CHAPTER X
“As had you seen her ’twould have moved your heart,
Though countermined with walls of brass, to love,
Or at the least to pity.”
—Marlowe, in The Jew of Malta.
On the third night following Manteo’s return, Vytal and Marlowe were together in the secluded hut of their choosing. The cabin contained but one room, scantily furnished by two pallets of straw, a rough-hewn table, a couple of chairs, and other bare necessities of a home’s interior.
The weather was foul, the sky lowering. Occasionally a gleam of distant lightning shot through chinks in the hovel wall, straight across Vytal’s face, as, deep in thought, he sat beside the table. A tempestuous wind, shrieking like a shrew in heated brawl, seemed bent on extinguishing a cresset which had been thrust between the logs, but succeeded only in causing the light to flare uncertainly, as though the torch were being brandished aloft by an unseen hand.
As the gale increased, Marlowe, who had been half reclining on his pallet in a dark corner, rose and peered out through the hole in the door which he had made with the skull-like stone. The aperture, jagged and splintered at the edges, had purposely been left uncovered, as the hut’s original windows were still barred.
“I’ faith, ’tis a murky night,” said Marlowe, striving to determine the outlines of trees against the sky. “This wind’s a very nightmare to the woods.” He turned slowly and sat down at the table. “’Tis well that most of the colonists have built and occupied their homes. Troth, I pity them who sleep aboard the ships at anchor.”
Vytal inclined his head, and Christopher smiled comprehendingly. Eleanor, at least, was safe and unharassed—hence Vytal’s unconcern. Mistress Dare, of whom lately they had seen nothing, was housed in the governor’s new-built dwelling, beyond the strip of woodland whose high outline Marlowe had just found indeterminate between this cabin and the town.
But Gyll Croyden was still on board the Admiral. Marlowe remembered this, and his thoughts pictured vividly the two women in contrast—one, as he supposed, all content and comfort; the other at the mercy of every wind and wave that crossed her life.
Listlessly he toyed with a sheet of paper on the table, and, picking up a pen, dipped it in an ink-horn at his side.
“Comparisons are odious,” he wrote, slowly, little dreaming that the words, born of that fleeting contrast in his mind, were to become proverbial the world over. But, on raising his eyes to Vytal’s face, he found in the deep expression none of the odiousness of comparison, for in his friend’s thoughts there was only one woman to be considered.
Again the poet smiled, as one who half gladly, yet half sadly, understands, and once more his reflections shaped themselves in words. He wrote, carelessly, “Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?” and, letting fall the pen, handed the paper to Vytal. The soldier read and re-read, but made no response whatever, for, even as his eyes were raised from the writing, his look changed suddenly, and Marlowe, with astonishment, saw him gazing transfixedly toward the battered door.
As a dream comes in the night-time to recall the thoughts of day, so a face, seemingly visionary, appeared now to the two men. The jagged edge of the door’s orifice framed it uncertainly, but the cresset’s light fell across the features in vivid revelation.
Vytal’s lips parted as though he would have spoken, but it was Marlowe who voiced the name.
“Eleanor—Mistress Dare!”
And now slowly, yet before the two could recover from amaze, the door was opened, and, like a white dove from the heart of the gale, Eleanor came within the cabin.
The door slammed, and then all was quiet, both men sitting spellbound, for a single glance had told them that she was walking in her sleep. Her eyes were open, but evidently unseeing, with that vaguely transcendental look of the somnambulist; and she was clad only in a white simar of silk. Her russet hair, with which the wind had rioted, hung in profuse disorder about her shoulders and beneath her throat, where now it rose and fell more gently with the undulation of her breast. Her hands, clasped before her, added an effect of rest to the blind bewilderment of her all-unconscious pose.
For a moment she stood mutely facing them and looking, as it were, through them to a limitless beyond.
Vytal rose. “Mistress Dare, I pray you—” but as the name Dare seemed to be borne in upon her mind she cried out terrifiedly, and, swaying, would have fallen, had he not supported her and led her to his pallet of straw.
As his hand touched hers, Vytal started. “She hath a fever,” he said to Marlowe. “Do you seek the chirurgeon. He sleeps on the Admiral to-night—also her tire-woman, Margery Harvie, at the governor’s house.”
Hastily Marlowe started out, and the two were left alone.
In silence, Vytal covered Eleanor with his cloak, then, kneeling beside her with all of a man’s tender concern and helplessness, held her hand.
Her mind was wandering now, and she spoke brokenly. The torchlight revealed her expression to him, and every look betokened change of subject in her thoughts, or, rather, change of subconscious impression, for the words never forsook a central theme, around which her mind seemed to revolve in desperate fascination.
Occasionally a glimmer of the distant lightning fell across the listener’s face, showing it tense and deep-cut with the lines of a new resignation.
