H. F. Cary - "The Divine Comedy of Dante"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - "Dante's Inferno [Divine Comedy]"

William Shakespeare - "The Sonnets"

Sam Vaknin - "Terrorists and Freedom Fighters"

To Have and To Hold:

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




The pasty and sack disposed of, I turned in my seat and spoke to
Diccon: "I looked for Master Rolfe to-day. Have you heard aught
of him?"

"No," he answered. As he spoke, the door was opened and the
gaoler put in his head. "A messenger from Master Rolfe, captain."
He drew back, and the Indian Nantauquas entered the room.

Rolfe I had seen twice since the arrival of the George at
Jamestown, but the Indian had not been with him. The young chief
now came forward and touched the hand I held out to him. "My
brother will be here before the sun touches the tallest pine," he
announced in his grave, calm voice. "He asks Captain Percy to
deny himself to any other that may come. He wishes to see him
alone."

"I shall hardly be troubled with company," I said. "There's a
bear-baiting toward."

Nantauquas smiled. " My brother asked me to find a bear for
to-day. I bought one from the Paspaheghs for a piece of copper,
and took him to the ring below the fort."

"Where all the town will presently be gone," I said. "I wonder what
Rolfe did that for!"

Filling a cup with sack, I pushed it to the Indian across the table.
"You are little in the woods nowadays, Nantauquas."

His fine dark face clouded ever so slightly. "Opechancanough has
dreamt that I am Indian no longer. Singing birds have lied to him,
telling him that I love the white man, and hate my own color. He
calls me no more his brave, his brother Powhatan's dear son. I do
not sit by his council fire now, nor do I lead his war bands. When I
went last to his lodge and stood before him, his eyes burned me
like the coals the Monacans once closed my hands upon. He
would not speak to me."

"It would not fret me if he never spoke again," I said. "You have
been to the forest to-day?"

"Yes," he replied, glancing at the smear of leaf mould upon his
beaded moccasins. "Captain Percy's eyes are quick; he should have
been an Indian. I went to the Paspaheghs to take them the piece of
copper. I could tell Captain Percy a curious thing" -

"Well?" I demanded, as he paused.

"I went to the lodge of the werowance with the copper, and found
him not there. The old men declared that he had gone to the weirs
for fish, - he and ten of his braves. The old men lied. I had passed
the weirs of the Paspaheghs, and no man was there. I sat and
smoked before the lodge, and the maidens brought me chinquapin
cakes and pohickory; for Nantauquas is a prince and a welcome
guest to all save Opechancanough. The old men smoked, with their
eyes upon the ground, each seeing only the days when he was even
as Nantauquas. They never knew when a wife of the werowance,
turned child by pride, unfolded a doeskin and showed Nantauquas
a silver cup carved all over and set with colored stones."

"Humph!"

"The cup was a heavy price to pay," continued the Indian. "I do not
know what great thing it bought."

"Humph!" I said again. "Did you happen to meet Master Edward
Sharpless in the forest?"

He shook his head. "The forest is wide, and there are many trails
through it. Nantauquas looked for that of the werowance of the
Paspaheghs, but found it not. He had no time to waste upon a
white man."

He gathered his otterskin mantle about him and prepared to depart.
I rose and gave him my hand, for I thoroughly liked him, and in the
past he had made me his debtor. "Tell Rolfe he will find me
alone," I said, "and take my thanks for your pains, Nantauquas. If
ever we hunt together again, may I have the chance to serve you! I
bear the scars of the wolf's teeth yet; you came in the nick of time,
that day."

The Indian smiled. "It was a fierce old wolf. I wish Captain Percy
free with all my heart, and then we will hunt more wolves, he and
I."

When he was gone, and the gaoler and Diccon with him, I returned
to the window. The runaway in the pillory was released, and went
away homewards, staggering beside his master's stirrup. Passers-by
grew more and more infrequent, and up the street came faint
sounds of laughter and hurrahing, - the bear must be making good
sport. I could see the half-moon, and the guns, and the flag that
streamed in the wind, and on the river a sail or two, white in the
sunlight as the gulls that swooped past. Beyond rose the bare masts
of the George. The Santa Teresa rode no more forever in the
James. The King's ship was gone home to the King without the
freight he looked for. Three days, and the George would spread her
white wings and go down the wide river, and I with her, and the
King's ward, and the King's sometime favorite. I looked down the
wind-ruffled stream, and saw the great bay into which it emptied,
and beyond the bay the heaving ocean, dark and light, league on
league, league on league; then green England, and London, and the
Tower. The vision disturbed me less than once it would have done.
Men that I knew and trusted were to be passengers on that ship, as
well as one I knew and did not trust. And if, at the journey's end, I
saw the Tower, I saw also his Grace of Buckingham. Where I
hated he hated, and was now powerful enough to strike.

