The Heart's Highway Part 14

No love nor fear for me was in her eyes as she looked at me, only that enthusiasm for the cause of liberty, and I loved her better for it, if that could be. A man or woman who is but a bond slave to love and incapable of aught but the longing for it, is but a poor lover.

"I tell thee, Harry, cut down the plants on Laurel Creek!" she cried again, and I answered to appease her, not daring violent contradiction lest I rouse her to some desperate act, this wild, young maid with Nathaniel Bacon's hair in the locket against her heart, and as fiery blood as his in her veins, that it should come in good time, but that I was under the leadership of others and not my own.

"Then as soon as may be, Harry," she persisted, "for sure I should die of shame were my plants standing and the others cut, and Harry, sure it could not be at all, were it not for my fine gowns which the 'Golden Horn' brought over from England!"

With that she laughed, and stood aside to let me pa.s.s, but suddenly, as I touched her in the narrow way, her mood changed, and the woman in her came uppermost, though not to her shaking. But she caught hold of my right arm with her two little hands and pressed her fair cheek against my shoulder with that modest boldness of a maid when she is a.s.sured of love, and whispered: "Harry, if the militia is ordered out they say they will not fire, but--if thou be wounded, Harry, 'tis I will nurse thee, and no other, and--Harry, cut all the plants that thou art able, before they come."

Then she let me go, and I went forth thinking that here was a helpmeet for a soldier in such times as these, and how I gloried in her because she held her love as one with glory. Round to the stable for my horse I stole, and it was very dark, with a soft smother of darkness because of a heavy mist, and the moon not up, and I had backed my horse out of his stall and was about to mount him, before I was aware of a dark figure lurking in shadow, and made out by the long sweep of the garments that it was a woman. I paused, and looked intently into the shadow, where she stood so silently that she might have deceived me had it not been for a flutter of her cloak in a stray wind.

"Who goes there?" I called out softly, but I knew well enough. 'Tis sometimes a stain on a man's manhood, the hatred he can bear to a woman who is continually between him and his will, and his keen apprehension of her as a sort of a cat under cover beside his path.

So I knew well enough it was Catherine Cavendish, and indeed I marvelled that I had gotten thus far without meeting her. She stepped forward with no more ado when I accosted her, and spoke, but with great caution.

"What do you, Master Wingfield?" she whispered. "I go on my own business, an it please you, Madam," I answered something curtly, and I have since shamed myself with the memory of it, for she was a woman.

"It pleases me not, nor my grandmother, that one of her household should go forth on any errand of mystery at such a time as this, when whispers have reached us of another insurrection," she replied.

"Master Wingfield, I demand to know, in the name of my Grandmother Cavendish, the purpose of your riding forth in such fashion?"

"And that, Madam, I refuse to tell you," I replied, bowing low. "You presume too greatly on your privileges," she burst out. "You think because my grandmother holds you in such strange favour that she seems to forget, to forget--"

"That I am a convict, Madam," I finished for her, with another low bow.

"Finish it as you will, Master Wingfield," she said haughtily, "but you think wrongly that she will countenance treason to the king in her own household, and 'tis treason that is brewing to-night."

"Madam," I whispered, "if you love your grandmother and value her safety, you will remain in ignorance of this."

Then she caught me by the arm, with such a nervous ardour that never would I have known her for the Catherine Cavendish of late years.

"My G.o.d, Harry, you shall not go," she whispered. "I say you shall not! I--I--will go to my grandmother. I will have the militia out.

Harry, I say you shall not go!"

But then my blood was up. "Madam," I said, "go I shall, and if you acquaint your grandmother, 'twill be to her possible undoing, and yours and your sister's, since the having one of the rioters in your own household will lay you open to suspicion. Then besides, your sister's bringing over of the arms may be traced to her if the matter be agitated."

Then truly the feminine soul of this woman leapt to the surface with no more ado.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Harry!" she cried out. "I care not for my grandmother, nor my sister, nor the king, nor Nathaniel Bacon, nor aught, nor aught--I fear, I fear--Oh, I fear lest thou be killed, Harry!"

"Lest my dead body be brought home to thy door, and the accusation of having furnished a traitor to the king be laid to thee, Madam?" I said, for not one whit believed I in her love for me. But she only sobbed in a distracted fashion.

"Fear not, Madam," I said, "if the militia be out, and I fall, it will go hard that I die before I have time to forswear myself yet again for the sake of thy family. But, I pray thee, keep to thyself for the sake of all."

With that I was in my saddle and rode away, for I had lingered, I feared, too long, and as G.o.d is my witness I had no faith that Catherine Cavendish did more than a.s.sume such interest in me for her own ends, for love, as I conceived it, was not thus.

I hastened on my way to Barry Upper Branch, where was the rendezvous, and on my way had to pa.s.s the house where dwelt that woman of strange repute, Margery Key, and it was naught but a solidity of shadow beside the road except for a glimmer of white from the breast of her cat in the doorway. But as I live, as I rode past, a voice came from that house, though how she knew me in that gloom I know not.

