Pocahontas was sitting at the latticed window of her apartment at the
Mermaid Inn, striving to pierce the thick yellow fog hanging over
the river. Down upon the narrow street lighted torches flared wildly
in the hands of linkboys conducting some lady’s sedan chair to its
destination in the closing evening. Rolfe was playing hide and seek
among the chairs and tables with his little son. The room was in
shadow except for the ruddy firelight dancing on the walls.
A low knock sounded upon the paneled door. Putting down the boy, whom
he had just caught, Rolfe went to see who it was.
“Is the Lady Rebecca at home?” inquired a deep manly voice. “If so,
may an old friend present himself?”
“The Lady Rebecca will be glad to see any one who calls himself
friend,” replied Rolfe. “May I inquire the name of the guest?”
“Captain John Smith, who knew her in Jamestown.”
Flinging wide the door, Rolfe bade him enter, and turning to
Pocahontas said, “Wife, a friend of long ago comes to see you.”
Pocahontas turned from the window, her eyes filled with the outside
gloom. At first she could not see the visitor.
“Have I had the misfortune to pass from your memory, madam?” said
Captain Smith advancing into the firelight.
A tremulous cry rang through the room “My father! My father!” and
covering her face with her hands, she tottered into a chair. A
long silence—broken only by the boy prattling to a King Charles
spaniel—held Smith and Rolfe spellbound. Finally she raised her head
and gazed long on the face of Smith; then coming up to him she said
in loving accents, “Pocahontas has her father again, and is his child
once more.”
“Nay, Lady Rebecca, I am of too humble a station to presume to be on
familiar terms with a princess. You must not call me father, and I am
not permitted to call you child.”
“You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the
like to you; you called him father being in his land a stranger, and
by the same reason, so must I do you,” she answered.
“You are well aware of the suspicious jealousy of the King and
Queen,” said Smith to Rolfe. “Try to make her understand the
situation.”
Rolfe endeavored to explain the rigid decorum of the King’s court to
her; besides, for reasons of his own, he was not anxious to have the
friendship renewed.
Unaccustomed to obey the whims of any monarch, except those of
her father, her eyes blazed and her features contracted. Smith
instinctively stepped back. Before him stood not the gentle
Pocahontas, but the savage Powhatan.
Then she spoke in a deep voice of scornful anger. “Were you not
afraid to come into my father’s country and cause fear in him and
all his people but me; and fear you I shall call you father?” Then
stamping her foot she cried, “I tell you I will, and you shall call
me child, and so I will be forever and ever your country-woman.”
Her voice broke as she added, “They did tell us always you were
dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet Powhatan did
commend Vetamatominakin to seek you and know the truth, because your
countrymen will lie much.”
Smith gently put her off with veiled words and turned the
conversation to a less painful theme.
“How is my father Powhatan, and what has become of Opechancanough?”
Picking up the little boy, he petted and fondled him, while
Pocahontas gave news of her tribe. Seeing his tender attentions to
her boy, she calmed down into the gentle frank maiden he had known so
well.
After an hour’s conversation he took his departure, evading deftly
a promise to come again, for he had marked the look in Rolfe’s eyes
when Pocahontas had called him father.
As he walked away he said to himself, “I must not endanger their
wedded bliss”; then bitterly, “Jealousy and suspicion dog my lonely
footsteps and will follow me to the grave.”