The wind blew from the west, from the unknown. I turned my
head, and it beat against my forehead, cold and fragrant with the
essence of the forest, - pine and cedar, dead leaves and black
mould, fen and hollow and hill, - all the world of woods over
which it had passed. The ghost of things long dead, which face or
voice could never conjure up, will sometimes start across our path
at the beckoning of an odor. A day in the Starving Time came back
to me: how I had dragged myself from our broken palisade and
crazy huts, and the groans of the famished and the plague-stricken,
and the presence of the unburied dead, across the neck and into the
woods, and had lain down there to die, being taken with a sick fear
and horror of the place of cannibals behind me; and how weak I
was! - too weak to care any more. I had been a strong man, and it
had come to that, and I was content to let it be. The smell of the
woods that day, the chill brown earth beneath me, the blowing
wind, the long stretch of the river gleaming between the pines, . . .
and fair in sight the white sails of the Patience and the
Deliverance.

I had been too nigh gone then to greatly care that I was saved; now
I cared, and thanked God for my life. Come what might in the
future, the past was mine. Though I should never see my wife
again, I had that hour in the state cabin of the George. I loved, and
was loved again.

There was a noise outside the door, and Rolfe's voice speaking to
the gaoler. Impatient for his entrance I started toward the door, but
when it opened he made no move to cross the threshold. "I am not
coming in," he said, with a face that he strove to keep grave. "I
only came to bring some one else." With that he stepped back, and
a second figure, coming forward out of the dimness behind him,
crossed the threshold. It was a woman, cloaked and hooded. The
door was drawn to behind her, and we were alone together.

Beside the cloak and hood she wore a riding mask. "Do you know
who it is?" she asked, when she had stood, so shrouded, for a long
minute, during which I had found no words with which to
welcome her.

"Yea," I answered: "the princess in the fairy tale."

She freed her dark hair from its covering, and unclasping her cloak
let it drop to the floor. "Shall I unmask?" she asked, with a sigh.
"Faith! I should keep the bit of silk between your eyes, sir, and my
blushes. Am I ever to be the forward one? Do you not think me too
bold a lady?" As she spoke, her white hands were busy about the
fastening of her mask. "The knot is too hard," she murmured, with
a little tremulous laugh and a catch of her breath.

I untied the ribbons.

"May I not sit down?" she said plaintively, but with soft merriment
in her eyes. "I am not quite strong yet. My heart - you do not know
what pain I have in my heart sometimes. It makes me weep of
nights and when none are by, indeed it does!"

There was a settle beneath the window. I led her to it, and she sat
down.

"You must know that I am walking in the Governor's garden, that
hath only a lane between it and the gaol." Her eyes were downcast,
her cheeks pure rose.

"When did you first love me?" I demanded.

"Lady Wyatt must have guessed why Master Rolfe alone went not
to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air
was keen, and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors
to embroider Samson in the arms of Delilah.'

"Was it here at Jamestown, or was it when we were first wrecked,
or on the island with the pink hill when you wrote my name in the
sand, or" -

"The George will sail in three days, and we are to be taken back to
England after all. It does not scare me now."

"In all my life I have kissed you only once," I said.

The rose deepened, and in her eyes there was laughter, with tears
behind. "You are a gentleman of determination," she said. "If you
are bent upon having your way, I do not know that I - that I - can
help myself. I do not even know that I want to help myself."

Outside the wind blew and the sun shone, and the laughter from
below the fort was too far away and elfin to jar upon us. The world
forgot us, and we were well content. There seemed not much to
say: I suppose we were too happy for words. I knelt beside her, and
she laid her hands in mine, and now and then we spoke. In her
short and lonely life, and in my longer stern and crowded one,
there had been little tenderness, little happiness. In her past, to
those about her, she had seemed bright and gay; I had been a
comrade whom men liked because I could jest as well as fight.
Now we were happy, but we were not gay. Each felt for the other a
great compassion; each knew that though we smiled to-day, the
groan and the tear might be to-morrow's due; the sunshine around
us was pure gold, but that the clouds were mounting we knew full
well.

