Chapter XIX

THE VISITOR AGAIN

IT was the next day after Jack had returned from Marlborough. The night was still and sultry, with just a breath of hot breeze blowing. Jack and Little Coffee were sitting together on the door-step, and Jack was telling about Miss Eleanor Parker. The moon had risen full and round, and bathed all the dark, hot, panting earth with a flood of shimmering silver. The fireflies, which were now just beginning to illuminate the night, flashed and twinkled here and there in clusters out over the damper places. Jack’s coat lay upon the step beside him, and now he sat in his shirt sleeves. Every now and then he slapped at the mosquitos that sang persistently in his ears. He had been speaking of Miss Eleanor Parker.

“I see her once myself,” said Little Coffee.

“And she spoke as kind as could be to me, and asked me all about myself,” continued Jack, without paying any attention to Little Coffee. “I told her how I had been kidnapped. I do believe she’ll speak to her father about me. M—m—m—!” he groaned, stretching himself. “I’m that sore with riding that if I’d had a beating I couldn’t be sorer. Drat that mosquito!” and he slapped his cheek violently.

“I see her once,” said Little Coffee again. “Ai! she a beauty! Um! You ain’t de only one in de world see her. She came down de ribber in de big boat and stopped yan at de landing. I stand up on de bluff and I see her with three, four fine people, all going down ribber. Dey stop here for de ma—aster.”

They were so intent upon their talk that they did not notice the approach of a stranger through the milky brightness of the night, until he was close to them. Then he was there. Jack jumped up from the step as the visitor approached, his feet rustling in the long, dry, moon-lit grass. Jack did not know him at first; then he recognized him. It was the man with the long black beard who had come at night three days before to see the master. He was trigged out now with a sort of tinsel finery that made a great show in the moonlight. He wore petticoat canvas breeches and a short-skirted coat, trimmed, as was the hat, with gilt braid. He wore a satin waistcoat, and across his breast a silken sling, from which dangled a brace of pistols. A broad leathern belt, from which hung a cutlass, was fastened at his waist by a brass buckle. The moonlight shone upon a gold chain about his neck, and his beard, which before had hung loose over his breast, was now plaited into three plaits.

Jack looked at him with wonder, and Little Coffee stared with mouth agape and shining eyes. The stranger, perfectly indifferent to them, spoke directly to Jack. “Is your master at home, boy?” he said, in his hoarse, husky voice.

“Yes, he is,” said Jack.

“Well, then, just tell him I’m here,” said the visitor, “for he’s expecting me.”

The doors and windows of the house stood wide open in the warm night. Jack led the stranger into the hall, the man’s heavy shoes clattering loudly in the silence. Mr. Parker sat at the desk in the room beyond, looking over some papers by the light of a candle. The warm breeze came in at the window, and the candle flickered and wavered. The insects flew around and around the light, and great beetles droned and tumbled in blundering flight. The room was full of the sooty smell from the empty fireplace. Mr. Parker sat in his shirt sleeves. He looked up as Jack tapped upon the door, and his fine florid face glistened with sweat. “Here’s a man wants to see your honor,” said Jack.

The stranger pushed roughly by Jack and entered. “I thought it must be you, captain,” said Mr. Parker, coldly; “I’ve been looking for you all the afternoon. Here; take this chair and sit down,” and he pointed to a seat as he spoke, turning his own chair around so as to bring his back to the candle and his face into shadow. “You may go,” said he to Jack, “and shut the door after you.”

Mr. Parker waited, after the door closed, until he heard Jack’s departing footsteps quitting the house. Meantime, he looked his visitor over with perfectly cool indifference, but with a sort of dry interest in his singular costume—his eyes lingering particularly upon the plaited beard and the chain around the neck. “I suppose, my good man,” said he at last, “that you’ve come for the settlement of that paper of yours?”

“Why, yes, I have,” said the other. “Why else d’ ye suppose I’d come?”

“Well, then,” said Mr. Parker, “I’m sorry for you, for I can’t say that I’m ready, after all, to settle it, or even a part of it. And what’s more, I won’t be for four weeks or more yet, nor until my brother’s agent pays me my quarterly allowance.”

