CHAPTER XVITHE FACE IN THE DARK
Patricia lifted her white face from her hands. "We rode that dreadful wave?" she cried incredulously.
"By God's mercy, yes," said Landless gravely.
"Is there any hope for us?"
Landless hesitated. "Tell me the truth," she said imperiously.
"We are in desperate case, madam. The boat is half filled with water. Another such sea will sink us."
"Why do you not bail the boat?"
"The bucket is gone; the tiller also."
She shivered, and Darkeih began to wail aloud. Landless laid a heavy hand upon the latter's shoulder. "Silence!" he said sternly. "Here! I shall lay Regulus' head in your lap, and you are to watch over him and not to think of yourself. There's a brave wench!"
Darkeih's lamentations subsided into a low sobbing, and Landless turned to her mistress.
"Try to keep up your courage, madam," he said. "Our peril is great; but while there is life there is hope."
"I am not afraid," she said. "I—" The pitching of the boat threw her against Landless, and he put his arm about her. "You must let me hold you,madam," he said quietly. She shrank away from his touch, saying breathlessly, "No, oh no! See! I can hold quite well by the gunwale." He acquiesced in silence, only lifting her into a more secure position. "I thank you," she said humbly.
The storm continued to rage with unabated fury. Flash and detonation succeeded flash and detonation; the rain poured in torrents; and the wind whooped on the angry sea like a demon of destruction. The Bluebird pitched and tossed at the mercy of the great waves that combed above her. Time passed, and to the darkness of the storm was added the darkness of the night. The occupants of the boat, drenched by the rain and the seas she had shipped, shivered with cold. Regulus began to stir and mutter. "He is coming to himself," Landless cried to Darkeih. "When you see that he is conscious, make him lie still. He must not move about."
"Do you know where we are?" asked Patricia.
"No, madam; but I fear that the wind is driving us out into the bay."
"Ah!"
She said it with a sob, for a sudden vision of home flashed across the cold and darkness; and presently Landless could hear that she was weeping.
The sound went to his heart. "I would God I could help you, madam," he said gently. "Take comfort! You are in the hands of One who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand."
In a little while she was quiet. There passed another long interval of silent endurance, broken by Patricia's saying piteously, "My hands are so numbed with cold that I cannot hold to the side of the boat. And my arms are bruised with striking against it."
Without a word Landless put his arm around her, and held her steady amidst the tossings of the boat. "You are shivering with cold!" he said. "If I had but something to wrap you in!"
She drooped against him, and the lightning showed him her face, still and white, with parted lips, and long lashes sweeping her marble cheek.
"Madam, madam!" he cried roughly. "You must not swoon! You must not!"
With a strong effort she rallied. "I will try to be brave," she said plaintively. "I am not frightened,—not very much. But oh! I am cold and tired!"
He drew her head down upon his knee. "Let it lie there," he said, speaking as to a tired child. "I will hold you quite steady. Now shut your eyes and try to sleep. The storm is no worse than it was; and since the boat has lived this long in this sea, she may live through the night. And with morning may come many chances of safety. Try to rest in that hope."
Faint and exhausted from cold and terror, she submitted like a child, and lay with closed eyes in a sort of stupor within his arms.
There was less lightning now, and the thunder sounded in long booming peals, instead of short, sharp cannon cracks. The rain, too, had ceased; but the wind blew furiously, and the sea ran in tremendous waves. Regulus stirred, groaned, and struggled into a sitting posture. "Lie down again!" ordered Darkeih. "We 's all on de way to Heaben, but if nigger shake de boat, we'll get dere befo' de Lawd ready for us. Lie down!" Regulus, muttering to himself, looked stupidly about him, then dropped his head back into her lap. In three minutes he was snoring.Darkeih's whimpering died away, and her turbaned head sank lower and lower, until it rested upon that of Regulus, and she, too, slept.
