The Old Dominion
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Title: The Old Dominion
Creator: Mary Johnston
Release date: February 14, 2015 [eBook #48258]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48258
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD DOMINION ***
Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Mary Johnston]
*THE OLD
DOMINION*
BY
MARY JOHNSTON
Author of "By Order of the Company" "Audrey"
and "Sir Mortimer"
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
1907
1st Impression, January, 1899
2nd " August, 1899
3rd " May, 1900
4th " July, 1900
5th " October, 1900
6th " February, 1901
7th " August, 1901
8th " August, 1902
9th " April, 1904
10th " (Pocket Edition) March, 1906
11th " " " Sept. 1907
TO MY FATHER
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I. A Sloop comes in
II. Its Cargo
III. A Colonial Dinner Party
IV. The Breaking Heart
V. In the Three-Mile Field
VI. The Hut on the Marsh
VII. A Mender of Nets
VIII. The New Secretary
IX. An Interrupted Wooing
X. Landless pays the Piper
XI. Landless becomes a Conspirator
XII. A Dark Deed
XIII. In the Tobacco House
XIV. A Midnight Expedition
XV. The Waters of Chesapeake
XVI. The Face in the Dark
XVII. Landless and Patricia
XVIII. A Capture
XIX. The Library of the Surveyor-General
XX. Wherein the Peace Pipe is smoked
XXI. The Duel
XXII. The Tobacco House again
XXIII. The Question
XXIV. A Message
XXV. The Road to Paradise
XXVI. Night
XXVII. Morning
XXVIII. Bread cast upon the Waters
XXIX. The Bridge of Rock
XXX. The Backward Track
XXXI. The Hut in the Clearing
XXXII. Attack
XXXIII. The Fall of the Leaf
XXXIV. An Accident
XXXV. The Boat that was not
XXXVI. The Last Fight
XXXVII. Vale
*CHAPTER I*
*A SLOOP COMES IN*
"She will reach the wharf in half an hour."
The speaker shaded her eyes with a great fan of carved ivory and painted
silk. They were beautiful eyes; large, brown, perfect in shape and
expression, and set in a lovely, imperious, laughing face. The divinity
to whom they belonged was clad in a gown of green dimity, flowered with
pink roses, and trimmed about the neck and half sleeves with a fall of
yellow lace. The gown was made according to the latest Paris mode, as
described in a year-old letter from the court of Charles the Second, and
its wearer gazed from under her fan towards the waters of the great bay
of Chesapeake, in his Majesty's most loyal and well beloved dominion of
Virginia.
The object of her attention was a large sloop that had left the bay and
was sailing up a wide inlet or creek that pierced the land, cork-screw
fashion, until it vanished from sight amidst innumerable green marshes.
The channel, indicated by a deeper blue in the midst of an expanse of
shoal water, was narrow, and wound like a gleaming snake in and out
among the interminable succession of marsh islets. The vessel, following
its curves, tacked continually its great sail, intensely white against
the blue of inlet, bay and sky, and the shadeless green of the marshes,
zigzagging from side to side with provoking leisureliness. The girl who
had spoken watched it eagerly, a color in her cheeks, and one little
foot in its square-toed, rosetted shoe tapping impatiently upon the
floor of the wide porch in which she stood.
Her companion, lounging upon the wooden steps, with his back to a
pillar, looked up with an amused light in his blue eyes.
"Why are you so eager, cousin?" he drawled. "You cannot be pining for
your father when 't is scarce five days since he went to Jamestown. Do
the Virginia ladies watch for the arrival of a new batch of slaves with
such impatience?"
"The slaves! No, indeed! But, sir, in that boat there are three cases
from England."
"Ah, that accounts for it! And what may these wonderful cases contain?"
"One contains the dress in which I shall dance with you at the party at
Green Spring which the governor is to give in your honor--if you ask me,
sir. Oh, I take it for granted that you will, so spare us your
protestations. 'T is to have a petticoat of blue tabby and an overdress
of white satin trimmed with yards and yards of Venice point. The
stockings are blue silk, and come from the French house in Covent
Garden, as doth the scarf of striped gauze, and the shoes, gallooned
with silver. Then there are my combs, gloves, a laced waistcoat, a red
satin bodice, a scarlet taffetas mantle, a plumed hat, a pair of clasped
garters, a riding mask, a string of pearls, and the latest romances."
"A pretty list! Is that all?"
"There are things for aunt Lettice, petticoats and ribbons, a gilt
stomacher and a China monster, and for my father, lace ruffles and
bands, a pair of French laced boots, a periwig, a new scabbard for his
rapier, and so on."
The young man laughed. "'T is a curious life you Virginians lead," he
said. "The embroidered suits and ruffles, the cosmetics and perfumes of
Whitehall in the midst of oyster beds and tobacco fields, savage Indians
and negro slaves."
The girl put on a charming look of mock offense. "We _are_ a little bit
of England set down here in the wilderness. Why should we not clothe
ourselves like gentlefolk as well as our kindred and friends at home?
And sure both England and Virginia have had enough of sad colored
raiment. Better go like a peacock than like a horrid Roundhead."
Her companion laughed musically and sang a stave of a cavalier love
song. He was a slender, well-made man, dressed in the extreme of the
mode of the year of grace, sixteen hundred and sixty-three, in a richly
laced suit of camlet with points of blue ribbon, and the great scented
periwig then newly come into fashion. The close curled rings of hair
descending far over his cravat of finest Holland framed a handsome,
lazily insolent face, with large steel-blue eyes and beautifully cut,
mocking lips. A rapier with a jeweled hilt hung at his side, and one
white hand, half buried in snowy ruffles, held a beribboned cane with
which, as he talked, he ruthlessly decapitated the pink and white
morning-glories with which the porch was trellised.
The house to which the porch belonged was long and low, built of wood,
with many small windows, and at either end a great brick chimney. From
the porch to the water, a hundred yards away, stretched a walk of
crushed shells bisecting an expanse of green turf dotted with noble
trees--the cedar and the cypress predominating. Diverging from this
central walk were two narrower paths which, winding in and out in
eccentric figures, led, on the one hand, to a rustic summer-house
overgrown with honeysuckle and trumpet-vine, and on the other to a tiny
grotto constructed of shells and set in a tangle of periwinkle. Along
one side of the house, and protected by a stout locust paling overrun
with grape-vines, lay the garden, where flowers and vegetables
flourished contentedly side by side, the hollyhocks and tall white
lilies, the hundred-leaved roses and scarlet poppies showing like gilded
officers amidst the rank and file of sober essuculents. Behind the
house were clustered various offices, then came an orchard where the
June apples and the great red cherries were ripening in the hot
sunshine, then on the shore of a second and narrower creek rose the
quarters for the plantation servants, white and black--a long double row
of cabins, dominated by the overseer's house and shaded by ragged yellow
pines. Along one shore of this inlet was planted the Indian corn
prescribed by law, and from the other gleamed the soft yellow of
ripening wheat, but beyond the water and away to the westward stretched
acre after acre of tobacco, a sea of vivid green, broken only by an
occasional shed or drying house, and merging at last into the darker hue
of the forest. Over all the fair scene, the flashing water, the velvet
marshes, the smiling fields, the fringe of dark and mysterious woodland,
hung a Virginia heaven, a cloudless blue, soft, pure, intense. The air
was full of subdued sound--the distant hum of voices from the fields of
maize and tobacco, the faint clink of iron from the smithy, the wash and
lap of the water, the drone of bees from the hives beneath the eaves of
the house. Great bronze butterflies fluttered in the sunshine,
brilliant humming-birds, plunged deep into the long trumpet-flowers;
from the topmost bough of a locust, heavy with bloom, came the liquid
trill of a mock bird.
It was a fair domain, and a wealthy. The Englishman thought of certain
appalling sums lost to Sedley and Roscommon, and there flitted through
his brain a swift little calculation as to the number of hogsheads of
Orenoko or sweet-scented it would take to wipe off the score. And the
girl beside him was beautiful enough to take Whitehall by storm, to be
berhymed by Waller, and to give to Lely a subject above all flattery.
He set his lips with the air of a man who has made up his mind, and
turned to his companion, who was absorbed in watching the white sail
grow slowly larger.
"How long, now, cousin?"
"But a few minutes unless the wind should fail."
"And then you will have your treasures. But, madam, when you have
assumed all the panoply your sex relies on to increase its charms 't
will be but to 'gild refined gold or paint the lily.' The Aphrodite of
this western ocean needs no adornment."
The girl looked at him with laughter in her eyes. "You make me too many
pretty speeches, cousin," she said demurely. "We know the value of the
fine things you court gallants are perpetually saying."
"Upon my soul, madam, I swear"--
"Do you know the amount of the fine for swearing, Sir Charles? See how
large the sail has grown! When the boat rounds the long marsh she will
come more quickly. We will soon be able to see my father wave his
handkerchief."
The young man bit his lip. "You are pleased to be cruel to-day, madam,
but I am your slave and I obey. We will look together for Colonel
Verney's handkerchief. How many black slaves does he bring you?"
She laughed. "But half a dozen blacks, but there will be several
redemptioners if you prefer to be numbered with them."
"Redemptioners! Ah, yes! the English servants who are sold for their
passage money. I thank you, madam, but _my_ servitude is for life."
"The men my father will bring may not be the ordinary servants who come
here to better their condition. He may have obtained them from a batch
of felons from Newgate who have been kept in gaol in Jamestown until
word could be got to the planters around. I am sure I wish the ship
captains and the traders would stop bringing in the wretches. It is
different with the negroes: we can make allowance for the poor silly
things that are scarce more than animals, and they grow attached to us
and we to them, and the simple indented servants are well enough too.
There are among them many honest and intelligent men. But these gaol
birds are dreadful. It sickens me to look at them. Thieves and
murderers every one!"
"I should not think the colony served by their importation."
"It is not indeed, and we have hopes that it will cease. I beg my
father not to buy them, but he says that one man cannot stop an
abuse--that as long as his fellow-planters use them he might as well do
so too."
Sir Charles Carew delicately smothered a yawn. "The ship that brought me
over a fortnight ago," he said lazily, "had a consignment of such
rascals. It was amusing to watch their antics, crowded together as they
were in the hold. There were two wild Irishmen whom we used to have on
deck to dance for us. Gad! what figures they cut! The captain and I
had a standing wager of five of the new guineas as to which of the
rascals could hold out longest, promising a measure of rum to the
victorious votary of Terpsichore. When I had lost a score of guineas I
found that the captain was in the habit of priming his man before he
came upon deck. Naturally, being filled with Dutch courage, he won."
"Poor Sir Charles! What did you do?"
"Sent the captain a cartel and fought him on his own deck. There was
one man in the villainous company whom, I protest, I almost pitied,
though of course the rogue had but his deserts."
"What was he?"
"A man of about thirty. A fellow with a handsome face and a lithe
well-made figure which he managed with some grace. He had the air of
one who had seen better days. I remember, one day when the captain was
bestowing upon him some especially choice oaths, seeing him clap his
hand to his side as though he expected to touch a rapier hilt. He was
cleanly too; kept his rags of clothing as decent as circumstances
allowed, and looked less like a wild beast in a litter of foul straw
than did his fellows. But he was an ill-conditioned dog. We had some
passages together, he and I. He took it upon himself to defend what he
was pleased to call the honor of one of his precious company. It was
vastly amusing.... After that I fell into the habit of watching him
through the open hatches. A little thing provides entertainment at sea,
Mistress Patricia. He would sit or stand for hours looking past me with
a perfectly still face. The other wretches were quick to crowd up,
whining to me to pitch them half pence or tobacco, but try as I would, I
could not get word or look from him. Sink me! if he did n't have the
impudence to resent my being there!"
"It was cruel to stare at misery."
"Lard, madam! such vermin are used to being stared at. In London,
Newgate, and Bridewell are theatres as well as the Cockpit or the King's
House, and the world of mode flock to the one spectacle as often as to
the other. But see! the sloop has passed the marsh and has a clean
sweep of water between her and the wharf."
"Yes, she is coming fast now."
"What is coming?" asked a voice from the doorway.
"The Flying Patty, Aunt Lettice," the girl answered over her shoulder.
"Get your hood and come with us to the wharf."
Mistress Lettice Verney emerged from the hall, two red spots burning in
her withered cheeks, and her tall thin figure quivering with excitement.
"I am all ready, child," she quavered. "But, mark my words, Patricia,
there will be something wrong with my paduasoy petticoat, or Charette
will not have sent the proper tale of green stockings or Holland smocks.
Did you not hear the screech owl last night?"
"No, Aunt Lettice."
"It remained beneath my window the entire night. I did not sleep a wink.
And this morning Chloe upset the salt cellar, and the salt fell towards
me." Mistress Lettice rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed
lugubriously. Patricia laughed.
"I dreamed of flowers last night, Aunt Lettice; miles and miles of them,
waxen and cold and sweet, like those they strew over the dead."
Mistress Lettice groaned. "'T is a dreadful sign. Captain Norton's wife
(she that was Polly Wilson) dreamed of flowers the night before the
massacre of 'forty-four. The only thing the poor soul said when the
warwhoop wakened them in the dead of the night and the door came
crashing in, was, 'I told you so.' They were her last words. Then
Martha Westall dreamed of flowers, and two days later her son James
stepped on a stingray over at Dale's Gift. And I myself dreamed of
roses the week before those horrid Roundhead commissioners with the
rebel Claiborne at their head and a whole fleet at their back, compelled
us to surrender to their odious Commonwealth."
"At least that evil is past," said the girl with a gay laugh. "And ill
fortune will never come to me aboard the Flying Patty, so I shall go
down to the wharf to see her in. Darkeih! my scarf!"
A negress appeared in the doorway with a veil of tissue in her hand.
Sir Charles took it from her and flung it over Patricia's golden head,
then offered his arm to Mistress Lettice.
The wharf was but a stone's throw from the wooden gates, and they were
soon treading the long stretch of gray, weather-beaten boards. Others
were before them, for the news that the sloop was coming in had drawn a
small crowd to the wharf to welcome the master.
The dozen or so of boatmen, white and black, who had been tinkering
about in the various barges, shallops and canoes tied to the mossy
piles, left their employments and scrambled up upon the platform, and a
trio of youthful darkies, fishing for crabs with a string and a piece of
salt pork, allowed their lines to fall slack and their intended victims
to walk coolly off with the meat, so intense was their interest in the
oncoming sail. A knot of negro women had left the great house kitchen
and stood, hands on hips, chatting volubly with a contingent from the
quarters, their red and yellow turbans nodding up and down like
grotesque Dutch tulips. The company was made up by an overseer with a
broadleafed palmetto hat pulled down over his eyes and a clay pipe stuck
between his teeth, a pale young man who acted as secretary to the master
of the plantation, and by three or four small land-owners and tenants
for whom Colonel Verney had graciously undertaken various commissions in
Jamestown, and who were on hand to make their acknowledgments to the
great man.
They all made deferential way for the two ladies and Sir Charles Carew.
Mistress Lettice commenced a condescending conversation with one of the
tenants, Darkeih added a white tulip to the red and yellow ones, and
Patricia, followed by Sir Charles, walked to the edge of the wharf, and
leaning upon the rude railing looked down the glassy reaches of the
water to the approaching boat.
The wind had sunk into a fitful breeze and the white sail moved very
slowly. The tide was in, and the water lapped with a cooling sound
against the dark green piles. In the distance the blue of the bay
melted into the blue of the sky, while the nearer waters mirrored every
passing gull, the masts of the fishing boats, the tall marsh grass, the
dead twigs marking oyster beds--each object had its double. On a point
of marshy ground stood a line of cranes, motionless as soldiers on
parade, until, taking fright as the great sail glided past, they whirred
off, uttering discordant cries and with their legs sticking out like
tail feathers. Slowly, and keeping to the middle of the channel, the
boat came on. Upon the long low deck men were preparing to lower the
sail, and a portly gentleman standing in the bow was vigorously waving
his handkerchief. The sail came down with a rush, the anchor swung
overboard, and half a dozen canoes and dugouts shot from under the
shadow of the wharf and across the strip of water between it and the
sloop. The gentleman with the handkerchief, followed by a man plainly
dressed in brown, sprang into the foremost; the others waited for their
lading of merchandise.
Before the boat had touched the steps the master of the plantation began
to call out greetings to his expectant family.
"Patricia, my darling, are you in health? Charles, I am happy to see
you again! Sister Lettice, Mr. Frederick Jones sends you his humble
services."
"La, brother! and how is the dear man?" screamed Mistress Lettice.
"As well as't is in nature to be, with his heart at Verney Manor and his
body at Flowerdieu Hundred."
The boat jarred against the piles and the planter stepped out, grasping
Sir Charles's extended hand.
"Again, I am happy to see you, Charles," he cried in a round and jovial
voice. "I have been telling my up-river good friends that I have the
most topping fellow in all London for my guest, and you will have
company enough anon."
Sir Charles smiled and bowed. "I hope, sir, that you were successful in
the business that took you to Jamestown?"
"Fairly so, fairly so. Haines here," with a wave of the hand towards
the man in brown, "had a lot picked out for me to choose from. I have
six negroes and three of those blackguards from Newgate--mighty poor
policy to shoulder ourselves with such gaol sweepings. I doubt we 'll
repent it some day. The blacks come by way of Boston, which means that
they will have to be cockered up considerably before they are fit for
work. Is that you, Woodson? How have things gone on?"
The overseer took his pipe from between his teeth and made an awkward
bow.
"Glad to see your Honor back," he said deferentially. "Everything 's all
right, sir. The last rain helped the corn amazingly, and the tobacco 's
prime. The lightning struck a shed, but we got the flames out before
they reached the hogsheads. The Nancy got caught in a squall; lost both
masts and ran aground on Gull Marsh. The tide will take her off at the
full of the moon. Sambo 's been playing 'possum again. Said he 'd cut
his foot with his hoe so badly that he could n't stand upon it. Said I
could see that by the blood on the rag that tied it up. I made him take
off the rag and wash the foot, and there wa'n't no cut there. The blood
was puccoon. If he 'd waited a bit he could 'a' had all he wanted to
paint with, for I gave him the rope's end lively, until Mistress
Patricia heard him yelling and made me stop."
"All right, Woodson. I reckon the plantation knows by this time that
what Mistress Patricia says is law. Here come the boats with the boxes.
Tell the men to be careful how they handle them."
After a hearty word or two to tenants and land owners the worthy Colonel
joined his daughter and sister; and together with Sir Charles Carew they
watched the precious boxes conveyed up the slippery steps, the overseer
shouting directions, plentifully sprinkled with selected, unfinable
oaths to the panting boatmen. When all were safely piled upon the wharf
ready to be wheeled to the great house, the empty boats swung off to
make room for others, laden with the colonel's Jamestown purchases.
One by one the articles climbed the stairs, each as it reached the level
being claimed by the overseer and told off into a lengthening line. Six
were negroes, gaunt and hollow-eyed, but smiling widely. They gazed
around them, at the heap of clams and oysters piled upon the wharf, at
the marshes, alive with wild fowl, at the distant green of waving corn,
the flower-embowered great house, the white quarters from which arose
many little spirals of savory smoke, and a bland and child-like content
took possession of their souls. With eager and obsequious "Yes Mas'rs"
they obeyed the overseer's objurgatory indications as to their
disposition.
There next arose above the landing the head of a white man--a
countenance of sullen ferocity, with a great scar running across it, and
framed in elf locks of staring red. The body belonging to this
prepossessing face was swollen and unshapely, and its owner moved with a
limp and a muttered curse towards the place assigned him. He was
followed by a sallow-faced, long-nosed man, with black oily hair and an
affected smirk which twitched the corners of his thin lips. Singling
out his master's family with a furtive glance from a pair of sinister
greenish eyes, he made a low bow and stepped jauntily into line.
The third man rose above the landing. Sir Charles, standing by
Patricia, laughed.
"This world is a place of fantastic meetings, cousin," he said, airily.
"Now who would suppose that I would ever again see that chipping from a
London gaol I told you of--my shipmate of cleanly habit and unsocial
nature. Yet there he is."
*CHAPTER II*
*ITS CARGO*
The afternoon sunshine lay hot upon the house and garden of Verney
Manor--the leaves drooped motionless, the glare of the white paths hurt
the eye, the flowers seemed all to be red. The odor of rose and
honeysuckle was drowned in the heavy cloying sweetness of the pendant
masses of locust bloom. Down in the garden the bees droned in the vines,
and on the steps the flies buzzed undisturbed about the sleeping hounds.
Above the long, deserted wharf and the green velvet of the marshes
quivered the heated air, while to look upon the water was like gazing
too closely at blue flame. From the tobacco fields floated the notes of
a monotonous many-versed chant, and a soft, uninterrupted cooing came
from the dove cot. Heat and fragrance and drowsy sound combined to give
a pleasant somnolence to the wide sunny scene.
Deep in the cavernous shade of the porch lounged the master of the
plantation, his body in one chair, his legs in another, and a silver
tankard of sack standing upon a third, over the back of which had been
flung his great peruke and his riding coat of green cloth, discarded
because of the heat. Thin, blue clouds curled up from his long pipe,
and obscured his ruddy countenance.
