"Listen," he said earnestly, dragging himself closer to her. "We can be
but a very few leagues from the falls, still fewer from the Indian
villages above them. Reach one of those villages and you are safe from
these devils at least. We have kept the start of them. They may not
reach this spot for several hours, and when they come, I will keep them
here, God helping me, for more hours than one. This place is a natural
fortress, and they have no guns. They will not take me until my
ammunition is exhausted, and you know there is store of bullets and
powder. They will think that you are with me, hidden behind the
rocks--"
"And I shall be with you!" she cried vehemently.
"No, no. You must go through this pass in the cliff to the right of us,
and thence down the river with all your speed. Please God, to-morrow
will find you in safety. It is the only way. To stay here is to fall
into their hands. And you must not delay. You must go at once."
"And you--" she said in a whisper.
"What does it matter if I lose my life to-day instead of a few weeks
hence? I grieve for this," with a glance at his foot, "because it keeps
me from being with you, from guarding you into perfect safety. Otherwise
it does not matter. You lose time, madam."
She stood with heaving bosom and foot tapping the ground, an expression
that he could not read in her wonderful eyes. "I am not going," she
said at last.
*CHAPTER XXXV*
*THE BOAT THAT WAS NOT*
"You will not go!" cried Landless.
"No, I will not!" she answered passionately. "Why should you think such
a thing of me? See! we have been together, you and I, for long weeks!
You have been my faithful guide, my faithful protector. Over and over
again you have saved my life. And now, now when you are the helpless
one, when it is through me that you lie there helpless, when it is
through me that you are in this dreadful forest at all, you tell me to
go! to leave you to the fate I have brought upon you! to save myself! I
will not save myself! But the other day it was dishonor in you to leave
me below the falls--almost in safety. Mine the dishonor if I do what
you bid me do!"
"Madam, madam, it is not with women as with men!"
"I care not for women! I care for myself. Never, never, will I leave,
helpless and wounded, the man who dies for me!"
"Upon my knees I implore you!" Landless cried in desperation. "You
cannot save me, you cannot help me. It is you that would make the
bitterness of my fate. Let me die believing that you have escaped these
fiends, and then, do what they will to me, I shall die happy, blessing
with my last breath the generous woman who lets me give--how proudly and
gladly she will never know--my worthless life in exchange for hers, so
young, bright, innocent. Go, go, before it is too late!"
He dragged himself a foot nearer, and grasping the hem of her dress,
pressed it to his lips. "Good-bye," he said with a faint smile. "Keep
behind the rocks for some distance, then follow the river. Think kindly
of me. Good-bye."
"It is too late," she said. "I can see the river through this crack
between the rocks. One of those two canoes has just passed, going down
the river. In it were seven Ricahecrians and the mulatto. I saw him
quite plainly, for they row close to the bank with their faces turned to
the woods. They will land at some point below this and search for our
trail. When they do not find it, they will know that we are between
them and the rest of the band, and they will come upon us from behind.
If I go now, it will be to meet them. Shall I go?"
"No, no," groaned Landless. "It is too late. God help you! I cannot."
The large tears gathered in her eyes and fell over her white cheeks.
"Oh, why," she said plaintively, "why did He let you hurt yourself just
now?" She turned her face to the rock against which she was standing,
and hiding it in her arm, broke into a low sobbing. It went to the
heart of the man at her feet to hear her.
Presently the weeping ceased. She drew a long tremulous sigh, and
dashed the tears from her eyes. Her hands went up to her disheveled hair
in a little involuntary, feminine gesture, and she looked at him with a
wan smile.
"I did not mean to be so cowardly," she said simply. "I will be brave
now."
"You are the bravest woman in the world," he answered.
Below them waved the painted forest flaunting triumphant banners of
crimson and gold. A strong south wind was blowing, and it brought to
them a sound as of the whispering of many voices. The shining river,
too, murmured to its reeds and pebbles, and in the air was the dull
whirr of wings as the vast flocks of wild fowl rose like dark smoke from
the water, or, skimming along its surface, broke it into myriad diamond
sprays. Around the horizon towered heaped-up masses of cloud--Ossa
piled on Pelion--fantastic Jack-and-the-Beanstalk castles, built high
above the world, with rampart and turret and bastion of pearl and coral.
Above rose the sky intensely blue and calm.
All the wealth, the warmth and loveliness of the world they were about
to leave flowed over the souls of the doomed pair. In their hearts they
each said farewell to it forever. Patricia stood with uplifted face and
clear eyes, looking deep into the azure heaven. "I am trying to think,"
she said, "that death is not so bitter after all. To-day is
beautiful--but ours will be a fairer morrow! After to-day we will never
be tired, or fear, or be in danger any more. I am not afraid to die; but
ah! if it could only come to us now, swiftly, silently, out of the blue
yonder; if we could go without the blood--the horror--" she broke off
shuddering. Her eyes closed and she rested her head against the rock.