"I must soon be gone," she said at last. "It is a stolen meeting. I do
not know when we shall meet again."

She rose from the settle, and I rose with her, and we stood together
beside the barred window. There was no danger of her being seen;
street and square were left to the wind and the sunshine. My arm
was around her, and she leaned her head against my breast.
"Perhaps we shall never meet again," she said.

"The winter is over," I answered. "Soon the trees will be green and
the flowers in bloom. I will not believe that our spring can have no
summer."

She took from her bosom a little flower that had been pinned
there. It lay, a purple star, in the hollow of her hand. "It grew in the
sun. It is the first flower of spring." She put it to her lips, then laid
it upon the window ledge beside my hand. "I have brought you evil
gifts, - foes and strife and peril. Will you take this little purple
flower - and all my heart beside?"

I bent and kissed first the tiny blossom, and then the lips that had
proffered it. "I am very rich," I said.

The sun was now low, and the pines in the square and the upright
of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the
sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the
creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went
past the window. "The snow is gone," I said. "The snowbirds are
flying north."

"The woods will soon be green," she murmured wistfully. "Ah, if
we could ride through them once more, back to Weyanoke" -

"To home," I said.

"Home," she echoed softly.

There was a low knocking at the door behind us. "It is Master
Rolfe's signal," she said. "I must not stay. Tell me that you love
me, and let me go."

I drew her closer to me and pressed my lips upon her bowed head.
"Do you not know that I love you?" I asked.

"Yea," she answered. "I have been taught it. Tell me that you
believe that God will be good to us. Tell me that we shall be happy
yet; for oh, I have a boding heart this day!"

Her voice broke, and she lay trembling in my arms, her face
hidden. "If the summer never comes for us" - she whispered.
"Good-by, my lover and my husband. If I have brought you ruin
and death, I have brought you, too, a love that is very great.
Forgive me and kiss me, and let me go."

"Thou art my dearly loved and honored wife," I said. "My heart
forebodes summer, and joy, and peace, and home."

We kissed each other solemnly, as those who part for a journey
and a warfare. I spoke no word to Rolfe when the door was opened
and she had passed out with her cloak drawn about her face, but
we clasped hands, and each knew the other for his friend indeed.
They were gone, the gaoler closing and locking the door behind
them. As for me, I went back to the settle beneath the window,
and, falling on my knees beside it, buried my face in my arms.



CHAPTER XXIX IN WHICH I KEEP TRYST


THE sun dropped below the forest, blood red, dyeing the river its
own color. There were no clouds in the sky, - only a great
suffusion of crimson climbing to the zenith; against it the woods
were as black as war paint. The color faded and the night set in, a
night of no wind and of numberless stars. On the hearth burned a
fire. I left the window and sat beside it, and in the hollows between
the red embers made pictures, as I used to make them when I was
a boy.

I sat there long. It grew late, and all sounds in the town were
hushed; only now and then the "All's well!" of the watch came
faintly to my ears. Diccon lodged with me; he lay in his clothes
upon a pallet in the far corner of the room, but whether he slept or
not I did not ask. He and I had never wasted words; since chance
had thrown us together again we spoke only when occasion
required.

The fire was nigh out, and it must have been ten of the clock when,
with somewhat more of caution and less of noise than usual, the
key grated in the lock; the door opened, and the gaoler entered,
closing it noiselessly behind him. There was no reason why he
should intrude himself upon me after nightfall, and I regarded him
with a frown and an impatience that presently turned to curiosity.

He began to move about the room, making pretense of seeing that
there was water in the pitcher beside my pallet, that the straw
beneath the coverlet was fresh, that the bars of the window were
firm, and ended by approaching the fire and heaping pine upon it.
It flamed up brilliantly, and in the strong red light he half opened a
clenched hand and showed me two gold pieces, and beneath them
a folded paper. I looked at his furtive eyes and brutal, doltish face,
but he kept them blank as a wall. The hand closed again over the
treasure within it, and he turned away as if to leave the room. I
drew a noble - one of a small store of gold pieces conveyed to me
by Rolfe - from my pocket, and stooping made it spin upon the
hearth in the red firelight. The gaoler looked at it askance, but
continued his progress toward the door. I drew out its fellow, set it
too to spinning, then leaned back against the table. "They hunt in
couples," I said. "There will be no third one."

