LANDLESS BECOMES A CONSPIRATOR
As Landless entered the hut Godwyn looked up with a pleased smile from the net he was mending. The two men had not seen each other since the night upon which Landless had been brought to the hut by the Muggletonian. Twice had Landless laid his plans for a second visit, only to be circumvented each time by the watchfulness of the overseer.
The smile died from Godwyn's face as he observed his visitor more closely.
"What is it?" he asked quickly.
Landless came up to him and held out his hand. "I am with you, Robert Godwyn, heart and soul," he said steadily.
The mender of nets grasped the hand. "I knew you would come," he said, drawing a long breath. "I have needed you sorely, lad."
"I could not come before."
"I know: Porringer told me you were prevented. I—" He still held Landless' hand in both his own, and as he spoke his slender fingers encircled the young man's wrist.
"What is the matter with your pulse?" he demanded. "And your eyes! They are glazing! Sit down!"
"It is nothing," said Landless, speaking with effort.
"I have been a physician, young man," retorted the other. "Sit down, or you will fall."
He forced him down upon a settle from which he had himself risen, and stood looking at him, his hand upon his shoulder. Presently his glance fell to the shoulder, and he saw upon the white cloth where his hand pressed it against the flesh, a faint red stain grow and spread.
The face of the mender of nets grew very dark. "So!" he said beneath his breath.
He limped across the hut and drew from some secret receptacle above the fireplace a flask, from which he poured a crimson liquid into an earthen cup; then hobbled back to Landless, sitting with closed eyes and head bowed upon the table.
"Drink, lad," he said with grave tenderness. "'Tis a cordial of mine own invention, and in the strength it gave me I fled from Cropredy Bridge though woefully hacked and spent. Drink!"
He held the cup to the young man's lips. Landless drained it and felt the blood gush back to his heart and the ringing in his ears to cease. Presently he raised his head. "Thank you," he said. "I am a man again."
"How is it that you are here?"
Landless smiled grimly. "I imagine it's because Woodson thinks me effectually laid by the heels. When he goes the rounds at supper time he will be surprised to find my pallet empty."
"You must be in quarters before then. You must not get into further trouble."
"Very well," was the indifferent reply.
They were silent for a few moments, and then Landless spoke.
"I am come to tell you, Master Godwyn, that I will join in any plan, however desperate, that may bring me release from an intolerable and degrading slavery. You may use me as you please. I will work for you with hands and head, ay, and with my heart also, for you have been kind to me, and I am grateful."
The mender of nets touched him softly upon the hand. "Lad," he said, "I once had a son who was my pride and my hope. In his young manhood he fell at the storming of Tredah. But the other night when I talked with you, I seemed to see him again, and my heart yearned over him."
Landless held out his hand. "I have no father," he said simply.
"Now," at length said Godwyn, "to business! I must not keep you now, but come to me to-morrow night if you can manage it. You may speak to Win-Grace Porringer, and he will help you. I will then tell you all my arrangements, give you figures and names, possess you, in short, with all that I, and I alone, know of this matter. And my heart is glad within me, for though my broken body is tied to my bench here, I shall now have a lieutenant indeed. I have conceived; you shall execute. The son of Warham Landless, if he have a tithe of his father's powers, will do much, very much. For more than a year I have longed for such an one."
"Tell me but one thing," said Landless, "and I am content. You have so planned this business that there shall be no wanton bloodshed? You intend no harm, for instance, to the family yonder?" with a motion of his head towards the great house.
"God forbid!" said the other quickly. "I tell you that not one woman or innocent soul shall suffer. Nor do I wish harm to the master of this plantation, who is, after the lights of a Malignant, a true and kindly man, and a gentleman. This is what will happen. Upon an appointed day the servants, Oliverian, indented and convict, upon all the plantations seated upon the bay, the creeks, the three rivers, and over in Accomac, will rise. They will overpower their overseers and those of their fellows who may remain faithful to the masters, will call upon the slaves to follow them, and will march (the force of each plantation under a captain or captains appointed by me), to an appointed place in this county. All going well, there should be mustered at that place within the space of a day and a night a force of some two thousand men—such an army as this colony hath never seen, an army composed in large measure of honest folk, and officered by four hundred men who, bold and experienced, and strong in righteous wrath, should in themselves be sufficient to utterly deject the adversary. We will make of that force, motley as it is, a second New Model, as well disciplined and as irresistible as the first; and who should be its general but the son of that Warham Landless whom Cromwell loved, and whose old regiment is well represented here? Then will we fight in honest daylight with those who come against us—and conquer. And we will not stain our victory. Your nightmare vision of midnight butchery is naught. There will be no such thing."
Through the quiet of the evening came to them the clear, sweet, and distant winding of a horn.
"'Tis the call to quarters," said Godwyn. "You must go, lad."
Landless rose. "I will come to-morrow night if I can. Till then, farewell,—father." He ended with a smile on his dark, stern face that turned it into a boy's again.
"May the Lord bless thee, my son," said the other in his gravely tender voice. "May he cause His face to shine upon thee, and bring thee out of all thy troubles."
As Landless turned to leave the hut the mender of nets had a sudden thought. "Come hither," he said, "and let me show you my treasure house. Should aught happen to me, it were well that you should know of it."
He took up the precious flask from the table, and followed by Landless, limped across the hut to the fireplace. The logs above it appeared as solid, gnarled and stained by time as any of the others constituting the walls of the hut, but upon the pressure of Godwyn's finger upon some secret spring, a section of the wood fell outwards like the lid of a box, disclosing a hollow within.