His shrewd gray eyes under their tufts of grizzled hair were half closed
in a lazy contentment, born of the hour, the pipe, and the drink. The
world went very well just then in Colonel Verney's estimation. His crop
of the preceding year had been a large and profitable one: this year it
bid fair to be still more satisfactory. During the past few months he
had acquired a number of servants and slaves, and his head rights would
add a goodly number of acres to his already enormous holdings; land,
land, always more land! being the ambition and the necessity of the
seventeenth century Virginia planter. Trader, planter, magistrate,
member of the council of state, soldier, author on occasion, and fine
gentleman all rolled into one, after the fashion of the times; Cavalier
of the Cavaliers, hand in glove with Governor Berkeley, and possessed of
a beautiful daughter, for whose favor one half of the young gentlemen of
the counties of York and Gloucester were ready to draw rapier on the
other half,--Colonel Verney's world was a fair and stirring one, and
gave him plentiful food for meditation on a fine afternoon.
Opposite him sat his kinsman and guest, Sir Charles Carew. He was
similarly equipped with pipe and sack, but there the resemblance to his
host ended, Sir Charles Carew being a man who made it a point of honor
to be clad like the lilies of the field on every possible occasion in
life, from the carrying a breach to the ogling a milkmaid. The sultry
afternoon had no power to affect the scrupulous elegance of his attire,
or to alter the careful repose of his manner. In his hand he held a
volume of "Hudibras," but his thoughts were not upon the book, wandering
instead, with those of his kinsman, over the fertile fields of Verney
Manor.
"You have a princely estate, sir, in this fair, new world," he said at
last, in a sweetly languid voice.
The planter roused himself from considering at what point of his newly
acquired land he should begin the attack upon the forest. "It 's a fair
enough home for a man to end his days in," he said with complacence.
"We of the court have very erroneous ideas as to Virginia. I confess
that my expectation of finding a courteous and loving kinsman," a
gracious smile and inclination of the head towards the older man, "is
the only one in which I have not been disappointed. I thought to see a
rude wilderness, and I find, to borrow the language of our Roundhead
friends, a very land of Beulah."
"Ay, ay. D' ye remember what old Drayton sings?
'Virginia!
Earth's only paradise!'
And a paradise it is, with mighty few drawbacks, now that the King has
come to his own again, if you except these d--d canting Quakers and
Anabaptists, and those yelling red devils on the frontier, and the
danger of a servant insurrection, and the fact that his Majesty (God
bless him!) and the Privy Council fleece us more mercilessly than did
old Noll himself. I verily think they believe our tobacco plants made of
gold like those they say Pizarro saw in Peru. But 'tis a sweet land!
Why, look around you!" he cried, warming to his subject. "The waters
swarm with fish, the marshes with wild fowl. In the winter the air
rings with the _cohonk! cohonk!_ of the wild geese. They darken the air
when they come and go. There in the forest stand the deer, waiting for
your bullet; badgers and foxes, bears, wolves, and catamounts are more
plentiful than are hares in England. You taste pleasure indeed when you
ride full tilt through the frosty moonlight, down the ringing glades of
the forest, and hear the hounds in full cry, and see before you, black
against the silver snow, a pack of yelling wolves. Then in summer the
woods are full of singing birds and of such flowers as you in England
only dream of. Strawberries make the ground red, and there are wild
melons and grapes and mulberries, and more nuts than squirrels, which is
saying much for the nuts. Everything grows here. 'T is the garden of
the world. And what is there fairer than the green of the tobacco and
the golden corn tassels? And the noble rivers, whose head waters no man
has ever found, hidden by the Lord in the Blue Mountains near to the
South Sea! Sir, Virginia is God's country!"
"You in these lowlands have no trouble with the Indians?"
"None to speak of since 'forty-four, when Opechancanough came down upon
us. The brush with the Ricahecrians seven years ago was nothing. They
are utterly broken, both here and in Accomac. Further up the rivers the
devil still holds his own, we hearing doleful tales of the butchery of
pioneers with their wives and children; and above the falls of the far
west, in the Monacan country, and towards the Blue Mountains, is his
stronghold and capitol; but here in the lowlands all's safe enough.
There is no fear of the savages. Would we could say as much of the
servants!"
"Why, what do you fear from them?"
"It 's hard to say; but an uneasy feeling has prevailed for a year or
more. It's this d--d Oliverian element among them. You see, ever since
his Majesty's blessed restoration, gang after gang of rebels have been
sent us--Independents, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy men, dour Scotch
Whigamores--dangerous fanatics all! Many are Naseby or Worcester
rogues, Ironsides who worship the memory of that devil's lieutenant,
Oliver. All have the gift of the gab. We disperse them as much as
possible, not allowing above five or six to any one plantation, we of
the Council realizing that they form a dangerous leaven. Should there
be trouble, which heaven forbid! they would be the instigators, restless
mischief-makers and overturners of the established order of things that
they are! Then there are their fellow criminals, the highwaymen,
forgers, cutpurses and bullies of whom we relieve his Majesty's
government. They are few in number, but each is a very plague spot,
infecting honester men. The slaves, always excepting the Portuguese and
Spanish mulattoes from the Indies, who are devils incarnate, have not
brain enough to conspire. But in the actual event of a rising they
would be fiends unchained."
"A pleasant state of affairs!"
"Oh, it is not so serious! We who govern the Colony have to take all
possibilities, however unpleasant, into consideration. I myself do not
think the danger imminent, and many in the Council and among the
Burgesses, and well-nigh all outside will not allow that there is danger
at all. We passed more stringent servant laws last year, and we depend
upon them, and upon the great body of indented servants, who are, for
the most part, honest and amenable and know upon which side their bread
is buttered, to repress the unruly element."
"What will you do with the convicts you brought with you this morning?"
"Use them in the tobacco fields just now when all hands are needed to
weed and sucker the plants, and afterwards put them to hewing down the
forest. I told Woodson to bring them around to me this afternoon when
they had been decently clothed. I always give the scoundrels a piece of
my mind to begin with. It saves trouble."
"Do they give you much trouble?"
"Not on this plantation. Woodson and Haines are excellent overseers."
The planter refilled his pipe, struck a light with his flint and steel,
and leaning back amidst the fragrant clouds, allowed his eyelids to
droop and his mind to wander over a pleasant sunshiny tract of nothing
in particular.
Sir Charles tasted his sack, adjusted his ruffles, and resumed his
reading. But even the delectable adventures of the Presbyterian knight,
over whom all London was laughing, palled on such an afternoon, and the
young gentleman, after listlessly turning a page or two, laid the book
across his knee, and with closed eyes commenced the construction of an
air castle of his own.
He was roused by the sound of approaching footsteps upon the shell path
leading to the back of the house, and by the harsh voice of the
overseer.
"Here come your hopeful purchases, sir," he said lazily.
The overseer turned the corner of the house and came forward with the
three convicts at his heels. He doffed his hat to the two gentlemen,
then turned to his charges. "Fall into line, you dogs, and salute his
Honor!"
The first man, he of the long nose and the twitching lip, smiled
sweetly, and bent so low that his fell of greasy hair well-nigh swept
the steps; the second, with a brow like a thunder cloud, gave a vicious
nod; the third, with as impassive a countenance as Sir Charles's own,
bowed gravely, and stood with folded arms and a quietly attentive mien.
The planter gathered himself up from his chair and came forward to the
top of the steps, his tall, corpulent figure towering above the men
below much as his fortunes towered above theirs.
"Now, men," he said, speaking sternly and with slow emphasis. "I have
just one word to say to you. Listen well to it. I am your master; you
are my servants. I reckon myself a good master, it not being my way to
treat those belonging to me, whether white or black, like dumb beasts.
Give me obedience and the faithful work of your hands, and you shall
find me kind. But if you are stubborn or rebellious, by the Lord, you
will rue the day you left Newgate! Whipping-post and branding-irons are
at hand, and death is something closer to a felon in Virginia than in
England. Be careful! Now, Woodson, what have you put these men to?"
"They 'll go into the three-mile field to-morrow morning, your honor,
unless you wish other disposition made of them."
"No, that will do. Take them away."
The overseer faced about and was marching off with the recruits for the
three-mile field when his master's voice arrested him.
"Take those two in front on with you, Woodson, and send me back the
brown-haired one."
The "brown-haired one" turned as his companions disappeared around a
hedge of privet and came slowly back to the steps.
"You wished to speak to me, sir?" he said quietly.
"Yes. You are the man who was tolerably helpful in the squall last
night?"
"I was so fortunate as to be of some small service, sir."
"You understand the handling of a boat?"
"Yes, sir."
"Hum. I will tell Woodson to try you with a sloop when the press of
work in the fields is past. What is your name?"
"Godfrey Landless."
"Chevalier d'Industrie and frequenter of the Newgate Ordinary," put in
Sir Charles lazily. "Of the Roundhead persuasion too, if I mistake
not,--from robbery in the large, descended to thievery in the small;
from the murder of a King to knives and a black alley mouth. Commend me
to these grave rogues for real knaves! Pray inform us to what little
mishap we owe the honor of your company. Did you mercifully incline to
relieve weary travelers over Hounslow Heath by disburdening them of
their heavy purses? Or did you mistake your own handwriting for that of
some one else? Or did you woo a mercer's wife a thought too roughly?
Or perhaps--"
The man shot a fiery upward glance at the slim, elegant figure and
mocking lips of his tormentor, but kept silence. Colonel Verney, who
had returned to his pipe, interposed. "What is all this, Charles? What
are you saying to the man?"
"Oh, nothing, sir! This gentleman and I were shipmates, and I did but
ask after his health since the voyage."
"Sir Charles Carew is very good," the man said proudly. "I assure him
that the object of his solicitude is well, and only desires an
opportunity to repay, with interest, those little attentions shown him
by his courteous fellow voyager."
The planter looked puzzled: Sir Charles laughed.
"Our liking is mutual, I see," he said coolly. "I--but what is this,
Colonel Verney! Venus descending from Olympus?"
Out of the doorway fluttered a brilliant vision, all blue and white like
the great butterflies hovering over the clove pinks. Behind it appeared
the faded countenance of Mrs. Lettice, and a group of turbaned heads
peered, grinning, from out the cool darkness of the hall.
"Papa!" cried the vision. "I want to show you my new dress! Cousin
Charles, you are to tell me if it is all as it should be!"
Sir Charles bowed, with his hand upon his heart. "Alas, madam! I could
as soon play critic to the choir of angels. My eyes are dazzled."
"Stand out, child," said her father gazing at her with eyes of love and
pride, "and let us see your finery. D' ye know what the extravagant
minx has upon her back, Charles? Just five hogsheads of prime tobacco!"
Mistress Lettice struck in: "Well, I 'm sure, brother, 't is much the
prettiest use to put tobacco to, to turn it into lace and brocade and
jewels,--much better, say I, than to be forever using it to accumulate
filthy slaves."
Patricia floated to the centre of the porch and stood sunning herself in
a stray shaft of light, like a very bird of paradise. The "tempestuous
petticoat," sky-blue and laced with silver, swelled proudly outwards,
the gleaming satin bodice slipped low over the snowy shoulders and the
heaving bosom, and the sleeves, trimmed with magnificent lace and looped
with pearls, showed the rounded arms to perfection. Around the slender
throat was wound a double row of pearls, and the golden ringlets were
partially confined by a snood of blue velvet. She unfurled a wonderful
fan, and lifted her skirts to show the tiny white and silver shoes and
the silken silver-clocked ankles. Her eyes shone like stars, faint wild
roses bloomed in her cheeks, charming half smiles chased each other
across her dainty mouth. Such a picture of radiant youth and loveliness
did she present that the Englishman's pulses quickened, and he swore
under his breath. "Surely," he muttered, "this is the most beautiful
woman in the world, and my lucky stars have sent me to this No Man's
Land to win her."
"How do you like me?" she cried gayly. "Is't not worth the five
hogsheads?"
Her father drew her to him and kissed the smooth forehead.
"You look just as your mother did, child, the day that we were
betrothed. I could not give you higher praise than that, sweetheart."
"And does it really lack nothing, cousin?" she cried anxiously. "Is it
in truth such a dress as they wear at Court?"
"Not at Whitehall, madam, nor at Brussels, nor even at St. Germains have
I seen anything more point device than the dress,--nor as beautiful as
the wearer," he added in a lower voice and with a lulling look.
The girl's face dimpled with pleasure and innocent, gratified vanity.
She swept him a magnificent courtesy, and he bent low over the slender
fingers she gave him. Suddenly he felt them stiffen in his clasp, and
looking up, saw a curious expression of fear and aversion pass like a
shadow across her face. She spoke abruptly. "That man! I did not see
him! What does he here?"
Sir Charles wheeled. The convict, forgotten by the two gentlemen, had
been left standing at the foot of the steps, and his sombre eyes were
now fixed upon the girl in a look so strange and intent as fully to
explain her perturbation. Through his parted lips the breath came
hurriedly, in his eyes was a mournful exaltation as of one who looks
from a desert into Paradise. He stood absorbed, unconscious of aught
save the splendid vision above him. For a moment she stared at him in
return, her eyes, held by his, slowly widening and the color quite gone
from her face. With a slow, involuntary movement one white arm rose,
and stiffened before her in a gesture of repulsion. The fan fell from
her hand upon the floor with a click of breaking tortoise shell. The
sound broke the spell, and with a strong shudder she turned her eyes
away. "Make him go," she said in a trembling voice. "He frightens me."
Sir Charles sprang forward with an oath. "Curse you, you dog! Take
your ill-omened eyes from the lady! Colonel Verney, do you not see that
the fellow is annoying your daughter?"
The planter had fallen into a reverie born of recollections of the
Patricia of his youth, long laid in her grave, but he roused himself at
the words of his guest.
"What's that?" he cried. "Annoying Patricia!" He walked to the head of
the steps and raised his cane threateningly.
"Hark ye, sirrah! The servants of Verney Manor, white or black, felon
or indented, need all their eyesight for their work. They have none to
waste in idle gazing at their betters. Begone to your mates!"
The man who, at Sir Charles's intervention, had started as from a dream,
colored deeply and compressed his lips, then glanced from one to the
other of the group above him. There was pain, humiliation, almost
supplication in the look which he directed to the girl who had brought
this rating upon him. He glanced at his master with a countenance
studiously devoid of expression, at Mistress Lettice with indifference,
at Sir Charles Carew with chill defiance. Then, with a grave
inclination of his head, he turned, and a moment later had disappeared
behind the hedge.
*CHAPTER III*
*A COLONIAL DINNER PARTY*
Three days later the master of Verney Manor gave a dinner party.
At Jamestown, twenty miles away, the Assembly had just adjourned after a
busy session. A law debarring that "turbulent people" the Quakers from
further admittance into the colony, and providing cold comfort for those
already within its doors, was passed with acclamation, as was another
against Anabaptists, and a third concerning the hue and cry for
absconding servants and slaves. The selling rates for wines and strong
waters were fixed, a proper penalty attached to the planting of tobacco
contrary to the statute, a regulation for the mending of the highways
adopted, a fine imposed for non-attendance at church, the Navigation Act
formally protested against, the trainbands strengthened, an
appropriation made for the erection of new whipping-posts and pillories,
a cruel mistress deprived of the slave she had mistreated, a harborer of
schismatics publicly reproved, and a conciliatory message and present
sent to the up-river Indians--when the Assembly adjourned with the
consciousness of having nobly done its duty. The only measure upon
which there was not unanimity of opinion was one proposing the erection
of schoolhouses at convenient cross-roads, and the Governor's weight
being thrown into the balance against it, it was promptly quashed.
The burgesses from the fourteen counties filled the twenty houses that
constituted the town to suffocation. Up-river planters, too, had come
in, choosing the time the Assembly was in session to attend to their
interests in the "city." Several ships were in harbor, and their
captains, professing themselves tired of salt water, threw themselves
upon the hospitality of their friends ashore. The crowded population
overflowed into the houses of the neighboring planters, who, after the
manner of their kind, entertained profusely, giving jovial welcome and
good liquor to all comers. There was a constant jingling of reins along
the bridle paths, a constant passing of white-sailed sloops upon the
river, as gentlemen in riding coats and jack boots, or in laced coats
and silk stockings, fared to and fro between plantation and town. In
the intervals of business the worthy burgesses and their fellow planters
made merry. They were good times--for king's men--and it behooved every
loyal subject to follow (at a respectful distance) his Majesty's
example, and get all possible enjoyment from a laughing world. So there
were horse-races and cock-fights and bear-baitings, as well as dinners
and suppers, at which much sack and aqua vitae was drunk to king,
church, and reigning beauties. And if a quarrel sprung, full armed,
from the heated brains of young gallants, crossed rapiers did but add a
piquancy, a dash of cayenne, to life.
Popular with the elder gentlemen because of his excellent Madeira, quick
wit, jovial soul, and friendship with the Governor, and with the younger
by virtue of being father to Mistress Patricia Verney, Colonel Richard
Verney had no difficulty in securing a score of guests for a day's
entertainment at Verney Manor.
About ten in the morning of the appointed day the guests began to
arrive, some by water, some on horseback, Colonel Verney meeting each
arrival with a stately bow and a high-flown speech of welcome, and
handing him on to the hall where stood Sir Charles Carew and the ladies
of the household.
Upon a pillion behind her father, Major Miles Carrington,
Surveyor-General to the Colony, came Mistress Betty Carrington, bosom
friend to Mistress Patricia Verney. Her sweetly serious face, pensive
eyes, and smooth, dark hair, with her dress of sober silk and kerchief
of finest lawn, demurely crossed over her bosom, contrasted finely with
Patricia's radiant beauty, decked in shimmering satin and rich lace, and
heightened by a tinge of vermilion upon the smooth cheek, and a long
black patch beneath the left temple. The two met like friends whom
weary years have parted, and indeed they had not seen each other for
nearly a week.
All the guests, save one, had arrived. Colonel Verney fidgeted, sent a
servant wench to look at the kitchen clock, and dispatched his secretary
to an upstairs window, whence was visible a long stretch of what
courtesy called the highroad.
The secretary returned and whispered his master. "God be thanked!"
exclaimed the latter. "I feared that his machine had mired in the
Two-Mile Swamp, or had toppled into a gully coming through the Devil's
Strip. Gentlemen, the Governor's coach is in sight. Shall we adjourn to
the porch and there await his Excellency?"
A mighty straining, jingling and lumbering came with the breeze down the
road and proceeded from a pillar of dust which was approaching the house
with reasonable rapidity. Presently the road changed from a trough of
dust into a ribbon of greensward. The cloud dissipated itself, streaming
away like the tail of a comet, and a ponderous and much begilt coach,
drawn by six horses, their manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and
outriders in gorgeous livery at the heads of each pair, rolled, or
rather bumped into sight. With a seasick motion it undulated over the
green acclivities of the road, and finally drew up beside the great
horse-block at the gate.
Two lackeys sprang from their perch behind the vehicle, flung open the
door, and lowered a short flight of steps. A very stately gentleman,
richly dressed, with a handkerchief of point in one hand and a jeweled
snuff-box in the other, descended the steps, placing one shapely leg in
its maroon-colored stocking before the other with the mannered grace of
the leader of a Coranto.
Colonel Verney met him with a low bow and smiling face, after which the
two embraced, for they were old friends.
"My dear Governor!"
"My dear Colonel!"
"I am charmed to welcome your Excellency to my poor house."
"My dear Colonel, I am charmed to be here. Gad! the possession of the
only chariot in the Colony is a burdensome honor! I thought dinner
would be over, and the stirrup cup in order while I was creeping, like a
snail with his house on his back, over these 'fair and pleasant
roads'--as I call them in my book, eh, Dick! But you have a goodly
company, I see; Ludwell, Fitzhugh, Carey, Anthony Nash, mine ancient
enemy Lawrence, Wormeley, Carrington our Puritan convert and his pretty
daughter, young Peyton, and that pretty fellow, your nephew or cousin,
is he? Odzooks! he is much what I was at his age, begotten of Delilah
and Lucifer, hand of iron in glove of velvet, eh, Dick! I hear he is
hail-fellow-well-met with the King and with Buckingham and Killigrew and
their wild set. Ah, boys will be boys! 'We have heard the chimes at
midnight,' eh, Dick?"
And the Governor in high good humor skipped up the steps with the
agility of youth, bent low with sugared compliments over the hands of
his hostesses and of Mistress Betty Carrington, and gave courteous
greeting to the assembled gentlemen, after which the company flowed back
into the grateful twilight of hall and "great room," where the weather,
the state of the crops, and the last horse-race engaged them until the
announcement of dinner.
With a flourish of his costly handkerchief, the Governor offered his arm
to the young mistress of the house, and led the way to the dining-room,
where old Humfrey, the butler, marshaled the guests to their seats.
