THE WEDDING
Everyone in Jamestown was astir early one April morning in 1614. The soldiers and the few children of the settlement, impressed with the importance of their errand, had gone into the woods to cut large sprays of wild azalea and magnolia to deck the church.
Sir Thomas Dale, and in truth all the cavaliers of the town, had seen that their best costumes were in order, sighing at the moth holes in precious cloth doublets and the rents in Flemish lace collars and cuffs, yet satisfied on the whole with their holiday appearance. The few women of the Colony, Mistress Easton, Mistress Horton, Elizabeth Parsons and others, had of course prepared their garments many days before. It was not often they had an excuse for decking themselves in the finery they had packed with such care and misgivings back in their English homes; and this was an occasion such as no one in the world had ever before participated in. Here was an English gentleman of old lineage who was to wed the daughter of a great heathen ruler, one in whose power it lay to help or hinder the progress of this first permanent English colony in the New World. In addition to making themselves as gay as possible, they had prepared a wedding breakfast to be served to the gentry at the Governor's house, and the Governor had provided that meat and other viands and ale should be distributed from the general store to the soldiers and laborers and the Indians, their guests.
The guard at the fort was kept busy admitting the Indians and bidding them lay aside their bows, hatchets or knives; though in truth no one that day looked for any hostile act, since Powhatan's consent to his daughter's marriage had put an end to the enmity between them.
He himself had not come to the ceremony. He was not minded to set his foot upon any land other than his own, but he had sent as his representative Pocahontas's uncle, Opechisco, and many messages of affection to "his dearest daughter." The elderly werowance wore all the ceremonial robes of his tribe: a headdress of feathers, leggings and girdle and a long deerskin mantle heavily embroidered in beads of shell. With him came Nautauquaus and Catanaugh. The two wandered as they pleased through the town, and Nautauquaus, seeing Rolfe arrive in his boat from his plantation Varina, where he had built a house for Pocahontas, stepped forward to greet him. His love for Pocahontas made him desire to know her future husband better. Though this man was of another world than his, though his thoughts and ways were different, he was a man as he was; therefore the Indian brave tried to appraise him by the same methods he used in judging the men of his own race—and he was satisfied. Rolfe, recognizing him, shook hands heartily and talked for a while, enquiring about those of his family he had known while a hostage at Werowocomoco.
After Rolfe had left him to enter the Governor's house, Nautauquas turned to find out what Catanaugh was doing, but could see nothing of him.
Catanaugh had not felt the same interest in Rolfe as did his brother and had strolled away towards Pocahontas's house. He had a question he was eager to put to her while Nautauquas was not by. He found his sister in her white gown, with brightly embroidered moccasins on her feet and a circlet of beads and feathers about her head.
"Wilt thou not adorn thyself," he asked, "with the bright chains of the white men?"
"Nay, Brother," she answered; "it may be that I shall wear the strange robes some day, and the bright chains and jewels I will don to-morrow when I am the squaw of an Englishman; but to-day I am still only the daughter of Powhatan."
Catanaugh said nothing further, yet he still stood in the doorway.
"Enter," invited Pocahontas, "and behold how I live."
"I see enough," he answered, turning his head from side to side; "but where dwelleth the white man's Okee?"
"The God of the Christians?" she asked, puzzled at his question; "in the sky above."
"But where do the shamans call to him?" he continued.
"Yonder in the church, that building with the peak to it," she pointed out.
"I will walk some more," announced Catanaugh and left her. When he thought Pocahontas was no longer observing him, he hastened in the direction of the church. During his former short stay in Jamestown he had never been inside and had thought of it—if he paid any attention to it at all—as some kind of a storehouse.
