I LAID him down upon the earth, and, cutting away his doublet and the shirt beneath, saw the wound, and knew that there was a journey indeed that he would shortly make. “The world is turning round,” he muttered, “and the stars are falling thicker than the hailstones yesterday. Go on, and I will stay behind,—I and the wolves.”
I took him in my arms and carried him back to the bank of the stream, for I knew that he would want water until he died. My head was bare, but he had worn his cap from the gaol at Jamestown that night. I filled it with water and gave him to drink; then washed the wound and did what I could to stanch the bleeding. He turned from side to side, and presently his mind began to wander, and he talked of the tobacco in the fields at Weyanoke. Soon he was raving of old things, old camp fires and night-time marches and wild skirmishes, perils by land and by sea; then of dice and wine and women. Once he cried out that Dale had bound him upon the wheel, and that his arms and legs were broken, and the woods rang to his screams. Why, in that wakeful forest, they were unheard, or why, if heard, they went unheeded, God only knows.
The moon went down, and it was very cold. How black were the shadows around us, what foes might steal from that darkness upon us, it was not worth while to consider. I do not know what I thought of on that night, or even that I thought at all. Between my journeys for the water that he called for I sat beside the dying man with my hand upon his breast, for he was quieter so. Now and then I spoke to him, but he answered not.
Hours before we had heard the howling of wolves, and knew that some ravenous pack was abroad. With the setting of the moon the noise had ceased, and I thought that the brutes had pulled down the deer they hunted, or else had gone with their hunger and their dismal voices out of earshot. Suddenly the howling recommenced, at first faint and far away, then nearer and nearer yet. Earlier in the evening the stream had been between us, but now the wolves had crossed and were coming down our side of the water, and were coming fast.
All the ground was strewn with dead wood, and near by was a growth of low and brittle bushes. I gathered the withered branches, and broke fagots from the bushes; then into the press of dark and stealthy forms I threw a great crooked stick, shouting as I did so, and threatening with my arms. They turned and fled, but presently they were back again. Again I frightened them away, and again they returned. I had flint and steel and tinder box; when I had scared them from us a third time, and they had gone only a little way, I lit a splinter of pine, and with it fired my heap of wood; then dragged Diccon into the light and sat down beside him, with no longer any fear of the wolves, but with absolute confidence in the quick appearance of less cowardly foes. There was wood enough and to spare; when the fire sank low and the hungry eyes gleamed nearer, I fed it again, and the flame leaped up and mocked the eyes.
No human enemy came upon us. The fire blazed and roared, and the man who lay in its rosy glare raved on, crying out now and then at the top of his voice; but on that night of all nights, of all years, light and voice drew no savage band to put out the one and silence the other forever.
Hours passed, and as it drew toward midnight Diccon sank into a stupor. I knew that the end was not far away. The wolves were gone at last, and my fire was dying down. He needed my touch upon his breast no longer, and I went to the stream and bathed my hands and forehead, and then threw myself face downward upon the bank. In a little while the desolate murmur of the water became intolerable, and I rose and went back to the fire, and to the man whom, as God lives, I loved as a brother.
He was conscious. Pale and cold and nigh gone as he was, there came a light to his eyes and a smile to his lips when I knelt beside him. “You did not go?” he breathed.
“No,” I answered, “I did not go.”
For a few minutes he lay with closed eyes; when he again opened them upon my face, there were in their depths a question and an appeal. I bent over him, and asked him what he would have.
“You know,” he whispered. “If you can... I would not go without it.”
“Is it that?” I asked. “I forgave you long ago.”
“I meant to kill you. I was mad because you struck me before the lady, and because I had betrayed my trust. An you had not caught my hand, I should be your murderer.” He spoke with long intervals between the words, and the death dew was on his forehead.
“Remember it not, Diccon,” I entreated. “I too was to blame. And I see not that night for other nights,—for other nights and days, Diccon.”
He smiled, but there was still in his face a shadowy eagerness. “You said you would never strike me again,” he went on, “and that I was man of yours no more forever—and you gave me my freedom in the paper which I tore.” He spoke in gasps, with his eyes upon mine. “I'll be gone in a few minutes now. If I might go as your man still, and could tell the Lord Jesus Christ that my master on earth forgave, and took back, it would be a hand in the dark. I have spent my life in gathering darkness for myself at the last.”
I bent lower over him, and took his hand in mine. “Diccon, my man,” I said.
A brightness came into his face, and he faintly pressed my hand. I slipped my arm beneath him and raised him a little higher to meet his death. He was smiling now, and his mind was not quite clear. “Do you mind, sir,” he asked, “how green and strong and sweet smelled the pines that May day, when we found Virginia, so many years ago?”
“Ay, Diccon,” I answered. “Before we saw the land, the fragrance told us we were near it.”
“I smell it now,” he went on, “and the bloom of the grape, and the May-time flowers. And can you not hear, sir, the whistling and the laughter and the sound of the falling trees, that merry time when Smith made axemen of all our fine gentlemen?”