Landless watched the beautiful, pale face, the quivering eyelids, the
coral underlip drawn between the pearly teeth, in a passion of pity and
despair. Horrid visions of torture flashed through his brain; he saw
the delicate limbs writhing, heard the agonized screams.... If he
killed the mulatto, it might come to that; if the mulatto lived, he knew
that she would kill herself. He had given her the knife that had been
Monakatocka's, and she had it now, hidden in her bosom.... The glory of
the autumn day darkened and went out, the bitter waters of affliction
surged over him, an immeasurable sea; it seemed to him that until then
he had never suffered. A cold sweat broke out upon him, and with an
inarticulate cry of rage and despair he struck at his wounded foot as at
a deadly foe. The girl cried out at the sound of the blow.
"Oh, don't, don't! What are you doing? You have loosened the bandage,
and it is bleeding afresh."
Despite his effort to prevent her she readjusted the kerchief which she
had wound about the torn and crushed foot, very carefully and tenderly.
"It must hurt you very much," she said pityingly.
He took the little ministering hands in his and kissed them. "Oh,
madam, madam!" he groaned. "God knows I would shed every drop of my
blood a thousand times to save you. Death to me is nothing, nor life so
fair that I should care to keep it. The grave is a less dreadful prison
than those on earth, and I think to find in God a more merciful Judge.
But you--so young and beautiful, with friends, love--"
She stopped him with a gesture full of dignity and sweetness. "That
life is gone forever,--it is thousands of miles and ages on ages away.
It is a world more distant than the stars, and we are nearer to Heaven
than to it.... It is strange to think how we have drifted, you and I,
to this rock. A year ago we had never seen each other's faces, had
never heard each other's names, and yet you were coming to this rock
from prison and over seas, and I was coming to meet you.... And it is
our death place, and we will die together, and to-morrow maybe the
little birds will cover us with leaves as they did the children in the
story. They were brother and sister.... When our time comes I will not
be afraid, for I will be with you ... my brother."
Landless covered his face with his hands.
The shadows grew longer and the cloud castles began to flush rosily,
though the sun still rode above the tree tops. A purple light filled
the aisles of the forest, through which a herd of deer, making for some
accustomed lick, passed like a phantom troop. They vanished, and from
out the stillness of the glades came the sudden, startled barking of a
fox. A shadow darted across a sunlit alley from gloom to gloom, paused
on the outskirts of the wood below the crags while one might count ten,
then turned and flitted back into the darkness from whence it came.
They beneath the crags did not see it.
Suddenly Landless raised his head. Upon his face was the look of one
who has come through much doubt and anguish of spirit to an immutable
resolve. He looked to the priming of his gun and laid it upon the rock
beside him, together with his powderhorn and pouch of bullets. Raising
himself to his knees he gazed long and intently into the forest below.
There was no sign of danger. On the checkered ground beneath two mighty
oaks squirrels were playing together like frolicsome kittens, and
through the clear air came the tapping of a woodpecker. The forest was
silent as to the shadow that had flitted through it. It can keep a
secret very well.
Landless sank back against the rock. He had lost much blood, and that
and the pain of his mangled foot turned him faint and sick for minutes
at a time. He clenched his teeth and forced back the deadly faintness,
then turned to the woman who stood beside him, her hands clasped before
her, her eyes following the declining sun, her lips sometimes set in
mournful curves, sometimes murmuring broken and inaudible words of
prayer. He called her twice before she answered, turning to him with
eyes of feverish splendor which saw and yet saw not. "What is it?" she
asked dreamily.
"Come back to earth, madam," he said. "There is that that I wish to say
to you. Listen to me kindly and pitifully, as to a dying man."
"I am listening," she answered. "What is it?"
"It is this, madam: I love you. For God's sake don't turn away! Oh, I
know that I should have been strong to the end, that I should not vex
you thus! It is the coward's part I play, perhaps, but I must speak! I
cannot die without. I love you, I love you, I love you!"
His voice rose into a cry; in it rang long repressed passion, hopeless
adoration, fierce joy in having broken the bonds of silence. He spoke
rapidly, thickly, with a stammering tongue, now throwing out his hands
in passionate appeal, now crushing between his fingers the dried moss
and twigs with which the ground was strewn. "I loved you the day I
first saw you. I have loved you ever since. I love you now. My God!
how I love you! Die for you? I would die for you ten thousand times!
I would live for you! Oh, the day I first saw you! I was in hell and I
looked at you as lost Dives might have looked at the angel on the other
side of the gulf.... I never thought to tell you this. I know that
never, never, never.... But this is the day of our death. In a few
hours we shall be gone. Do not leave the world in anger with me. Say
that you pity, understand, forgive.... Speak to me, madam!"
The sun sank lower and the shadows lengthened and deepened, and still
Patricia stood silent with uplifted and averted face, and fingers
tightly locked together. With a moan of mortal weakness Landless
dragged himself nearer until he touched with his forehead the low
pedestal of rock upon which she stood. "I understand," he said quietly.
"After all, there is nothing to be said, is there? Try to forget
my--madness. Think of it, if you will, as the raving of one at death's
door. Let it be as it was between us."
