In a week the English settlement had assumed an aspect that hinted at permanent residence on the island of Croatan. The Indian town, with a population of over one hundred, still offered shelter to the new-comers, though a number of houses, after the white man’s fashion of building, were already nearing completion. The village, girdled by trees, occupied a wide and natural opening. The sites of houses had been chosen with a certain regularity and crude symmetry as to position, which gave the paths an almost street-like appearance. The dwellings themselves were varied according to the tastes of their builders and the advantages of their surroundings, some walled by strips of bark staked to the ground and fastened together by thongs of hide; others, more pretentious, being strengthened by numerous upright poles placed side by side in double lines and bent over at the top, where they formed arched and lofty roofs. The interior of the house which belonged to Manteo and his mother was surprisingly spacious, measuring almost twenty yards in length, and in width as many feet.
One summer morning a child stood wonderingly before the threshold of this dwelling, regarding in silence another child in the doorway. The first was Virginia, the second Manteo’s son, a dark, supple boy, whose unclad body shone like bronze in the sunlight. Between the two, momentarily, there was silence, each regarding the other with curious and bashful eyes; until at last Virginia, stepping eagerly forward to the Indian lad, held out her hand. For a minute he looked down at the delicate fingers and little palm with a bewildered expression, as though at an object clearly demanding his attention, but in no way understood. Not a smile crossed his dark face; the perplexity was very sober, and the belief that she desired some gift embarrassed him, for what had he to give? But suddenly, as if with an intuitive impulse, he offered that which alone seemed available—his hand. At this she laughed, and, turning her head, now this way, now that, inspected the dusky present like a young bird and held it fast.
“The White Doe,” said Manteo, who stood near by with Vytal, “shall be as a bond between our peoples.”
CHAPTER XX
At Croatan the springs ran freely, and the soil, being naturally irrigated, bore sufficient crops for all. This the English sowers learned gladly, after inspecting the work of their uncivilized brethren with admiration for the bountiful result, if not for the crude and irksome methods of cultivation. Here men, women, and children were alike tillers of the soil, and although, with needless exertion, sticks were used instead of ploughs and holes dug instead of furrows, the wide fields beyond the town’s encircling strip of woodland showed an abundance of maize, or guinea wheat; beans, pease, and tobacco. About a third of the forest was composed of walnut-trees, from which the nuts were plucked by the natives, to be used as seasoning in spoon-meat. Chestnuts, which strewed the ground, were also gathered and made into a kind of bread.
The recent rains appeared to have reawakened nature; for not only had all the crops of fruit and vegetables been revivified, but animal life as well. Wild geese and turkeys, immense flocks of waterfowl and penguins, swans, crows, and magpies, being affrighted now and then by some unaccustomed sound, as a trumpet-call or accidental musket-shot, would rise with a concerted flutter and whir like a great wind above the forest. At these moments the varied clamor of their cries would fill the air with an alarum so loud as to seem almost human in tone and power.
Beasts of the field, great and small, were also near neighbors of the tribesmen. Black bear, deer, rabbits, opossums, wild hog, and foxes abounded on every side. Thus all manner of palatable meat was to be had for a single day’s hunting.
In life and custom the English soon became half Indian, the Indians half English.
Yet, with all the outward sign of harmony, and despite the genuine friendliness, a hope, deep down in the English hearts, strove to believe that this condition was in no way final. The barrier of race was too strong so soon to be removed. The Indians were on their own soil, surrounded by their intimate kinsmen, and living much as they had always lived; but the English were in exile. Thoughts of England haunting them at moments brought restless longings. That which had been born and bred in the bone must die with it. As the grave is the only portal to a life divine, so Death is the sole power by which a new country is forced to yield itself in full before the influx of aliens. The earthly land of promise is for sons, not fathers. With the first generation it is a trust, and only with the second a possession.
Many of the colonists, despite their new-found comfort and prosperity, were yet unsatisfied. Their hearts yearned for England. Gradually they went from bad to worse. Their turbulence, vice, and incontinence ran riot as never before. Only a few labored steadily for the common good. On these the others lived as parasites. Yet the minority averted the colony’s dissolution. Eleanor Dare, for one, by a daily example of fortitude, a never-failing sympathy, a detailed attention to the little ills and troubles of her fellows, served, through her influence upon the women, to maintain the industry of the men. While, however, it was she who thus gradually turned sorrowful resignation to contentment, it was Vytal who, by personal and continual contact with the planters, dominated their wills and held them fast to duty.
The control of these two superior spirits, one feminine, the other masculine, and each the other’s need, formed an almost perfect diarchy, by which the colonists of Virginia were governed for many years.
The influence of a third dominant spirit is more difficult to define, being that of Christopher Marlowe, whose temperament, ever varying and mystical, was understood by few.
As months passed the poet became again enveloped in abstraction, until at last his mind seemed to be concentrated on some definite purpose, of which the existence was made evident by an unusual taciturnity and set expression, while the purpose itself remained a mystery.
It had become the custom of Marlowe to absent himself daily from the town, and to pursue his solitary way, morning after morning, to a northeastern promontory that stretched out into the sea from an adjacent island. On these walks he was always, by apparent intention, alone. Standing on the shore, with face turned northward and eyes intent on scanning the wide horizon, his graceful figure was ever solitary, his reflections ever with no response save from his inward self. Thus for months, without the exception of a single day, he went to the promontory, until his patience was rewarded by the sight of that which he had so long awaited. An instinct, a premonition, an inward certainty, call it what he would, had told him that his determination must find an opportunity at last. Therefore, when the chance to work his will finally offered itself, he regarded it with small surprise. He called himself, not without a certain vain though mournful loftiness, the agent of Destiny; hence, when Destiny came to claim self-sacrifice at his hands, he met it with familiar greeting.