“Ay, Diccon,” I said. “And the sound of the water that was dashed down the sleeve of any that were caught in an oath.”
He laughed like a little child. “It is well that I was n't a gentleman, and had not those trees to fell, or I should have been as wet as any merman.... And Pocahontas, the little maid... and how blue the sky was, and how glad we were what time the Patience and Deliverance came in!”
His voice failed, and for a minute I thought he was gone; but he had been a strong man, and life slipped not easily from him. When his eyes opened again he knew me not, but thought he was in some tavern, and struck with his hand upon the ground as upon a table, and called for the drawer.
Around him were only the stillness and the shadows of the night, but to his vision men sat and drank with him, diced and swore and told wild tales of this or that. For a time he talked loudly and at random of the vile quality of the drink, and his viler luck at the dice; then he began to tell a story. As he told it, his senses seemed to steady, and he spoke with coherence and like a shadow of himself.
“And you call that a great thing, William Host?” he demanded. “I can tell a true tale worth two such lies, my masters. (Robin tapster, more ale! And move less like a slug, or my tankard and your ear will cry, 'Well met!') It was between Ypres and Courtrai, friends, and it's nigh fifteen years ago. There were fields in which nothing was sowed because they were ploughed with the hoofs of war horses, and ditches in which dead men were thrown, and dismal marshes, and roads that were no roads at all, but only sloughs. And there was a great stone house, old and ruinous, with tall poplars shivering in the rain and mist. Into this house there threw themselves a band of Dutch and English, and hard on their heels came two hundred Spaniards. All day they besieged that house,—smoke and flame and thunder and shouting and the crash of masonry,—and when eventide was come we, the Dutch and the English, thought that Death was not an hour behind.”
He paused, and made a gesture of raising a tankard to his lips. His eyes were bright, his voice was firm. The memory of that old day and its mortal strife had wrought upon him like wine.
“There was one amongst us,” he said, “he was our captain, and it's of him I am going to tell the story. Robin tapster, bring me no more ale, but good mulled wine! It's cold and getting dark, and I have to drink to a brave man besides”—
With the old bold laugh in his eyes, he raised himself, for the moment as strong as I that held him. “Drink to that Englishman, all of ye!” he cried, “and not in filthy ale, but in good, gentlemanly sack! I'll pay the score. Here's to him, brave hearts! Here's to my master!”
With his hand at his mouth, and his story untold, he fell back. I held him in my arms until the brief struggle was over, and then laid his body down upon the earth.
It might have been one of the clock. For a little while I sat beside him, with my head bowed in my hands. Then I straightened his limbs and crossed his hands upon his breast, and kissed him upon the brow, and left him lying dead in the forest.
It was hard going through the blackness of the night-time woods. Once I was nigh sucked under in a great swamp, and once I stumbled into some hole or pit in the earth, and for a time thought that I had broken my leg. The night was very dark, and sometimes when I could not see the stars, I lost my way, and went to the right or the left, or even back upon my track. Though I heard the wolves, they did not come nigh me. Just before daybreak, I crouched behind a log, and watched a party of savages file past like shadows of the night.
At last the dawn came, and I could press on more rapidly. For two days and two nights I had not slept; for a day and a night I had not tasted food. As the sun climbed the heavens, a thousand black spots, like summer gnats, danced between his face and my weary eyes. The forest laid stumbling-blocks before me, and drove me back, and made me wind in and out when I would have had my path straighter than an arrow. When the ground allowed I ran; when I must break my way, panting, through undergrowth so dense and stubborn that it seemed some enchanted thicket, where each twig snapped but to be on the instant stiff in place again, I broke it with what patience I might; when I must turn aside for this or that obstacle I made the detour, though my heart cried out at the necessity. Once I saw reason to believe that two or more Indians were upon my trail, and lost time in outwitting them; and once I must go a mile out of my way to avoid an Indian village.
As the day wore on, I began to go as in a dream. It had come to seem the gigantic wood of some fantastic tale through which I was traveling. The fallen trees ranged themselves into an abatis hard to surmount; the thickets withstood one like iron; the streamlets were like rivers, the marshes leagues wide, the treetops miles away. Little things, twisted roots, trailing vines, dead and rotten wood, made me stumble. A wind was blowing that had blown just so since time began, and the forest was filled with the sound of the sea.
Afternoon came, and the shadows began to lengthen. They were lines of black paint spilt in a thousand places, and stealing swiftly and surely across the brightness of the land. Torn and bleeding and breathless, I hastened on; for it was drawing toward night, and I should have been at Jamestown hours before. My head pained me, and as I ran I saw men and women stealing in and out among the trees before me: Pocahontas with her wistful eyes and braided hair and finger on her lips; Nantauquas; Dale, the knight-marshal, and Argall with his fierce, unscrupulous face; my cousin George Percy, and my mother with her stately figure, her embroidery in her hands. I knew that they were but phantoms of my brain, but their presence confused and troubled me.
