"Gentle herdsman, tell to me
Of courtesy I thee pray,
Unto the town of Walsingham,
Which is the right and ready way?
"Unto the town of Walsingham
The way is hard for to be gone,
And very crooked are those paths
For you to find out all alone."
The notes were wild and plaintive, and sounded sadly through the
gathering dusk. A figure flitted towards them between the shadowy tree
trunks.
"It is Mad Margery," said Patricia.
"And who is Mad Margery?" asked Sir Charles.
"No one knows, cousin. She does not know herself. Ten years ago a ship
came in with servants, and she was on it. She was mad then. The
captain could give no account of her, save that when, the day after
sailing, he came to count the servants, he found one more than there
should have been, and that one a woman, stupid from drugs. She had been
spirited on board the ship, that was all he could say. It's a common
occurrence, as you know. She never came to herself,--has always been
what she is now. She was sold to a small planter, and cruelly treated
by him. After a time my father heard her story and bought her from her
master. She has been with us ever since. Her term of service is long
out; but there is nothing that could drive her from this plantation.
She wanders about as she pleases, and has a cabin in the woods yonder;
for she will not live in the quarters. They say that she is a white
witch; and the Indians, who reverence the mad, lay maize and venison at
her door."
The voice, shrill and sweet, rang out close at hand.
"Thy years are young, thy face is fair,
Thy wits are weak, thy thoughts are green,
Time hath not given thee leave as yet,
For to commit so great a sin."
"Margery!" called Patricia softly.
The woman came towards them with a peculiar gliding step, swift and
stealthy. Within a pace or two of them she stopped, and asked, "Who
called me?" in a voice that seemed to come from far away. She was not
old, and might once have been beautiful.
"I called you, Margery," said Patricia gently. "Sit down beside us, and
tell us what you have been doing."
The woman came and sat herself down at Patricia's feet. She carried a
stick, or light pole, wound with thick strings of wild hops, which she
laid on the ground. Taking one of the wreaths from around it, she
dropped the pale green mass into Patricia's lap.
"Take it," she said. "They are flowers I gathered in Paradise, long
ago. They wither in this air; but if you fan them with your sighs, and
water them with your tears, they will revive.... Paradise is a long way
from here. I have been seeking the road all day; but I have not found
it yet. I think it must lie near Bristol Town, Bristol Town, Bristol
Town."
Her voice died away in a long sigh, and she sat plucking at the fragrant
blooms.
Patricia said softly, "She talks much of Bristol Town, and she is always
seeking the road to Paradise. I think that once some one must have said
to her, 'We will meet in Paradise.'"
"I know little of Paradise, Margery," said Sir Charles, good-naturedly;
"but Bristol Town is many leagues from here, across the great ocean."
"Yes, I know. It lieth in the rising of the sun. I have never seen it
except in my dreams. But it is a beautiful place--not like this world
of trees. The church bells are ever ringing there, ... and the children
sing in the streets. It is all fair, and smiling and beautiful, all but
one spot, one black, black, black spot. I will tell you." She sunk her
voice to a whisper and looked fearfully around. "The mouth of the Pit
is there, the Bottomless Pit that the Preacher tells about. It is a
small room, dark, dark, ... and there is a heavy smell in the air, ...
and there are fiends with black cloth over their faces. They hold a
draught of hell to your mouth, and they make you drink it; ... it burns,
burns. And then you go down, down, down, into everlasting blackness."
She broke off, and shuddered violently, then burst into eldritch
laughter.
"Shall I tell you what I found just now while I was looking for
Paradise?"
"Yes," said Patricia.
"A breaking heart."
"A breaking heart!"
Margery nodded. "Yes," she said. "I thought it would surprise you. I
find many things, looking for Paradise. The other day I found a brown
pixie sitting beneath a mushroom, and he told me curious things. But a
breaking heart is different. I know all about it, for once upon a time
my heart broke; but mine was soft and easy to break. It was as soft,
and weak as a baby's wrist, a little, tender, helpless thing, you know,
that melts under your kisses. But this heart that I found will take a
long time to break. Proud anger will strengthen it at first; but one
string will snap, and then another, and another, until, at last--" she
swept her arms abroad with a wild and desolate gesture.
"What does she mean?" asked Sir Charles.
"I do not know," answered Patricia.
Margery rose and took up her leafy staff,
"Come," she said. "Come and see the breaking heart."
"O Patricia!" cried Betty, "do not go with her!"
"Why not?" asked Patricia resolutely. "Come, cousin, let us find out
what she means. We will go with you, Margery; but you must not take us
far. It grows late."
