Even the sanguine governor had by now given up all hope of finding any survivor of the fifteen men who had been left to hold the territory for England. The supposition became general that these unfortunates had been massacred by a tribe of hostile savages, known through Manteo as Winginas. The colonists were much surprised, nevertheless, when, on a day early in August, their suspicions were seemingly verified in an unexpected way.
In the afternoon Vytal sought Rouse at the fortress, which had been rebuilt.
“Where is Roger?”
“I know not,” replied Hugh. “He is mad in this new country, more addle-pated than before. An hour ago I saw him leading King Lud away into the woods, and, following him, Mistress Gyll Croyden, after whom he runs nowadays as the bear runs after him. They went, I think, to speed some friendly Indians on their homeward way. But he is mad with his pipe and tabor, his cittern and King Lud. I fear in his wagging head there is no sense left.”
Vytal smiled. He knew men. “Come, we will go in search of them. I must see Roger without delay.”
They started out together on the trail the Indians had taken, Vytal telling briefly of St. Magil’s approach, and Rouse listening with more of satisfaction than alarm. At length, after a long walk, they heard the familiar notes of a flute gone wild, and pushing forward to an opening in the woods that bordered on the water, came within view of a scene that is wellnigh indescribable.
There, in the middle of the glade, sat Roger Prat on his tabor, piping for dear life, while Gyll Croyden flashed in and out amid the shadows in a dance even more fast and furious than the tune. But this was not all; for there, in ludicrous contrast, stood King Lud, the bear, facing her from across the sward, erect on his hind-legs and curveting clumsily about. His nose sniffed the air; his fore-paws dangled idly on his shaggy breast; but the bandy hind-legs danced with an awkward alacrity, while he shambled hither and thither as though on a red-hot iron. Again and again he revolved slowly in a cumbrous, rotary jump, maintaining his equilibrium with the utmost effort of ponderous energy. And still the flutist played his rollicking tune, the romp of the notes accompanying occasional outbursts of musical laughter and warbled catches from Mistress Croyden’s lips.
Mistress Croyden herself was undeniably the life and key-note of the extravagant orgie, dancing, and dancing as only impulse led her, in utter abandon and unrestrainable liberty of motion, until her little feet sped to no tune, but outstripped Prat’s endeavors—madly, riotously leaped, tripped, pirouetted, glided, and were never still. She whirled first, then ran forward as though on wings, then, bending low in mock courtesy to her bulky partner, receded as if to vanish in the air. Her curls, tumbling about her shoulders, shone like gold in the sun’s last rays; her velvet cap had fallen to the ground as though it, with decorum, had been thrown wildly to the winds.
She had not seen Vytal and Rouse, who held back within the wood, but the sight of a long row of dusky faces looking at her wonderingly from the water’s margin seemed only to increase the madness of her dance. The Indians stood near their canoes, spellbound before departing. Indeed, they could not depart until this preterhuman apparition, with its phantom bear and spirit of a woman, had dissolved, as it surely must, like a dream.
Suddenly, obeying some new whim, Roger slackened the speed of his Pan-like music and subdued the strains to a more pensive melody. In perfect accord with the change, Gyll Croyden fell to a slower motion, a dance no more definite, but only less eccentric and vivacious. With a sensuous, mystical step she seemed to sway and flow into the heart of a new song that her bird’s voice lilted softly, and she looked no longer at the bear. As if resenting this new indifference, King Lud fell to his natural position with a growl, and, returning to Roger, sat disconsolate at the player’s side. Then Gyll sank down breathless near him and used the shaggy shoulder as a cushion for support, her curls shining against the rough background of his coat, her song dying in a laugh.
She had no fear of the brute, for through all those days when his master had been unexpectedly absent on the fly-boat, she and she alone had ventured to attend King Lud, coaxing and scolding him into a condition of amity and servitude. As the pipe, with a wailing finale, became silent, Vytal and Rouse stepped into the opening.
Instantly Roger Prat, a somewhat sheepish trepidity in his bulging eyes, jumped up from the tabor, and, thrusting the pipe with an obvious attempt at concealment into his belt, bowed low before them. “Thus,” he ventured, waving his fat hand at the dark figures on the water’s edge—“thus we tame the redskins.”
“And a king,” added Gyll Croyden, stroking the bear’s nose with delicate fingers. She was looking down at King Lud, for somehow her laughing eyes persisted in avoiding the face of Vytal. Yet they were by no means bashful.
Rouse looked down at Prat. “Vagabond,” he muttered, under his heavy mustache, “Bubble-wit!”
But Roger only turned on the big soldier a glance of mimic scorn and commiseration, mumbling some retort, in which “Ox” and “Blunderbuss” were alone intelligible.
These courtesies were quickly interrupted by Vytal, who spoke a word or two in low tones to Prat. Immediately that worthy was transformed. His hand came forward from the flute to his sword-hilt. The merriment died out of his face, while a look almost stern and forbidding, yet, curiously enough, not at all incongruous, crossed his stubby features.
The Indians, one by one, withdrew to their canoes and vanished into the deepening darkness. The three soldiers and Gyll Croyden, turning their backs to the water, started homeward. But suddenly they heard a light, grating sound behind them on the shore, and a voice, calling to them in pure English, caused them to turn about again with extreme surprise.
A man, wearing a rusty steel corselet and bonnet, a sword, and shabby leathern breeches, was dragging a canoe onto the beach. Having drawn the prow with an evident effort to security among the weeds and tall grasses that lined the glade, he came staggering forward to the amazed on-lookers, and crying aloud, “At last! at last!” fell apparently lifeless at their feet.
Quickly, with a woman’s eternal instinct, Gyll Croyden ran to the water, took off her neckerchief, wetted it, and returned to the prone figure with ready aid. Drawing off his heavy headgear, she then bathed the man’s temples, and bidding Prat bring the helmet to her, filled with water, presently dashed the cooling liquid in her patient’s face. “Poor boy!” she exclaimed, for the face, despite its full beard and long mustache, was very young.
Perhaps half an hour elapsed before signs of returning consciousness rewarded her efforts. Then, slowly, a pair of blue eyes opened and looked into hers, after which, painfully, the forlorn soldier stood upon his feet.