The shadows ran together, and the sunshine died out of the forest. Stumbling on, I saw through the thinning trees a long gleam of red, and thought it was blood, but presently knew that it was the river, crimson from the sunset. A minute more and I stood upon the shore of the mighty stream, between the two brightnesses of flood and heavens. There was a silver crescent in the sky with one white star above it, and fair in sight, down the James, with lights springing up through the twilight, was the town,—the English town that we had built and named for our King, and had held in the teeth of Spain, in the teeth of the wilderness and its terrors. It was not a mile away; a little longer,—a little longer and I could rest, with my tidings told.
The dusk had quite fallen when I reached the neck of land. The hut to which I had been enticed that night stood dark and ghastly, with its door swinging in the wind. I ran past it and across the neck, and, arriving at the palisade, beat upon the gate with my hands, and called to the warder to open. When I had told him my name and tidings, he did so, with shaking knees and starting eyes. Cautioning him to raise no alarm in the town, I hurried by him into the street, and down it toward the house that was set aside for the Governor of Virginia. I should find there now, not Yeardley, but Sir Francis Wyatt.
The torches were lighted, and the folk were indoors, for the night was cold. One or two figures that I met or passed would have accosted me, not knowing who I was, but I brushed by them, and hastened on. Only when I passed the guest house I looked up, and saw that mine host's chief rooms were yet in use.
The Governor's door was open, and in the hall servingmen were moving to and fro. When I came in upon them, they cried out as it had been a ghost, and one fellow let a silver dish that he carried fall clattering to the floor. They shook and stood back, as I passed them without a word, and went on to the Governor's great room. The door was ajar, and I pushed it open and stood for a minute upon the threshold, unobserved by the occupants of the room.
After the darkness outside the lights dazzled me; the room, too, seemed crowded with men, though when I counted them there were not so many, after all. Supper had been put upon the table, but they were not eating. Before the fire, his head thoughtfully bent, and his fingers tapping upon the arm of his chair, sat the Governor; over against him, and as serious of aspect, was the Treasurer. West stood by the mantel, tugging at his long mustaches and softly swearing. Clayborne was in the room, Piersey the Cape Merchant, and one or two besides. And Rolfe was there, walking up and down with hasty steps, and a flushed and haggard face. His suit of buff was torn and stained, and his great-boots were spattered with mud.
The Governor let his fingers rest upon the arm of his chair, and raised his head.
“He is dead, Master Rolfe,” he said. “There can be no other conclusion,—a brave man lost to you and to the colony. We mourn with you, sir.”
“We too have searched, Jack,” put in West. “We have not been idle, though well-nigh all men believe that the Indians, who we know had a grudge against him, murdered him and his man that night, then threw their bodies into the river, and themselves made off out of our reach. But we hoped against hope that when your party returned he would be in your midst.”
“As for this latest loss,” continued the Governor, “within an hour of its discovery this morning search parties were out; yea, if I had allowed it, the whole town would have betaken itself to the woods. The searchers have not returned, and we are gravely anxious. Yet we are not utterly cast down. This trail can hardly be missed, and the Indians are friendly. There were a number in town overnight, and they went with the searchers, volunteering to act as their guides. We cannot but think that of this load, our hearts will soon be eased.”
“God grant it!” groaned Rolfe. “I will drink but a cup of wine, sir, and then will be gone upon this new quest.”
There was a movement in the room. “You are worn and spent with your fruitless travel, sir,” said the Governor kindly. “I give you my word that all that can be done is doing. Wait at least for the morning, and the good news it may bring.”
The other shook his head. “I will go now. I could not look my friend in the face else—God in heaven!”
The Governor sprang to his feet; through the Treasurer's lips came a long, sighing breath; West's dark face was ashen. I came forward to the table, and leaned my weight upon it; for all the waves of the sea were roaring in my ears, and the lights were going up and down.
“Are you man or spirit?” cried Rolfe through white lips. “Are you Ralph Percy?”
“Yes, I am Percy,” I said. “I have not well understood what quest you would go upon, Rolfe, but you cannot go to-night. And those parties that your Honor talked of, that have gone with Indians to guide them to look for some lost person,—I think that you will never see them again.”
With an effort I drew myself erect, and standing so told my tidings, quietly and with circumstance, so as to leave no room for doubt as to their verity, or as to the sanity of him who brought them. They listened, as the warder had listened, with shaking limbs and gasping breath; for this was the fall and wiping out of a people of which I brought warning.
When all was told, and they stood there before me, white and shaken, seeking in their minds the thing to say or do first, I thought to ask a question myself; but before my tongue could frame it, the roaring of the sea became so loud that I could hear naught else, and the lights all ran together into a wheel of fire. Then in a moment all sounds ceased, and to the lights succeeded the blackness of outer darkness.
WHEN I awoke from the sleep or stupor into which I must have passed from that swoon, it was to find myself lying upon a bed in a room flooded with sunshine. I was alone. For a moment I lay still, staring at the blue sky without the window, and wondering where I was and how I came there. A drum beat, a dog barked, and a man's quick voice gave a command. The sounds stung me into remembrance, and I was at the window while the voice was yet speaking.