Mistress Betty Carrington had for her cavalier Sir Charles Carew, to
whose honeyed words she listened with a species of awe, wondering in her
innocent soul if all the wild tales they told of this very fine,
smooth-tongued, handsome gentleman could be true.
Doctor Anthony Nash made a long and fluent grace wherein much latinity
was aired, a neat allusion made to the _jus divinum_, and an anathema
hurled against those "who break down the carved work of the sanctuary."
Then was uncovered the mighty saddle of mutton, reposing in the dish of
honor, the roast pig, the haunch of venison, the sirloin of beef, the
breast of veal, the powdered goose, the noble dish of sheeps-head and
bluefish, and the pasty in which was entombed a whole flock of pigeons.
These _pieces de resistance_ were flanked by bowls of oysters, by rows
of wild fowl skewered together, by mince pies and a grand salad, while
upon the outskirts of the damask plain were stationed trenchers piled
with wheat bread, platters of pease and smoking potatoes, cauliflower
and asparagus, and a concoction of rice and prunes, seasoned with mace
and cinnamon and a pinch of assafoetida. A great silver salt-cellar
stood in the centre of the table, and smaller receptacles of the same
metal held pepper and spices. Silver flagons of cider and ale were
placed at intervals, the Madeira, Fayal and Rhenish awaiting upon the
sideboard the moment when, the cloth drawn and the ladies gone, a
gentlemanly carousal should be inaugurated.
The company drew their Russian leather chairs closer to the table,
spread over their silken knees the fringed damask napkins, and for a
space little was to be heard but the sound of knife and spoon (forks
there were none), for the morning ride had sharpened appetites. The
servants passed from chair to chair; the master, seconded by his
daughter and sister, pricked his guests on to fresh attacks, pressing a
third slice of mutton on one, a fresh helping of capon upon another,
protesting that a third ate as though it were a fast day, and that a
fourth drank as though the October were sea-water.
When the cloth was drawn and the banquet put on, tongues were loosened.
The Governor quoted passages from his "Lost Lady" to Patricia, lifting
her lovely flushed face from the carving of a tart with wonderfully
constructed towering walls. Behind a second turreted marvel of pastry,
Mistress Lettice and Mr. Frederick Jones sighed and ogled with antique
grace. Sir Charles Carew, fingering his cherries, told a piquant little
court anecdote to Mistress Betty Carrington, and was lazily amused at
the blush and veiled eyelids with which the young lady received it.
Young Mr. Peyton, on her other side, looked very black.
The wine was put on and the toast to King and Church drunk standing,
after which the ladies dipped their white fingers into the basin of
perfumed water, dried them on the silver-fringed napkin, and sailed to
the door, through which, after the profoundest of courtesies on the one
side and the lowest of bows upon the other, they vanished, leaving the
gentlemen to wine and wassail.
Colonel Verney drank to the Governor; the Governor to Colonel Verney;
Sir Charles to the author of the "Lost Lady" and the "Discourse and View
of Virginia," so tickling the Governor's vanity thereby that he became
altogether charming. Mr. Peyton toasted Mistress Betty Carrington, and
Mr. Frederick Jones, Mistress Lettice Verney, "fairest and most discreet
of ladies." They drank to Captain Laramore's next voyage, to Mr.
Wormeley's success in vine planting, to Major Carrington's conversion.
They drank confusion to Quakers, Independents, Baptists and infidels, to
the heathen on the frontier and the Papists in Maryland, the Dutch on
the Hudson and the French on the St. Lawrence,--"Quebec in exchange for
Dunkirk!" In short, there were few things in heaven or earth but
justified draughts of Madeira.
The room filled with a blue and fragrant mist proceeding from twenty
pipe-bowls. Mr. Peyton sang a pretty song of his own composing. The
company applauded. Sir Charles Carew, in a richly plaintive tenor
voice, sang a lyric of Rochester's. Several of the gentlemen looked
askance (the clergyman had left the room with the ladies), but on the
Governor's crying out "Excellent!" they considered themselves
over-squeamish, and clapped loudly.
Sir Charles, being dry after his song, drank to Hospitality,--"A duty,"
he said, smiling, "that you gentlemen make so paramount that you must
wonder at the omission of 'Thou shalt be hospitable' from the
Decalogue."
"Faith, sir!" cried Mr. Peyton, "God is too good a Virginian not to
consider such a commandment superfluous."
The Governor commenced a story which all present, but one, had heard a
dozen times. It mattered the less, as it was a good one. Sir Charles
capped it with a better. The Governor told a weird tale of Lunsford's
men, the "babe-eating" regiment. Sir Charles recounted a little
adventure of His Grace of Buckingham with a quack astrologer, a Court
lady, and an orange girl, which made the company die of laughter.
"Rat me! but you tell a story well, sir!" said the Governor, wiping his
eyes.
"I serve King Charles the Second, your Excellency."
"And so have to live by your wit, eh, sir?"
"Precisely, your Excellency."
"Emigrate to Virginia, man! to the land of good eating, good drinking,
good fighting, stout men, and pretty women--who make angelic wives."
And the Governor, who loved his own wife with chivalric devotion, kissed
a locket which he wore at his neck. "Come to Virginia where we need
loyal men and true. Lord! we all thought the millennium was come with
the king, but damme! if it doesn't seem as far off as ever! Not that
his Majesty is to blame," he added quickly, as though fearing that his
words might be taken as an aspersion upon Charles's ability to conduct
the millennium single-handed. "The naughty spirit of the age sets
itself against the Lord's Anointed. The Puritan snake is but scotched,
not killed. It's the old prate of freedom of conscience, government by
the people, and the like disgusting stuff (no offense to you, Major
Carrington) that makes the trouble of the times both here and at home.
I sigh for the good old days when, for eleven sweet years, no Parliament
sat to meddle in affairs of state, when Wentworth kept down faction and
the saintly Laud built up the Church which he adorned." And the
Governor buried his woes in the Rhenish.
"Sir William Berkeley's loyalty is proverbial," said Sir Charles
suavely. "The King knows that while he is at the helm in Virginia, the
colony is on the high road to that era of peace and prosperity which his
majesty so ardently desires--for his tax-paying people. And I have
thought more than once of late that I might do worse than to dispose of
my majority in the 'Blues,' bid the Court adieu, and obtaining from his
Majesty a grant of land, retire here to Virginia to pass my days on my
own land and amid a little court of my own, in the patriarchal fashion
you gentlemen affect. Under certain circumstances it is a course I
might possibly pursue." He glanced at his kinsman, whose countenance
showed high approval of a plan which dovetailed nicely with one of his
own making.
"Can you guess the 'certain circumstances' which are to give us the
pleasure of his confounded company?" whispered Mr. Peyton to Mr. Carey.
"An easy riddle, Jack. Damn the insolent, smooth-spoken knave of
hearts, and confound the women! They all drop to a court card."
"Not Mistress Betty Carrington. She looks below the surface."
"Humph! What does she see below thine? An empty gourd with a few
madrigals and sonnets, and fine images, conned from the 'Grand Cyrus,'
rattling about like dried seeds?"
"Hush, thou green persimmon! the Governor is speaking."
The governor rose with care to his feet. His wig was awry, his cravat
of fine mechlin under one ear. Benevolent smiles played like summer
lightning across his flushed face. He raised his tankard slowly and
with attentive steadiness. "Gentlemen," he said in a high voice, "we
have eaten and we have drunken. Dick Verney's wine is as old as the
hills and as mellow as sunlight. It groweth late, gentlemen, and some
of you have miles to travel, and it takes cool heads to ride the
'planter's pace.' For William Berkeley, gentlemen, Governor of Virginia
by the grace of God and his Majesty, King Charles the Second, it takes
more than Dick Verney's wine to fluster him. I call a final toast. I
drink again to our loving friend and host, the worshipful Colonel
Richard Verney, to his beauteous daughter and sister, to his man-servant
and his maid-servant, his ox and his ass, and the stranger which is
within his gates." He smiled benignly at a reflection of Sir Charles in
a distant mirror. "Gentlemen, the devil, you see, can quote scripture.
Let the cup go roun' go roun', go roun'."
The toast was drunk with fervor, and the party broke up.
The Governor, with Colonel Ludlow and Captain Laramore, was to sleep at
Verney Manor, and Mistress Betty Carrington was left by her father to
bear Patricia company for a day or two. One by one the remainder of the
company rode or sailed away, those who had an even keel beneath them
being in much better case than their brethren on horseback.
When the last sail showed a white speck in the distance, Patricia and
Betty came out upon the porch and sat them down, one on either side of
the Governor, with whom they were great favorites. Colonel Ludlow and
Captain Laramore were at dice at a table within the hall, and Colonel
Verney had excused himself in order to hear the evening report from his
overseers. Sir Charles Carew, very idle and purposeless-looking,
lounged in a great chair, and studied the miniature upon his snuff-box.
The Governor, whom the wine had mellowed into a genial softness, a kind
of sunset glow, alternately puffed wide rings of smoke into the air, and
paid compliments to the young ladies. The evening breeze had sprung up,
rustling the leaves of the trees, and bringing with it the sound of the
water. In the western sky crimson islets forever shifted shapes in a
sea of gold. A rosy light suffused the earth. In it the water turned
to the pink of a shell, the marshes became ethereal and far away, earth
and sky seemed one. The flashing wings of gull and curlew were like
fairy sails faring to and fro.
"If I had wings," said Patricia dreamily, her hands clasped over her
knees, "I would fly straight to that highest island of cloud. The one,
Betty, that looks like a field of daffodils, with those beautiful peaks
rising from it, and the violet light in the hollows. I would set up my
standard there, Sir William, and the island should be mine, and I would
rule the fairies that must inhabit it, with a rod of iron--as you rule
Virginia," she ended with a laugh.
The Governor laughed with her. "You would have no such stiff-necked
folk to deal with, my love, as have I."
"No, they should all be good Cavaliers and Churchmen--no Roundheads, no
servants--and if Indians on neighboring isles threatened we would pray
for a wind and sail away from them, around and around the bright blue
sky."
"And when you are gone to take possession of your castle in the air what
will poor Virginia do?" gallantly demanded the governor.
"Oh, she would still exist! But I am not going to-night. The princess
of the castle in the air is engaged to his Excellency the Governor of
Virginia for a game of chess. In the mean time here comes my father,
who shall entertain your Excellency while Betty and I go for a walk.
Come, Lady-bird."
The two graceful figures twined arms and moved off down the walk. Sir
Charles looked after them a moment, then, with a "Permit me, sir," to
the Governor, he snapped the lid of his snuff-box and started down the
steps. The Governor laughed. "We will excuse you, sir," he said
graciously. "Dick," to Colonel Verney, as the young gentleman hastened
after the ladies, "that fine spark is to be your son-in-law, eh?"
"It is the wish of my heart, William."
"Humph!"
"He has birth and breeding. His father was my good friend and kinsman,
and as loyal a Cavalier as ever gave life and lands for the blessed
Martyr. He died in my arms at Marston Moor, and with his last breath
commended his son to me. My dear wife was then expecting the birth of
our child, of Patricia. I can see him now as he smiled up at me (he was
ever gay) and said, 'If it's a girl, Dick, marry her to my boy.' Well!
he died, and his brother took the boy, and my wife and I came over seas,
and I never saw the lad from that day to this, when he comes at my
invitation to visit us."
"Well, he is a very pretty fellow! And what does Patricia say to him?"
"Patricia is a good daughter," said the Colonel sedately, "and is
possessed of sense beyond the average of womenkind. She knows the
advantages this match offers. Sir Charles Carew can give her a title,
and a name that's as old as her own. He is a man of parts and
distinction, has served the King, is familiar with the courts of Europe.
I do not pin my faith to the tales that are told of him. His father was
a gallant gentleman, and I am not the man to believe ill of his son.
Moreover, if, as he hath half promised, he will come to Virginia, he
will throw off here the vices of the Court, the faults of youth, and
become an honest Virginia gentleman, God-fearing, law-abiding,
reverencing the King, but not copying him too closely--such an one as
them or I, William. The king should give him large grants of land, and
so, with what Patricia will have when I am gone, there will be laid the
foundation of a great and noble estate, which, please God, will belong
in the fair future of this fair land to a great and noble family sprung
from the union of Verney and Carew. Patricia, trust me, sees all this
with my eyes."
"Humph!" said the Governor again.
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE BREAKING HEART*
Sir Charles was up with the two girls before they reached the garden;
and they passed together through the gate and into the spicy wilderness.
The dew was falling and as they sauntered through the narrow paths,
Betty held back her skirts that the damp leaves of sage and marjoram
might not brush them; but Patricia, gathering larkspur and
sweet-william, was heedless of her finery. At the further end of the
garden was a wicket leading into a grove of mulberries. The three
walked on beneath the spreading branches and the broad, heart-shaped
leaves, until they came to a tree of extraordinary height and girth
whose roots bulged out into great, smooth excrescences like inverted
bowls. Patricia stopped. "Betty is tired," she said kindly, "and she
shall sit here and rest. Betty is a windflower, Sir Charles, a little
tender timid flower, frail and sweet--are you not, Betty?" She sat down
upon one of the bowls, and pulled her friend down beside her. Sir
Charles leaned against the trunk of the tree. "Betty is a little
Puritan," continued Patricia; "she would not wear the set of ribbons I
had for her; and that hurt me very much."
"O Patricia!" cried Betty, with tears in her eyes. "If I thought you
really cared! But even then I could not wear them!"
"No, you little martyr," said the other, with a kiss. "You would go to
the stake any day for what you call your 'principles.' And I honor you
for it, you know I do. Cousin Charles, do you know that Betty thinks it
wrong to hold slaves?"
Sir Charles laughed, and Betty's delicate face flushed.
"O Patricia!" she cried. "I did not say that! I only said that we
would not like it ourselves."
"'Pon my soul, I don't suppose we would," said Sir Charles coolly.
"But, Mistress Betty, the negroes have neither thin skins nor nice
feelings."
"I know that," said Betty bravely; "and I know that our divines and
learned men cannot yet decide whether or not they have souls. And, of
course, if they have not, they are as well treated as other animals; but
all the same I am sorry for them, and I am sorry for the servants too."
"For the servants!" cried Patricia, arching her brows.
"Yes," said Betty, standing to her guns. "I am sorry for the servants,
for those who must work seven years for another before they can do aught
for themselves. And often when their time is out they are bowed and
broken; and those whom they love at home, and would bring over, are
dead: and often before the seven years have passed they die themselves.
And I am sorry for those whom you call rebels, for the Oliverians; and
for the convicts, despised and outcast. And for the Indians about us,
dispossessed and broken, and--yes, I am sorry for the Quakers."
"I waste no pity on the under dog," said Sir Charles. "Keep him
down--and with a heavy hand--or he will fly at your throat."
"Hark!" said Patricia.
Some one in the distance was singing:--
"Gentle herdsman, tell to me
Of courtesy I thee pray,
Unto the town of Walsingham,
Which is the right and ready way?
"Unto the town of Walsingham
The way is hard for to be gone,
And very crooked are those paths
For you to find out all alone."
The notes were wild and plaintive, and sounded sadly through the
gathering dusk. A figure flitted towards them between the shadowy tree
trunks.
"It is Mad Margery," said Patricia.
"And who is Mad Margery?" asked Sir Charles.
"No one knows, cousin. She does not know herself. Ten years ago a ship
came in with servants, and she was on it. She was mad then. The
captain could give no account of her, save that when, the day after
sailing, he came to count the servants, he found one more than there
should have been, and that one a woman, stupid from drugs. She had been
spirited on board the ship, that was all he could say. It's a common
occurrence, as you know. She never came to herself,--has always been
what she is now. She was sold to a small planter, and cruelly treated
by him. After a time my father heard her story and bought her from her
master. She has been with us ever since. Her term of service is long
out; but there is nothing that could drive her from this plantation.
She wanders about as she pleases, and has a cabin in the woods yonder;
for she will not live in the quarters. They say that she is a white
witch; and the Indians, who reverence the mad, lay maize and venison at
her door."
The voice, shrill and sweet, rang out close at hand.
"Thy years are young, thy face is fair,
Thy wits are weak, thy thoughts are green,
Time hath not given thee leave as yet,
For to commit so great a sin."
"Margery!" called Patricia softly.
The woman came towards them with a peculiar gliding step, swift and
stealthy. Within a pace or two of them she stopped, and asked, "Who
called me?" in a voice that seemed to come from far away. She was not
old, and might once have been beautiful.
"I called you, Margery," said Patricia gently. "Sit down beside us, and
tell us what you have been doing."
The woman came and sat herself down at Patricia's feet. She carried a
stick, or light pole, wound with thick strings of wild hops, which she
laid on the ground. Taking one of the wreaths from around it, she
dropped the pale green mass into Patricia's lap.
"Take it," she said. "They are flowers I gathered in Paradise, long
ago. They wither in this air; but if you fan them with your sighs, and
water them with your tears, they will revive.... Paradise is a long way
from here. I have been seeking the road all day; but I have not found
it yet. I think it must lie near Bristol Town, Bristol Town, Bristol
Town."
Her voice died away in a long sigh, and she sat plucking at the fragrant
blooms.
Patricia said softly, "She talks much of Bristol Town, and she is always
seeking the road to Paradise. I think that once some one must have said
to her, 'We will meet in Paradise.'"
"I know little of Paradise, Margery," said Sir Charles, good-naturedly;
"but Bristol Town is many leagues from here, across the great ocean."
"Yes, I know. It lieth in the rising of the sun. I have never seen it
except in my dreams. But it is a beautiful place--not like this world
of trees. The church bells are ever ringing there, ... and the children
sing in the streets. It is all fair, and smiling and beautiful, all but
one spot, one black, black, black spot. I will tell you." She sunk her
voice to a whisper and looked fearfully around. "The mouth of the Pit
is there, the Bottomless Pit that the Preacher tells about. It is a
small room, dark, dark, ... and there is a heavy smell in the air, ...
and there are fiends with black cloth over their faces. They hold a
draught of hell to your mouth, and they make you drink it; ... it burns,
burns. And then you go down, down, down, into everlasting blackness."
She broke off, and shuddered violently, then burst into eldritch
laughter.
"Shall I tell you what I found just now while I was looking for
Paradise?"
"Yes," said Patricia.
"A breaking heart."
"A breaking heart!"
Margery nodded. "Yes," she said. "I thought it would surprise you. I
find many things, looking for Paradise. The other day I found a brown
pixie sitting beneath a mushroom, and he told me curious things. But a
breaking heart is different. I know all about it, for once upon a time
my heart broke; but mine was soft and easy to break. It was as soft,
and weak as a baby's wrist, a little, tender, helpless thing, you know,
that melts under your kisses. But this heart that I found will take a
long time to break. Proud anger will strengthen it at first; but one
string will snap, and then another, and another, until, at last--" she
swept her arms abroad with a wild and desolate gesture.
"What does she mean?" asked Sir Charles.
"I do not know," answered Patricia.
Margery rose and took up her leafy staff,
"Come," she said. "Come and see the breaking heart."
"O Patricia!" cried Betty, "do not go with her!"
"Why not?" asked Patricia resolutely. "Come, cousin, let us find out
what she means. We will go with you, Margery; but you must not take us
far. It grows late."
Margery laughed weirdly. "It is never late for Margery. There is a
star far up in heaven that is sorry for Margery, and it shines for her,
bright, bright, all night long, that she may not miss the road to
Paradise."
She glided in front of them, and moved rapidly down the dim alley of
trees, her feet seeming scarce to touch the short grass, and the long
green wreaths, stirred by the wind, coiling and uncoiling around her
staff like serpents. Patricia, with Betty and Sir Charles, followed her
closely. She led them out of the mulberry grove, through a small
vineyard, and into a patch of corn, beyond which could be seen the gleam
of water, faintly pink from the faded sunset.
"She is taking us towards the quarters!" exclaimed Patricia. "Margery!
Margery!"
But Margery held on, moving swiftly through the waist-deep corn. Betty
looked down with a little sigh at her dainty shoes, which were suffering
by their contact with the dew-laden leaves of pumpkins and macocks. Sir
Charles put aside the long corn blades with his cane, and so made a way
for the girls. He felt mildly curious and somewhat bored.
Suddenly they emerged upon the banks of the inlet, within a hundred
yards of the quarters. Patricia would have spoken, but Margery put her
finger to her lips and flitted on towards the row of cabins.
Before them stretched a long, narrow lane, sandy and barren, with a
pine-tree rising here and there. Rude cabins, windowless and with mud
chimneys, faced each other across the lane. Half way down was an open
space, or small square, in the centre of which stood a dead tree with a
board nailed across its trunk at about a man's height from the ground.
In either end of the board was cut a round hole big enough for a man's
hand to be squeezed through, and above hung a heavy stick with leathern
thongs tied to it, the whole forming a pillory and whipping-post, rude,
but satisfactory.
It was almost dark. The larger stars had come out, and the fireflies
began to sparkle restlessly. The wind sighed in the pines, and a strong
salt smell came from the sea. Overhead a whippoorwill uttered its
mournful cry.