A volley of questions rose to the lips of Gyll and Roger; but Vytal, who had stood watching the mysterious stranger in silence, disappointed their curiosity.
“It grows dark,” he said, addressing the youth. “An you, sir, can walk, we had best hasten to the town.”
The other, seeming to have regained his strength with surprising suddenness, declared, “If it be not too far, I can accompany you with little aid.”
“The darkness matters not,” averred Prat. “See, I have brought a lanthorn.” And, so saying, he lighted the sheltered candle with flint and steel. Handing the lanthorn to Gyll, who, like a will-o’-the-wisp, led the way into the forest, he then lent assistance to Rouse in supporting the stranger. For several minutes they followed the trail without speaking; but soon their ragged charge broke the silence. He spoke as though to himself, in a voice suggestive of vague reminiscence. Presently his words became more audible, the broken phrases more coherent. “A year,” he said—“a year in hell!” And then, in a clear, low tone, “There were fifteen men of us, just fifteen men, all damned save one.”
“My God!” ejaculated Rouse, halting suddenly; and Roger, coming likewise to a stand-still, stood surveying the youthful, bearded face, with mouth agape in mute amazement.
Vytal turned, but, fearing to break the spell of memory, said nothing. And Gyll Croyden, who had half caught the meaning of the words, returned to the group with her lanthorn. Holding the light high, so that its dim rays fell athwart the stranger’s face, she, too, gazed into the boyish blue eyes with wonder and impatience. As the features were thus illuminated, Vytal’s expression changed. In a voice that surprised its hearers by an unaccustomed vagueness of tone, which matched in uncertainty the youth’s own accents, he demanded, slowly, “Your name, sir; first, your name.”
The blue eyes met Vytal’s look squarely, but, blending with their candor, a peculiar, veiled expression suggested to the keen observer an incongruous amusement.
“Ralph Contempt.”
“Ralph Contempt!” echoed Roger, in an undertone. “It hath the sound of a stage conceit.”
The stranger turned to him, smiling feebly. “You speak as though I had christened myself. Believe me, it is a miracle that I remember the name at all.” His phrases became wandering again, and he passed a hand across his forehead. “Fifteen men,” he laughed aloud. “Fifteen to guard the possessions of their gracious queen. Fifteen soldiers … very brave, I assure you … fifteen in the middle of hell … but so brave, mark you, that a horde of rampant devils, with firebrands and a myriad whistling arrows, hesitated, really hesitated, in very fear before them. A thousand red demons … and, oh, what a song the weapons sang! It laughs in my ears even now.” He smiled with a look that only intensified the horror of his words by its genuine gayety. “Fourteen men damned, dead and damned … worse yet, one man alive to be played with … oh, ’twas a merry game in hell! A game of pall-mall, a new kind of badminton … painted devils, you know, and then the toy, the ball, the shuttlecock, the hobby-horse, call it what you will—that crawling thing in the centre, scorched and sore … behold, my masters, the toy!” He drew himself up to his full height and looked from one to another, laughing. With the exception of Vytal, the listeners could not but avert their glance—Hugh Rouse touching his brow significantly; Prat, with a grave nod, concurring in the verdict. Gyll Croyden turned away with tears in her eyes, and retraced her steps on the homeward trail. It was not until she had forgetfully left them in darkness, her light but a dim spark among the trees, that the others followed her. Vytal walked on alone in deep thought, the unfortunate bringing up the rear with lagging step between Prat and Rouse, who maintained a gloomy silence. Occasionally the youth would laugh, and, seeming to recall some incident of a terrible combat and captivity, would travesty the same with the inconsistency of dementia.
It was late in the evening when the little party arrived at its destination. A sentry, guarding the main entrance of the palisade, which by now had been completed, peered through a chink in the upright logs. Vytal, from without, uttered the watch-word, for the sentry’s ears alone. Instantly they were admitted, the guardian of the town’s security glancing curiously at the unknown figure of Ralph Contempt.
“In the morning,” whispered Prat, “you shall hear all.” And turning to Vytal, he asked: “Whither, captain, shall we conduct the man? To a pallet in the fortress near our own?”
“Nay, he will perhaps fare better with me;” then, to the subject of their discussion, “I trust, Master Contempt, you will accept the hospitality of myself and one other for a day or two at least.”
The youth bowed courteously. “I thank you,” he said, and, with that laugh which seemed to deride Fate itself, or, perhaps more subtly, the listeners, he added, “’Tis desirable to be a guest now and then, instead of a plaything.”
He went with Vytal to the secluded house beyond the enclosure. In the main room they found Marlowe sitting at a table, his arms thrown out over the rough pine top, his head resting on them in an attitude of sleep. A candle, sadly in need of snuffers, flickered across a page of manuscript that lay crumpled in his hands.
On hearing Vytal enter, the poet awoke slowly; but, seeing the face behind his friend, as it came within the candle-light, he rose from his chair with an exclamation of surprise.
“The sole survivor,” announced Vytal, “of our fifteen men.”
“What!”
“But a plaything,” added Ralph, with a deprecatory wave of his hand. “A mere babery for naked red-boys.”
Marlowe took up the candle and held it nearer the speaker’s face. Then, with less surprise and more commiseration, “Forgive me,” he said, “for my unmannerly welcome, but for the moment your features seemed familiar to me, as though I had seen them in a dream.”
The new-comer returned his gaze with a dazed expression. “I am a dream.”
The poet glanced at Vytal meaningly. “He needs rest; let him sleep on my bed. I will make a couch of grasses for myself.”
When finally they heard the regular breathing of their guest, who lay comfortably on Marlowe’s bed, Vytal told of the meeting on the shore and of Ralph Contempt’s broken narrative.
“Poor devil!” mused the poet. “He whose bones we found scattered here was far more fortunate.”
“I thought I knew this man’s face,” said Vytal. “’Tis strange that you, too, should have imagined a recognition.”
“Nay, it was but the eyes that seemed familiar. Doubtless there are many like them of Saxon blue, blighted by the undue levity of a disordered brain. The fellow, most like, has been a wild thing, little better than a beast. Saw you ever such a growth of hair on head and chin?”
“No, it ill becomes the youthful face—the face—” Vytal paused and fell again to thinking.