It was West in the street below, pointing with his sword now to the fort, now to the palisade, and giving directions to the armed men about him. There were many people in the street. Women hurried by to the fort with white, scared faces, their arms filled with household gear; children ran beside them, sturdily bearing their share of the goods, but pressing close to their elders' skirts; men went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few talking loudly. Not all of the faces in the crowd belonged to the town: there were Kingsmell and his wife from the main, and John Ellison from Archer's Hope, and the Italians Vincencio and Bernardo from the Glass House. The nearer plantations, then, had been warned, and their people had come for refuge to the city. A negro passed, but on that morning, alone of many days, no Indian aired his paint and feathers in the white man's village.
I could not see the palisade across the neck, but I knew that it was there that the fight—if fight there were—would be made. Should the Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the town, and, last of all, the fort in which to make a stand. I believed not that they would take it. Long since we had found out their method of warfare. They used ambuscade, surprise, and massacre; when withstood in force and with determination they withdrew to their stronghold the forest, there to bide their time until, in the blackness of some night, they could again swoop down upon a sleeping foe.
The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came down the street at a run. “They're in the woods over against us, thicker than ants!” he cried to West as he passed. “A boat has just drifted ashore yonder, with two men in it, dead and scalped!”
I turned to leave the room, and ran against Master Pory coming in on tiptoe, with a red and solemn face. He started when he saw me.
“The roll of the drum brought you to your feet, then!” he cried. “You've lain like the dead all night. I came but to see if you were breathing.”
“When I have eaten, I shall be myself again,” I said. “There's no attack as yet?”
“No,” he answered. “They must know that we are prepared. But they have kindled fires along the river bank, and we can hear them yelling. Whether they'll be mad enough to come against us remains to be seen.”
“The nearest settlements have been warned?”
“Ay. The Governor offered a thousand pounds of tobacco and the perpetual esteem of the Company to the man or men who would carry the news. Six volunteered, and went off in boats, three up river, three down. How many they reached, or if they still have their scalps, we know not. And awhile ago, just before daybreak, comes with frantic haste Richard Pace, who had rowed up from Pace's Pains to tell the news which you had already brought. Chanco the Christian had betrayed the plot to him, and he managed to give warning at Powel's and one or two other places as he came up the river.”
He broke off, but when I would have spoken interrupted me with: “And so you were on the Pamunkey all this while! Then the Paspaheghs fooled us with the simple truth, for they swore so stoutly that their absent chief men were but gone on a hunt toward the Pamunkey that we had no choice but to believe them gone in quite another direction. And one and all of every tribe we questioned swore that Opechancanough was at Orapax. So Master Rolfe puts off up river to find, if not you, then the Emperor, and make him give up your murderers; and the Governor sends a party along the bay, and West another up the Chickahominy. And there you were, all the time, mewed up in the village above the marshes! And Nantauquas, after saving our lives like one of us, is turned Indian again! And your man is killed! Alackaday! there's naught but trouble in the world. 'As the sparks fly upwards,' you know. But a brave man draws his breath and sets his teeth.”
In his manner, his rapid talk, his uneasy glances toward the door, I found something forced and strange. “I thought Rolfe was behind me,” he said, “but he must have been delayed. There are meat and drink set out in the great room, where the Governor and those of the Council who are safe here with us are advising together. Let's descend; you've not eaten, and the good sack will give you strength. Wilt come?”
“Ay,” I answered, “but tell me the news as we go. I have been gone ten days,—faith, it seems ten years! There have no ships sailed, Master Pory? The George is still here?” I looked him full in the eye, for a sudden guess at a possible reason for his confusion had stabbed me like a knife.
“Ay,” he said, with a readiness that could scarce be feigned. “She was to have sailed this week, it is true, the Governor fearing to keep her longer. But the Esperance, coming in yesterday, brought news which removed his Honor's scruples. Now she'll wait to see out this hand at the cards, and to take home the names of those who are left alive in Virginia. If the red varlets do swarm in upon us, there are her twelve-pounders; they and the fort guns”—
I let him talk on. The George had not sailed. I saw again a firelit hut, and a man and a panther who went down together. Those claws had dug deep; the man across whose face they had torn their way would keep his room in the guest house at Jamestown until his wounds were somewhat healed. The George would wait for him, would scarcely dare to sail without him, and I should find the lady whom she was to carry away to England in Virginia still. It was this that I had built upon, the grain of comfort, the passionate hope, the sustaining cordial, of those year-long days in the village above the Pamunkey.
My heart was sore because of Diccon; but I could speak of that grief to her, and she would grieve with me. There were awe and dread and stern sorrow in the knowledge that even now in the bright spring morning blood from a hundred homes might be flowing to meet the shining, careless river; but it was the springtime, and she was waiting for me. I strode on toward the stairway so fast that when I asked a question Master Pory, at my side, was too out of breath to answer it. Halfway down the stairs I asked it again, and again received no answer save a “Zooks! you go too fast for my years and having in flesh! Go more slowly, Ralph Percy; there's time enough, there's time enough!”