Patricia turned--her beautiful face transfigured. Roses bloomed in her
cheeks, her eyes were fathomless wells of splendor, an exquisite smile
played about her lips; with her nimbus of golden hair she looked a rapt
mediaeval saint. Her slender figure swayed towards Landless, and when
she spoke her voice was like the tone of a violin, soft, rich,
caressing, tremulous.
"There was no boat," she said.
"No boat!" he cried. "What do you mean?"
"The canoe going down the river. I told you that it held seven Indians
and the mulatto. I lied to you. There were no Indians, no mulatto, no
canoe. The shadows of the clouds have been upon the river, and the wild
fowl, and once a fish-hawk plunged. I have seen nothing else."
Landless gazed at her with staring eyeballs. "You have thrown away your
life," he said at last in a voice that did not seem his own.
"Yes, I have thrown away my life."
"But why--why--"
The rich color surged over her face and neck. She swayed towards him
with the grace of a wind-bowed lily, her breath fanning his forehead,
and her hand touching his, softly, flutteringly, like a young bird.
"Can you not guess why?" she said with an enchanting smile.
All the anguish of a little while back, all the terror of the fate that
hung over her, all the white calm of despair was gone. The horror that
moved nearer and nearer, moment by moment, through the painted forest,
was forgotten. She looked at him shyly from under her long lashes and
with another wonderful blush.
Landless gazed at her, comprehension slowly dawning in his eyes. For
five minutes there was a silence as of the dead beneath the crags. Then
with a great cry he caught her hands in his and drew her towards him.
"Is it?" he cried.
"Yes," she answered with laughter trembling on her lips. "Death hath
enfranchised us, you and I. Give me my betrothal kiss, my only love."
For them one moment of Paradise, of bliss ineffable and supreme. The
next, the crags behind them rang to the sound of the war whoop.
*CHAPTER XXXVI*
*THE LAST FIGHT*
Out from the forest rushed the remnant of that band which had smoked the
peace pipe with the Governor one sunny afternoon on the banks of the
Pamunkey. Tall and large of limb, painted with all fantastic and
ghastly devices, and decorated with hideous mementoes of nameless deeds;
with the lust of blood written large in every fierce lineament and dark
and rolling eye; with raised hands grasping knife and tomahawk, and lips
uttering cries that seemed not of earth--a more appalling vision could
not have issued from out the beautiful, treacherous forest, a more
crashing discord have come into the music of the golden evening.
For the two in their rocky fortress beneath the crags the apparition had
no terrors. All the pain, the anguish, the hopelessness of the world
was passing from them--the cry that swelled through the forest was its
knell. They smiled to hear it, and with raised faces looked beyond the
many-tinted evening skies into clear spaces where Love was all. The
intoxication of the moment when hidden and despairing love became love
triumphant and acknowledged abode with them. In the very grasp of death
ineffable bliss possessed them. Their countenances changed; the lines
of care and pain, the marks of tears, were all gone, and the beauty of
the happy soul shone out. For that brief space of time transcendent
youth and loveliness was theirs. About them, as about the sun now
sinking behind the low hills, there breathed a glory, a dying splendor
as bright as it was fleeting. They felt, too, a lightness and gaiety of
spirit--they had drunk of the nectar of the gods, and no leaden weight
of care, no heavy sorrow, could ever touch them, ever drag them down
again to the sad earth.
"You are beautiful," said Landless, gazing at her, even in the act of
raising his gun to his shoulder; "as beautiful as you were the day I
first saw you. I hear the drone of the bees in the vines at Verney
Manor. I smell the roses. I look up and see the Rose of the World. My
eyes were dazzled then, are dazzled now, my Rose of the World."
"That day I wore brocade and lace, and there were pearls around my
throat," she said with a laugh of pure delight. "There was rouge upon
my cheeks, too, sir, and my eyes were darkened. To-day I go a beggar
maid, in rags, burnt by the sun--"
"The nut-brown maid," he said.
"Ay," she answered, "the nut-brown maid--'For in my mind of all
mankind'--you may e'en finish it yourself, sir."
The Ricahecrians had paused at the foot of the ascent to hold a council.
It was soon over. With another burst of cries they rushed up the steep
and upon the rocks, behind which were hidden their victims. Landless,
kneeling to one side of the gap between the boulders by which he and
Patricia had entered, fired, and the foremost of the savages threw up
his arms, uttered a dreadful cry, and fell across the path of his
fellows. For one moment the rush was checked, the next on they came,
yelling furiously and brandishing their weapons. Landless fired and
missed, fired again and pierced the thigh of a gigantic warrior,
bringing him crashing to the ground. The line wavered, paused, then
turning, swept to one side and so passed out of sight.
"They have found this pass too formidable," said Landless. "They will
try now to force an entrance from the side. Do you watch the front, my
queen, while I face them, coming over the rocks."
"I looked only at the mulatto," she said. "The others are shadows to
me."
"His time is come," said Landless. "Do not fear him, sweetheart."
"I fear not," she answered. "I have the perfect love."