From this hollow came the dull gleam of gold, and by the side of the little heap of coin lay several folded papers and a pair of handsomely mounted pistols.
Godwyn touched the papers. "The names or the signs of the Oliverians are here," he said, "together with those of the leaders of the indented servants concerned with us. It is our solemn League and Covenant—and our death warrant if discovered. The gold I had with me, hidden upon my person, when I was brought to Virginia. The pistols were the gift of a friend. Both may be useful some day."
"Hide them! Quick!" said Landless in a low voice, and wheeled to face a man who stood in the doorway, blinking into the semi-darkness of the room.
The lid of the hollow swung to with a click, the log assumed its wonted appearance, and the mender of nets, too, turned upon the intruder.
It was the convict Roach who had pushed the door open and now stood with his swollen body and bestial face darkening the glory of the sunset without. There was no added expression of greed or of awakened curiosity upon his sullenly ferocious countenance. He might have seen or he might not. They could not tell.
"What do you want?" asked Landless sternly.
"Thought as you might not have heard the horn, comrade, and so might get into more trouble. So I thought I'd come over and warn you." All this in a low, hoarse and dogged voice.
"Don't call me comrade. Yes: I heard the horn. You had best hasten or you may get into trouble yourself."
The man received this intimation with a malevolent grin. "Talking big eases the smart, don't it?" and he broke into his yelling laugh.
"Get out of this," said Landless, a dangerous light in his eyes.
The man stopped laughing and began to curse. But he went his way, and Landless, too, after waiting to give him a start, left the hut and turned his steps towards the quarters.
Upon the other side of the creek, sitting beneath a big sweet gum, and whittling away at a piece of stick weed, he found the boy who, the day before, had accused him of feeling as fine as the Lord Mayor of London. He sprang to his feet as Landless approached, and cheerfully remarking that their paths were the same, strode on side by side with him.
"I say," he said presently with ingenuous frankness, "I asks your pardon for what I said to you yesterday. I dessay you make a very good Sec'tary, and Losh! the Lord Mayor himself mightn't have dared to strike that d—d fine Court spark. They say he has fought twenty duels."
"You have my full forgiveness," said Landless, smiling.
"That's right!" cried the other, relieved. "I hates for a man to bear malice."
"I have seen you before yesterday. I forget how they call you."
"Dick Whittington."
"Dick Whittington!"
"Ay. Leastways the parish over yonder," a jerk of his thumb towards England, "called me Dick, and I names myself Whittington. And why? Because like that other Dick I runs away to make my fortune. Because like him I've little besides empty pockets and a hopeful heart. And because I means to go back some fine day, jingling money, and wearing gold lace, and become the mayor of Banbury. Or maybe I'll stop in Virginia, and become a trader and Burgess. I could send for Joyce Whitbread, and marry her here as well as in Banbury."
Landless laughed. "So you ran away?"
"Yes; some four years ago, just after I came to man's estate." (He was about nineteen.) "Stowed myself away on board the Mary Hart at Plymouth. Made the Virginny voyage for my health, and on landing was sold by the captain for my passage money. Time's out in three years, but I may begin to make my fortune before then, for—" He stopped speaking to give Landless a sidelong glance from out his blue eyes, and then went on.
"A voice speaks through the land, from the Potomac to the James, and from the falls of the Far West to the great bay. What says the voice?"
Landless answered, "The voice saith, 'Comfort ye, my people, for the hour of deliverance is at hand.'"
"It's all right!" cried the boy gleefully. "I thought you was one of us. We are all in the fun together!"
"We are in for a desperate enterprise that may hang every man of us," said Landless sternly. "I do not see the 'fun,' and I think you talk something loudly for a conspirator."
The boy was nothing abashed. "There's none to hear us," he said. "I can be as mum as t' other Dick's cat when there are ears around. As for fun, Losh! what better fun than fighting!"
"You seem to have a pretty good time as it is."
"Lord, yes! Life's jolly enough, but you see there's mighty little variety in it."
"I have found variety enough," said Landless.
"Oh, you've been here only a few weeks. Wait until you've spent years, and have gone through your experience of to-day half a dozen times, and you will find it tame enough."
"I shall not wait to see."
"Then a man gets tired of working for another man, and hankers for the time when he can set up for himself, especially if there's a pretty girl waiting for him." A tremendous sigh. "And then there's the fun of the rising. Losh! a man must break loose now and then!"
"For all of which good reasons you have become a conspirator?"
"Ay, it doesn't pay to run away. You are hunted to death in the first place, and well nigh whipped to death if you are caught, as you always are. And then they double your time. This promises better."
"If it succeeds."
"Oh, it will succeed! Why shouldn't it with old Godwyn, who is more cunning than a red fox or a Nansemond medicine-man, at its head? Besides, if it fails, hanging is the worst that can happen, and we will have had the fun of the rising."
"You are a philosopher."
"What's that?"
"A wise man. Tell me: If this plot remains undiscovered, and the rising actually takes place, there will be upon each plantation before we can get away an interval of confusion and perhaps violence. 'Tis then that the greatest danger will threaten the planters and their families. You yourself have no ill feeling towards your master or his family? You would do them no unprovoked mischief?"
The boy opened his big blue eyes, and shook his head in a vehement negative.
"Lord bless your soul, no!" he cried. "I wouldn't hurt a hair of Mistress Patricia's pretty head, nor of Mistress Lettice's wig, neither. As for the master, if he lets us go peaceably, we'll go with three cheers for him! Bless you! they're safe enough!"
The sanguine youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more sedately, and reached his cabin without being observed by the overseer.