I AND Black Lamoral were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old company behind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, covering the face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of every mad charger went over me. For a time I was dead; then I lived again, and was walking with the forester’s daughter in the green chase at home. The oaks stretched broad sheltering arms above the young fern and the little wild flowers, and the deer turned and looked at us. In the open spaces, starring the lush grass, were all the yellow primroses that ever bloomed. I gathered them for her, but when I would have given them to her she was no longer the forester’s daughter, but a proud lady, heiress to lands and gold, the ward of the King. She would not take the primroses from a poor gentleman, but shook her head and laughed sweetly, and faded into a waterfall that leaped from a pink hill into a waveless sea. Another darkness, and I was captive to the Chickahominies, tied to the stake. My arm and shoulder were on fire, and Opechancanough came and looked at me, with his dark, still face and his burning eyes. The fierce pain died, and I with it, and I lay in a grave and listened to the loud and deep murmur of the forest above. I lay there for ages on ages before I awoke to the fact that the darkness about me was the darkness of a ship’s hold, and the murmur of the forest the wash of the water alongside. I put out an arm and touched, not the side of a grave, but a ship’s timbers. I stretched forth the other arm, then dropped it with a groan. Some one bent over me and held water to my lips. I drank, and my senses came fully to me. “Diccon!” I said.
“It’s not Diccon,” replied the figure, setting down a pitcher. “It is Jeremy Sparrow. Thank God, you are yourself again!”
“Where are we?” I asked, when I had lain and listened to the water a little longer.
“In the hold of the George,” he answered. “The ship sank by the bows, and well-nigh all were drowned. But when they upon the George saw that there was a woman amongst us who clung to the poop deck, they sent their long-boat to take us off.”
The light was too dim for me to read his face, so I touched his arm.
“She was saved,” he said. “She is safe now. There are gentlewomen aboard, and she is in their care.”
I put my unhurt arm across my eyes.
“You are weak yet,” said the minister gently. “The Spaniard’s ball, you know, went through your shoulder, and in some way your arm was badly torn from shoulder to wrist. You have been out of your head ever since we were brought here, three days ago. The chirurgeon came and dressed your wound, and it is healing well. Don’t try to speak,—I’ll tell you all. Diccon has been pressed into service, as the ship is short of hands, having lost some by fever and some overboard. Four of the pirates were picked up, and hung at the yardarm next morning.”
He moved as he spoke, and something clanked in the stillness. “You are ironed!” I exclaimed.
“Only my ankles. My lord would have had me bound hand and foot; but you were raving for water, and, taking you for a dying man, they were so humane as to leave my hands free to attend you.”
“My lord would have had you bound,” I said slowly. “Then it’s my lord’s day.”
“High noon and blazing sunshine,” he answered, with a rueful laugh. “It seems that half the folk on board had gaped at him at court. Lord! when he put his foot over the side of the ship, how the women screeched and the men stared! He’s cock of the walk now, my Lord Carnal, the King’s favourite!”
“And we are pirates.”
“That’s the case in a nutshell,” he answered cheerfully.
“Do they know how the ship came to strike upon that reef?” I asked.
“Probably not, unless madam has enlightened them. I didn’t take the trouble,—they wouldn’t have believed me,—and I can take my oath my lord hasn’t. He was only our helpless prisoner, you know; and they would think madam mistaken or bewitched.”
“It’s not a likely tale,” I said grimly, “seeing that we had already opened fire upon them.”
“I trust in heaven the sharks got the men who fired the culverins!” he cried, and then laughed at his own savagery.
I lay still and tried to think. “Who are they on board?” I asked at last.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I was only on deck until my lord had had his say in the poop cabin with the master and a gentleman who appeared most in authority. Then the pirates were strung up, and we were bundled down here in quick order. But there seems to be more of quality than usual aboard.”
“You do not know where we are?”
“We lay at anchor for a day,—whilst they patched her up, I suppose,—and since then there has been rough weather. We must be still off Florida, and that is all I know. Now go to sleep. You’ll get your strength best so, and there’s nothing to be gotten by waking.”
He began to croon a many-versed psalm. I slept and waked, and slept again, and was waked by the light of a torch against my eyes. The torch was held by a much-betarred seaman, and by its light a gentleman of a very meagre aspect, with a weazen face and small black eyes, was busily examining my wounded shoulder and arm.
“It passeth belief,” he said in a sing-song voice, “how often wounds, with naught in the world done for them outside of fair water and a clean rag, do turn to and heal out of sheer perversity. Now, if I had been allowed to treat this one properly with scalding oil and melted lead, and to have bled the patient as he should have been bled, it is ten to one that by this time there would have been a pirate the less in the world.” He rose to his feet with a highly injured countenance.
“Then he’s doing well?” asked Sparrow.
“So well that he couldn’t do better,” replied the other. “The arm was a trifling matter, though no doubt exquisitely painful. The wound in the shoulder is miraculously healing, without either blood-letting or cauteries. You’ll have to hang after all, my friend.” He looked at me with his little beady eyes. “It must have been a grand life,” he said regretfully. “I never expected to see a pirate chief in the flesh. When I was a boy, I used to dream of the black ships and the gold and the fighting. By the serpent of Esculapius, in my heart of hearts I would rather be such a world’s thief, uncaught, than Governor of Virginia!” He gathered up the tools of his trade, and motioned to his torchbearer to go before. “I’ll have to report you rapidly recovering,” he said warningly, as he turned to follow the light.
“Very well,” I made answer. “To whom am I indebted for so much kindness?”
“I am Dr. John Pott, newly appointed physician general to the colony of Virginia. It is little of my skill I could give you, but that little I gladly bestow upon a real pirate. What a life it must have been! And to have to part with it when you are yet young! And the good red gold and the rich gems all at the bottom of the sea!”
He sighed heavily and went his way. The hatches were closed after him, and the minister and I were left in darkness while the slow hours dragged themselves past us. Through the chinks of the hatches a very faint light streamed down, and made the darkness gray instead of black. The minister and I saw each other dimly, as spectres. Some one brought us mouldy biscuit that I wanted not, and water for which I thirsted. Sparrow put the small pitcher to his lips, kept it there a moment, then held it to mine. I drank, and with that generous draught tasted pure bliss. It was not until five minutes later that I raised myself upon my elbow and turned on him.
“The pitcher felt full to my lips!” I exclaimed. “Did you drink when you said you did?”
He put out his great hand and pushed me gently down. “I have no wound,” he said, “and there was not enough for two.”
