An hour later the cressets of the fortress armory cast their glare across many grave and apprehensive faces whose concern was heightened by an enforced silence.
“Say nothing of Mistress Dare; he will consider it his duty to go in search of her, and must not.” The words were Marlowe’s.
Out in the hallway, Governor White, pale and haggard, was giving orders to a small company of soldiers, who, though worn out with fatigue, were re-arming themselves as though for a second combat. “To the south! O my good men, hasten! We must pursue. Even now, perchance, we are too late. But stay … Who comes? … No … there is no need … Ah, my daughter Eleanor, you are here!”
Thus, at the very moment of the governor’s out-starting, which, to his despair, had been so long delayed by the battle, Eleanor returned.
“My father!” Her eyes were moist with tears, her hands caressed him, but even now she could not wait. The armory’s door stood open. “Virginia, little Virginia,” she said in the old, half-mechanical way, yet still very anxiously.
“She is asleep and well.”
“And—” But she could not voice the question of her heart.
The governor smiled in his kindly, unknowing way. “Yes; Ananias, too, is safe. Yet a terrible battle hath been fought.”
She stood for an instant mute and motionless, the dread anguish of uncertainty in her eyes. Then she hurried into the armory.
Here the first sight that met her searching glance was her child sleeping in Margery Harvie’s arms. She bent over and kissed it on the forehead—once; then turned to a group of men who stood in a corner encircling a central, recumbent figure that was resting on a bare settle of oak.