Clarence B Kelland - "Youth Challenges"

Nicolay Gogol - "The Inspector General"

Homer - "Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica"

Percy Bysshe Shelley - "The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I"

To Have and To Hold:

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




My heart was sore because of Diccon; but I could speak of that
grief to her, and she would grieve with me. There were awe and
dread and stern sorrow in the knowledge that even now in the
bright spring morning blood from a hundred homes might be
flowing to meet the shining, careless river; but it was the
springtime, and she was waiting for me. I strode on toward the
stairway so fast that when I asked a question Master Pory, at my
side, was too out of breath to answer it. Halfway down the stairs I
asked it again, and again received no answer save a "Zooks! you go
too fast for my years and having in flesh! Go more slowly, Ralph
Percy; there's time enough, there's time enough!"

There was a tone in his voice that I liked not, for it savored of pity.
I looked at him with knitted brows; but we were now in the hall,
and through the open door of the great room I caught a glimpse of
a woman's skirt. There were men in the hall, servants and
messengers, who made way for us, staring at me as they did so,
and whispering. I knew that my clothing was torn and muddied
and stained with blood; as we paused at the door there came to me
in a flash that day in the courting meadow when I had tried with
my dagger to scrape the dried mud from my boots. I laughed at
myself for caring now, and for thinking that she would care that I
was not dressed for a lady's bower. The next moment we were in
the great room.

She was not there. The silken skirt that I had seen, and - there
being but one woman in all the world for me - had taken for hers,
belonged to Lady Wyatt, who, pale and terrified, was sitting with
clasped hands, mutely following with her eyes her husband as he
walked to and fro. West had come in from the street and was
making some report. Around the table were gathered two or three
of the Council; Master Sandys stood at a window, Rolfe beside
Lady Wyatt's chair. The room was filled with sunshine, and a
caged bird was singing, singing. It made the only sound there when
they saw that I stood amongst them.

When I had made my bow to Lady Wyatt and to the Governor, and
had clasped hands with Rolfe, I began to find in the silence, as I
had found in Master Pory's loquaciousness, something strange.
They looked at me uneasily, and I caught a swift glance from the
Treasurer to Master Pory, and an answering shake of the latter's
head. Rolfe was very white and his lips were set; West was pulling
at his mustaches and staring at the floor.

"With all our hearts we welcome you back to life and to the
service of Virginia, Captain Percy," said the Governor, when the
silence had become awkward.

A murmur of assent went round the room.

I bowed. "I thank you, sir, and these gentlemen very heartily. You
have but to command me now. I find that I have to-day the best
will in the world toward fighting. I trust that your Honor does not
deem it necessary to send me back to gaol?"

"Virginia has no gaol for Captain Percy," he answered gravely.
"She has only grateful thanks and fullest sympathy."

I glanced at him keenly. "Then I hold myself at your command, sir,
when I shall have seen and spoken with my wife."

He looked at the floor, and they one and all held their peace.

"Madam," I said to Lady Wyatt, "I have been watching your
ladyship's face. Will you tell me why it is so very full of pity, and
why there are tears in your eyes?"

She shrank back in her chair with a little cry, and Rolfe stepped
toward me, then turned sharply aside. "I cannot!" he cried, " I that
know" -

I drew myself up to meet the blow, whatever it might be. "I
demand of you my wife, Sir Francis Wyatt," I said. "If there is ill
news to be told, be so good as to tell it quickly. If she is sick, or
hath been sent away to England" -

The Governor made as if to speak, then turned and flung out his
hands to his wife. " 'T is woman's work, Margaret!" he cried. "Tell
him!"

More merciful than the men, she came to me at once, the tears
running down her cheeks, and laid one trembling hand upon my
arm. "She was a brave lady, Captain Percy," she said. "Bear it as
she would have had you bear it."

"I am bearing it, madam," I answered at length. " 'She was a brave
lady.' May it please your ladyship to go on?"