“The face,” echoed Marlowe, looking over to the sleeper. “Perchance we saw it before the man left England, before he came hither a year ago to meet his doom.”
“It is probable,” allowed Vytal; “if, indeed, we saw the face at all.”
CHAPTER XII
By noon on the following day the whole colony had heard the tale of a desperate fight on this peaceful island, of an unimaginable, living death amid savage captors, and of a miraculous deliverance.
“He fought ten, single-handed, and so escaped,” said one of the planters, joining a number of his companions, who were hastening toward Vytal’s house.
“He was half roasted,” declared another, shuddering, “and prodded with stones red hot.”
“His house,” asserted a third, “was burned to cinders while he defended it within this very clearing.”
Throughout the whole morning small parties, thus discussing the subject, sought to gain a view of the man who filled their thoughts. Inquisitively they came and, looking in at the doorway of the cabin, surveyed the youth, who sat just across the threshold, mumbling to himself and bowing to them with a pitiable smile of welcome. Then, silently, they would return to their various labors, awe-struck and uneasy.
But at mid-day there was a larger gathering at Vytal’s door. Ralph Contempt stood in the centre of the circle, describing rapidly his misadventures with a new grasp of detail and some continuity of incident. His mental powers had evidently been refreshed by sleep and sustenance; his memory now offered a more vivid and coherent depiction of the fight, bondage, and escape. His listeners, men and women, stood enthralled and terrified, the cold fingers of fear insidiously touching their nerves and heart-strings to play the shivering discord of alarm. Perhaps no instrument was more perfectly attuned to the notes of apprehension than the heart of Ananias Dare. He stood near the speaker, with an ill-disguised attempt to suppress the terror that, like an east wind, froze his marrow with an actual chill. He was entirely sober, and, therefore, completely unmanned. His face, pallid and tense, was yet beautiful, its terror strangely heightening the effect of beauty as though by a magic but despicable art. For the expression, emasculated by fright, was remembered long after by those who had read the reflection of its fear in their own hearts. The shallowest eye can express the deepest apprehension; the nature devoid of capacity for all other intense emotion, may yet be keenly and desperately subject to the power of fear. The study of cowardice reveals peculiar inconsistencies. For instance, here stood Ananias, a man of insignificant psychal stature, surpassing all his fellows in the height of his alarm. His eyes, often but vague films beneath the fumes of wine, were now clarified and made brilliant by the horror of their gaze.
And here, too, listening to the narrative of Ralph Contempt, stood Simon Ferdinando, a coward of another sort, with eyes more furtive and less intense, who seemed already to consider the question of escape, while the other only remained paralyzed by the menace of a danger that might at any time repeat itself. But Dare bore unmistakable traces even now of gentle birth and a lost manhood, whereas Ferdinando appeared not unlike a frightened rat looking for its hole. The one inspired contempt and pity, the other contempt alone.
And the man who called himself Contempt wore an expression as he talked according well with the appellation. Directing his words and gestures toward these two, not pointedly, but in a subtle manner, he so worked upon them and all the others that, when his repeated story of the massacre was told and he paused breathless, a low, moaning sigh fell from many lips, like the wail of a night wind. Then suddenly Ferdinando cried out: “To the ships! To the ships! Must we, too, perish thus? Nay!” His voice rose to a high pitch. “To the ships and England!”
“Ay, ay,” came hoarsely from the terrified group.
“Ay, away from this accursed country,” said Ananias Dare, who at last had found voice to speak. But a new look, more pitiable than all the weakness of his first expression, crossed his face. “Yet, stay!” he cried, as though with a great effort, some latent nobility, the mere memory of a dead courage, asserting itself.
Ralph Contempt turned to the others as if he had not heard. “A huge devil,” he resumed, “brained my sole surviving comrade with an axe of stone, whereat, dragging me by the hair, for I was bound by leathern thongs, he rolled me among the burning timbers of my own house. Next, another savage—” But he was interrupted by a second shrill cry from Ferdinando:
“Even now the Indians may be on their way; even now it may be too late!”
“Yes,” moaned Ananias, his short-lived courage failing, “too late.”
“To the ships!”
It was the voice not of one man but of all, while panic-stricken they turned and, with a rush, made for the main enclosure of the town. Only the youth, who had caused the stampede, delayed, and he, smiling, started to re-enter the hut. But on the threshold he paused and looked back again. For he heard a new voice rising above the clamor of his retreating audience, a voice that he recognized instantly. Seeing the men and women hanging back before Vytal himself, who had met them at the narrow opening in the palisade, he returned to the group leisurely, his eyes on the tall figure and stern face in the gateway.
“How now?” demanded the soldier, quietly. “What means this panic?” Not one gave answer. “What means it?” The words came more sharply than before. But still there was no response, each being ready to cast on his fellow the onus of explanation. And still they all hung back, their eyes cast down.
Vytal looked at one and another with an infinite scorn, omitting only the forlorn Ananias in his searching gaze; for a brief glance at the governor’s son-in-law had shown him a figure of despicable shame.
“No man enters the town until the truth is told.” And, drawing his rapier, he waited.
“The bodkin!” muttered Ferdinando, who, drawing back to the outskirts of the group, sought to hide himself from view. At that moment Ralph Contempt went to Simon and spoke a low word in the sailing-master’s ear. Hearing it, Ferdinando started with an exclamation of surprise, and then, in evident relief, maintained silence, obedient to the other’s mute command. On this the youth, sauntering unconcernedly toward Vytal, spoke that all might hear him:
“An none other can find his tongue, mine must needs confess itself guilty.”
His manner became wandering, and he passed a hand across his brow. “The tongue is an unruly member … very mischievous … so mischievous that sometimes the painted devils put cinders on it, and the cinders sizzle to hiss its prayers.”
Vytal scrutinized the speaker, first keenly, then with that look of bewilderment which not until lately had been seen in the soldier’s face.
“These men fear a second massacre,” added Ralph, more sanely, “and would return to England.”
Vytal’s expression went darker yet. “Fools!” he exclaimed, and then with less severity, as a grieved look came into his eyes, “I had not thought to find men turned to sheep—men!”