Along the top of a tall boulder to their right appeared a dark red
line--the arm of a savage, with clutching fingers. Above it, very
slowly and cautiously, there rose first an eagle's feather, then coarse
black scalp lock, then a high forehead and fierce eyes. The echo of
Landless's shot reverberated through the cliffs, and when the smoke
cleared only the bare gray boulder faced him. But from behind it came a
derisive yell.
"Thou wilt think me a poor marksman, my dear," he said, smiling, as he
reloaded his musket. "I have missed again."
"It is because you are wounded," she said. "I would I had thy wounds."
"I had a wounded heart, but you have healed it," he said, and looked at
her with shining eyes.
The sun sank and the long twilight of the hills set in. The evening
star was brightening through the pale amethyst of the sky when Landless
said quietly: "The last charge," and emptied it into an arm which for
one incautious moment had waved above the rocks.
"It is the end, then," said Patricia.
"Yes, it is the end. We have beaten them back for the moment, but
presently they will find that all we could do we have done, and then--"
She left her post beside the gap in the front, and came and knelt beside
him, and he took her in his arms.
"It is not Death before us, but Life," she said in a low voice.
"It is God and Love, naught else," he answered. "But the river between
will be bitter for you to cross, sweetheart."
"We cross it together," she said, "and so--" She raised her head that
he might see her radiant smile, and their lips met.
"Hark!" she said directly with her hand on his. "What is that sound?"
He shook his head. "The wind has risen, and the forest rustles and
sighs. There is nothing more."
"It is far off," she answered, "but it is like the dip of oars. Ah!"
Over against them, framed in the narrow opening between the rocks, his
lithe, half-nude figure dark against the crimson west, and with a smile
upon his evil lips and in his evil eyes, stood Luiz Sebastian. In the
dead silence that succeeded he looked with a smiling countenance from
the musket, now useless and thrown aside, to his enemy, wounded and
unarmed save for a knife, and to the woman in that enemy's arms; then,
without turning, he said a few words in an Indian tongue. From the
dusky mass behind him came one short, wild cry of savage triumph,
followed by another dead silence.
Still holding Patricia in one arm, Landless rose from his knee, and
stood confronting him.
"We are met again, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian smoothly.
Receiving no answer, he spoke again with a tigerish expansion of his
thick lips. "You have had an accident, I see. Mother of God! that foot
must pain you! But you will forget it presently in the pleasure of the
pine splinters."
"I will forget it in the pleasure of this," said Landless, releasing
Patricia, and springing upon the mulatto with a suddenness and violence
that sent them both staggering through the opening between the rocks,
out upon the narrow plateau and into the ring of Ricahecrians. Luiz
Sebastian was strong, with the easy masked strength of the panther, but
Landless had the strength of despair. The mulatto, thrown heavily to
the ground, and pinned there by his adversary's knee, saw the gleam of
the lifted knife, and would have seen nothing more in this life, but
that a woman's cry rang out and saved him. Landless heard, turned, saw
Patricia dragged from the shelter of the rocks, leaped to his feet,
leaving his work undone, and rushed upon the knot of savages with whom
she was struggling. A moment saw him beside her with the Indian who had
held her dead at his feet. Behind them was the great boulder which had
formed the front wall of their chamber of defense. He put his arm
around her, and drew her back with him until they stood against this
rock, then faced the advancing savages with uplifted knife.
So determined was his attitude, so terribly had they proved his power,
so certain it was that before he should be taken one at least of their
number would taste that knife, that the Ricahecrians paused, swaying to
and fro, yelling, working themselves into a fury that should send them
on like maddened brutes, blind and deaf to all things but their lust for
blood.
"I hear a sound of footsteps over the leaves," said Patricia.
"The wind rustles in them, or the deer pass," answered Landless. "Oh,
my life! are you content?"
She answered with a low, clear laugh. "I hold happiness fast," she
said. "It cannot escape us now."
"They are coming," he said. "The last kiss, heart of my heart."
Their lips met, and their eyes with a smile in them met, and then he put
her gently behind him, and turned to again face Luiz Sebastian.
With his eyes fixed upon the yellow face, he had raised his hand to
strike at the yellow breast, spotted and barred with the black of the
war paint, when an Indian, gliding between, struck up his arm, and sent
the knife tinkling down upon the rocks. With a yell of triumph the
savage snatched up the weapon, and brandished it, showing it to his
fellows, who, seeing their work accomplished, and the two whom they had
tracked so far actually in their hands, made the forest ring with their
exultant shouts. A few closed in around the devoted pair, directing at
them fiendish cries and no less fiendish laughter, and menacing them
with knife and tomahawk, but the majority streamed down the steep and
into the forest at its base.
"They go to gather wood," said the still smiling Luiz Sebastian. "By
and by we are to have a bonfire. Senor Landless has often carried wood,
I think, in those old times when he was a slave, and when the pretty
mistress behind him there treated him as such--unless she gave him
favors in secret. But, Mother of God! now that she has made him master,
we must carry the wood for him!"
Landless, standing with folded arms, looked at him with quiet scorn.
"It is the nature of the viper to use his venom," he said calmly. "Such
a thing cannot anger me."
"At the same time it is as well to crush the viper," said a voice at his
elbow.
