D.H. Lawrence - "Women in Love"

Giovanni Boccaccio - "The Decameron, Volume I"

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - "Yesterdays"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "The Complete Works of Whittier"

To Have and To Hold:

M >> Mary Johnston >> To Have and To Hold:




The Governor stopped short, the smile still upon his lips, his hand
still outstretched, - stood thus for a moment, then sat down.
Around the half circle of gentlemen went a little rustling sound,
like wind in dead leaves. My lord half rose from his seat. "She is
bewitched," he said, with dry lips. "She will say what she has been
told to say. Lest she speak to her shame, we should refuse to hear
her."

She had been standing in the centre of the floor, her hands clasped,
her body bowed toward the Governor, but at my lord's words she
straightened like a bow unbent. "I may speak, your Honor?" she
asked clearly.

The Governor, who had looked askance at the working face of the
man beside him, slightly bent his head and leaned back in his
great armchair. The King's favorite started to his feet. The King's
ward turned her eyes upon him. "Sit down, my lord," she said.
"Surely these gentlemen will think that you are afraid of what I, a
poor erring woman, rebellious to the King, traitress to mine own
honor, late the plaything of a pirate ship, may say or do. Truth, my
lord, should be more courageous." Her voice was gentle, even
plaintive, but it had in it the quality that lurks in the eyes of the
crouching panther.

My lord sat down, one hand hiding his working mouth, the other
clenched on the arm of his chair as if it had been an arm of flesh.



CHAPTER XXVII IN WHICH I FIND AN ADVOCATE


SHE came slowly nearer the ring of now very quiet and attentive
faces until she stood beside me, but she neither looked at me nor
spoke to me. She was thinner and there were heavy shadows
beneath her eyes, but she was beautiful.

"I stand before gentlemen to whom, perhaps, I am not utterly
unknown," she said. "Some here, perchance, have been to court,
and have seen me there. Master Sandys, once, before the Queen
died, you came to Greenwich to kiss her Majesty's hands; and
while you waited in her antechamber you saw a young maid of
honor - scarce more than a child - curled in a window seat with a
book. You sat beside her, and told her wonderful tales of sunny
lands and gods and nymphs. I was that maid of honor. Master
Clayborne, once, hawking near Windsor, I dropped my glove.
There were a many out of their saddles before it touched the
ground, but a gentleman, not of our party, who had drawn his horse
to one side to let us pass, was quicker than they all. Did you not
think yourself well paid, sir, when you kissed the hand to which
you restored the glove? All here, I think, may have heard my name.
If any hath heard aught that ever I did in all my life to tarnish it, I
pray him to speak now and shame me before you all!"

Clayborne started up. "I remember that day at Windsor, lady!" he
cried. "The man of whom I afterward asked your name was a most
libertine courtier, and he raised his hat when he spoke of you,
calling you a lily which the mire of the court could not besmirch. I
will believe all good, but no harm of you, lady!"

He sat down, and Master Sandys said gravely: "Men need not be
courtiers to have known of a lady of great wealth and high birth, a
ward of the King's, and both beautiful and pure. I nor no man else,
I think, ever heard aught of the Lady Jocelyn Leigh but what
became a daughter of her line."

A murmur of assent went round the circle. The Governor, leaning
forward from his seat, his wife's hand in his, gravely bent his head.
"All this is known, lady," he said courteously.

She did not answer; her eyes were upon the King's favorite, and the
circle waited with her.

"It is known," said my lord.

She smiled proudly. "For so much grace, thanks, my lord," she
said, then addressed herself again to the Governor: "Your Honor,
that is the past, the long past, the long, long past, though not a year
has gone by. Then I was a girl, proud and careless; now, your
Honor, I am a woman, and I stand here in the dignity of suffering
and peril. I fled from England" - She paused, drew herself up, and
turned upon my lord a face and form so still, and yet so expressive
of noble indignation, outraged womanhood, scorn, and withal a
kind of angry pity, that small wonder if he shrank as from a blow.
"I left the only world I knew," she said. "I took a way low and
narrow and dark and set with thorns, but the only way that I - alone
and helpless and bewildered - could find, because that I, Jocelyn
Leigh, willed not to wed with you, my Lord Carnal. Why did you
follow me, my lord? You knew that I loved you not. You knew my
mind, and that I was weak and friendless, and you used your
power. I must tell you, my lord, that you were not chivalrous, nor
compassionate, nor brave" -

"I loved you!" he cried, and stretched out his arm toward her across
the table. He saw no one but her, spoke to none but her. There was
a fierce yearning and a hopelessness in his voice and bent head and
outstretched arm that lent for the time a tragic dignity to the
pageant, evil and magnificent, of his life.

