CHAPTER V
“Some powers divine, or else infernal, mixed
Their angry seeds at thy conception.”
—Marlowe, in Tamburlaine.
It was not long before Frazer stood alone with Eleanor and Virginia Dare in Vytal’s secluded cabin beyond the palisade, and about the cabin a Spanish guard.
The small room was fitfully lighted by a cresset that had been thrust into a chink in the log wall. Opposite the door stood Eleanor, with Virginia at her side, while before her, just within the room, Frazer leaned easily against the door-post, talking in low tones. In the mother’s eyes there was a calm determination, in the daughter’s as little fear, but no resolve.
“Then you object,” said Frazer, languidly, “to being crowned a queen?”
She made no answer. He turned his headpiece about in hand, pouting like a young boy.
“I should have preferred your heart’s love,” he declared, plaintively, “but that, perchance, will come later.” His manner, changing, became forceful. “Oh, believe me, the end hath come. We have played several games, you and I, but this is final; and now, by God! I win! D’ you hear—I win! England will never send you aid. This I know from St. Magil, who hath lately been there. Marlowe, the poet, ne’er e’en saw her Majesty to tell her of your plight. His end came far too soon. ’Twas defending the name of that trull, Gyll Croyden, he died in a brawl at Deptford—these poets will be rakes to the very end.” He paused, then spoke slower, with renewed emphasis: “Vytal is surrounded at the main entrance. At a single word from me our force, which now holds the fortress, will go to increase the overwhelming numbers that hem him in. Whether or not I give that word rests entirely with you. Your beloved Ananias is no more. Come, my beauty, I will make you my wife. There! What more can you desire? Oh, you smile ironically; you think we know not the colony’s weakness. Did I not hear the jovial Prat proclaim it on the house-tops to his friend the ox? You think I did not convey the information to St. Magil. Pah! ’twas an easy signal. Well I knew that if I came off alive Vytal would range his men before me and offer to hold me as an hostage for our ship. The signal was prearranged. Had you outnumbered us, I was to sink down as if in fear before the musketeers; but were you weaker, I was to stand erect. I stood erect. They knew then, as they know now, the hopeless condition of your colony. Your colony, Mistress Dare!” He let the words sink deep into her heart. “Your colony—are you going to cause their complete annihilation by refusing to accept my hand?”
He smiled, and added carelessly: “Then there is John Vytal.”
For a moment her eyes flashed, while she drew herself up proudly, but at his last words her chin sank on her breast and a flood of tears blinded her.
Virginia grasped her hand, and, bending forward, gazed up into her face perplexedly. “O my mother, will you not save the colony and Captain Vytal?”
Frazer nodded to Virginia approvingly. “I doubt it not,” he said, “for your mother is by no means heartless.”
Eleanor raised her head and gazed at him so expressionlessly that he started perceptibly; all life, all beauty, all consciousness, mental, spiritual, and physical, seemed suddenly to have left her face.
She went forward to him like one walking to death in sleep, and the only words that seemed, as it were, to drip and continually drip relentlessly on her brain, were these: “The end, the end!”
He sprang forward and covered her hand with burning kisses. “Thou’rt mine, Eleanor—mine at last.”
But suddenly he paused, startled. A low rustle, or trampling sound, as of innumerable bare feet rushing across the town, had caught his ear. And the voice of Hugh Rouse, far away, called loudly: “Quick, Manteo, this way! Thank God, we may yet save Vytal!”
On this Eleanor drew back with a cry of gladness, and Frazer hesitated. A Spanish soldier appeared at the door. “Shall we reinforce them?”
“Nay, keep your men around this cabin.” He turned to Eleanor, snapping his fingers carelessly. “Foh! a fico for the battle! You see I value your love higher even than our cause, and whether you will or not, I shall force it from you.” With this he started eagerly toward her, arms outstretched and eyes brilliant.
But Eleanor, quick as lightning, drew from her bosom a small poniard and held its point to her breast. “Another step,” she said, calmly, “and I stab myself.”
He paused, in genuine amazement. His supreme self-love had never dreamed of this—that a woman would rather kill herself than become his wife. “I no longer need to save others,” added Eleanor, triumphantly; “it is myself I save.”
For a moment he stood abashed, the very picture of chagrin; but then the light of a new impulse leaped into his eyes.
“Ay, but there shall be another,” he cried, “demanding your sacrifice,” with which, before she had divined his intent, he grasped Virginia in his arms and carried her to the doorway. “She is almost as beautiful,” he sneered, “and much younger.”
“Stay!” and Eleanor, swaying as if she must fall, cried out again in anguish, “Stay, I implore you—stay!”
He turned, laughing. “Nay, Mistress Dare; first throw away thy poniard.”
With a strenuous effort to stand erect, she obeyed, and the weapon fell at her feet. Evidently satisfied, he now released his hold on Virginia, and, swaggering forward, with an air of bravado, put an arm about Eleanor’s waist, while the daughter, utterly dazed, stood speechless, watching him.
“My dear love,” he murmured, caressingly, “rebel not against fate. We shall be very happy as king and queen.” It seemed as if there were a tone of real tenderness in his voice, while gently he led her to the door. But her own voice was silent as the grave, and again her whole being seemed hopelessly inert.
Before passing out he bent over her, and, with both arms, crushed her to him in a tense embrace. Then he started back and his face went pale as death.
A loud clash of steel, a roar of many voices, a whirlwind seemingly, and Vytal stood facing them in the doorway.
Like a flash Frazer drew his rapier, but too late.
The soldier, infuriated beyond control, thrust deep and deep again.