Landless sat very still, holding his burden lightly and tenderly, and staring into the darkness. Against the steep slope of the sea, a picture framed itself, melted away, and was followed by others in long procession. He saw a ruinous, ivy-grown hall, and an old, grave, formal garden, where, between long box hedges broken by fantastic yews, there walked a boy, book in hand. A man with a stately figure and a stern, careworn face met the boy, and they leaned upon a broken dial, and the father reasoned with the son of Right and Truth and Liberty, and something touched upon the Tyrannicides of old. The yew trees drooped their sombre boughs about the figures, and they were gone, and in their place roared and swelled the Chesapeake.... The sound of the storm became the sound of a battle-cry. He saw a clanging fight where sword clashed upon armor, and artillery belched fire and thunder, and horse and man went down in the melée, and were trampled under foot amidst shrieks and oaths and stern prayers. The boy who had leaned upon the dial fought coolly, desperately, drunk with the joy of battle, stung to fierce effort by his father's eyes. The great banner, blazoned with the Cross of Saint George, streamed in crimson and azure between the battle and the lonely watcher in the storm-tossed boat, and the vision was gone.... The spires of a great city, where men walked with long faces and church bells made the only music, rose through the gloom, and he saw a dingy chamber in a dingy stack of buildings, and within it, bending over great tomes of law, a man, impoverished and orphaned,but young, strong, and full of hope,—a man well spoken of and allowed to be on the road to high preferment. The chamber wavered into darkness; but the city spires flashed light, and the slow ringing changed to mad peals from joy bells. Some one had been restored—to drop balm upon the bleeding heart of a nation, to bring light to them that sit in darkness,—so said the joy bells.... He saw a loathsome prison, and the man who had sat in the dingy chamber lying therein under accusation of a crime which he had not committed. He saw him pining there, week after week, month after month, untried, forgotten, at the mercy of an enemy to his house whose day had come with the Restored One.... The prison vanished, and the waves that tossed around him were the waves of the Atlantic. A ship ploughed her way through them. He saw into her hold,—a horrible place of stench and filth and darkness,—a place where hounds would not have kenneled. Men and women were there who cursed and fought for the scanty, worm-eaten food that was thrown them. Some wore gyves: they were heavy upon the wrists and ankles of the man of his vision. He saw a face looking down upon this man, a handsome supercilious face, with insolent amusement in the languid eyes and in the curves of the lips. The hatches were battened down upon the cargo of misery, and the ship with its brutal captain and its handful of gold-laced, dicing, swearing passengers vanished.... He saw a sandy, grass-grown street, and a row of mean houses, and a low, brick building with barred windows. There was a crowd before this building, and a man standing upon the platform of a pillory was selling human flesh and blood. He saw the boy who had stood beneaththe yews of the old Hall, who had fought at Worcester beneath his father's eye; the man who had lain in prison and in the noisome hold of the ship, put up and sold to the highest bidder. He saw him carried away with other merchandise to the home of his purchaser. He saw a Virginia plantation lying fair and serene beneath a Virginia heaven; and a wide porch, and standing therein an angelic vision, all grace and beauty, vivid youth and splendor.
The picture vanished into the night that raved about him, and with a long shaken sigh he let his eyes fall from the watery steeps to the face of the woman who lay within his arms. He had not looked at her before, conceiving that she might be awake and feel his glance upon her. Now he could tell from her breathing that she slept. He gazed upon the pure pale face with the golden hair falling about it, in a passion of pity and tenderness. She moaned now and then in her sleep, or turned uneasily in his arms. Once she spoke a few words, and he bent eagerly to catch them, thinking that she had awakened and was speaking to him. They were:—
"Ah, your Excellency! where I reign there shall be only good Churchmen and loyal Cavaliers—no Roundheads, no rebel or convict servants!" and she laughed in her sleep.
Landless shrank as from a mortal blow, then broke into a bitter laugh, and said to himself, "Thou art a fool, Godfrey Landless. It were but too easy to forget to-night what thou art and what thou must seem to her. Thou art answered according to thy folly." He sighed impatiently, and withdrawing his gaze from the sleeping face, fell into a sombre reverie.
He was roused to active consciousness by a suddenand death-like pause in the gale. The lightning showed the pall of cloud hanging low, black, and unbroken; but the wind had sunk into an ominous calm. He looked anxiously around him, then softly disengaging himself from Patricia, leaned across her, and shook Regulus awake. The negro started up, stupid from sleep and from his wound.
"What is it, massa?" he queried. "Wake mighty early at Rosemead.... Lawd hab mercy! we 's still on de Chesapeake!"
"We will be in the Chesapeake in a moment," said Landless sternly, "if you stagger about in that way. Sit down and pull your wits together. You are like to need them all directly." He touched Darkeih and said, as her eyes, wide with alarm, opened upon him, "Listen, my wench! Whatever happens, you are to trust yourself to Regulus. He is a strong swimmer and he will take care of you. You hear, Regulus!"
"What is it?" exclaimed Patricia, as he bent over her. "Why have you waked Regulus? And oh! has not that dreadful wind died away?"
"It has stopped, madam, stopped suddenly and utterly," he said gravely. "But it will come upon us from another quarter, and it will bring the sea with it." He raised her, and held her with his arm. "Trust yourself to me when it comes," he said gently. "If I can save you, I will."
There was no time for more. Above them broke a new and more terrible storm. A ball of fire shot from the cloud into the sea; it was followed by a crash that seemed to shake the earth. A cataract of rain descended. From the northeast there swooped upon them a wind to which the gale of an hour before seemed a zephyr. It drove the boat before it as if shehad been the bird from which she took her name. It piled wave on wave until the sea ran in mountains. Athwart the storm came a dull booming roar, and above the great hills of water appeared a long ridge crested with white.
"It is coming," said Landless.
Patricia looked up at him with great, despairing, courageous eyes. "I have caused your death," she said. "Forgive me."
There came a vivid flash, and a loud scream from Darkeih. "De lan'! de bressed, bressed, lan'!"