“Not ready!” exclaimed the other, and he stared with bold anger at Mr. Parker. “What d’ ye mean by that? Why should you tell me last week that you’d pay me to-day, and then in so short a time change your mind and blow t’other way?” Mr. Parker shrugged his shoulders coolly, but did not condescend to explain how he had been disappointed in getting money from his brother.

“And don’t you intend to pay me at all, then?” the stranger asked in a loud voice.

“Why, fellow,” said Mr. Parker, “it will do you no good to lift your voice and to bluster at me. You can’t squeeze blood out of a stone, and you can’t squeeze money out of a man who hath none.”

“And when will you pay me, then?”

“That I cannot tell you either, except, as I said, I will settle something upon the paper when my allowance is paid me, and that will be four weeks from next Monday.”

“Why, then, Mr. Parker,” said the other, speaking more and more violently, “you know very well that I can’t be here four weeks from now. You know very well what danger I stand in here in Virginia as it is, and that I can’t come and go as I please, or as you please for me. You was pleased to tell me, last time I was here, that I’d broke my pardon, and you know I come here with a halter around my neck. Come, come, Mr. Parker, if you know what’s good for you you’ll make some reasonable settlement with me, and by—— you must make it to-night.”

“Must? Must, Mr. Pirate?”

“Yes, must, Mr. Gambler. Lookee, wind and weather permitting, I sail for North Carolina the day after to-morrow. If by that time you don’t make some settlement of this paper of yours, I’ll send it to your brother for collection, and tell him how I came by it. D’ ye understand?”

Mr. Parker, who from the first had not seemed to be keenly alert to the importance of the business in hand, sat fingering the papers upon his desk, looking intently at the other, but as though he did not hear what he was saying. After his visitor had ended speaking he still sat gazing at him for a little space of silence. At last, as though suddenly arousing himself, he said: “Pull your chair up here, I want to say something in your ear.”

“What d’ ye mean?” said his visitor, suspiciously.

“I mean that I have to say something privately to you. So pull your chair up here close to me.” And then the other obeyed, drawing his chair close to the desk in front of which Mr. Parker sat. “I have something in my mind,” said Mr. Parker, presently, breaking the silence and speaking in a lower voice, “I have something in my mind that may be of advantage to us both if you are the man to help me carry it out, and ’tis of that I want to speak to you.”

The other sat looking intently at Mr. Parker as he spoke. “D’ ye mean,” said he, “that you and I shall go into some venture together?”

“I mean something of that sort,” said Mr. Parker, and as he spoke there was more than the usual haughtiness in his tone and bearing.

“Well, what is it you have to propose, then?” said the visitor, in no way overawed. Again there was a little time of silence, and then Mr. Parker suddenly said: “I have a mind to be plain with you, Pirate, and I will be so, for I am driven to it. The case is just this”—and then, as with some effort—“I am a ruined and a desperate man. I am pushed fairly to the wall, and know of nowhere to get a single farthing of money to help me out of my pinch.” Even with his back to the candles the other could see that his handsome, florid face had flushed to a redder red than usual, and that he frowned a little as he spoke. “I will tell you plain,” he said, “I am in such straits that only some desperate chance can set me to rights again. So far as I can tell, I owe some five or six thousand pounds to one and another here in Virginia, besides something in Maryland, and something more in South Carolina. ’Tis not so very much, but ’tis enough to give you and others a chance to push me hard. The time was—that was when I was living in England—that my father would send me that much money in a lump, and did so two or three times. But now my brother Birchall hath everything and I have nothing; and ten thousand pounds is more to me now than fifty thousand pounds was to me then. If I could by some chance get seven thousand pounds, methinks I could set myself to rights. But where can a desperate man get seven thousand pounds except by some desperate chance?”