He emphasized the last word as though to convey its full meaning to their hearts. His face, resolute, fearless, but more sorrowing now than scornful, imparted some of its own courage to those about him. Ananias Dare, for one, seemed to have lost much of his fear. Vytal alone had the power to fortify his faint heart. In the soldier’s presence he was a different man.
“I strove to stop them,” he said, “but the effort was vain.” Yet still Vytal withheld his look from the assistant, for this weakling, all unknowing, was the one man the mere sight of whom could cut him to the quick.
“You will return to your duty—all!” It was not a question, but a quiet, doubtless command. He stepped aside from the gateway. One after another they filed past him, each more eager than his predecessor to hurry beyond the paling and the captain’s view. Ananias Dare and Ferdinando brought up the rear of this ignominious procession, the one slowly, the other scurrying like a rat.
Within the enclosure they all separated silently, each seeming to desire a temporary solitude in the pursuit of his work.
“They would defend the town most gallantly against attack,” observed Ralph, dryly.
“They will,” returned Vytal, emphasizing the change of tense. “But your story is told. They have heard enough. You will strive to forbear hereafter.”
The youth smiled. “Forbearance is my chief virtue,” and he went away, leaving his host alone in the cabin.
As he walked through the woods he came to a narrow creek that ran inland from the sea; and, following this toward the shore, he chanced on a sight that caused him to stop and smile with genuine light-hearted boyishness. For there, in the middle of the shallow stream, her back toward him, stood Mistress Gyll Croyden, bending low over the water. In one hand she held a forked stick which now and again she darted viciously into the muddy bed of the inlet, while with her other hand she held her skirts above the knee.
“Is it possible,” called the youth, “that even a crab is so heartless as to run away? Now, were I the crab—” but her expression, as she turned, brought another peal of laughter from his lips. “Yes,” he said, “you are caught instead of the shell-fish.”
At this the smile which had been rising to the surface of her eyes, whether she would or no, culminated in a laugh as merry as his own. She waded to the bank. “My patient is come to life at the wrong moment; but sit you down, pretty boy, and talk to me. Well?” she said, dangling a pair of white feet in the sluggish stream—“Well?”
“What is the meaning of your expectancy?” he inquired, stretching himself at full length on the mossy ground. “You wait, I suppose, for a seemly expression of gratitude. Thank you, then,” and, taking her hand, he kissed it lazily. But she was pouting. “Oh, I am wrong. What is it, then? Ah, I see. You wait to be told of your beauty, and how the sight of a maid crabbing is beyond description. Methinks there’s another will tell thee that, and more besides. I saw the mountebank to-day ogling thee with eyes distraught and bulging.”
Gyll laughed. “’Tis Roger Prat. He hath no thought o’ me. He’s all for the bear and Vytal.”
“Ah, well,” said Ralph, “thou’rt not so wondrous comely. I tell thee, wench, for all thy prettiness, there’s one outshines thee as the moon a will-o’-the-wisp. Nay, look not angry. ’Tis the governor’s daughter, Mistress Dare. I’ve seen her at her window thrice this very day. My heart goes wild of love for so fair a face, so unobtainable a damsel.”
At this Gyll made a wry face. “Pah! she loses her beauty quickly. When we set out from England she was fairer far than now. I saw her go aboard at Plymouth.”
“Ay,” laughed Ralph, “she was younger, but her face lacked its present fire in the London days.”
“What!” cried Gyll, “you saw her there?”
“Nay, nay,” he returned quickly, “’tis a delusion of my addled brain.”
She looked down at his incongruous beard, and then into the youthful eyes indulgently. “Poor boy!”
“Poor boy!” he echoed. “You call me nothing but ‘poor boy.’”
“Nay, nay, your Majesty,” she contradicted, mocking his assumed haughtiness. “When have I said such a thing before?”
“Was it not when I—” But Ralph hesitated. “Oh no, perhaps not,” he added, quickly, and rambled back to the praise of her appearance.
“If your Majesty will permit me,” she said, complacently, “I will pull on my stockings.”
To this he made a strange rejoinder. “Mistress Croyden, you are a prophetess, a sibyl who reads the future.”
She looked at him questioningly, with a kind concern, believing him again bereft of reason. “Because I predict the donning of my hose? Is it, then, so easy to be a prophetess?” She picked up a pair of red stockings and wound them about her fingers.
“Consider that the premonition an you will,” he replied, knowingly. “’Tis perhaps as fruitful.” He seemed to delight for the moment in propounding, by voice and look, an enigma. But in the next instant he meandered on after his usual manner, with flattery and idle jests.
In the evening, Gyll, meeting Marlowe in the town, pronounced Master Ralph Contempt hopelessly insane. “Or,” she added, “a knavish actor, who demands more sympathy than he merits, for he heard me say ‘poor boy’ when we thought him lifeless in a swoon. But he is a ‘poor boy’ for a’ that. Think of the tortures!”
Following this, three days went by without incident, and still Hugh Rouse and Roger Prat, stationed at the southern end of the island as outposts, gave no warning.
Vytal changed. His taciturnity, which had increased of late, was broken more often as the danger became imminent. His impassive face, in which only Marlowe could read the quietude of self-restraint, grew eager with the anticipation of an actual, tangible conflict between right and wrong. Here was a condition all-absorbing, and, above all, a condition the soldier could meet face to face with comprehension. He could cope with this, at least. The spirit of action, always ready to assert itself in him, but sometimes of necessity repressed, finally had become paramount again, once more to resume full sway. His step became lighter, his deep blue eyes less cold, and many, noting the alteration, wondered, only the veteran soldiers and the poet dimly understanding their leader’s change.
“My brother, they approach.” It was the Indian who, having again reconnoitred, vouchsafed this information on the fourth day after the advent of Ralph Contempt.
Late in the evening, Vytal started homeward to seek Marlowe. The night was dark and still, as though Fate, with finger to lips, had set a seal of silence on the world, which the distant surf and a slow rainfall on the sea of leaves intensified monotonously. But a new sound suddenly broke the stillness. A cry, a single cry—plaintive, feeble, and unutterably doleful—then a silence even deeper than before. Vytal, pausing near the palisade, looked up at the dwelling of John White. A rabbit, startled by the sound of the cry, darted across his pathway into the woods. An owl, high above him, answered the voice with a wailing screech. A deer, that had been watching his approach beyond the gate, ran away timidly through the forest. He remembered all this long afterward—the white flash of the rabbit, the owl’s response, the rustling of leaves as the deer withdrew.