Landless wheeled. Silhouetted against the lit sky he saw a fringe of pines, and below it a low, shelving shore where the waves were breaking in foam and thunder. The Bluebird, driven by the wind, was hurrying towards it in mad bounds. The great wave overtook her, bore her onward with it, and sunk her within fifty feet of the shore.
Ten minutes later Landless, breathless and exhausted, staggered from out the hell of pounding waves and blinding, stinging spray on to the shore. Unlocking Patricia's arms from about his neck, he laid her gently down upon the sand and turned to look for the other occupants of the hapless Bluebird. They were close behind him. In a few minutes the two men, battling against wind and rain, had borne the women out of reach of the waves, and had placed them in the shelter of a low bank of sand. As Landless set his burden down he said reverently, "I thank God, madam."
"And I thank God," she answered, in the same tone.
He tried to shield her from the wind with his body. "It is frightful," he said, "that you should be exposedto such a night. I pray God that you take no harm."
"Would it not be more sheltered higher up the shore, under those trees?"
"Perhaps, but I fear to risk you there with the lightning so near. Later, when the storm subsides, we will try it."
He seated himself so as to screen her as much as possible from wind and rain, and a silence fell upon the party so suddenly snatched from death. Regulus stretched himself upon the sand and pulled Darkeih down beside him. Within a few minutes they were both asleep. The white man and woman sat side by side without speaking, watching the storm.
By degrees it raved itself out. The rain fell in less and less volume, the lightning became infrequent, the thunder pealed less loudly, and the wind died from a hurricane into a breeze. In two hours' time from the swamping of the boat the booming of the sea, and a ragged mass of cloud, lit by an occasional flash and slowly falling away from a pale and watery moon, were the only evidences of the tornado which had raged so lately.
"The storm is over," said Patricia, breaking a long silence.
"Yes," said Landless. "You have nothing to fear now. Would you not like to walk a little? You must be sadly chilled and weary with long sitting."
"Yes, I would," she answered, with a sigh of relief. "Let us walk towards those trees, and see if forest or water be beyond them."
He helped her to her feet, and they left the slaves sleeping upon the ground, and moved slowly, for she was numbed with cold, towards the fringe of pines.
Landless walked beside her without speaking. A while ago she had been simply a woman in danger of death—something for him to protect and to save. He had well nigh forgotten: he knew that she had quite forgotten. She was safe now, and was become once more the lady of the manor to whose soil he was fettered. He had remembered, and she was beginning to remember, for presently she said timidly and sweetly, but with condescension in her voice;—
"I am not ungrateful for all that you have done for me to-night, for saving my life. And, trust me, you will not find your mas—my father, ungrateful either. We will find some way to reward—"
"I neither merit nor desire reward, madam," said Landless, proudly and sadly, "for doing but my duty as a man and as your servant."
"But—" she began kindly, when he interrupted her with sudden passion.
"Unless you wish to cut me to the heart, to bitterly humiliate me, you will not speak of payment for any service I may have done you. I have been a gentleman, madam. For this one night treat me as such."
"I beg your pardon," she said at once.
They reached the belt of trees and entered it. Outside, the broken clouds had permitted an occasional gleam of watery moonshine; within the shadow of the trees it was gross darkness. Above them the wet branches, moved by the wind which still blew strongly, clashed together with a harsh and mournful sound, showering them with heavy raindrops. Their feet sank deeply in cushions of soaked moss and rotting leaves.
"There is nothing to be done here," said Landless. "It is better beneath the open sky."
There came a last, vivid flash of lightning that for a moment lit the wood, showing long colonnades of glistening tree trunks, with here and there a blasted and fallen monster. It showed something more, for within ten feet of them, from out a tangle of dripping, rain-beaten vines looked the face of the murderer of Robert Godwyn.
CHAPTER XVIILANDLESS AND PATRICIA
For one moment the parties to this midnight encounter stared at each other with starting eyeballs; the next, down came the curtain of darkness between them.
With a cry of terror Patricia seized and clung to Landless's arm, trembling violently, and with her breath coming in long, gasping sobs. Exhausted by the previous terrors of the night, this last experience completely unnerved her—she seemed upon the point of swooning. Divining what would soonest calm her, Landless hurried her out of the wood and down the shore to the bank, beneath which lay the sleeping slaves. Here she sank upon the sand, her frame quivering like an aspen. "That dreadful face!" she said in a low, shaken voice. "It is burned upon my eyeballs. How came it there? Was it—dead?"
"No, no, madam," Landless said soothingly. "'Tis simple enough. The murderer is in hiding within these woods, and we stumbled upon his lair."
She gazed fearfully around her. "I see it everywhere. And may he not follow us down here? Oh, horrible!"
"He is not likely to do that," said Landless, with a smile. "You may rest assured that he is far from this by now."
She drew a long breath of relief. "Oh! I hope heis!" she cried fervently. "It was dreadful! No storm could frighten me as did that face!" and she shuddered again.