He did not say all this sequentially, but with many breaks and pauses, and it was so he continued, pausing every now and then, and then speaking suddenly again as though with an effort. Now he had stopped in his speech and was playing, fiddling with a pen. Then he began his broken talk again: “Well, I’d as leave say this to a rascal like you as to any other man—I am a ruined, desperate man. Day before yesterday I sent a letter to my brother Birchall asking for an immediate loan of five hundred pounds, and offering any sort of security that he might demand, and that I could give, if he would loan me five thousand pounds. I set forth to him how desperate were my circumstances, but no, he would not consider or think of anything, but sent me a letter—“ He ceased and sat frowning at the other. “You see,” he said, resuming, “when I came back from England four years ago I came a ruined man. My father had given me all that I had asked for while I was living in England, but when he died he left everything to my brother Birchall, and nothing to me except this plantation, which is not a tenth part, I may say, of what had been the estate. He said that he had given me my share, and more than that, while he lived, and so he gave the estate to my brother, who had married a great heiress and needed it not. I had to run away from England to escape my debts, and still they followed me up. Then I was forced into asking my brother for help. I spoke pretty roundly to him, telling him what I thought of such injustice, that gave him everything and me nothing, and so in the end he paid my debts for me. But he talked to me in such a way as showed plainly enough that he thought, in paying my debts, he had bought me body and soul, and might treat me as he chose, and say things to me as he pleased. I bore from him what I would not have borne from any other man in all the world. Well, this letter which he hath sent me in answer to my request for a loan of money, is such as hath driven me clean to the wall, and with no help left to me, and I am a desperate man. He comes as near to calling me a rogue as he dares to do, and tells me in so many words that I am a disgrace and a dishonor to him. Well, then, if he thinks that I am a dishonor to him, I may as well be so.”

All this time the stranger had been sitting motionlessly listening to what the other said, his eyes fixed intently upon the shadowed face of the master of the Roost. Presently Mr. Parker resumed:

“His letter is of the kind that makes me feel easy to do what I can to get from him what he will not give me, and what, if my father had but been just to me, would have been mine by rights. ‘Twould have cost him nothing to have spared me five hundred pounds, or five thousand pounds, either; but now I will get it from him if I can, let him suffer from it ever so much.” He checked himself suddenly, and then said, “Why, do you suppose, am I telling you all this that I would not tell to any other man in all the world.”

“Why, that is the very thing I’m waiting for you to let me know,” said the other.

Mr. Parker hesitated for a moment, and then he said, “Will you have something to drink?”

“Why, yes,” said the other. “If you have it handy here, I would like right well to have a glass of grog.”

Mr. Parker turned as though to summon Jack, then, as if thinking better of it, he himself arose, went to the closet at the side of the fireplace, and brought thence a bottle of rum and a glass. “Can you do without water?” said he.

“Yes, I can if I must,” said the other.

Mr. Parker pushed the papers aside on the desk and set the bottle and glass within reach of his visitor, who poured out nearly half a tumblerful of the liquor.

Mr. Parker looked coldly on as he filled his glass. “Well, then, my plan is, as I said, to get from my brother Birchall by force what he would not give me of his own free will. Are you listening?” The other nodded briefly, raised the glass to his lips, and drank off the rum he had poured out. “You know perhaps that my brother has only one living child?”

The visitor seemed struck by Mr. Parker’s sudden question. He looked at him for a second or two in an almost startled silence, and then again nodded briefly.

“His child is a daughter,” said Mr. Parker, “and a very beautiful and charming young lady, and one of whom I am very fond. Now, if some desperate pirate—one, for example, like yourself”—and he looked his visitor steadily almost scornfully in the face as he spoke—“should kidnap this young lady, and carry her away, say to somewhere in North Carolina, I know very well that my brother would give ten, yes, maybe twenty thousand pounds by way of ransom to have her safe back again.”

A pause of perfect and unbroken silence followed. “I never did anything of that kind before,” said Mr. Parker’s visitor at last, “and I wouldn’t know how to manage it.”

“Why, as for managing it,” said Mr. Parker, “it could be managed easily enough. You would only have to go up the river some time when my brother was away from home and when nobody was there, and carry off the young lady. You live down in North Carolina, and you could take her home until her father could ransom her.” Then, after a moment or two of brooding silence, he continued almost with a flash: “But, understand, she is my niece, and if anything of the kind is done she is to be treated in every way as befits a lady of such rank and quality in the world. There shall be no needless roughness, nor anything said or done after she is taken away from home that may be unfit for her to hear or to see. I have naught against my niece. I am very fond of her. If her father suffers, ’tis his own fault, but I will not have her suffer. D’ ye understand?”

