead, something more steady on his legs,
but all the madder of his wits for that, with an arm around the
waist of a buxom lass on either side, and all three dancing in time.
Then all the rest echoed that shout of "Down with the governor!"
Then out he burst again with, "Down, down with the tobacco, down
with the tobacco!" But the volley of that echo was cut short by five
horsemen galloping after the throng and scattering them to the right
and left. Then a great voice of authority, set out with the
strangest oaths which ever an imagination of evil compassed, called
out to them to be still if they valued their heads, and cursed them
all for drunken fools, and as he spoke he lashed with his whip from
side to side, and his face gleamed with wrath like a demon's in the
full light, and I saw he was Captain Noel Jaynes, and well
understood how he had made a name for himself on the high seas.
After him rode the brothers, Nicholas and Richard Barry, two great
men, sticking to their saddles like rocks, with fair locks alike on
the head of each flung out on the wind, and then came Ralph Drake
rising in his stirrups and laughing wildly, and last Parson Downs,
but only last because the road was blocked, for verily I thought his
plunging horse would have all before him under his feet. They were
all past me in a trice like a dream, the May revellers scattering
and hastening forward with shrieks of terror and shouts of rage and
peals of defiant laughter, and Captain Jaynes' voice, like a
trumpet, overbearing everything, and shouts from the Barry brothers
echoing him, and now and then coming the deep rumble of
expostulations from the parson's great chest, and Ralph Drake's
peals of horse-laughter, and I was left to consider what a
tinder-box this Colony of Virginia was, and how ready to leap to
flame at a spark even when seemingly most at peace, and to regard
with more and more anxiety Mary Cavendish's part in this brewing
tumult.