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Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia, a novel by Mary Johnston |
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Chapter 25. The Road To Paradise |
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_ CHAPTER XXV. THE ROAD TO PARADISE The family and guests of Verney Manor were assembled in the great room. The day had been one of confusion, haste and anxiety; but it was past, and the stillness and forced inaction of the night was upon them. With the readiness of those to whom danger is no novelty they seized the hour and made the most of it. Sufficient unto the morrow was the evil thereof. The Colonel, weary from hard riding, but well satisfied with his afternoon's work, had sunk into a great chair and challenged Dr. Anthony Nash to a game of chess. "Everything is in train," he told them, "and all quiet upon the plantations in this shire at least. I believe the danger past. God be thanked!" Upon a settle piled with cushions lay Captain Laramore, with a bandaged shoulder, a long pipe between his teeth, and at his elbow a tankard of sack and an elderly Hebe in the person of Mistress Lettice Verney. Patricia, sumptuously clad and beautiful as a dream, sat in the great window with Betty and Sir Charles. Her eyes shone with a feverish brilliancy, her white hands were never still, she laughed and jested with her lover, touching this or that with light wit. Once or twice she broke into song, rich, passionate, throbbing through the night. The gentle Betty looked at her in wonder, but Sir Charles was enchanted. Steps sounded on the stairs and in the hall. "Who is that?" cried the master, taking his hand from his rook. "The overseer, probably," said Dr. Nash. "Check to your king." A loud scream from Mistress Lettice. The master leaped to his feet, knocking over the chess-table and sending the pieces rattling into corners. Sir Charles, drawing his rapier, sprang to his side, the wounded Captain started up from amidst his pillows and the divine snatched a brass andiron from the fireplace. Framed in the doorway, looking larger than life against the blackness of the space behind him, stood the arch plotter, the Roundhead, the convict, the rebellious servant whom the Governor had sworn to hang. Blood dropped from his face, cut by the glass with which he had severed the rope, to meet the blood upon his arms and chest, lacerated by his savage straining at his bonds. For a moment he stood, blinded by the light, then advanced into the room. His master seized him. "Still bound!" he cried with an oath. "He is alone then! How did you get here? What are you doing here? Speak, scoundrel!" "I bring you this paper, sir," said Landless hoarsely. "Will you take it from me. I cannot raise my hands." The Colonel snatched the paper, glanced at it, read it with a face from which all the ruddy color had fled, and held it out to Sir Charles with a shaking hand. "Read it," he gasped. "Read it aloud," and sank into his chair breathing heavily. Sir Charles read. "Damnation!" he cried, crushing the paper in his hand. Laramore started up with a roar of "My ship!" and then broke into a torrent of oaths. Mistress Lettice's screams filled the room until her brother roughly silenced her by clapping his hand over her mouth. "By the Lord Harry, Lettice, I will throw you out to them if you do not hush! Gentlemen, in God's name, what are we to do?" "Barricade door and window and hold the house against them," said the baronet. "Send for help to Rosemead and to Fitzhugh and Ludwell!" cried the divine. "Five men and three women to hold this house against a hundred Indians and negroes! And no help could come for hours and it is now nearly ten! Moreover, the messenger would have to pass through the savages lying in the woods,--he would never reach Rosemead with his scalp on!" "I will be your messenger," said Nash rising, "and as every moment is more precious than rubies, I had best start at once." "You, Anthony! God forbid!" cried the Colonel "You would go to certain death." "I would stay to certain death, would I not?" retorted the other. "But my mare, Pixie, and I can shew clean heels to the red villains, were they as thick as chinquepins. Give me the stable-key, Verney. I know the way to the jade's stall, and she will follow her master through fire and water without a whinny. I don't want a light. Not a soul on the place must know that I have left Verney Manor." "Anthony, Anthony, I am loth to see you go, old friend!" cried the Colonel. "Tut, tut, as well leave my scalp in the woods as in Dick Verney's parlor! but I shall do