"You loved me," she said. "I had rather you had hated me, my lord.
I came to Virginia, your Honor, and men thought me the thing I
professed myself. In the green meadow beyond the church they
wooed me as such. This one came and that one, and at last a
fellow, when I said him nay and bade him begone, did dare to
seize my hands and kiss my lips. While I struggled one came and
flung that dastard out of the way, then asked me plainly to become
his wife, and there was no laugh or insult in his voice. I was
wearied and fordone and desperate. . . . So I met my husband, and
so I married him. That same day I told him a part of my secret, and
when my Lord Carnal was come I told him all. . . . I had not met
with much true love or courtesy or compassion in my life. When I
saw the danger in which he stood because of me, I told him he
might free himself from that coil, might swear to what they
pleased, whistle me off, save himself, and I would say no word of
blame. There was wine upon the table, and he filled a cup and
brought it to me, and we drank of it together. We drank of the
same cup then, your Honor, and we will drink of it still. We twain
were wedded, and the world strove to part us. Which of you here,
in such quarrel, would not withstand the world? Lady Wyatt,
would not thy husband hold thee, while he lived, against the
world? Then speak for mine!"

"Frank, Frank!" cried Lady Wyatt. "They love each other!"

"If he withstood the King," went on the King's ward, "it was for his
honor and for mine. If he fled from Virginia, it was because I
willed it so. Had he stayed, my Lord Carnal, and had you willed to
follow me again, you must have made a yet longer journey to a
most distant bourne. That wild night when we fled, why did you
come upon us, my lord? The moon burst forth from a black cloud,
and you stood there upon the wharf above us, calling to the
footsteps behind to hasten. We would have left you there in safety,
and gone ourselves alone down that stream as black and strange as
death. Why did you spring down the steps and grapple with the
minister? And he that might have thrust you beneath the flood and
drowned you there did but fling you into the boat. We wished not
your company, my lord; we would willingly have gone without
you. I trust, my lord, you have made honest report of this matter,
and have told these gentlemen that my husband gave you, a
prisoner whom he wanted not, all fair and honorable treatment.
That you have done this I dare take my oath, my lord" -

She stood silent, her eyes upon his. The men around stirred, and a
little flash like the glint of drawn steel went from one pair of eyes
to another.

"My lord, my lord!" said the King's ward. "Long ago you won my
hatred; an you would not win my contempt, speak truth this day!"

In his eyes, which he had never taken from her face, there leaped
to meet the proud appeal in her own a strange fire. That he loved
her with a great and evil passion, I, who needs had watched him
closely, had long known. Suddenly he burst into jarring laughter.
"Yea, he treated me fairly enough, damn him to everlasting hell!
But he 's a pirate, sweet bird; he's a pirate, and must swing as
such!"

"A pirate!" she cried. "But he was none! My lord, you know he was
none! Your Honor" -

The Governor interrupted her: "He made himself captain of a
pirate ship, lady. He took and sunk ships of Spain."

"In what sort did he become their chief?" she cried. "In such sort,
gentlemen, as the bravest of you, in like straits, would have been
blithe to be, an you had had like measure of wit and daring! Your
Honor, the wind before which our boat drave like a leaf, the waves
that would engulf us, wrecked us upon a desert isle. There was no
food or water or shelter. That night, while we slept, a pirate ship
anchored off the beach, and in the morning the pirates came ashore
to bury their captain. My husband met them alone, fought their
would-be leaders one by one, and forced the election to fall upon
himself. Well he knew that if he left not that isle their leader, he
would leave it their captive; and not he alone! God's mercy,
gentlemen, what other could he do? I pray you to hold him
absolved from a willing embrace of that life! Sunk ships of Spain!
Yea, forsooth; and how long hath it been since other English
gentlemen sunk other ships of Spain? The world hath changed
indeed if to fight the Spaniard in the Indies, e'en though at home
we be at peace with him, be conceived so black a crime! He fought
their galleons fair and knightly, with his life in his hand; he gave
quarter, and while they called him chief those pirates tortured no
prisoner and wronged no woman. Had he not been there, would the
ships have been taken less surely? Had he not been there, God wot,
ships and ships' boats alike would have sunk or burned, and no
Spanish men and women had rowed away and blessed a generous
foe. A pirate! He, with me and with the minister and with my Lord
Carnal, was prisoner to the pirates, and out of that danger he
plucked safety for us all! Who hath so misnamed a gallant
gentleman? Was it you, my lord?"