The speaker, who was Sir Charles Carew, had come from behind the
boulders which ran in a straggling line down the hillside toward the
river. He had his drawn sword in his hand, and as he spoke, he ran the
mulatto through the body. The wretch, his oath of rage and astonishment
still upon his lips, fell to the ground without a groan, writhed there a
moment or two, and then lay still forever.
From the forest below rose a loud confusion of shouts and cries,
followed by a volley of musketry. At the sound the half dozen savages
upon the plateau turned and plunged down the hillside, to be met before
they reached the bottom by the upward rush of a portion of the rescuing
party. For a short while the twilight glades, low hills and frowning
crags rang to the sound of a miniature battle, to the quick crack of
muskets, the clear shouts of the whites, and the whoops of the savages.
But by degrees these latter became fainter, further between, died
away--a short ten minutes, and there were no warriors left to return to
the village in the Blue Mountains. Fierce shedders of blood, they were
paid in their own coin.
On the hill-top Sir Charles shot his rapier into its scabbard, and
strode over to Patricia, standing white and still against the rock. "I
was in time," he said. "Thank God!"
She made no motion to meet his extended hands, but stood looking past
him at Landless. Her face was like marble, her eyes one dumb question.
Landless met their gaze, and in his own she read despair, renunciation,
strong resolve--and a long farewell.
"You are come in time, Sir Charles Carew," he said. "A little more, and
we should have been beyond your reach. You will find the lady safe and
well, though shaken, as you see, by this last alarm. She will speak for
me, I trust, will tell you that I have used her with all respect, that I
have done for her all that I could do.... Madam, all danger is past.
Will you not collect yourself and speak to your kinsman and savior?"
He spoke with a certain calm stateliness of voice and manner, as of one
who has passed beyond all emotion, whether of hope or fear, and in his
eyes which he kept fixed upon her there was a command.
"Speak to me, my cousin; tell me that I am welcome," said Sir Charles,
flinging himself upon his knee before her.
With a strong shudder she looked away from the still, white, and sternly
composed face opposite to the darkening river and the evening star
shining calmly down upon a waste world.
At length she spoke. "I was all but beyond this world, cousin, so
pardon me if I seem to come back to it somewhat tardily. You have my
thanks, of course--my dear thanks--for saving my life--my life which is
so precious to me."
She gave him her hand with a strange smile, and he pressed his lips upon
it. "Your father is below, dearest cousin. Shall we descend to meet
him? As to this--gentleman," turning with a smile that was like a frown
to Landless, "I regret that circumstances combine to prevent our
rewarding him as the guardian (a trusty one, I am sure) of so precious a
jewel should be rewarded. But Colonel Verney will do--I will do--all
that is possible. In the mean time I observe with regret that he is
wounded. If he will allow me, I will send him my valet, who is below,
and is the best barber surgeon in the three kingdoms. Come, dearest
madam."
He bowed low and ceremoniously to Landless, who returned the salute with
grave courtesy, and gave his hand to Patricia. For one moment she
looked at Landless with wide, dark eyes, then, her spirit obedient to
his spirit, she turned and went from him without one word or backward
look.
The color had quite faded from the west, and the stars were thickening
when Landless became conscious that the overseer was standing beside
him. "You are the hardest one to hold that ever I saw," said that
worthy grimly, and yet with a certain appreciation of the qualities that
made the man at his feet hard to hold showing in his tone, "but I fancy
we 've got you at last. You 've gone and put yourself in bilboes."
Landless smiled. "This time you may keep me. I shall not interfere.
But tell me how you come here. You were sent back to the Plantations."
"Ay," said the other, "and there was the devil to pay, I can tell you,
when I had to report you missing to Sir William. But Major Carrington
stood my friend, and I got off with a tongue-drubbing. Well, after
about three weeks or so, during which time the dogs and the searchers
brought back most all of the run away niggers, and Mistress Lettice had
hysterics every day, back comes the Colonel and Sir Charles with ten of
the twenty men who had rowed them up the Pamunkey. The rest had fallen
in a brush with the Monacans. They had n't come up with the
Ricahecrians, had n't seen hair nor hide of them, had but one report
from the Indian villages along the river, and that was that no
Ricahecrians had passed that way. So after a while they were forced to
believe that they were upon a false scent, and back they comes post
haste to the Plantations to get more men, and go up the Rappahannock.
Well, they went up the Rappahannock, and found nothing to their purpose,
so back they came again to try the James and the country above the
Falls. This time they found the Settlements, which had been before like
an overturned hive, pretty quiet, the ringleaders of your precious plot
having all been strung up, and the rest made as mild as sheep with
branding and whipping and doubling of times. So, the tobacco being in
and the plantation quiet, things were left to Haines, and I came along
with the Colonel. Major Carrington, too, who they say is in the
Governor's black books, though Lord knows he was active enough in
stamping out this insurrection, asked to be allowed to join in the
search for his old friend's daughter, and so he's down in the woods
yonder. And Mr. Cary is there, and Mr. Peyton (Mistress Betty
Carrington made _him_ come) and Mr. Jaclyn Carter. Fegs! half the young
gentry in the colony pressed their services on the Colonel. It got to
be the fashion to volunteer to run their heads into the wolf's mouth for
Mistress Patricia. But Sir Charles choked most of them off.