"I will tell you all, Captain Percy; I will tell you everything. . . .
She never believed you dead, and she begged upon her knees that
we would allow her to go in search of you with Master Rolfe. That
could not be; my husband, in duty to the Company, could not let
her have her will. Master Rolfe went, and she sat in the window,
yonder, day after day, watching for his return. When other parties
went out, she besought the men, as they had wives whom they
loved, to search as though those loved ones were in captivity and
danger; when they grew weary and fainthearted, to think of her
face waiting in the window. . . . Day after day she sat there
watching for them to come back; when they were come, then she
watched the river for Master Rolfe's boats. Then came word down
the river that he had found no trace of you whom he sought, that
he was on his way back to Jamestown, that he too believed you
dead. . . . We put a watch upon her after that, for we feared we
knew not what, there was such a light and purpose in her eyes. But
two nights ago, in the middle of the night, the woman who stayed
in her chamber fell asleep. When she awoke before the dawn, it
was to find her gone."

"To find her gone?" I said dully. "To find her dead?"

She locked her hands together and the tears came faster. "Oh,
Captain Percy, it had been better so! - it had been better so! Then
would she have lain to greet you, calm and white, unmarred and
beautiful, with the spring flowers upon her. . . . She believed not
that you were dead; she was distraught with grief and watching;
she thought that love might find what friendship missed; she went
to the forest to seek you. They that were sent to find and bring her
back have never returned" -

"Into the forest!" I cried. "Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn, come back!"

Some one pushed me into a chair, and I felt the warmth of wine
within my lips. In the moment that the world steadied I rose and
went toward the door to find my way barred by Rolfe.

"Not you, too, Ralph!" he cried. "I will not let you go. Look for
yourself!"

He drew me to the window, Master Sandys gravely making place
for us. From the window was visible the neck of land and the
forest beyond, and from the forest, up and down the river as far as
the eye could reach, rose here and there thin columns of smoke.
Suddenly, as we stared, three or four white smoke puffs, like giant
flowers, started out of the shadowy woods across the neck.
Following the crack of the muskets - fired out of pure bravado by
their Indian owners - came the yelling of the savages. The sound
was prolonged and deep, as though issuing from many throats.

I looked and listened, and knew that I could not go, - not now.

"She was not alone, Ralph," said Rolfe, with his arm about me.
"On the morning that she was missed, they found not Jeremy
Sparrow either. They tracked them both to the forest by the
footprints upon the sand, though once in the wood the trail was
lost. The minister must have been watching, must have seen her
leave the house, and must have followed her. How she, and he
after her, passed through the gates, none know. So careless and
confident had we grown - God forgive us! - that they may have
been left open all that night. But he was with her, Ralph; she had
not to face it alone" - His voice broke.

For myself, I was glad that the minister had been there, though I
knew that for him also I should grieve after a while.

At the firing and the shouting West had rushed from the room,
followed by his fellow Councilors, and now the Governor clapped
on his headpiece and called to his men to bring his
back-and-breast. His wife hung around his neck, and he bade her
good-by with great tenderness. I looked dully on at that parting. I
too was going to battle. Once I had tasted such a farewell, the pain,
the passion, the sweetness, but never again, - never again.

He went, and the Treasurer, after a few words of comfort to Lady
Wyatt, was gone also. Both were merciful, and spoke not to me,
but only bowed and turned aside, requiring no answering word or
motion of mine. When they were away, and there was no sound in
the room save the caged bird's singing and Lady Wyatt's low sobs, I
begged Rolfe to leave me, telling him that he was needed, as
indeed he was, and that I would stay in the window for a while,
and then would join him at the palisade. He was loath to go; but he
too had loved and lost, and knew that there is nothing to be said,
and that it is best to be alone. He went, and only Lady Wyatt and I
kept the quiet room with the singing bird and the sunshine on the
floor.

I leaned against the window and looked out into the street, - which
was not crowded now, for the men were all at their several posts, -
and at the budding trees, and at the smoke of many fires going up
from the forest to the sky, from a world of hate and pain and woe
to the heaven where she dwelt, and then I turned and went to the
table, where had been set bread and meat and wine.

At the sound of my footstep Lady Wyatt uncovered her face. "Is
there aught that I can do for you, sir?" she asked timidly.

"I have not broken my fast for many hours, madam," I answered. "I
would eat and drink, that I may not be found wanting in strength.
There is a thing that I have yet to do."

Rising from her chair, she brushed away her tears, and coming to
the table with a little housewifely eagerness would not let me wait
upon myself, but carved and poured for me, and then sat down
opposite me and covered her eyes with her hand.

"I think that the Governor is quite safe, madam," I said. "I do not
believe that the Indians will take the palisade. It may even be that,
knowing we are prepared, they will not attack at all. Indeed, I
think that you may be easy about him."

