



Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: Mary Johnston]




                                *THE OLD
                               DOMINION*


                                   BY

                             MARY JOHNSTON

              Author of "By Order of the Company" "Audrey"
                           and "Sir Mortimer"



                                 LONDON
                      ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
                                  1907




1st Impression, January, 1899
2nd      "      August, 1899
3rd      "      May, 1900
4th      "      July, 1900
5th      "      October, 1900
6th      "      February, 1901
7th      "      August, 1901
8th      "      August, 1902
9th      "      April, 1904
10th     "      (Pocket Edition) March, 1906
11th     "          "      "     Sept. 1907




                              TO MY FATHER




                               *CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

      I. A Sloop comes in
     II. Its Cargo
    III. A Colonial Dinner Party
     IV. The Breaking Heart
      V. In the Three-Mile Field
     VI. The Hut on the Marsh
    VII. A Mender of Nets
   VIII. The New Secretary
     IX. An Interrupted Wooing
      X. Landless pays the Piper
     XI. Landless becomes a Conspirator
    XII. A Dark Deed
   XIII. In the Tobacco House
    XIV. A Midnight Expedition
     XV. The Waters of Chesapeake
    XVI. The Face in the Dark
   XVII. Landless and Patricia
  XVIII. A Capture
    XIX. The Library of the Surveyor-General
     XX. Wherein the Peace Pipe is smoked
    XXI. The Duel
   XXII. The Tobacco House again
  XXIII. The Question
   XXIV. A Message
    XXV. The Road to Paradise
   XXVI. Night
  XXVII. Morning
 XXVIII. Bread cast upon the Waters
   XXIX. The Bridge of Rock
    XXX. The Backward Track
   XXXI. The Hut in the Clearing
  XXXII. Attack
 XXXIII. The Fall of the Leaf
  XXXIV. An Accident
   XXXV. The Boat that was not
  XXXVI. The Last Fight
 XXXVII. Vale




                              *CHAPTER I*

                           *A SLOOP COMES IN*


"She will reach the wharf in half an hour."

The speaker shaded her eyes with a great fan of carved ivory and painted
silk.  They were beautiful eyes; large, brown, perfect in shape and
expression, and set in a lovely, imperious, laughing face.  The divinity
to whom they belonged was clad in a gown of green dimity, flowered with
pink roses, and trimmed about the neck and half sleeves with a fall of
yellow lace.  The gown was made according to the latest Paris mode, as
described in a year-old letter from the court of Charles the Second, and
its wearer gazed from under her fan towards the waters of the great bay
of Chesapeake, in his Majesty's most loyal and well beloved dominion of
Virginia.

The object of her attention was a large sloop that had left the bay and
was sailing up a wide inlet or creek that pierced the land, cork-screw
fashion, until it vanished from sight amidst innumerable green marshes.
The channel, indicated by a deeper blue in the midst of an expanse of
shoal water, was narrow, and wound like a gleaming snake in and out
among the interminable succession of marsh islets. The vessel, following
its curves, tacked continually its great sail, intensely white against
the blue of inlet, bay and sky, and the shadeless green of the marshes,
zigzagging from side to side with provoking leisureliness. The girl who
had spoken watched it eagerly, a color in her cheeks, and one little
foot in its square-toed, rosetted shoe tapping impatiently upon the
floor of the wide porch in which she stood.

Her companion, lounging upon the wooden steps, with his back to a
pillar, looked up with an amused light in his blue eyes.

"Why are you so eager, cousin?" he drawled. "You cannot be pining for
your father when 't is scarce five days since he went to Jamestown.  Do
the Virginia ladies watch for the arrival of a new batch of slaves with
such impatience?"

"The slaves!  No, indeed!  But, sir, in that boat there are three cases
from England."

"Ah, that accounts for it!  And what may these wonderful cases contain?"

"One contains the dress in which I shall dance with you at the party at
Green Spring which the governor is to give in your honor--if you ask me,
sir. Oh, I take it for granted that you will, so spare us your
protestations.  'T is to have a petticoat of blue tabby and an overdress
of white satin trimmed with yards and yards of Venice point.  The
stockings are blue silk, and come from the French house in Covent
Garden, as doth the scarf of striped gauze, and the shoes, gallooned
with silver.  Then there are my combs, gloves, a laced waistcoat, a red
satin bodice, a scarlet taffetas mantle, a plumed hat, a pair of clasped
garters, a riding mask, a string of pearls, and the latest romances."

"A pretty list!  Is that all?"

"There are things for aunt Lettice, petticoats and ribbons, a gilt
stomacher and a China monster, and for my father, lace ruffles and
bands, a pair of French laced boots, a periwig, a new scabbard for his
rapier, and so on."

The young man laughed.  "'T is a curious life you Virginians lead," he
said.  "The embroidered suits and ruffles, the cosmetics and perfumes of
Whitehall in the midst of oyster beds and tobacco fields, savage Indians
and <DW64> slaves."