“Yes,” said the other with a sort of sullen acquiescence, “I understand.”

“You have a home down in Bath and you have a wife there, I understand. The young lady shall be taken to your wife and waited upon by her.”

The other nodded his head, but made no reply. Presently he asked: “But how is the rest to be managed? How is your brother to be approached, and how is the money to be handled that is to redeem the young lady?”

“I am about to tell you that,” said Mr. Parker, curtly. “I understand that Mr. Knight, the Colonial Secretary in North Carolina, is a friend of yours. Now it shall be arranged that Mr. Knight shall send, by some decent, respectable merchant-captain, a letter addressed to me. The letter will be of a kind to tell me that my niece hath been taken by some of the Pamlico pirates, who hold her for ransom. Then I will approach my brother, and the matter will be arranged—I acting as my brother’s agent and Mr. Knight as the agent of the pirates.”

The other listened closely and attentively. “And what share of the money might you expect when the matter is settled?” he asked.

“I shall expect,” said Mr. Parker, “to have the half of it. You and Mr. Knight can settle the balance betwixt yourselves.”

The other whistled and then arose, pushing back the chair noisily. “Why, Mr. Parker,” said he, “I am not used to doing business that way. If the thing is done at all, I take it, it is done at the risk of my neck and not at the risk of your neck. The danger falls all upon me and none of it upon you, and yet you expect the half of all the gain for yourself. My terms are these: I shall have half of what comes of the venture, and not you; and you and Mr. Knight, as agents, shall share the balance betwixt you.”

Mr. Parker also pushed back his chair and rose. “Then, sir,” said he, “if you choose to quibble so, the business is all over between us, for I tell you plainly that I shall not abate one single jot or tittle. I shall have the half of what is made of this venture for my share, or there shall be no venture and nothing to share at all. As for that paper of mine you hold, you will get not a farthing upon it as it stands, and you may send it to my brother if you choose, for, after all, I can’t be worse ruined than I am now,” and he shrugged his shoulders.

The other looked into his face for a moment or two, but there was not a shade or sign of yielding in it. Then he burst out laughing. “Well, Mr. Tobacco-Planter-Gambler,” said he, “you do drive a mightily hard bargain, to be sure. Well, as you won’t come to me I must come to you. I tell you what it is, I will think over all that you have said, and then let you know your answer.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Parker, “and when will that be?”

“Well, I will let you know it on Wednesday next.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Parker, “I will be down at Parrott’s on Wednesday next, and then we can settle the matter one way or the other.”

“At Parrott’s, on Wednesday next,” repeated the other. “That will suit me very well indeed.”

“And now, is there anything more?”

“Why, yes, there is,” said the other. “How about this note of hand that you was to settle this evening?” and he tapped the breast of his coat.

“That,” said Mr. Parker, “must go without settlement. You shall keep it for the present as an assurance of good faith upon my part. But when Mr. Knight sends the letter to me, as I have planned for him to do, the paper must be inclosed in it and sent to me.”

“And how about settlement upon it?”

“It must,” said Mr. Parker, “go, as I told you, without settlement, for I tell you plainly that I won’t conclude this business with you if you hold any paper with my name signed to it. I don’t choose so to put myself into the hands of any man, much less into your hands.”

Then once more the other burst out laughing. He clapped Mr. Parker upon the shoulder. Mr. Parker drew himself a little back, though he chose to show no resentment at his visitor’s familiarity. “Methinks you had better go now,” said he.

“Very well,” said the other, “very well, I’ll go.”

He stopped only long enough to pour for himself another half-glass of rum while Mr. Parker stood by watching him; then he opened the door and walked across the hall and out of the house. Mr. Parker followed him and stood upon the door-step watching him as he stalked away through the white moonlight toward the bluff overlooking the misty distance of the river beyond.