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PRISONERS OF HOPE
A Tale of Colonial Virginia
BY
MARY JOHNSTON
AUTHOR OF "TO HAVE AND TO HOLD," "AUDREY," ETC.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
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COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY MARY JOHNSTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINTH THOUSAND
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TO MY FATHER
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A SLOOP COMES IN 1
II. ITS CARGO 15
III. A COLONIAL DINNER PARTY 27
IV. THE BREAKING HEART 40
V. IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD 50
VI. THE HUT ON THE MARSH 60
VII. A MENDER OF NETS 71
VIII. THE NEW SECRETARY 86
IX. AN INTERRUPTED WOOING 91
X. LANDLESS PAYS THE PIPER 100
XI. LANDLESS BECOMES A CONSPIRATOR 108
XII. A DARK DEED 117
XIII. IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE 129
XIV. A MIDNIGHT EXPEDITION 137
XV. THE WATERS OF CHESAPEAKE 150
XVI. THE FACE IN THE DARK 162
XVII. LANDLESS AND PATRICIA 173
XVIII. A CAPTURE 185
XIX. THE LIBRARY OF THE SURVEYOR-GENERAL 193
XX. WHEREIN THE PEACE PIPE IS SMOKED 205
XXI. THE DUEL 219
XXII. THE TOBACCO HOUSE AGAIN 226
XXIII. THE QUESTION 239
XXIV. A MESSAGE 247
XXV. THE ROAD TO PARADISE 252
XXVI. NIGHT 267
XXVII. MORNING 273
XXVIII. BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS 282
XXIX. THE BRIDGE OF ROCK 295
XXX. THE BACKWARD TRACK 306
XXXI. THE HUT IN THE CLEARING 315
XXXII. ATTACK 326
XXXIII. THE FALL OF THE LEAF 335
XXXIV. AN ACCIDENT 343
XXXV. THE BOAT THAT WAS NOT 349
XXXVI. THE LAST FIGHT 357
XXXVII. VALE 369
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PRISONERS OF HOPE
CHAPTER I
A SLOOP COMES IN
"She will reach the wharf in half an hour."
The speaker shaded her eyes with a great fan of carved ivory and painted
silk. They were beautiful eyes; large, brown, perfect in shape and
expression, and set in a lovely, imperious, laughing face. The divinity
to whom they belonged was clad in a gown of green dimity, flowered with
pink roses, and trimmed about the neck and half sleeves with a fall of
yellow lace. The gown was made according to the latest Paris mode, as
described in a year-old letter from the court of Charles the Second, and
its wearer gazed from under her fan towards the waters of the great bay
of Chesapeake, in his Majesty's most loyal and well beloved dominion of
Virginia.
The object of her attention was a large sloop that had left the bay and
was sailing up a wide inlet or creek that pierced the land, cork-screw
fashion, until it vanished from sight amidst innumerable green marshes.
The channel, indicated by a deeper blue in the midst of an expanse of
shoal water, was narrow, and wound like a gleaming snake in and out
among the interminable succession of marsh islets. The vessel, following
its curves, tacked continually, its great sail intensely white against
the blue of inlet, bay and sky, and the shadeless green of the marshes,
zigzagging from side to side with provoking leisureliness. The girl who
had spoken watched it eagerly, a color in her cheeks, and one little
foot in its square-toed, rosetted shoe tapping impatiently upon the
floor of the wide porch in which she stood.
Her companion, lounging upon the wooden steps, with his back to a
pillar, looked up with an amused light in his blue eyes.
"Why are you so eager, cousin?" he drawled. "You cannot be pining for
your father when 'tis scarce five days since he went to Jamestown. Do
the Virginia ladies watch for the arrival of a new batch of slaves with
such impatience?"
"The slaves! No, indeed! But, sir, in that boat there are three cases
from England."
"Ah, that accounts for it! And what may these wonderful cases contain?"