"Try not to think of it," he said. "It is gone now; try to forget it."
"I will try," she said doubtfully.
Landless did not answer, and the two sat in silence, watching out the dreary night. But not for long, for presently Patricia said humbly:—
"Will you talk to me? I am frightened. It is so still, and I cannot see you, nor the slaves, only that horrid, horrid face. I see it everywhere."
Landless came nearer to her, and laid one hand upon the skirt of her wet robe. "I am here, close to you, madam," he said; "there can nothing harm you."
He began to speak quietly and naturally of this and that, of what they should do when the day broke, of Regulus's wound, of the storm, of the great sea and its perils. He told her something of these latter, for he knew the sea; piteous tales of forlorn wrecks, brave tales of dangers faced and overcome, of heroic endurance and heroic rescue. He told her tales of a wild, rockbound Devonshire coast with its scattered fisher villages; of a hidden cave, the resort of a band of desperadoes, half smugglers, half pirates, wholly villains; of how this cave had been long and vainly searched for by the authorities; of how, one night, a boy climbed down a great precipice, scaring the seafowl from their nests, and lighted upon this cavern with the smugglers in it, and in their midst a defenseless prisoner whom they were about to murder. How he had shouted and made wailing, outlandish noises, and had sent rocks hurtling down the cliffs, until thewretches thought that all the goblins of land and sea were upon them, and rushed from the cavern, leaving their work undone. Whereupon, the boy reclimbed the cliff, and hastening to the nearest village, roused the inhabitants, who hurried to their boats, and descending upon the long-sought-for cave, surprised the smugglers, cut them down to a man, and rescued the prisoner.
The man who told these things told them well. The wild tales ran like a strain of sombre music through the night. His audience of one forgot her terror and weariness, and listened with eager interest.
"Well—" she said, as he paused.
"That is all. The ruffians were all killed and the prisoner rescued."
"And the boy?"
"Oh, the boy! He went back to his books."
"Did you know him?"
"Yes, I knew him. See, madam, it has quite cleared. How the moon whitens those leaping waves!"
"Yes, it is beautiful. I am glad the prisoner escaped. Was he a fisherman?"
"No; an officer of the Excise—a gallant man, with a wife and many children. Yes, I suppose he prized life."
"And I am glad that the smugglers were all killed."
Landless smiled. "Life to them was sweet, too, perhaps."
"I do not care. They were wicked men who deserved to die. They had murdered and robbed. They were criminals—"
She stopped short, and her face turned from whiteto red and then to white again, and her eyes sought the ground.
"I had forgotten," she muttered.
The hot color rose to Landless's cheek, but he said quietly:—
"You had forgotten what, madam?"
She flashed a look upon him. "You know," she said icily.
"Yes, I know," he answered. "I know that the perils of this night had driven from your mind several things. For a little while you have thought of, and treated me, as an equal, have you not? You could not have been more gracious to,—let us say, to Sir Charles Carew. But now you have remembered what I am, a man degraded and enslaved, a felon,—in short, the criminal who, as you very justly say, should not be let to live."
She made no answer, and he rose to his feet.
"It is almost day, and the moon is shining brightly. You no longer fear the face in the dark? I will first waken the slaves, and then will push along the shore, and strive to discover where we are."
She looked at him with tears in her eyes. "Wait," she said, putting out a trembling hand. "I have hurt you. I am sorry. Who am I to judge you? And whatever you may have done, however wicked you may have been, to-night you have borne yourself towards a defenseless maiden as truly and as courteously as could have done the best gentleman in the land. And she begs you to forget her thoughtless words."
Landless fell upon his knee before her. "Madam!" he cried, "I have thought you the fairest piece of work in God's creation, but harder than marbletowards suffering such as may you never understand! But now you are a pitying angel! If I swear to you by the honor of a gentleman, by the God above us, that I am no criminal, that I did not do the thing for which I suffer, will you believe me?"
"You mean that you are an innocent man?" she said breathlessly.
"As God lives, yes, madam."
"Then why are you here?"
"I am here, madam," he said bitterly, "because Justice is not blind. She is only painted so. Led by the gleam of gold she can see well enough—in one direction. I could not prove my innocence. I shall never be able to do so. And any one—Sir William Berkeley, your father, your kinsman—would tell you that you are now listening to one who differs from the rest of the Newgate contingent, from the coiners and cheats, the cut-throats and highway robbers in whose company he is numbered, only in being hypocrite as well as knave. And yet I ask you to believe me. I am innocent of that wrong."
The moonlight struck full upon his face as he knelt before her. She looked at him long and intently, with large, calm eyes, then said softly and sweetly:—
"I believe you, and pity you, sir. You have suffered much."
He bowed his head, and pressed the hem of her skirt to his lips.
"I thank you," he said brokenly.
"Is there nothing?" she said after a pause, "nothing that I can do?"