He waited. Again the cry, louder, but none the less pitiful and lonely. The muscles of his face grew tense, the veins big like whipcords. He turned, as though to lean against the paling, but then, as with a strenuous effort, refused even that support, and stood motionless like stone.
And now, as a side door directly before him opened, a flood of light fell across the pathway from within. It shone in a pool of rain at his feet, and played about his drawn face with profane curiosity. Ananias Dare stood in the doorway looking at him. But suddenly the assistant lurched back, and, snatching a silver cup from the table behind him, brought it out, with reeling, splashing footsteps, to Vytal.
“Drink,” he mumbled, thickly. “Drink, good my captain, to the health of my first-born child! A toast, sir, to my daughter—a deep toast, a very deep toast—to the first English child—the first, mark you—is it not a great honor?—the first English child born in America—world-wide America!” He stood, all unheedful of the rain, bareheaded and half dressed, swaying as though at any minute he might fall to the wet ground.
He offered the cup to Vytal. His hand shook, and the troubled wine overflowed the brim. “Drink,” he repeated, laughing hilariously. “Such a toast, such a child! You’ve heard her voice already. Damn it! Drink! Will you?”
For an instant Vytal’s face went livid with a fury no man had ever seen there until now. He clinched his fists; the nails bit into the palms. “Desecrator!” And in another minute he was groping his way through the darkness toward the gate, until, finding the path, his step became firm and regular on the hard earth, as though he were marching, then died away slowly in the woods.
CHAPTER XIII
Weeks passed, and still the Spanish, for some unaccountable reason, delayed their invasion.
At noon on the last day of August, Vytal, accompanied by Manteo, started southward on a short reconnoissance. Before going, he left strict injunctions with Marlowe to admit none to the fortress save those who knew the countersign. He had left the poet, who was now well skilled in military methods, to maintain a watchful guard in the absence of Hugh Rouse and Roger Prat. Furthermore, he gave Dyonis Harvie positive orders to preserve a similar caution respecting the Admiral and fly-boat, of which the worthy mate was now temporarily in command.
On receiving this instruction, the seaman scratched his head in perplexity. “There is one who pesters me,” he said, “with importunate demands to come aboard, and as he is but a harmless lunatic—poor soul!—who says he longs to be on the deck of an English ship, and to imagine himself homeward bound, perhaps you will not refuse him.”
“You speak of Master Ralph Contempt?”
“Yes.”
“Even to him make no exception. Admit one, admit all. Only the few who know our sign must learn the condition of these vessels.”
“And Simon Ferdinando?”
“For the form’s sake you cannot question his authority. But he is well watched;” and Vytal rowed back to the shore. Here he met Marlowe.
“Our guest,” said the poet, “even now seeks admittance to the fortress, longing, he pitifully declares, for the sight of weapons that can avenge his comrades’ lives.”
“It is hard to forbid him entrance,” returned the soldier, “but there must be no exception. The example is needed to maintain secrecy;” with which Vytal joined Manteo in the woods.
Marlowe stood for a moment watching him, and then, turning, caught sight of another figure even more of interest than his friend’s. Eleanor Dare was walking alone on the shore. He started forward impulsively to join her, but, remembering Ralph Contempt, whom he had left at the entrance of the fortress, he returned to enforce the rule. Ralph, however, no longer awaited him. Having stood idly, first on one foot, then on the other, looking plaintively into the stolid eyes of an armed sentinel, the youth, his patience exhausted, had wandered, with an apparent aimlessness, down to the sea. At the water’s edge he stepped into a barge, and, with a long pole pushing the cumbrous craft out to the Admiral, once more accosted Dyonis Harvie. But, as the mate proved obdurate, he returned again, looking off now and then to the southward as he went back leisurely to land.
Then an unexpected circumstance favored him. He left the barge and struck inland behind the town. Once within shelter of the forest, he hastened by a circuitous route through almost impenetrable undergrowth to a point directly behind but about a mile to the south of the fortress. Here a stream, secluded from the sight of any one not on its immediate margin, met his view. It was the continuation of the inlet in which Mistress Croyden had been crabbing.
To his surprise, a canoe of birch-bark, a single paddle in the bottom, floated idly, nosing the bank, and farther on, to his yet greater astonishment, a small heap of clothing lay on the sprawling roots of an oak-tree. He examined the apparel, and found a woman’s linen undergarments, a long frock, kirtle, and richly garnished stomacher. Fearing that some foul play had befallen the wearer, he glanced about him, not without alarm. The spot, utterly sequestered, and only approached by the inlet, or with much difficulty, as he had approached it, by the woods, offered adequate concealment for deeds of violence.
But suddenly he heard a splashing sound from the near distance, and the expression of his eyes as they looked through the foliage to a bend in the stream, some fifty yards farther inland, changed instantly. For there was Mistress Croyden, all unheedful of his proximity, disporting herself to her heart’s content, the silver ripples of the water forming an adequate covering for all save her head, which glistened in the sunlight, a pond-lily of white and gold.
Ralph hurried forward along the border of the woods until he came within easy speaking distance of the bather. A curtain of leaves hung before him, but through the interstices he could see her plainly as she melted like a water-nymph into the bosom of the stream. His eyes shone; his lips parted as though he would have called to her, but hesitating, with a new consideration in which she was evidently not the foremost subject, he returned silently to the oak about which the clothes were scattered. Stooping, he picked up all the garments, and, re-entering the forest, hid them beneath the underbrush far within its shade. Then, with a smile almost mischievous in his boyish enjoyment of the proceeding, he made his way hastily to the town. On coming to the fortress he hallooed loudly and called to Marlowe as if in impatience and alarm.
The poet, who had relieved the sentinel, and was seated, reading, near the door, came out hurriedly. But before he could inquire concerning the other’s clamor, Ralph, trembling with a well-assumed excitement, pointed wildly in quite the opposite direction from which he had come, and seemed to strive the while vainly for utterance. Marlowe, catching much of his excitement, nevertheless bade him compose himself and speak. In this the youth finally succeeded.
