John Greenleaf Whittier - "The Complete Works of Whittier"

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To Have and To Hold:

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"Art so worn as that?" I exclaimed. "Put more heart into thy heels,
man!"

He straightened himself and strode on beside me. "I don't know
what came over me for a minute," he answered. "The wolves are
loud to-night. I hope they'll keep to their side of the water."

A stone's throw farther on, the stream curving to the west, we left
it, and found ourselves in a sparsely wooded glade, with a bare and
sandy soil beneath our feet, and above, in the western sky, a
crescent moon. Again Diccon lagged behind, and presently I heard
him groan in the darkness.

I wheeled. "Diccon!" I cried. "What is the matter?"

Before I could reach him he had sunk to his knees. When I put my
hand upon his arm and again demanded what ailed him, he tried to
laugh, then tried to swear, and ended with another groan. "The ball
did graze my arm," he said, "but it went on into my side. I'll just lie
here and die, and wish you well at Jamestown. When the red imps
come against you there, and you open fire on them, name a bullet
for me."



CHAPTER XXXV IN WHICH I COME TO THE GOVERNOR'S HOUSE


I LAID him down upon the earth, and, cutting away his doublet
and the shirt beneath, saw the wound, and knew that there was a
journey indeed that he would shortly make. "The world is turning
round," he muttered, "and the stars are falling thicker than the
hailstones yesterday. Go on, and I will stay behind, - I and the
wolves."

I took him in my arms and carried him back to the bank of the
stream, for I knew that he would want water until he died. My
head was bare, but he had worn his cap from the gaol at
Jamestown that night. I filled it with water and gave him to drink;
then washed the wound and did what I could to stanch the
bleeding. He turned from side to side, and presently his mind
began to wander, and he talked of the tobacco in the fields at
Weyanoke. Soon he was raving of old things, old camp fires and
night-time marches and wild skirmishes, perils by land and by sea;
then of dice and wine and women. Once he cried out that Dale had
bound him upon the wheel, and that his arms and legs were
broken, and the woods rang to his screams. Why, in that wakeful
forest, they were unheard, or why, if heard, they went unheeded,
God only knows.

The moon went down, and it was very cold. How black were the
shadows around us, what foes might steal from that darkness upon
us, it was not worth while to consider. I do not know what I
thought of on that night, or even that I thought at all. Between my
journeys for the water that he called for I sat beside the dying man
with my hand upon his breast, for he was quieter so. Now and then
I spoke to him, but he answered not.

Hours before we had heard the howling of wolves, and knew that
some ravenous pack was abroad. With the setting of the moon the
noise had ceased, and I thought that the brutes had pulled down the
deer they hunted, or else had gone with their hunger and their
dismal voices out of earshot. Suddenly the howling recommenced,
at first faint and far away, then nearer and nearer yet. Earlier in the
evening the stream had been between us, but now the wolves had
crossed and were coming down our side of the water, and were
coming fast.

All the ground was strewn with dead wood, and near by was a
growth of low and brittle bushes. I gathered the withered branches,
and broke fagots from the bushes; then into the press of dark and
stealthy forms I threw a great crooked stick, shouting as I did so,
and threatening with my arms. They turned and fled, but presently
they were back again. Again I frightened them away, and again
they returned. I had flint and steel and tinder box; when I had
scared them from us a third time, and they had gone only a little
way, I lit a splinter of pine, and with it fired my heap of wood;
then dragged Diccon into the light and sat down beside him, with
no longer any fear of the wolves, but with absolute confidence in
the quick appearance of less cowardly foes. There was wood
enough and to spare; when the fire sank low and the hungry eyes
gleamed nearer, I fed it again, and the flame leaped up and
mocked the eyes.

No human enemy came upon us. The fire blazed and roared, and
the man who lay in its rosy glare raved on, crying out now and then
at the top of his voice; but on that night of all nights, of all years,
light and voice drew no savage band to put out the one and silence
the other forever.

Hours passed, and as it drew toward midnight Diccon sank into a
stupor. I knew that the end was not far away. The wolves were
gone at last, and my fire was dying down. He needed my touch
upon his breast no longer, and I went to the stream and bathed my
hands and forehead, and then threw myself face downward upon
the bank. In a little while the desolate murmur of the water became
intolerable, and I rose and went back to the fire, and to the man
whom, as God lives, I loved as a brother.