Margery laughed weirdly. "It is never late for Margery. There is a
star far up in heaven that is sorry for Margery, and it shines for her,
bright, bright, all night long, that she may not miss the road to
Paradise."
She glided in front of them, and moved rapidly down the dim alley of
trees, her feet seeming scarce to touch the short grass, and the long
green wreaths, stirred by the wind, coiling and uncoiling around her
staff like serpents. Patricia, with Betty and Sir Charles, followed her
closely. She led them out of the mulberry grove, through a small
vineyard, and into a patch of corn, beyond which could be seen the gleam
of water, faintly pink from the faded sunset.
"She is taking us towards the quarters!" exclaimed Patricia. "Margery!
Margery!"
But Margery held on, moving swiftly through the waist-deep corn. Betty
looked down with a little sigh at her dainty shoes, which were suffering
by their contact with the dew-laden leaves of pumpkins and macocks. Sir
Charles put aside the long corn blades with his cane, and so made a way
for the girls. He felt mildly curious and somewhat bored.
Suddenly they emerged upon the banks of the inlet, within a hundred
yards of the quarters. Patricia would have spoken, but Margery put her
finger to her lips and flitted on towards the row of cabins.
Before them stretched a long, narrow lane, sandy and barren, with a
pine-tree rising here and there. Rude cabins, windowless and with mud
chimneys, faced each other across the lane. Half way down was an open
space, or small square, in the centre of which stood a dead tree with a
board nailed across its trunk at about a man's height from the ground.
In either end of the board was cut a round hole big enough for a man's
hand to be squeezed through, and above hung a heavy stick with leathern
thongs tied to it, the whole forming a pillory and whipping-post, rude,
but satisfactory.
It was almost dark. The larger stars had come out, and the fireflies
began to sparkle restlessly. The wind sighed in the pines, and a strong
salt smell came from the sea. Overhead a whippoorwill uttered its
mournful cry.
The long day's work, from sunrise to sunset, was over, and the
population of the quarter had drifted in from the fields of tobacco and
maize, the boats, the carpenter's shop, the forge, the mill, the
stables, and barns. Hard-earned rest was theirs, and they were prepared
to enjoy it. It was supper-time. In the square a great fire of
brush-wood had been kindled, and around it squatted a ring of negroes,
busy with bowls of loblolly and great chunks of corn bread. They
chattered like monkeys, and one who had finished his mess raised a chant
in which one note was a yell of triumph, the next a long-drawn plaintive
wail. The rich barbaric voice filled the night. A figure, rising,
tossed aside an empty bowl, and began to dance in the red fire-light.
The white men ate at their cabin doors, sitting upon logs of wood, or in
groups of three or four messed at tables made by stretching planks from
one tree-stump to another. It was meat-day; and they, too, made merry.
From the women's cabins also came shrill laughter. Snatches of song
arose, altercations that suddenly began and as suddenly ceased, a babel
of voices in many fashions of speech. Broad Yorkshire contended with
the thin nasal tones of the cockney; the man from the banks of the Tweed
thrust cautious sarcasms at the man from Galway. A mulatto, the color
of pale amber, spoke sonorous Spanish to an olive-hued piece of
drift-wood from Florida. An Indian indulged in a monologue in a tongue
of a far-away tribe of the Blue Mountains.
The glare from the fire and from flaring pine-knots played fitfully over
the motley throng, now bringing out in strong relief some one face or
figure, then plunging it into profoundest shadow. It burnished the high
forehead and scalp lock of the Indian, and made to gleam intensely the
gold earring in the ear of the mulatto. The scarlet cloth wound about
the head of a Turk seemed to turn to actual flame. Under the baleful
light vacant faces of dully honest English rustics became malignant,
while the negro, dancing with long, outstretched arms and uncouth
swayings to and fro, appeared a mirthful fiend.
The three gentlefolk and their mad conductress gazed from out the shadow
and at a safe distance. Sir Charles Carew, a man of taste, felt strong
artistic pleasure in the Rembrandtesque scene before him--the leaping
light, the weird shadows, resolving themselves into figures posed with
savage freedom, the dancing satyr, the sombre pines above, and, beyond
the pines, the stillness of the stars. Betty drew a little shuddering
breath, and her hand went to clasp Patricia's. The latter was looking
steadily upward at the slender crescent moon.
"Do not look, Betty," she said quietly. "I do not. It is a horror to
me--a horror. I am going back," she said, turning.
But she had reckoned without Margery, who caught her by the arm.
"Come," she said imperiously. "Come and see the breaking heart!"
Patricia hesitated, then yielded to curiosity and the insistent pressure
of the skeleton fingers.