Frazer fell.
Vytal turned to Eleanor. “Come away, quick, by the rear entrance. Manteo and Rouse have overcome his guard.”
The wounded man groaned pitifully. “I pray you send me a priest,” he pleaded. “There is yet time for a short shrift. Your heretic parson will do an there’s none other.”
“I have no messenger at hand,” said Vytal, “and cannot go myself.”
At this moment, however, a slight dusky figure stood in the doorway, to which Frazer motioned feebly. It was Dark Eye.
“Send him,” said Eleanor, mercifully.
“Nay, for he must guard Frazer.”
“But the man is dying.”
“Nevertheless,” said Vytal, bitterly, “he is not yet dead.”
“Then let Dark Eye bind his arms, though it seems cruel.”
Vytal assented, and in a moment the captive lay bound hand and foot with thongs of hide from the Indian’s girdle.
Virginia came to her mother. “I will go with Dark Eye.”
Eleanor rested a hand on her daughter’s head, and turned to Vytal. “Is it safe?”
“Yes, with him.”
Together Virginia Dare and Dark Eye left the room, only hesitating for a moment beyond the threshold to turn and wave farewell. “Have no fear,” said Manteo’s son. “The Winginas are put to flight; the Spaniards have left the town. Later we meet you on the shore.” The cresset flared high; its radiance fell across those two slight figures side by side in the near darkness.
The old world and the new had plighted troth, and here were the symbols of an everlasting union.
In another instant the picture had vanished—White Doe and Dark Eye were hidden in the forest.
“Now come,” said Vytal to Eleanor, and together they left the cabin. “We have won,” he declared; “yet lost completely.”
She glanced up at him with renewed apprehension, questioningly. In silence he led her to the shore. “See,” he said, and she looked up to the headland. A sheet of flame sprang heavenward from the town. “And look!” Two shadows were receding slowly southward. “Those are the enemy’s vessels.”
“Then we are exiles once again.”
The soldier inclined his head. “Yes, exiles. England will never know of our existence; history will account us futile in all our endeavors, and inexplicably lost.” His voice sank lower. “Five Englishmen remain alive besides myself.”
A cry escaped her lips. “’Tis impossible!”
“Nay, ’tis true.”
“But why, then, do the Spaniards beat a retreat?”
“Because Manteo’s force, though fatally delayed by Hugh’s encounter with St. Magil, arrived in time to surprise them, and because Frazer kept his guard apart from the main attack.”
She rested her hands on his arms and came very close to him. The glare of the burning town illuminated his face, showing an expression that even she had never pictured. The stern tensity was relieved, the despotic tyranny of his mouth, the imperial crown of deep-cut lines on his brow, the portentous fire of his eyes—all had been subdued beneath the touch of love. Drawing her closer, he kissed her forehead reverently.
The darkness of night had lost its meaning. The merciless fire was seen no more save as they found it reflected in each other’s eyes.
They were one.
Yet it was all so essentially natural that they experienced no surprise nor wonder in the realization of their unity. It seemed but the end of a primordial beginning, the reversion to their souls of a pre-natal heritage, which but for a season had been withheld that by sorrow and suffering its perfection might be assured.
For long they stood in silence, their very beings seeming to co-blend, each the other’s complement, both a perfect whole.
At last Eleanor spoke, and he felt her tremble with the words. “Let us never again speak the name ‘Frazer’ even within ourselves.”
“Nay, never,” he said. “I thank God he hath gone from out our lives.”
But Vytal’s thanksgiving was premature.
Frazer lived. In the cabin on the cliff above them he lived and moved. Slowly, and with great pain, he contrived, by working his way on knees and elbows, to reach the wall, high up in which the torch still sputtered fitfully. Then, although a stream of red had marked his passage across the room, he placed his bound hands between the logs and, with a strenuous exertion, raised himself until he stood unsteadily upon his feet. And now it was not only the cresset’s light that flashed in his blue eyes. A look of victory surmounted the expression of pain, as, stretching out his arms, he held the wrists immediately over the torch’s flame. The fire scorched and blistered his white skin, burning deep and slowly. At the last his teeth, gnashing in agony, met through his underlip, but still he allowed the flame to work its will. For the thongs that bound him, being damp with blood and perspiration, had not yet been severed.
Finally, however, burning like fuses, they parted slowly and fell to the floor. Then, bending forward, he unbound his ankles, stifling a moan as his scorched fingers untied the knots. Suddenly he was free; and, hastening as best he might to a lifeless Spanish soldier who had been killed in guarding him, he was in a moment not only liberated, but armed as well with a musket ready primed.
Having thus provided himself, he once more fell to his hands and knees and crawled, like some dying animal, into the forest. With a superhuman stoicism and determination, he descended by the winding path that led from Vytal’s cabin to the shore, while a circuitous trail of blood marked his progress.
At the wooded margin of the beach he paused and, leaning against a tree, staggered to his feet.
Two figures stood before him, distinctly visible in the light of the consuming flames.
But, as he raised his weapon, one of the figures moved.
Vytal had heard a rustle of leaves, yet the warning sound came all too late.
A short tongue of fire flashed beneath the branches, almost simultaneously a musket-shot rang out, and Eleanor fell prostrate on the sand.
A cry like the death-note of a soul rose from Vytal, and then the soldier’s face, in the first instant terribly anguished, was transformed to the face of wrath incarnate. His eyes were blue flames.
He rushed to the strip of woods, with sword quivering.
But Frazer lay dead, his face, lighted softly by the stars, showing no malevolence in its smile, more than ever boyish, guileless, and amused.