The light that trembled through the cracks above died away, and the darkness became gross. The air in the hold was stifling; our souls panted for the wind and the stars outside. At the worst, when the fetid blackness lay upon our chests like a nightmare, the hatch was suddenly lifted, a rush of pure air came to us, and with it the sound of men’s voices speaking on the deck above. Said one, “True, the doctor pronounces him out of all danger, yet he is a wounded man.”
“He is a desperate and dangerous man,” broke in another harshly. “I know not how you will answer to your Company for leaving him unironed so long.”
“I and the Company understand each other, my lord,” rejoined the first speaker, with some haughtiness. “I can keep my prisoner without advice. If I now order irons to be put upon him and his accomplice, it is because I see fit to do so, and not because of your suggestion, my lord. You wish to take this opportunity to have speech with him,—to that I can have no objection.”
The speaker moved away. As his footsteps died in the distance my lord laughed, and his merriment was echoed by three or four harsh voices. Some one struck flint against steel, and there was a sudden flare of torches and the steadier light of a lantern. A man with a brutal, weather-beaten face—the master of the ship, we guessed—came down the ladder, lantern in hand, turned when he had reached the foot, and held up the lantern to light my lord down. I lay and watched the King’s favourite as he descended. The torches held slantingly above cast a fiery light over his stately figure and the face which had raised him from the low estate of a doubtful birth and a most lean purse to a pinnacle too near the sun for men to gaze at with undazzled eyes. In his rich dress and the splendour of his beauty, with the red glow enveloping him, he lit the darkness like a baleful star.
The two torchbearers and a third man descended, closing the hatch after them. When all were down, my lord, the master at his heels, came and stood over me. I raised myself, though with difficulty, for the fever had left me weak as a babe, and met his gaze. His was a cruel look; if I had expected, as assuredly I did not expect, mercy or generosity from this my dearest foe, his look would have struck such a hope dead. Presently he beckoned to the men behind him. “Put the manacles upon him first,” he said, with a jerk of his thumb toward Sparrow.
The man who had come down last, and who carried irons enough to fetter six pirates, started forward to do my lord’s bidding. The master glanced at Sparrow’s great frame, and pulled out a pistol. The minister laughed. “You’ll not need it, friend. I know when the odds are too great.” He held out his arms, and the men fettered them wrist to wrist. When they had finished, he said calmly: “ ‘I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.’ ”
My lord turned from him, and pointed to me. He kept his eyes upon my face while they shackled me hand and foot; then said abruptly, “You have cords there: bind his arms to his sides.” The men wound the cords around me many times. “Draw them tight,” commanded my lord.
There came a wrathful clank of the minister’s chains. “The arm is torn and inflamed from shoulder to wrist, as I make no doubt you have been told!” he cried. “For very shame, man!”
“Draw them tighter,” said my lord, between his teeth.
The men knotted the cords, and rose to their feet, to be dismissed by my lord with a curt “You may go.” They drew back to the foot of the ladder, while the master of the ship went and perched himself upon one of the rungs. “The air is fresher here beneath the hatch,” he remarked.
As for me, though I lay at my enemy’s feet, I could yet set my teeth and look him in the eyes. The cup was bitter, but I could drink it with an unmoved face.
“Art paid?” he demanded. “Art paid for the tree in the red forest without the haunted wood? Art paid, thou bridegroom?”
“No,” I answered. “Bring her here to laugh at me as she laughed in the twilight beneath the guest-house window.”
I thought he would murder me with the poniard he drew, but presently he put it up.
“She is come to her senses,” he said. “Up in the state cabin are bright lights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I have been singing to the lute, to them—and to her. She is saved from the peril into which you plunged her; she knows that the Kings Court of High Commission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the fetters which she now shudders to think of; that the King and one besides will condone her past short madness. Her cheeks are roses, her eyes are stars. But now, when I pressed her hand between the verses of my song, she smiled and sighed and blushed. She is again the dutiful ward of the King, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh—she hath asked to be so called——”
“You lie,” I said. “She is my true and noble wife. She may sit in the state cabin, in the air and warmth and light, she may even laugh with her lips, but her heart is here with me in the hold.”
As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had said was true. With that knowledge came a happiness so deep and strong that it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and the deeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, and mirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a white fury, changing its beauty into something inhuman and terrifying. He looked a devil baffled. For a minute he stood there rigid, with hands clenched. “Embrace her heart, if thou canst,” he said, in a voice so low that it came like a whisper from the realm he might have left. “I shall press my face against her bosom.”
Another minute of a silence that I disdained to break; then he turned and went up the ladder. The seamen and the master followed. The hatch was clapped to and fastened, and we were left to the darkness and the heavy air, and to a grim endurance of what could not be cured.
During those hours of thirst and torment I came indeed to know the man who sat beside me. His hands were so fastened that he could not loosen the cords, and there was no water for him to give me; but he could and did bestow a higher alms,—the tenderness of a brother, the manly sympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest of God. I lay in silence, and he spoke not often; but when he did so, there was that in the tone of his voice—— Another cycle of pain, and I awoke from a half-swoon, in which there was water to drink and no anguish, to hear him praying beside me. He ceased to speak, and in the darkness I heard him draw his breath hard and his great muscles crack. Suddenly there came a sharp sound of breaking iron, and a low “Thank Thee, Lord!” Another moment, and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords. “I will have them off thee in a twinkling, Ralph,” he said, “thanks to Him who taught my hands to war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel.” As he spoke, the cords loosened beneath his fingers.
I raised my head and laid it on his knee, and he put his great arm, with the broken chain dangling from it, around me, and, like a mother with a babe, crooned me to sleep with the twenty-third Psalm.
MY lord came not again into the hold, and the untied cords and the broken chain were not replaced. Morning and evening we were brought a niggard allowance of bread and water; but the man who carried it bore no light, and may not even have observed their absence. We saw no one in authority. Hour by hour my wounds healed, and my strength returned. If it was a dark and noisome prison, if there were hunger and thirst and inaction to be endured, if we knew not how near to us might be a death of ignominy, yet the minister and I found the jewel in the head of the toad; for in that time of pain and heaviness we became as David and Jonathan.
At last some one came beside the brute who brought us food. A quiet gentleman, with whitening hair and bright dark eyes, stood before us. He had ordered the two men with him to leave open the hatch, and he held in his hand a sponge soaked with vinegar. “Which of you is—or rather was—Captain Ralph Percy?” he asked, in a grave but pleasant voice.
“I am Captain Percy,” I answered.
He looked at me with attention. “I have heard of you before,” he said. “I read the letter you wrote to Sir Edwyn Sandys, and thought it an excellently conceived and manly epistle. What magic transformed a gentleman and a soldier into a pirate?”
