Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 165
As I stood up and looked to the table’s end, I saw the dark, restless eyes and the heavy blue jowl of Governor Nicholson. He saw me, for I was alone at the bottom end, and when we were seated, he cried out to me, —
“What news of trade, Mr. Garvald? You’re an active packman, for they tell me you’re never off the road.”
At the mention of my name every eye turned towards me, and I felt, rather than saw, the disfavour of the looks. No doubt they resented a storekeeper’s intrusion into well-bred company, and some were there who had publicly cursed me for a meddlesome upstart. But I was not looking their way, but at the girl who sat on my host’s right hand, and in whose dark eyes I thought I saw a spark of recognition.
She was clad in white satin, and in her hair and bosom spring flowers had been set. Her little hand played with the slim glass, and her eyes had all the happy freedom of childhood. But now she was a grown woman, with a woman’s pride and knowledge of power. Her exquisite slimness and grace, amid the glow of silks and silver, gave her the air of a fairy-tale princess. There was a grave man in black sat next her, to whom she bent to speak. Then she looked towards me again, and smiled with that witching mockery which had pricked my temper in the Canongate Tollbooth.
The Governor’s voice recalled me from my dream.
“How goes the Indian menace, Mr. Garvald?” he cried. “You must know,” and he turned to the company, “that our friend combines commerce with high policy, and shares my apprehensions as to the safety of the dominion.”
I could not tell whether he was mocking at me or not. I think he was, for Francis Nicholson’s moods were as mutable as the tides. In every word of his there lurked some sour irony.
The company took the speech for satire, and many laughed. One young gentleman, who wore a purple coat and a splendid brocaded vest, laughed very loud.
“A merchant’s nerves are delicate things,” he said, as he fingered his cravat. “I would have said ‘like a woman’s,’ had I not seen this very day Miss Elspeth’s horsemanship.” And he bowed to her very neatly.
Now I was never fond of being quizzed, and in that company I could not endure it.
“We have a saying, sir,” I said, “that the farmyard fowl does not fear the eagle. The men who look grave just now are not those who live snugly in coast manors, but the outland folk who have to keep their doors with their own hands.”
It was a rude speech, and my hard voice and common clothes made it ruder. The gentleman fired in a second, and with blazing eyes asked me if I intended an insult. I was about to say that he could take what meaning he pleased, when an older man broke in with, “Tush, Charles, let the fellow alone. You cannot quarrel with a shopman.”
“I thank you, George, for a timely reminder,” said my gentleman, and he turned away his head with a motion of sovereign contempt.
“Come, come, sirs,” Colonel Beverley cried, “remember the sacred law of hospitality. You are all my guests, and you have a lady here, whose bright eyes should be a balm for controversies.”
The Governor had sat with his lips closed and his eyes roving the table. He dearly loved a quarrel, and was minded to use me to bait those whom he liked little.
“What is all this talk about gentility?” he said. “A man is as good as his brains and his right arm, and no better. I am of the creed of the Levellers, who would have a man stand stark before his Maker.”
He could not have spoken words better calculated to set the company against me. My host looked glum and disapproving, and all the silken gentlemen murmured. The Virginian cavalier had as pretty a notion of the worth of descent as any Highland land-louper. Indeed, to be honest, I would have controverted the Governor myself, for I have ever held that good blood is a mighty advantage to its possessor.
Suddenly the grave man who sat by Miss Elspeth’s side spoke up. By this time I had remembered that he was Doctor James Blair, the lately come commissary of the diocese of London, who represented all that Virginia had in the way of a bishop. He had a shrewd, kind face, like a Scots dominie, and a mouth that shut as tight as the Governor’s.
“Your tongue proclaims you my countryman, sir,” he said. “Did I hear right that your name was Garvald?”
“Of Auchencairn?” he asked, when I had assented.
“Of Auchencairn, or what is left of it,” I said.