neither. Hold the house as long as you can, and look for Carrington, and Fitzhugh, and Ludwell, and myself with a hundred men at our heels before the dawn. Until then vale." He was gone. "And now the doors and windows," said Sir Charles. "The windows, save those in this room, are secured as they always are at night. The shutters are heavy and strongly barred, and we have but to draw the chains across the doors. They will find it hard work to fire the house, for the logs are wet from this morning's shower. There is ammunition enough, and the shutters are loopholed. If we were in force, we might hold out, but, my God! what can we do? Even with the overseers whom we must manage to call to us, if we can do so without arousing suspicion, we are not enough to defend one face of the house." "Are there no honest servants?" "How can I tell the true men from the knaves? To rouse the quarters would be to show that we know, and to ourselves spring the mine which is to destroy us. And if we brought men into the house, who are leagued with the fiends outside, then would their work be done for them. There are a very few whom I know to be faithful, but how to secure them without giving the alarm--my God! how helpless we are!" "Perhaps I can help you, Colonel Verney," said Landless. In the midst of a dead silence the eyes of each occupant of the room,--the master, the courtier, the wounded captain, the women, trembling in each other's arms,--were turned upon the speaker who stood before them, haggard, torn and bleeding, but with a quiet power in his dark face and steadfast eyes. "You?" said the master sternly, "What can you do?" "I will tell you," said Landless, "but I must be freed from these bonds first." Another pause, and then Sir Charles, responding to a nod from his kinsman, walked over to Landless, and with his rapier cut the ropes which bound him. "Now speak!" said the Colonel. * * * * * * The quarters lay, to all appearance, wrapt in the profoundest slumber--no movement in the low-browed cabins, or in the lane or square; no sound other than the croak of the frogs in the marshes, the wail of the whip-poor-wills, and the sighing of the night wind in the pines. All was dark save in the east, where the low stars were beginning to pale. Below them glowed a dull red spark, shining dimly across a long expanse of black marsh and water, and coming from Captain Laramore's ship, anchored off the Point. One moment it seemed the only light in the wide landscape of darkness; the next the flame of a torch, streaming sidewise in the wind, cast an orange glare upon the dead tree in the centre of the square and upon the windowless fronts of the cabins surrounding it. The torch was in the hand of the overseer, who went the rounds, striking upon each door, and summoning the inmates of the cabin to the square. "The master wants a word with you," was all the answer he vouchsafed to startled, sullen, or suspicious inquiries. In five minutes the square was thronged. White and black, servant and slave, rustic, convict, Jew, Turk, Indian, mulatto, quadroon, coal black, untamed African--the motley crowd pressed and jostled towards that end of the square at which stood the master, his kinsman, the overseer, and Godfrey Landless. Behind them on the steps of the overseer's house were the Muggletonian, Havisham, and Trail. They had been unbound. In the Muggletonian's scarred face was stolid indifference, but Trail looked furtively about until he spied Luiz Sebastian, when he signaled "What is it?" with his eyes. The mulatto shook his head, and continued to shoulder his way through the press until he stood in the front row, face to face with the party from the great house. On one side of him was the Turk, on the other an Indian. The master stepped a pace or two in front of his companions, and held up his hand for silence. When the excited muttering had sunk into a breathless hush, he beckoned to Landless, and the young man stepped to his side. There were many streaming lights by now, and men saw each other, now clearly, now darkly, as the fitful glare rose and fell. "Now, my man," said the master in a loud, slow voice, "you will point out to me, as you have agreed to do, every man concerned in the plot discovered this morning. And you whom he designates, I command you, in the name of the King, to surrender peaceably. Your hope of pardon depends upon your doing so. Now, Landless!" "John Havisham," said Landless. "Taken redhanded," quoth the master. "Place him here, Woodson, in front of us. When all are in line, I shall have a word to say to them." Havisham advanced with quiet dignity, passing Landless as