SHE came slowly nearer the ring of now very quiet and attentive faces
until she stood beside me, but she neither looked at me nor spoke to me.
She was thinner and there were heavy shadows beneath her eyes, but she
was beautiful.
“I stand before gentlemen to whom, perhaps, I am not utterly unknown,”
she said. “Some here, perchance, have been to court, and have seen me
there. Master Sandys, once, before the Queen died, you came to Greenwich
to kiss her Majesty's hands; and while you waited in her antechamber you
saw a young maid of honor--scarce more than a child--curled in a window
seat with a book. You sat beside her, and told her wonderful tales
of sunny lands and gods and nymphs. I was that maid of honor. Master
Clayborne, once, hawking near Windsor, I dropped my glove. There were a
many out of their saddles before it touched the ground, but a gentleman,
not of our party, who had drawn his horse to one side to let us pass,
was quicker than they all. Did you not think yourself well paid, sir,
when you kissed the hand to which you restored the glove? All here, I
think, may have heard my name. If any hath heard aught that ever I
did in all my life to tarnish it, I pray him to speak now and shame me
before you all!”
Clayborne started up. “I remember that day at Windsor, lady!” he cried.
“The man of whom I afterward asked your name was a most libertine
courtier, and he raised his hat when he spoke of you, calling you a lily
which the mire of the court could not besmirch. I will believe all good,
but no harm of you, lady!”
He sat down, and Master Sandys said gravely: “Men need not be courtiers
to have known of a lady of great wealth and high birth, a ward of the
King's, and both beautiful and pure. I nor no man else, I think, ever
heard aught of the Lady Jocelyn Leigh but what became a daughter of her
line.”
A murmur of assent went round the circle. The Governor, leaning forward
from his seat, his wife's hand in his, gravely bent his head. “All this
is known, lady,” he said courteously.
She did not answer; her eyes were upon the King's favorite, and the
circle waited with her.
“It is known,” said my lord.
She smiled proudly. “For so much grace, thanks, my lord,” she said, then
addressed herself again to the Governor: “Your Honor, that is the past,
the long past, the long, long past, though not a year has gone by. Then
I was a girl, proud and careless; now, your Honor, I am a woman, and
I stand here in the dignity of suffering and peril. I fled from
England”--She paused, drew herself up, and turned upon my lord a face
and form so still, and yet so expressive of noble indignation, outraged
womanhood, scorn, and withal a kind of angry pity, that small wonder if
he shrank as from a blow. “I left the only world I knew,” she said. “I
took a way low and narrow and dark and set with thorns, but the only way
that I--alone and helpless and bewildered---could find, because that I,
Jocelyn Leigh, willed not to wed with you, my Lord Carnal. Why did you
follow me, my lord? You knew that I loved you not. You knew my mind,
and that I was weak and friendless, and you used your power. I must
tell you, my lord, that you were not chivalrous, nor compassionate, nor
brave”--
“I loved you!” he cried, and stretched out his arm toward her across the
table. He saw no one but her, spoke to none but her. There was a fierce
yearning and a hopelessness in his voice and bent head and outstretched
arm that lent for the time a tragic dignity to the pageant, evil and
magnificent, of his life.
“You loved me,” she said. “I had rather you had hated me, my lord. I
came to Virginia, your Honor, and men thought me the thing I professed
myself. In the green meadow beyond the church they wooed me as such.
This one came and that one, and at last a fellow, when I said him nay
and bade him begone, did dare to seize my hands and kiss my lips. While
I struggled one came and flung that dastard out of the way, then asked
me plainly to become his wife, and there was no laugh or insult in his
voice. I was wearied and fordone and desperate.... So I met my husband,
and so I married him. That same day I told him a part of my secret, and
when my Lord Carnal was come I told him all.... I had not met with much
true love or courtesy or compassion in my life. When I saw the danger in
which he stood because of me, I told him he might free himself from that
coil, might swear to what they pleased, whistle me off, save himself,
and I would say no word of blame. There was wine upon the table, and he
filled a cup and brought it to me, and we drank of it together. We drank
of the same cup then, your Honor, and we will drink of it still. We
twain were wedded, and the world strove to part us. Which of you here,
in such quarrel, would not withstand the world? Lady Wyatt, would not
thy husband hold thee, while he lived, against the world? Then speak for
mine!”