As he waited for me to speak, I gave him for answer, “Necessity.”
“A sad metamorphosis,” he said. “I had rather read of nymphs changed into laurel and gushing springs. I am come to take you, sir, before the officers of the Company aboard this ship, when, if you have aught to say for yourself, you may say it. I need not tell you, who saw so clearly some time ago the danger in which you then stood, that your plight is now a thousandfold worse.”
“I am perfectly aware of it,” I said. “Am I to go in fetters?”
“No,” he replied, with a smile. “I have no instructions on the subject, but I will take it upon myself to free you from them,—even for the sake of that excellently writ letter.”
“Is not this gentleman to go too?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I have no orders to that effect.”
While the men who were with him removed the irons from my wrists and ankles he stood in silence, regarding me with a scrutiny so close that it would have been offensive had I been in a position to take offence. When they had finished I turned and held Jeremy’s hand in mine for an instant, then followed the new-comer to the ladder and out of the hold; the two men coming after us, and resolving themselves above into a guard. As we traversed the main deck we came upon Diccon, busy with two or three others about the ports. He saw me, and, dropping the bar that he held, started forward, to be plucked back by an angry arm. The men who guarded me pushed in between us, and there was no word spoken by either. I walked on, the gentleman at my side, and presently came to an open port, and saw, with an intake of my breath, the sunshine, a dark blue heaven flecked with white, and a quiet ocean. My companion glanced at me keenly.
“Doubtless it seems fair enough, after that Cimmerian darkness below,” he remarked. “Would you like to rest here a moment?”
“Yes,” I said, and, leaning against the side of the port, looked out at the beauty of the light.
“We are off Hatteras,” he informed me, “but we have not met with the stormy seas that vex poor mariners hereabouts. Those sails you see on our quarter belong to our consort. We were separated by the hurricane that nigh sunk us, and finally drove us, helpless as we were, toward the Florida coast and across your path. For us that was a fortunate reef upon which you dashed. The gods must have made your helmsman blind, for he ran you into a destruction that gaped not for you. Why did every wretch that we hung next morning curse you before he died?”
“If I told you, you would not believe me,” I replied.
I was dizzy with the bliss of the air and the light, and it seemed a small thing that he would not believe me. The wind sounded in my ears like a harp, and the sea beckoned. A white bird flashed down into the crystal hollow between two waves, hung there a second, then rose, a silver radiance against the blue. Suddenly I saw a river, dark and ridged beneath thunderclouds, a boat, and in it, her head pillowed upon her arm, a woman, who pretended that she slept. With a shock my senses steadied, and I became myself again. The sea was but the sea, the wind the wind; in the hold below me lay my friend; somewhere in that ship was my wife; and awaiting me in the state cabin were men who perhaps had the will, as they had the right and the might, to hang me at the yardarm that same hour.
“I have had my fill of rest,” I said. “Whom am I to stand before?”
“The newly appointed officers of the Company, bound in this ship for Virginia,” he answered. “The ship carries Sir Francis Wyatt, the new Governor; Master Davison, the Secretary; young Clayborne, the surveyor general; the knight marshal, the physician general, and the Treasurer, with other gentlemen, and with fair ladies, their wives and sisters. I am George Sandys, the Treasurer.”
The blood rushed to my face, for it hurt me that the brother of Sir Edwyn Sandys should believe that the firing of those guns had been my act. His was the trained observation of the traveller and writer, and he probably read the colour aright. “I pity you, if I can no longer esteem you,” he said, after a pause. “I know no sorrier sight than a brave man’s shield reversed.”
I bit my lip and kept back the angry word. The next minute saw us at the door of the state cabin. It opened, and my companion entered, and I after him, with my two guards at my back. Around a large table were gathered a number of gentlemen, some seated, some standing. There were but two among them whom I had seen before,—the physician who had dressed my wound and my Lord Carnal. The latter was seated in a great chair, beside a gentleman with a pleasant active face and light brown curling hair,—the new Governor, as I guessed. The Treasurer, nodding to the two men to fall back to the window, glided to a seat upon my lord’s other hand, and I went and stood before the Governor of Virginia.
For some moments there was silence in the cabin, every man being engaged in staring at me with all his eyes; then the Governor spoke: “It should be upon your knees, sir.”
“I am neither petitioner nor penitent,” I said. “I know no reason why I should kneel, your Honour.”
“There’s reason, God wot, why you should be both!” he exclaimed. “Did you not, now some months agone, defy the writ of the King and Company, refusing to stand when called upon to do so in the King’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Did you not, when he would have stayed your lawless flight, lay violent hands upon a nobleman high in the King’s favour, and, over—powering him with numbers, carry him out of the King’s realm?”
“Yes.”
“Did you not seduce from her duty to the King, and force to fly with you, his Majesty’s ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh?”
“No,” I said. “There was with me only my wife, who chose to follow the fortunes of her husband.”
He frowned, and my lord swore beneath his breath. “Did you not, falling in with a pirate ship, cast in your lot with the scoundrels upon it, and yourself turn pirate?”
“In some sort.”
“And become their chief?”
“Since there was no other situation open,—yes.”
“Taking with you as captives upon the pirate ship that lady and that nobleman?”
“Yes.”
“You proceeded to ravage the dominions of the King of Spain, with whom his Majesty is at peace——”
“Like Drake and Raleigh,—yes,” I said.
He smiled, then frowned. “Tempora mutantur,” he said dryly. “And I have never heard that Drake or Raleigh attacked an English ship.”
“Nor have I attacked one,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. “We saw the flame and heard the thunder of your guns, and our rigging was cut by the shot. Did you expect me to believe that last assertion?”
“No.”
“Then you might have spared yourself—and us—that lie,” he said coldly.
The Treasurer moved restlessly in his seat, and began to whisper to his neighbour the Secretary. A young man, with the eyes of a hawk and an iron jaw,—Clayborne, the surveyor general,—who sat at the end of the table beside the window, turned and gazed out upon the clouds and the sea, as if, contempt having taken the place of curiosity, he had no further interest in the proceedings. As for me, I set my face like a flint, and looked past the man who might have saved me that last speech of the Governor’s as if he had never been.
There was a closed door in the cabin, opposite the one by which I had entered. Suddenly from behind it came the sound of a short struggle, followed by the quick turn of a key in the lock. The door was flung open, and two women entered the cabin. One, a fair young gentlewoman, with tears in her brown eyes, came forward hurriedly with outspread hands.