if unaware of his presence. "I surrender," he said, raising his voice, "because I have no choice. And I advise those of our number here present to do the same. Our plans known, our friends taken, betrayed and deserted by the man in whom we trusted most, whom we called our leader, we have, indeed, no choice." "Win-Grace Porringer," said Landless. The Muggletonian threw up his arms. "Iscariot!" he cried wildly. "Woe, woe to him by whom offenses come! Well for thee, son of Warham Landless, hadst thou never been born! By the power given to the Two Witnesses and to their followers I curse thee! Thou shalt be anathema maranatha! Famine, thirst, and a violent death be thy portion in this life, and in the world to come mayest thou burn forever, howling! Amen and amen!" With a wild laugh he stalked to the side of Havisham, leaving Trail standing alone upon the doorstep. The eyes of the forger met the eyes of Luiz Sebastian in another puzzled inquiry, but the latter shook his head with a frown. Not doubting that his name would be the next called, Trail had already taken a step forward, but Landless's eyes passed him over, and rested upon the face of a man standing near Luiz Sebastian. "John Robert!" he cried. The man, a Baptist preacher suffering under the Act of Uniformity, turned a gentle, reproachful face upon him, and stepping from the crowd, joined himself to Havisham and the Muggletonian. "James Holt!" said Landless. A rustic, standing behind Luiz Sebastian, uttered a dreadful imprecation. "You may hang me and welcome, your Honor," he cried as he took his place, "if you'll just let me see this d--d Judas hung first!" Luiz Sebastian fixed his great eyes upon Landless. "If he calls my name," said the wicked brain behind the blandly smiling face, "shall I, or shall I not--? It is many minutes to moonrise yet." But Landless did not call him. He passed him by as he had passed Trail, and named another rustic at some little distance from the mulatto, then a Fifth Monarchy man, then a veteran of Cromwell's, then the plantation miller and the carpenter, then two more Oliverians, then more peasants. Each man, as his name was called, stepped forward into the lengthening line that faced the master and his party, standing with pistols leveled and cocked; and each man bestowed upon Godfrey Landless a curse, or a look that was bitterer than a curse. "Humfrey Elder!" called Landless. The old butler shot from out the crowd, as though impelled from a catapult. "Your Honor!" he screamed, "the man as says I plot against a Verney, lies! I that fought with your Honor at Naseby! I that you brought from home with you when Mistress Patricia was a baby, and that has poured your wine from that day to this! I plot with these rapscallions and Roundheads! Your Honor, he lies in his throat!" "Fall into line, Humfrey," said his master quietly; "I will hear you out later, but now, obey me." The watchful eyes of Luiz Sebastian were growing very watchful indeed. "Regulus!" cried Landless. Under cover of a burst of protestation from Regulus, the Turk whispered to the mulatto, "By Allah! this is the slave you would not approach! You said he would die for his master." "He is not of them," returned the other. "St. Jago! if I understand it! But what can it matter? The moon will rise in less than an hour." "Dick Whittington!" cried Landless. There was a moment's silence, broken by the mulatto, who had stepped out of line, and now stood facing the party from the great house. "I grieve to say, señors," he said in his silkiest tone, "that the poor Dick was but now taken with the fever, and lies in a stupor within his cabin. To-morrow, perhaps, he will be better, and will answer when you call." "That is your cabin, just beyond you there, is it not?" demanded Landless. "Assuredly," with a quick glance. "And what then?" Landless raised his voice to a shout. "Dick Whittngton!" "Mother of God! what do you mean?" exclaimed the mulatto. "Your voice cannot reach him, deaf and dumb from the fever, lying in his cabin at the far end of the lane." "Dick Whittington!" again loudly called Landless. A cry arose from the crowd behind the mulatto and between him and his cabin. The next instant there broke through them the figure, bound and gagged, of young Dick Whittington. As he rushed past the mulatto, the latter, with a snarl of fury, grappled with him, but animated with the strength of despair, the boy, bound as he was, broke from him and rushed to Landless, at whose feet he dropped in a dead faint. Upon the crowd fell a silence so intense that nature herself seemed to have ceased to breathe. Luiz Sebastian, darting