CHAPTER XXI
“It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overrul’d by fate.”
—Marlowe, in Hero and Leander.
As the poet made his way through the forest he came suddenly on a scene that caused him to pause, laugh, quicken his pace, and turn aside to another trail, by which he reached the shore. Here, shrugging his shoulders, he sat down on the sand, looking back now and then as if waiting to be joined by some one who occupied his thoughts. Whether or not this person would come he could not be sure, since the scene just witnessed had disclosed a new phase of the situation in which he had placed himself.
In the clearing which he had just passed sat Gyll Croyden looking up at Roger Prat, who stood before her in an attitude of indecision and unaccustomed solemnity, while the bear regarded them drowsily from the overhanging branches of a tree. What transpired between the man and woman Marlowe could not definitely surmise, yet the result of their conversation was to subvert completely his own future.
“Now, I tell you,” said Prat, after the sound of footsteps had died away, “I am a peculiar personage.” He sank his chin deep into its triple substructure surveyed her with perplexity. In his hand he held an Indian pipe, whose wreaths of smoke rose and cast a veil before his face, through which his troubled, protruding eyes looked out with ghostly light.
“A peculiar hobgoblin,” corrected Gyll, laughing more from nervousness than mirth—“a dear hobgoblin.”
He eyed her reproachfully. “Oh, you may deride me with unflattering names,” he said, “but it makes no difference. Mark you, until now there has been one thing only which could make Roger Prat turn on his heel and run for dear life. This was the sight of a petticoat; but, alack! I am changed, most miserably changed, and, by some perversity, my new courage seems cowardice as well. For I take it that a really brave man nerves himself to retreat before the bombardment of a wench’s eyes. ’Tis the coward who succumbs.”
Gyll pouted. “Run away, then, and prove yourself a soldier.” But he shook his head with ponderous gravity, and, curiously enough, the unprecedented soberness of his manner spread to her. “Oh, you would stay. Now, I am glad of that, Sir Goblin,” and, rising, she stood facing him, with a hand on each of his bulky shoulders. “I am glad, Roger,” she repeated, in a softer tone. “For dost know that, with all my gallants, with the memory of all those faces upturned and kisses thrown to my window on the Bankside, ’tis a common fighting man I would marry?—a great, cumbersome roly-poly, a mountain, a heathen image, call him what you will, yet to me he hath so light a heart, so quaint a way, so sturdy a courage, that methinks he hath already won me.”
At this, either a recollection of her long-lost girlhood or a play of mere wanton coquetry—she herself did not know which—caused her to cast down her eyes, while the flush of her cheeks deepened vividly. For an instant Prat seemed to sway, as though his legs with an effort supported his corpulent body, and the perplexity of his look increased. Instinctively he thrust the pipe-stem between his teeth, and, gazing up at King Lud, blew a cloud of smoke into the branches. The bear looked down through it, blinking and sniffing at his master, while for a moment Roger himself was almost completely enveloped.
“Thou imp of Uppowac,” quoth Gyll, stepping back with a grimace, “is this thy only response to my condescension?” and she made as though to start away into the forest. But Roger, suddenly all-forgetful of his dilemma, waddled after her.
“Nay, stay,” he called, apprehensively; “stay, and permit me to collect my scattered wits.”
She turned and laughed with scornful badinage. “Stay?” she echoed; “and wherefore, pray? Merely that you may blow tobacco fumes into my eyes and blind them to the charm of your countenance?”
“Oh no,” he remonstrated. “In troth, I blew the smoke to hide the face of his wondering majesty above. His red eyes and sniffing snout seemed to condemn and scorn me. There, I’ll smoke no more,” and, knocking out the pipe’s ashes, he restored it quickly to his belt.
Seeming to be mollified by this, Gyll sat down again on the grass, while the new softness of her expression returned. “Prithee, Roger, make up your mind on that which troubles it, for if again I start, I go, and there’s the end.”
