Elizabeth Gaskell - "Sylvia's Lovers Vol. III"

Ethel Turner - "Seven Little Australians"

Joseph Conrad - "'Twixt Land & Sea"

G. A. Henty - "By Sheer Pluck"

To Have and To Hold:

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




Now and then ships came in, but they were small, belated craft.
The most had left England before the sailing of the Santa Teresa;
the rest, private ventures, trading for clapboard or sassafras, knew
nothing of court affairs. Only the Sea Flower, sailing from London
a fortnight after the Santa Teresa, and much delayed by adverse
winds, brought a letter from the deputy treasurer to Yeardley and
the Council. From Rolfe I learned its contents. It spoke of the stir
that was made by the departure from the realm of the King's
favorite. "None know where he hath gone. The King looks dour; 't
is hinted that the privy council are as much at sea as the rest of the
world; my Lord of Buckingham saith nothing, but his following -
which of late hath somewhat decayed - is so increased that his
antechambers cannot hold the throngs that come to wait upon
him. Some will have it that my Lord Carnal hath fled the kingdom
to escape the Tower; others, that the King hath sent him on a
mission to the King of Spain about this detested Spanish match;
others, that the gadfly hath stung him and he is gone to America, -
to search for Raleigh's gold mine, maybe. This last most
improbable; but if 't is so, and he should touch at Virginia, receive
him with all honor. If indeed he is not out of favor, the Company
may find in him a powerful friend; of powerful enemies, God
knows, there is no lack!"

Thus the worthy Master Ferrar. And at the bottom of the letter,
among other news of city and court, mention was made of the
disappearance of a ward of the King's, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh.
Strict search had been made, but the unfortunate lady had not been
found. " 'T is whispered that she hath killed herself; also, that his
Majesty had meant to give her in marriage to my Lord Carnal. But
that all true love and virtue and constancy have gone from the age,
one might conceive that the said lord had but fled the court for a
while, to indulge his grief in some solitude of hill and stream and
shady vale, - the lost lady being right worthy of such dole."

In sooth she was, but my lord was not given to such fashion of
mourning.

The summer passed, and I did nothing. What was there I could do?
I had written by the Due Return to Sir Edwyn, and to my cousin,
the Earl of Northumberland. The King hated Sir Edwyn as he
hated tobacco and witchcraft. "Choose the devil, but not Sir
Edwyn Sandys!" had been his passionate words to the Company
the year before. A certain fifth of November had despoiled my
Lord of Northumberland of wealth, fame, and influence. Small
hope there was in those two. That the Governor and Council,
remembering old dangers shared, wished me well I did not doubt,
but that was all. Yeardley had done all he could do, more than
most men would have dared to do, in procuring this delay. There
was no further help in him; nor would I have asked it. Already out
of favor with the Warwick faction, he had risked enough for me
and mine. I could not flee with my wife to the Indians, exposing
her, perhaps, to a death by fierce tortures; moreover,
Opechancanough had of late strangely taken to returning to the
settlements those runaway servants and fugitives from justice
which before we had demanded from him in vain. If even it had
been possible to run the gauntlet of the Indian villages, war parties,
and hunting bands, what would have been before us but endless
forest and a winter which for us would have had no spring? I could
not see her die of hunger and cold, or by the teeth of the wolves. I
could not do what I should have liked to do, - take, single-handed,
that King's ship with its sturdy crew and sail with her south and
ever southwards, before us nothing more formidable than Spanish
ships, and beyond them blue waters, spice winds, new lands,
strange islands of the blest.

There seemed naught that I could do, naught that she could do.
Our Fate had us by the hands, and held us fast. We stood still, and
the days came and went like dreams.

While the Assembly was in session I had my part to act as Burgess
from my hundred. Each day I sat with my fellows in the church,
facing the Governor in his great velvet chair, the Council on either
hand, and listened to the droning of old Twine, the clerk, like the
droning of the bees without the window; to the chant of the
sergeant-at-arms; to long and windy discourses from men who
planted better than they spoke; to remarks by the Secretary, witty,
crammed with Latin and traveled talk; to the Governor's slow,
weighty words. At Weyanoke we had had trouble with the Indians.
I was one who loved them not and had fought them well, for which
reason the hundred chose me its representative. In the Assembly it
was my part to urge a greater severity toward those our natural
enemies, a greater watchfulness on our part, the need for palisades
and sentinels, the danger that lay in their acquisition of firearms,
which, in defiance of the law, men gave them in exchange for
worthless Indian commodities. This Indian business was the chief
matter before the Assembly. I spoke when I thought speech was
needed, and spoke strongly; for my heart foreboded that which was
to come upon us too soon and too surely. The Governor listened
gravely, nodding his head; Master Pory, too, the Cape Merchant,
and West were of my mind; but the remainder were besotted by
their own conceit, esteeming the very name of Englishman sentinel
and palisade enough, or trusting in the smooth words and vows of
brotherhood poured forth so plentifully by that red Apollyon,
Opechancanough.