glances here, there, and everywhere, from eyes in which doubt was last growing into certainty, came upon something which told its own tale. The women's cabins were at some distance from the square, and nearer to the great house, and from the one to the other was passing a hurried line of women and children with the under overseer at their head. With the sight vanished the last remnant of doubt from the mind of the mulatto.... Landless saw that he saw; saw the intention with which he slipped out of range of the pistols; saw the wicked light in his face; saw him beckon to the Indian and point to the forest; saw the glistening and rolling eyeballs and the working lips of the throng of slaves who had by imperceptible degrees separated from the whites, and were now massing together at one side of the square; saw the Turk with a knife in his hand; saw Trail edging away from the group before the overseer's cabin--and sprang forward, his powerful figure instinct with determination, the set calm of the face with which he had met Havisham's quiet disdain and the imprecations of the other conspirators, broken up into fire and passion, high and resolved. Blood was upon it still, and upon his arms and half naked breast; his eyes burned; and as he threw up his arm in a gesture of command, he looked the very genius of war, and he seized and held every eye and ear. "Men!" he cried, addressing himself to the line he had called into being. "Havisham, Arnold, Allen, Braxton! we fought in the same cause once, fought for God and the Commonwealth! To-night we will fight again, and together; fight for our lives and for the honor of women! Comrades, I am no traitor! I have not sold you! You have cursed me without cause. Listen! Colonel Verney, will you repeat the oath you swore to me an hour ago?" The master stepped to his side. "I swear," he cried, in his loud, manly voice, "by the faith of a Christian, by the honor of a gentleman, that not one of you whose names have been given by this man, shall in any way suffer by having been privy to this plot. I will so work with the Governor and Council that your bodies shall not be touched, nor your time of service increased. Bygones shall be bygones between us. This applies to all save this man, the head and front of the conspiracy. Him I cannot save. He must pay the penalty, but he shall be the scapegoat for the rest of you. You have my promise, the promise of a man who never breaks his word for good or evil." "In the woods yonder are Indians," cried Landless. "They wait but for moonrise, for the appointed hour, to fall upon the plantation. You called me traitor! It is Luiz Sebastian and Trail who are the traitors, the betrayers! They are leagued with the Indians and with the slaves. Look at them, and see that I speak truth!" The look was sufficient. The dusky mass of slaves had swayed forward with one low, deep, bestial growl. Crouched for the spring, they were yet held in leash by the menace of the pistols, leveled upon them and gleaming in the torchlight, and by the restraining gesture and voice of Luiz Sebastian. In the crowd of servants, now quite separated from the slaves, was noise and confusion, and behind the Turk, standing midway between the parties, was forming a phalanx of villainous white faces--the dissolute, the convict, the refuse of the plantation,--and at his side, suddenly as though sprung from the earth, appeared the evil face and red hair of the murderer of Robert Godwyn. The silence of the Oliverians, stricken dumb by this new turn of affairs, was broken by Havisham's crying to Landless,-- "What are we to do, friend?" "Make for the house and defend it and our lives," answered Landless, "but first I call upon all true men among you yonder to leave those murderers and join yourselves to us." "In the name of the King!" cried the Colonel. "In the name of God!" said Landless. Some seven or eight broke from the opposite throng and with lowered heads ran to them across the open space. Landless stooped, and lifting the senseless figure at his feet swung it over his shoulder. "We are ready, Colonel Verney. Steady, men! Follow me!" He turned to the great house, rising vast and dark, two hundred yards away. A gigantic, coal black Ashantee chief broke from the throng opposite and, uttering his war cry, bounded across the space between them. Another instant and he would have been upon them, and close after him a yelling pack of hell hounds--the overseer's pistol cracked, and the black giant fell dead. A yell arose from the crowd, but they stood irresolute. For firearms, so strictly kept from servants and slaves, so preeminently