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Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia, a novel by Mary Johnston |
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Chapter 5. In The Three-Mile Field |
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_ 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 'twas 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." _ |
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