“I did what I could, Frank!” she cried. “When she would not listen to reason, I e’en locked the door; but she is strong, for all that she has been ill, and she forced the key out of my hand!” She looked at the red mark upon the white hand, and two tears fell from her long lashes upon her wild-rose cheeks.
With a smile the Governor put out an arm and drew her down upon a stool beside him, then rose and bowed low to the King’s ward. “You are not yet well enough to leave your cabin, as our worthy physician general will assure you, lady,” he said courteously, but firmly. “Permit me to lead you back to it.”
Still smiling, he made as if to advance, when she stayed him with a gesture of her raised hand, at once so majestic and so pleading that it was as though a strain of music had passed through the stillness of the cabin.
“Sir Francis Wyatt, as you are a gentleman, let me speak,” she said. It was the voice of that first night at Weyanoke, all pathos, all sweetness, all entreating.
The Governor stopped short, the smile still upon his lips, his hand still outstretched,—stood thus for a moment, then sat down. Around the half-circle of gentlemen went a little rustling sound, like wind in dead leaves. My lord half rose from his seat. “She is bewitched,” he said, with dry lips. “She will say what she has been told to say. Lest she speak to her shame, we should refuse to hear her.”
She had been standing in the centre of the floor, her hands clasped, her body bowed toward the Governor, but at my lord’s words she straightened like a bow unbent. “I may speak, your Honour?” she asked clearly.
The Governor, who had looked askance at the working face of the man beside him, slightly bent his head and leaned back in his great armchair. The King’s favourite started to his feet. The King’s ward turned her eyes upon him. “Sit down, my lord,” she said. “Surely these gentlemen will think that you are afraid of what I, a poor erring woman, rebellious to the King, traitress to mine own honour, late the plaything of a pirate ship, may say or do. Truth, my lord, should be more courageous.” Her voice was gentle, even plaintive, but it had in it the quality that lurks in the eyes of the crouching panther.
My lord sat down, one hand hiding his working mouth, the other clenched on the arm of his chair as if it had been an arm of flesh.
SHE came slowly nearer the ring of now very quiet and attentive faces until she stood beside me, but she neither looked at me nor spoke to me. She was thinner, and there were heavy shadows beneath her eyes, but she was beautiful.
“I stand before gentlemen to whom, perhaps, I am not utterly unknown,” she said. “Some here, perchance, have been to court, and have seen me there. Master Sandys, once, before the Queen died, you came to Greenwich to kiss her Majesty’s hands; and while you waited in her antechamber you saw a young maid of honour—scarce more than a child—curled in a window—seat with a book. You sat beside her, and told her wonderful tales of sunny lands and gods and nymphs. I was that maid of honour. Master Clayborne, once, hawking near Windsor, I dropped my glove. There were a many out of their saddles before it touched the ground, but a gentleman, not of our party, who had drawn his horse to one side to let us pass, was quicker than they all. Did you not think yourself well paid, sir, when you kissed the hand to which you restored the glove? All here, I think, may have heard my name. If any hath heard aught that ever I did in all my life to tarnish it, I pray him to speak now and shame me before you all!”
Clayborne started up. “I remember that day at Windsor, lady!” he cried. “The man of whom I afterward asked your name was a most libertine courtier, and he raised his hat when he spoke of you, calling you a lily which the mire of the court could not besmirch. I will believe all good, but no harm of you, lady!”
He sat down, and Master Sandys said gravely:
“Men need not be courtiers to have known of a lady of great wealth and high birth, a ward of the King’s, and both beautiful and pure. I nor no man else, I think, ever heard aught of the Lady Jocelyn Leigh but what became a daughter of her line.”
A murmur of assent went round the circle. The Governor, leaning forward from his seat, his wife’s hand in his, gravely bent his head. “All this is known, lady,” he said courteously.
She did not answer; her eyes were upon the King’s favourite, and the circle waited with her.
“It is known,” said my lord.
She smiled proudly. “For so much grace, thanks, my lord,” she said; then addressed herself again to the Governor: “Your Honour, that is the past, the long past, the long, long past, though not a year has gone by. Then I was a girl, proud and careless; now, your Honour, I am a woman, and I stand here in the dignity of suffering and peril. I fled from England——” She paused, drew herself up, and turned upon my lord a face and form so still, and yet so expressive of noble indignation, outraged womanhood, scorn, and withal a kind of angry pity, that small wonder if he shrank as from a blow. “I left the only world I knew,” she said. “I took a way low and narrow and dark and set with thorns, but the only way that I—alone and helpless and bewildered—could find, because that I, Jocelyn Leigh, willed not to wed with you, my Lord Carnal. Why did you follow me, my lord? You knew that I loved you not. You knew my mind, and that I was weak and friendless, and you used your power. I must tell you, my lord, that you were not chivalrous, nor compassionate, nor brave——”
“I loved you!” he cried, and stretched out his arm toward her across the table. He saw no one but her, spoke to none but her. There was a fierce yearning and a hopelessness in his voice and bent head and outstretched arm that lent for the time a tragic dignity to the pageant, evil and magnificent, of his life.
“You loved me,” she said. “I had rather you hated me, my lord. I came to Virginia, your Honour, and men thought me the thing I professed myself. In the green meadow beyond the church they wooed me as such. This one came and that one, and at last a fellow, when I said him nay and bade him begone, did dare to seize my hands and kiss my lips. While I struggled one came and flung that dastard out of the way, then asked me plainly to become his wife, and there was no laugh or insult in his voice. I was wearied and fordone and desperate.... So I met my husband, and so I married him. That same day I told him a part of my secret, and when my Lord Carnal was come I told him all.... I had not met with much true love or courtesy or compassion in my life. When I saw the danger in which he stood because of me, I told him he might free himself from that coil, might swear to what they pleased, whistle me off, save himself, and I would say no word of blame. There was wine upon the table, and he filled a cup and brought it to me, and we drank of it together. We drank of the same cup then, your Honour, and we will drink of it still. We twain were wedded, and the world strove to part us. Which of you here, in such quarrel, would not withstand the world? Lady Wyatt, would not thy husband hold thee, while he lived, against the world? Then speak for mine!”
“Frank, Frank!” cried Lady Wyatt. “They love each other!”