"One contains the dress in which I shall dance with you at the party at
Green Spring which the governor is to give in your honor--if you ask me,
sir. Oh, I take it for granted that you will, so spare us your
protestations. 'Tis to have a petticoat of blue tabby and an overdress
of white satin trimmed with yards and yards of Venice point. The
stockings are blue silk, and come from the French house in Covent
Garden, as doth the scarf of striped gauze and the shoes, gallooned with
silver. Then there are my combs, gloves, a laced waistcoat, a red satin
bodice, a scarlet taffetas mantle, a plumed hat, a pair of clasped
garters, a riding mask, a string of pearls, and the latest romances."
"A pretty list! Is that all?"
"There are things for aunt Lettice, petticoats and ribbons, a gilt
stomacher and a China monster, and for my father, lace ruffles and
bands, a pair of French laced boots, a periwig, a new scabbard for his
rapier, and so on."
The young man laughed. "'Tis a curious life you Virginians lead," he
said. "The embroidered suits and ruffles, the cosmetics and perfumes of
Whitehall in the midst of oyster beds and tobacco fields, savage Indians
and negro slaves."
The girl put on a charming look of mock offense. "We _are_ a little bit
of England set down here in the wilderness. Why should we not clothe
ourselves like gentlefolk as well as our kindred and friends at home?
And sure both England and Virginia have had enough of sad colored
raiment. Better go like a peacock than like a horrid Roundhead."
Her companion laughed musically and sang a stave of a cavalier love
song. He was a slender, well-made man, dressed in the extreme of the
mode of the year of grace sixteen hundred and sixty-three, in a richly
laced suit of camlet with points of blue ribbon, and the great scented
periwig then newly come into fashion. The close curled rings of hair
descending far over his cravat of finest Holland framed a handsome,
lazily insolent face, with large steel-blue eyes and beautifully cut,
mocking lips. A rapier with a jeweled hilt hung at his side, and one
white hand, half buried in snowy ruffles, held a beribboned cane with
which, as he talked, he ruthlessly decapitated the pink and white
morning-glories with which the porch was trellised.
The house to which the porch belonged was long and low, built of wood,
with many small windows, and at either end a great brick chimney. From
the porch to the water, a hundred yards away, stretched a walk of
crushed shells bisecting an expanse of green turf dotted with noble
trees--the cedar and the cypress predominating. Diverging from this
central walk were two narrower paths which, winding in and out in
eccentric figures, led, on the one hand, to a rustic summer-house
overgrown with honeysuckle and trumpet-vine, and on the other to a tiny
grotto constructed of shells and set in a tangle of periwinkle. Along
one side of the house, and protected by a stout locust paling overrun
with grape-vines, lay the garden, where flowers and vegetables
flourished contentedly side by side, the hollyhocks and tall white
lilies, the hundred-leaved roses and scarlet poppies showing like gilded
officers amidst the rank and file of sober esculents. Behind the house
were clustered various offices, then came an orchard where the June
apples and the great red cherries were ripening in the hot sunshine,
then on the shore of a second and narrower creek rose the quarters for
the plantation servants, white and black--a long double row of cabins,
dominated by the overseer's house and shaded by ragged yellow pines.
Along one shore of this inlet was planted the Indian corn prescribed by
law, and from the other gleamed the soft yellow of ripening wheat, but
beyond the water and away to the westward stretched acre after acre of
tobacco, a sea of vivid green, broken only by an occasional shed or
drying house, and merging at last into the darker hue of the forest.
Over all the fair scene, the flashing water, the velvet marshes, the
smiling fields, the fringe of dark and mysterious woodland, hung a
Virginia heaven, a cloudless blue, soft, pure, intense. The air was
full of subdued sound--the distant hum of voices from the fields of
maize and tobacco, the faint clink of iron from the smithy, the wash and
lap of the water, the drone of bees from the hives beneath the eaves of
the house. Great bronze butterflies fluttered in the sunshine, brilliant
humming-birds plunged deep into the long trumpet-flowers; from the
topmost bough of a locust, heavy with bloom, came the liquid trill of a
mock-bird.
It was a fair domain, and a wealthy. The Englishman thought of certain
appalling sums lost to Sedley and Roscommon, and there flitted through
his brain a swift little calculation as to the number of hogsheads of
Orenoko or sweet-scented it would take to wipe off the score. And the
girl beside him was beautiful enough to take Whitehall by storm, to be
berhymed by Waller, and to give to Lely a subject above all flattery. He
set his lips with the air of a man who has made up his mind, and turned
to his companion, who was absorbed in watching the white sail grow
slowly larger.