“Oh, I am but a child,” he heard her say, as her speech grew more coherent. “I pray thee, father, take me not to London … ’twill ne’er be the same to me as this … these vagrant flowers … they grow not thus in the streets of towns.” Her voice was tremulous with tears. “Is’t true, father, that the queen … hath sent for thee … oh, then, thou’lt go … I prove no hinderance … thou’lt go, and I’ll play at happiness in London.… ’Tis best.” She paused and tossed feverishly on the narrow pallet; but at length, as Vytal’s firm grasp seemed to comfort her, she lay quite still and spoke again. Several years had apparently elapsed in the life she was re-living. “Alack, I knew we’d find no content in London.… What is’t worries thee so, my father?” Suddenly a second cry escaped her. “What sayest thou? Her Majesty would have me married! … and ’tis the only way … nay, nay.… Will she not spare thee, father? Thou hast done naught amiss.… ’Tis most unjust.… Ah, nay, in troth, I cannot … yet ’tis all for thee … for thee … then tell her Majesty I will.”
Her look changed, and she smiled sadly, as though resigned, a second person seeming to enter in upon her dream. “Ananias, it shall be as you desire.… If thou’lt rest content with friendship for a time, perchance in the coming days I’ll learn to love thee, cousin, but now I cannot.… My father alone is in my heart.”
She broke off abruptly and grasped Vytal’s hand, as though upon that grasp depended her salvation from a fate far worse than death. Evidently behind all the foremost people of her delirium a dominant personality influenced her mind—the same personality, perhaps, whose thrall had in some strange way drawn her to the cabin. And now she fell to sobbing, sobbing in anguish, and her helplessly childlike expression tortured Vytal’s soul. “Oh, Ananias, I knew not of this great weakness.… I reck’d not against thy love of wine … God pity me.…”
Then for long she lay moaning and whispering inarticulately, Vytal kneeling beside her, scarcely more conscious than herself. The wind, subsiding, wailed about the cabin, leaving the torchlight steadier within. The damp earth, as yet unfloored, lent to the room a tomblike chill, and leaves rustled across the rafters.
Eleanor, turning restlessly, gazed into a dark corner, as if yet another figure had defined itself amid all the complexity of fevered thought. “Margery, I must tell thee,” she said, with the impassivity of one who has no interest in life. “I am with child.”
Then again all was silent save for the low moan and whisper of the wind as it died slowly in the forest.
Vytal rose and went to the door, acutely realizing that to remain longer beside the bed and hear these words of a breaking heart was not only to torture himself, but to profane the soul that, all unknowing, gave them utterance. “John Vytal, I love thee … thee only … always.”
He trembled, then mechanically opened the door, passed out, and, closing it again, stood outside before it, fixed and rigid like a sentinel on duty. Only incoherent phrases came to him now, inarticulate and meaningless in language, yet fraught with so terrible a significance that he strove to force upon his mind a condition utterly devoid of thought.
But with Vytal this was ever impossible, and so at the last, with a great mental effort, he clutched at the consideration of outward and practical necessity. Would Marlowe never return with aid? He listened desperately for footsteps. Every slight rustle, every sound of wind and wood that came instead, filled his ears and brain, until all the world and existence seemed but a medley of sounds, trivial, but wonderfully important; low, but always audible and intently to be heeded in the night.
When at last he heard a footfall he realized dimly that this was not what he had expected; it was not from the woods, but from within the hut.
Slowly the door opened, and Eleanor stood looking into his face. Her eyes, though bewildered, were calm and recognizing, while her whole expression seemed indicative of consciousness regained. The somnambulism and delirium, not unnatural to one in her condition, had left her very feeble in body but mentally aroused. As Vytal realized this, the demands of the moment became paramount to him, his own terrible lethargy being broken to meet her needs.
“Mistress Dare,” he said, calmly, “I pray you rest here longer. I have sent for aid.”
For a moment she made no response, but stood looking about her at the room’s interior. The torchlight fell across a sheet of paper on the table. First a single written sentence met her eye:
“Comparisons are odious.”
She shivered and would have turned away, but there was more writing, which seemed to speak to her, though she was not sensible of reading the lines, even to herself:
“Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?”
She looked from the table out into the darkness, and then at Vytal. “Oh, sir, tell me how came I hither—thus—at night!” She clasped his cloak tightly about her, leaning against the door-post for support.
“You have been stricken, madam, with a fever. I pray you rest.”
At this a new apprehension came into her eyes. “Oh, John Vytal, have I spoken in feverish way? Tell me, tell me—”
A quick denial sprang to his lips. He believed that deception then would have been no lie, but to the man who had ever fought for truth, to the simple, direct nature, even that deception was impossible.
“You spoke, madam; yet, believe me, your words I shall withhold forever, even from myself.”
Long they stood in silence, conveying no thought one to the other, by word, or look, or slightest gesture, their spirits, at the end of that silent lifetime, seeming to meet and become one; yet even in the instant of their acute conception of the union they stood apart, as if denying the bond.
Finally he saw her tremble, and a keen realization of her own despair rose above all thoughts of self. “Thank God,” he said, “our colony hath need of us. There’s work to do—not for me only, but for you.”
Thereafter she passed him, inclining her head in vague assent, and with a strenuous effort started out in the darkness toward the gate of the main enclosure.
He could not follow, knowing that her silence prayed him to withhold assistance, yet every instinct fought against his self-control.
“I will send the chirurgeon,” he said, “to your father’s house.”