When the day's work was done, and we streamed out of the church,
- the Governor and Council first, the rest of us in order, - it was to
find as often as not a red and black figure waiting for us among the
graves. Sometimes it joined itself to the Governor, sometimes to
Master Pory; sometimes the whole party, save one, went off with
it to the guest house, there to eat, drink, and make merry.

If Virginia and all that it contained, save only that jewel of which
it had robbed the court, were out of favor with the King's minion,
he showed it not. Perhaps he had accepted the inevitable with a
good grace; perhaps it was but his mode of biding his time; but he
had shifted into that soldierly frankness of speech and manner, that
genial, hail-fellow-well-met air, behind which most safely hides a
villain's mind. Two days after that morning behind the church, he
had removed himself, his French valets, and his Italian physician
from the Governor's house to the newly finished guest house. Here
he lived, cock of the walk, taking his ease in his inn, elbowing out
all guests save those of his own inviting. If, what with his open
face and his open hand, his dinners and bear-baitings and hunting
parties, his tales of the court and the wars, his half hints as to the
good he might do Virginia with the King, extending even to the
lightening of the tax upon our tobacco and the prohibition of the
Spanish import, his known riches and power, and the unknown
height to which they might attain if his star at court were indeed in
the ascendant, - if with these things he slowly, but surely, won to
his following all save a very few of those I had thought my fast
friends, it was not a thing marvelous or without precedent. Upon
his side was good that might be seen and handled; on mine was
only a dubious right and a not at all dubious danger. I do not think
it plagued me much. The going of those who had it in their heart to
wish to go left me content, and for those who fawned upon him
from the first, or for the rabble multitude who flung up their caps
and ran at his heels, I cared not a doit. There were still Rolfe and
West and the Governor, Jeremy Sparrow and Diccon.

My lord and I met, perforce, in the street, at the Governor's house,
in church, on the river, in the saddle. If we met in the presence of
others, we spoke the necessary formal words of greeting or
leave-taking, and he kept his countenance; if none were by, off
went the mask. The man himself and I looked each other in the
eyes and passed on. Once we encountered on a late evening among
the graves, and I was not alone. Mistress Percy had been restless,
and had gone, despite the minister's protests, to sit upon the river
bank. When I returned from the assembly and found her gone, I
went to fetch her. A storm was rolling slowly up. Returning the
long way through the churchyard, we came upon him sitting beside
a sunken grave, his knees drawn up to meet his chin, his eyes
gloomily regardful of the dark broad river, the unseen ocean, and
the ship that could not return for weeks to come. We passed him in
silence, - I with a slight bow, she with a slighter curtsy. An hour
later, going down the street in the dusk of the storm, I ran against
Dr. Lawrence Bohun. "Don't stop me!" he panted. "The Italian
doctor is away in the woods gathering simples, and they found my
Lord Carnal in a fit among the graves, half an hour agone." My
lord was bled, and the next morning went hunting.

The lady whom I had married abode with me in the minister's
house, held her head high, and looked the world in the face. She
seldom went from home, but when she did take the air it was with
pomp and circumstance. When that slender figure and exquisite
face, set off by as rich apparel as could be bought from a store of
finery brought in by the Southampton, and attended by a turbaned
negress and a serving man who had been to the wars, and had
escaped the wheel by the skin of his teeth, appeared in the street,
small wonder if a greater commotion arose than had been since the
days of the Princess Pocahontas and her train of dusky beauties. To
this fairer, more imperial dame gold lace doffed its hat and made
its courtliest bow, and young planters bent to their saddlebows,
while the common folk nudged and stared and had their say. The
beauty, the grace, the pride, that deigned small response to
well-meant words, - all that would have been intolerable in plain
Mistress Percy, once a waiting maid, then a piece of merchandise
to be sold for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, then the
wife of a poor gentleman, was pardoned readily enough to the
Lady Jocelyn Leigh, the ward of the King, the bride to be (so soon
as the King's Court of High Commission should have snapped in
twain an inconvenient and ill-welded fetter) of the King's minion.