She thanked me with a smile. "It is all so strange and dreadful to
me, sir," she said. "At my home, in England, it was like a Sunday
morning all the year round, - all stillness and peace; no terror, no
alarm. I fear that I am not yet a good Virginian."

When I had eaten, and had drunk the wine she gave me, I rose, and
asked her if I might not see her safe within the fort before I joined
her husband at the palisade. She shook her head, and told me that
there were with her faithful servants, and that if the savages broke
in upon the town she would have warning in time to flee, the fort
being so close at hand. When I thereupon begged her leave to
depart, she first curtsied to me, and then, again with tears, came to
me and took my hand in hers. "I know that there is naught that I
can say. . . . Your wife loved you, sir, with all her heart." She drew
something from the bosom of her gown. "Would you like this? It is
a knot of ribbon that she wore. They found it caught in a bush at
the edge of the forest."

I took the ribbon from her and put it to my lips, then unknotted it
and tied it around my arm; and then, wearing my wife's colors, I
went softly out into the street, and turned my face toward the guest
house and the man whom I meant to kill.



CHAPTER XXXVII IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PART COMPANY


THE door of the guest house stood wide, and within the lower
room were neither men that drank nor men that gave to drink. Host
and drawers and chance guests alike had left pipe and tankard for
sword and musket, and were gone to fort or palisade or river bank.

I crossed the empty room and went up the creaking stairway. No
one met me or withstood me; only a pigeon perched upon the sill
of a sunny window whirred off into the blue. I glanced out of the
window as I passed it, and saw the silver river and the George and
the Esperance, with the gunners at the guns watching for Indian
canoes, and saw smoke rising from the forest on the southern
shore. There had been three houses there, - John West's and
Minifie's and Crashaw's. I wondered if mine were burning, too, at
Weyanoke, and cared not if 't was so.

The door of the upper room was shut. When I raised the latch and
pushed against it, it gave at the top and middle, but there was some
pressure from within at the bottom. I pushed again, more strongly,
and the door slowly opened, moving away whatever thing had lain
before it. Another moment, and I was in the room, and had closed
and barred the door behind me.

The weight that had opposed me was the body of the Italian, lying
face downwards, upon the floor. I stooped and turned it over, and
saw that the venomous spirit had flown. The face was purple and
distorted; the lips were drawn back from the teeth in a dreadful
smile. There was in the room a faint, peculiar, not unpleasant odor.
It did not seem strange to me to find that serpent, which had coiled
in my path, dead and harmless for evermore. Death had been busy
of late; if he struck down the flower, why should he spare the thing
that I pushed out of my way with my foot?

Ten feet from the door stood a great screen, hiding from view all
that might be beyond. It was very quiet in the room, with the
sunshine coming through the window, and a breeze that smelt of
the sea. I had not cared to walk lightly or to close the door softly,
and yet no voice had challenged my entrance. For a minute I feared
to find the dead physician the room's only occupant; then I passed
the screen and came upon my enemy.

He was sitting beside a table, with his arms outstretched and his
head bowed upon them. My footfall did not rouse him; he sat there
in the sunshine as still as the figure that lay before the threshold. I
thought with a dull fury that maybe he was dead already, and I
walked hastily and heavily across the floor to the table. He was a
living man, for with the fingers of one hand he was slowly striking
against a sheet of paper that lay beneath them. He knew not that I
stood above him; he was listening to other footsteps.

The paper was a letter, unfolded and written over with great black
characters. The few lines above those moving fingers stared me in
the face. They ran thus: "I told you that you had as well cut your
throat as go upon that mad Virginia voyage. Now all's gone, -
wealth, honors, favor. Buckingham is the sun in heaven, and cold
are the shadows in which we walk who hailed another luminary.
There's a warrant out for the Black Death; look to it that one meets
not you too, when you come at last. But come, in the name of all
the fiends, and play your last card. There's your cursed beauty still.
Come, and let the King behold your face once more" - The rest
was hidden.

I put out my hand and touched him upon the shoulder, and he
raised his head and stared at me as at one come from the grave.

Over one side of his face, from temple to chin, was drawn and
fastened a black cloth; the unharmed cheek was bloodless and
shrunken, the lip twisted. Only the eyes, dark, sinister, and
splendid, were as they had been. "I dig not my graves deep
enough," he said. "Is she behind you there in the shadow?"