There was a tone in his voice that I liked not, for it savored of pity. I looked at him with knitted brows; but we were now in the hall, and through the open door of the great room I caught a glimpse of a woman's skirt. There were men in the hall, servants and messengers, who made way for us, staring at me as they did so, and whispering. I knew that my clothing was torn and muddied and stained with blood; as we paused at the door there came to me in a flash that day in the courting meadow when I had tried with my dagger to scrape the dried mud from my boots. I laughed at myself for caring now, and for thinking that she would care that I was not dressed for a lady's bower. The next moment we were in the great room.
She was not there. The silken skirt that I had seen, and—there being but one woman in all the world for me—had taken for hers, belonged to Lady Wyatt, who, pale and terrified, was sitting with clasped hands, mutely following with her eyes her husband as he walked to and fro. West had come in from the street and was making some report. Around the table were gathered two or three of the Council; Master Sandys stood at a window, Rolfe beside Lady Wyatt's chair. The room was filled with sunshine, and a caged bird was singing, singing. It made the only sound there when they saw that I stood amongst them.
When I had made my bow to Lady Wyatt and to the Governor, and had clasped hands with Rolfe, I began to find in the silence, as I had found in Master Pory's loquaciousness, something strange. They looked at me uneasily, and I caught a swift glance from the Treasurer to Master Pory, and an answering shake of the latter's head. Rolfe was very white and his lips were set; West was pulling at his mustaches and staring at the floor.
“With all our hearts we welcome you back to life and to the service of Virginia, Captain Percy,” said the Governor, when the silence had become awkward.
A murmur of assent went round the room.
I bowed. “I thank you, sir, and these gentlemen very heartily. You have but to command me now. I find that I have to-day the best will in the world toward fighting. I trust that your Honor does not deem it necessary to send me back to gaol?”
“Virginia has no gaol for Captain Percy,” he answered gravely. “She has only grateful thanks and fullest sympathy.”
I glanced at him keenly. “Then I hold myself at your command, sir, when I shall have seen and spoken with my wife.”
He looked at the floor, and they one and all held their peace.
“Madam,” I said to Lady Wyatt, “I have been watching your ladyship's face. Will you tell me why it is so very full of pity, and why there are tears in your eyes?”
She shrank back in her chair with a little cry, and Rolfe stepped toward me, then turned sharply aside. “I cannot!” he cried, “I that know”—
I drew myself up to meet the blow, whatever it might be. “I demand of you my wife, Sir Francis Wyatt,” I said. “If there is ill news to be told, be so good as to tell it quickly. If she is sick, or hath been sent away to England”—
The Governor made as if to speak, then turned and flung out his hands to his wife. “'T is woman's work, Margaret!” he cried. “Tell him!”
More merciful than the men, she came to me at once, the tears running down her cheeks, and laid one trembling hand upon my arm. “She was a brave lady, Captain Percy,” she said. “Bear it as she would have had you bear it.”
“I am bearing it, madam,” I answered at length. “'She was a brave lady.' May it please your ladyship to go on?”
“I will tell you all, Captain Percy; I will tell you everything.... She never believed you dead, and she begged upon her knees that we would allow her to go in search of you with Master Rolfe. That could not be; my husband, in duty to the Company, could not let her have her will. Master Rolfe went, and she sat in the window, yonder, day after day, watching for his return. When other parties went out, she besought the men, as they had wives whom they loved, to search as though those loved ones were in captivity and danger; when they grew weary and fainthearted, to think of her face waiting in the window.... Day after day she sat there watching for them to come back; when they were come, then she watched the river for Master Rolfe's boats. Then came word down the river that he had found no trace of you whom he sought, that he was on his way back to Jamestown, that he too believed you dead.... We put a watch upon her after that, for we feared we knew not what, there was such a light and purpose in her eyes. But two nights ago, in the middle of the night, the woman who stayed in her chamber fell asleep. When she awoke before the dawn, it was to find her gone.”
“To find her gone?” I said dully. “To find her dead?”
She locked her hands together and the tears came faster. “Oh, Captain Percy, it had been better so!—it had been better so! Then would she have lain to greet you, calm and white, unmarred and beautiful, with the spring flowers upon her.... She believed not that you were dead; she was distraught with grief and watching; she thought that love might find what friendship missed; she went to the forest to seek you. They that were sent to find and bring her back have never returned”—
“Into the forest!” I cried. “Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn, come back!”
Some one pushed me into a chair, and I felt the warmth of wine within my lips. In the moment that the world steadied I rose and went toward the door to find my way barred by Rolfe.
“Not you, too, Ralph!” he cried. “I will not let you go. Look for yourself!”