'Gentlemen,' he says, says he, 'despite the saying that there cannot be
too much of a good thing, I beg to remind you that the disastrous
fortunes of those who first struggled with the forest and the Indians in
this western paradise are attributed to the fact that they were two
thirds gentlemen. Wherefore let us shun the rock upon which they
split'--"
"How many of my fellow conspirators were put to death?" interrupted
Landless.
"All the principal ones--them that Trail denounced as leaders. The rest
we pardoned after giving them a lesson they won't soon forget. We let
bygones be bygones with the redemptioners and slaves--all but those
devils who got away that night at Verney Manor, and with Trail at their
head, made for Captain Laramore's ship which was going to turn pirate.
Well, they got to the boats, and one lot got off safe to the ship which
hoisted the black flag, and sailed away to the Indies, and is sailing
there, murdering and ruining, to this day, I reckon. But the other boat
was over full, and the steersman was drunken, and she capsized before
she got to the middle of the channel. Some were drowned, and those that
got ashore we hung next morning. But Trail was in the first boat."
"When do you--do we--start down the river?"
"At midnight. And it's the Colonel's orders that until then you stay
here among the rocks and not show yourself to the men below. He 'll see
you before we start. In the mean time I 'll keep you company." And the
overseer took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the former, lighted
it, and leaning back against the rock fell to smoking in contented
silence.
Landless too sat in silence, with his head thrown back against the rock
and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night
wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag,
struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came
the tide of forest sounds--the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of
branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of
wings, the cries of night birds--all the low and stealthy notes of the
earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the
lullabies of his childhood. Below him, at the foot of the hill, a
square of dark and stately pines was irradiated by a great fire which
burnt redly, casting flickering shadows far across the smooth brown
earth, and around which sat or moved many figures. Laughter and jest,
oaths and scraps of song floated up to the lonely watcher upon the
hilltop. He heeded them not--he was above that world--and no sound came
from that other and smaller fire blazing at some distance from the
first--and the tree trunks between were so many and so thick that he
could see naught but the light.
*CHAPTER XXXVII*
*VALE*
The overseer knocked the ashes from his pipe and stuck it in his belt.
"The master," he said curtly, getting to his feet as three cloaked
figures, followed by a negro bearing a torch, came up the hillside and
into the waste of stones beneath the crags. Advancing to meet them, he
took the torch from Regulus's hand and fired a mass of dead and leafless
vine depending from the cliff. In the bright light which sprang up,
filling the rocky chamber and burnishing the face of the crags into the
semblance of a cataract of fire, the parties to the interview gazed at
one another in silence.
Colonel Verney was the first to speak. "I am sorry to see that you are
wounded," he said gravely.
"I thank you, sir,--it is nothing."
The Colonel walked the length of the plateau twice, then came back to
his prisoner's side. "My daughter has told me all," he said somewhat
huskily. "That you and the Susquehannock sought for her and found her;
that you fought for her bravely more than once; that after the Indian
was slain you guided and protected her through the forest; that you have
in all things borne yourself towards her faithfully and reverently, not
injuring her by word, thought or deed. My daughter is very dear to
me--dearer than life. I am not ungrateful. I thank you very heartily."
"Mistress Patricia Verney is dear to me also," said Sir Charles, coming
forward to stand beside his kinsman. "I too thank the man who restores
her to her friends--to her lover."
"And I would to God," said the third figure, advancing, "that we could
save the brave man to whom so much is owed. If I were Governor of
Virginia--"
"You could do naught, Carrington," broke in the Colonel impatiently.
"The man is convict--outside the pale! A convict, and the head of an
Oliverian plot! Scarce the King himself could pardon him! And if he
did, how long d' ye think the walls of the gaol at Jamestown would keep
him from the rabble--and the nearest tree? No, no, William Berkeley
does but his duty. And yet--and yet--"
He began to pace the rocks again, frowning heavily, and pulling at the
curls of his periwig. "You are a brave man," he said at last, stopping
before Landless and speaking with energy, "and from my soul I wish I
could save you. I would gladly overlook all that is over and done with,
would gladly free you, aid you, help you, so far as might be, to
retrieve your past--but I cannot. My hands are tied; it is
impossible--you must see for yourself that it is impossible."
"None can see that so clearly as myself, Colonel Verney," Landless said
steadily. "I thank you for the will none the less."
"To take you back with me," the other continued, beginning to stride up
and down again, "is to take you back, bound, to certain death. And
there is but one alternative--to leave you here in the wilderness. Your
presence here is known only to those upon whose discretion I can depend.
They would hold their tongues, and none need ever be the wiser. But the
Settlements will be barred to you forever, and hundreds of leagues
stretch between this spot and the Dutch or the New Englanders.
Moreover, your description hath been sent to the authorities of each
colony. And you are wounded, and winter is at hand. It may be but a
choice of deaths! I would to God there were some other way--but there
is none! You must choose."