Starting out to welcome that which he termed “Incarnate Fate,” he made his way farther north, and having finally, as he told himself, “bound the Parcæ with their own thread,” returned to Croatan.
It was all a mystical thrall, dominant and positive, yet vaguely transcendental, as it is here described. The actual was resolved instantly to the poetical in his mind, and in this, the beginning of the final act of his life’s drama, he became that astral dreamer and etherealist whom a few, by the perceptive comprehension of his poetry, have recognized and understood.
On re-entering the town, Marlowe sought Eleanor Dare. She was sitting near the threshold of her door with Virginia, who, slight, pale, and more visionary than real, watched him with a curious eagerness and joy as he approached; for Christopher and the Indian youth were, with the exception of her mother, the sole favorites of her child heart. To her father Virginia showed a peculiar devotion, but this was often broken by moments of angry rebellion, while usually with Eleanor, and always with Manteo’s son, she seemed perfectly in accord.
“Mistress Dare, I would speak to you now beyond the town, where no interruption can break in upon my sorrow.”
Before Eleanor could reply, the child, looking up into Marlowe’s face, asked, half wistfully, “What is sorrow?”
The poet gazed down at her and smoothed her hair. “That is a secret,” he answered, kindly.
“Whose secret?” she demanded, pouting. “My mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“And yours?”
“Yes.”
“And my father’s?”
“Yes, perhaps.”
“And Captain Vytal’s?”
The poet inclined his head. “Ay, truly, his as well.”
“And is it the dark boy’s?”
“Nay, not yet.”
“Ah, then I am glad,” said Virginia, with a satisfied air, “for it would not be nice if he, too, had a secret that I did not know. But please tell me the secret about sorrow, Master Christopher.” She tripped over the long name, pronouncing it with difficulty.
The poet smiled. “Sorrow is the secret of happiness, little White Doe; and some day, when you have lived perhaps a million years up near the sun and are entirely happy, you will say, ‘’Tis all because I guessed the secret far down there.’”
She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. “Tell me now,” she pleaded; but seeing that he had already forgotten, she turned and, with a pout, ran off to seek her dusky playfellow. “Dark boy,” she said, on finding him near by, “I am glad you do not know the secrets I don’t know.”
For a moment Eleanor watched her as here and there in the distance she flitted about the bronze figure.
“I can in no way comprehend her, Master Marlowe.”
“Nay, nor shall the day come in all the earthly future when she shall understand herself. Thus are some of us prescient with meaning, yet forever enigmatical, save to—save to—shall I say God?”
“Yes, to God,” replied Eleanor, simply; and, rising, she walked with Marlowe into the fields beyond the town.
For several minutes they went on in silence, she in wonder waiting to hear what he would say, he melancholy and wrapped in meditation. At last they came to the edge of a wide wheat-field, over which the surface of the sunlit grain swayed and rippled like a lake of pale and molten gold. As the poet looked across it he smiled sadly, yet with a certain light recklessness of manner that belied the former seriousness of his look. “See,” he said, “the wheat inclines eastward; the wind is from the west. I’d have thee remember, Mistress Dare, that if in the near future I am no more to be seen, there is no deeper reason in’t than in this course the wind doth follow. To America I came, for the wind blew hither from the east. The wind is changed, madam, and so my way. ’Tis Fate ordains this brief farewell.”
At these words Eleanor started perceptibly, her eyes opening wide in amazement. “Farewell!” she exclaimed. “O sir, what mean you by ‘farewell’?”
He took her hand and, bending low, kissed it reverently. “I cannot say, for, alas! many know the present meaning, but none the hidden prophecy, of that word ‘farewell.’”
“Yet surely, Master Marlowe, you contemplate no—”
“Nay,” he rejoined, with a vague smile; “I shackle the Fates with their own thread for but a single day, and not forever.” Turning, he walked away on the margin of the wheat-field that now, no longer golden, swayed and whispered beneath an umbrous pall; and Eleanor, seeming to be bound by the spell of his mysticism, could only watch in silence his graceful, receding figure while the tall wheat-blades bent forward and touched him as he passed. When at last he was about to disappear, she would have started after him, but at this instant Virginia, flitting as though from nowhere to her mother’s side, called out to him, “Come back!” He turned. “Please, Master Kyt, come back and tell me the secret.”
But Marlowe only shook his head, and, waving his hand, went forward with light footsteps into the woods.
CHAPTER XXI
As the poet made his way through the forest he came suddenly on a scene that caused him to pause, laugh, quicken his pace, and turn aside to another trail, by which he reached the shore. Here, shrugging his shoulders, he sat down on the sand, looking back now and then as if waiting to be joined by some one who occupied his thoughts. Whether or not this person would come he could not be sure, since the scene just witnessed had disclosed a new phase of the situation in which he had placed himself.
In the clearing which he had just passed sat Gyll Croyden looking up at Roger Prat, who stood before her in an attitude of indecision and unaccustomed solemnity, while the bear regarded them drowsily from the overhanging branches of a tree. What transpired between the man and woman Marlowe could not definitely surmise, yet the result of their conversation was to subvert completely his own future.
“Now, I tell you,” said Prat, after the sound of footsteps had died away, “I am a peculiar personage.” He sank his chin deep into its triple substructure surveyed her with perplexity. In his hand he held an Indian pipe, whose wreaths of smoke rose and cast a veil before his face, through which his troubled, protruding eyes looked out with ghostly light.
“A peculiar hobgoblin,” corrected Gyll, laughing more from nervousness than mirth—“a dear hobgoblin.”