“They have taken her,” he said, lowering his voice that no chance passer-by might hear; “they have taken her as they took me, by the hair of the head. Oh, she will be a plaything—it is very sad.”
The vagueness of the announcement only added to Marlowe’s disquiet. “Who? Where?”
“Oh, they have dragged her off. I saw them, the red devils, at the northeast end of the island. The game is to be played again.” The words seemed fraught with an under-meaning, but to the excited listener there was no change. “The game is to be played,” repeated Ralph, now in a dreary monotone, “with Gyll Croyden.”
“Gyll Croyden—Gyll!” And the impetuous poet, beside himself with alarm, not stopping to hear another word, rushed away. When he had passed through the north gate of the palisade, Ralph Contempt, who had watched his headlong pursuit, turned, with an amused look, and entered the fortress. In its main apartment, a long mess-room that served also as an armory, he found a small company of soldiers, who sat about in groups playing at cards and “tables.”[5] Believing that Marlowe had admitted him, they made no remonstrance, and soon he was throwing dice and jesting with the merriest, his eyes roving now and then over the massive oaken walls and stacked muskets.
But as there was no great show of weapons here, he grew listless and unheedful of the game. The heavier pieces, if such there were, must be elsewhere.
Laying down his dice-cup with a yawn, he sauntered into the hallway, closing the mess-room door behind him. But here he started back quickly, as though to return to the armory, for some one who had just entered the fort was approaching him with light footsteps. Recognizing the tread as a woman’s, however, he went forward more easily and met the new-comer in the middle of the hall. The light, coming from the door behind, threw out her figure in relief, but failed to reveal her face. In the next instant, though, when his eyes had become accustomed to the glare of the entrance, he started back more suddenly but less perceptibly than before. Then, quickly regaining his composure, he bowed low as to a woman and a stranger.
As the light from the doorway fell full upon his face, it became the other’s turn to show surprise. Instinctively she recoiled, a world of meaning memory in her hazel eyes. But he gave no sign of notice.
“’Tis Mistress Eleanor Dare, I think,” he said, with a courtly deference. “She hath been well described by all. These colonists laud her to the skies. Moreover, I have watched her many times from beneath her window.”
“Your name, sir?” The voice contained no recognition or repulsion now, but only a natural inquiry.
“Ralph Contempt, yours to be commanded.”
“Ah, Master Ralph Contempt, of whom I have heard much lately. The sole survivor of that brave company which perished.”
“Madam,” he returned, in a lower tone of double meaning, “I, too, may perish.”
“Why, sir, what mean you? Are you not safe and sound among your countrymen?” There was an accusatory stress on the last word, but he only answered with a shrug of his shoulders, and reassumed his old, wandering manner.
“Are you, too,” he asked, vaguely, “a dream, as I am? But oh, how different! Your eyes fire my brain, madam. Women have offered to die for me—” he was running on now with a wild impetuosity—“it is refreshing to meet one at least for whom I myself would die.”
She turned to him with a look of intense hatred and repugnance, but it died suddenly; and, smiling, so that he might see the smile, whereas the scorn had been concealed, she retreated slowly toward the door. He hesitated for a moment, seeming to be drawn two ways, then followed her. Once outside the fortress she sat down upon a rusty caliver which had been found among the débris of the first settlement—sat down and waited, fearing doubtfully that her magnetism might not avail to bring him even to so short a distance from the secrets of the fort. But the chape of his scabbard grated on the threshold, and in a minute he stood bending over her with ardent eyes, yet evidently against his will. Youthful insouciance, which, warring with a certain haughtiness and scorn, played so often across his features, had left him a suppliant before her, yet a suppliant who would, she felt, as a last resort, throw supplication to the winds.
“Since the description,” he said, “I have dreamed of you often.”
The square before the fortress was now deserted, a large crowd having followed Marlowe in his excited quest, for, despite her unpleasant notoriety, Gyll Croyden was by no means unpopular in the colony. The women might shake their heads and, justly enough, gossip as they would, but the men had been glad now to take up arms and go in search of her. And with many it was but the spirit of comradeship that inspired them.
“My queen!” The two words came in a low whisper, nevertheless with all the colossal self-assurance by which the youth, now known as Ralph Contempt, was long remembered.
The effrontery almost caused Eleanor to lose her hold on him. She rose from the cannon as though, in all the majesty of her pure womanhood, to smite and cast him from her with a mere glance from the very eyes that held him spellbound. But she realized instinctively that this man must at all costs be kept her prisoner until the return of Vytal. She felt sure that he had come as a spy from the Spanish ranks, and that, if he were allowed to rejoin them, it must mean disaster. She did not know how far he had unravelled Vytal’s plan, or how deeply he had penetrated the secrets of the ships and fortress. The welfare of the whole colony, however, seemed at stake, and she must play for it against a keen, resourceful opponent. This realization, quick-born and vivid, though formless, caused her to sink down once more breathlessly to the caliver. And then a deeper shade of trouble crossed her face. It was the look of a penitent who seeks forgiveness before some invisible tribunal, with the justifying excuse of unblemished innocence. She knew that in her heart the judge’s name was Vytal, and that to him alone she was answering: “It is for our colony—our colony.” Her mind kept repeating this, feverishly, for thus she always spoke of the settlement to herself. That night, long months ago, when she had led Vytal to Ananias, and had fought against her shame in order to reveal her husband’s condition—for had not her duty to the colony demanded instant action?—that night saw the beginning of her sacrifice.
But the word “sacrifice” was not now in her mind. It is rarely those who name a crisis that live up to its demands. The details of the moment must be paramount; the troubling, perplexing flux of thought on thought, act on act, seeming chaotic in their onrush, must blind a person to the perfect whole.
“My queen!”
She raised her eyes and looked into his own. He grasped her hand. For an instant, as a last resort, she thought of alarming the soldiers, the dull murmur of whose voices reached her from within. But recognizing the folly of an outcry—for he could readily have escaped within the forest—she forbore to give alarm, and only sat there, her head drooping, for the moment seeming to yield. To voice her encouragement was impossible. While she could force herself to remain impassive, by look and gesture drawing on herself his sudden, passionate avowal, she could by no means bring a word of answer to her lips. Fortunately, he seemed content for the moment with his own reckless wooing, and so she merely listened and met his eyes—met his eyes without remonstrance—that was all, and yet to her it meant that her heart was guilty of a lie.