“Frank, Frank!” cried Lady Wyatt. “They love each other!”
“If he withstood the King,” went on the King's ward, “it was for his
honor and for mine. If he fled from Virginia, it was because I willed
it so. Had he stayed, my Lord Carnal, and had you willed to follow me
again, you must have made a yet longer journey to a most distant bourne.
That wild night when we fled, why did you come upon us, my lord? The
moon burst forth from a black cloud, and you stood there upon the wharf
above us, calling to the footsteps behind to hasten. We would have left
you there in safety, and gone ourselves alone down that stream as black
and strange as death. Why did you spring down the steps and grapple with
the minister? And he that might have thrust you beneath the flood and
drowned you there did but fling you into the boat. We wished not your
company, my lord; we would willingly have gone without you. I trust, my
lord, you have made honest report of this matter, and have told these
gentlemen that my husband gave you, a prisoner whom he wanted not, all
fair and honorable treatment. That you have done this I dare take my
oath, my lord”--
She stood silent, her eyes upon his. The men around stirred, and a
little flash like the glint of drawn steel went from one pair of eyes to
another.
“My lord, my lord!” said the King's ward. “Long ago you won my hatred;
an you would not win my contempt, speak truth this day!”
In his eyes, which he had never taken from her face, there leaped to
meet the proud appeal in her own a strange fire. That he loved her with
a great and evil passion, I, who needs had watched him closely, had
long known. Suddenly he burst into jarring laughter. “Yea, he treated me
fairly enough, damn him to everlasting hell! But he 's a pirate, sweet
bird; he's a pirate, and must swing as such!”
“A pirate!” she cried. “But he was none! My lord, you know he was none!
Your Honor”--
The Governor interrupted her: “He made himself captain of a pirate ship,
lady. He took and sunk ships of Spain.”
“In what sort did he become their chief?” she cried. “In such sort,
gentlemen, as the bravest of you, in like straits, would have been
blithe to be, an you had had like measure of wit and daring! Your Honor,
the wind before which our boat drave like a leaf, the waves that would
engulf us, wrecked us upon a desert isle. There was no food or water
or shelter. That night, while we slept, a pirate ship anchored off the
beach, and in the morning the pirates came ashore to bury their captain.
My husband met them alone, fought their would-be leaders one by one, and
forced the election to fall upon himself. Well he knew that if he left
not that isle their leader, he would leave it their captive; and not
he alone! God's mercy, gentlemen, what other could he do? I pray you
to hold him absolved from a willing embrace of that life! Sunk ships
of Spain! Yea, forsooth; and how long hath it been since other English
gentlemen sunk other ships of Spain? The world hath changed indeed if
to fight the Spaniard in the Indies, e'en though at home we be at peace
with him, be conceived so black a crime! He fought their galleons fair
and knightly, with his life in his hand; he gave quarter, and while
they called him chief those pirates tortured no prisoner and wronged
no woman. Had he not been there, would the ships have been taken less
surely? Had he not been there, God wot, ships and ships' boats alike
would have sunk or burned, and no Spanish men and women had rowed away
and blessed a generous foe. A pirate! He, with me and with the minister
and with my Lord Carnal, was prisoner to the pirates, and out of that
danger he plucked safety for us all! Who hath so misnamed a gallant
gentleman? Was it you, my lord?”
Eyes and voice were imperious, and in her cheeks burned an indignant
crimson. My lord's face was set and white; he looked at her, but spoke
no word.
“The Spanish ships might pass, lady,” said the Governor; “but this is an
English ship, with the flag of England above her.”
“Yea,” she said. “What then?”
The circle rustled again. The Governor loosed his wife's fingers and
leaned forward. “You plead well, lady!” he exclaimed. “You might win, an
Captain Percy had not seen fit to fire upon us.”
A dead silence followed his words. Outside the square window a cloud
passed from the face of the sun, and a great burst of sunshine entered
the cabin. She stood in the heart of it, and looked a goddess angered.
My lord, with his haggard face and burning eyes, slowly rose from his
seat, and they faced each other.
“You told them not who fired those guns, who sunk that pirate ship?”
she said. “Because he was your enemy, you held your tongue? Knight and
gentleman--my Lord Carnal--my Lord Coward!”