He eyed her reproachfully. “Oh, you may deride me with unflattering names,” he said, “but it makes no difference. Mark you, until now there has been one thing only which could make Roger Prat turn on his heel and run for dear life. This was the sight of a petticoat; but, alack! I am changed, most miserably changed, and, by some perversity, my new courage seems cowardice as well. For I take it that a really brave man nerves himself to retreat before the bombardment of a wench’s eyes. ’Tis the coward who succumbs.”
Gyll pouted. “Run away, then, and prove yourself a soldier.” But he shook his head with ponderous gravity, and, curiously enough, the unprecedented soberness of his manner spread to her. “Oh, you would stay. Now, I am glad of that, Sir Goblin,” and, rising, she stood facing him, with a hand on each of his bulky shoulders. “I am glad, Roger,” she repeated, in a softer tone. “For dost know that, with all my gallants, with the memory of all those faces upturned and kisses thrown to my window on the Bankside, ’tis a common fighting man I would marry?—a great, cumbersome roly-poly, a mountain, a heathen image, call him what you will, yet to me he hath so light a heart, so quaint a way, so sturdy a courage, that methinks he hath already won me.”
At this, either a recollection of her long-lost girlhood or a play of mere wanton coquetry—she herself did not know which—caused her to cast down her eyes, while the flush of her cheeks deepened vividly. For an instant Prat seemed to sway, as though his legs with an effort supported his corpulent body, and the perplexity of his look increased. Instinctively he thrust the pipe-stem between his teeth, and, gazing up at King Lud, blew a cloud of smoke into the branches. The bear looked down through it, blinking and sniffing at his master, while for a moment Roger himself was almost completely enveloped.
“Thou imp of Uppowac,” quoth Gyll, stepping back with a grimace, “is this thy only response to my condescension?” and she made as though to start away into the forest. But Roger, suddenly all-forgetful of his dilemma, waddled after her.
“Nay, stay,” he called, apprehensively; “stay, and permit me to collect my scattered wits.”
She turned and laughed with scornful badinage. “Stay?” she echoed; “and wherefore, pray? Merely that you may blow tobacco fumes into my eyes and blind them to the charm of your countenance?”
“Oh no,” he remonstrated. “In troth, I blew the smoke to hide the face of his wondering majesty above. His red eyes and sniffing snout seemed to condemn and scorn me. There, I’ll smoke no more,” and, knocking out the pipe’s ashes, he restored it quickly to his belt.
Seeming to be mollified by this, Gyll sat down again on the grass, while the new softness of her expression returned. “Prithee, Roger, make up your mind on that which troubles it, for if again I start, I go, and there’s the end.”
He gazed at her for a moment with solemn eyes, and now she smiled in an almost womanly way instead of laughing wantonly. “Tell me, Gyll, dost really—dost truly?—” but he broke off for want of a word.
“Truly what?” she asked, in a low voice.
His chin sank into its underfolds again, and he twirled a pair of globular thumbs tentatively. “Dost truly have that feeling for me which the poet would call ‘love’?”
The question touched her sense of the ludicrous keenly, yet his astonishing earnestness underlying it must have reached a deeper sense, for still she only smiled instead of laughing, and answered, “Yes.”
At this his rotund face grew brighter. “Come, then, to the Oxford preacher, Gyll, before we change our minds;” and, nothing loath, she rose quietly.
“Change our minds, Roger! I, for one, shall ne’er do that.”
“Nay,” he said, “nay, I pray you, do not change. Oh, that would be dire misfortune;” whereon, picking up the end of King Lud’s chain, which dangled from the tree, he tugged thereat until the beast, with a good-humored growl, descended. For an instant the sight of her animal friend brought the old, careless look to Gyll’s face—there was something so drolly suggestive of Roger in the bear’s bandy legs and awkward gait. A fit of devil-may-care recklessness seized her. The strain of even a moment’s seriousness on such a nature being unendurable, breaks in the end, and, as when a supporting rope is severed without warning the one who has been held thereby falls suddenly, so the snapping of a moral stay leaves one sprawling in abandonment.
Gyll went to the extreme of flippancy. “Come,” she said. “Look at King Lud. Let him give us his blessing. Let him tie the knot with his great paws upon our heads. I much mislike real parsons; we will have none o’ them. I’ll bind myself to no man. ‘Please one, please all,’ as the song hath it—‘please one, please all.’” So saying, she was on the point of profaning her troth by kneeling, with a laugh, before the bear, when a glance at Prat restrained her. The soldier had started back with an oath. His eyes, enraged as she had never seen them, were lowering, and his breath came quickly. With one hand he ground the bear’s chain until its links grated as if they must break in the tight-clinched fist, while with the other he sought his hip, and the fat palm ignored his flute and Uppowac pipe to cool itself on the metal of his sword.
Gyll drew back in amaze. “How now, goblin,” she asked, with not a little terror; “art gone wholly mad?”
He said nothing, but slowly his expression altered until a mingling of grief and cold repulsion told her of his inward change. “I would have risked a wedding,” he said, at last, and drawing the bear to his side. “I would have made you honest wife, and not ungladly, for I felt a kind o’ love—ah, a deal o’ love—for you, Gyll; but I’m a peculiar personage, and not irreverent to men o’ God and church-like things, be I rake or no. Faith, ye’re a most heartless jade, who’ll ne’er be wife o’ mine. Ye’ve shown yourself. For that I thank thee;” whereat he turned on his heel and, leading away King Lud, disappeared in the forest.
For a moment Gyll stood listening, and once she called, but only the clank, clank of the bear’s chain, growing fainter and more faint in the distance, answered her unhappy cry. Finally, when the sound had died, a flood of tears fell from her eyes, but quickly she brushed them away, then, turning, walked in the direction of the shore, and forced from her tremulous lips a song, popular at the time in Southwark:
Her voice sounded low, its lilt for once seeming artificial. The friends she strove to cheer were her own thoughts—new, discomforting thoughts—yet perhaps more truly friends than all their predecessors. She persisted, however, in drowning the inward mutter of their realization with her voice’s melody:
And now the notes of a flute came to her from afar, half in accompaniment of her tune:
The last words came in faltering tones that utterly belied their meaning, while from the distance the flute’s music ended in that wild wail which now, more than ever, denoted a finale.