So she passed like a splendid vision through the street perhaps
once a week. On Sundays she went with me to church, and the
people looked at her instead of at the minister, who rebuked them
not, because his eyes were upon the same errand.

The early autumn passed and the leaves began to turn, and still all
things were as they had been, save that the Assembly sat no longer.
My fellow Burgesses went back to their hundreds, but my house at
Weyanoke knew me no more. In a tone that was apologetic, but
firm, the Governor had told me that he wished my company at
Jamestown. I was pleased enough to stay, I assured him, - as
indeed I was. At Weyanoke, the thunderbolt would fall without
warning; at Jamestown, at least I could see, coming up the river,
the sails of the Due Return or what other ship the Company might
send.

The color of the leaves deepened, and there came a season of a
beauty singular and sad, like a smile left upon the face of the dead
summer. Over all things, near and far, the forest where it met the
sky, the nearer woods, the great river, and the streams that empty
into it, there hung a blue haze, soft and dream-like. The forest
became a painted forest, with an ever thinning canopy and an ever
thickening carpet of crimson and gold; everywhere there was a low
rustling underfoot and a slow rain of color. It was neither cold nor
hot, but very quiet, and the birds went by like shadows, - a listless
and forgetful weather, in which we began to look, every hour of
every day, for the sail which we knew we should not see for weeks
to come.

Good Master Bucke tarried with Master Thorpe at Henricus,
recruiting his strength, and Jeremy Sparrow preached in his pulpit,
slept in his chamber, and worked in his garden. This garden ran
down to the green bank of the river; and here, sitting idly by the
stream, her chin in her hand and her dark eyes watching the strong,
free sea birds as they came and went, I found my wife one evening,
as I came from the fort, where had been some martial exercise.
Thirty feet away Master Jeremy Sparrow worked among the dying
flowers, and hummed: -

"There is a garden in her face,

Where roses and white lilies grow."

He and I had agreed that when I must needs be absent he should
be within call of her; for I believed my Lord Carnal very capable
of intruding himself into her presence. That house and garden, her
movements and mine, were spied upon by his foreign hirelings, I
knew perfectly well.

As I sat down upon the bank at her feet, she turned to me with a
sudden passion. "I am weary of it all!" she cried. "I am tired of
being pent up in this house and garden, and of the watch you keep
upon me. And if I go abroad, it is worse! I hate all those shameless
faces that stare at me as if I were in the pillory. I am pilloried
before you all, and I find the experience sufficiently bitter. And
when I think that that man whom I hate, hate, hate, breathes the air
that I breathe, it stifles me! If I could fly away like those birds, if I
could only be gone from this place for even a day!"

"I would beg leave to take you home, to Weyanoke," I said after a
pause, "but I cannot go and leave the field to him."

"And I cannot go," she answered. "I must watch for that ship and
that King's command that my Lord Carnal thinks potent enough to
make me his wife. King's commands are strong, but a woman's will
is stronger. At the last I shall know what to do. But now why may I
not take Angela and cross that strip of sand and go into the woods
on the other side? They are so fair and strange, - all red and
yellow, - and they look very still and peaceful. I could walk in
them, or lie down under the trees and forget awhile, and they are
not at all far away." She looked at me eagerly.

"You could not go alone," I told her. "There would be danger in
that. But to-morrow, if you choose, I and Master Sparrow and
Diccon will take you there. A day in the woods is pleasant enough,
and will do none of us harm. Then you may wander as you please,
fill your arms with colored leaves, and forget the world. We will
watch that no harm comes nigh you, but otherwise you shall not be
disturbed."

She broke into delighted laughter. Of all women the most steadfast
of soul, her outward moods were as variable as a child's. "Agreed!"
she cried. "You and the minister and Diccon Demon shall lay your
muskets across your knees, and Angela shall witch you into stone
with her old, mad, heathen charms. And then - and then - I will
gather more gold than had King Midas; I will dance with the
hamadryads; I will find out Oberon and make Titania jealous!"

"I do not doubt that you could do so," I said, as she sprang to her
feet, childishly eager and radiantly beautiful.

I rose to go in with her, for it was supper time, but in a moment
changed my mind, and resumed my seat on the bank of turf. "Do
you go in," I said. "There's a snake near by, in those bushes below
the bank. I'll kill the creature, and then I'll come to supper."