The girl put on a charming look of mock offense. "We _are_ a little bit
of England set down here in the wilderness.  Why should we not clothe
ourselves like gentlefolk as well as our kindred and friends at home?
And sure both England and Virginia have had enough of sad 
raiment.  Better go like a peacock than like a horrid Roundhead."

Her companion laughed musically and sang a stave of a cavalier love
song.  He was a slender, well-made man, dressed in the extreme of the
mode of the year of grace, sixteen hundred and sixty-three, in a richly
laced suit of camlet with points of blue ribbon, and the great scented
periwig then newly come into fashion. The close curled rings of hair
descending far over his cravat of finest Holland framed a handsome,
lazily insolent face, with large steel-blue eyes and beautifully cut,
mocking lips.  A rapier with a jeweled hilt hung at his side, and one
white hand, half buried in snowy ruffles, held a beribboned cane with
which, as he talked, he ruthlessly decapitated the pink and white
morning-glories with which the porch was trellised.

The house to which the porch belonged was long and low, built of wood,
with many small windows, and at either end a great brick chimney.  From
the porch to the water, a hundred yards away, stretched a walk of
crushed shells bisecting an expanse of green turf dotted with noble
trees--the cedar and the cypress predominating.  Diverging from this
central walk were two narrower paths which, winding in and out in
eccentric figures, led, on the one hand, to a rustic summer-house
overgrown with honeysuckle and trumpet-vine, and on the other to a tiny
grotto constructed of shells and set in a tangle of periwinkle. Along
one side of the house, and protected by a stout locust paling overrun
with grape-vines, lay the garden, where flowers and vegetables
flourished contentedly side by side, the hollyhocks and tall white
lilies, the hundred-leaved roses and scarlet poppies showing like gilded
officers amidst the rank and file of sober essuculents.  Behind the
house were clustered various offices, then came an orchard where the
June apples and the great red cherries were ripening in the hot
sunshine, then on the shore of a second and narrower creek rose the
quarters for the plantation servants, white and black--a long double row
of cabins, dominated by the overseer's house and shaded by ragged yellow
pines.  Along one shore of this inlet was planted the Indian corn
prescribed by law, and from the other gleamed the soft yellow of
ripening wheat, but beyond the water and away to the westward stretched
acre after acre of tobacco, a sea of vivid green, broken only by an
occasional shed or drying house, and merging at last into the darker hue
of the forest.  Over all the fair scene, the flashing water, the velvet
marshes, the smiling fields, the fringe of dark and mysterious woodland,
hung a Virginia heaven, a cloudless blue, soft, pure, intense.  The air
was full of subdued sound--the distant hum of voices from the fields of
maize and tobacco, the faint clink of iron from the smithy, the wash and
lap of the water, the drone of bees from the hives beneath the eaves of
the house.  Great bronze butterflies fluttered in the sunshine,
brilliant humming-birds, plunged deep into the long trumpet-flowers;
from the topmost bough of a locust, heavy with bloom, came the liquid
trill of a mock bird.

It was a fair domain, and a wealthy.  The Englishman thought of certain
appalling sums lost to Sedley and Roscommon, and there flitted through
his brain a swift little calculation as to the number of hogsheads of
Orenoko or sweet-scented it would take to wipe off the score.  And the
girl beside him was beautiful enough to take Whitehall by storm, to be
berhymed by Waller, and to give to Lely a subject above all flattery.
He set his lips with the air of a man who has made up his mind, and
turned to his companion, who was absorbed in watching the white sail
grow slowly larger.

"How long, now, cousin?"

"But a few minutes unless the wind should fail."

"And then you will have your treasures.  But, madam, when you have
assumed all the panoply your sex relies on to increase its charms 't
will be but to 'gild refined gold or paint the lily.'  The Aphrodite of
this western ocean needs no adornment."

The girl looked at him with laughter in her eyes. "You make me too many
pretty speeches, cousin," she said demurely.  "We know the value of the
fine things you court gallants are perpetually saying."

"Upon my soul, madam, I swear"--

"Do you know the amount of the fine for swearing, Sir Charles?  See how
large the sail has grown! When the boat rounds the long marsh she will
come more quickly.  We will soon be able to see my father wave his
handkerchief."

The young man bit his lip.  "You are pleased to be cruel to-day, madam,
but I am your slave and I obey.  We will look together for Colonel
Verney's handkerchief.  How many black slaves does he bring you?"

She laughed.  "But half a dozen blacks, but there will be several
redemptioners if you prefer to be numbered with them."

"Redemptioners!  Ah, yes!  the English servants who are sold for their
passage money.  I thank you, madam, but _my_ servitude is for life."