In a few minutes Gyll joined Marlowe on the shore. “Ah, you have come,” he said, rising.
She laughed. “So it seems; but wherefore, Kyt, did you so mysteriously arrange this meeting?”
He made an impatient gesture. “Wilt swear to say nothing of my tidings to any in the town?”
“Yea, if it pleases your poetic soul thus to weave mysteries, I make no remonstrance.”
He scrutinized her silently until, at last, being satisfied, he spoke again. “I leave for England, Gyll, this very day.”
Her eyes opened wide, and she stared at him as at one demented. “Leave for England, Kyt! Thou’rt mad!”
“Nay,” he returned, calmly. “Listen. For I know not how many days and months I have scanned the sea far to the northward. For an eternity I have seen naught save gulls and waves, but at last a sail hath come, as I knew it would. Nor is it surprising that I waited expectantly, for while in England I had heard that every year as many as five hundred ships found their way to the great country which Martin Frobisher explored. ’Tis called Newfoundland, and off its banks myriads of fish are caught by the men of Brittany, Normandy, and nearly all the provinces of France. Was it not likely, therefore, that one of these fishing-vessels, returning with its catch, should follow the coast of this continent until it came to southern waters? Well, likely or not, the thing hath happened. A Breton shallop lies to the north and awaits me, for I builded a fire and signalled to it. Three mariners came ashore, and, to one who understood the French language, I explained that I was a castaway. Thus they think me a shipwrecked sailor, and I have allayed their curiosity. Otherwise, no doubt, they would have come prying about Croatan. These men have promised to land me on the coast of France or Ireland.” He paused, seeming to question her with a look, but for answer she only threw an arm about his neck.
“Oh, Kyt, art really going? I cannot believe ’tis true.”
“Ay, ’tis very truth.”
She looked up into his dark eyes with a troubled expression. “Tell me, dreamer, why do you depart so secretly, and why, indeed, at all?”
“Secretly,” he answered, with renewed vagueness, “because in secret Destiny works; I for to-day am Fate, and keep these colonists to their duty as Vytal and Mistress Dare have done. Were they to know of the vessel’s proximity, they would in a moment be havoc-struck. Ananias would start an insurrection and incite them to seize the shallop. This must not be. I go alone, or with—”
She interrupted him. “Why, why do you go?”
He raised himself to his full height. “Because a voice, calling me in whispers, so decrees. I shall seek audience with the queen and Raleigh to demand the forwarding of supplies and men to Virginia.” He paused, a look of despondency crossing his face. “But would I could foresee success. Alas! I cannot. Some godless curse rests on this colony, whose spirit is in the very air we breathe.” He looked darkly into the distance, as though the hitherto invisible had come within the range of sight. Then, however, as he heard a sob from the woman beside him, his expression changed. The earnestness of the moment seemed to pall upon him, and he laughed carelessly.
Untying a silken kerchief from her neck, he held it aloft so that it hung lightly on the breeze, its soft ends fluttering toward the sea. “This is the true reason,” he said, inconsequently. “The wind blows eastward.”
Her eyes were smiling now behind her tears. “May not I go thither also?” she asked, breathlessly. “I cannot stay behind. ‘Faith, all the colony hath turned against me. The parson would have me married or banished, were there chance of either fate. Besides—I’d be more comfortable in Southwark,” she added, with a note of hardness in her ever-changing voice.
He pressed her hand pityingly. “As you like, Gyll. ’Tis but natural you desire to return. Neither you nor I were made for this. Our parts were writ to be played in London. I go aboard the shallop within an hour, but it waits too far for you. To-night we’ll anchor to the southward. Do you slip away and await me on the southern shore. Whate’er you do, remember one thing: none must know of our departure. Nay, postpone thy thanks, Gyll, for here comes Vytal by appointment.”
She turned, and, on seeing the soldier, who alone of all men inspired her with awe, made her way quickly to the town.
As Vytal joined Marlowe, they spoke at once of that which paramountly filled their minds. “I am ready to start,” said Christopher. “The shallop lies north of Hatarask.”
“Then,” returned Vytal, “let us go to it at once. I will accompany you thither.”
They walked along the shore. “We can speedily reach the place,” said Marlowe, who was oppressed with the other’s silence; “I have left a canoe on the northern beach.”
Vytal inclined his head, as who should say, “I supposed so.”
The poet’s eyes saddened. “Your muteness is hard to brook.”
“Nay, Kyt, I count it kind to both of us.”
“Wherefore kind?”
“Because, when the heart is sick, words but pain it more.”
“You regret, then, my departure?”
“For my own sake, deeply. We have been friends.”
“Ay,” said the poet, “friends. Friendship’s the reality; love but a pleasant dream. I look back over the past five years and think of our conversations. I recall, too, those few hours when I talked with Mistress Dare. The difference is plain. Man and man enjoy the freer reverie. No personal distraction mars their elemental thought. They become unbiased lookers-on at life, unfettered by the stage directions. To them the lover’s star hath varied cosmic meanings which far transcend its amorous spell. To them all nature shows her heart, and not the mere reflection of their own. Ay, only with man and man is meditation free—unless—of course, unless—the dream of love hath proven true.” The last words came in a voice of pain, which, however, passed as he added, mechanically, “But come, here is the canoe.”
Following the poet, Vytal stepped into the craft, and with a single stroke of his paddle sent it far out across the inlet. With long, slow sweeps he propelled it on in silence, while Marlowe, facing him, gazed at the sharp-cut features with a kind of worship in his eyes.
