She looked at him questioningly, with a kind concern, believing him again bereft of reason. “Because I predict the donning of my hose? Is it, then, so easy to be a prophetess?” She picked up a pair of red stockings and wound them about her fingers.
“Consider that the premonition an you will,” he replied, knowingly. “’Tis perhaps as fruitful.” He seemed to delight for the moment in propounding, by voice and look, an enigma. But in the next instant he meandered on after his usual manner, with flattery and idle jests.
In the evening, Gyll, meeting Marlowe in the town, pronounced Master Ralph Contempt hopelessly insane. “Or,” she added, “a knavish actor, who demands more sympathy than he merits, for he heard me say ‘poor boy’ when we thought him lifeless in a swoon. But he is a ‘poor boy’ for a’ that. Think of the tortures!”
Following this, three days went by without incident, and still Hugh Rouse and Roger Prat, stationed at the southern end of the island as outposts, gave no warning.
Vytal changed. His taciturnity, which had increased of late, was broken more often as the danger became imminent. His impassive face, in which only Marlowe could read the quietude of self-restraint, grew eager with the anticipation of an actual, tangible conflict between right and wrong. Here was a condition all-absorbing, and, above all, a condition the soldier could meet face to face with comprehension. He could cope with this, at least. The spirit of action, always ready to assert itself in him, but sometimes of necessity repressed, finally had become paramount again, once more to resume full sway. His step became lighter, his deep blue eyes less cold, and many, noting the alteration, wondered, only the veteran soldiers and the poet dimly understanding their leader’s change.
“My brother, they approach.” It was the Indian who, having again reconnoitred, vouchsafed this information on the fourth day after the advent of Ralph Contempt.
Late in the evening, Vytal started homeward to seek Marlowe. The night was dark and still, as though Fate, with finger to lips, had set a seal of silence on the world, which the distant surf and a slow rainfall on the sea of leaves intensified monotonously. But a new sound suddenly broke the stillness. A cry, a single cry—plaintive, feeble, and unutterably doleful—then a silence even deeper than before. Vytal, pausing near the palisade, looked up at the dwelling of John White. A rabbit, startled by the sound of the cry, darted across his pathway into the woods. An owl, high above him, answered the voice with a wailing screech. A deer, that had been watching his approach beyond the gate, ran away timidly through the forest. He remembered all this long afterward—the white flash of the rabbit, the owl’s response, the rustling of leaves as the deer withdrew.
He waited. Again the cry, louder, but none the less pitiful and lonely. The muscles of his face grew tense, the veins big like whipcords. He turned, as though to lean against the paling, but then, as with a strenuous effort, refused even that support, and stood motionless like stone.
And now, as a side door directly before him opened, a flood of light fell across the pathway from within. It shone in a pool of rain at his feet, and played about his drawn face with profane curiosity. Ananias Dare stood in the doorway looking at him. But suddenly the assistant lurched back, and, snatching a silver cup from the table behind him, brought it out, with reeling, splashing footsteps, to Vytal.
“Drink,” he mumbled, thickly. “Drink, good my captain, to the health of my first-born child! A toast, sir, to my daughter—a deep toast, a very deep toast—to the first English child—the first, mark you—is it not a great honor?—the first English child born in America—world-wide America!” He stood, all unheedful of the rain, bareheaded and half dressed, swaying as though at any minute he might fall to the wet ground.