He drew me to the window, Master Sandys gravely making place for us. From the window was visible the neck of land and the forest beyond, and from the forest, up and down the river as far as the eye could reach, rose here and there thin columns of smoke. Suddenly, as we stared, three or four white smoke puffs, like giant flowers, started out of the shadowy woods across the neck. Following the crack of the muskets—fired out of pure bravado by their Indian owners—came the yelling of the savages. The sound was prolonged and deep, as though issuing from many throats.
I looked and listened, and knew that I could not go,—not now.
“She was not alone, Ralph,” said Rolfe, with his arm about me. “On the morning that she was missed, they found not Jeremy Sparrow either. They tracked them both to the forest by the footprints upon the sand, though once in the wood the trail was lost. The minister must have been watching, must have seen her leave the house, and must have followed her. How she, and he after her, passed through the gates, none know. So careless and confident had we grown—God forgive us!—that they may have been left open all that night. But he was with her, Ralph; she had not to face it alone”—His voice broke.
For myself, I was glad that the minister had been there, though I knew that for him also I should grieve after a while.
At the firing and the shouting West had rushed from the room, followed by his fellow Councilors, and now the Governor clapped on his headpiece and called to his men to bring his back-and-breast. His wife hung around his neck, and he bade her good-by with great tenderness. I looked dully on at that parting. I too was going to battle. Once I had tasted such a farewell, the pain, the passion, the sweetness, but never again,—never again.
He went, and the Treasurer, after a few words of comfort to Lady Wyatt, was gone also. Both were merciful, and spoke not to me, but only bowed and turned aside, requiring no answering word or motion of mine. When they were away, and there was no sound in the room save the caged bird's singing and Lady Wyatt's low sobs, I begged Rolfe to leave me, telling him that he was needed, as indeed he was, and that I would stay in the window for a while, and then would join him at the palisade. He was loath to go; but he too had loved and lost, and knew that there is nothing to be said, and that it is best to be alone. He went, and only Lady Wyatt and I kept the quiet room with the singing bird and the sunshine on the floor.
I leaned against the window and looked out into the street,—which was not crowded now, for the men were all at their several posts,—and at the budding trees, and at the smoke of many fires going up from the forest to the sky, from a world of hate and pain and woe to the heaven where she dwelt, and then I turned and went to the table, where had been set bread and meat and wine.
At the sound of my footstep Lady Wyatt uncovered her face. “Is there aught that I can do for you, sir?” she asked timidly.
“I have not broken my fast for many hours, madam,” I answered. “I would eat and drink, that I may not be found wanting in strength. There is a thing that I have yet to do.”
Rising from her chair, she brushed away her tears, and coming to the table with a little housewifely eagerness would not let me wait upon myself, but carved and poured for me, and then sat down opposite me and covered her eyes with her hand.
“I think that the Governor is quite safe, madam,” I said. “I do not believe that the Indians will take the palisade. It may even be that, knowing we are prepared, they will not attack at all. Indeed, I think that you may be easy about him.”
She thanked me with a smile. “It is all so strange and dreadful to me, sir,” she said. “At my home, in England, it was like a Sunday morning all the year round,—all stillness and peace; no terror, no alarm. I fear that I am not yet a good Virginian.”
When I had eaten, and had drunk the wine she gave me, I rose, and asked her if I might not see her safe within the fort before I joined her husband at the palisade. She shook her head, and told me that there were with her faithful servants, and that if the savages broke in upon the town she would have warning in time to flee, the fort being so close at hand. When I thereupon begged her leave to depart, she first curtsied to me, and then, again with tears, came to me and took my hand in hers. “I know that there is naught that I can say.... Your wife loved you, sir, with all her heart.” She drew something from the bosom of her gown. “Would you like this? It is a knot of ribbon that she wore. They found it caught in a bush at the edge of the forest.”
I took the ribbon from her and put it to my lips, then unknotted it and tied it around my arm; and then, wearing my wife's colors, I went softly out into the street, and turned my face toward the guest house and the man whom I meant to kill.
THE door of the guest house stood wide, and within the lower room were neither men that drank nor men that gave to drink. Host and drawers and chance guests alike had left pipe and tankard for sword and musket, and were gone to fort or palisade or river bank.
I crossed the empty room and went up the creaking stairway. No one met me or withstood me; only a pigeon perched upon the sill of a sunny window whirred off into the blue. I glanced out of the window as I passed it, and saw the silver river and the George and the Esperance, with the gunners at the guns watching for Indian canoes, and saw smoke rising from the forest on the southern shore. There had been three houses there,—John West's and Minifie's and Crashaw's. I wondered if mine were burning, too, at Weyanoke, and cared not if 't was so.
The door of the upper room was shut. When I raised the latch and pushed against it, it gave at the top and middle, but there was some pressure from within at the bottom. I pushed again, more strongly, and the door slowly opened, moving away whatever thing had lain before it. Another moment, and I was in the room, and had closed and barred the door behind me.
