CHAPTER XXVII
Pocahontas was sitting at the latticed window of her apartment at the Mermaid Inn, striving to pierce the thick yellow fog hanging over the river. Down upon the narrow street lighted torches flared wildly in the hands of linkboys conducting some lady’s sedan chair to its destination in the closing evening. Rolfe was playing hide and seek among the chairs and tables with his little son. The room was in shadow except for the ruddy firelight dancing on the walls.
A low knock sounded upon the paneled door. Putting down the boy, whom he had just caught, Rolfe went to see who it was.
“Is the Lady Rebecca at home?” inquired a deep manly voice. “If so, may an old friend present himself?”
“The Lady Rebecca will be glad to see any one who calls himself friend,” replied Rolfe. “May I inquire the name of the guest?”
“Captain John Smith, who knew her in Jamestown.”
Flinging wide the door, Rolfe bade him enter, and turning to Pocahontas said, “Wife, a friend of long ago comes to see you.”
Pocahontas turned from the window, her eyes filled with the outside gloom. At first she could not see the visitor.
“Have I had the misfortune to pass from your memory, madam?” said Captain Smith advancing into the firelight.
A tremulous cry rang through the room “My father! My father!” and covering her face with her hands, she tottered into a chair. A long silence—broken only by the boy prattling to a King Charles spaniel—held Smith and Rolfe spellbound. Finally she raised her head and gazed long on the face of Smith; then coming up to him she said in loving accents, “Pocahontas has her father again, and is his child once more.”
“Nay, Lady Rebecca, I am of too humble a station to presume to be on familiar terms with a princess. You must not call me father, and I am not permitted to call you child.”
“You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like to you; you called him father being in his land a stranger, and by the same reason, so must I do you,” she answered.
“You are well aware of the suspicious jealousy of the King and Queen,” said Smith to Rolfe. “Try to make her understand the situation.”
Rolfe endeavored to explain the rigid decorum of the King’s court to her; besides, for reasons of his own, he was not anxious to have the friendship renewed.
Unaccustomed to obey the whims of any monarch, except those of her father, her eyes blazed and her features contracted. Smith instinctively stepped back. Before him stood not the gentle Pocahontas, but the savage Powhatan.
Then she spoke in a deep voice of scornful anger. “Were you not afraid to come into my father’s country and cause fear in him and all his people but me; and fear you I shall call you father?” Then stamping her foot she cried, “I tell you I will, and you shall call me child, and so I will be forever and ever your country-woman.” Her voice broke as she added, “They did tell us always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet Powhatan did commend Vetamatominakin to seek you and know the truth, because your countrymen will lie much.”
Smith gently put her off with veiled words and turned the conversation to a less painful theme.
“How is my father Powhatan, and what has become of Opechancanough?”
Picking up the little boy, he petted and fondled him, while Pocahontas gave news of her tribe. Seeing his tender attentions to her boy, she calmed down into the gentle frank maiden he had known so well.
After an hour’s conversation he took his departure, evading deftly a promise to come again, for he had marked the look in Rolfe’s eyes when Pocahontas had called him father.
As he walked away he said to himself, “I must not endanger their wedded bliss”; then bitterly, “Jealousy and suspicion dog my lonely footsteps and will follow me to the grave.”