Salute to Adventurers Part 12

"How goes the Indian menace, Mr. Garvald?" he cried. "You must know,"

and he turned to the company, "that our friend combines commerce with high policy, and shares my apprehensions as to the safety of the dominion."

I could not tell whether he was mocking at me or not. I think he was, for Francis Nicholson's moods were as mutable as the tides. In every word of his there lurked some sour irony.

The company took the speech for satire, and many laughed. One young gentleman, who wore a purple coat and a splendid brocaded vest, laughed very loud.

"A merchant's nerves are delicate things," he said, as he fingered his cravat. "I would have said 'like a woman's,' had I not seen this very day Miss Elspeth's horsemans.h.i.+p." And he bowed to her very neatly.

Now I was never fond of being quizzed, and in that company I could not endure it.

"We have a saying, sir," I said, "that the farmyard fowl does not fear the eagle. The men who look grave just now are not those who live snugly in coast manors, but the outland folk who have to keep their doors with their own hands."

It was a rude speech, and my hard voice and common clothes made it ruder. The gentleman fired in a second, and with blazing eyes asked me if I intended an insult. I was about to say that he could take what meaning he pleased, when an older man broke in with, "Tush, Charles, let the fellow alone. You cannot quarrel with a shopman."

"I thank you, George, for a timely reminder," said my gentleman, and he turned away his head with a motion of sovereign contempt.

"Come, come, sirs," Colonel Beverley cried, "remember the sacred law of hospitality. You are all my guests, and you have a lady here, whose bright eyes should be a balm for controversies."

The Governor had sat with his lips closed and his eyes roving the table. He dearly loved a quarrel, and was minded to use me to bait those whom he liked little.

"What is all this talk about gentility?" he said. "A man is as good as his brains and his right arm, and no better. I am of the creed of the Levellers, who would have a man stand stark before his Maker."

He could not have spoken words better calculated to set the company against me. My host looked glum and disapproving, and all the silken gentlemen murmured. The Virginian cavalier had as pretty a notion of the worth of descent as any Highland land-louper. Indeed, to be honest, I would have controverted the Governor myself, for I have ever held that good blood is a mighty advantage to its possessor.

Suddenly the grave man who sat by Miss Elspeth's side spoke up. By this time I had remembered that he was Doctor James Blair, the lately come commissary of the diocese of London, who represented all that Virginia had in the way of a bishop. He had a shrewd, kind face, like a Scots dominie, and a mouth that shut as tight as the Governor's.

"Your tongue proclaims you my countryman, sir," he said. "Did I hear right that your name was Garvald?"

"Of Auchencairn?" he asked, when I had a.s.sented.

"Of Auchencairn, or what is left of it," I said.

"Then, gentlemen," he said, addressing the company, "I can settle the dispute on the facts, without questioning his Excellency's dogma. Mr.

Garvald is of as good blood as any in Scotland. And that," said he firmly, "means that in the matter of birth he can hold up his head in any company in any Christian land."

I do not think this speech made any man there look on me with greater favour, but it enormously increased my own comfort. I have never felt such a glow of grat.i.tude as then filled my heart to the staid cleric.

That he was of near kin to Miss Elspeth made it tenfold sweeter. I forgot my old clothes and my uncouth looks; I forgot, too, my irritation with the brocaded gentleman. If her kin thought me worthy, I cared not a bodle for the rest of mankind.

Presently we rose from table, and Colonel Beverley summoned us to the Green Parlour, where Miss Elspeth was brewing a dish of chocolate, then a newfangled luxury in the dominion. I would fain have made my escape, for if my appearance was unfit for a dining-hall, it was an outrage in a lady's withdrawing-room. But Doctor Blair came forward to me and shook me warmly by the hand, and was full of gossip about Clydesdale, from which apparently he had been absent these twenty years. "My niece bade me bring you to her," he said. "She, poor child, is a happy exile, but she has now and then an exile's longings. A Scots tongue is pleasant in her ear."

So I perforce had to follow him into a fine room with an oaken floor, whereon lay rich Smyrna rugs and the skins of wild beasts from the wood. There was a prodigious number of soft couches of flowered damask, and little tables inlaid with foreign woods and jeweller's work. 'Twas well enough for your fine gentleman in his buckled shoes and silk stockings to enter such a place, but for myself, in my coa.r.s.e boots, I seemed like a colt in a flower garden. The girl sat by a brazier of charcoal, with the scarlet-coated negro at hand doing her commands. She was so busy at the chocolate making that when her uncle said, "Elspeth, I have brought you Mr. Garvald," she had no hand to give me. She looked up and smiled, and went on with the business, while I stood awkwardly by, the scorn of the a.s.sured gentlemen around me.

By and by she spoke: "You and I seem fated to meet in odd places. First it was at Carnwath in the rain, and then at the Cauldstaneslap in a motley company. Then I think it was in the Tolbooth, Mr. Garvald, when you were very gruff to your deliverer. And now we are both exiles, and once more you step in like a bogle out of the night. Will you taste my chocolate?"

