Prisoners of Hope | Page 4

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. "'Tis 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
war-whoop 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, shallops and canoes tied to the mossy piles,
left their employments and scrambled up upon the platform, and a trio
of youthful darkies, fishing for crabs with a string and a piece of salt
pork, allowed their lines to fall slack and their intended victims to walk
coolly off with the meat, so intense was their interest in the oncoming
sail. A knot of negro women had left the great house kitchen and stood,
hands on hips, chatting volubly with a contingent from the quarters,
their red and yellow turbans nodding up and down like grotesque Dutch

tulips. The company was made up by an overseer with a broadleafed
palmetto hat pulled down over his eyes and a clay pipe stuck between
his teeth, a pale young man who acted as secretary to the master of the
plantation, and by three or four small land-owners and tenants for
whom Colonel Verney had graciously undertaken various commissions
in Jamestown, and who were on hand to make their acknowledgments
to the great man.
They all made deferential way for the two ladies and Sir Charles Carew.
Mistress Lettice commenced a condescending conversation with one of
the tenants, Darkeih added a white tulip to the red and yellow ones, and
Patricia, followed by Sir Charles, walked to the edge of the wharf, and
leaning upon the rude railing looked down the glassy reaches of the
water to the approaching boat.
The wind had sunk into a fitful breeze and the white sail moved very
slowly. The tide was in, and the water lapped with a cooling sound
against the