He was conscious. Pale and cold and nigh gone as he was, there
came a light to his eyes and a smile to his lips when I knelt beside
him. "You did not go?" he breathed.

"No," I answered, "I did not go."

For a few minutes he lay with closed eyes; when he again opened
them upon my face, there were in their depths a question and an
appeal. I bent over him, and asked him what he would have.

"You know," he whispered. "If you can . . . I would not go without
it."

"Is it that?" I asked. "I forgave you long ago."

"I meant to kill you. I was mad because you struck me before the
lady, and because I had betrayed my trust. An you had not caught
my hand, I should be your murderer." He spoke with long intervals
between the words, and the death dew was on his forehead.

"Remember it not, Diccon," I entreated. "I too was to blame. And I
see not that night for other nights, - for other nights and days,
Diccon."

He smiled, but there was still in his face a shadowy eagerness.
"You said you would never strike me again," he went on, "and that
I was man of yours no more forever - and you gave me my
freedom in the paper which I tore." He spoke in gasps, with his
eyes upon mine. "I'll be gone in a few minutes now. If I might go
as your man still, and could tell the Lord Jesus Christ that my
master on earth forgave, and took back, it would be a hand in the
dark. I have spent my life in gathering darkness for myself at the
last."

I bent lower over him, and took his hand in mine. "Diccon, my
man," I said.

A brightness came into his face, and he faintly pressed my hand. I
slipped my arm beneath him and raised him a little higher to meet
his death. He was smiling now, and his mind was not quite clear.
"Do you mind, sir," he asked, "how green and strong and sweet
smelled the pines that May day, when we found Virginia, so many
years ago?"

"Ay, Diccon," I answered. "Before we saw the land, the fragance
told us we were near it."

"I smell it now," he went on, "and the bloom of the grape, and the
May-time flowers. And can you not hear, sir, the whistling and the
laughter and the sound of the falling trees, that merry time when
Smith made axemen of all our fine gentlemen?"

"Ay, Diccon," I said. "And the sound of the water that was dashed
down the sleeve of any that were caught in an oath."

He laughed like a little child. "It is well that I was n't a gentleman,
and had not those trees to fell, or I should have been as wet as any
merman. . . . And Pocahontas, the little maid . . . and how blue the
sky was, and how glad we were what time the Patience and
Deliverance came in!"

His voice failed, and for a minute I thought he was gone; but he
had been a strong man, and life slipped not easily from him. When
his eyes opened again he knew me not, but thought he was in some
tavern, and struck with his hand upon the ground as upon a table,
and called for the drawer.

Around him were only the stillness and the shadows of the night,
but to his vision men sat and drank with him, diced and swore and
told wild tales of this or that. For a time he talked loudly and at
random of the vile quality of the drink, and his viler luck at the
dice; then he began to tell a story. As he told it, his senses seemed
to steady, and he spoke with coherence and like a shadow of
himself.

"And you call that a great thing, William Host?" he demanded. "I
can tell a true tale worth two such lies, my masters. (Robin tapster,
more ale! And move less like a slug, or my tankard and your ear
will cry, 'Well met!') It was between Ypres and Courtrai, friends,
and it's nigh fifteen years ago. There were fields in which nothing
was sowed because they were ploughed with the hoofs of war
horses, and ditches in which dead men were thrown, and dismal
marshes, and roads that were no roads at all, but only sloughs. And
there was a great stone house, old and ruinous, with tall poplars
shivering in the rain and mist. Into this house there threw
themselves a band of Dutch and English, and hard on their heels
came two hundred Spaniards. All day they besieged that house, -
smoke and flame and thunder and shouting and the crash of
masonry, - and when eventide was come we, the Dutch and the
English, thought that Death was not an hour behind."

He paused, and made a gesture of raising a tankard to his lips. His
eyes were bright, his voice was firm. The memory of that old day
and its mortal strife had wrought upon him like wine.

"There was one amongst us," he said, "he was our captain, and it's
of him I am going to tell the story. Robin tapster, bring me no
more ale, but good mulled wine! It's cold and getting dark, and I
have to drink to a brave man besides" -

With the old bold laugh in his eyes, he raised himself, for the
moment as strong as I that held him. "Drink to that Englishman, all
of ye!" he cried, "and not in filthy ale, but in good, gentlemanly
sack! I'll pay the score. Here's to him, brave hearts! Here's to my
master!"

