CHAPTER XIII
“With hair that gilds the water as it glides
And …
One like Actæon peeping through the grove.”
—Marlowe, in Edward the Second.
Weeks passed, and still the Spanish, for some unaccountable reason, delayed their invasion.
At noon on the last day of August, Vytal, accompanied by Manteo, started southward on a short reconnoissance. Before going, he left strict injunctions with Marlowe to admit none to the fortress save those who knew the countersign. He had left the poet, who was now well skilled in military methods, to maintain a watchful guard in the absence of Hugh Rouse and Roger Prat. Furthermore, he gave Dyonis Harvie positive orders to preserve a similar caution respecting the Admiral and fly-boat, of which the worthy mate was now temporarily in command.
On receiving this instruction, the seaman scratched his head in perplexity. “There is one who pesters me,” he said, “with importunate demands to come aboard, and as he is but a harmless lunatic—poor soul!—who says he longs to be on the deck of an English ship, and to imagine himself homeward bound, perhaps you will not refuse him.”
“You speak of Master Ralph Contempt?”
“Yes.”
“Even to him make no exception. Admit one, admit all. Only the few who know our sign must learn the condition of these vessels.”
“And Simon Ferdinando?”
“For the form’s sake you cannot question his authority. But he is well watched;” and Vytal rowed back to the shore. Here he met Marlowe.
“Our guest,” said the poet, “even now seeks admittance to the fortress, longing, he pitifully declares, for the sight of weapons that can avenge his comrades’ lives.”
“It is hard to forbid him entrance,” returned the soldier, “but there must be no exception. The example is needed to maintain secrecy;” with which Vytal joined Manteo in the woods.
Marlowe stood for a moment watching him, and then, turning, caught sight of another figure even more of interest than his friend’s. Eleanor Dare was walking alone on the shore. He started forward impulsively to join her, but, remembering Ralph Contempt, whom he had left at the entrance of the fortress, he returned to enforce the rule. Ralph, however, no longer awaited him. Having stood idly, first on one foot, then on the other, looking plaintively into the stolid eyes of an armed sentinel, the youth, his patience exhausted, had wandered, with an apparent aimlessness, down to the sea. At the water’s edge he stepped into a barge, and, with a long pole pushing the cumbrous craft out to the Admiral, once more accosted Dyonis Harvie. But, as the mate proved obdurate, he returned again, looking off now and then to the southward as he went back leisurely to land.
Then an unexpected circumstance favored him. He left the barge and struck inland behind the town. Once within shelter of the forest, he hastened by a circuitous route through almost impenetrable undergrowth to a point directly behind but about a mile to the south of the fortress. Here a stream, secluded from the sight of any one not on its immediate margin, met his view. It was the continuation of the inlet in which Mistress Croyden had been crabbing.
To his surprise, a canoe of birch-bark, a single paddle in the bottom, floated idly, nosing the bank, and farther on, to his yet greater astonishment, a small heap of clothing lay on the sprawling roots of an oak-tree. He examined the apparel, and found a woman’s linen undergarments, a long frock, kirtle, and richly garnished stomacher. Fearing that some foul play had befallen the wearer, he glanced about him, not without alarm. The spot, utterly sequestered, and only approached by the inlet, or with much difficulty, as he had approached it, by the woods, offered adequate concealment for deeds of violence.
But suddenly he heard a splashing sound from the near distance, and the expression of his eyes as they looked through the foliage to a bend in the stream, some fifty yards farther inland, changed instantly. For there was Mistress Croyden, all unheedful of his proximity, disporting herself to her heart’s content, the silver ripples of the water forming an adequate covering for all save her head, which glistened in the sunlight, a pond-lily of white and gold.