The cabins nearest them were deserted, their occupants having joined
themselves to the groups further down the lane where the firelight beat
strongest and the torches were more numerous. With no more sound than a
moth would make, flitting through the dusk, the mad woman led them to
the outermost of these cabins. Within five paces of the door she
stopped and pointed a long forefinger.
"The breaking heart!" she said in a triumphant whisper.
A man lay, face downwards, in the coarse and scanty grass. One arm was
bent beneath his forehead, the other was outstretched, the hand
clenched. It was the attitude of one who has flung himself down in dumb,
despairing misery. As they looked, he gave a long gasping sob that
shook his whole frame, then lay quiet.
A burst of revelry came down the lane. The man raised his head
impatiently, then let it drop again upon his arm.
Patricia turned and walked quickly back the way they had come. Betty
and Sir Charles followed her; Margery, her whim gratified, had vanished
into the darkness of the pines.
No one spoke until they were again amidst the wet and rustling corn.
Then said Betty with tears in her voice, "O Patricia, darling! there is
so much misery in the world, fair and peaceful as it looks to-night.
That poor man!"
"That 'poor man,' Betty," answered Patricia in a hard voice, "is a
criminal, a felon, guilty of some dreadful, sordid thing, a gaol-bird
reclaimed from the gallows and sent here to pollute the air we breathe."
"It was the convict, Landless, was it not?" asked Sir Charles.
"Yes."
"But, Patricia," said the gentle Betty, "whatever he may have done, he
is wretched now."
"He has sowed the wind; let him reap the whirlwind," said Patricia
steadily.
They went on to the house and into the great room where the myrtle
candles were burning softly, the dimity curtains shutting out the night.
Mrs. Lettice was at the spinet, with Captain Laramore to turn the leaves
of her song book, and the Governor, with the chess table out and the
pieces in battle array, awaited (he said) the arrival of the Princess of
the Castle in the Air.
*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 't was 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."
*CHAPTER VI*
*THE HUT ON THE MARSH*
It was shortly after midnight when the two servants slipped along the
inlet, silently and warily, and keeping their boat well under the shore.
It was a crazy affair, barely large enough for two, and requiring
constant bailing. When they had made half a mile from the quarters, the
Muggletonian, who rowed, turned the boat's head across the inlet, and
ran into a very narrow creek that wound in many doubles through the
marshes. They entered it, made the first turn, and the broad bosom of
the inlet, lit by a low, crimson moon, was as if it had never been. On
every side high marsh grass soughed in the night wind,--plains of
blackness with the red moon rising from them. The tide was low. So
close were the banks of wet, black earth, that they heard the crabs
scuttling down them, and Porringer made a jab with his pole at a great
sheepshead lying _perdu_ alongside. The water broke before them into
spangles, glittering phosphorescent ripples. A school of small fish,
disturbed by the oars, rushed past them, leaping from the water with
silver flashes. A turtle plunged sullenly. From the grass above came
the sleepy cry of marsh hens, and once a great white heron rose like a
ghost across their path. It flapped its wings and sailed away with a
scream of wrath.
The boat had wound its tortuous way for many minutes before Porringer
said in a low voice: "We can speak safely now. There is nothing human
moving on these flats unless the witch, Margery, is abroad. Cursed may
she be, and cursed those who give her shelter and food and raiment and
lay offerings at her door, for surely it is written, 'Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live.'"
"Is there anything a Muggletonian will not curse?" asked Landless.
"Yea," answered the other complacently. "There are ourselves, the salt
of the earth. There are a thousand or more of us."
"And the remainder of the inhabitants of the earth are reprobate and
doomed?"
"Yea, verily, they shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up
will they be burned in the fire."
"Then why have you to do with me, and with the man to whom we are
going?"
"Because it is written: 'Make ye friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness;' and moreover there be degrees even in hell fire. I do
not place you, who have some inkling of the truth, nor the Independents
and Fifth Monarchy men (as for the Quakers they shall be utterly damned)
in the furnace seven times heated which is reserved for the bigoted and
bloody Prelatists who rule the land, swearing strange oaths, foining
with the sword, and delighting in vain apparel; keeping their feast days
and their new moons and their solemn festivals. They are the rejoicing
city that dwells carelessly, that says in her heart, 'I am, and there is
none beside me.' The day cometh when they shall be broken as the
breaking of a potter's vessel, yea, they shall be violently tossed like
a ball into a far country."