In the dead silence that ensued the Colonel moved back to the side of
the Surveyor-General, and the two stood, thoughtfully regardant of the
prisoner. The light from the partially consumed vines beginning to
wane, the overseer motioned to Regulus to collect and apply his torch to
a quantity of the fagots with which the ground was strewn. The negro
obeyed, and stood behind the light flame and curling smoke which he had
evoked, like the genie of an Arabian tale. Sir Charles, left standing in
the centre of the rocky chamber, hesitated a moment, then walked with
his usual languid grace over to where Landless leaned against a boulder,
his eyes, shaded by his hand, fixed upon the ground.
"Whichever you choose--Scylla or Charybdis--" said Sir Charles in his
most dulcet tones, "this is probably the last time you and I will ever
speak together. There have been passages between us in the past, which,
in the light of after event, I cannot but regret. You have just
rendered me an inestimable service. I have learnt, too, that you saved
my life the night of the storming of the Manor House. I beg to
apologize to you, sir, for any offense I may have given you by word or
deed." And he held out his hand with his most courtly smile.
"It becomes a dying man to be in charity with the world he leaves," said
Landless, somewhat coldly, but with a smile too, "and so I do that which
I never thought to do," and he touched the other's fingers with his own.
Sir Charles looked at him curiously. "You make a good enemy," he said
lightly. "Had it not been predestined that we were to hate each other,
I could find it in my heart to desire you for a friend. You remain in
the forest, I dare swear?"
"Yes," answered Landless, with his eyes upon the light in the glade
below. "I choose the easier fate."
"The easier for all concerned," said the other with a peculiar
intonation.
Landless glanced at him keenly, but the courtier face and the
inscrutable smile told nothing. "The easier for myself, whom alone it
concerneth," said Landless sternly.
Dragging himself up by the rock behind him, he turned to the two elder
men. "I have decided, Colonel Verney," he said slowly, "I will stay
here, an it please you."
"You shall have all that we can leave you," said the Colonel eagerly and
with some emotion. "Ammunition in plenty, food, blankets, an axe--it's
little enough I can do, God knows, but I do that little most willingly."
"Again I thank you," said Landless wearily.
Sir Charles caught the inflection. "You stand in need of rest," he said
courteously, "and, this matter settled, our farther intrusion upon you
is as unnecessary as it must be unwelcome. Had we not best descend,
gentlemen?"
"Ay," said the Colonel. "We have done all we could." Then, to
Landless, "With the moonrise we drop down the river--from out your sight
forever. I have told you frankly there is no hope for you amongst your
kind in the world to which we return. I believe there to be none. But
have you thought of what we must needs leave you to? Humanly speaking,
it is death, and death alone, in the winter forest."
"I have thought," said Landless.
"From my soul I wish that some miracle may occur to save you yet!"
"An ill wish!" said the other, smiling, "with but little chance,
however, of its fulfillment."
"I fear not," said the Colonel with something like a groan, "but I wish
it, nevertheless. Here is my hand, and with it my heartfelt thanks for
your service to my daughter. And I wish you to believe that I deeply
deplore your fate, and that I would have saved you if I could."
"I believe it," Landless said simply.
The Colonel took and wrung his hand, then turned sharply away, and
beckoning the overseer to follow, strode out of the circle of rocks.
Sir Charles raised his feathered hat. "We have been foes," he said,
"but the strife is over--and when all is said, we are both Englishmen.
I trust we bear each other no ill will."
"I bear none," said Landless.
Sir Charles, his eyes still fixed upon the pale quiet of the other's
face, passed out of the opening between the rocks, and his place was
taken by the Surveyor-General.
"I would have saved you if I could," he said in a low and troubled
voice. "I bow to a brave man and a gallant gentleman," and he too was
gone.
In the glade below, the movement, the laughter and the song sank
gradually into silence as the gentlemen adventurers, the rangers, Indian
guides, and servants composing the rescuing party threw themselves down,
one by one, beside the blazing fires for a short rest before moonrise
and the long pull down the river.
Among the crags, high above the twinkling watch-fires and the wash of
the dark river, there was the stillness of the stars, of the white frost
and the bare cliffs. In the northern heavens played a soft light, and
now and then a star shot. The man who marked its trail across the
studded skies thought of himself as of one as far withdrawn as it from
the world of lower lights in the forest at his feet. Already he felt a
prescience of the loneliness of the morrow, and the morrow, and the
morrow, of the slow drift of the days in the waning forest, the hopeless
nights, the terror of that great solitude--and felt, too, a feverish
desire to hasten that approach, to embrace that which was to be
henceforth bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. He wished for the
clash of oars in the dark stream below and for the rise of the moon
which was to shine coldly down upon him, companionless, immerged in that
vast fortress from which he might never hope to emerge.
The sound of cautious footsteps among the rocks brought his sick and
wandering fancy back to the present. Raising himself upon his elbow and
peering intently into the darkness, he made out two figures, one tall
and large, the other much slighter, advancing towards him. Presently
the larger figure stopped short, and, seating itself upon a flat rock at
the brink of the hill, turned its face towards the fires in the woods
below. The other came on lightly and hurriedly--another moment, and
rising to his knees, he clasped her in his arms and laid his head upon
her bosom.