"How long, now, cousin?"
"But a few minutes unless the wind should fail."
"And then you will have your treasures. But, madam, when you have
assumed all the panoply your sex relies on to increase its charms 'twill
be but to 'gild refined gold or paint the lily.' The Aphrodite of this
western ocean needs no adornment."
The girl looked at him with laughter in her eyes. "You make me too many
pretty speeches, cousin," she said demurely. "We know the value of the
fine things you court gallants are perpetually saying."
"Upon my soul, madam, I swear--"
"Do you know the amount of the fine for swearing, Sir Charles? See how
large the sail has grown! When the boat rounds the long marsh she will
come more quickly. We will soon be able to see my father wave his
handkerchief."
The young man bit his lip. "You are pleased to be cruel to-day, madam,
but I am your slave and I obey. We will look together for Colonel
Verney's handkerchief. How many black slaves does he bring you?"
She laughed. "But half a dozen blacks, but there will be several
redemptioners if you prefer to be numbered with them."
"Redemptioners! Ah, yes! the English servants who are sold for their
passage money. I thank you, madam, but _my_ servitude is for life."
"The men my father will bring may not be the ordinary servants who come
here to better their condition. He may have obtained them from a batch
of felons from Newgate who have been kept in gaol in Jamestown until
word could be got to the planters around. I am sure I wish the ship
captains and the traders would stop bringing in the wretches. It is
different with the negroes: we can make allowance for the poor silly
things that are scarce more than animals, and they grow attached to us
and we to them, and the simple indented servants are well enough too.
There are among them many honest and intelligent men. But these gaol
birds are dreadful. It sickens me to look at them. Thieves and murderers
every one!"
"I should not think the colony served by their importation."
"It is not indeed, and we have hopes that it will cease. I beg my father
not to buy them, but he says that one man cannot stop an abuse--that as
long as his fellow-planters use them he might as well do so too."
Sir Charles Carew delicately smothered a yawn. "The ship that brought me
over a fortnight ago," he said lazily, "had a consignment of such
rascals. It was amusing to watch their antics, crowded together as they
were in the hold. There were two wild Irishmen whom we used to have on
deck to dance for us. Gad! what figures they cut! The captain and I had
a standing wager of five of the new guineas as to which of the rascals
could hold out longest, promising a measure of rum to the victorious
votary of Terpsichore. When I had lost a score of guineas I found that
the captain was in the habit of priming his man before he came upon
deck. Naturally, being filled with Dutch courage, he won."
"Poor Sir Charles! What did you do?"
"Sent the captain a cartel and fought him on his own deck. There was one
man in the villainous company whom, I protest, I almost pitied, though
of course the rogue had but his deserts."
"What was he?"
"A man of about thirty. A fellow with a handsome face and a lithe
well-made figure which he managed with some grace. He had the air of one
who had seen better days. I remember, one day when the captain was
bestowing upon him some especially choice oaths, seeing him clap his
hand to his side as though he expected to touch a rapier hilt. He was
cleanly too; kept his rags of clothing as decent as circumstances
allowed, and looked less like a wild beast in a litter of foul straw
than did his fellows. But he was an ill-conditioned dog. We had some
passages together, he and I. He took it upon himself to defend what he
was pleased to call the honor of one of his precious company. It was
vastly amusing.... After that I fell into the habit of watching him
through the open hatches. A little thing provides entertainment at sea,
Mistress Patricia. He would sit or stand for hours looking past me with
a perfectly still face. The other wretches were quick to crowd up,
whining to me to pitch them half pence or tobacco, but try as I would, I
could not get word or look from him. Sink me! if he didn't have the
impudence to resent my being there!"
"It was cruel to stare at misery."
"Lard, madam! such vermin are used to being stared at. In London,
Newgate and Bridewell are theatres as well as the Cockpit or the King's
House, and the world of _mode_ flock to the one spectacle as often as to
the other. But see! the sloop has passed the marsh and has a clean sweep
of water between her and the wharf."
"Yes, she is coming fast now."
"What is coming?" asked a voice from the doorway.