Ralph hurried forward along the border of the woods until he came within easy speaking distance of the bather. A curtain of leaves hung before him, but through the interstices he could see her plainly as she melted like a water-nymph into the bosom of the stream. His eyes shone; his lips parted as though he would have called to her, but hesitating, with a new consideration in which she was evidently not the foremost subject, he returned silently to the oak about which the clothes were scattered. Stooping, he picked up all the garments, and, re-entering the forest, hid them beneath the underbrush far within its shade. Then, with a smile almost mischievous in his boyish enjoyment of the proceeding, he made his way hastily to the town. On coming to the fortress he hallooed loudly and called to Marlowe as if in impatience and alarm.
The poet, who had relieved the sentinel, and was seated, reading, near the door, came out hurriedly. But before he could inquire concerning the other’s clamor, Ralph, trembling with a well-assumed excitement, pointed wildly in quite the opposite direction from which he had come, and seemed to strive the while vainly for utterance. Marlowe, catching much of his excitement, nevertheless bade him compose himself and speak. In this the youth finally succeeded.
“They have taken her,” he said, lowering his voice that no chance passer-by might hear; “they have taken her as they took me, by the hair of the head. Oh, she will be a plaything—it is very sad.”
The vagueness of the announcement only added to Marlowe’s disquiet. “Who? Where?”
“Oh, they have dragged her off. I saw them, the red devils, at the northeast end of the island. The game is to be played again.” The words seemed fraught with an under-meaning, but to the excited listener there was no change. “The game is to be played,” repeated Ralph, now in a dreary monotone, “with Gyll Croyden.”
“Gyll Croyden—Gyll!” And the impetuous poet, beside himself with alarm, not stopping to hear another word, rushed away. When he had passed through the north gate of the palisade, Ralph Contempt, who had watched his headlong pursuit, turned, with an amused look, and entered the fortress. In its main apartment, a long mess-room that served also as an armory, he found a small company of soldiers, who sat about in groups playing at cards and “tables.”[5] Believing that Marlowe had admitted him, they made no remonstrance, and soon he was throwing dice and jesting with the merriest, his eyes roving now and then over the massive oaken walls and stacked muskets.
But as there was no great show of weapons here, he grew listless and unheedful of the game. The heavier pieces, if such there were, must be elsewhere.
Laying down his dice-cup with a yawn, he sauntered into the hallway, closing the mess-room door behind him. But here he started back quickly, as though to return to the armory, for some one who had just entered the fort was approaching him with light footsteps. Recognizing the tread as a woman’s, however, he went forward more easily and met the new-comer in the middle of the hall. The light, coming from the door behind, threw out her figure in relief, but failed to reveal her face. In the next instant, though, when his eyes had become accustomed to the glare of the entrance, he started back more suddenly but less perceptibly than before. Then, quickly regaining his composure, he bowed low as to a woman and a stranger.
As the light from the doorway fell full upon his face, it became the other’s turn to show surprise. Instinctively she recoiled, a world of meaning memory in her hazel eyes. But he gave no sign of notice.
“’Tis Mistress Eleanor Dare, I think,” he said, with a courtly deference. “She hath been well described by all. These colonists laud her to the skies. Moreover, I have watched her many times from beneath her window.”
“Your name, sir?” The voice contained no recognition or repulsion now, but only a natural inquiry.
“Ralph Contempt, yours to be commanded.”
“Ah, Master Ralph Contempt, of whom I have heard much lately. The sole survivor of that brave company which perished.”
“Madam,” he returned, in a lower tone of double meaning, “I, too, may perish.”
“Why, sir, what mean you? Are you not safe and sound among your countrymen?” There was an accusatory stress on the last word, but he only answered with a shrug of his shoulders, and reassumed his old, wandering manner.
“Are you, too,” he asked, vaguely, “a dream, as I am? But oh, how different! Your eyes fire my brain, madam. Women have offered to die for me—” he was running on now with a wild impetuosity—“it is refreshing to meet one at least for whom I myself would die.”