“Hath any yet known you, Vytal? Hath one single man or woman probed your depths?”
Vytal shrugged his shoulders for reply, then said, in a voice that sounded harsh even to himself, “We are come to your starting-point,” and, as they landed, “Where is the ship?”
“Five miles to the north.”
“Let us hasten, then, by the shore.”
They walked for many minutes mutely, until Vytal spoke as though half to himself: “I would have made the sacrifice in your stead, but for these children of Croatan, these helpless colonists, who are in my charge.”
The poet’s eyes lighted up with their old fervor. “I know it well, for partly I know you.” His eyes wandered. “Yet I cannot say that, were I you, I would have left her even for friendship’s sake. I read you, I read myself—you as mighty prose, I, it sometimes seems, as vainly garnished poetry. Marlowe would whisper to her, ‘My soul sings thine,’ but Vytal would say, ‘I love thee.’ Methinks in these very words lie our inmost selves contrasted.” Turning again to look at his companion, he found the dark face averted, but when at last he saw its deep-graven, premature lines again, he found no change in the expression.
“I trust you will make every effort,” said Vytal, “to gain audience with the queen.”
“Yes, I swear it, but I fear ’twill prove of no avail. White hath not returned, nor shall I, nor shall any man. Tell me, hast not felt that, with all thy power, thou and these people are foredoomed?” But as he received no answer, Marlowe became resigned to the taciturnity of his friend. After all these years he was forced to confess that even now, in what he believed to be the final parting, he could not touch his comrade’s depths, or even, touching them, elicit response save the look and intense voice that told him of Vytal’s friendship. “Nevertheless, there is but one man,” he resumed at length, as though to himself, “who of all merits your fear. I speak of—” He broke off suddenly. “Hark! what was that?”
They stood still, intently listening.
A low “Whist!” reached their ears from the adjacent woods.
“Foh!” exclaimed Christopher. “’Twas but the hissing of a snake.”
“Nay,” said Vytal, “wait!”
The words were no sooner spoken than the dusky figure of Manteo emerged from the forest, and the Indian approached them with noiseless step. “My brother, have a care. I waited that I might warn thee. Two men, lying concealed to the northward, curiously watch the ship at anchor. The one is Towaye, the other your countryman who named himself ‘Ralph Contempt!’”
CHAPTER XXII
“Ralph Contempt!”
The name transformed them instantly. The old perfervid recklessness rekindled fire in Marlowe’s eyes, while the lineaments of Vytal’s face contracted and grew sharper with rigid hate.
“Let one of us return,” suggested the poet, “and bring a force to help capture him. It cannot be that he is alone with Towaye.”
Vytal dissented. “We should lose time by going to Croatan, and even the absence of one would jeopard our chances. If we find we need assistance, Manteo can seek it later. It is most probable that, alone or not, Frazer will strive either to board the shallop and sail or to prevent you from doing so.”
“How so? He has no knowledge of my intention.”
“Be not so sure. The conjectures of Frazer are as good as certainty. Doubtless he has already guessed the meaning of the ship, for it would not lie there idly waiting without reason. Quick! We must meet the two and take them by ourselves. Lead us, Manteo, that we may come upon them unobserved.”
Without a word the Indian re-entered the woods, and, coming to a trail that ran parallel with the coastline, made a sign to the others, bidding them avoid dry brushwood on the pathway that their tread might be unheard. For some time they followed him, cautiously keeping on a strip of mossy earth which bordered the trail and muffled their footsteps. It was now high noon, and the sun shone in a clear sky. March, just dying into April, had lost its harshness at sight of spring and grown more tender, as a crabbed parent grows tender with the child of his old age. The air, bracing and clear, seemed to fill their lungs with a breath of immortal life, while the sea’s untroubled breast, just visible through rifts in the arras of blossoms, bespoke a joy too deep for surface emotion.
Finally, as their guide turned with finger to lips, Vytal and Marlowe halted. Through a low interstice in the foliage a sight met their eyes which, although expected, caused them to draw their weapons instantly, for on the shore stood Towaye, with bow in hand, facing their cover, and beside him Frazer, lying on the beach, idly patting the sand into little moulds, as a child builds toy castles. The beach, sandy and shelving, rose gradually on either side, until, terminating in two high ridges or bulwarks of sand, it fell away again in long, flat sweeps to the north and south. Thus Frazer and Towaye occupied a naturally fortified square, two sides of which were formed by the sand-bank and two by forest and water. To reach them unobserved was therefore impossible, and an open encounter must necessarily ensue. As the odds favored the aggressors by three to two, there appeared to be small hazard in boldly forcing an issue. Unfortunately, however, Manteo was unarmed save for a wooden truncheon, and Vytal carried only his rapier. But Marlowe, ready to defend himself against Breton mutineers or pirates on the high seas, was better provided, his rapier being supplemented by a pistol and poniard. Ordinarily, with these weapons he would have found no difficulty in placing Towaye hors de combat, but the occasion demanded unusual strategy.
“Your dagger to Manteo,” whispered Vytal. “Cover Towaye with the firearm. Nay, don’t shoot from here. You are too far for accuracy. If possible, merely wound him. We must take the Indian alive and force him to reveal Frazer’s motives. Where is the shallop?”
“Farther on beyond the headland.”
“Good! Now at them!”
Side by side the three emerged quickly from the woods. A sudden viperish hiss from his ally caused Frazer to turn instantly, and the enemies stood face to face. Swiftly Towaye started to raise his bow, but swifter still Marlowe’s pistol sprang to a deadly aim. Yet the poet, fearing to kill, withheld his bullet. In the next instant he would have changed his aim and fired, but the risk of missing his opponent altogether and receiving the arrow in his own breast held him motionless. Thus between these two there was temporarily a deadlock, while both stood transfixedly waiting for the slightest error of movement on the other’s part.