"The Flying Patty, Aunt Lettice," the girl answered over her shoulder.
"Get your hood and come with us to the wharf."
Mistress Lettice Verney emerged from the hall, two red spots burning in
her withered cheeks, and her tall thin figure quivering with excitement.
"I am all ready, child," she quavered. "But, mark my words, Patricia,
there will be something wrong with my paduasoy petticoat, or Charette
will not have sent the proper tale of green stockings or Holland smocks.
Did you not hear the screech owl last night?"
"No, Aunt Lettice."
"It remained beneath my window the entire night. I did not sleep a wink.
And this morning Chloe upset the salt cellar, and the salt fell towards
me." Mistress Lettice rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed
lugubriously. Patricia laughed.
"I dreamed of flowers last night, Aunt Lettice; miles and miles of them,
waxen and cold and sweet, like those they strew over the dead."
Mistress Lettice groaned. "'Tis a dreadful sign. Captain Norton's wife
(she that was Polly Wilson) dreamed of flowers the night before the
massacre of 'forty-four. The only thing the poor soul said when the
war-whoop wakened them in the dead of the night and the door came
crashing in, was, 'I told you so.' They were her last words. Then Martha
Westall dreamed of flowers, and two days later her son James stepped on
a stingray over at Dale's Gift. And I myself dreamed of roses the week
before those horrid Roundhead commissioners with the rebel Claiborne at
their head and a whole fleet at their back, compelled us to surrender to
their odious Commonwealth."
"At least that evil is past," said the girl with a gay laugh. "And ill
fortune will never come to me aboard the Flying Patty, so I shall go
down to the wharf to see her in. Darkeih! my scarf!"
A negress appeared in the doorway with a veil of tissue in her hand. Sir
Charles took it from her and flung it over Patricia's golden head, then
offered his arm to Mistress Lettice.
The wharf was but a stone's throw from the wooden gates, and they were
soon treading the long stretch of gray, weather-beaten boards. Others
were before them, for the news that the sloop was coming in had drawn a
small crowd to the wharf to welcome the master.
The dozen or so of boatmen, white and black, who had been tinkering
about in the various barges, shallops and canoes tied to the mossy
piles, left their employments and scrambled up upon the platform, and a
trio of youthful darkies, fishing for crabs with a string and a piece of
salt pork, allowed their lines to fall slack and their intended victims
to walk coolly off with the meat, so intense was their interest in the
oncoming sail. A knot of negro women had left the great house kitchen
and stood, hands on hips, chatting volubly with a contingent from the
quarters, their red and yellow turbans nodding up and down like
grotesque Dutch tulips. The company was made up by an overseer with a
broadleafed palmetto hat pulled down over his eyes and a clay pipe stuck
between his teeth, a pale young man who acted as secretary to the master
of the plantation, and by three or four small land-owners and tenants
for whom Colonel Verney had graciously undertaken various commissions in
Jamestown, and who were on hand to make their acknowledgments to the
great man.
They all made deferential way for the two ladies and Sir Charles Carew.
Mistress Lettice commenced a condescending conversation with one of the
tenants, Darkeih added a white tulip to the red and yellow ones, and
Patricia, followed by Sir Charles, walked to the edge of the wharf, and
leaning upon the rude railing looked down the glassy reaches of the
water to the approaching boat.
The wind had sunk into a fitful breeze and the white sail moved very
slowly. The tide was in, and the water lapped with a cooling sound
against the dark green piles. In the distance the blue of the bay
melted into the blue of the sky, while the nearer waters mirrored every
passing gull, the masts of the fishing boats, the tall marsh grass, the
dead twigs marking oyster beds--each object had its double. On a point
of marshy ground stood a line of cranes, motionless as soldiers on
parade, until, taking fright as the great sail glided past, they whirred
off, uttering discordant cries and with their legs sticking out like
tail feathers. Slowly, and keeping to the middle of the channel, the
boat came on. Upon the long low deck men were preparing to lower the
sail, and a portly gentleman standing in the bow was vigorously waving
his handkerchief. The sail came down with a rush, the anchor swung
overboard, and half a dozen canoes and dugouts shot from under the
shadow of the wharf and across the strip of water between it and the
sloop. The gentleman with the handkerchief, followed by a man plainly
dressed in brown, sprang into the foremost; the others waited for their
lading of merchandise.