Eyes and voice were imperious, and in her cheeks burned an
indignant crimson. My lord's face was set and white; he looked at
her, but spoke no word.

"The Spanish ships might pass, lady," said the Governor; "but this
is an English ship, with the flag of England above her."

"Yea," she said. "What then?"

The circle rustled again. The Governor loosed his wife's fingers
and leaned forward. "You plead well, lady!" he exclaimed. "You
might win, an Captain Percy had not seen fit to fire upon us."

A dead silence followed his words. Outside the square window a
cloud passed from the face of the sun, and a great burst of sunshine
entered the cabin. She stood in the heart of it, and looked a
goddess angered. My lord, with his haggard face and burning eyes,
slowly rose from his seat, and they faced each other.

"You told them not who fired those guns, who sunk that pirate
ship?" she said. "Because he was your enemy, you held your
tongue? Knight and gentleman - my Lord Carnal - my Lord
Coward!"

"Honor is an empty word to me," he answered. "For you I would
dive into the deepest hell, - if there be a deeper than that which
burns me, day in, day out. . . . Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn!"

"You love me so?" she said. "Then do me pleasure. Because I ask
it of you, tell these men the truth." She came a step nearer, and
held out her clasped hands to him. "Tell them how it was, my lord,
and I will strive to hate you no longer. The harm that you have
done me I will pray for strength to forgive. Ah, my lord, let me not
ask in vain! Will you that I kneel to you?"

"I fix my own price," he said. "I will do what you ask, an you will
let me kiss your lips."

I sprang forward with an oath. Some one behind caught both my
wrists in an iron grasp and pulled me back. "Be not a fool!"
growled Clayborne in my ear. "The cord's loosening fast: if you
interfere, it may tighten with a jerk!" I freed my hands from his
grasp. The Treasurer, sitting next him, leaned across the table and
motioned to the two seamen beside the window. They left their
station, and each seized me by an arm. "Be guided, Captain Percy,"
said Master Sandys in a low voice. "We wish you well. Let her win
you through."

"First tell the truth, my lord," said the King's ward; "then come and
take the reward you ask."

"Jocelyn!" I cried. "I command you" -

She turned upon me a perfectly colorless face. "All my life after I
will be to you an obedient wife," she said. "This once I pray you to
hold me excused. . . . Speak, my lord."

There was the mirth of the lost in the laugh with which he turned
to the Governor. "That pretty little tale, sir, that I regaled you with,
the day you obligingly picked me up, was pure imagination; the
wetting must have disordered my reason. A potion sweeter than
the honey of Hybla, which I am about to drink, hath restored me
beforehand. Gentlemen all, there was mutiny aboard that ship
which so providentially sank before your very eyes. For why? The
crew, who were pirates, and the captain, who was yonder
gentleman, did not agree. The one wished to attack you, board you,
rummage you, and slay, after recondite fashions, every mother's
son of you; the other demurred, - so strongly, in fact, that his life
ceased to be worth a pin's purchase. Indeed, I believe he resigned
his captaincy then and there, and, declining to lift a finger against
an English ship, defied them to do their worst. He had no hand in
the firing of those culverins; the mutineers touched them off
without so much as a 'by your leave.' His attention was otherwise
occupied. Good sirs, there was not the slightest reason in nature
why the ship should have struck upon that sunken reef, to the
damnation of her people and the salvation of yours. Why do you
suppose she diverged from the path of safety to split into slivers
against that fortunate ledge?"

The men around drew in their breath, and one or two sprang to
their feet. My lord laughed again. "Have you seen the pious man
who left Jamestown and went aboard the pirate ship as this
gentleman's lieutenant? He hath the strength of a bull. Captain
Percy here had but to nod his head, and hey, presto! the helmsman
was bowled over, and the minister had the helm. The ship struck:
the pirates went to hell, and you, gentlemen, were preserved to
order all things well in Virginia. May she long be grateful! The
man who dared that death rather than attack the ship he guessed to
be the Company's is my mortal foe, whom I will yet sweep from
my path, but he is not a pirate. Ay, take it down, an it please you,
Master Secretary! I retreat from a most choice position, to be sure,
but what care I? I see a vantage ground more to my liking. I have
lost a throw, perhaps, but I will recoup ten such losses with one
such kiss. By your leave, lady."

He went up to her where she stood, with hanging arms, her head a
little bent, white and cold and yielding as a lady done in snow;
gazed at her a moment, with his passion written in his fierce eyes
and haggard, handsome face; then crushed her to him.