Vytal, however, being in the first second unimpeded, rushed toward his adversary with rapier drawn.
“Halt!” The peremptory cry came from Frazer in a sharp note of menace, as, guarding himself with a rapier in one hand, he now raised with the other a small curved horn to his lips. Keeping it poised as though ready at an instant to sound an alarum, he called threateningly: “Two hundred Winginas lie within the forest waiting. A single blast means death to each of you;” then, with a laugh, “I pray you reconsider the expediency of attacking me now.”
Vytal stood still, controlling himself by a great effort. In his place doubtless the poet and many another would have rushed forward with rash impetuosity, but the campaigner’s trained hand could even compass that which to a brave soldier in the heat of fight is the most difficult of tactics, namely, the lowering of his sword.
The two men stood at gaze, Vytal fettered by the realization that his own death would in all probability mean the decimation of the whole colony, and Frazer by the rigid Fate before him.
For once the soldier hesitated. Instinct hinted that threats of alarum were empty, but reason demanded caution. The possibility that an overwhelming force lay near at hand in ambush was by no means slight.
Suddenly Vytal uttered a low order to Manteo, who thereupon, step by step, retreated almost imperceptibly toward the woods.
“Halt!” Again the horn touched Frazer’s lips. “I forbid you,” he said, “to arouse the settlers.” But Manteo only looked to Vytal for a sign.
“Remain,” said the latter, calmly, and the deadlock was now complete.
“It is strange, Master Frazer,” observed the poet, still covering Towaye with his pistol, “that your horn forbears so long. In troth, I begin to doubt its efficacy.”
Frazer laughed. “At any instant I am ready to prove it, Sir Poet. ’Troth, ’tis only a feeling of kindness that delays your doom, mingled perhaps with a slight curiosity. Doom, say I? Yea, doom. This colony will perish. Perchance you know not that John White, your governor, hath come to the very shore of Roanoke and departed.[9] His own men played mutineers. He could not seek you at Croatan. Ay, on my oath, ’fore God, a ship came and went away. ’Tis common report in England. Roanoke is deserted, say they; Virginia, a savage wilderness.”
Glancing at Vytal, whose face had gone livid as death, he laughed derisively. “Therefore I blame you not, Sir Soldier,” he added, with feigned contempt, “for planning this secret desertion.”
“Desertion!” cried Marlowe. “Fool! Think you John Vytal would desert?” But his outburst was suddenly interrupted by Vytal. “Look to your lock! Have a care, Towaye! an the arrow rises another inch, you fall.” Marlowe regained his aim, yet his thoughts returned immediately to Frazer. “Fool,” he repeated. “’Tis I who—”
“Hush!” said Vytal.
But the warning was too late, and Frazer laughed once more. “Ay, hush now, an you will, for the secret’s out. ’Twas for this I mentioned Vytal. It shall now be my duty—I may say my delight—to detain you.”
With an oath Marlowe started as though he would have rushed upon the man who so daringly taunted and harassed them. But a word from Vytal, more sudden and apprehensive than before, again restrained him.
“Beware!”
Towaye’s bowstring was already pulled, and in the next second an arrow grazed Marlowe’s cheek. With a cry to Manteo the poet rushed forward. “We have him now! Quick! Bind his arms!”
“Halt!” For the third time Frazer’s lips seemed to kiss affectionately the horn. “A move, a shot, and, by God, I blow!”
The poet, impotent with rage, stood still, and Manteo once more haughtily obeyed the order. Even Vytal, in whose eyes a dangerous light gleamed cruelly, made no advance. A bold plan was quickly maturing in his mind. To hide it he exclaimed, as though chagrined, “Cursed horn, it defeats us! I can fight against swordsmen, not musicians.”
Frazer started, seemingly with a new impulse. “So be it, then. I fear not your little bodkin. Come, we will decide the issue with our blades.”
Vytal’s plan, however, prohibited a duel. “Nay, there is trickery in the suggestion. Besides, I do not of a choice tilt with stage-jesters.”
At this Frazer appeared to become enraged as they had never seen him. “Stage-jester!” he cried, hoarsely. “Dost know, sirrah, who it is you thus address? Who am I?” The question came in a tone of high fury, and, receiving no response, he answered it himself, as if the assertion burst from him against his will. “I am not Frazer, not Ralph Contempt, but Arthur Dudley. Dost hear? Arthur Dudley, the son of Elizabeth and Leicester!” His manner, calming, became supercilious. “Gentlemen, you see before you the heir apparent to the English throne.”
“Liar!” It was Marlowe who spoke, and then for a moment there was silence, while Frazer’s lip curled scornfully.
“Oh, you doubt me, gentles. Yet I care not.” He took on a grandiose air, whether natural or assumed, they could not tell. “I seek not to convince such men as you. There is one even greater than my mother who knows the truth. I speak of the King of Spain!”[10]
He paused, as an actor pauses to heighten the effect of a sensation. But as Vytal only met his glance with a cold stare, he resumed, nonchalantly: “We have tried once to invade England, on whose throne Philip would have placed me, but we failed. Now that was but a first attempt. Mark you, the end is not yet.” He stood erect, as if striving to match his height with Vytal’s. “Perhaps you wonder why I have come twice to America? On this point I will satisfy your curiosity. It is because we would lop off this much of my beloved mother’s dominions and amputate a limb, as it were, while waiting to seize the trunk. If all else fail, I shall at least be the King of Virginia and St. Augustine.”
He said no more, but waited interestedly now as a spectator of the play instead of an actor.
Inexorably Vytal stepped forward, bending his well-tempered weapon in both hands like a bow.