"I never thought to see you again," he said at last.
"I made Regulus bring me," she answered. "The others do not know--they
think me asleep."
She spoke in a low, even, monotonous voice, and the hand which she laid
upon his forehead was like marble. "My heart is dead, I think," she
said. "I wish my body were so too."
He drew her closer to him and covered her face and hands with kisses.
"My love, my lady," he said. "My white rose, my woodland dove!"
She clung to him, trembling. "Down there I was going mad," she
whispered. "But now--now--I feel as though I could weep." He felt her
tears upon his face, but in a moment she was calm again. "Do you
remember the bird we found the other day, all numbed with cold?" she
said. "It had been gay and free and light of heart, but it had not
strength to flutter when I took it in my hands and tried to warm it--and
could not. I am like that bird. The world is very gray and cold, and
my heart--it will never be warm again."
"God comfort you," he said brokenly.
"They have told me that at moonrise we leave this place--and you. They
say that it is all they can do for you--to leave you here. All!--Oh, my
God!"
"They have done what they could," he said gravely. "I recognize that.
And I wish you to do so too, sweetheart."
She looked at him wildly. "I have been silent," she said, pressing her
clasped hands against her bosom. "I have not told them. I have obeyed
what I read in your eyes. But was it well? Oh, my dear, let me speak!"
He took her hands from her breast and laid them against his own. "No,"
he said with a smile, "I love you too well for that."
From the woods across the river came the crying of wolves, then a
silence as of the grave; then a whisper arose in the long dry grass and
the leafless vines, and a cold breeze lifted the hair from their
foreheads. The whisper grew into a murmur, prolonged and deep, a sound
as of a distant cataract, or of the dash of surf upon a far away
shore--the voice of the wind in the world of trees. A star shot,
leaving a stream of white fire to fade out of the dark blue sky. From
the forest came again the cry of the wolves. In the camp below there
seemed some stir, and the figure seated on the rock turned its head
towards them and lifted a warning hand.
"You must go," said Landless. "It was madness for you to venture here.
See, the light is growing in the east."
With a low, desolate moaning sound she wrung the hands he released and
raised her face to his. He kissed her upon the brow, the eyes and the
mouth. "Good-by, my life, my love, my heart," he said. "We were happy
for an hour. Good-by!"
"I will be brave," she answered. "I will live my life out. I will pray
to God. And, Godfrey, I will be ever true to you. I shall never see
you again, my dear, never hear of you more, never know till my latest
day whether you are of this world still, or whether you have waited for
me a long time, up there beyond those lights. If it--if death--should
come soon, wait for me--beyond--in perfect trust, my dear, for I will
come to you--I will come to you as I am, Godfrey."
He bowed his face upon her hands.
The breeze freshened, and the sound of the surf became the sound of
breakers. In the east the pale light strengthened. The figure below
them stood up and beckoned.
"The moon is coming," said Patricia. "Once before I watched for it--in
terror, with pride and anger in my heart. Then, when I thought of you,
I hated you. It is strange to think of that now. Kiss me good-by."
"I too will be strong," he said. "I will await the pleasure of the
Lord. Until His good time, my bride!"
Rising to his feet he held her in his arms, then kissed her upon the
lips and put her gently from him. For a moment she stood like a statue,
then with a lifted face and hands clasped at her bosom, she turned, and
slowly, but without a backward look, left the circle of rocks. Through
the opening he saw the slave come up to her, and saw her motion to him
to fall behind--another moment, and both dark figures had sunk below the
brow of the hill.
Stronger and stronger blew the wind, louder and louder swelled the voice
of the forest. Below, the wash of the river in its reeds, the dull
groaning of branch grating against branch, the fall of leaf and acorn,
the loud sighing of the pines, the cry of the owl, the panther and the
wolf--above, the vast dome of the heavens and the fading stars. An
effulgence in the oast: a silver crest, like the white rim of a giant
wave, upon the eastern hills; a pale splendor mounting slowly and calmly
upward--a dead world,--all her passion, all her pain, all toil and
strife over and done with,--shining down upon a sadder earth.
From beneath the shadowy banks there shot out into the middle of the
broad moonlit stream a long canoe, followed by a second and a third, and
turning, went swiftly down that long, bright, shimmering, rippling path.
In the last and smallest of the three boats a man rose from his seat in
the stern, and with his eyes upon the line of moon-whitened cliffs above
him, raised his plumed hat with a courteous gesture, then bent and spoke
to a cloaked and hooded figure sitting, still and silent, between him
and a burlier form. This canoe was rowed by negroes, and as they rowed
they sang. The wild chant--half dirge, half frenzy--that they raised was
suited to that waste which they were leaving.
The black lines upon the silver flood became mere dots, and the wailing
notes came up the stream faintly and more faintly still. For a while
the echoes rolled among the folded hills and the tall gray crags, but at
length they died away forever.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.