“Honor is an empty word to me,” he answered. “For you I would dive into
the deepest hell,--if there be a deeper than that which burns me, day
in, day out.... Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn!”
“You love me so?” she said. “Then do me pleasure. Because I ask it of
you, tell these men the truth.” She came a step nearer, and held out her
clasped hands to him. “Tell them how it was, my lord, and I will strive
to hate you no longer. The harm that you have done me I will pray for
strength to forgive. Ah, my lord, let me not ask in vain! Will you that
I kneel to you?”
“I fix my own price,” he said. “I will do what you ask, an you will let
me kiss your lips.”
I sprang forward with an oath. Some one behind caught both my wrists in
an iron grasp and pulled me back. “Be not a fool!” growled Clayborne
in my ear. “The cord's loosening fast: if you interfere, it may tighten
with a jerk!” I freed my hands from his grasp. The Treasurer, sitting
next him, leaned across the table and motioned to the two seamen beside
the window. They left their station, and each seized me by an arm. “Be
guided, Captain Percy,” said Master Sandys in a low voice. “We wish you
well. Let her win you through.”
“First tell the truth, my lord,” said the King's ward; “then come and
take the reward you ask.”
“Jocelyn!” I cried. “I command you”--
She turned upon me a perfectly colorless face. “All my life after I will
be to you an obedient wife,” she said. “This once I pray you to hold me
excused.... Speak, my lord.”
There was the mirth of the lost in the laugh with which he turned to the
Governor. “That pretty little tale, sir, that I regaled you with, the
day you obligingly picked me up, was pure imagination; the wetting must
have disordered my reason. A potion sweeter than the honey of Hybla,
which I am about to drink, hath restored me beforehand. Gentlemen all,
there was mutiny aboard that ship which so providentially sank before
your very eyes. For why? The crew, who were pirates, and the captain,
who was yonder gentleman, did not agree. The one wished to attack
you, board you, rummage you, and slay, after recondite fashions, every
mother's son of you; the other demurred,--so strongly, in fact, that his
life ceased to be worth a pin's purchase. Indeed, I believe he resigned
his captaincy then and there, and, declining to lift a finger against
an English ship, defied them to do their worst. He had no hand in the
firing of those culverins; the mutineers touched them off without so
much as a 'by your leave.' His attention was otherwise occupied. Good
sirs, there was not the slightest reason in nature why the ship should
have struck upon that sunken reef, to the damnation of her people and
the salvation of yours. Why do you suppose she diverged from the path of
safety to split into slivers against that fortunate ledge?”
The men around drew in their breath, and one or two sprang to their
feet. My lord laughed again. “Have you seen the pious man who
left Jamestown and went aboard the pirate ship as this gentleman's
lieutenant? He hath the strength of a bull. Captain Percy here had but
to nod his head, and hey, presto! the helmsman was bowled over, and the
minister had the helm. The ship struck: the pirates went to hell, and
you, gentlemen, were preserved to order all things well in Virginia. May
she long be grateful! The man who dared that death rather than attack
the ship he guessed to be the Company's is my mortal foe, whom I will
yet sweep from my path, but he is not a pirate. Ay, take it down, an it
please you, Master Secretary! I retreat from a most choice position, to
be sure, but what care I? I see a vantage ground more to my liking. I
have lost a throw, perhaps, but I will recoup ten such losses with one
such kiss. By your leave, lady.”
He went up to her where she stood, with hanging arms, her head a little
bent, white and cold and yielding as a lady done in snow; gazed at her
a moment, with his passion written in his fierce eyes and haggard,
handsome face; then crushed her to him.
If I could have struck him dead, I would have done so. When her word had
been kept, she released herself with a quiet and resolute dignity. As
for him, he sank back into the great chair beside the Governor's, leaned
an elbow on the table, and hid his eyes with one shaking hand.
The Governor rose to his feet, and motioned away the two seamen who held
me fast. “We'll have no hanging this morning, gentlemen,” he announced.
“Captain Percy, I beg to apologize to you for words that were never
meant for a brave and gallant gentleman, but for a pirate who I find
does not exist. I pray you to forget them, quite.”
I returned his bow, but my eyes traveled past him.