"Good speed to thee, Master Wingfield, and the f.a.gots that thou didst gather for the despised and poor shall turn into blessings, like bars of silver. That which thou hast given, hast thou forever.

Go on and fear not, and strike for liberty, and no harm shall come nigh thee." As she spoke I saw the bent back of the poor old crone in the doorway beside her cat, and partly because of her blessing, and partly because, as I said before, whether witch or not, she was aged and feeble, and ill fitted for such work, I leapt from my saddle and gathered her another armful of f.a.gots, and laid them on her hearth. I left the old soul shedding such tears of grat.i.tude over that slight service and calling down such childish blessings upon my head that I began to have little doubt that she was no witch, but only a poor and solitary old woman, which to my mind is the forlornest state of humanity. How a man fares without those of his own flesh and blood I can understand, since a man must needs have some comfort in his own endurance of hardships, but what a woman can do without chick or child, and no solace in her own dependency, I know not. Verily I know not that such be to blame if they turn to Satan himself for a protector, as they suspected Margery Key of doing.

I rode away from Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment, and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there pa.s.sed from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed tightly as if to a.s.sure folk that all therein were sound asleep, a bright light like a torch, but no man carried it, and it crossed the road and was away over the meadows, and no man whom I saw carried it, and it waved in the wind like a torch streaming back, and I knew it for a corpse candle. And that same night the man who dwelt in that house was slain while pulling up the tobacco plants.

I rode fast, marvelling a little upon this strange sight, yet, though marvelling, not afraid, for things that I understand not, and that seem to savour of something outside the flesh, have always rather aroused me to rage as of one who was approached by other than the given rules of warfare rather than fear. I have always argued that an apparition should attack only his own kind, and hath no right to leave his own battlefield for ours, when we be at a disadvantage by our lack of understanding as to weapons. So if I had time I would have ridden after that corpse candle and gotten, if I could, a sight of the bearer had he been fiend or spook, but I knew that I had none to lose. So I rode on hard to Barry Upper Branch.

There was an air of mystery about the whole place that night, though it were hard to see the use of it. Whereas, generally speaking, there was a broad blazon of light from all the windows often to the revealing of strange sights within, the shutters were closed, and only by the lines of gold at top and bottom would one have known the house was lit at all. And whereas there were always to be seen horses standing openly before the porch, this night one knew there were any about only by the sound of their distant stamping. And yet this was the night when all mystery of plotting was to be resolved into the wind of action.

I entered and found a great company a.s.sembled in the hall, and all equipped with knives for the cutting of the tobacco plants, and arms, for the militia, as was afterwards proved, was an uncertain quant.i.ty. One minute the soldiers were for the government, when the promises as to their pay were specious, and the next, when the pay was not forthcoming, for the rioters, and there was no stability either for the one cause or the other in them.

There was a hushed greeting from one or two who stood nearest--Sir Humphrey Hyde among them--as I entered, then the work went on. Major Robert Beverly it was who was taking the lead of matters, though it was not fully known then or afterward, but sure it can do no harm at this late date to divulge the truth, for it was a glorious cause, and to the credit of a man's honour, if not to his purse, and his standing with the government.

Major Beverly stood at the head of the hall with a roll of parchment in his hand, wherefrom he read the names of those present, whom he was dividing into parties for the purpose of the plant-cutting, esteeming that the best plan to pursue rather than to march out openly in a great mob. Thus the whole company there a.s.sembled was divided into small parties, and each put under a leader, who was to give directions as to the commencement of the work of destruction.

My party was headed by Capt. Noel Jaynes, something to my discontent, for the hardest luck of choosing in the world to my mind is that of choosing a leader, for the leader is in himself a very gall-stone. Never had it pleased me to follow any man's bidding, and in one way only could I comfort myself and retain my respect of self, and that was by the consideration that I followed by my own will, and so in one sense led myself.

When at last we set forth, some of us riding, and some on foot, with that old pirate captain to the front hunched to his saddle, for he never could sit a horse like a landsman, but clung to him as if he were a swaying mast, and worked his bridle like a wheel with the result of heavy lunges to right or left, I felt for the first time since I had come to Virginia like my old self.

We hurried along the moonlit road, then struck into a bridle-path, being bound for Major Robert Beverly's plantation, he being supposed to know naught of it, and indeed after his issuing of orders he had ridden to Jamestown, to see Sir Henry Chichely, and keep him quiet with a game at piquet, which he much affected.

As we rode along in silence, if any man spoke, Captain Jaynes quieted him with a great oath smothered in his chest, as if by a bed of feathers, and presently I became aware that there were more of us than when we started. We swarmed through the woods, our company being swelled invisibly from every side, and not only men but women were there. Both Mistress Allgood and Mistress Longman were pressing on with their petticoats tucked up, and to my great surprise both of the black women who lived at Barry Upper Branch. They slunk along far to the rear, with knives gleaming like white fire at their girdles, keeping well out of sight of the Barry brothers, who were both of our party, and looking for all the world like two female tigers of some savage jungle in search of prey, since both moved with a curious powerful crouch of secrecy as to her back and hips, and wary roll of fierce eyes.

