Part 32 (2/2)

He made a gesture of command. ”Thou shalt do no murder!” he cried.

”It is not murder; it is sacrifice.”

”There must be another way!” cried Havisham.

”Find it!”

Havisham turned to the prisoner. ”Madam, will you swear to be silent concerning what you have heard?”

The Muggletonian laughed wildly. ”Who trusts a woman's oath!”

”You shall have no need,” said the lady of the manor calmly. She paused and her eyes went to the door in an intent and listening gaze, then came back to the faces about her with a strange light in their depths. ”Rebel servants,” she said in a clear, low voice, ”I defy you! And you, false slave, stand from before me. I need not your hateful aid.” In the moment of ominous silence that followed, she swayed towards the door, her hand at her throat, her soul in her eyes. Suddenly she cried out, ”My father!

Charles! help!”

From without came an answering cry, followed by a rush of men through the door, and in an instant the room was filled with struggling forms as the two parties threw themselves upon each other. The newcomers were half a dozen blacks, the two overseers and Sir Charles Carew. The overseers had pistols and Sir Charles his sword. With it he met the rush of the youth with the hectic cheek, who came towards him in long, hound-like leaps, brandis.h.i.+ng a piece of wood above his head, and drove the blade deep into the chest of the fanatic. The wretched man staggered and fell, then rose to his knees. Flinging his arms above his head, he turned his worn face towards the flood of suns.h.i.+ne pouring in through the door, and cried in a loud voice, ”I see!” A stream of blood gushed from his lips, his arms dropped, and without a groan he fell back, dead.

Landless, wrestling with the slave Regulus, at length succeeded in hurling the powerful figure to the ground, where it lay stunned, and turned to find himself confronted by Woodson's pistol and the point of Sir Charles's rapier. A glance showed him the remaining conspirators, overpowered, and in the act of being bound with the ropes that had lain, coiled for use in packing, in the corners of the tobacco house. The hectic youth lay, a ghastly spectacle, in a pool of blood across the doorway. At his feet was the branded man, a bullet through his brain, and near him the groaning figure of Havisham's mortally wounded companion. The woman who had brought all this to pa.s.s stood unharmed, white, with tragic, exultant eyes.

Sir Charles, serene and debonair, lowered his point. ”Your hand is played,” he said with a fine smile. Landless's stern, despairing gaze pa.s.sed him and went on to the overseer. ”I surrender to you,” he said briefly.

Woodson chuckled grimly and stuck his pistol in his belt. He was in high good humor, visions of reward and thanks from the a.s.sembly dancing before his eyes. ”I've had my eye on you for some time, young man,” he said almost genially. ”I've suspected that you were up to something, but Lord! to think that a woman's wit should have trapped you at last!

Haines, bring that rope over here.”

Sir Charles went over to Patricia and offered her his arm. ”Dearest and bravest of women!” he said in a caressing whisper. ”Come with me from this place, which must be dreadful to you.”

She did not answer him at once, but stood looking past him at the picture of laughing water and waving forest framed in the doorway.

”I thought I should never see the suns.h.i.+ne again,” she said dreamily.

”Did Margery give _you_ the message?”

”Yes, she met me under the mulberries. I would not wait to rouse your father, but calling the overseers and the blacks from the fields, came at once.”

”I owe you my life,” she said. ”You and--”

Her eyes left the summer outside and came back to the shadowy forms within the tobacco house. ”I will go with you directly, cousin,” she said quietly, ”but first I wish to speak to that man.”

He shot a swift glance at her face, but drew back with a bow, and she walked with a steady step up to Landless. ”Fall back a little,” she said with an imperious wave of her hand to the men about him. They obeyed her. Landless, left standing before her, his arms bound to his sides, raised his head and looked her in the face. She met his eyes. ”You lied to me,” she said in a low, even voice.

”Once, madam, and to save others,” he said proudly,

”Not once, but twice. Do you think that now I believe that tale you told me that night, that fairy tale of persecuted innocence? When I think that I ever believed it I hate myself.”

”Nevertheless, it is true, madam.”

”It is false! Yesterday I thought of you as a gallant gentleman, greatly wronged ... and I pitied you. To-day I am wiser.”

He held her eyes with his own for a moment, then let them go. ”Some day you will know,” he said.

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