Prisoners of Hope Part 35

"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 d.i.c.k 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 G.o.d! 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 G.o.d! 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, s.h.i.+ning dimly across a long expanse of black marsh and water, and coming from Captain Laramore's s.h.i.+p, anch.o.r.ed 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 G.o.dfrey 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed him by as he had pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ked; and each man bestowed upon G.o.dfrey 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."

"d.i.c.k 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, senors," he said in his silkiest tone, "that the poor d.i.c.k 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.

"a.s.suredly," with a quick glance. "And what then?"

Landless raised his voice to a shout. "d.i.c.k Whittngton!"

"Mother of G.o.d! 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."

"d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sing 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s and the working lips of the throng of slaves who had by imperceptible degrees separated from the whites, and were now ma.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion, 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 G.o.d 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?"