Before the boat had touched the steps the master of the plantation began
to call out greetings to his expectant family.
"Patricia, my darling, are you in health? Charles, I am happy to see you
again! Sister Lettice, Mr. Frederick Jones sends you his humble
services."
"La, brother! and how is the dear man?" screamed Mistress Lettice.
"As well as 'tis in nature to be, with his heart at Verney Manor and his
body at Flowerdieu Hundred."
The boat jarred against the piles and the planter stepped out, grasping
Sir Charles's extended hand.
"Again, I am happy to see you, Charles," he cried in a round and jovial
voice. "I have been telling my up-river good friends that I have the
most topping fellow in all London for my guest, and you will have
company enough anon."
Sir Charles smiled and bowed. "I hope, sir, that you were successful in
the business that took you to Jamestown?"
"Fairly so, fairly so. Haines here," with a wave of the hand towards the
man in brown, "had a lot picked out for me to choose from. I have six
negroes and three of those blackguards from Newgate--mighty poor policy
to shoulder ourselves with such gaol sweepings. I doubt we'll repent it
some day. The blacks come by way of Boston, which means that they will
have to be cockered up considerably before they are fit for work. Is
that you, Woodson? How have things gone on?"
The overseer took his pipe from between his teeth and made an awkward
bow.
"Glad to see your Honor back," he said deferentially. "Everything's all
right, sir. The last rain helped the corn amazingly, and the tobacco's
prime. The lightning struck a shed, but we got the flames out before
they reached the hogsheads. The Nancy got caught in a squall; lost both
masts and ran aground on Gull Marsh. The tide will take her off at the
full of the moon. Sambo 's been playing 'possum again. Said he'd cut his
foot with his hoe so badly that he couldn't stand upon it. Said I could
see that by the blood on the rag that tied it up. I made him take off
the rag and wash the foot, and there wa'n't no cut there. The blood was
puccoon. If he'd waited a bit he could 'a' had all he wanted to paint
with, for I gave him the rope's end, lively, until Mistress Patricia
heard him yelling and made me stop."
"All right, Woodson. I reckon the plantation knows by this time that
what Mistress Patricia says is law. Here come the boats with the boxes.
Tell the men to be careful how they handle them."
After a hearty word or two to tenants and land owners the worthy Colonel
joined his daughter and sister; and together with Sir Charles Carew they
watched the precious boxes conveyed up the slippery steps, the overseer
shouting directions, plentifully sprinkled with selected, unfinable
oaths to the panting boatmen. When all were safely piled upon the wharf
ready to be wheeled to the great house, the empty boats swung off to
make room for others, laden with the colonel's Jamestown purchases.
One by one the articles climbed the stairs, each as it reached the level
being claimed by the overseer and told off into a lengthening line. Six
were negroes, gaunt and hollow-eyed, but smiling widely. They gazed
around them, at the heap of clams and oysters piled upon the wharf, at
the marshes, alive with wild fowl, at the distant green of waving corn,
the flower-embowered great house, the white quarters from which arose
many little spirals of savory smoke, and a bland and childlike content
took possession of their souls. With eager and obsequious "Yes, Mas'rs"
they obeyed the overseer's objurgatory indications as to their
disposition.
There next arose above the landing the head of a white man--a
countenance of sullen ferocity, with a great scar running across it, and
framed in elf locks of staring red. The body belonging to this
prepossessing face was swollen and unshapely, and its owner moved with
a limp and a muttered curse towards the place assigned him. He was
followed by a sallow-faced, long-nosed man, with black oily hair and an
affected smirk which twitched the corners of his thin lips. Singling out
his master's family with a furtive glance from a pair of sinister
greenish eyes, he made a low bow and stepped jauntily into line.
The third man rose above the landing. Sir Charles, standing by Patricia,
laughed.
"This world is a place of fantastic meetings, cousin," he said, airily.
"Now who would suppose that I would ever again see that chipping from a
London gaol I told you of--my shipmate of cleanly habit and unsocial
nature. Yet there he is."