Part 6

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?"