I FELT a touch upon my shoulder, and turned to find Mistress Percy
beside me. Her cheeks were white, her eyes aflame, her whole frame
tense. The passion that dominated her was so clearly anger at white heat
that I stared at her in amazement. Her hand slid from my shoulder to the
bend of my arm and rested there. “Remember that I am your wife, sir,”
she said in a low, fierce voice,--“your kind and loving wife. You said
that your sword was mine; now bring your wit to the same service!”
There was not time to question her meaning. The man whose position in
the realm had just been announced by the Secretary, and of whom we had
all heard as one not unlikely to supplant even Buckingham himself, was
close at hand. The Governor, headpiece in hand, stepped forward; the
other swept off his Spanish hat; both bowed profoundly.
“I speak to his Honor the Governor of Virginia?” inquired the newcomer.
His tone was offhand, his hat already back upon his head.
“I am George Yeardley, at my Lord Carnal's service,” answered the
Governor.
The favorite raised his eyebrows. “I don't need to introduce myself, it
seems,” he said. “You've found that I am not the devil, after all,--at
least not the Spanish Apollyon. Zooks! a hawk above a poultry yard could
n't have caused a greater commotion than did my poor little ship and my
few poor birding pieces! Does every strange sail so put you through your
paces?”
The Governor's color mounted. “We are not at home,” he answered stiffly.
“Here we are few and weak and surrounded by many dangers, and have need
to be vigilant, being planted, as it were, in the very grasp of that
Spain who holds Europe in awe, and who claims this land as her own. That
we are here at all is proof enough of our courage, my lord.”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “I don't doubt your mettle,” he said
negligently. “I dare say it matches your armor.”
His glance had rested for a moment upon the battered headpiece and
ancient rusty breastplate with which Master Jeremy Sparrow was bedight.
“It is something antique, truly, something out of fashion,” remarked
that worthy,--“almost as out of fashion as courtesy from guests, or
respect for dignities from my-face-is-my-fortune minions and lords on
carpet considerations.”
The hush of consternation following this audacious speech was broken by
a roar of laughter from the favorite himself. “Zounds!” he cried, “your
courage is worn on your sleeve, good giant! I'll uphold you to face
Spaniards, strappado, rack, galleys, and all!”
The bravado with which he spoke, the insolence of his bold glance and
curled lip, the arrogance with which he flaunted that King's favor which
should be a brand more infamous than the hangman's, his beauty, the pomp
of his dress,--all were alike hateful. I hated him then, scarce knowing
why, as I hated him afterward with reason.
He now pulled from the breast of his doublet a packet, which he
proffered the Governor. “From the King, sir,” he announced, in the
half-fierce, half--mocking tone he had made his own. “You may read it at
your leisure. He wishes you to further me in a quest upon which I have
come.”
The Governor took the packet with reverence. “His Majesty's will is our
law,” he said. “Anything that lies in our power, sir; though if you come
for gold”--
The favorite laughed again. “I've come for a thing a deal more precious,
Sir Governor,--a thing worth more to me than all the treasure of the
Indies with Manoa and El Dorado thrown in,--to wit, the thing upon which
I've set my mind. That which I determine to do, I do, sir, and the thing
I determine to have, why, sooner or later, by hook or by crook, fair
means or foul, I have it! I am not one to be crossed or defied with
impunity.”
“I do not take your meaning, my lord,” said the Governor, puzzled,
but courteous. “There are none here who would care to thwart, in any
honorable enterprise, a nobleman so high in the King's favor. I trust
that my Lord Carnal will make my poor house his own during his stay in
Virginia--What's the matter, my lord?”
My lord's face was dark red, his black eyes afire, his mustaches working
up and down. His white teeth had closed with a click on the loud oath
which had interrupted the Governor's speech. Honest Sir George and his
circle stared at this unaccountable guest in amazement not unmixed with
dismay. As for myself, I knew before he spoke what had caused the oath
and the fierce triumph in that handsome face. Master Jeremy Sparrow had
moved a little to one side, thus exposing to view that which his great
body had before screened from observation,--namely, Mistress Jocelyn
Percy.
In a moment the favorite was before her, hat in hand, bowing to the
ground.
“My quest hath ended where I feared it but begun!” he cried, flushed and
exultant. “I have found my Manoa sooner than I thought for. Have you no
welcome for me, lady?”
She withdrew her arm from mine and curtsied to him profoundly; then
stood erect, indignant and defiant, her eyes angry stars, her cheeks
carnation, scorn on her smiling lips.
“I cannot welcome you as you should be welcomed, my lord,” she said in a
clear voice. “I have but my bare hands. Manoa, my lord, lies far to the
southward. This land is quite out of your course, and you will find here
but your travail for your pains. My lord, permit me to present to you my
husband, Captain Ralph Percy. I think that you know his cousin, my Lord
of Northumberland.”