She turned to him with a look of intense hatred and repugnance, but it died suddenly; and, smiling, so that he might see the smile, whereas the scorn had been concealed, she retreated slowly toward the door. He hesitated for a moment, seeming to be drawn two ways, then followed her. Once outside the fortress she sat down upon a rusty caliver which had been found among the débris of the first settlement—sat down and waited, fearing doubtfully that her magnetism might not avail to bring him even to so short a distance from the secrets of the fort. But the chape of his scabbard grated on the threshold, and in a minute he stood bending over her with ardent eyes, yet evidently against his will. Youthful insouciance, which, warring with a certain haughtiness and scorn, played so often across his features, had left him a suppliant before her, yet a suppliant who would, she felt, as a last resort, throw supplication to the winds.
“Since the description,” he said, “I have dreamed of you often.”
The square before the fortress was now deserted, a large crowd having followed Marlowe in his excited quest, for, despite her unpleasant notoriety, Gyll Croyden was by no means unpopular in the colony. The women might shake their heads and, justly enough, gossip as they would, but the men had been glad now to take up arms and go in search of her. And with many it was but the spirit of comradeship that inspired them.
“My queen!” The two words came in a low whisper, nevertheless with all the colossal self-assurance by which the youth, now known as Ralph Contempt, was long remembered.
The effrontery almost caused Eleanor to lose her hold on him. She rose from the cannon as though, in all the majesty of her pure womanhood, to smite and cast him from her with a mere glance from the very eyes that held him spellbound. But she realized instinctively that this man must at all costs be kept her prisoner until the return of Vytal. She felt sure that he had come as a spy from the Spanish ranks, and that, if he were allowed to rejoin them, it must mean disaster. She did not know how far he had unravelled Vytal’s plan, or how deeply he had penetrated the secrets of the ships and fortress. The welfare of the whole colony, however, seemed at stake, and she must play for it against a keen, resourceful opponent. This realization, quick-born and vivid, though formless, caused her to sink down once more breathlessly to the caliver. And then a deeper shade of trouble crossed her face. It was the look of a penitent who seeks forgiveness before some invisible tribunal, with the justifying excuse of unblemished innocence. She knew that in her heart the judge’s name was Vytal, and that to him alone she was answering: “It is for our colony—our colony.” Her mind kept repeating this, feverishly, for thus she always spoke of the settlement to herself. That night, long months ago, when she had led Vytal to Ananias, and had fought against her shame in order to reveal her husband’s condition—for had not her duty to the colony demanded instant action?—that night saw the beginning of her sacrifice.
But the word “sacrifice” was not now in her mind. It is rarely those who name a crisis that live up to its demands. The details of the moment must be paramount; the troubling, perplexing flux of thought on thought, act on act, seeming chaotic in their onrush, must blind a person to the perfect whole.
“My queen!”
She raised her eyes and looked into his own. He grasped her hand. For an instant, as a last resort, she thought of alarming the soldiers, the dull murmur of whose voices reached her from within. But recognizing the folly of an outcry—for he could readily have escaped within the forest—she forbore to give alarm, and only sat there, her head drooping, for the moment seeming to yield. To voice her encouragement was impossible. While she could force herself to remain impassive, by look and gesture drawing on herself his sudden, passionate avowal, she could by no means bring a word of answer to her lips. Fortunately, he seemed content for the moment with his own reckless wooing, and so she merely listened and met his eyes—met his eyes without remonstrance—that was all, and yet to her it meant that her heart was guilty of a lie.
At length he would have had her go with him “for a walk,” he said,“within the silent forest of dreams.” But to this she could not bring herself, even though it would have beguiled him from the fort and vessels.
“Nay,” she replied, “we are alone here.”
“But I have dreamed of you,” he persisted, “as walking beside me, your hand in mine, through a vista of green and gold. And I dreamed that we stood on the brink of a silver stream—stood, oh, so long—until at last I carried you across. Yet, before that, I had called you queen—Queen of England—was it not strange? But you broke my heart by refusing to call me king. Come.”
She laughed, with desperate coquetry. “And for a whimsical dream must we lose ourselves in the gloomy forest?”
