Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
The prison
vanished, and the waves that tossed around him were the waves of the
Atlantic. A ship ploughed her way through them. He saw into her
hold,—a horrible place of stench and filth and darkness,—a place where
hounds would not have kenneled. Men and women were there who cursed and
fought for the scanty, worm-eaten food that was thrown them. Some wore
gyves: they were heavy upon the wrists and ankles of the man of his
vision. He saw a face looking down upon this man, a handsome
supercilious face, with insolent amusement in the languid eyes and in
the curves of the lips. The hatches were battened down upon the cargo
of misery, and the ship with its brutal captain and its handful of
gold-laced, dicing, swearing passengers vanished.... He saw a sandy,
grass-grown street, and a row of mean houses, and a low, brick building
with barred windows. There was a crowd before this building, and a man
standing upon the platform of a pillory was selling human flesh and
blood. He saw the boy who had stood beneath the yews of the old Hull,
who had fought at Worcester beneath his father’s eye; the man who had
lain in prison and in the noisome hold of the ship, put up and sold to
the highest bidder. He saw him carried away with other merchandise to
the home of his purchaser. He saw a Virginia plantation lying fair and
serene beneath a Virginia heaven; and a wide porch, and standing therein
an angelic vision, all grace and beauty, vivid youth and splendor.
The picture vanished into the night that raved about him, and with a
long shaken sigh he let his eyes fall from the watery steeps to the face
of the woman who lay within his arms. He had not looked at her before,
conceiving that she might be awake and feel his glance upon her. Now he
could tell from her breathing that she slept. He gazed upon the pure
pale face with the golden hair falling about it, in a passion of pity
and tenderness. She moaned now and then in her sleep, or turned
uneasily in his arms. Once she spoke a few words, and he bent eagerly to
catch them, thinking that she had awakened and was speaking to him.
They were:—
"Ah, your Excellency! where I reign there shall be only good Churchmen
and loyal Cavaliers—no Roundheads, no rebel or convict servants!" and
she laughed in her sleep.
Landless shrank as from a mortal blow, then broke into a bitter laugh,
and said to himself, "Thou art a fool, Godfrey Landless. It were but
too easy to forget to-night what thou art and what thou must seem to
her. Thou art answered according to thy folly." He sighed impatiently,
and withdrawing his gaze from the sleeping face, fell into a sombre
reverie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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