“If he withstood the King,” went on the King’s ward, “it was for his honour and for mine. If he fled from Virginia, it was because I willed it so. Had he stayed, my Lord Carnal, and had you willed to follow me again, you must have made a yet longer journey to a most distant bourne. That wild night when we fled, why did you come upon us, my lord? The moon burst forth from a black cloud, and you stood there upon the wharf above us, calling to the footsteps behind to hasten. We would have left you there in safety, and gone ourselves alone down that stream as black and strange as death. Why did you spring down the steps and grapple with the minister? And he that might have thrust you beneath the flood and drowned you there did but fling you into the boat. We wished not your company, my lord; we would willingly have gone without you. I trust, my lord, you have made honest report of this matter, and have told these gentlemen that my husband gave you, a prisoner whom he wanted not, all fair and honourable treatment. That you have done this I dare take my oath, my lord——”
She stood silent, her eyes upon his. The men around stirred, and a little flash like the glint of drawn steel went from one pair of eyes to another.
“My lord, my lord!” said the King’s ward. “Long ago you won my hatred; an you would not win my contempt, speak truth this day!”
In his eyes, which he had never taken from her face, there leaped to meet the proud appeal in her own a strange fire. That he loved her with a great and evil passion, I, who needs had watched him closely, had long known. Suddenly he burst into jarring laughter. “Yea, he treated me fairly enough, damn him to everlasting hell! But he’s a pirate, sweet bird; he’s a pirate, and must swing as such!”
“A pirate!” she cried. “But he was none! My lord, you know he was none! Your Honour——”
The Governor interrupted her: “He made himself captain of a pirate ship, lady. He took and sunk ships of Spain.”
“In what sort did he become their chief?” she cried. “In such sort, gentlemen, as the bravest of you, in like straits, would have been blithe to be, an you had had like measure of wit and daring! Your Honour, the wind before which our boat drave like a leaf, the waves that would engulf us, wrecked us upon a desert isle. There was no food or water or shelter. That night, while we slept, a pirate ship anchored off the beach, and in the morning the pirates came ashore to bury their captain. My husband met them alone, fought their would-be leaders one by one, and forced the election to fall upon himself. Well he knew that if he left not that isle their leader, he would leave it their captive; and not he alone! God’s mercy, gentlemen, what other could he do? I pray you to hold him absolved from a willing embrace of that life! Sunk ships of Spain! Yea, forsooth; and how long hath it been since other English gentlemen sunk other ships of Spain? The world hath changed indeed if to fight the Spaniard in the Indies, e’en though at home we be at peace with him, be conceived so black a crime! He fought their galleons fair and knightly, with his life in his hand; he gave quarter, and while they called him chief those pirates tortured no prisoner and wronged no woman. Had he not been there, would the ships have been taken less surely? Had he not been there, God wot, ships and ships’ boats alike would have sunk or burned, and no Spanish men and women had rowed away and blessed a generous foe. A pirate! He, with me and with the minister and with my Lord Carnal, was prisoner to the pirates, and out of that danger he plucked safety for us all! Who hath so misnamed a gallant gentleman? Was it you, my lord?”
Eyes and voice were imperious, and in her cheeks burned an indignant crimson. My lord’s face was set and white; he looked at her, but spoke no word.
“The Spanish ships might pass, lady,” said the Governor; “but this is an English ship, with the flag of England above her.”
“Yea,” she said. “What then?”
The circle rustled again. The Governor loosed his wife’s fingers and leaned forward. “You plead well, lady!” he exclaimed. “You might win, an Captain Percy had not seen fit to fire upon us.”
A dead silence followed his words. Outside the square window a cloud passed from the face of the sun, and a great burst of sunshine entered the cabin. She stood in the heart of it, and looked a goddess angered. My lord, with his haggard face and burning eyes, slowly rose from his seat, and they faced each other.
“You told them not who fired those guns, who sunk that pirate ship?” she said. “Because he was your enemy, you held your tongue? Knight and gentleman—my Lord Carnal—my Lord Coward!”
“Honour is an empty word to me,” he answered. “For you I would dive into the deepest hell,—if there be a deeper than that which burns me, day in, day out.... Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn!”
“You love me so?” she said. “Then do me pleasure. Because I ask it of you, tell these men the truth.” She came a step nearer, and held out her clasped hands to him. “Tell them how it was, my lord, and I will strive to hate you no longer. The harm that you have done me I will pray for strength to forgive. Ah, my lord, let me not ask in vain! Will you that I kneel to you?”
“I fix my own price,” he said. “I will do what you ask, an you will let me kiss your lips.”
I sprang forward with an oath. Some one behind caught both my wrists in an iron grasp and pulled me back. “Be not a fool!” growled Clayborne in my ear. “The cord’s loosening fast: if you interfere, it may tighten with a jerk!” I freed my hands from his grasp. The Treasurer, sitting next him, leaned across the table and motioned to the two seamen beside the window. They left their station, and each seized me by an arm. “Be guided, Captain Percy,” said Master Sandys in a low voice. “We wish you well. Let her win you through.”
“First tell the truth, my lord,” said the King’s ward; “then come and take the reward you ask.”
“Jocelyn!” I cried. “I command you——”
She turned upon me a perfectly colourless face. “All my life after I will be to you an obedient wife,” she said. “This once I pray you to hold me excused.... Speak, my lord.”
There was the mirth of the lost in the laugh with which he turned to the Governor. “That pretty little tale, sir, that I regaled you with, the day you obligingly picked me up, was pure imagination; the wetting must have disordered my reason. A potion sweeter than the honey of Hybla, which I am about to drink, hath restored me beforehand. Gentlemen all, there was mutiny aboard that ship which so providentially sank before your very eyes. For why? The crew, who were pirates, and the captain, who was yonder gentleman, did not agree. The one wished to attack you, board you, rummage you, and slay, after recondite fashions, every mother’s son of you; the other demurred,—so strongly, in fact, that his life ceased to be worth a pin’s purchase. Indeed, I believe he resigned his captaincy then and there, and, declining to lift a finger against an English ship, defied them to do their worst. He had no hand in the firing of those culverins; the mutineers touched them off without so much as a ‘by your leave.’ His attention was otherwise occupied. Good sirs, there was not the slightest reason in nature why the ship should have struck upon that sunken reef, to the damnation of her people and the salvation of yours. Why do you suppose she diverged from the path of safety to split into slivers against that fortunate ledge?”
The men around drew in their breath, and one or two sprang to their feet. My lord laughed again. “Have you seen the pious man who left Jamestown and went aboard the pirate ship as this gentleman’s lieutenant? He hath the strength of a bull. Captain Percy here had but to nod his head, and hey, presto! the helmsman was bowled over, and the minister had the helm. The ship struck: the pirates went to hell, and you, gentlemen, were preserved to order all things well in Virginia. May she long be grateful! The man who dared that death rather than attack the ship he guessed to be the Company’s is my mortal foe, whom I will yet sweep from my path, but he is not a pirate. Ay, take it down, an it please you, Master Secretary! I retreat from a most choice position, to be sure, but what care I? I see a vantage ground more to my liking. I have lost a throw, perhaps, but I will recoup ten such losses with one such kiss. By your leave, lady.”