pertaining to the dominant class, they had a superstitious dread. Four pistols meant four lives picked from the foremost to advance. "Let them go," cried the mulatto, with a taunting laugh. "Let them go! Let them go cage themselves in wooden walls where we will take them all together--rats in a trap. We will wait for the Chickahominies who have guns, señors, and for the Ricahecrians whose scalping knives are very bright. Until moonrise, señors from the great house, and you others who go with them! Mother of God! look well upon it, for it is the last you will ever see!" Fifteen minutes later saw the house of Verney Manor garrisoned by some thirty desperate men. They had entered to find a scene of confusion--the hall and lower rooms filled with frightened women and crying children. Patricia with white cheeks and brilliant eyes had come forward to meet her father, carrying a three days' child in her arms. Beyond her was Betty, bending her sweet, pale face over the mother, caught up from her pallet and carried to the house in the arms of the under overseer. Mistress Lettice was alternately wailing that they were all undone and murdered, and wringing her hands over the obstinacy of Captain Laramore who, rapier in left hand, would stand guard at the door, instead of keeping quiet as the Doctor had said he must. The master's stern command for silence reduced the clamor of women and children to an undertone of lamentation. "We must to work at once," he said, "and apportion our forces. There are about thirty men, are there not, Woodson? I shall take the front with ten; Charles, thou shalt have one side, Woodson the other, and Haines the back. Laramore, thou must let us fight for thee, man, though I know thou findest it a bitter pill. Do you marshal the men, Woodson, and divide them into four parties, one for each face, and tell the women to leave off their whimpering and prepare to load the muskets. Haines, have the arms taken down from the racks and distribute them. Men and women, one and all, you are to remember that you are fighting for your lives and for more than your lives. You know what you have to expect if you are taken." Sir Charles, followed by Landless, the Muggletonian and some three or four others, entered the great room, which, with the master's room, occupied that side of the house allotted to the baronet. The wax candles still burned upon the spinet, and upon the high mantel, and in the middle of the floor lay the overturned chess table. Three of the four windows were closely shuttered, but the fourth was open, and before it stood a graceful figure, looking out into the darkness. Sir Charles strode hurriedly over to it. "Cousin! this is madness! You know not to what danger you may be exposing yourself. Come away!" "I am watching for the moonrise," she said dreamily. "It is very near now. Look at the white glow above the water, and how pale the stars are! How beautiful it is, and how cool the wind upon your forehead! Listen! that was the cry of a jay, surely! and yet why should we hear it at night?" "It is the cry of a jay, sure enough," said the overseer, pausing in his hurried passage through the room, "but it was made by Indian lips." "Come away, for God's sake!" cried the baronet. "Look! there is the moon!" she answered. Above the level of marsh and water appeared a thin line of silver. It thickened, rounded, became a glorious orb. The marshes blanched from black to gray, and across the water, from the dim land to the great silver globe, stretched a long, bright, shimmering path. A knot of women appeared in the doorway, laden with powder-flasks and platters filled with bullets. One, with only a stick wound with faded flowers in her hand, left them and glided to the open window. "Margery!" said Patricia softly. The mad woman, pressing in front of her mistress, looked out into the night and saw the white shining road cutting through the darkness and stretching endlessly away. She threw up her arms with a cry of rapture. "The road to Paradise! the road to Paradise!" An arrow whistled through the window and struck into her bosom--into her heart--the staff dropped from her hand, and she swayed forward and fell at her mistress's feet. The night, so placid, still and beautiful, was rent and in an instant made hideous by a sound so long, loud, and dreadful, that it might have been the shriek of a legion of exultant fiends. It rose to the stars, sunk to the earth and rose again, unearthly, menacing, curdling the blood and turning the heart to stone. "The war-whoop," said Woodson. "Close the window, quick." _ |
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