When she was gone, I walked to where, ten feet away, the bank
dipped to a clump of reeds and willows planted in the mud on the
brink of the river. Dropping on my knees I leaned over, and,
grasping a man by the collar, lifted him from the slime where he
belonged to the bank beside me.

It was my Lord Carnal's Italian doctor that I had so fished up. I had
seen him before, and had found in his very small, mean figure clad
all in black, and his narrow face with malignant eyes, and thin
white lips drawn tightly over gleaming teeth, something infinitely
repulsive, sickening to the sight as are certain reptiles to the touch.

"There are no simples or herbs of grace to be found amongst reeds
and half-drowned willows," I said. "What did so learned a doctor
look for in so unlikely a place?"

He shrugged his shoulders and made play with his clawlike hands,
as if he understood me not. It was a lie, for I knew that he and the
English tongue were sufficiently acquainted. I told him as much,
and he shot at me a most venomous glance, but continued to shrug,
gesticulate, and jabber in Italian. At last I saw nothing better to do
than to take him, still by the collar, to the edge of the garden next
the churchyard, and with the toe of my boot to send him tumbling
among the graves. I watched him pick himself up, set his attire to
rights, and go away in the gathering dusk, winding in and out
among the graves; and then I went in to supper, and told Mistress
Percy that the snake was dead.



CHAPTER X IN WHICH I RECEIVE A WARNING AND REPOSE A TRUST


SHORTLY before daybreak I was wakened by a voice beneath my
window. "Captain Percy," it cried, "the Governor wishes you at his
house!" and was gone.

I dressed and left the house, disturbing no one. Hurrying through
the chill dawn, I reached the square not much behind the rapid
footsteps of the watch who had wakened me. About the Governor's
door were horses, saddled and bridled, with grooms at their heads,
men and beasts gray and indistinct, wrapped in the fog. I went up
the steps and into the hall, and knocked at the door of the
Governor's great room. It opened, and I entered to find Sir George,
with Master Pory, Rolfe, West, and others of the Council gathered
about the great centre table and talking eagerly. The Governor was
but half dressed; West and Rolfe were in jack boots and coats of
mail. A man, breathless with hard riding, spattered with swamp
mud and torn by briers, stood, cap in hand, staring from one to the
other.

"In good time, Captain Percy!" cried the Governor. "Yesterday you
called the profound peace with the Indians, of which some of us
boasted, the lull before the storm. Faith, it looks to-day as though
you were in the right, after all!"

"What 's the matter, sir?" I asked, advancing to the table.

"Matter enough!" he answered. "This man has come, post haste,
from the plantations above Paspahegh. Three days ago, Morgan,
the trader, was decoyed into the woods by that Paspahegh fool and
bully, Nemattanow, whom they call Jack of the Feather, and there
murdered. Yesterday, out of sheer bravado, the Indian turned up at
Morgan's house, and Morgan's men shot him down. They buried
the dog, and thought no more of it. Three hours ago, Chanco the
Christian went to the commander and warned him that the
Paspaheghs were in a ferment, and that the warriors were painting
themselves black. The commander sent off at once to me, and I see
naught better to do than to dispatch you with a dozen men to bring
them to their senses. But there 's to be no harrying nor battle. A
show of force is all that 's needed, - I'll stake my head upon it. Let
them see that we are not to be taken unawares, but give them fair
words. That they may be the sooner placated I send with you
Master Rolfe, - they'll listen to him. See that the black paint is
covered with red, give them some beads and a knife or two, then
come home. If you like not the look of things, find out where
Opechancanough is, and I'll send him an embassy. He loves us
well, and will put down any disaffection."

"There's no doubt that he loves us," I said dryly. "He loves us as a
cat loves the mouse that it plays with. If we are to start at once, sir,
I'll go get my horse."

"Then meet us at the neck of land," said Rolfe.

I nodded, and left the room. As I descended the steps into the
growing light outside, I found Master Pory at my side.

"I kept late hours last night," he remarked, with a portentous
yawn. "Now that this business is settled, I'll go back to bed."

I walked on in silence.

"I am in your black books," he continued, with his sly, merry,
sidelong glance. "You think that I was overcareful of the ground,
that morning behind the church, and so unfortunately delayed
matters until the Governor happened by and brought things to
another guess conclusion."

"I think that you warned the Governor," I said bluntly.