He gazed at her for a moment with solemn eyes, and now she smiled in an almost womanly way instead of laughing wantonly. “Tell me, Gyll, dost really—dost truly?—” but he broke off for want of a word.
“Truly what?” she asked, in a low voice.
His chin sank into its underfolds again, and he twirled a pair of globular thumbs tentatively. “Dost truly have that feeling for me which the poet would call ‘love’?”
The question touched her sense of the ludicrous keenly, yet his astonishing earnestness underlying it must have reached a deeper sense, for still she only smiled instead of laughing, and answered, “Yes.”
At this his rotund face grew brighter. “Come, then, to the Oxford preacher, Gyll, before we change our minds;” and, nothing loath, she rose quietly.
“Change our minds, Roger! I, for one, shall ne’er do that.”
“Nay,” he said, “nay, I pray you, do not change. Oh, that would be dire misfortune;” whereon, picking up the end of King Lud’s chain, which dangled from the tree, he tugged thereat until the beast, with a good-humored growl, descended. For an instant the sight of her animal friend brought the old, careless look to Gyll’s face—there was something so drolly suggestive of Roger in the bear’s bandy legs and awkward gait. A fit of devil-may-care recklessness seized her. The strain of even a moment’s seriousness on such a nature being unendurable, breaks in the end, and, as when a supporting rope is severed without warning the one who has been held thereby falls suddenly, so the snapping of a moral stay leaves one sprawling in abandonment.
Gyll went to the extreme of flippancy. “Come,” she said. “Look at King Lud. Let him give us his blessing. Let him tie the knot with his great paws upon our heads. I much mislike real parsons; we will have none o’ them. I’ll bind myself to no man. ‘Please one, please all,’ as the song hath it—‘please one, please all.’” So saying, she was on the point of profaning her troth by kneeling, with a laugh, before the bear, when a glance at Prat restrained her. The soldier had started back with an oath. His eyes, enraged as she had never seen them, were lowering, and his breath came quickly. With one hand he ground the bear’s chain until its links grated as if they must break in the tight-clinched fist, while with the other he sought his hip, and the fat palm ignored his flute and Uppowac pipe to cool itself on the metal of his sword.
Gyll drew back in amaze. “How now, goblin,” she asked, with not a little terror; “art gone wholly mad?”
He said nothing, but slowly his expression altered until a mingling of grief and cold repulsion told her of his inward change. “I would have risked a wedding,” he said, at last, and drawing the bear to his side. “I would have made you honest wife, and not ungladly, for I felt a kind o’ love—ah, a deal o’ love—for you, Gyll; but I’m a peculiar personage, and not irreverent to men o’ God and church-like things, be I rake or no. Faith, ye’re a most heartless jade, who’ll ne’er be wife o’ mine. Ye’ve shown yourself. For that I thank thee;” whereat he turned on his heel and, leading away King Lud, disappeared in the forest.
For a moment Gyll stood listening, and once she called, but only the clank, clank of the bear’s chain, growing fainter and more faint in the distance, answered her unhappy cry. Finally, when the sound had died, a flood of tears fell from her eyes, but quickly she brushed them away, then, turning, walked in the direction of the shore, and forced from her tremulous lips a song, popular at the time in Southwark:
“Be merry, friends, and take no thought;
For worldly cares now care ye naught,
For whoso doth, when all is fought,
Shall find that thought availeth not—
Be merry, friends.”
Her voice sounded low, its lilt for once seeming artificial. The friends she strove to cheer were her own thoughts—new, discomforting thoughts—yet perhaps more truly friends than all their predecessors. She persisted, however, in drowning the inward mutter of their realization with her voice’s melody:
“To take our sorrows mournfully,
Augmenteth but our malady;
But taking sorrows merrily
Maketh them smaller, verily—
Be merry, friends.”
And now the notes of a flute came to her from afar, half in accompaniment of her tune:
“Let the world slide, let the world go;
A fig for care and a fig for woe!
If I can’t pay, why, I can owe;
And death makes equal the high and low—
Be merry, friends!”