She served me first, and I could see how little the favour was to the liking of her little retinue of courtiers. My silken gentleman, whose name was Grey, broke in on us abruptly.

"What is this story, sir, of Indian dangers? You are new to the country, or you would know that it is the old cry of the landless and the lawless. Every out-at-elbows republican makes it a stick to beat His Majesty."

"Are you a republican, Mr. Garvald?" she asked. "Now that I remember, I have seen you in Whiggamore company."

"Why, no," I said. "I do not meddle with politics. I am a merchant, and am well content with any Government that will protect my trade and my person."

A sudden perversity had taken me to show myself at my most prosaic and unromantic. I think it was the contrast with the glamour of those fine gentlemen. I had neither claim nor desire to be of their company, and to her I could make no pretence.

He laughed scornfully. "Yours is a n.o.ble cause," he said. "But you may sleep peacefully in your bed, sir. Be a.s.sured that there are a thousand gentlemen of Virginia whose swords will leap from their scabbards at a breath of peril, on behalf of their women and their homes. And these,"

he added, taking snuff from a gold box, "are perhaps as potent spurs to action as the whims of a busybody or the gains of a house-keeping trader."

I was determined not to be provoked, so I answered nothing. But Miss Elspeth opened her eyes and smiled sweetly upon the speaker.

"La, Mr. Grey, I protest you are too severe. Busybody--well, it may be.

I have found Mr. Garvald very busy in other folks' affairs. But I do a.s.sure you he is no house-keeper, I have seen him in desperate conflict with savage men, and even with His Majesty's redcoats. If trouble ever comes to Virginia, you will find him, I doubt not, a very bold moss-trooper."

It was the, light, laughing tone I remembered well, but now it did not vex me. Nothing that she could say or do could break the spell that had fallen on my heart, "I pray it may be so," said Mr. Grey as he turned aside.

By this time the Governor had come forward, and I saw that my presence was no longer desired. I wanted to get back to Shalah and solitude. The cold bed on the sh.o.r.e would be warmed for me by happy dreams. So I found my host, and thanked him for my entertainment. He gave me good-evening hastily, as if he were glad to be rid of me.

At the hall door some one tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to find my silken cavalier.

"It seems you are a gentleman, sir," he said, "so I desire a word with you. Your manners at table deserved a whipping, but I will condescend to forget them. But a second offence shall be duly punished." He spoke in a high, lisping voice, which was the latest London importation.

I looked him square in the eyes. He was maybe an inch taller than me, a handsome fellow, with a flushed, petulant face and an overweening pride in his arched brows.

"By all means let us understand each other," I said. "I have no wish to quarrel with you. Go your way and I will go mine, and there need be no trouble."

"That is precisely the point," said he. "I do not choose that your way should take you again to the side of Miss Elspeth Blair. If it does, we shall quarrel."

It was the height of flattery. At last I had found a fine gentleman who did me the honour to regard me with jealous eyes. I laughed loudly with delight.

He turned and strolled back to the company. Still laughing, I pa.s.sed from the house, lit my lantern, and plunged into the sombre woods.

CHAPTER XI.

GRAVITY OUT OF BED.

A week later I had a visit from old Mercer. He came to my house in the evening just after the closing of the store. First of all, he paid out to me the gold I had lost from my s.h.i.+p at Accomac, with all the gravity in the world, as if it had been an ordinary merchant's bargain. Then he produced some papers, and putting on big horn spectacles, proceeded to instruct me in them. They were lists, fuller than those I had already got, of men up and down the country whom Lawrence trusted. Some I had met, many I knew of, but two or three gave me a start. There was a planter in Henricus who had treated me like dirt, and some names from Ess.e.x county that I did not expect. Especially there were several in James Town itself--one a lawyer body I had thought the obedient serf of the London merchants, one the schoolmaster, and another a drunken skipper of a river boat. But what struck me most was the name of Colonel Beverley.

"Are you sure of all these?" I asked.

"Sure as death," he said. "I'm not saying that they're all friends of yours, Mr. Garvald. Ye've trampled on a good wheen toes since you came to these parts. But they're all men to ride the ford with, if that should come which we ken of."

Some of the men on the list were poor settlers, and it was our business to equip them with horse and gun. That was to be my special duty--that and the establis.h.i.+ng of means by which they could be summoned quickly.

With the first Mercer could help me, for he had his hand on all the lines of the smuggling business, and there were a dozen ports on the coast where he could land arms. Horses were an easy matter, requiring only the doling out of money. But the summoning business was to be my particular care. I could go about the country in my ordinary way of trade without exciting suspicion, and my house was to be the rendezvous of every man on the list who wanted news or guidance.

"Can ye trust your men?" Mercer asked, and I replied that Faulkner was as staunch as cold steel, and that he had picked the others.