Prisoners of Hope Part 48

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d 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 quant.i.ty of the f.a.gots 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 pa.s.sages 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, G.o.d 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, pa.s.sed 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 dash of oars in the dark stream below and for the rise of the moon which was to shine coldly down upon him, companionless, immured in that vast fortress from which he might never hope to escape.

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."

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d!"

"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!"