The last words came in faltering tones that utterly belied their meaning, while from the distance the flute’s music ended in that wild wail which now, more than ever, denoted a finale.
In a few minutes Gyll joined Marlowe on the shore. “Ah, you have come,” he said, rising.
She laughed. “So it seems; but wherefore, Kyt, did you so mysteriously arrange this meeting?”
He made an impatient gesture. “Wilt swear to say nothing of my tidings to any in the town?”
“Yea, if it pleases your poetic soul thus to weave mysteries, I make no remonstrance.”
He scrutinized her silently until, at last, being satisfied, he spoke again. “I leave for England, Gyll, this very day.”
Her eyes opened wide, and she stared at him as at one demented. “Leave for England, Kyt! Thou’rt mad!”
“Nay,” he returned, calmly. “Listen. For I know not how many days and months I have scanned the sea far to the northward. For an eternity I have seen naught save gulls and waves, but at last a sail hath come, as I knew it would. Nor is it surprising that I waited expectantly, for while in England I had heard that every year as many as five hundred ships found their way to the great country which Martin Frobisher explored. ’Tis called Newfoundland, and off its banks myriads of fish are caught by the men of Brittany, Normandy, and nearly all the provinces of France. Was it not likely, therefore, that one of these fishing-vessels, returning with its catch, should follow the coast of this continent until it came to southern waters? Well, likely or not, the thing hath happened. A Breton shallop lies to the north and awaits me, for I builded a fire and signalled to it. Three mariners came ashore, and, to one who understood the French language, I explained that I was a castaway. Thus they think me a shipwrecked sailor, and I have allayed their curiosity. Otherwise, no doubt, they would have come prying about Croatan. These men have promised to land me on the coast of France or Ireland.” He paused, seeming to question her with a look, but for answer she only threw an arm about his neck.
“Oh, Kyt, art really going? I cannot believe ’tis true.”
“Ay, ’tis very truth.”
She looked up into his dark eyes with a troubled expression. “Tell me, dreamer, why do you depart so secretly, and why, indeed, at all?”
“Secretly,” he answered, with renewed vagueness, “because in secret Destiny works; I for to-day am Fate, and keep these colonists to their duty as Vytal and Mistress Dare have done. Were they to know of the vessel’s proximity, they would in a moment be havoc-struck. Ananias would start an insurrection and incite them to seize the shallop. This must not be. I go alone, or with—”
She interrupted him. “Why, why do you go?”
He raised himself to his full height. “Because a voice, calling me in whispers, so decrees. I shall seek audience with the queen and Raleigh to demand the forwarding of supplies and men to Virginia.” He paused, a look of despondency crossing his face. “But would I could foresee success. Alas! I cannot. Some godless curse rests on this colony, whose spirit is in the very air we breathe.” He looked darkly into the distance, as though the hitherto invisible had come within the range of sight. Then, however, as he heard a sob from the woman beside him, his expression changed. The earnestness of the moment seemed to pall upon him, and he laughed carelessly.
Untying a silken kerchief from her neck, he held it aloft so that it hung lightly on the breeze, its soft ends fluttering toward the sea. “This is the true reason,” he said, inconsequently. “The wind blows eastward.”
Her eyes were smiling now behind her tears. “May not I go thither also?” she asked, breathlessly. “I cannot stay behind. ‘Faith, all the colony hath turned against me. The parson would have me married or banished, were there chance of either fate. Besides—I’d be more comfortable in Southwark,” she added, with a note of hardness in her ever-changing voice.
He pressed her hand pityingly. “As you like, Gyll. ’Tis but natural you desire to return. Neither you nor I were made for this. Our parts were writ to be played in London. I go aboard the shallop within an hour, but it waits too far for you. To-night we’ll anchor to the southward. Do you slip away and await me on the southern shore. Whate’er you do, remember one thing: none must know of our departure. Nay, postpone thy thanks, Gyll, for here comes Vytal by appointment.”
She turned, and, on seeing the soldier, who alone of all men inspired her with awe, made her way quickly to the town.