When we were fairly in the open of Major Beverly's plantation some few torches were lit, and then I saw that we were indeed a good hundred strong, and of the party were that old graybeard who had played Maid Marion on Mayday, and many of the Morris dancers, and those l.u.s.ty lads and la.s.ses, and they had been at the cider this time as at the other, but all had their wits at their service.

Not a light was in Major Beverly's great house, not a stir in the slave quarters. One would have sworn they were all asleep or dead.

But Captain Jaynes called a halt, and divided us into rank and file like a company of reapers, and to work we went on the great tobacco fields.

I trow it seemed a shame, as it ever does, to invoke that terrible force of the world which man controls, whether to his liberty or his slavery 'tis the question, and bring destruction upon all that fair inflorescence of life. But sometimes death and destruction are the means to life and immortality. Those great fields of Major Robert Beverly's lay before us in the full moonlight, overlapping with the l.u.s.ty breadth of the new leaves gleaming with silver dew, and upon them we fell. We hacked and cut, we tore up by the roots. In a trice we were bedlam loosened--that is, the ruder part of us. Some of us worked with no less fury, but still with some sense of our own dignity as destroyers over destruction. But the rabble who had swelled our ranks were all on fire with rage, and wasted themselves as well as the tobacco. They filled the air with shouts and wild screams and peals of laughter. That fiercest joy of the world, the joy of destruction, was upon them, and sure it must have been one of the chiefest of the joys of primitive man, for all in a second it was as if the centuries of civilisation and Christianity had gone for naught, and the great gulf which lies back of us to the past had been leapt. One had doubted it not, had he seen those old men tearing up the tobacco plants, their mouths dribbling with a slow mutter of curses, for they had drunk much cider, and being aged, and none too well fed, it had more hold on them than on some of the others; and to see the women lost to all sense of decency, with their petticoats girded high on account of the dew, striding among the plants with high flings of stalwart legs, then slashing right and left with an uncertainty of fury which threatened not only themselves but their neighbours as well as the tobacco, and shrieking now and then, regardless of who might hear, "Down with the king!"

Often one cut a finger, but went on with blood flowing, and their hair begun to fly loose, and they smeared their faces with their cut hands, and as for the two black women, they pounced upon those green plants with fierce swashes of their gleaming knives, and though they could have sensed little about the true reason for it all, worked with a fury of savagery which needed no motive only its first impetus of motion.

Captain Jaynes rode hither and thither striving to keep the mob in order, and enjoining silence upon them, and now and then lashing out with his long riding whip, but he had set forces in motion which he could not stop. Fire and flood and wind and the pa.s.sions of men, whether for love or rage, are beyond the leading of them who invoke them, being the instruments of the G.o.ds.

Sir Humphrey Hyde, who was beside me, slashing away at the plants, whispered: "My G.o.d, Harry, how far will this fire which we have kindled spread?" but not in fear so much as amazement.

And I, bringing down a great ring of the green leaves, replied, and felt as I spoke as if some other than I had my tongue and my voice:

"Maybe in the end, before it hath quite died out, to the destroying of tyranny and monarchy, and the clearing of the fields for a new government of equality and freedom."

But Sir Humphrey stared at me.

"Sure," he said, "it can do no more than to force the king to see that his colony hath grown from infancy to manhood, and hath an arm to be respected, and compel him to repeal the Navigation Act. What else, Harry?"

Then I, speaking again as if some other moved my tongue, replied that none could say what matter a little fire kindleth, but those that came after us might know the result of that which we that night begun.

But Sir Humphrey shook his head.

"If but Nat Bacon were alive!" he sighed. "No leader have we, Harry.

Oh, Harry, if thou wert not a convict! Captain Jaynes is sure out of his element in defending the rights of the oppressed, and should be on his own quarter-deck with his cutla.s.s in hand and his rapscallions around him, slaying and robbing, to be in full feather.

Naught can he do here. Lord, hear those women shriek! Why did they let women come hither, Harry? Sure Nick Barry is in his cups. Not thus would matters have been were Bacon alive. The women would have been at home in their beds, and no man in liquor at work, for I trust not the militia. Would Captain Bacon were alive, as he would have been, had he not been foully done to death."

This he said believing, as did many, that Bacon's death was due to treachery and not fever, nor, as many of his enemies affirmed, from over-indulgence in strong spirits, and I must say that I, remembering Bacon's greatness of enthusiasm and fixedness of purpose, was of the same belief.

As he spoke I seemed to see that dead hero as he would have looked in our midst with the moonlight shining on the stern whiteness of his face, and that look of high command in his eyes which none dared gainsay. And I answered again and again, as with an impulse not my own, "And maybe Bacon in truth leads us still, if not by his own chosen ways, to his own ends."