He had his foot upon them before they had done spinning. The
next moment they had kissed the two pieces already in his
possession, and he had transferred all four to his pocket. I held out
my hand for the paper, and he gave it to me grudgingly, with a
spiteful slowness of movement. He would have stayed beside me
as I read it, but I sternly bade him keep his distance; then kneeling
before the fire to get the light, I opened the paper. It was written
upon in a delicate, woman's hand, and it ran thus: -

An you hold me dear, come to me at once. Come without tarrying
to the deserted hut on the neck of land, nearest to the forest. As
you love me, as you are my knight, keep this tryst.

In distress and peril,
THY WIFE.

Folded with it was a line in the commander's hand and with his
signature: "The bearer may pass without the palisade at his
pleasure."

I read the first paper again, refolded it, and rose to my feet. "Who
brought this, sirrah?" I demanded.

His answer was glib enough: "One of the governor's servants. He
said as how there was no harm in the letter, and the gold was
good."

"When was this?"

"Just now. No, I did n't know the man."

I saw no way to discover whether or not he lied. Drawing out
another gold piece, I laid it upon the table. He eyed it greedily,
edging nearer and nearer.

"For leaving this door unlocked," I said.

His eyes narrowed and he moistened his lips, shifting from one
foot to the other.

I put down a second piece. "For opening the outer door," I said.

He wet his lips again, made an inarticulate sound in his throat, and
finally broke out with, "The commander will nail my ears to the
pillory."

"You can lock the doors after me, and know as little as you choose
in the morning. No gain without some risk."

"That's so," he agreed, and made a clutch at the gold.

I swept it out of his reach. "First earn it," I said dryly. "Look at the
foot of the pillory an hour from now and you'll find it. I'll not pay
you this side of the doors."

He bit his lips and studied the floor. "You're a gentleman," he
growled at last. "I suppose I can trust ye."

"I suppose you can."

Taking up his lantern he turned toward the door. "It 's growing
late," he said, with a most uncouth attempt to feign a guileless
drowsiness. "I'll to bed, captain, when I've locked up. Good-night
to ye!"

He was gone, and the door was left unlocked. I could walk out of
that gaol as I could have walked out of my house at Weyanoke. I
was free, but should I take my freedom? Going back to the light of
the fire I unfolded the paper and stared at it, turning its contents
this way and that in my mind. The hand - but once had I seen her
writing, and then it had been wrought with a shell upon firm sand.
I could not judge if this were the same. Had the paper indeed come
from her? Had it not? If in truth it was a message from my wife,
what had befallen in a few hours since our parting? If it was a
forger's lie, what trap was set, what toils were laid? I walked up
and down, and tried to think it out. The strangeness of it all, the
choice of a lonely and distant hut for trysting place, that pass
coming from a sworn officer of the Company, certain things I had
heard that day . . . A trap . . . and to walk into it with my eyes open.
. . . An you hold me dear. As you are my knight, keep this tryst. In
distress and peril. . . .Come what might, there was a risk I could
not run.

I had no weapons to assume, no preparations to make. Gathering
up the gaoler's gold I started toward the door, opened it, and going
out would have closed it softly behind me but that a booted leg
thrust across the jamb prevented me. "I am going with you," said
Diccon in a guarded voice. "If you try to prevent me, I will rouse
the house." His head was thrown back in the old way; the old
daredevil look was upon his face. "I don't know why you are
going," he declared, "but there'll be danger, anyhow."

"To the best of my belief I am walking into a trap," I said.

"Then it will shut on two instead of one," he answered doggedly.

By this he was through the door, and there was no shadow of
turning on his dark, determined face. I knew my man, and wasted
no more words. Long ago it had grown to seem the thing most in
nature that the hour of danger should find us side by side.

When the door of the firelit room was shut, the gaol was in
darkness that might be felt. It was very still: the few other inmates
were fast asleep; the gaoler was somewhere out of sight, dreaming
with open eyes. We groped our way through the passage to the
stairs, noiselessly descended them, and found the outer door
unchained, unbarred, and slightly ajar.

When I had laid the gold beneath the pillory, we struck swiftly
across the square, being in fear lest the watch should come upon
us, and took the first lane that led toward the palisade. Beneath the
burning stars the town lay stark in sleep. So bright in the wintry air
were those far-away lights that the darkness below them was not
great. We could see the low houses, the shadowy pines, the naked
oaks, the sandy lane glimmering away to the river, star-strewn to
match the heavens. The air was cold, but exceedingly clear and
still. Now and then a dog barked, or wolves howled in the forest
across the river. We kept in the shadow of the houses and the trees,
and went with the swiftness, silence, and caution of Indians.