The weight that had opposed me was the body of the Italian, lying face downwards, upon the floor. I stooped and turned it over, and saw that the venomous spirit had flown. The face was purple and distorted; the lips were drawn back from the teeth in a dreadful smile. There was in the room a faint, peculiar, not unpleasant odor. It did not seem strange to me to find that serpent, which had coiled in my path, dead and harmless for evermore. Death had been busy of late; if he struck down the flower, why should he spare the thing that I pushed out of my way with my foot?
Ten feet from the door stood a great screen, hiding from view all that might be beyond. It was very quiet in the room, with the sunshine coming through the window, and a breeze that smelt of the sea. I had not cared to walk lightly or to close the door softly, and yet no voice had challenged my entrance. For a minute I feared to find the dead physician the room's only occupant; then I passed the screen and came upon my enemy.
He was sitting beside a table, with his arms outstretched and his head bowed upon them. My footfall did not rouse him; he sat there in the sunshine as still as the figure that lay before the threshold. I thought with a dull fury that maybe he was dead already, and I walked hastily and heavily across the floor to the table. He was a living man, for with the fingers of one hand he was slowly striking against a sheet of paper that lay beneath them. He knew not that I stood above him; he was listening to other footsteps.
The paper was a letter, unfolded and written over with great black characters. The few lines above those moving fingers stared me in the face. They ran thus: “I told you that you had as well cut your throat as go upon that mad Virginia voyage. Now all's gone,—wealth, honors, favor. Buckingham is the sun in heaven, and cold are the shadows in which we walk who hailed another luminary. There's a warrant out for the Black Death; look to it that one meets not you too, when you come at last. But come, in the name of all the fiends, and play your last card. There's your cursed beauty still. Come, and let the King behold your face once more”—The rest was hidden.
I put out my hand and touched him upon the shoulder, and he raised his head and stared at me as at one come from the grave.
Over one side of his face, from temple to chin, was drawn and fastened a black cloth; the unharmed cheek was bloodless and shrunken, the lip twisted. Only the eyes, dark, sinister, and splendid, were as they had been. “I dig not my graves deep enough,” he said. “Is she behind you there in the shadow?”
Flung across a chair was a cloak of scarlet cloth. I took it and spread it out upon the floor, then unsheathed a dagger which I had taken from the rack of weapons in the Governor's hall. “Loosen thy poniard, thou murderer,” I cried, “and come stand with me upon the cloak.”
“Art quick or dead?” he answered. “I will not fight the dead.” He had not moved in his seat, and there was a lethargy and a dullness in his voice and eyes. “There is time enough,” he said. “I too will soon be of thy world, thou haggard, bloody shape. Wait until I come, and I will fight thee, shadow to shadow.”
“I am not dead,” I said, “but there is one that is. Stand up, villain and murderer, or I will kill you sitting there, with her blood upon your hands!”
He rose at that, and drew his dagger from the sheath. I laid aside my doublet, and he followed my example, but his hands moved listlessly and his fingers bungled at the fastenings. I waited for him in some wonder, it not being like him to come tardily to such pastime.
He came at length, slowly and with an uncertain step, and we stood together on the scarlet cloak. I raised my left arm and he raised his, and we locked hands. There was no strength in his clasp; his hand lay within mine cold and languid. “Art ready?” I demanded.
“Yea,” he answered in a strange voice, “but I would that she did not stand there with her head upon your breast.... I too loved thee, Jocelyn,—Jocelyn lying dead in the forest!”
I struck at him with the dagger in my right hand, and wounded him, but not deeply, in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his poniard scarce drew blood, so nerveless was the arm that would have driven it home. I struck again, and he stabbed weakly at the air, then let his arm drop to his side, as though the light and jeweled blade had weighed it down.
Loosening the clasp of our left hands, I fell back until the narrow scarlet field was between us. “Hast no more strength than that?” I cried. “I cannot murder you!”
He stood looking past me as into a great distance. He was bleeding, but I had as yet been able to strike no mortal blow. “It is as you choose,” he said. “I am as one bound before you. I am sick unto death.”
Turning, he went back, swaying as he walked, to his chair, and sinking into it sat there a minute with half-closed eyes; then raised his head and looked at me, with a shadow of the old arrogance, pride, and disdain upon his scarred face. “Not yet, captain?” he demanded. “To the heart, man! So I would strike an you sat here and I stood there.”
“I know you would,” I said, and going to the window I flung the dagger down into the empty street; then stood and watched the smoke across the river, and thought it strange that the sun shone and the birds sang.
When I turned to the room again, he still sat there in the great chair, a tragic, splendid figure, with his ruined face and the sullen woe of his eyes. “I had sworn to kill you,” I said. “It is not just that you should live.”