He shook his head. "Nothing, madam. You have given me your belief and your divine compassion. It is all that I ask, more than I dared dream of askingan hour ago. You cannot help me. I must dree my weird. I would even ask of your goodness that you say nothing of what I have told you to Colonel Verney or to any one."
"Yes," she said thoughtfully. "If I cannot help you, it were wiser not to speak. I might but make your hard lot harder."
"Again I thank you." He kissed the hem of her robe once more, and rose to his feet with a heart that sat lightly on its throne.
The day began to break. With the first faint flush Landless woke the slaves, who at length yawned and shivered themselves into consciousness of their surroundings. "What are we to do now?" demanded Patricia.
"We had best strike through that belt of woods until we come to some house, whence we may get conveyance for you to Verney Manor."
"Very well. But oh! do not let us enter the forest here where we saw that fearful face. Let us walk along the shore until the light grows stronger. It is still night within the woods."
Landless acquiesced with a smile, and the four—he and Patricia in front, the negroes straying in the rear—set out along the shore. The air was chill and heavy, but there was no wind, and the unclouded sky gave promise of a hot day. In the east the rosy flush spread and deepened, and a pink path stretched itself across the fast subsiding waters. The wet sand dragged at their feet, and made walking difficult; moreover Patricia was chilled and weary, so their progress was slow. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her lips had a weary, downward curve; her golden hair, broken from its fastenings, hung in damp,rich masses against her white throat and blue-veined temples, and amidst the enshrouding glory her perfect face looked very small and white and childlike. The magnificent eyes carried in their clear, brown depths an expression new to Landless. Heretofore he had seen in them scorn and dislike; now they looked at him with a grave and wondering pity.
As the sun rose, the shipwrecked party left the shore, and entered the forest. A purple light filled its vast aisles. Far overhead bits of azure gleamed through the rifts in the foliage, but around them was the constant patter and splash of rain drops, falling slow and heavy from every leaf and twig. There was a dank, rich smell of wet mould and rotting leaves, and rain-bruised fern. The denizens of the woodland were all astir. Birds sang, squirrels chattered, the insect world whirred around the yellow autumn blooms and the purpling clusters of the wild grape; from out the distance came the barking of a fox. The sunlight began to fall in shafts of pale gold through openings in the green and leafy world, and to warm the chilled bodies of the wayfarers.
"It is like a bad dream," said Patricia gayly, as Landless held back a great, wet branch of cedar from her path. "All the storm and darkness, and the great hungry waves and the danger of death! Ah! how happy we are to have waked!"
Her glance fell upon Landless's face, and there came to her a sudden realization that there were those in the world, to whom life was not one sweet, bright gala day. She gazed at him with troubled eyes.
"I hope you care to live," she said. "Death is very dreadful."
"I do not think so," he answered. "At least it would be forgetfulness."
She shuddered. "Ah! but to leave the world, the warm, bright, beautiful world! To die on your bed, when you are old—that is different. But to go young! to go in storm and terror, or in horror and struggling as did that man who was murdered! Oh, horrible!"
The thought of the murdered man brought another thought into her mind.
"Do you think," she said, "that we had better tell that we saw the murderer at the first house to which we come, or had we best wait until we reach Verney Manor?"
Landless gave a great start. "You will tell Colonel Verney that?"
She opened her eyes widely. "Why, of course! What else should we do? Is not the country being scoured for him? My father is most anxious that he should be captured. Justice and the weal of the State demand that such a wretch should be punished." She paused and looked at him gravely as he walked beside her with a clouded face. "You say nothing! This man is guilty, guilty of a dreadful crime. Surely you do not wish to shield him, to let him escape?"
"Not so, madam," said Landless in desperation. "But—but—"
"But what?" she asked as he stopped in confusion.
He recovered himself. "Nothing, madam. You are right, of course. But I would not speak before reaching Verney Manor."
"Very well."
Landless walked on, bitterly perplexed and chagrined. The strife and danger of the night, the intoxicating sweetness of the morning hours when he knew himself believed in and pitied by the woman besidehim, had driven certain things into oblivion. He had been dreaming, and now he had been plucked from a fool's paradise, and dashed rudely to the ground. Yesterday and the life and thoughts of yesterday, which had but now seemed so far away, pressed upon him remorselessly. And to-morrow! He did not want Roach to be taken. Always there would have been danger to himself and his associates in the capture of the murderer, but now when the vindictive wretch would assuredly attribute his disaster to the man to whom the lightning flash had revealed his presence on the shores of the bay, the danger was trebled. And it was imminent. He had little doubt that another night would see Roach in custody, and he had no doubt at all that the scoundrel would make a desperate effort to save his neck by betraying what he knew of the conspiracy—and thanks to Godwyn's lists he knew a great deal—to Governor and Council.
Patricia began to speak again. "It imports much that men should see that there is no weakness in the arm the law stretches out to seize and punish offenders. My father and the Governor and Colonel Ludlow believe that there is afoot an Oliverian plot—- What is the matter?"