With his hand at his mouth, and his story untold, he fell back. I
held him in my arms until the brief struggle was over, and then
laid his body down upon the earth.

It might have been one of the clock. For a little while I sat beside
him, with my head bowed in my hands. Then I straightened his
limbs and crossed his hands upon his breast, and kissed him upon
the brow, and left him lying dead in the forest.

It was hard going through the blackness of the night-time woods.
Once I was nigh sucked under in a great swamp, and once I
stumbled into some hole or pit in the earth, and for a time thought
that I had broken my leg. The night was very dark, and sometimes
when I could not see the stars, I lost my way, and went to the right
or the left, or even back upon my track. Though I heard the
wolves, they did not come nigh me. Just before daybreak, I
crouched behind a log, and watched a party of savages file past
like shadows of the night.

At last the dawn came, and I could press on more rapidly. For two
days and two nights I had not slept; for a day and a night I had not
tasted food. As the sun climbed the heavens, a thousand black
spots, like summer gnats, danced between his face and my weary
eyes. The forest laid stumbling-blocks before me, and drove me
back, and made me wind in and out when I would have had my
path straighter than an arrow. When the ground allowed I ran;
when I must break my way, panting, through undergrowth so dense
and stubborn that it seemed some enchanted thicket, where each
twig snapped but to be on the instant stiff in place again, I broke it
with what patience I might; when I must turn aside for this or that
obstacle I made the detour, though my heart cried out at the
necessity. Once I saw reason to believe that two or more Indians
were upon my trail, and lost time in outwitting them; and once I
must go a mile out of my way to avoid an Indian village.

As the day wore on, I began to go as in a dream. It had come to
seem the gigantic wood of some fantastic tale through which I was
traveling. The fallen trees ranged themselves into an abatis hard to
surmount; the thickets withstood one like iron; the streamlets were
like rivers, the marshes leagues wide, the treetops miles away.
Little things, twisted roots, trailing vines, dead and rotten wood,
made me stumble. A wind was blowing that had blown just so
since time began, and the forest was filled with the sound of the
sea.

Afternoon came, and the shadows began to lengthen. They were
lines of black paint spilt in a thousand places, and stealing swiftly
and surely across the brightness of the land. Torn and bleeding and
breathless, I hastened on; for it was drawing toward night, and I
should have been at Jamestown hours before. My head pained me,
and as I ran I saw men and women stealing in and out among the
trees before me: Pocahontas with her wistful eyes and braided hair
and finger on her lips; Nantauquas; Dale, the knight-marshal, and
Argall with his fierce, unscrupulous face; my cousin George Percy,
and my mother with her stately figure, her embroidery in her
hands. I knew that they were but phantoms of my brain, but their
presence confused and troubled me.

The shadows ran together, and the sunshine died out of the forest.
Stumbling on, I saw through the thinning trees a long gleam of red,
and thought it was blood, but presently knew that it was the river,
crimson from the sunset. A minute more and I stood upon the
shore of the mighty stream, between the two brightnesses of flood
and heavens. There was a silver crescent in the sky with one white
star above it, and fair in sight, down the James, with lights
springing up through the twilight, was the town, - the English town
that we had built and named for our King, and had held in the teeth
of Spain, in the teeth of the wilderness and its terrors. It was not a
mile away; a little longer, - a little longer and I could rest, with my
tidings told.

The dusk had quite fallen when I reached the neck of land. The hut
to which I had been enticed that night stood dark and ghastly, with
its door swinging in the wind. I ran past it and across the neck,
and, arriving at the palisade, beat upon the gate with my hands,
and called to the warder to open. When I had told him my name
and tidings, he did so, with shaking knees and starting eyes.
Cautioning him to raise no alarm in the town, I hurried by him into
the street, and down it toward the house that was set aside for the
Governor of Virginia. I should find there now, not Yeardley, but
Sir Francis Wyatt.

The torches were lighted, and the folk were indoors, for the night
was cold. One or two figures that I met or passed would have
accosted me, not knowing who I was, but I brushed by them, and
hastened on. Only when I passed the guest house I looked up, and
saw that mine host's chief rooms were yet in use.