He went up to her where she stood, with hanging arms, her head a little bent, white and cold and yielding as a lady done in snow; gazed at her a moment, with his passion written in his fierce eyes and haggard, handsome face; then crushed her to him.
If I could have struck him dead, I would have done so. When her word had been kept, she released herself with a quiet and resolute dignity. As for him, he sank back into the great chair beside the Governor’s, leaned an elbow on the table, and hid his eyes with one shaking hand.
The Governor rose to his feet, and motioned away the two seamen who held me fast. “We’ll have no hanging this morning, gentlemen,” he announced. “Captain Percy, I beg to apologize to you for words that were never meant for a brave and gallant gentleman, but for a pirate who I find does not exist. I pray you to forget them, quite.”
I returned his bow, but my eyes travelled past him.
“I will allow you no words with my Lord Carnal,” he said. “With your wife,—that is different.” He moved aside with a smile.
She was standing, pale, with downcast eyes, where my lord had left her. “Jocelyn,” I said. She turned toward me, crimsoned deeply, uttered a low cry, half laughter, half a sob, then covered her face with her hands. I took them away and spoke her name again, and this time she hid her face upon my breast.
A moment thus; then—for all eyes were upon her—I lifted her head, kissed her, and gave her to Lady Wyatt, whom I found at my side. “I commend my wife to your ladyship’s care,” I said. “As you are woman, deal sisterly by her!”
“You may trust me, sir,” she made answer, the tears upon her cheeks. “I did not know,—I did not understand.... Dear heart, come away,—come away with Margaret Wyatt.”
Clayborne opened the door of the cabin, and stood aside with a low bow. The men who had sat to judge me rose; only the King’s favourite kept his seat. With Lady Wyatt’s arm about her, the King’s ward passed between the lines of standing gentlemen to the door, there hesitated, turned, and, facing them with I know not what of pride and shame, wistfulness of entreaty and noble challenge to belief in the face and form that were of all women’s most beautiful, curtsied to them until her knee touched the floor. She was gone, and the sunlight with her.
When I turned upon that shameless lord where he sat in his evil beauty, with his honour dead before him, men came hastily in between. I put them aside with a laugh. I had but wanted to look at him. I had no sword,—already he lay beneath my challenge,—and words are weak things.
At length he rose, as arrogant as ever in his port, as evilly superb in his towering pride, and as amazingly indifferent to the thoughts of men who lied not. “This case hath wearied me,” he said. “I will retire for a while to rest, and in dreams to live over a past sweetness. Give you good-day, gentles! Sir Francis Wyatt, you will remember that this gentleman did resist arrest, and that he lieth under the King’s displeasure!” So saying, he clapped his hat upon his head and walked out of the cabin. The Company’s officers drew a long breath, as if a fresher air had come in with his departure.
“I have no choice, Captain Percy, but to keep you still under restraint, both here and when we shall reach Jamestown,” said the Governor. “All that the Company, through me, can do, consistent with its duty to his Majesty, to lighten your confinement shall be done——”
“Then send him not again into the hold, Sir Francis!” exclaimed the Treasurer, with a wry face.
The Governor laughed. “Lighter and sweeter quarters shall be found. Your wife’s a brave lady, Captain Percy——”
“And a passing fair one,” said Clayborne under his breath.
“I left a friend below in the hold, your Honour,” I said. “He came with me from Jamestown because he was my friend. The King hath never heard of him. And he’s no more a pirate than I or you, your Honour. He is a minister,—a sober, meek, and godly man——”
From behind the Secretary rose the sing-song of my acquaintance of the hold, Dr. John Pott. “He is Jeremy, your Honour, Jeremy who made the town merry at Blackfriars. Your Honour remembers him? He had a sickness, and forsook the life and went into the country. He was known to the Dean of St. Paul’s. All the town laughed when it heard that he had taken orders.”
“Jeremy!” cried out the Treasurer. “Nick Bottom! Christopher Sly! Sir Toby Belch! Sir Francis, give me Jeremy to keep in my cabin!”
The Governor laughed. “He shall be bestowed with Captain Percy where he’ll not lack for company, I warrant! Jeremy! Ben Jonson loved him; they drank together at the Mermaid.”
A little later the Treasurer turned to leave my new quarters, to which he had walked beside me, glanced at the men who waited for him without,—Jeremy had not yet been brought from the hold,—and returned to my side to say, in a low voice, but with emphasis: “Captain Percy has been a long time without news from home,—from England. What would he most desire to hear?”
“Of the welfare of his Grace of Buckingham,” I replied.
He smiled. “His Grace is as well as heart could desire, and as powerful. The Queen’s dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this way or that, as it pleaseth him. Since we are not to hang you as a pirate, Captain Percy, I incline to think your affairs in better posture than when you left Virginia.”
“I think so too, sir,” I said, and gave him thanks for his courtesy, and wished him good-day, being anxious to sit still and thank God, with my face in my hands and summer in my heart.
TIRED of dicing against myself, and of the books that Rolfe had sent me, I betook myself to the gaol window, and, leaning against the bars, looked out in search of entertainment. The nearest if not the merriest thing the prospect had to offer was the pillory. It was built so tall that it was but little lower than the low upper storey of the gaol, and it faced my window at so short a distance that I could hear the long, whistling breath of the wretch who happened to occupy it. It was not a pleasant sound; neither was a livid face, new branded on the cheek with a great R, and with a trickle of dark blood from the mutilated ears staining the board in which the head was immovably fixed, a pleasant sight. A little to one side was the whipping-post: a woman had been whipped that morning, and her cries had tainted the air even more effectually than had the decayed matter with which certain small devils had pelted the runaway in the pillory. I looked away from the poor rogue below me into the clear, hard brightness of the March day, and was most heartily weary of the bars between me and it. The wind blew keenly; the sky was blue as blue could be, and the river a great ribbon of azure sewn with diamonds. All colours were vivid and all distances near. There was no haze over the forest; brown and bare it struck the cloudless blue. The marsh was emerald, the green of the pines deep and rich, the budding maples redder than coral. The church, with the low green graves around it, appeared not a stone’s-throw away, and the voices of the children up and down the street sounded clearly, as though they played in the brown square below me. When the drum beat for the nooning, the roll was close in my ears. The world looked so bright and keen that it seemed new made, and the brilliant sunshine and the cold wind stirred the blood like wine.