He found the door open and entered quietly, glancing cautiously about until he had assured himself that it was empty. Then he pushed the door to and fastened it with the bolt. This done, he set about examining the building curiously. At the end, towards the rising sun, was an elevation of three steps which made him think of the raised dais that ran across the end of Powhatan's ceremonial lodge. This was lined with the reddish wood of the cedar, and there was a dark wooden table covered with a white cloth standing in it, and the sun shining through the windows above made the vases filled with flowers glisten brightly. In the part where he stood there were many benches and chairs, and everywhere that it was possible to stand or hang them, was a profusion of fragrant flowering branches.
The very simplicity of the church awed him; had there been a multiplicity of furnishings, of strange objects whose use he could not comprehend, he would have felt he had something definite to watch and fear. His impulse was to flee out into the sunshine, and he turned towards the door. Then he remembered his object in coming and stood still again.
He listened intently, but there was no sound; then taking from the pouch that hung at his side a lump of deer's suet, he smeared it about the sides of the benches and the backs of the chairs. Then with a handful of tobacco taken from the same receptacle he began to sprinkle a small circle in the centre aisle. When this was complete he seated himself crosslegged inside of it. Slowly and deliberately he drew from the larger pouch slung at his back and covered by his long mantle, a mask, somewhat out of shape from its confinement in a small space, and a rattle made of a gourd filled with pebbles. He attached the mask to his face as carefully as if he were to be observed by all his tribe, and laid the rattle across his knees. All these preparations had taken place so quietly that no one who might have been in the church could have discovered the Indian's presence by the aid of his ears alone.
Catanaugh had not come to Jamestown with the sole idea of witnessing his sister's wedding. It was not altogether of his own will that he was now about to undertake a dangerous experiment. He was by no manner of means a coward: his long row of scalps attested to his prowess as a brave; but, unlike Nautauquas, he was one who followed where others led, who obeyed when others commanded. He was fierce in fight, relentless to an enemy, could not even dream as did his father and brother that the white men might become valuable allies and friends. He would gladly have killed them all, and he had grown more and more unwilling that Pocahontas should unite herself to one of these interlopers, as he called them, because he realized that her marriage would make a bond of peace between the two peoples. He had hoped to discover that Pocahontas was being forced into this marriage, in which case he had been prepared to carry her off by some desperate deed at the last moment; but he could not help seeing that she was happy and free in her choice, and would never follow him willingly or go quietly if he tried to make her.
Catanaugh was a member of the secret society of Mediwiwin and he was one who had great faith in medicine men and shamans. He never undertook even a hunting expedition unless he had had a shaman consult his Okee to decide if the day would be a lucky one. In every religious ceremony he would take an active part, would fast if the shamans said it was pleasing to Okee, would kill his enemies or save them for slaves, whichever the shamans suggested. He was himself little of a talker except when after victory he was loud and long in his boasting; but he loved nothing better than to listen when the shamans told tales, as they sat on winter evenings around a lodge fire, or as they lay during the long summer twilights on the soft dried grass, of the transformations of human beings into otter, bear or deer forms, of the pursuit of evil demons, of magic incantations. And the shamans, sure always of an audience in Catanaugh, made much of him, and in many ways without his knowing it, used him as a tool.
Now, it was at their bidding that he sat there motionless, except for his lips, which recited in a tone as regular and as loud as a tree-toad's the words of an incantation they had taught him. And all the time he, who had never trembled before an enemy, was trembling from fear of the unknown. Of course, it was wise for the shamans to make this trial, but he wished it had been possible for one of them to have taken his place. But they knew they would never have got the chance to slip unnoticed as he had done into the lodge of the white man's Okee.
He wondered how this strange Okee would answer his call, for answer he knew he must. The incantation was such strong medicine that no spirit could resist it, especially when he shook the rattle as he did now, rising to his feet and lifting his foot higher and higher, as bending over, he went round and round on his tiptoes, always within the confines of the tobacco circle. The shamans had been determined to find out what kind of an Okee protected the white men, and it was only in this spot they could do so. The palefaces knew so many things the Indian had never learned and which he must learn if he was to hold his own against the terrible medicine of the strangers.