"Nothing, madam."
"You stood still and caught your breath. Are you ill, faint?"
"It is nothing, madam, believe me? You were saying?"
"Oh! the Oliverians! Nothing definite has been discovered as yet, but there is thunder in the air, my father says, and I know that he and the Governor and the rest of the council are very watchful just now. But yesterday my father said that those few hundredmen form a greater menace to the Colony than do all the Indians between this and the South Sea."
They walked on in silence for a few moments, and then she broke out. "They are horrible, those grim, frowning men! They are rebels and traitors, one and all, and yet they stand by and shake curses on the heads of true men. They slew the best man, the most gracious sovereign; they trampled the Church under foot, they made the blood of the noble and the good to flow like water, and now when they receive a portion of their deserts, they call themselves martyrs! They, martyrs! Roundhead traitors!"
"Madam," interrupted Landless with a curious smile upon his lips, "did you not know that I was, that I am, what you call a Roundhead?"
"No," she said, "I did not know," and stood perfectly still, looking straight before her down the long vista of trees. He saw her face change and harden into the old expression of aversion. The slaves came up to them, and Regulus asked if 'lil Missy wanted anything. "No, nothing at all," she answered, and walked quietly onward.
Landless, an angry pain tugging at his heart, kept beside her, for they were passing through a deep hollow in the wood where the gnarled and protruding roots of cypress and juniper made walking difficult, and where a strong hand was needed to push aside the wet and pendent masses of vine. Regulus, fifty yards behind them, began to sing a familiar broadside ballad, torturing the words out of all resemblance to English. The rich notes rang sweetly through the forest. Down from the far summit of a pine flashed a cardinal bird, piercing the gloom of the hollow like a fire ball thrown into a cavern. Landless held asidea curtain of glistening leaves that, mingled with purple clusters of fruit, hung across their path. Patricia passed him, then turned impulsively. "You think me hard!" she said. "Many people think me so, but I am not so, indeed.... And there are good Puritans. Major Carrington, they say, is Puritan at heart, and he is a good man and a gentleman.... And you saved my life.... At least you are not like those men of whom I spoke. You would not plot against the good peace which we enjoy! You would not try to array servant against master?"
It was a direct question asked with large, straightforward eyes fixed upon his. He tried to evade it, but she asked again with insistence, and with a faint doubt lurking in her eyes, "If these men are plotting, which God forbid! you know nothing of it? You have great wrongs, but you would take no such dastard way to right them?"
Landless's soul writhed within him, but he told the inevitable lie that was none the less a lie that it was also the truth. He said in a low voice, "I trust, madam, that I will do naught that may misbecome a gentleman."
She was quite satisfied. He saw that he had regained the ground lost by his avowal of a few minutes before, and he cursed himself and cursed his fate.
Soon afterwards they emerged from the forest upon a tobacco patch, from the midst of which rose a rude cabin, in whose doorway stood a woman serving out bowls of loblolly to half a dozen tow-headed children.
Half an hour later, Patricia, rested and refreshed, took her seat behind the oxen, which the owner of the cabin had harnessed up, with much protestation of his eagerness to serve the daughter of Colonel Verney,emptied her purse in the midst of the open-mouthed children, and bade kindly adieu to the good wife. Darkeih curled herself up in the bottom of the cart, and Landless and Regulus walked beside it.
In two hours' time they were at Verney Manor, where they found none but women to greet them, Rendered uneasy by the storm, Woodson had despatched a messenger to Rosemead, who had returned with the tidings that no boat from Verney Manor had reached that plantation. The overseer had ill news with which to greet the Colonel and Sir Charles when at midnight they arrived unexpectedly from Green Spring. Since then every able-bodied man had deserted the plantation. There were no boats at the wharf, no horses in the stables. The master and Sir Charles were gone in the Nancy, the two overseers on horseback. A Sabbath stillness brooded over the plantation, until a negro woman recognized the occupants of the ox-cart lumbering up the road. Then there was noise enough of an exclamatory, feminine kind. The shrill sounds penetrated to the great room, where, behind drawn curtains, surrounded by essences, and an odor of burnt feathers, with Chloe to fan her, and Mr. Frederick Jones to murmur consolation, reclined Mistress Lettice. As Patricia stepped upon the porch, Betty Carrington flew down the stairs and through the hall, and the two met with a little inarticulate burst of cries and kisses. Mistress Lettice in the great room went into hysterics for the fifth time that morning.
CHAPTER XVIIIA CAPTURE
At noon the next day returned the search party, dispatched by the Colonel on receipt of his daughter's information, and headed by Woodson and Sir Charles Carew. In their midst, bound with ropes, and seated behind one of the mounted men, was Roach. His clothing hung from him in tatters, and witnessed, moreover, to the quagmires and mantled pools through which he had struggled; his arm had been injured, and was tied with a bloody rag; blood was caked upon his villainous face, scratched and torn in his breathless bursting through thickets; his red hair fell over his eyes in matted elf-locks; his lips were drawn back in a snarl over discolored fangs; he panted like a dog, his thick red tongue hanging out. He looked hardly human. The man behind whom he rode was Luiz Sebastian.