The long day's work, from sunrise to sunset, was over, and the
population of the quarter had drifted in from the fields of tobacco and
maize, the boats, the carpenter's shop, the forge, the mill, the
stables, and barns. Hard-earned rest was theirs, and they were prepared
to enjoy it. It was supper-time. In the square a great fire of
brush-wood had been kindled, and around it squatted a ring of negroes,
busy with bowls of loblolly and great chunks of corn bread. They
chattered like monkeys, and one who had finished his mess raised a chant
in which one note was a yell of triumph, the next a long-drawn plaintive
wail. The rich barbaric voice filled the night. A figure, rising,
tossed aside an empty bowl, and began to dance in the red fire-light.
The white men ate at their cabin doors, sitting upon logs of wood, or in
groups of three or four messed at tables made by stretching planks from
one tree-stump to another. It was meat-day; and they, too, made merry.
From the women's cabins also came shrill laughter. Snatches of song
arose, altercations that suddenly began and as suddenly ceased, a babel
of voices in many fashions of speech. Broad Yorkshire contended with
the thin nasal tones of the cockney; the man from the banks of the Tweed
thrust cautious sarcasms at the man from Galway. A mulatto, the color
of pale amber, spoke sonorous Spanish to an olive-hued piece of
drift-wood from Florida. An Indian indulged in a monologue in a tongue
of a far-away tribe of the Blue Mountains.
The glare from the fire and from flaring pine-knots played fitfully over
the motley throng, now bringing out in strong relief some one face or
figure, then plunging it into profoundest shadow. It burnished the high
forehead and scalp lock of the Indian, and made to gleam intensely the
gold earring in the ear of the mulatto. The scarlet cloth wound about
the head of a Turk seemed to turn to actual flame. Under the baleful
light vacant faces of dully honest English rustics became malignant,
while the negro, dancing with long, outstretched arms and uncouth
swayings to and fro, appeared a mirthful fiend.
The three gentlefolk and their mad conductress gazed from out the shadow
and at a safe distance. Sir Charles Carew, a man of taste, felt strong
artistic pleasure in the Rembrandtesque scene before him--the leaping
light, the weird shadows, resolving themselves into figures posed with
savage freedom, the dancing satyr, the sombre pines above, and, beyond
the pines, the stillness of the stars. Betty drew a little shuddering
breath, and her hand went to clasp Patricia's. The latter was looking
steadily upward at the slender crescent moon.
"Do not look, Betty," she said quietly. "I do not. It is a horror to
me--a horror. I am going back," she said, turning.
But she had reckoned without Margery, who caught her by the arm.
"Come," she said imperiously. "Come and see the breaking heart!"
Patricia hesitated, then yielded to curiosity and the insistent pressure
of the skeleton fingers.
The cabins nearest them were deserted, their occupants having joined
themselves to the groups further down the lane where the firelight beat
strongest and the torches were more numerous. With no more sound than a
moth would make, flitting through the dusk, the mad woman led them to
the outermost of these cabins. Within five paces of the door she
stopped and pointed a long forefinger.
"The breaking heart!" she said in a triumphant whisper.
A man lay, face downwards, in the coarse and scanty grass. One arm was
bent beneath his forehead, the other was outstretched, the hand
clenched. It was the attitude of one who has flung himself down in dumb,
despairing misery. As they looked, he gave a long gasping sob that
shook his whole frame, then lay quiet.
A burst of revelry came down the lane. The man raised his head
impatiently, then let it drop again upon his arm.
Patricia turned and walked quickly back the way they had come. Betty
and Sir Charles followed her; Margery, her whim gratified, had vanished
into the darkness of the pines.
No one spoke until they were again amidst the wet and rustling corn.
Then said Betty with tears in her voice, "O Patricia, darling! there is
so much misery in the world, fair and peaceful as it looks to-night.
That poor man!"
"That 'poor man,' Betty," answered Patricia in a hard voice, "is a
criminal, a felon, guilty of some dreadful, sordid thing, a gaol-bird
reclaimed from the gallows and sent here to pollute the air we breathe."
"It was the convict, Landless, was it not?" asked Sir Charles.
"Yes."
"But, Patricia," said the gentle Betty, "whatever he may have done, he
is wretched now."
"He has sowed the wind; let him reap the whirlwind," said Patricia
steadily.
They went on to the house and into the great room where the myrtle
candles were burning softly, the dimity curtains shutting out the night.
Mrs. Lettice was at the spinet, with Captain Laramore to turn the leaves
of her song book, and the Governor, with the chess table out and the
pieces in battle array, awaited (he said) the arrival of the Princess of
the Castle in the Air.
*CHAPTER V*
*IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD*
In a far corner of the Three-mile Field Landless bent over tobacco plant
after tobacco plant, patiently removing the little green shoots or
"suckers" from the parent stem.
His back and limbs ached from the unaccustomed stooping, the fierce
sunshine beat upon his head, the blood pounded behind his temples, his
tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,--and the noontide rest was still
two hours away. As, with a gasp of weariness, he straightened himself,
the endless plain of green rose and fell to his dazzled eyes in misty
billows. The most robust rustic required several months of seasoning
before he and the Virginia climate became friends, and this man was
still weak from privation and confinement in prison and in the noisome
hold of the ship.
He turned his weary eyes from the vivid gold green of the fields to the
shadows of the forest. It lay within a few yards of him, just on the
other side of a little stream and a rail fence that zigzagged in gray
lines hung with creepers. At the moment he defined happiness as a
plunge into the cool, perfumed darkness, a luxurious flinging of a tired
body upon the carpet of pine needles, a shutting out, forever, of the
sunshine.
Suddenly he felt that eyes were upon him, and his glance traveled from
the fringe of trees to meet that of an Indian seated upon a log in an
angle of the fence.
He was a man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and
with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold
features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability,
and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of
carven bronze, staring at Landless with large, inscrutable eyes.
Landless, staring in return, saw something else. The rank growth of
weeds in which the log was sunk moved ever so slightly. There was a
flash as of a swiftly drawn rapier, and something long and mottled hung
for an instant upon the shoulder of the Indian, and then dropped into
its lair again.
With a sudden lithe twist of his body, the savage flung himself upon it,
and holding it down with one hand, with the other beat the life out with
a heavy stick. The creature was killed by the first stroke, but he
continued to rain vindictive blows upon it until it was mashed to a
pulp. Then, with a serenely impassive mien, he resumed his seat upon
the log.
Landless sprang across the stream, and went up to him.
"You are bitten! Is there aught I can do?"
The Indian shook his head. With one hand he pulled the shoulder
forward, trying, as Landless saw, to meet the wound with his lips: but
finding that it could not be done, he desisted and sat silent, and to
all appearance, unconcerned.
Landless cried out impatiently, "It will kill you, man! Do you know no
remedy?"
The Indian grunted. "Snake root grow deep in the forest, a long way
off. Besides, an Iroquois does not die for a little thing like a pale
face or a dog of an Algonquin."
"Why did you try to reach the sting with your mouth?"
"To suck out the evil."
"Is that a cure?"
The Indian nodded. Landless knelt down and examined the shoulder.
"Now," he said, "tell me if I set about it in the right way," and
applied his lips to the swollen, blue-black spot.
The Indian gave a grunt of surprise, and his white teeth flashed in a
smile; then he sat silent under the ministrations of the white man who
sucked at the wound, spitting the venom upon the ground, until the dark
skin was drawn and wrinkled like the hand of a washerwoman.
"Good!" then said the Indian, and pointed to the stream. Landless went
to it, rinsed his mouth, and brought back water in his cap with which he
laved the shoulder of his new acquaintance, ending by binding it up with
the handkerchief from the man's head.
A guttural sound from the Indian made him look up. At the same instant
the whip of the overseer, descending, cut him sharply across the
shoulders, he sprang to his feet, the veins in his forehead swollen, his
frame tense with impotent anger. The overseer, having gained his
attention, thrust the whip back into his belt.
"If you don't want to get what will hurt as bad as a snake bite," he
said grimly, "you had best tend to your tobacco and let vagrom Indians
alone. That row is to be suckered before dinner-time or your pork and
beans will go begging. As for you," turning to the Indian, "what are
you doing on this plantation? Where 's your pass?"
The Indian took from his waistband a slip of paper which he handed to
the overseer, who looked at it and gave it back with a grudging--"It's
all right this time, but you 'd better be careful. It's my opinion that
Major Carrington lets his servants run about a deal more than 's good
for them. Anyhow, you 've no business in this field. Clear out!"
The Indian arose and went his way. But as he passed Landless, suckering
a plant with angry energy, he touched him, as if by accident, with his
sinewy hand.
"Monakatocka never forgives an enemy," came in a sibilant whisper too
low to be heard by the watchful overseer. "Monakatocka never forgets a
friend. Some day he will repay."
The red-brown body slipped away through the tall weeds and clumps of
alder, like the larger edition of the thing that had hung upon its
shoulder. The overseer strode off down the field, sending keen glances
to right and left. He was a conscientious man and earned every pound of
his wages.
Landless, left alone, worked steadily on, for he had no mind to lose his
midday meal, uninviting as he knew it would prove to be. Moreover, he
was one who did with his might what his hand found to do. His body was
weary, and his heart sick within him, but the green shoots fell thick
and fast.
"Yon was a kindly thing you did. Pity 't was in no better cause than
the saving of a worthless natural."
The speaker, who was at work on the next row of plants, had caught up
with Landless from behind, and now moved his nimble fingers more slowly,
so as to keep pace with the less expert new hand.
Landless, raising his head, stared at a figure of positively terrifying
aspect. Upon a skeleton body of extraordinary height was set a head
bare of any hair. Scalp, forehead and cheeks were of one dull, ivory
hue like an eastern carving. Upon the smooth, dead surface of the right
cheek sprawled a great red R, branded into the flesh, and through each
large protruding ear went a ragged hole. For the rest, the lips were of
iron, and the small, deep-set eyes were so bright and burning that they
gave the impression that they were red like the great letter. It might
have been the face of a man of sixty years, though it would have been
hard to tell wherein lay the semblance of age, so smooth was the skin
and so brilliant the eyes.
"The Indian needed help. Why should I not have given it him?" said
Landless.
"Because it is written, 'Cursed are the heathen who inhabit the land.'"
Landless smiled. "So you would not help an Indian in extremity. What
if it had been a negro?"
"Cursed are the negroes! 'Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by the
sword.'"
"A Quaker?"
"Cursed are the Quakers! 'Silly doves that have no heart.'"
Landless laughed. "You have cursed pretty well all the oppressed of the
land. I suppose you reserve your blessings for the powers that be."
"The powers that be! May the plagues of Egypt light upon them, and the
seven vials rain down their contents upon them! Cursed be they all,
from the young man, Charles Stuart, to that prelatical, tyrannical,
noxious Malignant, William Berkeley! May their names become a hissing
and an abomination! Roaring lions are their princes, ravening wolves are
their judges, their priests have polluted the sanctuary! May their flesh
consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes consume
away in their holes, and their tongues consume away in their mouths, and
may there be mourning among them, even as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in
the valley of Megiddon!"
"You are a Muggletonian?"
"Yea, verily am I! a follower of the saintly Ludovick Muggleton, and of
the saintlier John Reeve, of whom Ludovick is but the mouthpiece, even
as Aaron was of Moses. They are the two witnesses of the Apocalypse.
They are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks. To them and to
their followers it is given to curse and to spare not, to prophesy
against the peoples and kindred and nations and tongues whereon is set
the seal of the beast. Wherefore I, Win-Grace Porringer, testify
against the people of this land; against Prelatists and Papists,
Presbyterians and Independents, Baptists, Quakers and heathen; against
princes, governors, and men in high places; against them that call
themselves planters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their
sons and their daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth
neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with
their feet. Cursed be they all! Surely they shall be as Sodom and
Gomorrah, even the breeding of salt-pits and a perpetual desolation!"
"Your curses seem not to have availed, friend," said Landless. "Curses
are apt to come home to roost. I should judge that yours have returned
to you in the shape of branding-irons."
The man raised a skeleton hand and stroked the red letter.
"This," he said coolly, "was given me when I ran away the second time.
The first time I was merely whipped. The third time I was shaven and
this shackle put upon my leg." He raised his foot and pointed to an
iron ring encircling the ankle. "The fourth time I was nailed by the
ears to the pillory, whence come these pretty scars."
Landless burst into grim laughter. "And after your fifth attempt, what
then?"
The man gave him a sidelong look. "I have not made my fifth attempt,"
he said quietly.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then said Master Win-Grace
Porringer:--
"I was sent to the plantations, because, in defiance of the Act of
Uniformity (cursed be it, and the authors thereof), I attended a meeting
of the persecuted and broken remnant of the Lord's people. What was your
offense, friend, for I reckon that you come not here of your free will,
being neither a rustic nor a fool?"
"I came from Newgate," said Landless, after a pause. "I am a convict."
The man's hand stopped in the act of pulling off a shoot. He gave a
slow upward look at the figure beside him, let his eyes rest upon the
face, and looked slowly down again with a shake of the head.
"Humph!" he said. "The society in Newgate must be improved since my
time."
They worked without speaking until they had nearly reached the end of
the long double row, when said the Muggletonian:--
"You are too young, I take it, to have seen service in the wars?"
"I fought at Worcester."
"Upon which side?"
"The Commonwealth's."
"I thought as much. Humph! You were all, Parliament and Presbytery,
Puritan and Independent, Hampden and Vane and Oliver, in the gall of
bitterness and the bond of iniquity, very far from the pure light in
which walk the followers of the blessed Ludovick. At the last the two
witnesses will speak against you also. But in the mean time it were
easier for the children of light to walk under the rule of the Puritan
than under that of the lascivious house of Jeroboam which now afflicts
England for her sins. But the Lord hath a controversy with them! An
east wind shall come up, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the
wilderness! They shall be moved from their places! They shall lick the
dust like serpents, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the
earth, and be utterly destroyed! Think you not as I do, friend?" he
asked, turning suddenly upon Landless.
"I think," said Landless, "that you are talking that which, if
overheard, might give you a deeper scar than any you bear."
"But who is to hear? the tobacco, the Lord in heaven, and you. The
senseless plant will keep counsel, the Lord is not like to betray his
servant, and as for you, friend,--" he looked long and searchingly at
Landless. "Despite the place you come from, I do not think you one to
bring a man into trouble for being bold enough to say what you dare only
think."
Landless returned the look. "No," he said quietly. "You need have no
fear of me."
"I fear no one," said the other proudly.
Presently he craned his long body across the plant between them until
his lips almost touched the ear of the younger man.
"Shall you try to escape?" he whispered.
A smile curled Landless's lip. "Very probably I shall," he said dryly.
He looked down the long lines of broad green leaves at the toiling
figures, black and white, dull peasants at best, scoundrels at worst;
and beyond to the huddled cabins of the quarter, and to the great house,
rising fair and white from orchard and garden; seeing, as in a dream, a
man, young in years but old in sorrow, disgraced, outcast, friendless,
alone, creeping down a vista of weary years, day after day of
soul-deadening toil, of association with the mean and the vile, of
shameful submission to whip and finger. Escape! The word had beaten
through brain and heart so long and so persistently, that at times he
feared lest he should cry it aloud.
Win-Grace Porringer shook his head.
"It's not an easy thing to escape from a Virginia plantation. With dogs
and with horses they hunt you down, yea, with torches and boats. They
band themselves together against the fleeing sparrow. They call in the
heathen to their aid. And it is a fearful land, for great rivers bar
your way, and forests push you back, and deep quagmires clutch you and
hold you until the men of blood come up. And when you are taken they
cruelly maltreat you, and your term of service is doubled."
"And yet men have gotten away," said Landless.
"Yes, but not many. And those that get away are seldom heard of more.
The forest swallows them up, and after a while their skulls roll about
the hills, playthings for wolves, or the deep waters flow over their
bones, or they lie in a little heap of ashes at the foot of some Indian
torture stake."
"Why did you try to escape?" asked Landless.
The man gave him another sidelong look.
"I tried because I was a fool. I am no longer a fool. I know a better
way."
"A better way!"
"Hush!" The man looked over his shoulder and then whispered, "Will you
go with me to-night?"
"Go with you! Where?"
"To a man I know--a man who gives good advice."
"Many can do that, friend."
"Ay, but not show the way to profit by it as doth this man."
"Who is he?"
"A servant even as we are servants,--a learned and godly man, albeit not
a follower of the blessed Ludovick. Listen! About the rising of the
moon to-night, slip from your cabin and come to the blasted pine on the
shore of the inlet. There will be a boat there and I will be in it. We
will go to the cabin of the man of whom I speak. He is a cripple, and
knowing that he cannot run away, the godless and roistering Malignant
who calls himself our master hath given him a hut among the marshes,
where he mendeth nets. Come! I may not say more than that it will be
worth your while."
"If we are caught--"
"Our skins pay for us. But the Lord will shut the eyes of the overseers
that they see not, and their ears that they hear not, and we will be
safely back before the dawn. You will come?"
"Yes," said Landless. "I will come."
*CHAPTER VI*
*THE HUT ON THE MARSH*
It was shortly after midnight when the two servants slipped along the
inlet, silently and warily, and keeping their boat well under the shore.
It was a crazy affair, barely large enough for two, and requiring
constant bailing. When they had made half a mile from the quarters, the
Muggletonian, who rowed, turned the boat's head across the inlet, and
ran into a very narrow creek that wound in many doubles through the
marshes. They entered it, made the first turn, and the broad bosom of
the inlet, lit by a low, crimson moon, was as if it had never been. On
every side high marsh grass soughed in the night wind,--plains of
blackness with the red moon rising from them. The tide was low. So
close were the banks of wet, black earth, that they heard the crabs
scuttling down them, and Porringer made a jab with his pole at a great
sheepshead lying _perdu_ alongside. The water broke before them into
spangles, glittering phosphorescent ripples. A school of small fish,
disturbed by the oars, rushed past them, leaping from the water with
silver flashes. A turtle plunged sullenly. From the grass above came
the sleepy cry of marsh hens, and once a great white heron rose like a
ghost across their path. It flapped its wings and sailed away with a
scream of wrath.
The boat had wound its tortuous way for many minutes before Porringer
said in a low voice: "We can speak safely now. There is nothing human
moving on these flats unless the witch, Margery, is abroad. Cursed may
she be, and cursed those who give her shelter and food and raiment and
lay offerings at her door, for surely it is written, 'Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live.'"
"Is there anything a Muggletonian will not curse?" asked Landless.
"Yea," answered the other complacently. "There are ourselves, the salt
of the earth. There are a thousand or more of us."
"And the remainder of the inhabitants of the earth are reprobate and
doomed?"
"Yea, verily, they shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up
will they be burned in the fire."
"Then why have you to do with me, and with the man to whom we are
going?"
"Because it is written: 'Make ye friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness;' and moreover there be degrees even in hell fire. I do
not place you, who have some inkling of the truth, nor the Independents
and Fifth Monarchy men (as for the Quakers they shall be utterly damned)
in the furnace seven times heated which is reserved for the bigoted and
bloody Prelatists who rule the land, swearing strange oaths, foining
with the sword, and delighting in vain apparel; keeping their feast days
and their new moons and their solemn festivals. They are the rejoicing
city that dwells carelessly, that says in her heart, 'I am, and there is
none beside me.' The day cometh when they shall be broken as the
breaking of a potter's vessel, yea, they shall be violently tossed like
a ball into a far country."
Here they struck a snag, well-nigh capsizing the boat. When she
righted, and Landless had bailed her out with a gourd, they proceeded in
silence. Landless was in no mood for speech. He did not know where they
were going, nor for what purpose, nor did he greatly care. He meant to
escape, and that as soon as his strength should be recovered and he
could obtain some knowledge of the country, and he meant to take no one
into his counsel, not the Muggletonian, whose own attempts had ended so
disastrously, nor the 'man who gave good advice.' As to this midnight
expedition he was largely indifferent. But it was something to escape
from the stifling atmosphere of the cabin where he had tossed from side
to side, listening to the heavy breathing of the convict, Turk, and
peasant lad with whom he was quartered, to the silver peace of
moon-flooded marsh and lapping water.
They made another turn, and in front of them shone out a light, gleaming
dully like a will-of-the-wisp. It looked close at hand, but the creek
turned upon itself, coiled and writhed through the marsh, and trebled
the distance.
The Muggletonian rested on his oar, and turned to Landless.
"Yonder is our bourne," he said gravely. "But I have a word to say to
you, friend, before we reach it. If, to curry favor with the
uncircumcised Philistines who set themselves over us, thou speakest of
aught thou mayest see or hear there to-night, may the Lord wither thy
tongue within thy mouth, may he smite thee with blindness, may he bring
thee quick into the pit! And if not the Lord, then will I, Win-Grace
Porringer, rise and smite thee!"
"You may spare your invectives," said Landless coldly. "I am no
traitor."
"Nay, friend," said the other in a milder tone. "I thought it not of
thee, or I had not brought thee thither."
