She came over to the table, and with a laugh showered the white fragments down upon it, then fell to idly piecing them together. “What were you writing?” she asked. “ ‘To all whom it may concern: I, Ralph Percy, Gentleman, of the Hundred of Weyanoke, do hereby set free from all service to me and mine——’ ”
I took from her the bits of paper, and fed the fire with them. “Paper is but paper,” I said. “It is easily rent. Happily a man’s will is more durable.”
CHAPTER XVII
In which my Lord and I Play at Bowls
THE Governor had brought with him from London, the year before, a set of boxwood bowls, and had made, between his house and the fort, a noble green. The generality must still use for the game that portion of the street that was not tobacco planted; but the quality flocked to the Governor’s green, and here, one holiday afternoon, a fortnight or more from the day in which I had drunk to the King from my lord’s silver goblet, was gathered a very great company. The Governor’s match was toward,—ten men to a side, a hogshead of sweet-scented to the victorious ten, and a keg of canary to the man whose bowl should hit the jack.
The season had been one of unusual mildness, and the sunshine was still warm and bright, gilding the velvet of the green, and making the red and yellow leaves swept into the trench to glow like a ribbon of flame. The sky was blue, the water bluer still, the leaves bright-coloured, the wind blowing; only the enshrouding forest, wrapped in haze, seemed as dim, unreal, and far away as a last year’s dream.
The Governor’s gilt armchair had been brought from the church, and put for him upon the bank of turf at the upper end of the green. By his side sat my Lady Temperance, while the gaily dressed dames and the men who were to play and to watch were accommodated with stools and settles or with seats on the green grass. All were dressed in holiday clothes, all tongues spoke, all eyes laughed; you might have thought there was not a heavy heart amongst them. Rolfe was there, gravely courteous, quiet and ready; and by his side, in otterskin mantle, beaded moccasins, and feathered headdress, the Indian chief, his brother-in-law,—the bravest, comeliest, and manliest savage with whom I have ever dealt. There, too, was Master Pory, red and jovial, with an eye to the sack the servants were bringing from the Governor’s house; and the commander, with his wife; and Master Jeremy Sparrow, fresh from a most moving sermon on the vanities of this world. Captains, Councillors, and Burgesses aired their gold lace, and their wit or their lack of it; while a swarm of younger adventurers, youths of good blood and bad living, come from home for the weal of England and the woe of Virginia, went here and there through the crowd like gilded summer flies.
Rolfe and I were to play; he sat on the grass at the feet of Mistress Jocelyn Percy, making her now and then some courtly speech, and I stood beside her, my hand on the back of her chair.
The King’s ward held court as though she were a kings daughter. In the brightness of her beauty she sat there, as gracious for the nonce as the sunshine, and as much of another world. All knew her story, and to the daring that is in men’s hearts her own daring appealed,—and she was young and very beautiful. Some there had not been my friends, and now rejoiced in what seemed my inevitable ruin; some whom I had thought my friends were gone over to the stronger side; many who in secret wished me well still shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders over what they were pleased to call my madness; but for her, I was glad to know, there were only good words. The Governor had left his gilt armchair to welcome her to the green, and had caused a chair to be set for her near his own, and here men came and bowed before her as if she had been a princess indeed.
A stir amongst the crowd, a murmur, and a craning of necks heralded the approach of that other at whom the town gaped with admiration. He came with his retinue of attendants, his pomp of dress, his arrogance of port, his splendid beauty. Men looked from the beauty of the King’s ward to the beauty of the King’s minion, from her costly silk to his velvet and miniver, from the air of the court that became her well to the towering pride and insolence which to the thoughtless seemed his fortune’s proper mantle, and deemed them a pair well suited, and the King’s will indeed the will of Heaven.
I was never one to value a man by his outward seeming, but suddenly I saw myself as in a mirror,—a soldier, scarred and bronzed, acquainted with the camp, but not with the court, roughened by a rude life, poor in this world’s goods, the first flush of youth gone for ever. For a moment my heart was bitter within me. The pang passed, and my hand tightened its grasp upon the chair in which sat the woman I had wed. She was my wife, and I would keep my own.