At length he would have had her go with him “for a walk,” he said,“within the silent forest of dreams.” But to this she could not bring herself, even though it would have beguiled him from the fort and vessels.
“Nay,” she replied, “we are alone here.”
“But I have dreamed of you,” he persisted, “as walking beside me, your hand in mine, through a vista of green and gold. And I dreamed that we stood on the brink of a silver stream—stood, oh, so long—until at last I carried you across. Yet, before that, I had called you queen—Queen of England—was it not strange? But you broke my heart by refusing to call me king. Come.”
She laughed, with desperate coquetry. “And for a whimsical dream must we lose ourselves in the gloomy forest?”
He grew restless. “To the shore, then. Perchance the river should have been the sea. I did not read the dream aright. It must, indeed, have meant the sea, else wherefore the King and Queen of England?”
“No,” she answered, forcing a pout to her lips. “The sound of the surf oppresses me. Have you not more faith in the music of your voice? I had not supposed you lacked self-confidence.”
“Until now nor had I supposed so.” He kissed her hand, which was cold and lifeless. “But now—”
“You do not realize,” she interposed, striving strenuously to fight down the meaning regret in her voice, “how much I have given you.” At this he seized her hand again, to cover it with kisses, and, growing more bold, bent down to kiss her lips; but she recoiled quickly, and, eluding him, stepped back until the cannon lay between them. Then she forced herself to laugh.
He vaulted over the caliver. “Even this great piece,” he cried, “although it were ready primed, could scarce deter me,” and, seizing both of her hands, he leaned down to repeat his first attempt. But she hung her head, and his lips only brushed the velvet of her cap. Then, raising her eyes to his, by sheer force of will she dominated his desire, held it in check, yet kindled it the more.
“Stay,” she objected, calmly, “you little comprehend the ways of women; they must be wooed before they can be won.”
He started back with an impatient gesture. “They can wait, then, to be wooed,” and, turning, he would have re-entered the fortress.
Had she lost him? Must the humiliation of it all be bitterly deepened by failure? No. She felt her woman’s power, her tingling wit and intuitive diplomacy rise quickly to meet the crisis. “I pray you, do not go, Master Contempt. Have I been so very unkind?”
He turned back smiling, his self-conceit actually leading him to believe that his own little ruse of apparent indifference had worked success.
A bold, flashing plan came to her. She would play upon the man’s two conflicting desires at one and the same time. A double spell must shackle him.
“I have it,” she suggested, in a yielding voice. “Let us row out to the Admiral, and pretend we have left this dangerous land for good and all.”
His eyes sparkled. Fortune had showered him with favors. He felt less compunction now in making love. She little knew, he thought, how opportunely her suggestion came. He even feigned reluctance for the moment, to hide the eagerness of his steps.
They walked to the shore.
“I have not been on board my father’s ship,” she told him, “since we landed in the fly-boat. You have heard, no doubt, of our mishaps?”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “But one thing I know not, and that is the countersign. I fear Dyonis Harvie will forbid me the ship.”
She laughed. “Nay, he is my tire-woman’s husband. You shall see.”
In a few minutes they were under the Admiral’s side, and in one more she had mounted to the deck.
“It is against Captain Vytal’s orders,” expostulated the mate, as Ralph followed her. “Under your favor, Master Contempt must stay behind.”
But the youth was already beside them. “Nay, Dyonis,” remonstrated Eleanor. “You forget ’tis the governor’s daughter who brings him.”
“I ask your pardon, Mistress Dare; but ’tis not that I forget too easily; it is that I remember well a positive command.” And he made as though to assist the subject of their talk down into the barge again.
“How now?” she demanded, imperiously. “Are any save my father’s orders superior to mine own? I had not looked to find my maid-servant’s husband so disloyal.”
At this the poor seaman wavered on the horns of a dilemma. Against Mistress Dare, of all the colony, he could not persist further, for she was regarded already as a kind of queen in the little settlement, who had shown kindness to the very humblest in sickness and distress, and was above all others most readily obeyed.
Harvie scratched his head. “You will explain, I pray, to Captain Vytal.”
“I will explain.”
The mate walked away mumbling to himself. Whereat, turning with a laugh of feigned delight and mischief, Eleanor led her companion to the room of state. “It is here,” she said, “that the king should hold his court. And, besides, I am anxious to inspect the chamber in which my poor father used to sit, head in hands, hoping against hope for my safe arrival.” She paused. “Furthermore, there is wine within of a rare vintage.”
“Wine,” he said, eagerly—“golden wine. We shall drink to our realm, to the England I pictured in my dreams. But no, first, first to our love.”
She felt his breath hot against her cheek. “And to solitude,” she added, with an under-meaning in her thoughts. Then, daringly, for the game at moments carried her away, “To an immemorial captivity in the room of state.”
He had, however, thrown caution to the winds, being, as he believed, at the very threshold of a double goal. Nevertheless, as they entered the long apartment, he assumed his old, pitiable air. “It is cruel,” he said, “to mention captivity to one who, having but just escaped so fell a slavery, is again in direst bondage.”
“It was thoughtless,” she allowed, with subtle truth, “and reprehensible to talk of victory when as yet we have neither of us won.”
He strove to encircle her waist with his arm, but once more, as if with natural coquetry, she eluded him. “Not yet won?” he whispered, passionately. “It is won; it shall be won—and by me.”
“Nay, sir, not so fast. You forget the wine; it is there.” She pointed to a heavy sideboard of black oak near the wall, at the same time taking a silver flagon from the table.
“Ah, the golden wine!”
He went to the sideboard, and, kneeling with his back toward her, thrust a hand across the shelf of a lower cupboard. Finding a dusty bottle in the corner, he withdrew it. “’Tis as old,” he said, closing the doors and surveying the film of cobwebs, “as old as our love is new. Come, dearest—” but, on turning, he broke off suddenly.
The flash of a white ruff, the soft whisper of slippers across a rug, and he was alone—a prisoner.