“I will allow you no words with my Lord Carnal,” he said. “With your
wife,--that is different.” He moved aside with a smile.
She was standing, pale, with downcast eyes, where my lord had left her.
“Jocelyn,” I said. She turned toward me, crimsoned deeply, uttered a low
cry, half laughter, half a sob, then covered her face with her hands. I
took them away and spoke her name again, and this time she hid her face
upon my breast.
A moment thus; then--for all eyes were upon her--I lifted her head,
kissed her, and gave her to Lady Wyatt, whom I found at my side. “I
commend my wife to your ladyship's care,” I said. “As you are woman,
deal sisterly by her!”
“You may trust me, sir,” she made answer, the tears upon her cheeks. “I
did not know,--I did not understand....Dear heart, come away,--come away
with Margaret Wyatt.”
Clayborne opened the door of the cabin, and stood aside with a low bow.
The men who had sat to judge me rose; only the King's favorite kept his
seat. With Lady Wyatt's arm about her, the King's ward passed between
the lines of standing gentlemen to the door, there hesitated, turned,
and, facing them with I know not what of pride and shame, wistfulness of
entreaty and noble challenge to belief in the face and form that were of
all women's most beautiful, curtsied to them until her knee touched the
floor. She was gone, and the sunlight with her.
When I turned upon that shameless lord where he sat in his evil beauty,
with his honor dead before him, men came hastily in between. I put
them aside with a laugh. I had but wanted to look at him. I had no
sword,--already he lay beneath my challenge,--and words are weak things.
At length he rose, as arrogant as ever in his port, as evilly superb in
his towering pride, and as amazingly indifferent to the thoughts of men
who lied not. “This case hath wearied me,” he said. “I will retire for
a while to rest, and in dreams to live over a past sweetness. Give
you good-day, gentles! Sir Francis Wyatt, you will remember that
this gentleman did resist arrest, and that he lieth under the King's
displeasure!” So saying he clapped his hat upon his head and walked out
of the cabin. The Company's officers drew a long breath, as if a fresher
air had come in with his departure.
“I have no choice, Captain Percy, but to keep you still under restraint,
both here and when we shall reach Jamestown,” said the Governor. “All
that the Company, through me, can do, consistent with its duty to his
Majesty, to lighten your confinement shall be done”--
“Then send him not again into the hold, Sir Francis!” exclaimed the
Treasurer, with a wry face.
The Governor laughed. “Lighter and sweeter quarters shall be found. Your
wife's a brave lady, Captain Percy”--
“And a passing fair one,” said Claybourne under his breath.
“I left a friend below in the hold, your Honor,” I said. “He came with
me from Jamestown because he was my friend. The King hath never heard
of him. And he's no more a pirate than I or you, your Honor. He is a
minister,--a sober, meek, and godly man”--
From behind the Secretary rose the singsong of my acquaintance of the
hold, Dr. John Pott. “He is Jeremy, your Honor, Jeremy who made the town
merry at Blackfriars. Your Honor remembers him? He had a sickness, and
forsook the life and went into the country. He was known to the Dean
of St. Paul's. All the town laughed when it heard that he had taken
orders.”
“Jeremy!” cried out the Treasurer. “Nick Bottom! Christopher Sly! Sir
Toby Belch! Sir Francis, give me Jeremy to keep in my cabin!”
The Governor laughed. “He shall be bestowed with Captain Percy where
he'll not lack for company, I warrant! Jeremy! Ben Jonson loved him;
they drank together at the Mermaid.”
A little later the Treasurer turned to leave my new quarters, to
which he had walked beside me, glanced at the men who waited for him
without,--Jeremy had not yet been brought from the hold,--and returned
to my side to say, in a low voice, but with emphasis: “Captain Percy has
been a long time without news from home,--from England. What would he
most desire to hear?”
“Of the welfare of his Grace of Buckingham,” I replied.
He smiled. “His Grace is as well as heart could desire, and as powerful.
The Queen's dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this way or that, as it
pleaseth him. Since we are not to hang you as a pirate, Captain Percy,
I incline to think your affairs in better posture than when you left
Virginia.”
“I think so too, sir,” I said, and gave him thanks for his courtesy, and
wished him good-day, being anxious to sit still and thank God, with my
face in my hands and summer in my heart.