Prisoners of Hope Part 11

"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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.dwyn, that you would not have been sorry had this young man proclaimed his discovery in full conclave," said Carrington with a keen glance.

G.o.dwyn'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 G.o.dwyn, servant to Colonel Verney, 'tis simply to employ him (with his master's consent) in the mending of nets, or to pa.s.s an idle hour reading Plato, Robert G.o.dwyn having been a scholar of note at home."

"Certainly," said Landless, answering the smile. "Major Carrington and Master G.o.dwyn 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 G.o.dwyn. "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 gra.s.s, 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?"

G.o.dwyn 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 ap.r.o.n with midsummer flowers, sang with a careless pa.s.sion, 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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, G.o.dfrey Landless, who sat at a table covered with papers, busily writing.

She started violently, and the ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d-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 doesn'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 ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.s, 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.