If I could have struck him dead, I would have done so. When her
word had been kept, she released herself with a quiet and resolute
dignity. As for him, he sank back into the great chair beside the
Governor's, leaned an elbow on the table, and hid his eyes with one
shaking hand.

The Governor rose to his feet, and motioned away the two seamen
who held me fast. "We'll have no hanging this morning,
gentlemen," he announced. "Captain Percy, I beg to apologize to
you for words that were never meant for a brave and gallant
gentleman, but for a pirate who I find does not exist. I pray you to
forget them, quite."

I returned his bow, but my eyes traveled past him.

"I will allow you no words with my Lord Carnal," he said. "With
your wife, - that is different." He moved aside with a smile.

She was standing, pale, with downcast eyes, where my lord had
left her. "Jocelyn," I said. She turned toward me, crimsoned
deeply, uttered a low cry, half laughter, half a sob, then covered
her face with her hands. I took them away and spoke her name
again, and this time she hid her face upon my breast.

A moment thus; then - for all eyes were upon her - I lifted her
head, kissed her , and gave her to Lady Wyatt, whom I found at my
side. "I commend my wife to your ladyship's care," I said. "As you
are woman, deal sisterly by her!"

"You may trust me, sir," she made answer, the tears upon her
cheeks. "I did not know, - I did not understand. . . .Dear heart,
come away, - come away with Margaret Wyatt."

Clayborne opened the door of the cabin, and stood aside with a
low bow. The men who had sat to judge me rose; only the King's
favorite kept his seat. With Lady Wyatt's arm about her, the King's
ward passed between the lines of standing gentlemen to the door,
there hesitated, turned, and, facing them with I know not what of
pride and shame, wistfulness of entreaty and noble challenge to
belief in the face and form that were of all women's most
beautiful, curtsied to them until her knee touched the floor. She
was gone, and the sunlight with her.

When I turned upon that shameless lord where he sat in his evil
beauty, with his honor dead before him, men came hastily in
between. I put them aside with a laugh. I had but wanted to look at
him. I had no sword, - already he lay beneath my challenge, - and
words are weak things.

At length he rose, as arrogant as ever in his port, as evilly superb in
his towering pride, and as amazingly indifferent to the thoughts of
men who lied not. "This case hath wearied me," he said. "I will
retire for a while to rest, and in dreams to live over a past
sweetness. Give you good-day, gentles! Sir Francis Wyatt, you will
remember that this gentleman did resist arrest, and that he lieth
under the King's displeasure!" So saying he clapped his hat upon
his head and walked out of the cabin. The Company's officers drew
a long breath, as if a fresher air had come in with his departure.

"I have no choice, Captain Percy, but to keep you still under
restraint, both here and when we shall reach Jamestown," said the
Governor. "All that the Company, through me, can do, consistent
with its duty to his Majesty, to lighten your confinement shall be
done" -

"Then send him not again into the hold, Sir Francis!" exclaimed
the Treasurer, with a wry face.

The Governor laughed. "Lighter and sweeter quarters shall be
found. Your wife's a brave lady, Captain Percy" -

"And a passing fair one," said Claybourne under his breath.

"I left a friend below in the hold, your Honor," I said. "He came
with me from Jamestown because he was my friend. The King
hath never heard of him. And he's no more a pirate than I or you,
your Honor. He is a minister, - a sober, meek, and godly man" -

From behind the Secretary rose the singsong of my acquaintance of
the hold, Dr. John Pott. "He is Jeremy, your Honor, Jeremy who
made the town merry at Blackfriars. Your Honor remembers him?
He had a sickness, and forsook the life and went into the country.
He was known to the Dean of St. Paul's. All the town laughed
when it heard that he had taken orders."

"Jeremy!" cried out the Treasurer. "Nick Bottom! Christopher Sly!
Sir Toby Belch! Sir Francis, give me Jeremy to keep in my cabin!"

The Governor laughed. "He shall be bestowed with Captain Percy
where he'll not lack for company, I warrant! Jeremy! Ben Jonson
loved him; they drank together at the Mermaid."

A little later the Treasurer turned to leave my new quarters, to
which he had walked beside me, glanced at the men who waited
for him without, - Jeremy had not yet been brought from the hold, -
and returned to my side to say, in a low voice, but with emphasis:
"Captain Percy has been a long time without news from home, -
from England. What would he most desire to hear?"

"Of the welfare of his Grace of Buckingham," I replied.