"The men my father will bring may not be the ordinary servants who come
here to better their condition.  He may have obtained them from a batch
of felons from Newgate who have been kept in gaol in Jamestown until
word could be got to the planters around.  I am sure I wish the ship
captains and the traders would stop bringing in the wretches.  It is
different with the <DW64>s: we can make allowance for the poor silly
things that are scarce more than animals, and they grow attached to us
and we to them, and the simple indented servants are well enough too.
There are among them many honest and intelligent men.  But these gaol
birds are dreadful.  It sickens me to look at them.  Thieves and
murderers every one!"

"I should not think the colony served by their importation."

"It is not indeed, and we have hopes that it will cease.  I beg my
father not to buy them, but he says that one man cannot stop an
abuse--that as long as his fellow-planters use them he might as well do
so too."

Sir Charles Carew delicately smothered a yawn. "The ship that brought me
over a fortnight ago," he said lazily, "had a consignment of such
rascals.  It was amusing to watch their antics, crowded together as they
were in the hold.  There were two wild Irishmen whom we used to have on
deck to dance for us. Gad!  what figures they cut!  The captain and I
had a standing wager of five of the new guineas as to which of the
rascals could hold out longest, promising a measure of rum to the
victorious votary of Terpsichore. When I had lost a score of guineas I
found that the captain was in the habit of priming his man before he
came upon deck.  Naturally, being filled with Dutch courage, he won."

"Poor Sir Charles!  What did you do?"

"Sent the captain a cartel and fought him on his own deck.  There was
one man in the villainous company whom, I protest, I almost pitied,
though of course the rogue had but his deserts."

"What was he?"

"A man of about thirty.  A fellow with a handsome face and a lithe
well-made figure which he managed with some grace.  He had the air of
one who had seen better days.  I remember, one day when the captain was
bestowing upon him some especially choice oaths, seeing him clap his
hand to his side as though he expected to touch a rapier hilt.  He was
cleanly too; kept his rags of clothing as decent as circumstances
allowed, and looked less like a wild beast in a litter of foul straw
than did his fellows.  But he was an ill-conditioned dog.  We had some
passages together, he and I.  He took it upon himself to defend what he
was pleased to call the honor of one of his precious company.  It was
vastly amusing....  After that I fell into the habit of watching him
through the open hatches.  A little thing provides entertainment at sea,
Mistress Patricia.  He would sit or stand for hours looking past me with
a perfectly still face. The other wretches were quick to crowd up,
whining to me to pitch them half pence or tobacco, but try as I would, I
could not get word or look from him. Sink me!  if he didn't have the
impudence to resent my being there!"

"It was cruel to stare at misery."

"Lard, madam!  such vermin are used to being stared at.  In London,
Newgate, and Bridewell are theatres as well as the Cockpit or the King's
House, and the world of mode flock to the one spectacle as often as to
the other.  But see!  the sloop has passed the marsh and has a clean
sweep of water between her and the wharf."

"Yes, she is coming fast now."

"What is coming?" asked a voice from the doorway.

"The Flying Patty, Aunt Lettice," the girl answered over her shoulder.
"Get your hood and come with us to the wharf."

Mistress Lettice Verney emerged from the hall, two red spots burning in
her withered cheeks, and her tall thin figure quivering with excitement.

"I am all ready, child," she quavered.  "But, mark my words, Patricia,
there will be something wrong with my paduasoy petticoat, or Charette
will not have sent the proper tale of green stockings or Holland smocks.
Did you not hear the screech owl last night?"

"No, Aunt Lettice."

"It remained beneath my window the entire night. I did not sleep a wink.
And this morning Chloe upset the salt cellar, and the salt fell towards
me."  Mistress Lettice rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed
lugubriously.  Patricia laughed.

"I dreamed of flowers last night, Aunt Lettice; miles and miles of them,
waxen and cold and sweet, like those they strew over the dead."

Mistress Lettice groaned.  "'T is a dreadful sign. Captain Norton's wife
(she that was Polly Wilson) dreamed of flowers the night before the
massacre of 'forty-four.  The only thing the poor soul said when the
warwhoop wakened them in the dead of the night and the door came
crashing in, was, 'I told you so.'  They were her last words.  Then
Martha Westall dreamed of flowers, and two days later her son James
stepped on a stingray over at Dale's Gift.  And I myself dreamed of
roses the week before those horrid Roundhead commissioners with the
rebel Claiborne at their head and a whole fleet at their back, compelled
us to surrender to their odious Commonwealth."

"At least that evil is past," said the girl with a gay laugh.  "And ill
fortune will never come to me aboard the Flying Patty, so I shall go
down to the wharf to see her in.  Darkeih!  my scarf!"

A negress appeared in the doorway with a veil of tissue in her hand.
Sir Charles took it from her and flung it over Patricia's golden head,
then offered his arm to Mistress Lettice.

The wharf was but a stone's throw from the wooden gates, and they were
soon treading the long stretch of gray, weather-beaten boards.  Others
were before them, for the news that the sloop was coming in had drawn a
small crowd to the wharf to welcome the master.

The dozen or so of boatmen, white and black, who had been tinkering
about in the various barges,