The last house we must pass before reaching the palisade was one
that Rolfe owned, and in which he lodged when business brought
him to Jamestown. It and some low outbuildings beyond it were as
dark as the cedars in which they were set, and as silent as the
grave. Rolfe and his Indian brother were sleeping there now, while
I stood without. Or did they sleep? Were they there at all? Might it
not have been Rolfe who had bribed the gaoler and procured the
pass from West? Might I not find him at that strange trysting
place? Might not all be well, after all? I was sorely tempted to
rouse that silent house and demand if its master were within. I did
it not. Servants were there, and noise would be made, and time that
might be more precious than life-blood was flying fast. I went on,
and Diccon with me.

There was a cabin built almost against the palisade, and here one
man was supposed to watch, whilst another slept. To-night we
found both asleep. I shook the younger to his feet, and heartily
cursed him for his negligence. He listened stupidly, and read as
stupidly, by the light of his lantern, the pass which I thrust beneath
his nose. Staggering to his feet, and drunk with his unlawful
slumber, he fumbled at the fastenings of the gate for full three
minutes before the ponderous wood finally swung open and
showed the road beyond. "It's all right," he muttered thickly. "The
commander's pass. Good-night, the three of ye!"

"Are you drunk or drugged?" I demanded. "There are only two. It's
not sleep that is the matter with you. What is it?"

He made no answer, but stood holding the gate open and blinking
at us with dull, unseeing eyes. Something ailed him besides sleep;
he may have been drugged, for aught I know. When we had gone
some yards from the gate, we heard him say again, in precisely the
same tone, "Good-night, the three of ye!" Then the gate creaked to,
and we heard the bars drawn across it.

Without the palisade was a space of waste land, marsh and thicket,
tapering to the narrow strip of sand and scrub joining the peninsula
to the forest, and here and there upon this waste ground rose a
mean house, dwelt in by the poorer sort. All were dark. We left
them behind, and found ourselves upon the neck, with the desolate
murmur of the river on either hand, and before us the deep
blackness of the forest. Suddenly Diccon stopped in his tracks and
turned his head. "I did hear something then," he muttered. "Look,
sir!"

The stars faintly lit the road that had been trodden hard and bare
by the feet of all who came and went. Down this road something
was coming toward us, something low and dark, that moved not
fast, and not slow, but with a measured and relentless pace. "A
panther!" said Diccon.

We watched the creature with more of curiosity than alarm. Unless
brought to bay, or hungry, or wantonly irritated, these great cats
were cowardly enough. It would hardly attack the two of us.
Nearer and nearer it came, showing no signs of anger and none of
fear, and paying no attention to the withered branch with which
Diccon tried to scare it off. When it was so close that we could see
the white of its breast it stopped, looking at us with large
unfaltering eyes, and slightly moving its tail to and fro.

"A tame panther!" ejaculated Diccon. "It must be the one
Nantauquas tamed, sir. He would have kept it somewhere near
Master Rolfe's house."

"And it heard us, and followed us through the gate," I said. "It was
the third the warder talked of."

We walked on, and the beast, addressing itself to motion, followed
at our heels. Now and then we looked back at it, but we feared it
not.

As for me, I had begun to think that a panther might be the least
formidable thing I should meet that night. By this I had scarcely
any hope - or fear - that I should find her at our journey's end. The
lonesome path that led only to the night-time forest, the deep and
dark river with its mournful voice, the hard, bright, pitiless stars,
the cold, the loneliness, the distance, - how should she be there?
And if not she, who then?

The hut to which I had been directed stood in an angle made by the
neck and the main bank of the river. On one side of it was the
water, on the other a deep wood. The place had an evil name, and
no man had lived there since the planter who had built it hanged
himself upon its threshold. The hut was ruinous: in the summer tall
weeds grew up around it, and venomous snakes harbored beneath
its rotted and broken floor; in the winter the snow whitened it, and
the wild fowl flew screaming in and out of the open door and the
windows that needed no barring. To-night the door was shut and
the windows in some way obscured. But the interstices between
the logs showed red; the hut was lighted within, and some one was
keeping tryst.

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