He shoved the nose of the boat into the shore, and caught at a stake,
rising, water-soaked and rotten, from below the bank. Landless threw
him the looped end of a rope, and together they made the boat fast, then
scrambled up the three feet of fat, sliding earth to the level above
where the ground was dry, none but the highest of tides ever reaching
it. Fifty yards away rose a low hut. It stood close to another bend in
the creek, and before it were several boats, tied to stakes, and softly
rubbing their sides together. The hut had no window, but there were
interstices between the logs through which the light gleamed redly.
When the two men had reached it, the Muggletonian knocked upon the heavy
door, after a peculiar fashion, striking it four times in all. There
was a shuffling sound within, and (Landless thought) two voices ceased
speaking. Then some one said in a low voice and close to the door: "Who
is it?"
"The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," answered the Muggletonian.
A bar fell from the door, and it swung slowly inwards.
"Enter, friends," said a quiet voice. Landless, stooping his head,
crossed the threshold, and found himself in the presence of a man with a
high, white forehead and a grave, sweet face, who, leaning on a stick,
and dragging one foot behind him, limped back to the settle from which
he had risen, and fell to work upon a broken net as calmly as if he were
alone. Besides themselves he was the only inmate of the room.
A pine torch, stuck into a cleft in the table, cast a red and flickering
light over a rude interior, furnished with the table, the settle, a
chest and a straw pallet. From the walls and rafters hung nets, torn or
mended. In one corner was a great heap of dingy sail, in another a sheaf
of oars, and a third was wholly in darkness. Lying about the earthen
floor were several small casks to which the man motioned as seats.
Leaving Landless near the door, Win-Grace Porringer dragged a keg to the
side of the settle, and sitting down upon it, approached his death mask
of a face close to the face of the mender of nets, and commenced a
whispered conversation. To Landless, awaiting rather listlessly the
outcome of this nocturnal adventure, came now and then a broken
sentence. "He hath not the look of a criminal, but--" "Of Puritan
breeding, sayest thou?" "We need young blood." Then after prolonged
whispering, "No traitor, at least."
At length the Muggletonian arose and came towards Landless. "My friend
would speak with you alone," he said, "I will stand guard outside." He
went out, closing the door behind him.
The mender of nets beckoned Landless. "Will you come nearer?" he asked
in a quiet refined voice that was not without a ring of power. "As you
see, I am lame, and I cannot move without pain."
Landless came and sat down beside the table, resting his elbow upon the
wood, and his chin upon his hand. The mender of nets put down his work,
and the two measured each other in silence.
Landless saw a man of middle age who looked like a scholar, but who
might have been a soldier; a man with a certain strong, bright sweetness
of look in a spare, worn face, and underlying the sweetness a still and
deadly determination. The mender of nets saw, in his turn, a figure
lithe and straight as an Indian's, a well-poised head, and a handsome
face set in one fixed expression of proud endurance. A determined face,
too, with dark, resolute eyes and strong mouth, the face of a man who
has done and suffered much, and who knows that he will both do and
suffer more.
"I am told," said the mender of nets, "that you are newly come to the
plantations."
"I was brought by the ship God-Speed a month ago."
"You did not come as an indented servant?"
Landless reddened. "No."
"Nor as a martyr to principle, a victim of that most iniquitous and
tyrannical Act of Uniformity?"
"No."
"Nor as one of those whom they call Oliverians?"
"No."
The mender of nets tapped softly Against the table with his thin, white
fingers. Landless said coldly:--
"These are idle questions. The man who brought me here hath told you
that I am a convict."
The other looked at him keenly. "I have heard convicts talk before
this. Why do you not assert your innocence?"
"Who would believe me if I did?"
There was a silence. Landless, raising his eyes, met those of the
mender of nets, large, luminous, gravely tender, and reading him like a
book.
"I will believe you," said the mender of nets.
"Then, as God is above us," said the other solemnly, "I did not do the
thing! And He knows that I thank you, sir, for your trust. I have not
found another--"
"I know, lad, I know! How was it?"
"I was a Commonwealth's man. My father was dead, my kindred attainted,
and I had a powerful enemy. I was caught in a net of circumstance. And
Morton was my judge."
"Humph! the marvel is that you ever got nearer to the plantations than
Tyburn. Your name is--"
"Godfrey Landless."
"Landless! Once I knew--and loved--a Warham Landless--a brave soldier,
a gallant gentleman, a true Christian. He fell at Worcester."
"He was my father."
The mender of nets covered his eyes with his hand. "O Lord! how
wonderful are thy ways!" he said beneath his breath, then aloud, "Lad,
lad, I cannot wholly sorrow to see you here. Wise in counsel, bold in
action, patient, farseeing, brave, was thy father, and I think thou hast
his spirit. Thou hast his eyes, now that I look at thee more closely.
I have prayed for such a man."
"I am glad you knew my father," said Landless simply.
After a long silence, in which the minds of both had gone back to other
days, the mender of nets spoke gravely.
"You have no cause to love the present government?"
"No," said Landless grimly.
"You were heart and hand for the Commonwealth?"
"Yes."
"You mean to escape from this bondage?"
"Yes."
The mender of nets took from his bosom a little worn book. "Will you
swear upon this that you will never reveal what I am about to say to
you, save to such persons as I shall designate? For myself I would take
your simple word, for we are both gentlemen, but other lives than mine
hang in the balance."
Landless touched the book with his lips. "I swear," he said.
The man brought his serene, white face nearer.
"What would you have given," he asked solemnly, "for the cause for which
your father died?"
"My life," said Landless.
"Would you give it still?"
"A worthless gift," said Landless bitterly. "Yea, I would give it, but
the cause is dead."
The other shook his head. "The cause of the just man dieth not."
There was a pause broken by the mender of nets.
"Thou art no willing slave, I trow. The thought of escape is ever with
thee."
"I shall escape," said Landless deliberately. "And if they track me
they shall not take me alive."
The mender of nets gave a melancholy smile. "They would track you, never
fear!" He leaned forward and touched Landless with his hand. "What if
I show you a better way?" he asked in a whisper.
"What way?"
"A way to recover your liberty, and with it, the liberty of downtrodden
brethren. A way to raise the banner of the Commonwealth and to put down
the Stuart."
Landless stared. "A miserable hut," he said, "in the midst of a
desolate Virginia marsh, and within it, a brace of slaves, the one a
cripple, the other a convict,--and Charles Stuart on his throne in
Whitehall! Friend, this dismal place hath turned your wits!"
The other smiled. "My wits are sound," he said, "as sound as they were
upon that day when I gave my voice for the death (a sad necessity!) of
this young man's father. And I do not think to shake England,--I speak
of Virginia."
"Of Virginia!"
"Yea, of this goodly land, a garden spot, a new earth where should be
planted the seeds of a mighty nation, strong in justice and simple
right, wise, temperate, brave; an enlightened people, serving God in
spirit and in truth, not with the slavish observance of prelatist and
papist, nor with the indecent familiarity of the Independent; loyal to
their governors, but exercising the God-given right of choosing those
who are to rule over them: a people amongst whom liberty shall walk
unveiled, and to whom Astroea shall come again; a people as free as the
eagle I watched this morning, soaring higher and ever higher, strongly
and proudly, rejoicing in its progress heavenward."
"In other words, a republic," said Landless dryly.
"Why not?" answered the other with shining, unseeing eyes. "It is a
dream we dreamed ten years ago, I and Vane and Sidney and Marten and
many others,--but Oliver rudely wakened us. Then it was by the banks of
the Thames, and it was for England. Now, on the shores of Chesapeake I
dream again, and it is for Virginia. You smile!"
"Have you considered, sir,--I do not know your name."
"Robert Godwyn is my name."
"Have you considered, Master Godwyn, that the Virginians do not want a
republic, that they are more royalist and prelatical than are their
brethren at home; that they out-Herod Herod in their fantastic loyalty?"
"That is true of the class with whom you have come into contact,--of the
masters. But there is much disaffection among the people at large. And
there are the Nonconformists, the Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists,
even the Quakers, though they say they fight not. To them all, Charles
Stuart is the Pharaoh whose heart the Lord hardened, and William
Berkeley is his task-master."
"Any one else?"
"There are those of the gentry who were Commonwealth's men, and who
chafe sorely under the loss of office and disfavor into which they have
fallen."
"And these all desire a republic?"
"They desire the downfall of the royalists with William Berkeley at
their head. The republic would follow."
"And when a handful of Puritan gentlemen, a few hundred Nonconformists,
and the rabble of the colony shall have executed this project, have
usurped the government, dethroning the king, or his governor, which is
the same thing,--then will come in from the mouth of Thames a couple of
royal frigates and blow your infant republic into space."
"I do not think so. Thu frigates would come undoubtedly, but I am of
another opinion as to the result of their coming. They would not take
us unprepared as those of the Commonwealth took William Berkeley in
fifty-two. And with a plentiful lack of money and a Dutch war
threatening, Charles Stuart could not send unlimited frigates.
Moreover, if Virginia revolted, Puritan New England would follow her
example, and she would find allies in the Dutch of New Amsterdam."
"You spin large fancies," said Landless, with some scorn. "I suppose
you are plotting with these gentlemen you speak of?"
"No," said the man, with a scarcely perceptible hesitation. "No, they
are few in number and scattered. Moreover, they might plot amongst
themselves but never with--a servant."
"Then you are concerned with the Nonconformists?"
"The Nonconformists are timid, and dream not that the day of deliverance
is at hand."
Landless began to laugh. "Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that you
and I, for I suppose you count on my assistance, are to enact a kind of
Pride's Purge of our own? That we are to drive from the land the King's
Governor, Council, Burgesses and trainbands; sweep into the bay Sir
William Berkeley and Colonel Verney, and all those gold-laced planters
who dined with him the other day? That we are to take possession of the
colony as picaroons do of a vessel, and hoisting our flag,--a crutch
surmounted by a ball and chain on a ground sable,--proclaim a republic?"
"Not we alone."
"Oh, ay! I forgot the worthy Muggletonian."
"He is but one of many," said the mender of nets.
Landless leaned forward, a light growing in his eyes. "Speak out!" he
said. "What is it that will break this chain?"
The mender of nets, too, bent forward from his settle until his breath
mingled with the breath of the younger man.
"A slave insurrection," he said.
*CHAPTER VII*
*A MENDER OF NETS*
"A slave insurrection!"
Landless, recoiling, struck with his shoulder the torch, which fell to
the floor. The flame went out, leaving only a red gleaming end. "I
will get another," said the mender of nets, and limped to the corner
where the shadow had been thickest. Landless, left in darkness, heard a
faint muttering as though Master Robert Godwyn were talking to himself.
It took some time to find the torch; but at length Godwyn returned with
one in his hand, and kindled it at the expiring light.
Landless rose from his seat, and strode to and fro through the hut. His
pulses beat to bursting; there was a tingling at his finger-tips; to his
startled senses the hut seemed to expand, to become a cavern,
interminable and unfathomable, wide as the vaulted earth, filled with
awful, shadowy places and strange, lurid lights. The mender of nets
became a far-off sphinx-like figure.
Godwyn watched him in silence. He had a large knowledge of human
nature, and he saw into the mind and heart of the restless figure. He
himself was a philosopher, and wore his chains lightly, but he guessed
that the iron had entered deeply into the soul of the man before him.
The sturdy peasants, indented servants with but a few short years to
serve, better fed and better clad than their fellows at home, found life
on a Virginia plantation no sweet or easy thing; the political and
ecclesiastical offenders enjoyed it still less, while the small criminal
class found their punishment quite sufficiently severe. To this man the
life must be a slow _peine fort et dure_, breaking his body with toil,
crushing his soul with a hopeless degradation. The thought of escape
must be ever present with him. But escape in the conventional manner,
through pathless forests and over broad streams, was a thing rarely
attained to. Ninety-nine out of a hundred failed; and the last state of
the man who failed was worse than his first.
Landless strode over to the table, and leaned his weight upon it.
"Listen!" he said. "God knows I am a desperate man! My attempt to
escape failing, there is naught but his word between me and the deepest
pool of these waters. I am no saint. I hate my enemies. Restore to me
my sword, pit me against them one by one, and I will fight my way to
freedom or die.... A fair fight, too, a rising of the people against
oppression; a challenge to the oppressor to do his worst; a gallant
leading of a forlorn hope.... But a slave insurrection! a midnight
butchery! There was one who used to tell me tales of such risings in
the Indies. Murder and rapine, fire rising through the night, planters
cut down at their very thresholds, shrieking women tortured, children
flung into the flames,--a carnival of blood and horror!"
"We are not in the Indies," said the other quietly. "There will be no
such devil's work here. Sit down and listen while I put the thing
before you as it is. There are, most iniquitously held as slaves in this
Virginia, some four hundred Commonwealth's men, each one of whom, at
home and in his own station, was a man of mark. Many were Ironsides.
And each one is a force in himself,--cool, determined, intrepid,--and
wholly desperate. With them are many victims of the Act of Uniformity,
godly men, eaten up with zeal. For their freedom they would dare much;
for their faith they would spill every drop of their blood."
"They are like our friend, the Muggletonian, fanatics all, I suppose,"
said Landless.
"Possibly. Your fanatic is the best fighting machine yet invented. Do
you not see that these two classes form a regiment against which no
trainbands, no force which these planters could raise, would stand?"
"But they are scattered, dispersed through the colony!"
"Ay, but they can be brought together! And to that end, seeing how few
there are upon any one plantation, upon the day when they rise, they
must raise with them servants and slaves. Then will they overpower
masters and overseers, and gathering to one point, form there a force
which will beat down all opposition. It is simple enough. We will but
do that which it was proposed to do ten years ago. You know the
instructions given by the Parliament to the four commissioners?"
"They were to summon the colony to surrender to the Commonwealth. If it
did so, well and good; if not, war was to be declared, and the servants
invited to rise against their masters and so purchase their freedom."
"Precisely. Berkeley submitted, and there was no rising. This time
there will be no summons, but a rising, and a very great one. It will
be, primarily, a rising of four hundred Oliverians, strong to avenge
many and grievous wrongs; but with them will rise servants and slaves,
and to the banner of the Commonwealth, beneath which they will march,
will flock every Nonconformist in the land, and, when success is
assured, then will come in and give us weight and respectability those
(and they are not a few) of the better classes who long in their hearts
for the good days of the Commonwealth, and yet dare not lift a finger to
bring them back."
"And the royalists?"
"If they resist, their blood be upon them! But there shall be no
carnage, no butchery. And if they submit they shall be unmolested, even
as they were ten years ago. There is land enough for all."
"The servants and slaves?"
"They that join with us, of whatever class, shall be freed."
"This insurrection is actually in train?"
"Let us call it a revolution. Yes, it is in train as far as regards the
Oliverians. We have but begun to sound servants and slaves."
"And you?"
"I am, for lack of a better, General to the Oliverians."
"And you believe yourself able to control these motley forces,--men
wronged and revengeful, fanatics, peasants, brutal negroes, mulattoes
(whom they say are devils), convicts,--to say to them, 'Thus far must
you go, and no farther.' You invoke a fiend that may turn and rend
you!"
Godwyn shaded his eyes with his hand. "Yes," he said at last, speaking
with energy. "I do believe it! I know it is a desperate game; but the
stake! I believe in myself. And I have four hundred able adjutants,
men who are to me what his Ironsides were to Oliver, but none--" he
stretched out his hand, thin, white, and delicate as a woman's, and laid
it upon the brown one resting upon the table. "Lad," he said in a
gravely tender voice, "I have none upon this plantation in whom I can
put absolute trust. There are few Oliverians here, and they are like
Win-Grace Porringer, in whom zeal hath eaten up discretion. Lad, I need
a helper! I have spoken to you freely; I have laid my heart before you;
and why? Because I, who was and am a gentleman, see in you a gentleman,
because I would take your word before all the oaths of all the peasant
servants in Virginia, because you have spirit and judgment; because,--in
short, because I could love you as I loved your father before you. You
have great wrongs. We will right them together. Be my lieutenant, my
confidant, my helper! Come! put your hand in mine and say, 'I am with
you, Robert Godwyn, heart and soul.'"
Landless sprang to his feet. "It were easy to say that," he said
hoarsely, "for, in all the two years I lay rotting in prison, and in
these weeks of sordid misery here in Virginia, yours is the only face
that has looked kindly upon me, yours the only voice that has told me I
was believed.... But it is a fearful thing you propose! If all go as
you say it will,--why WELL! but if not, Hell will be in the land. I
must have time to think, to judge for myself, to decide--"
The door swung stealthily inward, and in the opening appeared the dead
white face, with the great letter sprawling over it, of Master Win-Grace
Porringer.
"There are boats on the creek." he said. "Two coming up, one coming
down."
Godwyn nodded. "I hold conference to-night with men from this and the
two neighboring plantations. You will stay where you are and see and
hear them. Only you must be silent; for they must not know that you are
not entirely one with us, as I am well assured you will be."
"They are Oliverians?"
"All but two or three."
"I secured the mulatto," interrupted the Muggletonian.
"Ay," said Godwyn, "I thought it well to have one slave representative
here to-night. These mulattoes are devils; but they can plot, and they
can keep a still tongue. But I shall not trust him or his kind too
far."
The peculiar knock--four strokes in all--sounded upon the door, and
Porringer went to it. "Who is there?" passed on the one side, and "The
sword of the Lord and of Gideon" on the other. The door swung open, and
there entered two men of a grave and determined cast of countenance.
Both had iron-gray hair, and one was branded upon the forehead with the
letter that appeared upon the cheek of the Muggletonian. Again the
knock sounded, the countersign was given, and the door opened to admit a
pale, ascetic-looking youth, with glittering eyes and a crimson spot on
each cheek, who stooped heavily and coughed often. He was followed by
another stern-faced Commonwealth's man, and he in turn by a brace of
broad-visaged rustics and a smug-faced man, who looked like a small
shop-keeper. After an interval came two more Oliverians, grim of eye,
and composed in manner.
Last of all came the mulatto of the pale amber color and the gold
ear-rings; and with him came the long-nosed, twitching-lipped convict in
whose company Landless had crossed the Atlantic. His name was Trail;
and Landless, knowing him for a villainous rogue, started at finding him
amongst the company.
His presence there was evidently unexpected; Godwyn frowned and turned
sharply upon the mulatto. "Who gave you leave to bring this man?" he
demanded sternly.
The mulatto was at no loss. "Worthy Senors all," he said smoothly,
addressing himself to the company in general. "This Senor Trail is a
good man, as I have reason to know. Once we were together in San
Domingo, slave to a villainous cavalier from Seville. With the help of
St. Jago and the Mother of God, we killed him and made our escape. Now,
after many years, we meet here in a like situation. I answer for my
friend as I answer for myself, myself, Luiz Sebastian, the humble and
altogether-devoted servant of you all, worshipful Senors."
The man with the branded forehead muttered something in which the only
distinguishable words were, "Scarlet woman," and "Papist half-breed,"
and the smug-faced man cried out, "Trail is a forger and thief! I
remember his trial at the Bailey, a week before I signed as storekeeper
to Major Carrington."
This speech of the smug-faced man created something of a commotion, and
one or two started to their feet. The mulatto looked about him with an
evil eye.
"My friend has been in trouble, it is true," he said, still very
smoothly. "He will not make the worse conspirator for that. And why,
worthy Senors, should you make a difference between him and one other I
see in company? Mother of God! they are both in the same boat!" He
fixed his large eyes on Landless as he spoke, and his thick lips curled
into a tigerish smile.
Landless half rose, but Godwyn laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "Be
still," he said in a low voice, "and let me manage this matter."
Landless obeyed, and the mender of nets turned to the assembly, who by
this time were looking very black.
"Friends," he said with quiet impressiveness, "I think you know me,
Robert Godwyn, well enough to know that I make no move in these great
matters without good and sufficient reason. I have good and sufficient
reason for wishing to associate with us this young man,--yea, even to
make him a leader among us. He is one of us--he fought at Worcester.
And that he is an innocent man, falsely accused, falsely imprisoned,
wrongfully sent to the plantations, I well believe,--for I will believe
no wrong of the son of Warham Landless."
There was a loud murmur of surprise through the room, and one of the
Oliverians sprung to his feet, crying out, "Warham Landless was my
colonel! I will follow his son were he ten times a convict!"
Godwyn waited for the buzz of voices to cease and then calmly proceeded,
"As to this man whom Luiz Sebastian hath brought with him, I know
nothing. But it matters little. Sooner or later we must engage his
class,--as well commence with him as with another. He will be faithful
for his own sake."
The dark faces of his audience cleared gradually. Only the youth with
the hectic cheeks cried out, "I have hated the congregation of evil
doers, and I will not sit with the wicked!" and rose as if to make for
the door. Win-Grace Porringer pulled him down with a muttered, "Curse
you for a fool! Shall not the Lord shave with a hired razor? When
these men have done their work, then shall they be cut down and cast
into outer darkness, until when, hold thy peace!"
The company now applied itself to the transaction of business. Trail
was duly sworn in, not without a deal of oily glibness and unnecessary
protestation on his part. The man who held the little, worn Bible now
turned to Landless, but upon Godwyn's saying quietly, "I have already
sworn him," the book was returned to the bosom of its owner.