Now and then men and women passed through the square below. Well-nigh all glanced up at the window, and their eyes were friendly. It was known now that Buckingham was paramount at home, and my Lord Carnal’s following in Virginia was much decayed. Young Hamor strode by, bravely dressed and whistling cheerily, and doffed a hat with a most noble broken feather. “We’re going to bait a bear below the fort!” he called. “Sorry you’ll miss the sport! There will be all the world—and my Lord Carnal.” He whistled himself away, and presently there came along Master Edward Sharpless. He stopped and stared at the rogue in the pillory,—with no prescience, I suppose, of a day when he was to stand there himself; then looked up at me with as much malevolence as his small soul could write upon his mean features, and passed on. He had a jaded look; moreover, his clothes were swamp-stained and his cloak had been torn by briars. “What did you go to the forest for?” I muttered.
The key grated in the door behind me, and it opened to admit the gaoler and Diccon with my dinner,—which I was not sorry to see. “Sir George sent the venison, sir,” said the gaoler, grinning, “and Master Piersey the wild fowl, and Madam West the pasty and the marchpane, and Master Pory the sack. Be there anything you lack, sir?”
“Nothing that you can supply,” I answered curtly.
The fellow grinned again, straightened the things upon the table, and started for the door. “You can stay until I come for the platters,” he said to Diccon, and went out, locking the door after him with ostentation.
I applied myself to the dinner, and Diccon went to the window, and stood there looking out at the blue sky and at the man in the pillory. He had the freedom of the gaol. I was somewhat more straitly confined, though my friends had easy access to me. As for Jeremy Sparrow, he had spent twenty-four hours in gaol, at the end of which time Madam West had a fit of the spleen, declared she was dying, and insisted upon Master Sparrow’s being sent for to administer consolation; Master Bucke, unfortunately, having gone up to Henricus on business connected with the college. From the bedside of that despotic lady Sparrow was called to bury a man on the other side of the river, and from the grave to marry a couple at Mulberry Island. And the next day being Sunday, and no minister at hand, he preached again in Master Bucke’s pulpit,—and preached a sermon so powerful and moving that its like had never been heard in Virginia. They marched him not back from the pulpit to gaol. There were but five ministers in Virginia, and there were a many more sick to visit and dead to bury. Master Bucke, still feeble in body, tarried up river discussing with Thorpe the latter’s darling project of converting every imp of an Indian this side the South Sea, and Jeremy slipped into his old place. There had been some talk of a public censure, but it died away.
The pasty and sack disposed of, I turned in my seat and spoke to Diccon: “I looked for Master Rolfe to-day. Have you heard aught of him?”
“No,” he answered. As he spoke, the door was opened and the gaoler put in his head. “A messenger from Master Rolfe, captain.” He drew back, and the Indian Nantauquas entered the room.
Rolfe I had seen twice since the arrival of the George at Jamestown, but the Indian had not been with him. The young chief now came forward and touched the hand I held out to him. “My brother will be here before the sun touches the tallest pine,” he announced in his grave, calm voice. “He asks Captain Percy to deny himself to any other that may come. He wishes to see him alone.”
“I shall hardly be troubled with company,” I said. “There’s a bear-baiting toward.”
Nantauquas smiled. “My brother asked me to find a bear for to-day. I bought one from the Paspaheghs for a piece of copper, and took him to the ring below the fort.”
“Where all the town will presently be gone,” I said. “I wonder what Rolfe did that for!”
Filling a cup with sack, I pushed it to the Indian across the table. “You are little in the woods nowadays, Nantauquas.”
His fine dark face clouded ever so slightly. “Opechancanough has dreamt that I am Indian no longer. Singing birds have lied to him, telling him that I love the white man, and hate my own colour. He calls me no more his brave, his brother Powhatan’s dear son. I do not sit by his council fire now, nor do I lead his war bands. When I went last to his lodge and stood before him, his eyes burned me like the coals the Monacans once closed my hands upon. He would not speak to me.”
“It would not fret me if he never spoke again,” I said. “You have been to the forest to-day?”
“Yes,” he replied, glancing at the smear of leaf mould upon his beaded moccasins. “Captain Percy’s eyes are quick; he should have been an Indian. I went to the Paspaheghs to take them the piece of copper. I could tell Captain Percy a curious thing——”
“Well?” I demanded, as he paused.
“I went to the lodge of the werowance with the copper, and found him not there. The old men declared that he had gone to the weirs for fish,—he and ten of his braves. The old men lied. I had passed the weirs of the Paspaheghs, and no man was there. I sat and smoked before the lodge, and the maidens brought me chinquapin cakes and pohickory; for Nantauquas is a prince and a welcome guest to all save Opechancanough. The old men smoked, with their eyes upon the ground, each seeing only the days when he was even as Nantauquas. They never knew when a wife of the werowance, turned child by pride, unfolded a doeskin and showed Nantauquas a silver cup carved all over and set with coloured stones.”
“Humph!”
“The cup was a heavy price to pay,” continued the Indian. “I do not know what great thing it bought.”
“Humph!” I said again. “Did you happen to meet Master Edward Sharpless in the forest?”
He shook his head. “The forest is wide, and there are many trails through it. Nantauquas looked for that of the werowance of the Paspaheghs, but found it not. He had no time to waste upon a white man.”
He gathered his otterskin mantle about him and prepared to depart. I rose and gave him my hand, for I thoroughly liked him, and in the past he had made me his debtor. “Tell Rolfe he will find me alone,” I said, “and take my thanks for your pains, Nantauquas. If ever we hunt together again, may I have the chance to serve you! I bear the scars of the wolf’s teeth yet; you came in the nick of time, that day.”
The Indian smiled. “It was a fierce old wolf. I wish Captain Percy free with all my heart, and then we will hunt more wolves, he and I.”
When he was gone, and the gaoler and Diccon with him, I returned to the window. The runaway in the pillory was released, and went away homewards, staggering beside his master’s stirrup. Passers-by grew more and more infrequent, and up the street came faint sounds of laughter and hurrahing,—the bear must be making good sport. I could see the half-moon, and the guns, and the flag that streamed in the wind, and on the river a sail or two, white in the sunlight as the gulls that swooped past. Beyond rose the bare masts of the George. The Santa Teresa rode no more for ever in the James. The King’s ship was gone home to the King without the freight he looked for. Three days, and the George would spread her white wings and go down the wide river, and I with her, and the King’s ward, and the King’s sometime favourite. I looked down the wind—ruffled stream, and saw the great bay into which it emptied, and beyond the bay the heaving ocean, dark and light, league on league, league on league; then green England, and London, and the Tower. The vision disturbed me less than once it would have done. Men that I knew and trusted were to be passengers on that ship, as well as one I knew and did not trust. And if, at the journey’s end, I saw the Tower, I saw also his Grace of Buckingham. Where I hated he hated, and was now powerful enough to strike.