The Governor's door was open, and in the hall servingmen were
moving to and fro. When I came in upon them, they cried out as it
had been a ghost, and one fellow let a silver dish that he carried
fall clattering to the floor. They shook and stood back, as I passed
them without a word, and went on to the Governor's great room.
The door was ajar, and I pushed it open and stood for a minute
upon the threshold, unobserved by the occupants of the room.

After the darkness outside the lights dazzled me; the room, too,
seemed crowded with men, though when I counted them there
were not so many, after all. Supper had been put upon the table,
but they were not eating. Before the fire, his head thoughtfully
bent, and his fingers tapping upon the arm of his chair, sat the
Governor; over against him, and as serious of aspect, was the
Treasurer. West stood by the mantel, tugging at his long mustaches
and softly swearing. Clayborne was in the room, Piersey the Cape
Merchant, and one or two besides. And Rolfe was there, walking
up and down with hasty steps, and a flushed and haggard face. His
suit of buff was torn and stained, and his great-boots were
spattered with mud.

The Governor let his fingers rest upon the arm of his chair, and
raised his head.

"He is dead, Master Rolfe," he said. "There can be no other
conclusion, - a brave man lost to you and to the colony. We mourn
with you, sir."

"We too have searched, Jack," put in West. "We have not been
idle, though well-nigh all men believe that the Indians, who we
know had a grudge against him, murdered him and his man that
night, then threw their bodies into the river, and themselves made
off out of our reach. But we hoped against hope that when your
party returned he would be in your midst."

"As for this latest loss," continued the Governor, "within an hour
of its discovery this morning search parties were out; yea, if I had
allowed it, the whole town would have betaken itself to the woods.
The searchers have not returned, and we are gravely anxious. Yet
we are not utterly cast down. This trail can hardly be missed, and
the Indians are friendly. There were a number in town overnight,
and they went with the searchers, volunteering to act as their
guides. We cannot but think that of this load, our hearts will soon
be eased."

"God grant it!" groaned Rolfe. "I will drink but a cup of wine, sir,
and then will be gone upon this new quest."

There was a movement in the room. "You are worn and spent with
your fruitless travel, sir," said the Governor kindly. "I give you my
word that all that can be done is doing. Wait at least for the
morning, and the good news it may bring."

The other shook his head. "I will go now. I could not look my
friend in the face else - God in heaven!"

The Governor sprang to his feet; through the Treasurer's lips came
a long, sighing breath; West's dark face was ashen. I came forward
to the table, and leaned my weight upon it; for all the waves of the
sea were roaring in my ears, and the lights were going up and
down.

"Are you man or spirit?" cried Rolfe through white lips. "Are you
Ralph Percy?"

"Yes, I am Percy," I said. "I have not well understood what quest
you would go upon, Rolfe, but you cannot go to-night. And those
parties that your Honor talked of, that have gone with Indians to
guide them to look for some lost person, - I think that you will
never see them again."

With an effort I drew myself erect, and standing so told my tidings,
quietly and with circumstance, so as to leave no room for doubt as
to their verity, or as to the sanity of him who brought them. They
listened, as the warder had listened, with shaking limbs and
gasping breath; for this was the fall and wiping out of a people of
which I brought warning.

When all was told, and they stood there before me, white and
shaken, seeking in their minds the thing to say or do first, I thought
to ask a question myself; but before my tongue could frame it, the
roaring of the sea became so loud that I could hear naught else,
and the lights all ran together into a wheel of fire. Then in a
moment all sounds ceased, and to the lights succeeded the
blackness of outer darkness.



CHAPTER XXXVI IN WHICH I HEAR ILL NEWS


WHEN I awoke from the sleep or stupor into which I must have
passed from that swoon, it was to find myself lying upon a bed in a
room flooded with sunshine. I was alone. For a moment I lay still,
staring at the blue sky without the window, and wondering where I
was and how I came there. A drum beat, a dog barked, and a man's
quick voice gave a command. The sounds stung me into
remembrance, and I was at the window while the voice was yet
speaking.

It was West in the street below, pointing with his sword now to the
fort, now to the palisade, and giving directions to the armed men
about him. There were many people in the street. Women hurried
by to the fort with white, scared faces, their arms filled with
household gear; children ran beside them, sturdily bearing their
share of the goods, but pressing close to their elders' skirts; men
went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few talking loudly.
Not all of the faces in the crowd belonged to the town: there were
Kingsmell and his wife from the main, and John Ellison from
Archer's Hope, and the Italians Vincencio and Bernardo from the
Glass House. The nearer plantations, then, had been warned, and
their people had come for refuge to the city. A negro passed, but
on that morning, alone of many days, no Indian aired his paint and
feathers in the white man's village.