He grew restless. “To the shore, then. Perchance the river should have been the sea. I did not read the dream aright. It must, indeed, have meant the sea, else wherefore the King and Queen of England?”
“No,” she answered, forcing a pout to her lips. “The sound of the surf oppresses me. Have you not more faith in the music of your voice? I had not supposed you lacked self-confidence.”
“Until now nor had I supposed so.” He kissed her hand, which was cold and lifeless. “But now—”
“You do not realize,” she interposed, striving strenuously to fight down the meaning regret in her voice, “how much I have given you.” At this he seized her hand again, to cover it with kisses, and, growing more bold, bent down to kiss her lips; but she recoiled quickly, and, eluding him, stepped back until the cannon lay between them. Then she forced herself to laugh.
He vaulted over the caliver. “Even this great piece,” he cried, “although it were ready primed, could scarce deter me,” and, seizing both of her hands, he leaned down to repeat his first attempt. But she hung her head, and his lips only brushed the velvet of her cap. Then, raising her eyes to his, by sheer force of will she dominated his desire, held it in check, yet kindled it the more.
“Stay,” she objected, calmly, “you little comprehend the ways of women; they must be wooed before they can be won.”
He started back with an impatient gesture. “They can wait, then, to be wooed,” and, turning, he would have re-entered the fortress.
Had she lost him? Must the humiliation of it all be bitterly deepened by failure? No. She felt her woman’s power, her tingling wit and intuitive diplomacy rise quickly to meet the crisis. “I pray you, do not go, Master Contempt. Have I been so very unkind?”
He turned back smiling, his self-conceit actually leading him to believe that his own little ruse of apparent indifference had worked success.
A bold, flashing plan came to her. She would play upon the man’s two conflicting desires at one and the same time. A double spell must shackle him.
“I have it,” she suggested, in a yielding voice. “Let us row out to the Admiral, and pretend we have left this dangerous land for good and all.”
His eyes sparkled. Fortune had showered him with favors. He felt less compunction now in making love. She little knew, he thought, how opportunely her suggestion came. He even feigned reluctance for the moment, to hide the eagerness of his steps.
They walked to the shore.
“I have not been on board my father’s ship,” she told him, “since we landed in the fly-boat. You have heard, no doubt, of our mishaps?”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “But one thing I know not, and that is the countersign. I fear Dyonis Harvie will forbid me the ship.”
She laughed. “Nay, he is my tire-woman’s husband. You shall see.”
In a few minutes they were under the Admiral’s side, and in one more she had mounted to the deck.
“It is against Captain Vytal’s orders,” expostulated the mate, as Ralph followed her. “Under your favor, Master Contempt must stay behind.”
But the youth was already beside them. “Nay, Dyonis,” remonstrated Eleanor. “You forget ’tis the governor’s daughter who brings him.”
“I ask your pardon, Mistress Dare; but ’tis not that I forget too easily; it is that I remember well a positive command.” And he made as though to assist the subject of their talk down into the barge again.
“How now?” she demanded, imperiously. “Are any save my father’s orders superior to mine own? I had not looked to find my maid-servant’s husband so disloyal.”
At this the poor seaman wavered on the horns of a dilemma. Against Mistress Dare, of all the colony, he could not persist further, for she was regarded already as a kind of queen in the little settlement, who had shown kindness to the very humblest in sickness and distress, and was above all others most readily obeyed.
Harvie scratched his head. “You will explain, I pray, to Captain Vytal.”
“I will explain.”
The mate walked away mumbling to himself. Whereat, turning with a laugh of feigned delight and mischief, Eleanor led her companion to the room of state. “It is here,” she said, “that the king should hold his court. And, besides, I am anxious to inspect the chamber in which my poor father used to sit, head in hands, hoping against hope for my safe arrival.” She paused. “Furthermore, there is wine within of a rare vintage.”