Frazer smiled. “Ah, do you seek to break it and vow allegiance?” he inquired, with mock graciousness, “or merely to prove it of Toledo make? In the former case, I create you Knight of the Bodkin; in the latter, believe me, I know well ’tis a supple blade.”
“Unluckily,” returned Vytal, wholly disregarding his banter, “it is my duty to cross swords with you. Whether or not you have been so bold as purposely to bring it on yourself by this outrage, I cannot tell. Yet this one thing I know: a man’s duty and reverence are ever to his liege sovereign. In the name of my queen’s honor I am compelled to fight. Save for your scandalous insult I would have taken you alive, but now—to it!”
“Stay! First, I pray you, bid the poet and Manteo make no further attack on Towaye, and ask them both to remain here. Only on this condition will I throw aside the horn, trusting to your honor for fair play.”
Vytal inclined his head. “Manteo, stand by; and you, Kyt, control Towaye with your aim, but shoot not unless he move.”
At this Frazer appeared satisfied. “Towaye, wait. I will end the discussion with their leader first; later we can argue with the others.” So saying, he let fall his horn to the sand beside him.
“I would to God,” muttered Marlowe, “I had killed him that day in the ‘Tabard.’”
Frazer caught the tenor of the wish and smiled again. “Sir Poet,” he said, rolling back the sleeves of his doublet, “then we discussed the baiting of a bear, and I waxed eloquent for the pastime. Again we are in the same position, you disapproving from mercy to the animal, I enthusiastic of very love for the sport. But now ’tis not a bear I would fain see pestered; ’tis better still—a wolf!” Whereupon, as his arms were now bared to the elbows, he raised his rapier and saluted the soldier with an easy grace. “I wait!”
The weapons crossed, slithered, separated, and crossed again. Then Vytal lunged, and Frazer, falling back apace, parried successfully, even as the point touched his doublet. Next, in feigned alarm, his arm, wavering, left the heart exposed, and Vytal thrust again. But the stroke was answered with lightning speed, and, save for an even swifter parry, the response would have been final.
Now, with extreme caution, weapons apart, now with seemingly rash bursts of daring, the two fenced for several minutes, the advantage appearing to change with every move.
To Marlowe, even more than to the principals, the moment was desperate. For, being forced to guard Towaye, he could follow the contest only by the sound of the rapiers, which, in rasping voice, told him that Frazer had mastered the art of fence since their fight on London Bridge. With astonishment and apprehension he wondered why the ring and slither were so long continued, for his straining ears could not explain that which a single glance, had he dared to risk it, would have made evident.
Behind Frazer the water shone like a vast burning-glass, while behind Vytal the forest was a soft background of shade. The glare almost blinded Vytal’s eyes; the shadows rested Frazer’s. And the latter made the most of his advantage. With quick and varied sidelong springs he used the reflected sunlight as a second weapon, more baffling than the first. Nevertheless, with brows contracted and lids lowered, Vytal so screened his eyes when Frazer, with steps aside, brought the glare into play, that he contrived to gain despite the disadvantage.
Gradually his opponent fell back toward the water’s edge.
The weapons played faster and more furiously than before, the sound of Frazer’s quick-drawn breath mingling itself with the hoarse whisper of steel as the irresistible swordsman impelled him backward inch by inch. Strangely enough, he had never once made a move toward the horn, and now it lay well beyond his reach.
Suddenly at the water’s brink Vytal’s rapier, darting forward, zigzagged about its foe like a flash of forked lightning, and Frazer fell to one knee. At this Vytal would have thrust it home, but his great height compelled him to lean so far forward that the water, in which he now stood ankle-deep, cast up its glare directly into his eyes, and for a second he was subject to a retinal blur, while splotches of silver obscured his vision. At this instant Frazer, springing to an erect position, lunged viciously, but the thrust was parried with blind instinct, and Vytal’s half-closed eyes saw his adversary fall back, steadily back, before him into the sea.
Now they stood up to their knees in water, Vytal gaining, until even their scabbards were submerged. Again and again the soldier had striven to turn his foe, but never had he met so dexterous and strategic an opposition. Yet there seemed to be no doubt as to the issue, for at the last Frazer, merely endeavoring to control the other’s point, was content to recede on the defensive. And soon Vytal foresaw that his opponent, who, besides being many inches shorter than himself, was also farther from the shore, would in a moment be struggling in deep water, since even now he was forced to keep his sword-arm at a high level for free play. Having no desire thus to drown him, Vytal purposely fell back a pace, his innate sense of justice forbidding him to avail himself of the advantage, though he had well earned it, and even though his enemy, in the same position, would have profited thereby with no compunction.
Yet even as he fell back a mocking laugh escaped from Frazer’s lips, and Vytal, no longer generously hesitating, thrust with fatal intent. Quicker still, however, Frazer dived beneath the water, and the soldier now looked out across a circle of shining ripples that widened until they passed him and reached the shore. And Frazer, with full-inflated lungs, still remained below the surface.
Impassively Vytal turned, and, regaining the shore, amazed Marlowe by blowing on the horn.
“God’s pity! why do you do that?” asked the poet, still holding his pistol on a level with Towaye’s heart. “It means our massacre.”
“Nay,” said the soldier, “he would have tried to regain it were there allies near. His threat was hollow. I seek to arouse the town.” He looked at the two men before him as they stood facing each other, the poet threatening, the Indian sullen, and added, mercilessly, “Fire!”
“To kill?”
Vytal turned to Manteo. “He is your enemy, my brother.”
“To kill,” said the chief, “for he is a traitor to the men of his blood.”
The poet shuddered. “Do you, then, avenge them,” he said, handing the pistol to Manteo, and the lord of Roanoke inclined his head. A pistol-shot rang out. Towaye fell with a groan, mortally wounded.