“Then, gentlemen,” he said, addressing the company, “I can settle the dispute on the facts, without questioning his Excellency’s dogma. Mr. Garvald is of as good blood as any in Scotland. And that,” said he firmly, “means that in the matter of birth he can hold up his head in any company in any Christian land.”
I do not think this speech made any man there look on me with greater favour, but it enormously increased my own comfort. I have never felt such a glow of gratitude as then filled my heart to the staid cleric. That he was of near kin to Miss Elspeth made it tenfold sweeter. I forgot my old clothes and my uncouth looks; I forgot, too, my irritation with the brocaded gentleman. If her kin thought me worthy, I cared not a bodle for the rest of mankind.
Presently we rose from table, and Colonel Beverley summoned us to the Green Parlour, where Miss Elspeth was brewing a dish of chocolate, then a newfangled luxury in the dominion. I would fain have made my escape, for if my appearance was unfit for a dining-hall, it was an outrage in a lady’s withdrawing-room. But Doctor Blair came forward to me and shook me warmly by the hand, and was full of gossip about Clydesdale, from which apparently he had been absent these twenty years. “My niece bade me bring you to her,” he said. “She, poor child, is a happy exile, but she has now and then an exile’s longings. A Scots tongue is pleasant in her ear.”
So I perforce had to follow him into a fine room with an oaken floor, whereon lay rich Smyrna rugs and the skins of wild beasts from the wood. There was a prodigious number of soft couches of flowered damask, and little tables inlaid with foreign woods and jeweller’s work. ‘Twas well enough for your fine gentleman in his buckled shoes and silk stockings to enter such a place, but for myself, in my coarse boots, I seemed like a colt in a flower garden. The girl sat by a brazier of charcoal, with the scarlet-coated negro at hand doing her commands. She was so busy at the chocolate making that when her uncle said, “Elspeth, I have brought you Mr. Garvald,” she had no hand to give me. She looked up and smiled, and went on with the business, while I stood awkwardly by, the scorn of the assured gentlemen around me.
By and by she spoke: “You and I seem fated to meet in odd places. First it was at Carnwath in the rain, and then at the Cauldstaneslap in a motley company. Then I think it was in the Tollbooth, Mr. Garvald, when you were very gruff to your deliverer. And now we are both exiles, and once more you step in like a bogle out of the night. Will you taste my chocolate?”
She served me first, and I could see how little the favour was to the liking of her little retinue of courtiers. My silken gentleman, whose name was Grey, broke in on us abruptly.
“What is this story, sir, of Indian dangers? You are new to the country, or you would know that it is the old cry of the landless and the lawless. Every out-at-elbows republican makes it a stick to beat His Majesty.”
“Are you a republican, Mr. Garvald?” she asked. “Now that I remember, I have seen you in Whiggamore company.”
“Why, no,” I said. “I do not meddle with politics. I am a merchant, and am well content with any Government that will protect my trade and my person.”
A sudden perversity had taken me to show myself at my most prosaic and unromantic. I think it was the contrast with the glamour of those fine gentlemen. I had neither claim nor desire to be of their company, and to her I could make no pretence.
He laughed scornfully. “Yours is a noble cause,” he said. “But you may sleep peacefully in your bed, sir. Be assured that there are a thousand gentlemen of Virginia whose swords will leap from their scabbards at a breath of peril, on behalf of their women and their homes. And these,” he added, taking snuff from a gold box, “are perhaps as potent spurs to action as the whims of a busybody or the gains of a house-keeping trader.”
I was determined not to be provoked, so I answered nothing. But Miss Elspeth opened her eyes and smiled sweetly upon the speaker.
“La, Mr. Grey, I protest you are too severe. Busybody — well, it may be. I have found Mr. Garvald very busy in other folks’ affairs. But I do assure you he is no house-keeper, I have seen him in desperate conflict with savage men, and even with His Majesty’s redcoats. If trouble ever comes to Virginia, you will find him, I doubt not, a very bold moss-trooper.”
It was the, light, laughing tone I remembered well, but now it did not vex me. Nothing that she could say or do could break the spell that had fallen on my heart, “I pray it may be so,” said Mr. Grey as he turned aside.