“Wine,” he said, eagerly—“golden wine. We shall drink to our realm, to the England I pictured in my dreams. But no, first, first to our love.”
She felt his breath hot against her cheek. “And to solitude,” she added, with an under-meaning in her thoughts. Then, daringly, for the game at moments carried her away, “To an immemorial captivity in the room of state.”
He had, however, thrown caution to the winds, being, as he believed, at the very threshold of a double goal. Nevertheless, as they entered the long apartment, he assumed his old, pitiable air. “It is cruel,” he said, “to mention captivity to one who, having but just escaped so fell a slavery, is again in direst bondage.”
“It was thoughtless,” she allowed, with subtle truth, “and reprehensible to talk of victory when as yet we have neither of us won.”
He strove to encircle her waist with his arm, but once more, as if with natural coquetry, she eluded him. “Not yet won?” he whispered, passionately. “It is won; it shall be won—and by me.”
“Nay, sir, not so fast. You forget the wine; it is there.” She pointed to a heavy sideboard of black oak near the wall, at the same time taking a silver flagon from the table.
“Ah, the golden wine!”
He went to the sideboard, and, kneeling with his back toward her, thrust a hand across the shelf of a lower cupboard. Finding a dusty bottle in the corner, he withdrew it. “’Tis as old,” he said, closing the doors and surveying the film of cobwebs, “as old as our love is new. Come, dearest—” but, on turning, he broke off suddenly.
The flash of a white ruff, the soft whisper of slippers across a rug, and he was alone—a prisoner.
But then—even then, as the key grated in the lock—he laughed like a boy who has been caught in a game of blind-man’s-buff or hide-and-seek. Even in the first moment of his plight, amusement and an uncontrollable sense of the ludicrous sparkled in his blue eyes. Impulsively knocking off the bottle’s neck against the sideboard, he picked up a silver cup which had rolled to his feet from the cabin door and filled it to the brim.
“You remembered me,” he reflected, sipping the wine with a too-apparent relish as though acting to himself. “You remembered me. That is one point gained.”
In the meanwhile, Eleanor Dare, on the deck, was graciously explaining to Dyonis her apparent unreasonableness and breach of discipline. “You will guard the door until relieved.” And so saying, she returned in her barge to the shore.
Early in the evening, Vytal, re-entering the town, was surprised to find her evidently awaiting him at the fort.
“The man,” she exclaimed, breathlessly, without any prelude of greeting, “the man you fought with on the bridge is here!”
“Frazer?”
“Yes, Frazer, known lately as Ralph Contempt.”
A sharp, sudden comprehension, all the keener for having been so long deferred, sprang into the soldier’s face. “’Twas to set him a-land that the Spanish vessel anchored to the southward. I knew the boy’s eyes. ’Twas his heavy beard deceived me.”
She smiled. “A woman knows from the heart,” she said, “while a man’s head aches with perplexity. And, besides, whereas he only fought with you, me he insulted.” Her cheeks flushed, her eyes revealing the pure hatred and anger they had so long been forced to mask with smiles.
The look fired Vytal’s blood. But, following his first silent fury, an expression which had never yet been in his eyes changed them to those of a wounded animal, and he seemed for the moment almost ashamed. The thought had cut him cruelly that his worst enemies on earth were a mere careless stripling and a shallow drunkard, with not even the boy’s bravery to commend him as a foe. There are a few men who regret the lack of noble power in an enemy as deeply as the many deplore its non-existence in a friend.
“Where is he?”
“I have imprisoned him in the Admiral.”
“You!”
“Yes.” Her look had a strange penitence in it and no triumph. He dimly understood the reason, and an expression of pain crossed his own features. But there was not a trace of condemnation in the deep-set eyes, his faith being perfect. “Yes,” she added, in a whisper, as though half to herself, “’twas for our colony I led him on. But oh, if by any chance he should escape—”
“It would matter little,” broke in Vytal.
“How so?”
