CHAPTER XVII
“What we have done our heart-blood shall maintain.”
—Marlowe, in Edward the Second.
“Thy words are swords.”
—Marlowe, in Tamburlaine.
To those who, long afterwards, recalled the months and months that followed Governor White’s departure there was no clear, consecutive reminiscence in the mind’s eye. Only one or two vivid scenes, enacted in those anxious days, graved themselves on memory. All else was but a medley of hours and seasons, and even years, quick-changing, confused, monotonous yet varied, listless yet portentous and pregnant—the fœtus of the Future in the Present’s womb. Hope burned brightly, waned, flared again, flickered, and seemed to die. For even Hope cannot live by Hope alone forever; only grief is self-sustaining. And grief came to the colony of Roanoke. Pestilence, tempests and privations, famine, drought, and mortality, all conspired in turn against their one invincible enemy whose name is Courage.
A desperate, absorbing question haunted the faces of men, women, and children; a question first asked in words, next mutely from eye to eye, then not at all. When? when? The word holds all the meaning of existence, and the meaning is a question. Despair is the death of Hope; Resignation, the deep-cut grave. Yet from the grave a ghost returns to whisper, “Then.”
The ghost of Hope still haunted Roanoke Island.
Surely some day the resigned yet watchful eyes would see a sail to the eastward. First the settlers said “To-morrow,” then “Next month,” and at last, “Within a year John White will bring deliverance.”