By this time the Governor had come forward, and I saw that my presence was no longer desired. I wanted to get back to Shalah and solitude. The cold bed on the shore would be warmed for me by happy dreams. So I found my host, and thanked him for my entertainment. He gave me good-evening hastily, as if he were glad to be rid of me.
At the hall door some one tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to find my silken cavalier.
“It seems you are a gentleman, sir,” he said, “so I desire a word with you. Your manners at table deserved a whipping, but I will condescend to forget them. But a second offence shall be duly punished.” He spoke in a high, lisping voice, which was the latest London importation.
I looked him square in the eyes. He was maybe an inch taller than me, a handsome fellow, with a flushed, petulant face and an overweening pride in his arched brows.
“By all means let us understand each other,” I said. “I have no wish to quarrel with you. Go your way and I will go mine, and there need be no trouble.”
“That is precisely the point,” said he. “I do not choose that your way should take you again to the side of Miss Elspeth Blair. If it does, we shall quarrel.”
It was the height of flattery. At last I had found a fine gentleman who did me the honour to regard me with jealous eyes. I laughed loudly with delight.
He turned and strolled back to the company. Still laughing, I passed from the house, lit my lantern, and plunged into the sombre woods.
CHAPTER 11. GRAVITY OUT OF BED
A week later I had a visit from old Mercer. He came to my house in the evening just after the closing of the store. First of all, he paid out to me the gold I had lost from my ship at Accomac, with all the gravity in the world, as if it had been an ordinary merchant’s bargain. Then he produced some papers, and putting on big horn spectacles, proceeded to instruct me in them. They were lists, fuller than those I had already got, of men up and down the country whom Lawrence trusted. Some I had met, many I knew of, but two or three gave me a start. There was a planter in Henricus who had treated me like dirt, and some names from Essex county that I did not expect. Especially there were several in James Town itself — one a lawyer body I had thought the obedient serf of the London merchants, one the schoolmaster, and another a drunken skipper of a river boat. But what struck me most was the name of Colonel Beverley.
“Are you sure of all these?” I asked.
“Sure as death,” he said. “I’m not saying that they’re all friends of yours, Mr. Garvald. Ye’ve trampled on a good wheen toes since you came to these parts. But they’re all men to ride the ford with, if that should come which we ken of.”
Some of the men on the list were poor settlers, and it was our business to equip them with horse and gun. That was to be my special duty — that and the establishing of means by which they could be summoned quickly. With the first Mercer could help me, for he had his hand on all the lines of the smuggling business, and there were a dozen ports on the coast where he could land arms. Horses were an easy matter, requiring only the doling out of money. But the summoning business was to be my particular care. I could go about the country in my ordinary way of trade without exciting suspicion, and my house was to be the rendezvous of every man on the list who wanted news or guidance.
“Can ye trust your men?” Mercer asked, and I replied that Faulkner was as staunch as cold steel, and that he had picked the others.
“Well, let’s see your accommodation,” and the old fellow hopped to his feet, and was out of doors before I could get the lantern.
Mercer on a matter of this sort was a different being from the decayed landlord of the water-side tavern. His spectacled eyes peered everywhere, and his shrewd sense judged instantly of a thing’s value. He approved of the tobacco-shed as a store for arms, for he could reach it from the river by a little-used road through the woods. It was easy so to arrange, the contents that a passing visitor could guess nothing, and no one ever penetrated to its recesses but Faulkner and myself. I summoned Faulkner to the conference, and told him his duties, which, he undertook with sober interest. He was a dry stick from Fife, who spoke seldom and wrought mightily.
Faulkner attended to Mercer’s consignments, and I took once more to the road. I had to arrange that arms from the coast or the river-sides could be sent inland, and for this purpose I had a regiment of pack horses that delivered my own stores as well. I had to visit all the men on the list whom I did not know, and a weary job it was. I repeated again my toil of the first year, and in the hot Virginian summer rode the length and breadth of the land. My own business prospered hugely, and I bought on credit such a stock of tobacco as made me write my uncle for a fourth ship at the harvest sailing. It seemed a strange thing, I remember, to be bargaining for stuff which might never be delivered, for by the autumn the dominion might be at death grips.
