“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.