The party dismounted in the small square, in the midst of the quarters. It being the noon rest, the entire servant population was on hand, and leaving its cabins and smoking messes of bacon and succotash, it hastened to a man to the square, where, beneath the dead tree and its sinister appendage, stood the master, listening to Woodson's account of the capture, and to Sir Charles's airy interpolations. Roach, dragged from the horse by a dozen officious hands, staggered with exhaustion. Luiz Sebastian caughthim by the arm and so held him during the ensuing interview.
When the unusual bustle, the neighing of the horses, and the excited voices of the crowd brought the news of the capture to Landless, sitting, sunk in anxious thought, within his cabin, he rose and began to pace to and fro in the narrow room. Past his door hurried men, women, and children on their way to the square. One or two beckoned him to follow, but he shook his head. "If he betray me," he thought, "my fate will come to me soon enough. I will not go to meet it."
In his restless pacing to and fro, he stopped before a shelf where, beside some coarse eating utensils and the heap of tobacco pegs, the cutting of which occupied his spare moments, lay a little worn book. It had been Godwyn's. He opened it at random, and read a few verses. With a heavy sigh he laid his arm along the shelf and rested his burning forehead upon it. "'Let not your heart be troubled,'" he said beneath his breath; and again, "'Let not your heart be troubled.'" He recommenced his pacing up and down the room. "'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you.'" Going to the doorway, he leaned against it and looked out into a world of sunshine, and up to where the topmost branches of a pine slept against the blue. "There may be peace beyond," he said. "I have not found it here."
Down the lane came a murmur of voices; then the overseer's harsh tones; then a light and mocking laugh. Seized by an uncontrollable impulse he left the cabin and directed his steps towards the square. As he passed a cabin some doors from his own, a gaunt figure arose from the doorstep and joined itself to him.
"The murderer is here," said the sepulchral voice of Master Win-Grace Porringer. "Verily the blood hath been taken out of his mouth, and his abominations from between his teeth. Cursed be the shedder of innocent blood!"
"Amen," said Landless; then, "This capture is like to be our ruin. This wretch will not keep silence."
"But he has no proofs. Since you destroyed those lists there exists not a scrap of writing about this affair. And we have covered our tracks as carefully as if we were the cursed heathen of the land upon the warpath. Let him say what he will. The Malignants, besotted fools! will think he lies to save his neck."
"A week ago they might have thought so," said Landless. "But not now. Something has gotten abroad. Already Governor and Council think they smell a plot."
The Muggletonian caught his breath. "How do you know this?"
"No matter how: I know it."
Porringer raised his scarred face to heaven. "God," he said, "we are thy people! Save us! Let destruction come upon them unawares; let them go down a dark and slippery way to death; make them to be as blind and deaf adders that see not the foot of the destroyer! Yea, shake thy hand upon these Malignants and make them a spoil to their servants!" He turned his ghastly face and burning eyes upon Landless. "Curse them with me!" he cried.
Landless shook his head. "Thou, and I look not alike at things, friend," he said.
"Thou art a Laodicean!" cried the other wildly."Thou hast not an eye single to the Lord's work as had thy father before thee. Thou wouldst not smite the Amalekites hip and thigh, root and branch! One damsel would thou save alive, and for her sake thy heart is soft towards the whole accursed brood! Look to it lest the Lord spew thee out of His mouth! Woe, woe, to him that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back!" He laughed wildly and tossed out his arms.
"I think thou hast eaten of the Jamestown weed!" said Landless fiercely. "Collect thy senses, man! And speak something less loudly, or Roach's betrayal will be superfluous. As to myself, if I curse not, I act; and as for my motives for what you call luke-warmness, and I call common humanity, you will please to let them alone!"
The excitement faded from the fanatic's face, and he said more quietly, "You are right, friend. I was mad for a moment, mad to see that freedom which is so near us so imperiled. I meant not to quarrel with you who have shown in the conduct of this work the discernment of a young Daniel, yea, who have so borne yourself, that I have grown to care for you as I never thought to care again for human being. I have prayed much that you should be brought from the twilight of Calvinism into the pure light wherein walk the disciples of the blessed Ludovick."
They reached the square and mingled with the motly crowd that lined its sides, leaving the centre occupied only by the murderer, his captors, and the master. Followed by the Muggletonian, Landless made his way to where the yellow locks of young Dick Whittington towered above the crowd. The boy saw him coming, and edging past a knot of blacks,met him in a little open space, whose only occupants were two or three women, and an Indian squatting upon the ground. Leaning against a pine, and fixing his gaze and, to all appearance, his attention upon the central group where the overseer was just finishing a circumstantial account of the chase, Landless said quietly:—
"You were of the party that took him?"