I could not see the palisade across the neck, but I knew that it was
there that the fight - if fight there were - would be made. Should
the Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the
town, and, last of all, the fort in which to make a stand. I believed
not that they would take it. Long since we had found out their
method of warfare. They used ambuscade, surprise, and massacre;
when withstood in force and with determination they withdrew to
their stronghold the forest, there to bide their time until, in the
blackness of some night, they could again swoop down upon a
sleeping foe.

The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came
down the street at a run. "They're in the woods over against us,
thicker than ants!" he cried to West as he passed. "A boat has just
drifted ashore yonder, with two men in it, dead and scalped!"

I turned to leave the room, and ran against Master Pory coming in
on tiptoe, with a red and solemn face. He started when he saw me.

"The roll of the drum brought you to your feet, then!" he cried.
"You've lain like the dead all night. I came but to see if you were
breathing."

"When I have eaten, I shall be myself again," I said. "There's no
attack as yet?"

"No," he answered. "They must know that we are prepared. But
they have kindled fires along the river bank, and we can hear them
yelling. Whether they'll be mad enough to come against us remains
to be seen."

"The nearest settlements have been warned?"

"Ay. The Governor offered a thousand pounds of tobacco and the
perpetual esteem of the Company to the man or men who would
carry the news. Six volunteered, and went off in boats, three up
river, three down. How many they reached, or if they still have
their scalps, we know not. And awhile ago, just before daybreak,
comes with frantic haste Richard Pace, who had rowed up from
Pace's Pains to tell the news which you had already brought.
Chanco the Christian had betrayed the plot to him, and he
managed to give warning at Powel's and one or two other places as
he came up the river."

He broke off, but when I would have spoken interrupted me with:
"And so you were on the Pamunkey all this while! Then the
Paspaheghs fooled us with the simple truth, for they swore so
stoutly that their absent chief men were but gone on a hunt toward
the Pamunkey that we had no choice but to believe them gone in
quite another direction. And one and all of every tribe we
questioned swore that Opechancanough was at Orapax. So Master
Rolfe puts off up river to find, if not you, then the Emperor, and
make him give up your murderers; and the Governor sends a party
along the bay, and West another up the Chickahominy. And there
you were, all the time, mewed up in the village above the marshes!
And Nantauquas, after saving our lives like one of us, is turned
Indian again! And your man is killed! Alackaday! there's naught
but trouble in the world. 'As the sparks fly upwards,' you know.
But a brave man draws his breath and sets his teeth."

In his manner, his rapid talk, his uneasy glances toward the door, I
found something forced and strange. "I thought Rolfe was behind
me," he said, "but he must have been delayed. There are meat and
drink set out in the great room, where the Governor and those of
the Council who are safe here with us are advising together. Let's
descend; you've not eaten, and the good sack will give you
strength. Wilt come?"

"Ay," I answered, "but tell me the news as we go. I have been gone
ten days, - faith, it seems ten years! There have no ships sailed,
Master Pory? The George is still here?" I looked him full in the
eye, for a sudden guess at a possible reason for his confusion had
stabbed me like a knife.

"Ay," he said, with a readiness that could scarce be feigned. "She
was to have sailed this week, it is true, the Governor fearing to
keep her longer. But the Esperance, coming in yesterday, brought
news which removed his Honor's scruples. Now she'll wait to see
out this hand at the cards, and to take home the names of those
who are left alive in Virginia. If the red varlets do swarm in upon
us, there are her twelve-pounders; they and the fort guns" -

I let him talk on. The George had not sailed. I saw again a firelit
hut, and a man and a panther who went down together. Those
claws had dug deep; the man across whose face they had torn their
way would keep his room in the guest house at Jamestown until
his wounds were somewhat healed. The George would wait for
him, would scarcely dare to sail without him, and I should find the
lady whom she was to carry away to England in Virginia still. It
was this that I had built upon, the grain of comfort, the passionate
hope, the sustaining cordial, of those year-long days in the village
above the Pamunkey.

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