He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips. “Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy,” he said. “Within a week I shall be gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon the floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had Nicolo whom men called the Black Death,—poisons swift and strong, or subtle and slow. Day and night, the earth and sunshine have become hateful to me. I will go to the fires of hell, and see if they can make me forget,—can make me forget the face of a woman.” He was speaking half to me, half to himself. “Her eyes are dark and large,” he said, “and there are shadows beneath them, and the mark of tears. She stands there day and night with her eyes upon me. Her lips are parted, but she never speaks. There was a way that she had with her hands, holding them one within the other, thus”—
I stopped him with a cry for silence, and I leaned trembling against the table. “Thou wretch!” I cried. “Thou art her murderer!”
He raised his head and looked beyond me with that strange, faint smile. “I know,” he replied, with the dignity which was his at times. “You may play the headsman, if you choose. I dispute not your right. But it is scarce worth while. I have taken poison.”
The sunshine came into the room, and the wind from the river, and the trumpet notes of swans flying to the north. “The George is ready for sailing,” he said at last. “To-morrow or the next day she will be going home with the tidings of this massacre. I shall go with her, and within a week they will bury me at sea. There is a stealthy, slow, and secret poison.... I would not die in a land where I have lost every throw of the dice, and I would not die in England for Buckingham to come and look upon my face, and so I took that poison. For the man upon the floor, there,—prison and death awaited him at home. He chose to flee at once.”
He ceased to speak, and sat with his head bowed upon his breast. “If you are content that it should be as it is,” he said at length, “perhaps you will leave me? I am not good company to-day.”
His hand was busy again with the letter upon the table, and his gaze was fixed beyond me. “I have lost,” he muttered. “How I came to play my cards so badly I do not know. The stake was heavy,—I have not wherewithal to play again.”
His head sank upon his outstretched arm. As for me, I stood a minute with set lips and clenched hands, and then I turned and went out of the room and down the stair and out into the street. In the dust beneath the window lay my dagger. I picked it up, sheathed it, and went my way.
The street was very quiet. All windows and doors were closed and barred; not a soul was there to trouble me with look or speech. The yelling from the forest had ceased; only the keen wind blew, and brought from the Esperance upon the river a sound of singing. The sea was the home of the men upon her decks, and their hearts dwelt not in this port; they could sing while the smoke went up from our homes and the dead lay across the thresholds.
I went on through the sunshine and the stillness to the minister's house. The trees in the garden were bare, the flowers dead. The door was not barred. I entered the house and went into the great room and flung the heavy shutters wide, then stood and looked about me. Naught was changed; it was as we had left it that wild November night. Even the mirror which, one other night, had shown me Diccon still hung upon the wall. Master Bucke had been seldom at home, perhaps, or was feeble and careless of altering matters. All was as though we had been but an hour gone, save that no fire burned upon the hearth.
I went to the table, and the books upon it were Jeremy Sparrow's: the minister's house, then, had been his home once more. Beside the books lay a packet, tied with silk, sealed, and addressed to me. Perhaps the Governor had given it, the day before, into Master Bucke's care,—I do not know; at any rate, there it lay. I looked at the “By the Esperance” upon the cover, and wondered dully who at home would care to write to me; then broke the seal and untied the silk. Within the cover there was a letter with the superscription, “To a Gentleman who has served me well.”
I read the letter through to the signature, which was that of his Grace of Buckingham, and then I laughed, who had never thought to laugh again, and threw the paper down. It mattered naught to me now that George Villiers should be grateful, or that James Stewart could deny a favorite nothing. “The King graciously sanctions the marriage of his sometime ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh, with Captain Ralph Percy; invites them home”—
She was gone home, and I her husband, I who loved her, was left behind. How many years of pilgrimage... how long, how long, O Lord?
The minister's great armchair was drawn before the cold and blackened hearth. How often she had sat there within its dark clasp, the firelight on her dress, her hands, her face! She had been fair to look upon; the pride, the daring, the willfulness, were but the thorns about the rose; behind those defenses was the flower, pure and lovely, with a heart of gold. I flung myself down beside the chair, and, putting my arms across it, hid my face upon them, and could weep at last.
That passion spent itself, and I lay with my face against the wood and well-nigh slept. The battle was done; the field was lost; the storm and stress of life had sunk into this dull calm, as still as peace, as hopeless as the charred log and white ash upon the hearth, cold, never to be quickened again.
Time passed, and at length I raised my head, roused suddenly to the consciousness that for a while there had been no stillness. The air was full of sound, shouts, savage cries, the beating of a drum, the noise of musketry. I sprang to my feet, and went to the door to meet Rolfe crossing the threshold.
He put his arm within mine and drew me out into the sunshine upon the doorstep. “I thought I should find you here,” he said; “but it is only a room with its memories, Ralph. Out here is more breadth, more height. There is country yet, Ralph, and after a while, friends. The Indians are beginning to attack in force. Humphry Boyse is killed, and Morris Chaloner. There is smoke over the plantations up and down the river, as far as we can see, and awhile ago the body of a child drifted down to us.”
“I am unarmed,” I said. “I will but run to the fort for sword and musket”—
“No need,” he answered. “There are the dead whom you may rob.” The noise increasing as he spoke, we made no further tarrying, but, leaving behind us house and garden, hurried to the palisade.