"That I was!" answered the boy gleefully. "Losh! but it was fun!" His blue eyes danced with impish delight; a noiseless laugh showed all his strong white teeth. "We went straight to the spot where you and Mistress Patricia saw him by the lightning. There the dogs struck his trail and the fun commenced. Over streams and fallen trees, and chinquepin ridges; through bogs and myrtle thickets and miles of grape vines—swounds! but it was hot work! Just look at the scratches on my face and hands! Joyce Whitbread wouldn't know me! The Court spark, he wore a mask and saved his beauty. He's a well-plucked one, though, took the lead and kept it, and when it was over, treated us to usquebaugh at Luckey Doughty's store. Well, we run the fox to earth in a Chickahominy village. Lord! I'm sorry for the half king of the Chickahominies! He'll have to answer to Governor and Council for letting red fox burrow in his village. Found him squatted in a sassafras patch. Snarled and fought and tried to bite like the beast he is. Woodson and the Court spark took him."
"Do you know what will be done with him now?"
"He'll be taken on to the gaol at the court-house."
"That is five miles from here," said Landless.
"Yes, near to the village where we took him. He'llbe kept there until they can try him. And they'll make short work of him. He'll be food for crows directly."
The throng pressed upon them, forcing them nearer to the group beneath the dead tree. The overseer had finished his account, and the master was clearing his throat to speak. Landless found himself upon the inner verge of the mass of spectators, directly opposite the murderer, and confronted by him with a look so dark, wild and malignant, that he could not doubt the intention that lay behind those scowling eyes. Luiz Sebastian, still with the murderer's arm in his grasp, gave him a peculiar look which he could not translate. In the background he saw Trail's sinister face peering over the shoulder of an Indian.
"You dog!" said the planter, addressing himself directly to Roach. "What have you to say for yourself?"
The murderer made an uncertain sound with his dry lips, and his bloodshot eyes roamed around the circle from one staring face to another, until they returned to rest upon the watchful, amber-hued countenance beside him.
"Speak!" said his master sternly.
"I'll say nothing," was the dogged reply, "until I stands my trial. I demands a fair trial."
"Remember that this is your last chance to speak to me, to speak to any one in authority before you are tried. Of course you will hang for this. Have you anything to say? Do you wish to speak to me in private?"
The murderer raised his head, and shaking the tangled hair from about his face, cast at Landless, standing ten paces beyond the planter, such a look ofdeadly and blasting hatred, that for a moment the blood ran cold in the young man's veins. He set his teeth and braced himself to meet the blow at plans and hopes and life that should follow such a look.
To his astonishment the blow did not fall. Roach changed the basilisk gaze with which he had regarded him to a vacant stare.
"I've naught to say," he whined, "except that I hopes your honor will see that I has a fair trial—no d—d Tyburn or Newgate hocus-pocussing."
The master beckoned to the overseer. "Take him away," he said. "Take two or three men and carry him on to the gaol."
He turned on his heel and walked to where Sir Charles Carew leaned against a tree, idly flicking the mud from his boots with his riding cane. Landless standing near and listening with strained ears heard the master say in answer to the other's lifted brows:—
"Nothing to be learnt in that quarter. If there's rebellion brewing, he knows nothing of it."
Fresh horses were brought from the stables. "You, Luiz Sebastian, Taylor, and Mathew," said the overseer, swinging himself into the saddle. The men designated mounted, and Roach, bound and scowling, was hoisted to his former seat behind Luiz Sebastian. The cavalcade started. As the horse that bore the double load passed Landless, the murderer twisted himself about in his seat, and, with a venomous look, spat at him. Luiz Sebastian smiled evilly.
The shaven head and fleshless face of Win-Grace Porringer protruded themselves over Landless's shoulder.
"What does it mean?" he muttered.
"God knows," answered the other. "Come tothe trysting place to-night. We must act, and act quickly."
That night ten men met in the deserted hut on the marsh, having stolen with the caution of Indians from their respective plantations. Five were men who had fought at Edgehill and Naseby and Worcester, or had followed Cromwell through the breach at Drogheda. Four were victims of the Act of Uniformity; darker, sterner, more determined if possible, than the veterans of the New Model. The tenth man was Landless. When, late at night, he and Porringer crept stealthily back to the quarters, it was with the conviction that this was the last time they should so steal through the darkness. The date of the rising had been fixed for the thirteenth of September; this night, by Landless's advice, it was brought forward to the tenth—and it was now the sixth.
Groping his way past the slumbering forms of the three other occupants of his cabin, Landless threw himself down upon his pallet with a heavy sigh.
"Liberty!" he said beneath his breath. "Goddess, whom I and mine have sought through long years, whom once we thought we held, and waked to find thee gone,—once I thought thee fairer than aught beside; thought no price too great to pay for thee. But now!"
He hid his face in his hands with a stifled groan. When at length he fell into a troubled sleep, it was to see again a storm-tossed boat, and a woman's face, set like a star against the blackness of the night.