Flung across a chair was a cloak of scarlet cloth. I took it and
spread it out upon the floor, then unsheathed a dagger which I had
taken from the rack of weapons in the Governor's hall. "Loosen thy
poniard, thou murderer," I cried, "and come stand with me upon
the cloak."

"Art quick or dead?" he answered. "I will not fight the dead." He
had not moved in his seat, and there was a lethargy and a dullness
in his voice and eyes. "There is time enough," he said. "I too will
soon be of thy world, thou haggard, bloody shape. Wait until I
come, and I will fight thee, shadow to shadow."

"I am not dead," I said, "but there is one that is. Stand up, villain
and murderer, or I will kill you sitting there, with her blood upon
your hands!"

He rose at that, and drew his dagger from the sheath. I laid aside
my doublet, and he followed my example, but his hands moved
listlessly and his fingers bungled at the fastenings. I waited for him
in some wonder, it not being like him to come tardily to such
pastime.

He came at length, slowly and with an uncertain step, and we
stood together on the scarlet cloak. I raised my left arm and he
raised his, and we locked hands. There was no strength in his
clasp; his hand lay within mine cold and languid. "Art ready?" I
demanded.

"Yea," he answered in a strange voice, "but I would that she did
not stand there with her head upon your breast. . . . I too loved
thee, Jocelyn, - Jocelyn lying dead in the forest!"

I struck at him with the dagger in my right hand, and wounded
him, but not deeply, in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his
poniard scarce drew blood, so nerveless was the arm that would
have driven it home. I struck again, and he stabbed weakly at the
air, then let his arm drop to his side, as though the light and
jeweled blade had weighed it down.

Loosening the clasp of our left hands, I fell back until the narrow
scarlet field was between us. "Hast no more strength than that?" I
cried. "I cannot murder you!"

He stood looking past me as into a great distance. He was
bleeding, but I had as yet been able to strike no mortal blow. "It is
as you choose," he said. "I am as one bound before you. I am sick
unto death."

Turning, he went back, swaying as he walked, to his chair, and
sinking into it sat there a minute with half-closed eyes; then raised
his head and looked at me, with a shadow of the old arrogance,
pride, and disdain upon his scarred face. "Not yet, captain?" he
demanded. "To the heart, man! So I would strike an you sat here
and I stood there."

"I know you would," I said, and going to the window I flung the
dagger down into the empty street; then stood and watched the
smoke across the river, and thought it strange that the sun shone
and the birds sang.

When I turned to the room again, he still sat there in the great
chair, a tragic, splendid figure, with his ruined face and the sullen
woe of his eyes. "I had sworn to kill you," I said. "It is not just that
you should live."

He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless
lips. "Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy," he said. "Within a week I shall
be gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead
upon the floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had
Nicolo whom men called the Black Death, - poisons swift and
strong, or subtle and slow. Day and night, the earth and sunshine
have become hateful to me. I will go to the fires of hell, and see if
they can make me forget, - can make me forget the face of a
woman." He was speaking half to me, half to himself. "Her eyes
are dark and large," he said, "and there are shadows beneath them,
and the mark of tears. She stands there day and night with her eyes
upon me. Her lips are parted, but she never speaks. There was a
way that she had with her hands, holding them one within the
other, thus" -

I stopped him with a cry for silence, and I leaned trembling
against the table. "Thou wretch!" I cried. "Thou art her murderer!"

He raised his head and looked beyond me with that strange, faint
smile. "I know," he replied, with the dignity which was his at
times. "You may play the headsman, if you choose. I dispute not
your right. But it is scarce worth while. I have taken poison."

The sunshine came into the room, and the wind from the river, and
the trumpet notes of swans flying to the north. "The George is
ready for sailing," he said at last. "To-morrow or the next day she
will be going home with the tidings of this massacre. I shall go
with her, and within a week they will bury me at sea. There is a
stealthy, slow, and secret poison. . . . I would not die in a land
where I have lost every throw of the dice, and I would not die in
England for Buckingham to come and look upon my face, and so I
took that poison. For the man upon the floor, there, - prison and
death awaited him at home. He chose to flee at once."

He ceased to speak, and sat with his head bowed upon his breast.
"If you are content that it should be as it is," he said at length,
"perhaps you will leave me? I am not good company to-day."