In those weeks I discovered what kind of force Lawrence leaned on. He who only knew James Town and the rich planters knew little of the true Virginia. There were old men who had long memories of Indian fights, and men in their prime who had risen with Bacon, and young men who had their eyes turned to the unknown West. There were new-comers from Scotland and North Ireland, and a stout band of French Protestants, most of them gently born, who had sought freedom for their faith beyond the sway of King Louis. You cannot picture a hardier or more spirited race than the fellows I thus recruited. The forest settler who swung an axe all day for his livelihood could have felled the ordinary fine gentleman with one blow of his fist. And they could shoot too, with their rusty matchlocks or clumsy snaphances. In some few the motive was fear, for they had seen or heard of the tender mercies of the savages. But in most, I think, it was a love of bold adventure, and especially the craving to push the white man’s province beyond the narrow borders of the Tidewater. If you say that this was something more than defence, I claim that the only way to protect a country is to make sure of its environs. What hope is there of peace if your frontier is the rim of an unknown forest?
My hardest task was to establish some method of sending news to the outland dwellers. For this purpose I had to consort with queer folk. Shalah, who had become my second shadow, found here and there little Indian camps, from which he chose young men as messengers. In one place I would get a settler with a canoe, in another a woodman with a fast horse; and in a third some lad who prided himself on his legs. The rare country taverns were a help, for most of their owners were in the secret. The Tidewater is a flat forest region, so we could not light beacons as in a hilly land. But by the aid of Shalah’s woodcraft I concocted a set of marks on trees and dwellings which would speak a language to any initiate traveller. The Indians, too, had their own silent tongue, by which they could send messages over many leagues in a short space. I never learned the trick of it, though I tried hard with Shalah as interpreter; for that you must have been suckled in a wigwam.
When I got back to James Town, Faulkner would report on his visitors, and he seems to have had many. Rough fellows would ride up at the darkening, bringing a line from Mercer, or more often an agreed password, and he had to satisfy their wants and remember their news. So far I had had no word from Lawrence, though Mercer reported that Ringan was still sending arms. That tobacco-shed of mine would have made a brave explosion if some one had kindled it, and, indeed, the thing more than once was near happening through a negro’s foolishness. I spent all my evenings, when at home, in making a map of the country. I had got a rough chart from the Surveyor-General, and filled up such parts as I knew, and over all I spread a network of lines which meant my ways of sending news. For instance, to get to a man in Essex county, the word would be passed by Middle Plantation to York Ferry. Thence in an Indian’s canoe it would be carried to Aird’s store on the Mattaponey, from which a woodman would take it across the swamps to a clump of hemlocks. There he would make certain marks, and a long-legged lad from the Rappahannock, riding by daily to school, would carry the tidings to the man I wanted. And so forth over the habitable dominion. I calculated that there were not more than a dozen of Lawrence’s men who within three days could not get the summons and within five be at the proper rendezvous.
One evening I was surprised by a visit from Colonel Beverley. He came openly on a fine bay horse with two mounted negroes as attendants. I had parted from him dryly, and had been surprised to find that he was one of us; but when I had talked with him a little, it appeared that he had had a big share in planning the whole business. We mentioned no names, but I gathered that he knew Lawrence, and was at least aware of Ringan. He warned me, I remember, to be on my guard against some of the young bloods, who might visit me to make mischief. “It’s not that they know anything of our affairs,” he said, “but that they have got a prejudice against yourself, Mr. Garvald. They are foolish, hot-headed lads, very puffed up by their pride of gentrice, and I do not like the notion of their playing pranks in that tobacco-shed.”
I asked him a question which had long puzzled me, why the natural defence of a country should be kept so secret. “The Governor, at any rate,” I said, “would approve, and we are not asking the burgesses for a single guinea.”
