THE NEW SECRETARY
"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I flee....
"Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore.
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."
The rich notes rang higher and higher, filling the languid air, and
drowning the trill of the mockingbirds. Patricia, filling her apron with
midsummer flowers, sang with a careless passion, her mind far away in
the midst of a Whitehall pageant, described to her the night before by
that silver-tongued courtier, Sir Charles Carew.
Still singing, she went up the steps of the porch and into the cool wide
hall. In her face there was a languorous beauty born of the sunshine
outside; a soft color glowed in her cheeks, her eyes were large and
dreamy, little damp tendrils of gold strayed about her temples. She
threw down her hat, and loosened the kerchief of delicate lawn from
about her warm young throat; then, with the flowers still in her arms,
she raised the latch of the door of a room held sacred to Colonel
Verney, and entered, to find herself face to face with the convict,
Godfrey Landless, who sat at a table covered with papers, busily
writing.
She started violently, and the mass of flowers fell to the floor,
shattering the petals from the roses and poppies. Landless came forward,
knelt down, and, picking them up, restored them to her without a word.
"I thank you," she said coldly. "I thought my father was here."
"Colonel Verney is in the next room, madam."
She moved to the door leading into the great room with the gait of a
princess, and Landless went back to his work.
Colonel Verney, on his knees before the richly carven chest containing
his library, looked up from the two score volumes to behold a mass of
brilliant blooms transferred from two white arms to the ground outside
the open window.
"Well, sweetheart," he said. "What is it?"
"Papa," she said, coming to his side, and looking down upon him with a
vexed face; "you promised me that you would employ no more convicts in
the house."
"Why, so I did, my dear," answered her father, comfortably seating
himself upon "Purchas: His Pilgrimmes." "And I meant to keep my word,
but this is the way of it. The day after you went to Rosemead with Betty
Carrington, down comes young Shaw with the fever, and has to be sent
home to his mother. His illness came at a precious inconvenient season,
for the gout was in my fingers again, and I was bent on disappointing
William Berkeley, who hath wagered a thousand pounds of sweet scented
that my 'Statement of the Evil Wrought by the Navigation Laws to His
Majesty's Colony of Virginia' won't be finished in time for the sailing
of the God-Speed. So I told Woodson to find me some one among the men
who knew how to write. He brought me this fellow, and I vow he is an
improvement on young Shaw. He doesn't ask questions, and he is a very
pretty Latinist. The paper will be finished to-day. I was but searching
for a neat quotation to close with. Then the fellow will go back to the
tobacco, and you will be no longer annoyed by his presence in the house.
Now kiss me, sweet chuck, and begone, for I am busied upon affairs of
state."
Left alone, Colonel Verney pored over his books until he found what he
wanted, when, after rearranging his library in the carved chest, he rose
stiffly to his feet, and went into the next room and up to the
writing-table. Landless rose from his seat, and, resigning it to his
master, stood gravely by while the Colonel looked over the manuscript
upon which he had been employed.
"Ha!" said the Colonel. "A very fair copy! You have numbered and headed
the pages, I observe. Let me see, let me see, let me see," and he ran
them over between his fingers. "Oppressive Nature of the Act.--Grave
Dissatisfaction.--It advantageth No One save Small Traders at
Home.--Increase of Revenue to His Majesty if 't were repealed.--Dutch
Bottoms.--Trade with Russia.--His Majesty's Poor Planters Throw
Themselves upon His Majesty's Mercy. Very good, very good!"
"It is nigh finished, sir," said Landless.
"Ay, ay! By the Lord Harry, William Berkeley will repent his wager! A
pretty paper it is, and containeth many excellent points and much good
Latin, and you have copied it fairly and cleanly. It is a pity, my man,"
he added not unkindly, "that you should have lived so evilly as to
bring yourself to this pass, for you have in you the making of an
excellent secretary."
"Is it your will, sir, that I finish the copy now?"
"Yes, but take it to the small table within the window there. I myself
will sit here and jot down some ideas for my dedication which you can
afterwards amplify."
The worthy colonel pulled the big Turkey worked chair closer to the
table, turned back his ruffles and fell to work. Landless retired to the
table within the window, and for a while naught was heard in the quiet
room but the scratching of quills, as master and man drove them across
the whitey-brown sheets.
At length the master pushed his chair back and stretched himself with a
prodigious yawn. "The Lord be thanked!" he said, addressing the air.
"That's done! And it is time to see to the dressing of that sore upon
Prince Rupert's shoulder; and I remember Haines said that one of the
hounds had been gored by Carrington's bull. Haines can't dress a wound.
Haines is a bungler. But, by the Lord Harry! Richard Verney is as good a
veterinary as he is a statesman."
He lifted his burly figure from the depths of the chair, and going over
to Landless, dropped upon the table before him a page of hieroglyphics
for him to decipher at his leisure. Then with another word of
commendation for the beauty of the copy, he walked heavily from the
room. A moment later Landless heard him whistle to his dogs, and then
break into a stave of a cavalier drinking song, sung at the top of a
full manly voice, and dying away in the direction of the stables.
Landless' hand moved to and fro across the paper with a tireless
patience. He did not go back to the central table, for the light was
better in the window, and a vagrant breath of air strayed in now and
then. The window was a deep one, and heavy drugget curtains hung between
it and the rest of the room.
The door opened and a man's voice said: "This room is darkened into
delicious coolness. Shall we try it, cousin?"
Patricia entered like a sunbeam, and after her sauntered Sir Charles
Carew, languid, debonair, and perfectly appareled.
Landless, seeing them plainly, did not realize that in the shadow of the
heavy curtains he was himself unseen. He had grown so accustomed to the
quiet insolence that overlooks the presence of an inferior as it does
that of any other article of furniture, that he did not doubt that the
fine lady and gentleman before him were perfectly aware of the presence
in the room of the slave whom his master's caprice had raised for the
moment to the post of secretary. It was some few minutes before he began
to consider within himself that he might be mistaken.