The red left the favorite's cheeks, and he moved as though a blow had
been dealt him by some invisible hand. Recovering himself he bowed
to me, and I to him, which done we looked each other in the eyes long
enough for each to see the thrown gauntlet.
“I raise it,” I said.
“And I raise it,” he answered.
“A l'outrance, I think, sir?” I continued.
“A l'outrance,” he assented.
“And between us two alone,” I suggested.
His answering smile was not good to see, nor was the tone in which he
spoke to the Governor good to hear.
“It is now some weeks, sir,” he said, “since there disappeared from
court a jewel, a diamond of most inestimable worth. It in some sort
belonged to the King, and his Majesty, in the goodness of his heart,
had promised it to a certain one,--nay, had sworn by his kingdom that
it should be his. Well, sir, that man put forth his hand to claim his
own--when lo! the jewel vanished! Where it went no man could tell. There
was, as you may believe, a mighty running up and down and looking into
dark corners, all for naught,--it was clean gone. But the man to whom
that bright gem had been promised was not one easily hoodwinked or
baffled. He swore to trace it, follow it, find it, and wear it.”
His bold eyes left the Governor, to rest upon the woman beside me; had
he pointed to her with his hand, he could not have more surely drawn
upon her the regard of that motley throng. By degrees the crowd had
fallen back, leaving us three--the King's minion, the masquerading lady,
and myself--the centre of a ring of staring faces; but now she became
the sole target at which all eyes were directed.
In Virginia, at this time, the women of our own race were held in high
esteem. During the first years of our planting they were a greater
rarity than the mocking-birds and flying squirrels, or than that weed
the eating of which made fools of men. The man whose wife was loving and
daring enough, or jealous enough of Indian maids, to follow him into
the wilderness counted his friends by the score and never lacked for
company. The first marriage in Virginia was between a laborer and a
waiting maid, and yet there was as great a deal of candy stuff as if it
had been the nuptials of a lieutenant of the shire. The brother of my
Lord de la Warre stood up with the groom, the brother of my Lord of
Northumberland gave away the bride and was the first to kiss her, and
the President himself held the caudle to their lips that night. Since
that wedding there had been others. Gentlewomen made the Virginia voyage
with husband or father; women signed as servants and came over, to marry
in three weeks' time, the husband paying good tobacco for the wife's
freedom; in the cargoes of children sent for apprentices there were many
girls. And last, but not least, had come Sir Edwyn's doves. Things had
changed since that day--at the memory of which men still held their
sides--when Madam West, then the only woman in the town with youth and
beauty, had marched down the street to the pillory, mounted it, called
to her the drummer, and ordered him to summon to the square by tuck of
drum every man in the place. Which done, and the amazed population
at hand, gaping at the spectacle of the wife of their commander (then
absent from home) pilloried before them, she gave command, through
the crier, that they should take their fill of gazing, whispering, and
nudging then and there, forever and a day, and then should go about
their business and give her leave to mind her own.
That day was gone, but men still dropped their work to see a woman pass,
still cheered when a farthingale appeared over a ship's side, and at
church still devoted their eyes to other service than staring at the
minister. In our short but crowded history few things had made a greater
stir than the coming in of Sir Edwyn's maids. They were married now,
but they were still the observed of all observers; to be pointed out to
strangers, run after by children, gaped at by the vulgar, bowed to with
broad smiles by Burgess, Councilor, and commander, and openly contemned
by those dames who had attained to a husband in somewhat more regular
fashion. Of the ninety who had arrived two weeks before, the greater
number had found husbands in the town itself or in the neighboring
hundreds, so that in the crowd that had gathered to withstand the
Spaniard, and had stayed to welcome the King's favorite, there were
farthingales not a few.
But there were none like the woman whose hand I had kissed in the
courting meadow. In the throng, that day, in her Puritan dress and amid
the crowd of meaner beauties, she had passed without overmuch comment,
and since that day none had seen her save Rolfe and the minister, my
servants and myself; and when “The Spaniard!” was cried, men thought of
other things than the beauty of women; so that until this moment she
had escaped any special notice. Now all that was changed. The Governor,
following the pointing of those insolent eyes, fixed his own upon her
in a stare of sheer amazement; the gold-laced quality about him craned
necks, lifted eyebrows, and whispered; and the rabble behind followed
their betters' example with an emphasis quite their own.
“Where do you suppose that jewel went, Sir Governor,” said the
favorite,--“that jewel which was overnice to shine at court, which set
up its will against the King's, which would have none of that one to
whom it had been given?”
“I am a plain man, my lord,” replied the Governor bluntly. “An it please
you, give me plain words.”
My lord laughed, his eyes traveling round the ring of greedily intent
faces. “So be it, sir,” he assented. “May I ask who is this lady?”
“She came in the Bonaventure,” answered the Governor. “She was one of
the treasurer's poor maids.”