Catanaugh was afraid he might forget some of the magic words the Okee would speak, which the shamans had told him he must hold fast in his mind as he would hold a slippery eel in his hand. Even if he didn't understand them he must just remember them, because they would be wise enough to interpret them. He meant, too, if he only had the courage, to try to make the Okee prevent the wedding.
He had been shaking the rattle gently for fear it might be heard outside the church; but now, anxious to bring this dreadful task to an end, he began to shake it with all his might in one last challenge to the strange spirit.
Bim! Bam! Boum! BOUM! Bim!
Catanaugh jumped like a deer that hears the crackle of a twig behind it. Here in the deep brazen voice of the marriage bells ringing out in the belfry above him he thought he heard the answer his incantation had forced from the white man's Okee. But the voice was so terrible, so loud, that, forgetting the shaman's injunctions, forgetting everything but his need to escape, he rushed to the door, unbolted it frantically and ran, still pursued by the "him, barn, boum" till he reached the fort, where the frightened sentries, who had no orders to keep any Indian from leaving the town, let the masked figure through the gates.
Dr. James Buck, who with Dr. Whitaker, was to perform the ceremony, arrived at the church just as the wedding party was starting from the other end of the town. His foot hit against something. He stooped and picked up a rattle and his fingers were covered with brown dust. Hastily seizing a broom which stood in the vestry-room, he swept the tobacco down the aisle and into a corner. The curious rattle he hid with the replaced broom, to be investigated later. Then he took his stand in the chancel, where Dr. Whitaker soon joined him, and through the open door the two clergymen watched their flock approach. Most of them were men, cavaliers as finely dressed, if their garments were somewhat faded, as though they were to sit in Westminster Abbey; soldiers in leathern jerkins; bakers, masons, carpenters, with freshly washed face and hands, in their Sunday garments of fustian and minus workaday aprons; and the few women were in figured tabbies and damasks.
Now when the congregation had filled every seat and were lined up against the walls, a number of Indians, all relatives of Pocahontas, slipped in and stood silently with faces that seemed not alive except for the keenness of their curious eyes. Them through the doorway came Pocahontas and old Opechisco and Nautauquas.
A sudden feeling of the wonder of this marriage overcame Alexander Whitaker. This Indian maiden who was a creature of the woods, shy and proud as a wild animal, was to be married by him to an Englishman with centuries of civilization behind him. What boded it for them both and for their races?
Then with love for the maiden whom he had baptized and with faith in his heart, he listened while Dr. Buck began, until he himself asked in a loud, clear voice:
"Rebecca, wilt thou take this man to be thy wedded husband?"
After the feast was over the bride said to her husband, using his Christian name shyly for the first time:
"John, wilt thou walk with me into the forest a little?"
And Rolfe, nothing loath to escape the noisy crowd, rose to go with her.
"Why dost thou care to come here?" he asked when they found themselves beyond the causeway in the woods flecked with the white of the innumerable dogwood trees.
"Because I feel Jamestown too small to-day, John; because I have ever sought the forest when I was happy or sad; because it seemeth to me that the trees and beasts would be hurt if I did not let them see me this great day."
"'Tis a pretty fancy, but a pagan one, my child," said Rolfe, frowning slightly.
But Pocahontas did not notice. She had caught a glimpse across the leafy branches of the spotted sides of a deer, and she saw a striped chipmunk peer at her from overhead.
"Hey! little friends," she called out gaily to them, "here's Pocahontas come to greet ye. Wish her happiness, that her nest may be filled with nuts. Little Dancer, and cool shade, Bright Eyes, in hot noondays." Then as two wood pigeons flew by she clapped her hands gently together and cried:
"Here's my mate, Swift Wings, wish us happiness."
And John Rolfe, sober Englishman that he was, felt uprise in him a new kinship with all the breathing things of the world, and he wondered whether this Indian maiden he had made his wife did not know more of the secrets of the earth than the wise men of Europe.