The wind blew from the west, from the unknown. I turned my head, and it beat against my forehead, cold and fragrant with the essence of the forest,—pine and cedar, dead leaves and black mould, fen and hollow and hill,—all the world of woods over which it had passed. The ghost of things long dead, which face or voice could never conjure up, will sometimes start across our path at the beckoning of an odour. A day in the Starving Time came back to me: how I had dragged myself from our broken palisade and crazy huts, and the groans of the famished and the plague-stricken, and the presence of the unburied dead, across the neck and into the woods, and had lain down there to die, being taken with a sick fear and horror of the place of cannibals behind me; and how weak I was!—too weak to care any more. I had been a strong man, and it had come to that, and I was content to let it be. The smell of the woods that day, the chill brown earth beneath me, the blowing wind, the long stretch of the river gleaming between the pines, ... and fair in sight the white sails of the Patience and the Deliverance.
I had been too nigh gone then to greatly care that I was saved; now I cared, and thanked God for my life. Come what might in the future, the past was mine. Though I should never see my wife again, I had that hour in the state cabin of the George. I loved, and was loved again.
There was a noise outside the door, and Rolfe’s voice speaking to the gaoler. Impatient for his entrance, I started toward the door, but when it opened he made no move to cross the threshold. “I am not coming in,” he said, with a face that he strove to keep grave. “I only came to bring some one else.” With that he stepped back, and a second figure, coming forward out of the dimness behind him, crossed the threshold. It was a woman, cloaked and hooded. The door was drawn to behind her, and we were alone together.
Beside the cloak and hood she wore a riding mask. “Do you know who it is?” she asked, when she had stood, so shrouded, for a long minute, during which I had found no words with which to welcome her.
“Yea,” I answered: “the princess in the fairy tale.”
She freed her dark hair from its covering, and unclasping her cloak let it drop to the floor. “Shall I unmask?” she asked, with a sigh. “Faith! I should keep the bit of silk between your eyes, sir, and my blushes. Am I ever to be the forward one? Do you not think me too bold a lady?” As she spoke, her white hands were busy about the fastening of her mask. “The knot is too hard,” she murmured, with a little tremulous laugh and a catch of her breath.
I untied the ribbons.
“May I not sit down?” she said plaintively, but with soft merriment in her eyes. “I am not quite strong yet. My heart—you do not know what pain I have in my heart sometimes. It makes me weep of nights and when none are by, indeed it does!”
There was a settle beneath the window. I led her to it, and she sat down.
“You must know that I am walking in the Governors garden, that hath only a lane between it and the gaol.” Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks pure rose.
“When did you first love me?” I demanded.
“Lady Wyatt must have guessed why Master Rolfe alone went not to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air was keen, and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors to embroider Samson in the arms of Delilah.”
“Was it here at Jamestown, or was it when we were first wrecked, or on the island with the pink hill when you wrote my name in the sand, or——”
“The George will sail in three days, and we are to be taken back to England after all. It does not scare me now.”
“In all my life I have kissed you only once,” I said.
The rose deepened, and in her eyes there was laughter, with tears behind. “You are a gentleman of determination,” she said. “If you are bent upon having your way, I do not know that I—that I—can help myself. I do not even know that I want to help myself.”
Outside the wind blew and the sun shone, and the laughter from below the fort was too far away and elfin to jar upon us. The world forgot us, and we were well content. There seemed not much to say: I suppose we were too happy for words. I knelt beside her, and she laid her hands in mine, and now and then we spoke. In her short and lonely life, and in my longer stern and crowded one, there had been little tenderness, little happiness. In her past, to those about her, she had seemed bright and gay; I had been a comrade whom men liked because I could jest as well as fight. Now we were happy, but we were not gay. Each felt for the other a great compassion; each knew that though we smiled to-day, the groan and the tear might be to-morrow’s due; the sunshine around us was pure gold, but that the clouds were mounting we knew full well.
“I must soon be gone,” she said at last. “It is a stolen meeting. I do not know when we shall meet again.”
She rose from the settle, and I rose with her, and we stood together beside the barred window. There was no danger of her being seen; street and square were left to the wind and the sunshine. My arm was around her, and she leaned her head against my breast. “Perhaps we shall never meet again,” she said.
“The winter is over,” I answered. “Soon the trees will be green and the flowers in bloom. I will not believe that our spring can have no summer.”
She took from her bosom a little flower that had been pinned there. It lay, a purple star, in the hollow of her hand. “It grew in the sun. It is the first flower of spring.” She put it to her lips, then laid it upon the window ledge beside my hand. “I have brought you evil gifts,—foes and strife and peril. Will you take this little purple flower—and all my heart beside?”
I bent and kissed first the tiny blossom, and then the lips that had proffered it. “I am very rich,” I said.
The sun was now low, and the pines in the square and the upright of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went past the window. “The snow is gone,” I said. “The snowbirds are flying north.”
“The woods will soon be green,” she murmured wistfully. “Ah, if we could ride through them once more, back to Weyanoke——”
“To home,” I said.
“Home,” she echoed softly.
There was a low knocking at the door behind us. “It is Master Rolfe’s signal,” she said. “I must not stay. Tell me that you love me, and let me go.”
I drew her closer to me and pressed my lips upon her bowed head. “Do you not know that I love you?” I asked.
“Yea,” she answered. “I have been taught it. Tell me that you believe that God will be good to us. Tell me that we shall be happy yet; for oh, I have a boding heart this day!”
Her voice broke, and she lay trembling in my arms, her face hidden. “If the summer never comes for us——” she whispered. “Good-bye, my lover and my husband. If I have brought you ruin and death, I have brought you, too, a love that is very great. Forgive me and kiss me, and let me go.”
“Thou art my dearly loved and honoured wife,” I said. “My heart forebodes summer, and joy, and peace, and home.”
We kissed each other solemnly, as those who part for a journey and a warfare. I spoke no word to Rolfe when the door was opened and she had passed out with her cloak drawn about her face, but we clasped hands, and each knew the other for his friend indeed. They were gone, the gaoler closing and locking the door behind them. As for me, I went back to the settle beneath the window, and, falling on my knees beside it, buried my face in my arms.