“With whom I trod a measure at court not long ago,” said the favorite.
“I had to wait for the honor until the prince had been gratified.”
The Governor's round eyes grew rounder. Young Hamor, a-tiptoe behind
him, drew a long, low whistle.
“In so small a community,” went on my lord, “sure you must all know
one another. There can be no masks worn, no false colors displayed.
Everything must be as open as daylight. But we all have a past as well
as a present. Now, for instance”--
I interrupted him. “In Virginia, my lord, we live in the present. At
present, my lord, I like not the color of your lordship's cloak.”
He stared at me, with his black brows drawn together. “It is not of your
choosing nor for your wearing, sir,” he rejoined haughtily.
“And your sword knot is villainously tied,” I continued. “And I like not
such a fire-new, bejeweled scabbard. Mine, you see, is out at heel.”
“I see,” he said dryly.
“The pinking of your doublet suits me not, either,” I declared. “I could
make it more to my liking,” and I touched his Genoa three-pile with the
point of my rapier.
A loud murmur arose from the crowd, and the Governor started forward,
crying out, “Captain Percy! Are you mad?”
“I was never saner in my life, sir,” I answered. “French fashions like
me not,--that is all,--nor Englishmen that wear them. To my thinking
such are scarcely true-born.”
That thrust went home. All the world knew the story of my late Lord
Carnal and the waiting woman in the service of the French ambassador's
wife. A gasp of admiration went up from the crowd. My lord's rapier was
out, the hand that held it shaking with passion. I had my blade in my
hand, but the point was upon the ground. “I'll lesson you, you madman!”
he said thickly. Suddenly, without any warning, he thrust at me; had
he been less blind with rage, the long score which each was to run up
against the other might have ended where it began. I swerved, and the
next instant with my own point sent his rapier whirling. It fell at the
Governor's feet.
“Your lordship may pick it up,” I remarked. “Your grasp is as firm as
your honor, my lord.”
He glared at me, foam upon his lips. Men were between us now,--the
Governor, Francis West, Master Pory, Hamor, Wynne,--and a babel of
excited voices arose. The diversion I had aimed to make had been made
with a vengeance. West had me by the arm. “What a murrain is all this
coil about, Ralph Percy? If you hurt hair of his head, you are lost!”
The favorite broke from the Governor's detaining hand and conciliatory
speech.
“You'll fight, sir?” he cried hoarsely.
“You know that I need not now, my lord,” I answered.
He stamped upon the ground with rage and shame; not true shame for that
foul thrust, but shame for the sword upon the grass, for that which
could be read in men's eyes, strive to hide it as they might, for the
open scorn upon one face. Then, during the minute or more in which we
faced each other in silence, he exerted to some effect that will
of which he had boasted. The scarlet faded from his face, his frame
steadied, and he forced a smile. Also he called to his aid a certain
soldierly, honest-seeming frankness of speech and manner which he could
assume at will.
“Your Virginian sunshine dazzleth the eyes, sir,” he said. “Of a verity
it made me think you on guard. Forgive me my mistake.”
I bowed. “Your lordship will find me at your service. I lodge at the
minister's house, where your lordship's messenger will find me. I am
going there now with my wife, who hath ridden a score of miles this
morning and is weary. We give you good-day, my lord.”
I bowed to him again and to the Governor, then gave my hand to Mistress
Percy. The crowd opening before us, we passed through it, and crossed
the parade by the west bulwark. At the further end was a bit of rising
ground. This we mounted; then, before descending the other side into the
lane leading to the minister's house, we turned as by one impulse
and looked back. Life is like one of those endless Italian corridors,
painted, picture after picture, by a master hand; and man is the
traveler through it, taking his eyes from one scene but to rest them
upon another. Some remain a blur in his mind; some he remembers not; for
some he has but to close his eyes and he sees them again, line for line,
tint for tint, the whole spirit of the piece. I close my eyes, and I
see the sunshine hot and bright, the blue of the skies, the sheen of the
river. The sails are white again upon boats long lost; the Santa Teresa,
sunk in a fight with an Algerine rover two years afterward, rides
at anchor there forever in the James, her crew in the waist and the
rigging, her master and his mates on the poop, above them the flag.
I see the plain at our feet and the crowd beyond, all staring with
upturned faces; and standing out from the group of perplexed and
wondering dignitaries a man in black and scarlet, one hand busy at his
mouth, the other clenched upon the newly restored and unsheathed sword.
And I see, standing on the green hillock, hand in hand, us two, myself
and the woman so near to me, and yet so far away that a common enemy
seemed our only tie.
We turned and descended to the green lane and the deserted houses. When
we were quite hidden from those we had left on the bank below the fort,
she dropped my hand and moved to the other side of the lane; and thus,
with never a word to spare, we walked sedately on until we reached the
minister's house.