Here they struck a snag, well-nigh capsizing the boat. When she
righted, and Landless had bailed her out with a gourd, they proceeded in
silence. Landless was in no mood for speech. He did not know where they
were going, nor for what purpose, nor did he greatly care. He meant to
escape, and that as soon as his strength should be recovered and he
could obtain some knowledge of the country, and he meant to take no one
into his counsel, not the Muggletonian, whose own attempts had ended so
disastrously, nor the 'man who gave good advice.' As to this midnight
expedition he was largely indifferent. But it was something to escape
from the stifling atmosphere of the cabin where he had tossed from side
to side, listening to the heavy breathing of the convict, Turk, and
peasant lad with whom he was quartered, to the silver peace of
moon-flooded marsh and lapping water.
They made another turn, and in front of them shone out a light, gleaming
dully like a will-of-the-wisp. It looked close at hand, but the creek
turned upon itself, coiled and writhed through the marsh, and trebled
the distance.
The Muggletonian rested on his oar, and turned to Landless.
"Yonder is our bourne," he said gravely. "But I have a word to say to
you, friend, before we reach it. If, to curry favor with the
uncircumcised Philistines who set themselves over us, thou speakest of
aught thou mayest see or hear there to-night, may the Lord wither thy
tongue within thy mouth, may he smite thee with blindness, may he bring
thee quick into the pit! And if not the Lord, then will I, Win-Grace
Porringer, rise and smite thee!"
"You may spare your invectives," said Landless coldly. "I am no
traitor."
"Nay, friend," said the other in a milder tone. "I thought it not of
thee, or I had not brought thee thither."
He shoved the nose of the boat into the shore, and caught at a stake,
rising, water-soaked and rotten, from below the bank. Landless threw
him the looped end of a rope, and together they made the boat fast, then
scrambled up the three feet of fat, sliding earth to the level above
where the ground was dry, none but the highest of tides ever reaching
it. Fifty yards away rose a low hut. It stood close to another bend in
the creek, and before it were several boats, tied to stakes, and softly
rubbing their sides together. The hut had no window, but there were
interstices between the logs through which the light gleamed redly.
When the two men had reached it, the Muggletonian knocked upon the heavy
door, after a peculiar fashion, striking it four times in all. There
was a shuffling sound within, and (Landless thought) two voices ceased
speaking. Then some one said in a low voice and close to the door: "Who
is it?"
"The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," answered the Muggletonian.
A bar fell from the door, and it swung slowly inwards.
"Enter, friends," said a quiet voice. Landless, stooping his head,
crossed the threshold, and found himself in the presence of a man with a
high, white forehead and a grave, sweet face, who, leaning on a stick,
and dragging one foot behind him, limped back to the settle from which
he had risen, and fell to work upon a broken net as calmly as if he were
alone. Besides themselves he was the only inmate of the room.
A pine torch, stuck into a cleft in the table, cast a red and flickering
light over a rude interior, furnished with the table, the settle, a
chest and a straw pallet. From the walls and rafters hung nets, torn or
mended. In one corner was a great heap of dingy sail, in another a sheaf
of oars, and a third was wholly in darkness. Lying about the earthen
floor were several small casks to which the man motioned as seats.
Leaving Landless near the door, Win-Grace Porringer dragged a keg to the
side of the settle, and sitting down upon it, approached his death mask
of a face close to the face of the mender of nets, and commenced a
whispered conversation. To Landless, awaiting rather listlessly the
outcome of this nocturnal adventure, came now and then a broken
sentence. "He hath not the look of a criminal, but--" "Of Puritan
breeding, sayest thou?" "We need young blood." Then after prolonged
whispering, "No traitor, at least."
At length the Muggletonian arose and came towards Landless. "My friend
would speak with you alone," he said, "I will stand guard outside." He
went out, closing the door behind him.
The mender of nets beckoned Landless. "Will you come nearer?" he asked
in a quiet refined voice that was not without a ring of power. "As you
see, I am lame, and I cannot move without pain."
Landless came and sat down beside the table, resting his elbow upon the
wood, and his chin upon his hand. The mender of nets put down his work,
and the two measured each other in silence.
Landless saw a man of middle age who looked like a scholar, but who
might have been a soldier; a man with a certain strong, bright sweetness
of look in a spare, worn face, and underlying the sweetness a still and
deadly determination. The mender of nets saw, in his turn, a figure
lithe and straight as an Indian's, a well-poised head, and a handsome
face set in one fixed expression of proud endurance. A determined face,
too, with dark, resolute eyes and strong mouth, the face of a man who
has done and suffered much, and who knows that he will both do and
suffer more.
"I am told," said the mender of nets, "that you are newly come to the
plantations."
"I was brought by the ship God-Speed a month ago."
"You did not come as an indented servant?"