Each conspirator had his report to make. Landless listened with grave
attention and growing wonder to long lists of plantations and the
servant and slave force thereon; to news from the up-river estates, and
from the outlying settlements upon the Rappahannock and the Pamunkey,
and from across the bay in Accomac; to accounts of secret arsenals
slowly filling with rude weapons; to allusions to the well-affected
sailors on board those ships that were likely to be in harbor during the
next two months;--to the details of a formidable and far-reaching
conspiracy.
The Oliverians spoke of the hour in which this mine should be sprung as
the great and appointed day of the Lord, the day when the Lord was to
stretch forth his hand and smite the malignants, the day when Israel
should be delivered out of the hand of Pharaoh. The branded man
apostrophized Godwyn as Moses. Their stern and rigid features relaxed,
their eyes glistened, their breath came short and thick. Once the youth
who had wished to avoid the company of the wicked broke into hysterical
sobbing. The two rustics spoke little, but possibly thought the more.
To them the day of the Lord translated itself the day of their obtaining
a freehold. The smug-faced shopkeeper put in his oar now and again, but
only to be swept aside by the torrent of Biblical quotation. The newly
admitted Trail kept a discreet silence, but used his furtive greenish
eyes to good purpose. Luiz Sebastian sat with the stillness of a great,
yellow, crouching tiger cat.
Godwyn heard all in silence. Not till the last man had had his say did
he begin to speak, approving, suggesting, directing, moulding in his
facile hands the incongruous and disjointed mass of information and
opinion into a rounded whole. The men, listening to him with breathless
attention, gave grim nods of approval. At one point of his discourse
the branded man cried out:--
"If the Puritan gentry you talk of would gird themselves like men, and
come forth to the battle, how quickly would the Lord's work be done!
They are the drones within the hive! They expect the honey, but do not
the work."
"It is so," said Godwyn, "but they have lands and goods and fame to
lose. We have naught to lose--can be no worse off than we are now."
"If the Laodicean, Carrington,"--began the branded man.
Godwyn interrupted him. "This is beside the matter. Major Carrington
is a godly man who hath, though in secret, done many kindnesses to us
poor prisoners of the Lord. Let us be content with that."
A moment later he said, "It waxeth late, friends, and loath would I be
for one of you to be discovered. Come to me again a week from to-night.
The word will be, 'The valley of Jehoshaphat.'"
The conspirators dropped away, in twos and threes gliding silently off
in their stolen boats between the walls of waving grass. When, last of
all save Landless and the Muggletonian, Trail and Luiz Sebastian
approached the door, Godwyn stopped them with a gesture.
"Stay a moment," he said. "I have a word to say to you. We may as well
be frank with you. I distrust you, of course. It is natural that I
should. And you distrust me as much. It is natural that you should. I
would do without the aid of you and the class you represent if I could,
but I cannot. You would do without my aid if you could, but you cannot.
Betray me, and whatever blood money you get, it will not be that freedom
which you want. We are obliged to work together, unequal yoke-fellows
as we are. Do I make myself understood?"
"To a marvel, Senor," said Luiz Sebastian.
"Damn my soul, but you 're a sharp one!" said Trail.
Godwyn smiled. "That is enough, we understand one another.
Good-night."
The two glided off in their turn, and Godwyn said to the Muggletonian,
"Friend Porringer, that mended sail must be bestowed in the large boat
before the hut against Haines' coming for it in the morning. Will you
take it to the boat for me? And if you will wait there this young man
shall join you shortly."
The Muggletonian nodded, piled the heap of dingy sail upon his head and
strode off. The mender of nets turned to Landless.
"Well," he said. "What do you think?"
"I think," said Landless, raising his voice, "that the gentleman in the
dark corner must be tired of standing."
There was a dead silence. Then a piece of shadow detached itself from
the other heavy shadows in the dark corner and came forward into the
torch light, where it resolved itself into a handsome figure of a man,
apparently in the prime of life, and wearing a riding cloak of green
cloth and a black riding mask. Not content with the concealment afforded
by the mask, he had pulled his beaver low over his eyes and with one
hand held the folds of the cloak about the lower part of his face. He
rested the other ungloved hand upon the table and stared fixedly at
Landless. "You have good eyes," he said at last, in a voice as muffled
as his countenance.
"It is a warm night," said Landless with a smile. "If Major Carrington
would drop that heavy cloak, he would find it more comfortable."
The man recoiled. "You know me!" he cried incredulously.
"I know the Carrington arms and motto. _Tenax et Fidelis_, is it not?
You should not wear your signet ring when you go a-plotting."
The Surveyor-General of the Colony dropped his cloak, and springing
forward seized Landless by the shoulders.
"You dog!" he hissed between his teeth, "if you dare betray me, I 'll
have every drop of your blood lashed out of your body!"
Landless wrenched himself free. "I am no traitor," he said coldly.
Carrington recovered himself. "Well, well," he said, still breathing
hastily, "I believe you. I heard all that passed to-night, and I
believe you. You have been a gentleman."
"Had I my sword, I should be happy to give Major Carrington proof," said
Landless sternly.
The other smiled. "There, there, I was hasty, but by Heaven! you gave
me a start! I ask your pardon."
Landless bowed, and the mender of nets struck in. "I was sorry to keep
you so long, Major Carrington, in such an uncomfortable position. But
the arrival of the Muggletonian before he was due, together with your
desire for secrecy, left me no alternative."
"I surmise, friend Godwyn, that you would not have been sorry had this
young man proclaimed his discovery in full conclave," said Carrington
with a keen glance.
Godwyn's thin cheek flushed, but he answered composedly, "It is
certainly true that I would like to see Major Carrington committed
beyond withdrawal to this undertaking. But he will do me the justice to
believe that if, by raising my finger, I could so commit him, I would
not do so without his permission."
"Faith, it is so!" said the other, then turned to Landless with a stern
smile. "You will understand, young man, that Miles Carrington never
attended, nor will attend, a meeting wherein the peace of the realm is
conspired against by servants. If Miles Carrington ever visits Robert
Godwyn, servant to Colonel Verney, 't is simply to employ him (with his
master's consent) in the mending of nets, or to pass an idle hour
reading Plato, Robert Godwyn having been a scholar of note at home."
"Certainly," said Landless, answering the smile. "Major Carrington and
Master Godwyn are at present much interested in the philosopher's pretty
but idle conception of a Republic, wherein philosophers shall rule, and
warriors be the bulwark of the state, and no Greek shall enslave a
fellow Greek, but only outer barbarians--all of which is vastly pretty
on paper--but they agree that it would turn the world upside down were
it put into practice."
"Precisely," said Carrington with a smile.
"You had best be off, lad," put in Godwyn. "Woodson is an early riser,
and he must not catch you gadding.... You will think on what you have
heard to-night, and will come to me again as soon as you can make
opportunity?"
"Yes," said Landless slowly. "I will come, but I make no promises."
He found Porringer seated in their boat, patiently awaiting him. They
cast off and rowed back the way they had come through the stillness of
the hour before dawn. The tide being full, the black banks had
disappeared, and the grass, sighing and whispering, waved on a level
with their boat. When they slid at last into the broader waters of the
inlet, the stars were paling, and in the east there gleamed a faint rose
tint, the ghost of a color. A silver mist lay upon land and water, and
through it they stole undetected to their several cabins.
Meanwhile the two men, left alone in the hut on the marsh, looked one
another in the face.
"Are you sure that he can be trusted?" demanded Carrington.
"I would answer for his father's son with my life."
"What of these scruples of his? Faith! an unusual conjunction--a
convict and scruples! Will you manage to dispose of them?"
Godwyn smiled with wise, sad eyes. "Time will dispose of them," he said
quietly. "He is new to the life. Let him taste its full bitterness.
It will plead powerfully against his--scruples. He has as yet no
special and private grievance. Wait until he gets into trouble with
Woodson or his master. When he has done that and has taken the
consequences, he will be ours. We can bide our time."
*CHAPTER VIII*
*THE NEW SECRETARY*
"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind
That, from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I flee....
"Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore.
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."
The rich notes rang higher and higher, filling the languid air, and
drowning the trill of the mockingbirds. Patricia, filling her apron with
midsummer flowers, sang with a careless passion, her mind far away in
the midst of a Whitehall pageant, described to her the night before by
that silver-tongued courtier, Sir Charles Carew.
Still singing, she went up the steps of the porch and into the cool wide
hall. In her face there was a languorous beauty born of the sunshine
outside; a soft color glowed in her cheeks, her eyes were large and
dreamy, little damp tendrils of gold strayed about her temples. She
threw down her hat, and loosened the kerchief of delicate lawn from
about her warm young throat; then, with the flowers still in her arms,
she raised the latch of the door of a room held sacred to Colonel
Verney, and entered, to find herself face to face with the convict,
Godfrey Landless, who sat at a table covered with papers, busily
writing.
She started violently, and the mass of flowers fell to the floor,
shattering the petals from the roses and poppies. Landless came
forward, knelt down, and, picking them up, restored them to her without
a word.
"I thank you," she said coldly. "I thought my father was here."
"Colonel Verney is in the next room, madam."
She moved to the door leading into the great room with the gait of a
princess, and Landless went back to his work.
Colonel Verney, on his knees before the richly carven chest containing
his library, looked up from the two score volumes to behold a mass of
brilliant blooms transferred from two white arms to the ground outside
the open window.
"Well, sweetheart," he said. "What is it?"
"Papa," she said, coming to his side, and looking down upon him with a
vexed face: "you promised me that you would employ no more convicts in
the house."
"Why, so I did, my dear," answered her father, comfortably seating
himself upon "Purchas: His Pilgrimmes." "And I meant to keep my word,
but this is the way of it. The day after you went to Rosemead with
Betty Carrington, down comes young Shaw with the fever, and has to be
sent home to his mother. His illness came at a precious inconvenient
season, for the gout was in my fingers again, and I was bent on
disappointing William Berkeley, who hath wagered a thousand pounds of
sweet scented that my 'Statement of the Evil Wrought by the Navigation
Laws to His Majesty's Colony of Virginia' won't be finished in time for
the sailing of the God-Speed. So I told Woodson to find me some one
among the men who knew how to write. He brought me this fellow, and I
vow he is an improvement on young Shaw. He does n't ask questions, and
he is a very pretty Latinist. The paper will be finished to-day. I was
but searching for a neat quotation to close with. Then the fellow will
go back to the tobacco, and you will be no longer annoyed by his
presence in the house. Now kiss me, sweet chuck, and begone, for I am
busied upon affairs of state."
Left alone, Colonel Verney pored over his books until he found what he
wanted, when, after rearranging his library in the carved chest, he rose
stiffly to his feet, and went into the next room and up to the
writing-table. Landless rose from his seat, and, resigning it to his
master, stood gravely by while the Colonel looked over the manuscript
upon which he had been employed.
"Ha!" said the Colonel. "A very fair copy! You have numbered and
headed the pages, I observe. Let me see, let me see, let me see," and
he ran them over between his fingers. "Oppressive Nature of the
Act.--Grave Dissatisfaction.--It advantageth No One save Small Traders
at Home.--Increase of Revenue to His Majesty if 't were repealed.--Dutch
Bottoms.--Trade with Russia.--His Majesty's Poor Planters Throw
Themselves upon His Majesty's Mercy. Very good, very good!"
"It is nigh finished, sir," said Landless.
"Ay, ay! By the Lord Harry, William Berkeley will repent his wager! A
pretty paper it is, and containeth many excellent points and much good
Latin, and you have copied it fairly and cleanly. It is a pity, my
man," he added not unkindly, "that you should have lived so evilly as to
bring yourself to this pass, for you have in you the making of an
excellent secretary."
"Is it your will, sir, that I finish the copy now?"
"Yes, but take it to the small table within the window there. I myself
will sit here and jot down some ideas for my dedication which you can
afterwards amplify."
The worthy colonel pulled the big Turkey worked chair closer to the
table, turned back his ruffles and fell to work. Landless retired to
the table within the window, and for a while naught was heard in the
quiet room but the scratching of quills, as master and man drove them
across the whitey-brown sheets.
At length the master pushed his chair back and stretched himself with a
prodigious yawn. "The Lord be thanked!" he said, addressing the air.
"That's done! And it is time to see to the dressing of that sore upon
Prince Rupert's shoulder; and I remember Haines said that one of the
hounds had been gored by Carrington's bull. Haines can't dress a wound.
Haines is a bungler. But, by the Lord Harry! Richard Verney is as good
a veterinary as he is a statesman."
He lifted his burly figure from the depths of the chair, and going over
to Landless, dropped upon the table before him a page of hieroglyphics
for him to decipher at his leisure. Then with another word of
commendation for the beauty of the copy, he walked heavily from the
room. A moment later Landless heard him whistle to his dogs, and then
break into a stave of a cavalier drinking song, sung at the top of a
full manly voice, and dying away in the direction of the stables.
Landless' hand moved to and fro across the paper with a tireless
patience. He did not go back to the central table, for the light was
better in the window, and a vagrant breath of air strayed in now and
then. The window was a deep one, and heavy drugget curtains hung between
it and the rest of the room.
The door opened and a man's voice said: "This room is darkened into
delicious coolness. Shall we try it, cousin?"
Patricia entered like a sunbeam, and after her sauntered Sir Charles
Carew, languid, debonair, and perfectly appareled.
Landless, seeing them plainly, did not realize that in the shadow of the
heavy curtains he was himself unseen. He had grown so accustomed to the
quiet insolence that overlooks the presence of an inferior as it does
that of any other article of furniture, that he did not doubt that the
fine lady and gentleman before him were perfectly aware of the presence
in the room of the slave whom his master's caprice had raised for the
moment to the post of secretary. It was some few minutes before he
began to consider within himself that he might be mistaken.
*CHAPTER IX*
*AN INTERRUPTED WOOING*
Sir Charles pushed forward the big chair for Patricia, and himself
dropped upon a stool at her feet. Taking her fan from her, he began to
play with it, lightly commenting on the picture of the Rape of Europa
with which it was adorned. Suddenly he closed it, tossed it aside, and
leaning forward, possessed himself of her hand.
"Madam, sweet cousin, divinest Patricia," he exclaimed in a carefully
impassioned tone; "do you not know that I am your slave, the captive of
your bow and spear, that I adore you? I adore you! and you,
flinty-hearted goddess, give no word of encouragement to your prostrate
worshiper. You trample upon the offering of sighs and tears which he
lays at your feet; you will not listen when he would pour into your ear
his aspirations towards a sweeter and richer life than he has ever
known. Will it be ever thus? Will not the goddess stoop from her
throne to make him the happiest of mortals, to win his eternal
gratitude, to become herself forever the object of the most respectful,
the most ardent, the most devoted love?"
He flung himself upon his knee and pressed her hand to his heart with
passion not all affected. He had come to consider it a piece of
monstrous good luck, that, since he must make a wealthy match,
Providence (or whatever as a Hobbist he put in place of Providence),
had, in pointing him the fortune, pointed also to Patricia Verney. But
the night before, in the privacy of his chamber, he had suddenly sat up
between the Holland sheets with a startled and amused expression upon
his handsome face, swathed around with a wonderful silken night-cap, and
had exclaimed to the carven heads surmounting the bed-posts, "May the
Lard sink me! but I 'm in love!" and had lain down again with an
astonished laugh. While sipping his morning draught he made up his mind
to secure the prize that very day, in pursuance of which determination
he made a careful toilet, assuming a suit that was eminently becoming to
his blonde beauty. Also his valet slightly darkened the lower lids of
his eyes, thereby giving him a larger, more languishing and melancholy
aspect.
Patricia, from the depths of the Turkey worked chair, gazed with calm
amusement upon her kneeling suitor.
"You talk beautifully, cousin," she said at length. "'Tis as good as a
page from 'Artemene.'"
Sir Charles bit his lip. "It is a page from my heart, madam; nay, it is
my heart itself that I show you."
"And would you forsake all those beautiful ladies who are so madly in
love with you?--I vow, sir, you told me so yourself! Let me see, there
was Lady Mary and Lady Betty, Mistress Winifred, the Countess of ----
and Madame la Duchesse de ----. Will Corydon leave all the nymphs
lamenting to run after a little salvage wench who does not want him?"
"'S death, madam! you mock me!" cried the baronet, starting to his feet.
"Sure, I meant no harm, cousin; I but put in a good word for the poor
ladies at Whitehall. I fear that you are but a recreant wooer."
"Will you marry me, madam?" demanded Sir Charles, standing before her
with folded arms.
She slowly shook her head. "I do not love you, cousin."
"I will teach you to do so."
"I do not think you can," she said demurely. "Though I am sure I do not
know why I do not. You are a very fine gentleman, a soldier and a
courtier, witty, brave and handsome--and this match"--a sigh--"is my
father's dearest wish. But I do not love you, sir, and I shall not
marry you until I do."
"Ah!" cried Sir Charles, and sunk again upon his knee. "You give me
hope! I will teach you to love me! I will exhibit towards you such
absolute fidelity, such patient devotion, such uncomplaining submission
to your cruel probation, that you will perforce pity me, and pity will
grow by soft degrees into blessed love. I do not despair, madam!" He
pressed her hand to his lips and cast his fine eyes upward in a killing
look.
Patricia gave a charming laugh. "As you please, Sir Charles. In the
mean time let us be once more simply good friends and loving cousins.
Tell me as much as you please of Lady Mary's charms, but leave Patricia
Verney's alone."
Sir Charles rose from his knees, smarting under an amazed sense of
failure, and very angry with the girl who had discarded him, Charles
Carew, as smilingly as if he had been one of the very provincial youths
whom he awed into awkward silence every time they came to Verney Manor.
Without doubt she deserved the condign punishment which it was in his
power to inflict by sailing away upon the next ship which should leave
for England. But he was now obstinately bent upon winning her. If not
to-day, to-morrow; and if not to-morrow, the next day; and if not that,
the day after. He was of the school of Buckingham and Rochester. He
could devote to the capture of a woman all the tireless energy, the
strategic skill, the will, the patience, the daring, of a great general.
He could mine and countermine, could plan an ambuscade here, and lead a
forlorn hope there, could take one intrenchment by storm, and another by
treachery. And victory seldom forsook her perch upon his banners.
Life in Virginia was pleasant enough, and he could afford to devote
several months to this siege. As to how it would terminate he had not
the slightest doubt. But just now it was the course of wisdom to retreat
upon the position held yesterday, and that as quickly as possible. So
he smoothed his face into a fine calm, modulated his voice into its
usual tone of languor, and said with quiet melancholy:--
"You are pleased to be cruel, madam. I submit. I will bide my time
until that thrice happy day when you will have learnt the lesson I would
teach, when Love, tyrannous Love, shall compel your allegiance as he
does mine."
"A far day!" said Patricia with soft laughter. "You had best return to
Lady Mary. I do not think that I shall ever love."
She lifted her white arms, and clasping them behind her head, gazed at
him with soft, bright, untroubled eyes and smiling lips. The sunlight,
filtering through the darkened windows in long bright stripes, laid a
shaft of gold athwart her shoulder and lit her hair into a glory. From
out the distance came the colonel's voice:--
"In his train see sweet Peace, fairest Queen of the sky,
Ev'ry bliss in her look, ev'ry charm in her eye.
Whilst oppression, corruption, vile slav'ry and fear
At his wished for return never more shall appear.
Your glasses charge high, 'tis in great Charles' praise,
In praise, in praise, 'tis in great Charles' praise."
Some one outside the door coughed, and then rattled the latch
vigorously. These precautions taken, the door was opened and there
appeared Mistress Lettice, gorgeously attired, and with an extra row of
ringlets sweeping her withered neck, and a deeper tinge of vermilion
upon her cheeks,--for she had waked that morning with a presentiment
that Mr. Frederick Jones would ride over in the course of the day. Sir
Charles rose to hand her to a chair, but she waved him back with a thin,
beringed hand.
"I thank you, Sir Charles: but I will not trouble you. I am going down
to the summer-house by the road, as I think the air there will cure my
migraine. Patricia, love, I am looking for my 'Clelie,'--the fourth
volume. Have you seen it?"
"No, Aunt Lettice."
"It is very strange," said Mrs. Lettice plaintively. "I am sure that I
left it in this room. 'T is that careless slut of a Chloe who deserves
a whipping. She hides things away like a magpie."
"Look in the window; you may have left it there," said Patricia.
Mrs. Lettice approached the window, laid a hand upon the curtain, and
started back with a scream.
"What is it, madam?" cried the baronet.
"'T is a man! a horrid, horrid man hiding there, waiting to cut all our
throats in the dead of night as the Redemptioner did to the family at
Martin-Brandon! Oh! Oh! Oh!" and Mrs. Lettice threw her apron over her
head, and sank into the nearest chair. Patricia started up. Sir
Charles, striding hastily towards the window, his hand upon his sword,
was met by the emerging figure of Landless.