He smiled. "His Grace is as well as heart could desire, and as
powerful. The Queen's dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this
way or that, as it pleaseth him. Since we are not to hang you as a
pirate, Captain Percy, I incline to think your affairs in better
posture than when you left Virginia."

"I think so too, sir," I said, and gave him thanks for his courtesy,
and wished him good-day, being anxious to sit still and thank God,
with my face in my hands and summer in my heart.



CHAPTER XXVIII IN WHICH THE SPRINGTIME IS AT HAND


TIRED of dicing against myself, and of the books that Rolfe had
sent me, I betook myself to the gaol window, and, leaning against
the bars, looked out in search of entertainment. The nearest if not
the merriest thing the prospect had to offer was the pillory. It was
built so tall that it was but little lower than the low upper story of
the gaol, and it faced my window at so short a distance that I could
hear the long, whistling breath of the wretch who happened to
occupy it. It was not a pleasant sound; neither was a livid face,
new branded on the cheek with a great R, and with a trickle of
dark blood from the mutilated ears staining the board in which the
head was immovably fixed, a pleasant sight. A little to one side
was the whipping post: a woman had been whipped that morning,
and her cries had tainted the air even more effectually than had the
decayed matter with which certain small devils had pelted the
runaway in the pillory. I looked away from the poor rogue below
me into the clear, hard brightness of the March day, and was most
heartily weary of the bars between me and it. The wind blew
keenly; the sky was blue as blue could be, and the river a great
ribbon of azure sewn with diamonds. All colors were vivid and all
distances near. There was no haze over the forest; brown and bare
it struck the cloudless blue. The marsh was emerald, the green of
the pines deep and rich, the budding maples redder than coral. The
church, with the low green graves around it, appeared not a stone's
throw away, and the voices of the children up and down the street
sounded clearly, as though they played in the brown square below
me. When the drum beat for the nooning the roll was close in my
ears. The world looked so bright and keen that it seemed new
made, and the brilliant sunshine and the cold wind stirred the
blood like wine.

Now and then men and women passed through the square below.
Well-nigh all glanced up at the window, and their eyes were
friendly. It was known now that Buckingham was paramount at
home, and my Lord Carnal's following in Virginia was much
decayed. Young Hamor strode by, bravely dressed and whistling
cheerily, and doffed a hat with a most noble broken feather. "We're
going to bait a bear below the fort!" he called. "Sorry you'll miss
the sport! There will be all the world - and my Lord Carnal." He
whistled himself away, and presently there came along Master
Edward Sharpless. He stopped and stared at the rogue in the
pillory, - with no prescience, I suppose, of a day when he was to
stand there himself; then looked up at me with as much
malevolence as his small soul could write upon his mean features,
and passed on. He had a jaded look; moreover, his clothes were
swamp-stained and his cloak had been torn by briers. "What did
you go to the forest for?" I muttered.

The key grated in the door behind me, and it opened to admit the
gaoler and Diccon with my dinner, - which I was not sorry to see.
"Sir George sent the venison, sir," said the gaoler, grinning, "and
Master Piersey the wild fowl, and Madam West the pasty and the
marchpane, and Master Pory the sack. Be there anything you lack,
sir?"

"Nothing that you can supply," I answered curtly.

The fellow grinned again, straightened the things upon the table,
and started for the door. "You can stay until I come for the
platters," he said to Diccon, and went out, locking the door after
him with ostentation.

I applied myself to the dinner, and Diccon went to the window,
and stood there looking out at the blue sky and at the man in the
pillory. He had the freedom of the gaol. I was somewhat more
straitly confined, though my friends had easy access to me. As for
Jeremy Sparrow, he had spent twenty-four hours in gaol, at the end
of which time Madam West had a fit of the spleen, declared she
was dying, and insisted upon Master Sparrow's being sent for to
administer consolation; Master Bucke, unfortunately, having gone
up to Henricus on business connected with the college. From the
bedside of that despotic lady Sparrow was called to bury a man on
the other side of the river, and from the grave to marry a couple at
Mulberry Island. And the next day being Sunday, and no minister
at hand, he preached again in Master Bucke's pulpit, - and
preached a sermon so powerful and moving that its like had never
been heard in Virginia. They marched him not back from the
pulpit to gaol. There were but five ministers in Virginia, and there
were a many more sick to visit and dead to bury. Master Bucke,
still feeble in body, tarried up river discussing with Thorpe the
latter's darling project of converting every imp of an Indian this
side the South Sea, and Jeremy slipped into his old place. There
had been some talk of a public censure, but it died away.

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