“He has failed. You have frustrated his plan to estimate our strength. Even were he to return, he could impart naught of value to the others. But stay, in what room have you imprisoned him?”
“In the main cabin.”
“That is well. His knowledge of the fortress would avail them nothing. St. Magil, I doubt not, knows the force and number of our arms. ’Tis mainly my new arrangement of the ships that holds the key to our defence. Thus, Mistress Dare, even should he escape, which he must not, you have accomplished that which I had not supposed within a woman’s range to compass. I thank you—deeply.”
Her face brightened for the instant, but, as he walked away, she returned to her home sadly, as though even the skilful winning of her first play had brought only an ephemeral gladness.
Vytal had but just crossed the square when Marlowe, having entered the town from the north, joined him. The poet was dishevelled from his hasty pursuit through the forest and extremely agitated. “Gyll Croyden has been captured by the Indians!”
“Who told you that?”
“Our guest.”
“And so you went in search of her?”
“Most naturally, for though she and I are naught save comrades, comrades we shall be to the end.”
Vytal studied his face. “Our guest’s name, Kyt, is Frazer.”
“Frazer!” The poet started. “We are tricked. Tricked by a boy! Forgive me. You must leave another to defend the fortress,” and Marlowe, drawing his sword, held it out to the soldier. “Leave me the pen only, for I am not worthy of this.”
But Vytal laid a hand on his shoulder kindly. “I was befooled myself.”
“Let us go to him,” suggested Christopher.
“Nay, I have just sent Hugh Rouse, who returned with me from his picket duty. He will bring the fellow to the fort.”
“Let us wait in the armory, then. I long to see that bantering actor pleading for our mercy. He would play excellent well upon the stage, with his tales of torture and feigned idiocy.”
So they waited, waited long, and still Hugh Rouse did not return.
The cause of this delay is briefly told.
Hugh, having stepped into a canoe, had, with a few long sweeps of his paddle, come to the Admiral; and the captive heard voices approaching the cabin door. At this he rose from the table, and, with an air still somewhat careless, yet of definite purpose, concealed himself behind the arras with which the walls were hung.
Once more the key grated in its lock, and Frazer heard two men enter the long cabin, which by now was enveloped in gloom. Seeming to stand near the threshold, while their eyes were probably accustoming themselves to the darkness, neither of these men spoke at first, but finally the prisoner heard one whisper to the other and, with a deep oath, advance farther into the room.
“He hides. Do you, Dyonis, guard the door.”
Harvie obeyed, while Rouse, growing more and more amazed, searched the cabin without success. He might have searched until the crack of doom and come no nearer to a trace of the cunning quarry.
For, even on their first entrance midway into the room, when Rouse had supposed that Harvie held the door, and Harvie that the captive must certainly be before them, the bird had flown. Softly, in that first moment, the heavy arras undulated, as though a breeze were passing across it from end to end of the apartment. Then, parting from the wall near the entrance, it fell flat again—a motionless, innocent piece of tapestry in darkness.
And, suppressing a laugh, Master Ralph lowered himself into Hugh’s canoe, to paddle away under the cover of evening.
After propelling the light craft silently for several minutes, he listened. An oath rang out in deep bass from the Admiral’s deck. Hearing this, he turned the prow of his canoe toward a narrow inlet, and entered on a winding forest stream. The moon, just rising above the trees, ensilvered his course with a radiance that found itself reflected yet more brightly in his youthful eyes.
On and on he paddled with silent speed, until, coming to an abrupt bend in the stream, he saw another canoe on the opposite shore. Looking about him, he appeared to hesitate; but suddenly a golden thing, round like a second moon, appeared over the edge of the lonely craft.
“You will find them,” he called, “on a direct line with your canoe, back in the brushwood. Farewell, Gyll, and thank you.”
“Thank you!” came the answer, in exasperation, after him. “Here have I been starving, fearing to move! Villanous—” but he was beyond earshot now, as, running the prow of his boat onto a shelving bank in the distance, he plunged straightway into the forest.