His hand was busy again with the letter upon the table, and his
gaze was fixed beyond me. "I have lost," he muttered. "How I
came to play my cards so badly I do not know. The stake was
heavy, - I have not wherewithal to play again."

His head sank upon his outstretched arm. As for me, I stood a
minute with set lips and clenched hands, and then I turned and
went out of the room and down the stair and out into the street. In
the dust beneath the window lay my dagger. I picked it up,
sheathed it, and went my way.
ILLUSTRATION

The street was very quiet. All windows and doors were closed and
barred; not a soul was there to trouble me with look or speech. The
yelling from the forest had ceased; only the keen wind blew, and
brought from the Esperance upon the river a sound of singing. The
sea was the home of the men upon her decks, and their hearts
dwelt not in this port; they could sing while the smoke went up
from our homes and the dead lay across the thresholds.

I went on through the sunshine and the stillness to the minister's
house. The trees in the garden were bare, the flowers dead. The
door was not barred. I entered the house and went into the great
room and flung the heavy shutters wide, then stood and looked
about me. Naught was changed; it was as we had left it that wild
November night. Even the mirror which, one other night, had
shown me Diccon still hung upon the wall. Master Bucke had been
seldom at home, perhaps, or was feeble and careless of altering
matters. All was as though we had been but an hour gone, save that
no fire burned upon the hearth.

I went to the table, and the books upon it were Jeremy Sparrow's:
the minister's house, then, had been his home once more. Beside
the books lay a packet, tied with silk, sealed, and addressed to me.
Perhaps the Governor had given it, the day before, into Master
Bucke's care, - I do not know; at any rate, there it lay. I looked at
the "By the Esperance" upon the cover, and wondered dully who at
home would care to write to me; then broke the seal and untied the
silk. Within the cover there was a letter with the superscription,
"To a Gentleman who has served me well."

I read the letter through to the signature, which was that of his
Grace of Buckingham, and then I laughed, who had never thought
to laugh again, and threw the paper down. It mattered naught to me
now that George Villiers should be grateful, or that James Stewart
could deny a favorite nothing. "The King graciously sanctions the
marriage of his sometime ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh, with
Captain Ralph Percy; invites them home" -

She was gone home, and I her husband, I who loved her, was left
behind. How many years of pilgrimage . . . how long, how long, O
Lord?

The minister's great armchair was drawn before the cold and
blackened hearth. How often she had sat there within its dark
clasp, the firelight on her dress, her hands, her face! She had been
fair to look upon; the pride, the daring, the willfulness, were but
the thorns about the rose; behind those defenses was the flower,
pure and lovely, with a heart of gold. I flung myself down beside
the chair, and, putting my arms across it, hid my face upon them,
and could weep at last.

That passion spent itself, and I lay with my face against the wood
and well-nigh slept. The battle was done; the field was lost; the
storm and stress of life had sunk into this dull calm, as still as
peace, as hopeless as the charred log and white ash upon the
hearth, cold, never to be quickened again.

Time passed, and at length I raised my head, roused suddenly to
the consciousness that for a while there had been no stillness. The
air was full of sound, shouts, savage cries, the beating of a drum,
the noise of musketry. I sprang to my feet, and went to the door to
meet Rolfe crossing the threshold.

He put his arm within mine and drew me out into the sunshine
upon the doorstep. "I thought I should find you here," he said; "but
it is only a room with its memories, Ralph. Out here is more
breadth, more height. There is country yet, Ralph, and after a
while, friends. The Indians are beginning to attack in force.
Humphry Boyse is killed, and Morris Chaloner. There is smoke
over the plantations up and down the river, as far as we can see,
and awhile ago the body of a child drifted down to us."

"I am unarmed," I said. "I will but run to the fort for sword and
musket" -

"No need," he answered. "There are the dead whom you may rob."
The noise increasing as he spoke, we made no further tarrying, but,
leaving behind us house and garden, hurried to the palisade.



CHAPTER XXXVIII IN WHICH I GO UPON A QUEST


THROUGH a loophole in the gate of the palisade I looked, and
saw the sandy neck joining the town to the main, and the deep and
dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to a host.
Between us and that refuge dead men lay here and there, stiff and
stark, with the black paint upon them, and the colored feathers of
their headdresses red or blue against the sand. One warrior, shot
through the back, crawled like a wounded beetle to the forest. We
let him go, for we cared not to waste ammunition upon him.

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