But then—even then, as the key grated in the lock—he laughed like a boy who has been caught in a game of blind-man’s-buff or hide-and-seek. Even in the first moment of his plight, amusement and an uncontrollable sense of the ludicrous sparkled in his blue eyes. Impulsively knocking off the bottle’s neck against the sideboard, he picked up a silver cup which had rolled to his feet from the cabin door and filled it to the brim.
“You remembered me,” he reflected, sipping the wine with a too-apparent relish as though acting to himself. “You remembered me. That is one point gained.”
In the meanwhile, Eleanor Dare, on the deck, was graciously explaining to Dyonis her apparent unreasonableness and breach of discipline. “You will guard the door until relieved.” And so saying, she returned in her barge to the shore.
Early in the evening, Vytal, re-entering the town, was surprised to find her evidently awaiting him at the fort.
“The man,” she exclaimed, breathlessly, without any prelude of greeting, “the man you fought with on the bridge is here!”
“Frazer?”
“Yes, Frazer, known lately as Ralph Contempt.”
A sharp, sudden comprehension, all the keener for having been so long deferred, sprang into the soldier’s face. “’Twas to set him a-land that the Spanish vessel anchored to the southward. I knew the boy’s eyes. ’Twas his heavy beard deceived me.”
She smiled. “A woman knows from the heart,” she said, “while a man’s head aches with perplexity. And, besides, whereas he only fought with you, me he insulted.” Her cheeks flushed, her eyes revealing the pure hatred and anger they had so long been forced to mask with smiles.
The look fired Vytal’s blood. But, following his first silent fury, an expression which had never yet been in his eyes changed them to those of a wounded animal, and he seemed for the moment almost ashamed. The thought had cut him cruelly that his worst enemies on earth were a mere careless stripling and a shallow drunkard, with not even the boy’s bravery to commend him as a foe. There are a few men who regret the lack of noble power in an enemy as deeply as the many deplore its non-existence in a friend.
“Where is he?”
“I have imprisoned him in the Admiral.”
“You!”
“Yes.” Her look had a strange penitence in it and no triumph. He dimly understood the reason, and an expression of pain crossed his own features. But there was not a trace of condemnation in the deep-set eyes, his faith being perfect. “Yes,” she added, in a whisper, as though half to herself, “’twas for our colony I led him on. But oh, if by any chance he should escape—”
“It would matter little,” broke in Vytal.
“How so?”
“He has failed. You have frustrated his plan to estimate our strength. Even were he to return, he could impart naught of value to the others. But stay, in what room have you imprisoned him?”
“In the main cabin.”
“That is well. His knowledge of the fortress would avail them nothing. St. Magil, I doubt not, knows the force and number of our arms. ’Tis mainly my new arrangement of the ships that holds the key to our defence. Thus, Mistress Dare, even should he escape, which he must not, you have accomplished that which I had not supposed within a woman’s range to compass. I thank you—deeply.”
Her face brightened for the instant, but, as he walked away, she returned to her home sadly, as though even the skilful winning of her first play had brought only an ephemeral gladness.
Vytal had but just crossed the square when Marlowe, having entered the town from the north, joined him. The poet was dishevelled from his hasty pursuit through the forest and extremely agitated. “Gyll Croyden has been captured by the Indians!”
“Who told you that?”
“Our guest.”
“And so you went in search of her?”
“Most naturally, for though she and I are naught save comrades, comrades we shall be to the end.”
Vytal studied his face. “Our guest’s name, Kyt, is Frazer.”
“Frazer!” The poet started. “We are tricked. Tricked by a boy! Forgive me. You must leave another to defend the fortress,” and Marlowe, drawing his sword, held it out to the soldier. “Leave me the pen only, for I am not worthy of this.”
But Vytal laid a hand on his shoulder kindly. “I was befooled myself.”
“Let us go to him,” suggested Christopher.
“Nay, I have just sent Hugh Rouse, who returned with me from his picket duty. He will bring the fellow to the fort.”
“Let us wait in the armory, then. I long to see that bantering actor pleading for our mercy. He would play excellent well upon the stage, with his tales of torture and feigned idiocy.”
So they waited, waited long, and still Hugh Rouse did not return.
The cause of this delay is briefly told.
Hugh, having stepped into a canoe, had, with a few long sweeps of his paddle, come to the Admiral; and the captive heard voices approaching the cabin door. At this he rose from the table, and, with an air still somewhat careless, yet of definite purpose, concealed himself behind the arras with which the walls were hung.
Once more the key grated in its lock, and Frazer heard two men enter the long cabin, which by now was enveloped in gloom. Seeming to stand near the threshold, while their eyes were probably accustoming themselves to the darkness, neither of these men spoke at first, but finally the prisoner heard one whisper to the other and, with a deep oath, advance farther into the room.
“He hides. Do you, Dyonis, guard the door.”
Harvie obeyed, while Rouse, growing more and more amazed, searched the cabin without success. He might have searched until the crack of doom and come no nearer to a trace of the cunning quarry.
For, even on their first entrance midway into the room, when Rouse had supposed that Harvie held the door, and Harvie that the captive must certainly be before them, the bird had flown. Softly, in that first moment, the heavy arras undulated, as though a breeze were passing across it from end to end of the apartment. Then, parting from the wall near the entrance, it fell flat again—a motionless, innocent piece of tapestry in darkness.
And, suppressing a laugh, Master Ralph lowered himself into Hugh’s canoe, to paddle away under the cover of evening.
After propelling the light craft silently for several minutes, he listened. An oath rang out in deep bass from the Admiral’s deck. Hearing this, he turned the prow of his canoe toward a narrow inlet, and entered on a winding forest stream. The moon, just rising above the trees, ensilvered his course with a radiance that found itself reflected yet more brightly in his youthful eyes.
On and on he paddled with silent speed, until, coming to an abrupt bend in the stream, he saw another canoe on the opposite shore. Looking about him, he appeared to hesitate; but suddenly a golden thing, round like a second moon, appeared over the edge of the lonely craft.
“You will find them,” he called, “on a direct line with your canoe, back in the brushwood. Farewell, Gyll, and thank you.”
“Thank you!” came the answer, in exasperation, after him. “Here have I been starving, fearing to move! Villanous—” but he was beyond earshot now, as, running the prow of his boat onto a shelving bank in the distance, he plunged straightway into the forest.