A face rose to the surface of the water, invisible behind a rock, and a pair of lips opened wide to admit air, then closed tightly and disappeared.
“Now, make haste,” said Vytal to Manteo. “Get you over yonder ridge and intercept our enemy if he lands there.” Without a word the Indian sprang to the sand-bank, and, clearing it, was lost to view. Vytal turned to Marlowe. “Stay here. He is a fox, and may retrace his course, supposing that we have gone to the right and left in search of him. I guard the northern shore,” and instantly Vytal disappeared beyond the second bulwark.
“He is not a fox, but a fish,” muttered Marlowe, reloading his pistol. Almost before the words were spoken a head appeared above the surface of the water. The poet raised his weapon and took aim.
“Oh,” exclaimed Frazer, unconcernedly, as he waded inshore, “is this thy boasted poetry, to shoot me like a dog?”
Marlowe impatiently drew a rapier, while Frazer came to the beach.
“Once more,” he said, “the crown prince must fight with a commoner.” Then, feigning to thrust at Christopher, he suddenly swerved, and with his left hand grasped the horn which he and Vytal in turn had let fall near the water.
“This was the signal,” he declared, still menacing the poet with a flashing blade. “Not one blast, but three!” And he blew thrice in rapid succession.
Instinctively Marlowe turned toward the forest, expecting to see a horde of savages rush therefrom upon him. But in that instant of error only a single figure crossed his vision, fleet as Mercury, and, to his deep mortification, even before he could change rapier for pistol, he saw Frazer vanish in the woods.
In a fit of wild exasperation the poet started headlong in pursuit; but he had scarcely crossed the beach when Vytal and Manteo, recalled by the horn’s flourish, reappeared from beyond the ridges.
“There, in there!” cried Christopher, and would have rushed forward again had not the soldier restrained him.
“How long is it since he escaped you?”
“One minute. You heard the alarum. He fled immediately.”
Vytal turned to Manteo. “Will you follow him?”
“Yes.”
“Hasten, then,” and the chief, with noiseless tread and eyes keenly perceptive of every telltale twig and leaf, made his way into the forest. “He understands the stalking of game,” observed Vytal. “It is best so.”
Marlowe’s face clouded dismally. “Ay, ’tis best so, and ’tis best that I sail away. Twice this fellow hath outwitted me with the simplest trickery. I am not worthy to remain.”
“Ah,” said Vytal, with an even deeper note of self-conviction, “these things belong not to your calling. We do not require carpentry of vintners, nor a crop of wheat from fighting-men. But to mine they do belong, and, Christopher—” the voice sounded harsh and unreal—“I have now failed at mine own work—failed!”
He prodded the little sand-hills of Frazer’s inconsequent building with the point of his rapier. “Failed!” He seemed to be on the threshold of new knowledge. A word hitherto utterly unknown and unregarded was being cut deep into the granite of his character.
The poet watched him, and saw the keen, unfathomable eyes for once cast down in self-reproach.
“Failed!” The soldier straightened himself and looked about at the shore and water as at a new world.
Now, suddenly, his eyes, flashing the old fire of their indomitable resolve, met Marlowe’s. “Failed, but in the end I shall succeed.”
A short sigh of relief escaped the poet’s lips; not that he had doubted, but that he had awaited, seemingly an age, this reassertion of power. “Yes,” he said, “yours was not really failure. Can Fate be thwarted? Nay; yet for a time little men, elated and audacious in their puny grandeur, may break its august decrees and laugh at the inevitable. Vytal, read yourself; interpret the cryptograms your sword hath hewn; translate your nature into words, and, even though you withhold the meaning from us all, you will have attained to the consummative pinnacle of manhood.” The poet’s fervid eyes, gazing at his friend, became orators.
For a moment Vytal’s face softened, while a fleeting smile crossed it sadly. “I must return now to the town.”
“And I,” said Kyt, “to my birthland. You have been a ‘queen’s defender.’ This much of the gypsy’s prophecy has been fulfilled. I will tell her Majesty, and, in gratitude, I doubt not, she will send hither assistance to you all. Yet, Vytal, my soul is consumed with fear for you and Mistress Dare.”
Vytal shrugged his shoulders. “I have not yet worthily defended her, but the day will come.”
“Yes,” returned the poet, “of a certainty the day will come. Ne’ertheless, have a care, I pray you, when again you meet this Frazer. His strategy is unsurpassed, his cunning resourceful and never spent. I could feel happy even now, in leaving, were the actor dead and his incongruous blue eyes closed, his lips uncurled. Well, I tarry no longer. The moment hath come for me to go. I pray you say nothing of my departure. Let them think that I have been slain by some wild beast, or if, by ill-luck, they see the sail, let them believe I have deserted.”
Vytal shook his head. “That I will not. When you are gone I shall tell them of your sacrifice. They must know the truth. A surreptitious leaving and elopement shall not be their charge against you.”
The poet’s face grew troubled. “But they will blame you,” he objected; “they will kill you for your share in the concealment of my plan.”
“Let them try,” returned Vytal. “I care not; now, farewell.”
“Farewell.” The two separated abruptly, and Marlowe, with a light step, artificially careless, made his way to the headland beyond which lay the Breton shallop awaiting him.
In the evening, under cover of darkness, a canoe, propelled by one man, came stealthily to the southern shore of Croatan, and went away again with two occupants. Later these two boarded a vessel that hovered about near the mainland. The ship, the canoe, the people were shadows—all wraiths of unreality. But suddenly, after the vessel had crept away, far to the eastward, and the land was seen no more, a low, weird song arose at the first moment of light. It was from many voices, sailorly and strong, but the tongue and the tune were strange save to the stalwart singers.