The two gazed at each other, Sir Charles' first haughty surprise fast
deepening into passion as he remembered that the man before him had
assisted at the scene of a while before, had witnessed his discomfiture,
had seen him upon his knees, baffled, repulsed, even laughed at!
He was the first to speak. "Well, sirrah," he said between his teeth,
"what have you to say for yourself?"
"That I ask your pardon," said Landless steadily. "I should have made
known my presence in the room. But at first I thought you aware of it;
and when I discovered that you were not, I ... it seemed best to remain
silent. I was wrong. I should have made some sign even then. Again, I
beg your pardon." He turned to Patricia, who stood, tall, straight, and
coldly indignant, beside the chair from which she had risen. "Madam,"
he said in a voice that faltered, despite himself, "I crave your
forgiveness."
She bit her coral under lip, and looked at him from under veiled
eyelids. It was a cruel look, very expressive of scorn, abhorrence, and
perhaps of fear.
"My father hath many unmannerly servants," she said coldly and clearly,
"who often provoke me. But I pardon them because they know no better.
It seems that like allowance cannot be made for you. However," she
smiled icily, "I shall not complain of you to my father, which assurance
will doubtless content you."
Landless turned from burning red to deadly white. His eyes, fixed upon
the floor, caught the rich shimmer of her skirts as she moved towards
the door; a moment and she was gone, leaving the two men facing each
other.
Between them there existed a subtle but strong antagonism. Sir Charles
Carew, courtier in a coarse and shameless court masquerading under a
glittering show of outward graces, had taken lazy delight in heaping
quiet insults upon the man who could not resent them. This amusement had
beguiled the tedium of the Virginia voyage; and when chance threw them
together upon a Virginia plantation, where life flowed on in one long,
placid lack of variety, the sport became doubly prized. It had to be
pursued at longer intervals, but pursued it was. Heretofore the
amusement had been all upon one side; now, Sir Charles felt a chagrined
suspicion that it was he who had afforded the entertainment.
Simultaneously with arriving at this conclusion he arrived at a point
where he was coldly furious.
Landless returned his look coolly and boldly. He considered that he had
made quite sufficient apology for an offense which was largely
involuntary, and he was in no mood for further abasement.
"You are an insolent rascal," said the baronet smoothly.
Landless smiled. "Sir Charles Carew should be a good judge of
insolence."
Sir Charles took a leisurely pinch of snuff, shook the fallen grains
from his ruffles, snapped the lid of the box, looked languishingly at
the miniature that adorned it, replaced the box in his pocket, and
remarked, "Well, I am waiting!"
"And for what?"
"To hear your petition that I forbear to bring this matter to the notice
of your master. The lady mercifully gave you her promise. I suppose I
must follow so fair an example."
"Sir Charles Carew may wait till doomsday to hear that or any other
request made by me to him or to the lady--who does not seem always
mercifully inclined--" he broke off with a slight and expressive smile.
Sir Charles took another pinch of snuff. "May the Lard blast me," he
drawled, "if they do not teach repartee at Newgate! But I forget that
the tongue is the only weapon of women and slaves."
"Some day I hope to teach you otherwise."
The other laughed. "So the slave thinks he can use a sword? Where did
he learn? In Newgate, from some broken captain, as payment for
imparting the trick of stealing by the Book?"
Landless forced himself to stand quiet, his arms folded, his fingers
tightly clenching the sleeves of his coarse shirt. "Shall I tell Sir
Charles Carew where I first used my sword with good effect?" he said in
an ominously quiet voice. "At Worcester I was but a stripling, but I
fought by the side of my father. I remember that, young as I was, I
disabled a very pretty perfumed and ringleted Cavalier. I think he was
afterwards sold to the Barbadoes. And my father praised my sword play."
"Your father," said the other, bringing his strong white teeth together
with a click. "Like father, like son. The latter a detected rogue,
gaol-bird, and slave; the former a d--d canting, sniveling Roundhead
hypocrite and traitor, with a text ever at hand to excuse parricide and
sacrilege."
Landless sprang forward and struck him in the face.
He staggered beneath the weight of the blow; then, recovering himself,
he whipped out his rapier, but presently slapped it home again. "I am a
gentleman," he said, with an airy laugh. "I cannot fight you." And
stood, slightly smiling, and pressing his laced handkerchief to his
cheek whence had started a few drops of blood.
Mrs. Lettice, whom curiosity or the search for the fourth volume of
"Clelie" had detained in the room, screamed loudly as the blow fell; and
Colonel Verney, appearing at the door, stopped short, and stared from
one to the other of the two men.
*CHAPTER X*
*LANDLESS PAYS THE PIPER*
The hut of the mender of nets stood upon a narrow isthmus connecting two
large tracts of marsh. That to the eastward was partially submerged at
high tide; that to the west, being higher ground, waved its long grass
triumphantly above the reaching waters. Upon this side the marsh was
separated from the mainland of forest and field by a creek so narrow
that the great pines upon one margin cast their shadows across to the
other, and one fallen giant quite spanned the sluggish waters.
The grass of this marsh was annually cut for hay; for though the great
herds of cattle belonging to the different plantations roamed at large
through all seasons of the year, seeking their sustenance from forest or
marsh, the more provident of the planters were accustomed to make some
slight provision against the winter, which might prove a severe one with
snow and ice.
It was late afternoon, and the hay was cut. The half dozen mowers threw
themselves down upon the stubble, stretching out tired limbs and
pillowing heated foreheads upon their arms. They had been given until
sunset to do the work. Having no taskmaster over them, and being hid
from the tobacco-fields by a convenient coppice of pine and cedar, they
had set to work in a fury of diligence, had cut and stacked the grass in
a race with time, and now found themselves possessed of a precious hour
in which to dawdle, and swap opinions and tobacco before the sunset horn
should call them to quarters.
Three were indented servants, lumbering, honest-visaged youths whose
aims in life were simple and well defined. Their creed had but four
articles: "Do as little as you can consistently with keeping out of the
overseer's black books; get your full share of loblolly and bacon, and
some one else's if you are clever enough; embrace every opportunity for
reasonable mischief that is offered you; honor Church and King, or say
you do, and Colonel Verney will overlook most pranks." Of the others,
one was the Muggletonian, one the mulatto, Luiz Sebastian, and one a
convict, not Trail, but the red-haired, pock-marked, sullen wretch who
had come to the plantation with Trail and Landless, and whose name was
Roach.
One of the rustics, who seemed more intelligent than his fellows, and
who had a good-humored deviltry in his young face and big blue eyes,
began an excellent imitation of Dr. Nash's exhortation to submission and
obedience delivered upon the last instruction day for servants, and soon
had his audience of two guffawing with laughter. The mulatto and the
convict edged by imperceptible degrees farther and farther away from the
others, until, within the shadow of a stack of grass, they lay side by
side and commenced a muttered conversation. The countenance of the
white man, atrocious villainy written large in every lineament, became
horribly intent as his amber-hued companion talked in fluent low tones,
emphasizing what he had to say by a restless, peculiar, and sinister
motion of his long, yellow fingers. At a little distance lay the
Muggletonian, his elbows on the ground, his ghastly face in his hands,
and his eyes riveted upon the Geneva Bible which he had drawn from his
bosom.
When he had brought his entertainment to a finish, the blue-eyed youth
rolled himself over and over the stubble to where the Muggletonian lay,
intent upon a chapter of invective. The youth covered the page with one
enormous paw and playfully attempted to insert the little finger of the
other into the hole in Porringer's ear. "What now, old Runaway," he
said, lazily, "hunting up fresh curses to pour on our unfort'net heads?"
"Cursed be he who makes a mock of age," said the Muggletonian, grimly.
"May he be even as the wicked children who cried to the prophet, 'Go up,
thou baldhead!'"
The boy laughed. "Tell me when you see brown bear a-coming," quoth he.
"Losh! a bear steak would taste mighty good after eternal bacon!"
Porringer closed his book and restored it to his bosom. "Tell me," he
said, abruptly, "have you seen aught of the young man called Landless?"
"'The young man called Landless,'" answered the other, petulantly, "has
a d--d easy berth of it! Yesterday evening I carried water from the
spring to the great house to water Mistress Patricia's posies, and every
time I passes the window of the master's room I see that fellow
a-sitting at his ease in a fine chair before a fine table, writing away
as big as all out of doors. And every time I says to him, says I, 'I
reckon you think yourself as fine as the Lord Mayor of London? A pretty
sec'tary you make!'"
"Have you seen him to-day?"
"No, I have n't seen him to-day,--but I see someone else. Mates," he
exclaimed, "Witch Margery's coming down t' other side of creek. I 'll
call her over."
Scrambling to his feet he gave a low halloo through his hands, "Margery!
Margery! Come and find the road to Paradise!"
Margery waved her hand to signify that she heard and understood, and
presently stepped upon the fallen tree that spanned the stream. It was
a narrow and a slippery bridge, but she flitted across it with the
secure grace of some woodland thing, and, staff in hand, advanced
towards the men. Between them and the western sun she stood still, a
dark figure against a halo of gold light, and threw an intent and
searching glance over the unbroken green of the marsh and the blue of
the waters beyond. Then with a wild laugh she came up to them and cast
her staff wreathed with dark ivy upon the ground.
"The road is not here," she cried. "Here is all green grass, and beyond
is the weary, weary, weary sea! There is no long, bright, shining road
to Paradise." She sat down beside her staff, and taking her chin into
her hand, stared fixedly at the ground.
The men gathered around her, with the exception of the Muggletonian,
who, after audibly comparing her to the Witch of Endor, turned on his
side and drew his cap over his eyes as if to shut out the hated sight.
The convict took up the staff and began to pull from it the strings of
ivy.
"Put it down!" she said quickly.
The man continued to strip it of its leafy mantle.
"Put it down, can't you?" said the youth. "She never lets any one touch
it. She says an angel gave it to her to help her on her way."
With a snarling laugh the convict threw it from him with all his force.
Whirling through the air it struck the water midway from shore to shore.
Margery sprang to her feet with a loud cry. The boy rose also.
"D--n you!" he said, wrathfully. "I'd like to break it over your
misshapen back! Here, Margery, don't fret. I 'll get it for you."
He ran to the bank, dived into the water, and in three minutes was back
with the dripping mass in his arms. He gave it into Margery's hands,
saying kindly while he shook himself like a large spaniel; "There! it is
n't hurt a mite!"
With a cry of delight Margery seized the "angel's gift" and kissed the
hand that restored it. Then she turned upon the convict.
"When I go back to my cabin in the woods," she said, solemnly, and with
her finger up, "I shall whistle all the fairy folk into a ring, all the
elves and the pixies, and the little brown gnomes who burrow in the
leaves and look for all the world like pine cones, and I shall tell them
what you did, and to-night they will come to your cabin, and will pinch
you black and blue, and stick thorns into you, and rub you with the
poison leaf until you are blotched and swelled like the great bull frog
that croaks, croaks, in these marshes."
There was an uneasy ring in the convict's laugh, full of bravado as he
meant it to be. Margery continued with an ominously extended
forefinger. "And then they will fly to the great house where the master
lies sleeping, and they will whisper to him that you took away the
angel's gift from poor, lost Margery, and he will be angry, for he is
good to Margery, and to-morrow he will make Woodson do to you what he
did to-day to the Breaking Heart."
"To the Breaking Heart!" exclaimed her auditors.
Margery nodded. "Yes, the Breaking Heart. You call him Landless."
The Muggletonian sat up. "What dost thou mean, wretched woman! fit
descendant of the mother of all evil?"
Margery, offended by his tone, only pursed up her lips and looked wise.
"What did the master have done to Landless, Margery?" asked the youth.
Margery threw her worn figure into a singular posture. Standing
perfectly straight, she raised her arms from her sides and spread them
stiffly out, the hands turned inward in a peculiar fashion. Then, still
with extended arms, she swayed slightly forward until she appeared to
lean against, or to be fastened to, some support. Next she threw her
head back and to one side, so that her face might be seen in three
quarter over her shoulder. Her mobile features wreathed themselves in
an expression of pain and rage. Her brows drew downward, her thin lips
curled themselves away from the gleaming teeth, and, at intervals of
half a minute or more, her eyelids quivered, she shuddered, and her
whole frame appeared to shrink together.
The pantomime was too expressive to be misunderstood by men each of whom
had probably his own reasons for recognizing some one or all of its
features. The convict broke into a yelling laugh, in which he was
joined, though in a subdued and sinister fashion, by Luiz Sebastian.
The rustics looked at each other with slow grins of comprehension, and
the blue-eyed youth uttered a long shrill whistle. The great letter
upon the cheek of the Muggletonian turned a deeper red, and his eyes
burned. The youth was curious.
"Tell us all about it, Margery," he said, coaxingly, "and when the
millons are ripe, I 'll steal you one every night."
Margery was nothing loth. She had attained the reputation of an
accomplished _raconteuse_, and she was proud of it. Her crazed
imagination peopled the forest with weird uncanny things, and fearful
tales she told of fays and bugaboos, of spectres and awful voices
speaking from out the dank stillness of twilight hollows. Often she
sent quaking to their pallets men who would have heard the war-whoop
with scarcely quickened pulses. And she could tell of every-day
domestic happenings as well as of the doings of the powers of darkness.
Her audience listened greedily to the instance of plantation economy
which she proceeded to relate.
"When was this, woman?" demanded the Muggletonian, when she had
finished.
Margery pointed to the declining sun and then upwards to a spot a little
past the zenith.
"Just after the nooning," said the Muggletonian, and began to curse.
Margery stood up, her staff in her hand, and said airily, "Margery must
be going. The sun is growing large and red, and when he has slipped
away behind the woods, the voices will begin to call to Margery from the
hollow where the brook falls into the black pool. She must be there to
answer them." She moved away with a rapid and gliding step, flitted
across the fallen tree, and was lost to sight in the shadow of the pines
beyond.
As the last flutter of her light robe vanished, a figure appeared,
walking rapidly along the opposite margin of the creek. The youth's
sight was keen. He sent a piercing glance across the intervening
distance and broke into an astonished laugh. "Lord in Heaven! it's the
man himself!" he cried in an awed tone. "Ecod! he must be made of iron!"
Landless crossed the bridge and came towards the staring group. His
face was white and set, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes,
which had the wide unseeing stare of a sleep-walker. He walked lightly
and quickly, with a free, lithe swing of his body. The men looked at
one another in rough wonder, knowing what was hidden by the coarse
shirt. He passed them without a word, apparently without knowing that
they were there, and went on towards the hut of the mender of nets.
Presently they saw him enter and shut the door.
The rustics and the convict, after one long stare of amazement at the
distant hut, began to comment freely and with much recondite blasphemy
upon the transaction recorded by Margery. Luiz Sebastian only smiled
amiably, like a lazy and well-disposed catamount, and the boy whistled
long and thoughtfully. But the countenance of Master Win-Grace Porringer
wore an expression of secret satisfaction.
*CHAPTER XI*
*LANDLESS BECOMES A CONSPIRATOR*
As Landless entered the hut Godwyn looked up with a pleased smile from
the net he was mending. The two men had not seen each other since the
night upon which Landless had been brought to the hut by the
Muggletonian. Twice had Landless laid his plans for a second visit,
only to be circumvented each time by the watchfulness of the overseer.
The smile died from Godwyn's face as he observed his visitor more
closely.
"What is it?" he asked quickly.
Landless came up to him and held out his hand. "I am with you, Robert
Godwyn, heart and soul," he said steadily.
The mender of nets grasped the hand. "I knew you would come," he said,
drawing a long breath. "I have needed you sorely, lad."
"I could not come before."
"I know: Porringer told me you were prevented. I--" He still held
Landless' hand in both his own, and as he spoke his slender fingers
encircled the young man's wrist.
"What is the matter with your pulse?" he demanded. "And your eyes! They
are glazing! Sit down!"
"It is nothing," said Landless, speaking with effort.
"I have been a physician, young man," retorted the other. "Sit down, or
you will fall."
He forced him down upon a settle from which he had himself risen, and
stood looking at him, his hand upon his shoulder. Presently his glance
fell to the shoulder, and he saw upon the white cloth where his hand
pressed it against the flesh, a faint red stain grow and spread.
The face of the mender of nets grew very dark. "So!" he said beneath his
breath.
He limped across the hut and drew from some secret receptacle above the
fireplace a flask, from which he poured a crimson liquid into an earthen
cup; then hobbled back to Landless, sitting with closed eyes and head
bowed upon the table.
"Drink, lad," he said with grave tenderness. "'T is a cordial of mine
own invention, and in the strength it gave me I fled from Cropredy
Bridge though woefully hacked and spent. Drink!"
He held the cup to the young man's lips. Landless drained it and felt
the blood gush back to his heart and the ringing in his ears to cease.
Presently he raised his head. "Thank you," he said. "I am a man
again."
"How is it that you are here?"
Landless smiled grimly. "I imagine it's because Woodson thinks me
effectually laid by the heels. When he goes the rounds at supper time he
will be surprised to find my pallet empty."
"You must be in quarters before then. You must not get into further
trouble."
"Very well," was the indifferent reply.
They were silent for a few moments, and then Landless spoke.
"I am come to tell you, Master Godwyn, that I will join in any plan,
however desperate, that may bring me release from an intolerable and
degrading slavery. You may use me as you please. I will work for you
with hands and head, ay, and with my heart also, for you have been kind
to me, and I am grateful."
The mender of nets touched him softly upon the hand. "Lad," he said, "I
once had a son who was my pride and my hope. In his young manhood he
fell at the storming of Tredah. But the other night when I talked with
you, I seemed to see him again, and my heart yearned over him."
Landless held out his hand. "I have no father," he said simply.
"Now," at length said Godwyn, "to business! I must not keep you now,
but come to me to-morrow night if you can manage it. You may speak to
Win-Grace Porringer, and he will help you. I will then tell you all my
arrangements, give you figures and names, possess you, in short, with
all that I, and I alone, know of this matter. And my heart is glad
within me, for though my broken body is tied to my bench here, I shall
now have a lieutenant indeed. I have conceived; you shall execute. The
son of Warham Landless, if he have a tithe of his father's powers, will
do much, very much. For more than a year I have longed for such an
one."
"Tell me but one thing," said Landless, "and I am content. You have so
planned this business that there shall be no wanton bloodshed? You
intend no harm, for instance, to the family yonder?" with a motion of
his head towards the great house.
"God forbid!" said the other quickly. "I tell you that not one woman or
innocent soul shall suffer. Nor do I wish harm to the master of this
plantation, who is, after the lights of a Malignant, a true and kindly
man, and a gentleman. This is what will happen. Upon an appointed day
the servants, Oliverian, indented and convict, upon all the plantations
seated upon the bay, the creeks, the three rivers, and over in Accomac,
will rise. They will overpower their overseers and those of their
fellows who may remain faithful to the masters, will call upon the
slaves to follow them, and will march (the force of each plantation
under a captain or captains appointed by me), to an appointed place in
this county. All going well, there should be mustered at that place
within the space of a day and a night a force of some two thousand
men--such an army as this colony hath never seen, an army composed in
large measure of honest folk, and officered by four hundred men who,
bold and experienced, and strong in righteous wrath, should in
themselves be sufficient to utterly deject the adversary. We will make
of that force, motley as it is, a second New Model, as well disciplined
and as irresistible as the first; and who should be its general but the
son of that Warham Landless whom Cromwell loved, and whose old regiment
is well represented here? Then will we fight in honest daylight with
those who come against us--and conquer. And we will not stain our
victory. Your nightmare vision of midnight butchery is naught. There
will be no such thing."
Through the quiet of the evening came to them the clear, sweet, and
distant winding of a horn.
"'Tis the call to quarters," said Godwyn. "You must go, lad."
Landless rose. "I will come to-morrow night if I can. Till then,
farewell,--father." He ended with a smile on his dark, stern face that
turned it into a boy's again.
"May the Lord bless thee, my son," said the other in his gravely tender
voice. "May he cause His face to shine upon thee, and bring thee out of
all thy troubles."
As Landless turned to leave the hut the mender of nets had a sudden
thought. "Come hither," he said, "and let me show you my treasure
house. Should aught happen to me, it were well that you should know of
it."
He took up the precious flask from the table, and followed by Landless,
limped across the hut to the fireplace. The logs above it appeared as
solid, gnarled and stained by time as any of the others constituting the
walls of the hut, but upon the pressure of Godwyn's finger upon some
secret spring, a section of the wood fell outwards like the lid of a
box, disclosing a hollow within.
From this hollow came the dull gleam of gold, and by the side of the
little heap of coin lay several folded papers and a pair of handsomely
mounted pistols.
Godwyn touched the papers. "The names or the signs of the Oliverians
are here," he said, "together with those of the leaders of the indented
servants concerned with us. It is our solemn League and Covenant--and
our death warrant if discovered. The gold I had with me, hidden upon my
person, when I was brought to Virginia. The pistols were the gift of a
friend. Both may be useful some day."
"Hide them! Quick!" said Landless in a low voice, and wheeled to face a
man who stood in the doorway, blinking into the semi-darkness of the
room.