As Vytal joined Marlowe, they spoke at once of that which paramountly filled their minds. “I am ready to start,” said Christopher. “The shallop lies north of Hatarask.”
“Then,” returned Vytal, “let us go to it at once. I will accompany you thither.”
They walked along the shore. “We can speedily reach the place,” said Marlowe, who was oppressed with the other’s silence; “I have left a canoe on the northern beach.”
Vytal inclined his head, as who should say, “I supposed so.”
The poet’s eyes saddened. “Your muteness is hard to brook.”
“Nay, Kyt, I count it kind to both of us.”
“Wherefore kind?”
“Because, when the heart is sick, words but pain it more.”
“You regret, then, my departure?”
“For my own sake, deeply. We have been friends.”
“Ay,” said the poet, “friends. Friendship’s the reality; love but a pleasant dream. I look back over the past five years and think of our conversations. I recall, too, those few hours when I talked with Mistress Dare. The difference is plain. Man and man enjoy the freer reverie. No personal distraction mars their elemental thought. They become unbiased lookers-on at life, unfettered by the stage directions. To them the lover’s star hath varied cosmic meanings which far transcend its amorous spell. To them all nature shows her heart, and not the mere reflection of their own. Ay, only with man and man is meditation free—unless—of course, unless—the dream of love hath proven true.” The last words came in a voice of pain, which, however, passed as he added, mechanically, “But come, here is the canoe.”
Following the poet, Vytal stepped into the craft, and with a single stroke of his paddle sent it far out across the inlet. With long, slow sweeps he propelled it on in silence, while Marlowe, facing him, gazed at the sharp-cut features with a kind of worship in his eyes.
“Hath any yet known you, Vytal? Hath one single man or woman probed your depths?”
Vytal shrugged his shoulders for reply, then said, in a voice that sounded harsh even to himself, “We are come to your starting-point,” and, as they landed, “Where is the ship?”
“Five miles to the north.”
“Let us hasten, then, by the shore.”
They walked for many minutes mutely, until Vytal spoke as though half to himself: “I would have made the sacrifice in your stead, but for these children of Croatan, these helpless colonists, who are in my charge.”
The poet’s eyes lighted up with their old fervor. “I know it well, for partly I know you.” His eyes wandered. “Yet I cannot say that, were I you, I would have left her even for friendship’s sake. I read you, I read myself—you as mighty prose, I, it sometimes seems, as vainly garnished poetry. Marlowe would whisper to her, ‘My soul sings thine,’ but Vytal would say, ‘I love thee.’ Methinks in these very words lie our inmost selves contrasted.” Turning again to look at his companion, he found the dark face averted, but when at last he saw its deep-graven, premature lines again, he found no change in the expression.
“I trust you will make every effort,” said Vytal, “to gain audience with the queen.”
“Yes, I swear it, but I fear ’twill prove of no avail. White hath not returned, nor shall I, nor shall any man. Tell me, hast not felt that, with all thy power, thou and these people are foredoomed?” But as he received no answer, Marlowe became resigned to the taciturnity of his friend. After all these years he was forced to confess that even now, in what he believed to be the final parting, he could not touch his comrade’s depths, or even, touching them, elicit response save the look and intense voice that told him of Vytal’s friendship. “Nevertheless, there is but one man,” he resumed at length, as though to himself, “who of all merits your fear. I speak of—” He broke off suddenly. “Hark! what was that?”
They stood still, intently listening.
A low “Whist!” reached their ears from the adjacent woods.
“Foh!” exclaimed Christopher. “’Twas but the hissing of a snake.”
“Nay,” said Vytal, “wait!”
The words were no sooner spoken than the dusky figure of Manteo emerged from the forest, and the Indian approached them with noiseless step. “My brother, have a care. I waited that I might warn thee. Two men, lying concealed to the northward, curiously watch the ship at anchor. The one is Towaye, the other your countryman who named himself ‘Ralph Contempt!’”