He shook with laughter. "Warned him? Of course I warned him.
Youth would never have seen that molehill and fairy ring and
projecting root, but wisdom cometh with gray hairs, my son. D' ye
not think I'll have the King's thanks?"

"Doubtless," I answered. "An the price contents you, I do not know
why I should quarrel with it."

By this we were halfway down the street, and we now came upon
the guest house. A window above us was unshuttered, and in the
room within a light still burned. Suddenly it was extinguished. A
man's face looked down upon us for a moment, then drew back; a
skeleton hand was put out softly and slowly, and the shutter drawn
to. Hand and face belonged to the man I had sent tumbling among
the graves the evening before.

"The Italian doctor," said Master Pory.

There was something peculiar in his tone. I glanced at him, but his
broad red face and twinkling eyes told me nothing. "The Italian
doctor," he repeated. "If I had a friend in Captain Percy's
predicament, I should bid him beware of the Italian doctor."

"Your friend would be obliged for the warning," I replied.

We walked a little further. "And I think," he said, "that I should
inform this purely hypothetical friend of mine that the Italian and
his patron had their heads mighty close together, last night."

"Last night?"

"Ay, last night. I went to drink with my lord, and so broke up their
tˆte-…-tˆte. My lord was boisterous in his cups and not oversecret.
He dropped some hints" - He broke off to indulge in one of his
endless silent laughs. "I don't know why I tell you this, Captain
Percy. I am on the other side, you know, - quite on the other side.
But now I bethink me, I am only telling you what I should tell you
were I upon your side. There's no harm in that, I hope, no
disloyalty to my Lord Carnal's interests which happen to be my
interests?"

I made no answer. I gave him credit both for his ignorance of the
very hornbook of honor and for his large share of the milk of
human kindness.

"My lord grows restive," he said, when we had gone a little further.
"The Francis and John, coming in yesterday, brought court news.
Out of sight, out of mind. Buckingham is making hay while the
sun shines. Useth angel water for his complexion, sleepeth in a
medicated mask such as the Valois used, and is grown handsomer
than ever; changeth the fashion of his clothes thrice a week, which
mightily pleaseth his Majesty. Whoops on the Spanish match, too,
and, wonderful past all whooping, from the prince's detestation
hath become his bosom friend. Small wonder if my Lord Carnal
thinks it's time he was back at Whitehall."

"Let him go, then," I said. "There's his ship that brought him here."

"Ay, there 's his ship," rejoined Master Pory. "A few weeks more,
and the Due Return will be here with the Company's commands. D'
ye think, Captain Percy, that there's the slightest doubt as to their
tenor?"

"No."

"Then my lord has but to possess his soul with patience and wait
for the Due Return. No doubt he'll do so."

"No doubt he'll do so," I echoed.

By this we had reached the Secretary's own door. "Fortune favor
you with the Paspaheghs!" he said, with another mighty yawn. "As
for me, I'll to bed. Do you ever dream, Captain Percy? I don't; mine
is too good a conscience. But if I did, I should dream of an Italian
doctor."

The door shut upon his red face and bright eyes. I walked rapidly
on down the street to the minister's house. The light was very pale
as yet, and house and garden lay beneath a veil of mist. No one
was stirring. I went on through the gray wet paths to the stable, and
roused Diccon.

"Saddle Black Lamoral quickly," I ordered. "There's trouble with
the Paspaheghs, and I am off with Master Rolfe to settle it."

"Am I to go with you?" he asked.

I shook my head. "We have a dozen men. There's no need of
more."

I left him busy with the horse, and went to the house. In the hall I
found the negress strewing the floor with fresh rushes, and asked
her if her mistress yet slept. In her soft half English, half Spanish,
she answered in the affirmative. I went to my own room and
armed myself; then ran upstairs to the comfortable chamber where
abode Master Jeremy Sparrow, surrounded by luxuries which his
soul contemned. He was not there. At the foot of the stair I was
met by Goodwife Allen. "The minister was called an hour ago,
sir," she announced. "There's a man dying of the fever at Archer's
Hope, and they sent a boat for him. He won't be back until
afternoon."

I hurried past her back to the stable. Black Lamoral was saddled,
and Diccon held the stirrup for me to mount.

"Good luck with the vermin, sir!" he said. "I wish I were going,
too."

His tone was sullen, yet wistful. I knew that he loved danger as I
loved it, and a sudden remembrance of the dangers we had faced
together brought us nearer to each other than we had been for
many a day.

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