The lid of the hollow swung to with a click, the log assumed its wonted
appearance, and the mender of nets, too, turned upon the intruder.
It was the convict Roach who had pushed the door open and now stood with
his swollen body and bestial face darkening the glory of the sunset
without. There was no added expression of greed or of awakened
curiosity upon his sullenly ferocious countenance. He might have seen or
he might not. They could not tell.
"What do you want?" asked Landless sternly.
"Thought as you might not have heard the horn, comrade, and so might get
into more trouble. So I thought I 'd come over and warn you." All this
in a low, hoarse and dogged voice.
"Don't call me comrade. Yes: I heard the horn. You had best hasten or
you may get into trouble yourself."
The man received this intimation with a malevolent grin. "Talking big
eases the smart, don't it?" and he broke into his yelling laugh.
"Get out of this," said Landless, a dangerous light in his eyes.
The man stopped laughing and began to curse. But he went his way, and
Landless, too, after waiting to give him a start, left the hut and
turned his steps towards the quarters.
Upon the other side of the creek, sitting beneath a big sweet gum, and
whittling away at a piece of stick weed, he found the boy who, the day
before, had accused him of feeling as fine as the Lord Mayor of London.
He sprang to his feet as Landless approached, and cheerfully remarking
that their paths were the same, strode on side by side with him.
"I say," he said presently with ingenuous frankness, "I asks your pardon
for what I said to you yesterday. I dessay you make a very good
Sec'tary, and Losh! the Lord Mayor himself might n't have dared to
strike that d--d fine Court spark. They say he has fought twenty
duels."
"You have my full forgiveness," said Landless, smiling.
"That's right!" cried the other, relieved. "I hates for a man to bear
malice."'
"I have seen you before yesterday. I forget how they call you."
"Dick Whittington."
"Dick Whittington!"
"Ay. Leastways the parish over yonder," a jerk of his thumb towards
England, "called me Dick, and I names myself Whittington. And why?
Because like that other Dick I runs away to make my fortune. Because
like him I 've little besides empty pockets and a hopeful heart. And
because I means to go back some fine day, jingling money, and wearing
gold lace, and become the mayor of Banbury. Or maybe I 'll stop in
Virginia, and become a trader and Burgess. I could send for Joyce
Witbread, and marry her here as well as in Banbury."
Landless laughed. "So you ran away?"
"Yes; some four years ago, just after I came to man's estate." (He was
about nineteen.) "Stowed myself away on board the Mary Hart at
Plymouth. Made the Virginny voyage for my health, and on landing was
sold by the captain for my passage money. Time 's out in three years,
but I may begin to make my fortune before then, for--" He stopped
speaking to give Landless a sidelong glance from out his blue eyes, and
then went on.
"A voice speaks through the land, from the Potomac to the James, and
from the falls of the Far West to the great bay. What says the voice?"
Landless answered, "The voice saith, 'Comfort ye, my people, for the
hour of deliverance is at hand.'"
"It 's all right!" cried the boy gleefully. "I thought you was one of
us. We are all in the fun together!"
"We are in for a desperate enterprise that may hang every man of us,"
said Landless sternly. "I do not see the 'fun,' and I think you talk
something loudly for a conspirator."
The boy was nothing abashed. "There's none to hear us," he said. "I
can be as mum as t' other Dick's cat when there are ears around. As for
fun, Losh! what better fun than fighting!"
"You seem to have a pretty good time as it is."
"Lord, yes! Life 's jolly enough, but you see there 's mighty little
variety in it."
"I have found variety enough," said Landless.
"Oh, you 've been here only a few weeks. Wait until you've spent years,
and have gone through your experience of to-day half a dozen times, and
you will find it tame enough."
"I shall not wait to see."
"Then a man gets tired of working for another man, and hankers for the
time when he can set up for himself, especially if there 's a pretty
girl waiting for him." A tremendous sigh. "And then there 's the fun
of the rising. Losh! a man must break loose now and then!"
"For all of which good reasons you have become a conspirator?"
"Ay, it does n't pay to run away. You are hunted to death in the first
place, and well nigh whipped to death if you are caught, as you always
are. And then they double your time. This promises better."
"If it succeeds."
"Oh, it will succeed! Why should n't it with old Godwyn, who is more
cunning than a red fox or a Nansemond medicine-man, at its head?
Besides, if it fails, hanging is the worst that can happen, and we will
have had the fun of the rising."
"You are a philosopher."
"What's that?"
"A wise man. Tell me: If this plot remains undiscovered, and the rising
actually takes place, there will be upon each plantation before we can
get away an interval of confusion and perhaps violence. 'T is then that
the greatest danger will threaten the planters and their families. You
yourself have no ill feeling towards your master or his family? You
would do them no unprovoked mischief?"
The boy opened his big blue eyes, and shook his head in a vehement
negative.
"Lord bless your soul, no!" he cried. "I would n't hurt a hair of
Mistress Patricia's pretty head, nor of Mistress Lettice's wig, neither.
As for the master, if he lets us go peaceably, we 'll go with three
cheers for him! Bless you! they 're safe enough!"
The sanguine youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that
his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the
quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more
sedately, and reached his cabin without being observed by the overseer.
*CHAPTER XII*
*A DARK DEED*
Three weeks passed, weeks in which Landless saw the mender of nets some
eight times in all, making each visit at night, stealthily and under
constant danger of detection. Thrice he had assisted at conferences of
the Oliverians from the neighboring plantations, who now, by virtue of
his descent, his intimacy with Godwyn, and his very apparent powers,
accepted him as a leader. Upon the first of these occasions he had set
his case before them in a few plain, straightforward words, and they
believed him as Godwyn had done, and he became in their eyes, not a
convict, but, as he in truth was, an Oliverian like themselves, and a
sufferer for the same cause. The remaining interviews had been between
him and Godwyn alone. In the lonely hut on the marsh, beneath starlight
or moonlight, the two had held much converse, and had grown to love each
other. The mender of nets, though possessed of a calm and high serenity
of nature that defied trials beneath which a weaker soul had sunk, was a
man of many sorrows; he had the wisdom, too, of years and experience,
and he sympathized with, soothed, and counseled his younger yoke-fellow
with a parental tenderness that was very grateful to the other's more
ardent, undisciplined, and deeply wounded spirit.
Upon the night of their eighth meeting they held a long and serious
consultation. Affairs were in such train that little remained to be
done, but to set the day for the rising, and to send notice by many
devious and underground ways to the Oliverian captains scattered
throughout the Colony. Landless counseled immediate action, the firing
of the fuse at once by starting the secret intelligence which would
spread like wildfire from plantation to plantation. Then would the mine
be sprung within the week. There was nothing so dangerous as delay, when
any hour, any moment might bring discovery and ruin.
Godwyn was of a different opinion. It was then August, the busiest and
most unhealthy season of the year, when the servants and slaves,
weakened by unremitting toil, were succumbing by scores to the fever. It
was the time when the masters looked for disaffection, when the
overseers were most alert, when a general watchfulness pervaded the
Colony. The planters stayed at home and attended to their business, the
trainbands were vigilant, the servant and slave laws were construed with
a harshness unknown at other seasons of the year. There were few ships
in harbor compared with the number which would assemble for their fall
lading a month later, and Godwyn counted largely upon the seizure of the
ships. In a month's time the tobacco would be largely in,--a weighty
consideration, for tobacco was money, and the infant republic must have
funds. The ships would be in harbor, and their sailors ready for
anything that would rid them of their captains; the heat and sickness of
the summer would be abated; the work slackened, and discipline relaxed.
The danger of discovery was no greater now than it had been all along,
and the good to be won by biding their time might be inestimable. The
danger was there, but they would face it, and wait,--say until the
second week in September.
Landless acquiesced, scarcely convinced, but willing to believe that the
other knew whereof he spoke, and conscious, too, that his own impatience
of the yoke which galled his spirit almost past endurance might incline
him to a reckless and disastrous haste.
It was past midnight when he rose to leave the hut on the marsh. Godwyn
took up his stick. "I will walk with you to the banks of the creek," he
said. "'T is a feverish night, and I have an aching head. The air will
do me good, and I will then sleep."
The young man gave him his arm with a quiet, protecting tenderness that
was very dear to the mender of nets, and leaning upon it, he limped
through the fifty feet of long grass to the border of the creek.
"Shall I not wait to help you back?" asked Landless.
"No," said the other, with his peculiarly sweet and touching smile. "I
will sit here awhile beneath the stars and say my hymn of praise to the
Creator of Night. You need not fear for me; my trusty stick will carry
me safely back. Go, lad, thou lookest weary enough thyself, and should
be sleeping after thy long day of toil."
"I am loth to leave you to-night," said Landless.
Godwyn smiled. "And I am always loth to see you go, but it were selfish
to keep you listening to a garrulous, wakeful old man, when your young
frame is in sore need of rest. Good-night, dear lad."
Landless gave him his hands. "Good-night," he said.
He stood below the other at the foot of the low bank to which was moored
his stolen boat. Godwyn stooped and kissed him upon the forehead. "My
heart is tender to-night, lad," he said. "I see in thee my Robert.
Last night I dreamed of him and of his mother, my dearly loved and
long-lost Eunice, and ah! I sorrowed to awake!"
Landless pressed his hand in silence, and in a moment the water widened
between them as Landless bent to his oars and the crazy little bark shot
out into the middle of the stream. At the entrance of the first
labyrinthine winding he turned and looked back to see Godwyn standing
upon the bank, the moonlight silvering his thin hair and high serene
brow. In the mystic white light, against the expanse of solemn heaven,
he looked a vision, a seer or prophet risen from beneath the sighing
grass. He waved his hand to Landless, saying in his quiet voice, "Until
to-morrow!" The boat made the turn, and the lonely figure and the hut
beyond it vanished, leaving only the moonlight, the wash and lap of
water, and the desolate sighing of the marsh grass.
There were many little channels and threadlike streams debouching from
the main creek, and separated from it by clumps and lines of partially
submerged grass, growing in places to the height of reeds. While
passing one of these clumps it occurred to Landless that the grass
quivered and rustled in an unusual fashion. He rested upon his oars and
gazed at it curiously, then stood up, and parting the reeds, looked
through into the tiny channel upon the other side. There was nothing to
be seen, and the rustling had ceased. "A heron has its nest there, or a
turtle plunged, shaking the reeds," said Landless to himself, and went
his way.
Some three hours later he was roused from the heavy sleep of utter
fatigue by the voice of the overseer. Bewildered, he raised himself
upon his elbow to stare at Woodson's grim face, framed in the doorway
and lit by the torch held by Win-Grace Porringer, who stood behind him.
"You there, you Landless!" cried the overseer, impatiently. "You sleep
like the dead. Tumble out! You and Porringer are to go to Godwyn's
after that new sail for the Nancy. Sir Charles Carew has taken it into
his head to run over to Accomac, and he 's got to have a spick and span
white rag to sail under. Hurry up, now! He wants to start by sun up,
and I clean forgot to send for it last night. You 're to be back within
the hour, d'ye hear? Take the four-oared shallop. There's the key,"
and the overseer strode away, muttering something about patched sails
being good enough for Accomac folk.
Landless and the Muggletonian stumbled through the darkness to the wharf
behind the quarters, where they loosed the shallop, and in it shot
across the inlet towards the mouth of the creek.
"I will row," said the Muggletonian with grim kindness; "you look worn
out. I suppose you were out last night?"
Landless nodded, and the other bent to the oars with a will that sent
them rapidly across the sheet of water. A cold and uncertain light
began to stream from the ashen east, and the air was dank and heavy with
the thick mist that wrapped earth and water like a shroud. It swallowed
up the land behind them, and through it the nearer marshes gloomed
indistinctly, dark patches upon the gray surface of the water. The
narrow creek was hard to find amidst the universal dimness. The
Muggletonian rowed slowly, peering about him with small, keen eyes. At
length with a grunt of satisfaction he pointed to a pale streak dividing
two masses of gray, and had turned the boat's head towards it, when
through the stillness they caught the sound of oars. The next moment a
boat glided from the creek and began to skirt the shores of the inlet,
hugging the banks and moving slowly and stealthily. It was still so
dark that they could tell nothing more than that it held one man.
"Now, who is that?" said the Muggletonian. "And what has he been doing
up that creek?"
"Hail him," Landless replied.
Porringer sent a low halloo across the water, but if the man heard he
made no sign. The boat, one of the crazy dugouts of which every
plantation had store, held on its stealthy way, but being over close to
the bank presently ran upon a sand bar. Its occupant was forced to rise
to his feet in order to shove it off. He stood upright but a moment, but
in that moment, and despite the partial darkness, Landless recognized
the misshapen figure.
"It is the convict, Roach!" he exclaimed.
"Ay," said the Muggletonian, "and an ill-omened night bird he is! May
he be cursed from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head! May
there be no soundness in him! May-- What are you about, friend?" he
cried, interrupting himself. "There 's no need of two pair of oars. We
have plenty of time."
Landless bent to the second pair of oars. "He came down the creek," he
said in a voice that sounded strained and unnatural.
The other stared at him. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Nothing: but let us hasten."
Porringer stared, but fell in with the humor of his companion, and the
shallop, impelled by strong arms, shot into the creek and along its mazy
windings with the swiftness of a bird.
Landless rowed with compressed lips and stony face, a great fear tugging
at his heart. Porringer too was silent. The vapor hung so heavily upon
the plains of marsh level with their heads that they seemed to be
piercing a dense, low cloud. The light was growing stronger, but the
earth still lay like a corpse, livid, dumb, cold and still. There was a
chill stagnant smell in the air.
Arriving at the stake in the bank below the hut, they fastened the boat
to it, and stepping out, moved through the dense mist to where the hut
loomed indistinctly before them, looking in the blank and awful
stillness like a forlorn wreck drifting upon an infinite sea of
soundless foam.
"The door is open," said Landless.
"Ay, I see," answered Porringer. "Does he wish to die before his time
of the fever, that he lets this graveyard mist and stench creep in upon
him in his sleep?"
They spoke in low tones as though they feared to waken the sleeper whom
they had come to waken. When they reached the hut, they knocked upon the
lintel of the door and called Godwyn by name, once, twice, thrice.
There was no answer.
"Come on!" said Landless hoarsely, and entered the hut, followed by the
other. The cold twilight, filtering through the low and narrow doorway,
was powerless to dispel the darkness within. Landless groped his way to
the pallet and stooped down.
"He is not here," he said.
The Muggletonian stumbled over a sheaf of oars, sending them to the
floor with a noise that in the utter stillness, and to their strained
ears, sounded appalling.
"It's the darkness of Tophet," muttered Porringer. "If I could find his
flint and steel; there are pine knots, I know, in the corner--God in
Heaven!"
"What is it? What is the matter?" cried Landless, as he staggered
against him.
"It's his face!" gasped the other. "There upon the table! I put my
hand upon it. It's cold!"
Landless rushed to the fireplace where he knew the tinder-box to be
kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment
more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light
throughout the hut, and choking back the pale daylight.
The familiar room with its familiar furnishing of chest and settle and
pallet, of hanging nets and piles of dingy sail, sprung into sight, but
with it sprung into sight something unfamiliar, strange, and dreadful.
It was the body of the mender of nets, flung face upwards across the
rude table, the head hanging over the edge, and the face, which but a
few short hours before had looked upon Landless with such a bright and
patient serenity, blackened and distorted. Upon the throat were dark
marks, the print of ten murderous fingers.
With a bitter cry Landless fell upon his knees beside the table, and
pressed his face against the cold hand flung backwards over the head of
the murdered man. Porringer began to curse. With white lips and
burning eyes he hurled anathemas at the murderer. He cursed him by the
powers of light and darkness, by the earth, the sea, and the air: by all
the plagues of the two Testaments. Landless broke the torrent of his
maledictions.
"Silence!" he said sternly. "_He_ would have forgiven." Presently he
rose from the ground, and taking the body in his arms, placed it upon
the pallet, and reverently composed the limbs. Then he turned to the
fireplace. It was easy to see that the hiding-place had been visited.
The spring was broken, and the lid had been struck and jammed into place
by a powerful and hasty hand. Landless wrenched it off. Before him lay
the pistols; but the gold and papers were gone. He turned to the
Muggletonian, standing beside him with staring eyes.
"Listen!" he said. "There was gold here. The wretch whom we passed but
now knew of it--never mind how--and for it he has murdered the only
friend I had on earth. There will come a day when I will avenge him.
There were papers here, lists with the signatures of Oliverians,
Redemptioners, sailors,--of all classes concerned in this undertaking,
save only the slaves and the convicts. There were letters from Maryland
and New England, and a correspondence which would provide whipping-post
and pillory for other Nonconformists than the Quakers. All these, the
actual proofs of this conspiracy, are in his--that
murderer's--hands,--where they must not stay."
"What wilt thou do, friend?" said the Muggletonian eagerly. "Wilt thou
take the murderer aside in the gate to speak with him quietly, and smite
him under the fifth rib, as did Joab to Abner the son of Ner, who slew
his brother Asahel?"
"God forbid," said Landless. "But I will take them from him before he
knows their contents. One moment, and we will go."
He crossed to the pallet and stood beside it, looking down on the shell
that lay upon it with a stern and quiet grief. One of the cold white
hands was clenched upon something. He stooped, and with difficulty
unclasped the rigid fingers. The something was a ragged lock of coarse
red hair.
"You see," he said.
"Ay," said the Muggletonian grimly. "It's evidence enough. There 's
but one man in this county with hair like that. Leave that lock where
it is, and that dead man holds the rope that will hang his murderer."
"It shall be left where it is," said Landless, and reclosed the fingers
upon it.
He took a piece of sail-cloth from the floor, and with it covered the
dead man from sight. Next he turned to the hollow above the fireplace,
and took from it the pistols, concealing them in his bosom. "I may need
them," he said. "Come."
They left the hut and its dead guardian, and rowed back through the
summer dawn. The sky was barred with crimson and gold, the fiery rim of
the sun just lifting above the eastern waters, the mist, a bridal veil
of silver and pearl drawn across the face of a virgin earth.
They rowed in silence until they neared the wharf, when Porringer said,
"You are leader now."
The other raised his haggard eyes. "It is a trust. I will go through
with it, God helping me. But I would I were lying dead beside him in
yonder hut."
They left the boat at the wharf, and went towards the quarters. Meeting
one of the blowzed and slatternly female servants, Landless asked where
they might find the overseer. He had gone to the three-mile field half
an hour ago, after bestowing upon the two dilatory servants a hearty
cursing, and promising to reckon with them at dinner-time. "Where was
the master?" He had gone to the mouth of the inlet with Sir Charles
Carew, who had grown impatient, and had sailed away under the Nancy's
patched sail. The under overseer was in the far corn-field, two miles
off.
"Are all the men in the fields, Barb?" asked Landless.
Barb informed him that they were, "as he might very well know, seeing
that the sun was half an hour high."
"Have you seen the man called Roach?"
No: Barb had not seen him; but she had heard the overseer tell Luiz
Sebastian to take two men and go to the strip of Orenoko between the
inlet and the third tobacco house, and Luiz Sebastian, had been calling
for Roach and Trail.
Landless thanked her, and moved away without offering to bestow upon her
that which Barb probably thought her information merited.
"Do you find Woodson," he said to the Muggletonian, "and report this
murder, saying nothing, however, of what we know. I myself will go to
the tobacco house."
"Had I not best come with thee to hold up thy hands?" said Porringer.
"I would take up my text from the thirty-fifth of Numbers, and from
Revelation, twenty-second, thirteen, and deal mightily with the
murderer."
"No," answered Landless. "Woodson must be seen at once, or we ourselves
will fall under suspicion. And, friend, ask that thou and I may be the
ones to bury _him_."
*CHAPTER XIII*
*IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE*
The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the
larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt
of cedars. It was a lonely, retired spot, and the high, dark, windowless
structure with its heavy, low-browed door had a menacing aspect.
Landless expected to find the men within the building, instead of
outside attending to their work, and he was not disappointed. As he
walked through the doorway into the pungent gloom the three started up
from the debris of casks, sticks, and pegs, amidst which they had been
squatting, with their heads ominously close together.
Landless strode up to Roach. "You murderer!" he said.
The convict recoiled; then with a bestial sound, half snarl, half bellow
of rage, he gathered himself for a rush. Landless awaited him with bent
body and sinewy, outstretched arms; but the mulatto interposed. Laying
his long, beautifully shaped, yellow hands upon Roach, he forced him
back against a cask, and, pinning him there, whispered in his ear. The
face of the wretch gradually resumed its usual expression of low
brutality, though an ugly sweat broke out upon it, and the mouth opened
and shut as though he had been running. He turned upon Landless with a
half threatening, half cringing air.
"So you 've found out what I was about last night, eh, pardner? But you
'll keep a still tongue. You 're not one to peach on your comrade as
was in hell or Newgate with you, and as crossed the ocean with you to
this d--d Virginia, and as has always liked you, and has the same spite
as you have against the man what bought us. You say naught, comrade,
and you 'll not st
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