Patroon van Volkenberg

by Henry Thew Stephenson

I could do nothing but fall on my knees and cry, God be merciful to me a sinner. After that I rose with more peace of mind. I put my hand upon my bosom where Louis had laid his upon me, and drew out the rosary which I had picked up when Miriam dropped it on the floor of Meg’s cottage. I held it before me for a moment, then I put it to my lips and kissed it as a sacred thing.

CHAPTER XXII
A FRUITLESS RESOLUTION

This scene with Miriam put me in a state of bad humor, for all there was in it to make me glad. It is seldom that sweet recollections come unmixed with sour, and then the sour bite into our thoughts and the sweet are clean forgotten. I ought to have been happy over the dear picture of my sister and her friend praying together, each in her own faith, as Miriam said. But I could think only of my own loss in Ruth’s death, and of what wicked ways I had fallen into without her to keep me free of pitfalls. It was useless to argue with myself that I had been driven against my will; that, through my late career, I had chosen what seemed to be the right path, or, at least, the lesser of two evils. Such meditations gave me no comfort.

Here I actually was in the household of the patroon, a spy not even owning my name. My present safety was due mainly to Miriam’s intercession on my behalf. She had denied that I was a spy and had vouched for my honesty. This added new weight to my burden of remorse. I tossed wakefully on my bed at night, wondering what would happen if she knew the truth. How she would hate me and despise me when she found out who I was. I was not only deceiving the patroon, acting a lie day by day; I was also deceiving her, she who had been so kind to my sister, and whose coveted belief in me had become more than I could contemplate.

So, when I rose in the morning after Meg’s death, I was full of a new idea. Come what would of it, I should seek Lady Marmaduke that very day and demand my release. I had gone to the manor-house at her instigation and felt myself bound to her service; but I would soon end that. Just how to accomplish the meeting had not occurred to me as yet, but I could not fail to make a chance before the day was over.

For an hour in the morning I was busy in my mind going over the situation and trying to read the signs of the times. I knew well enough that Van Volkenberg’s expulsion from the council was not the end of his account with the governor. It was but one successful blow from his enemy and was sure to be returned. Theirs was a bitter struggle that I knew would end only with the utter annihilation of one or the other of them.

Could Van Volkenberg possibly succeed? He was nearer to success than I had any idea of at the time. There were many points in his favor. Captain Kidd was about to arrive—in fact, he had arrived during the night, but we did not know it then. His mission was now familiar to everyone, and the fact that he would recruit his crew in New York was also public. There were so many merchants in the city whose trade would be hurt by the suppression of the buccaneers, that ill-feeling against the Earl was running high. The patroon made the most of this, coaxing here, explaining there, till all the discontented faction began to look to him more than ever as their leader against the Earl.

Had the patroon been ready to strike his blow a few days earlier, I ween he had overturned the city.

Bellamont, on the other hand, was likely to suffer from too much security, or fancied security. He was an easy-going man most of the time; one who prided himself on his knowledge of the character of men—a knowledge which he really did not possess at all. Through me he had detected the plotting of the patroon. Governor Bellamont thought that the retirement of his enemy from the council in disgrace removed him altogether from the sphere of troublesome elements that beset the King’s processes in the province. There was one person, however, at his very right hand who realized the danger. Hardly a day passed that Lady Marmaduke did not warn the Earl, did not beseech him to use more care and watchfulness.

“No, no,” Bellamont would answer in his easy-going way. “I have killed him now. I’ll get the Assembly to reverse his grant and we shall hear no more of him.”