WHEN I awoke from the sleep or stupor into which I must have passed from
that swoon, it was to find myself lying upon a bed in a room flooded
with sunshine. I was alone. For a moment I lay still, staring at the
blue sky without the window, and wondering where I was and how I
came there. A drum beat, a dog barked, and a man's quick voice gave a
command. The sounds stung me into remembrance, and I was at the window
while the voice was yet speaking.
It was West in the street below, pointing with his sword now to the
fort, now to the palisade, and giving directions to the armed men about
him. There were many people in the street. Women hurried by to the
fort with white, scared faces, their arms filled with household gear;
children ran beside them, sturdily bearing their share of the goods, but
pressing close to their elders' skirts; men went to and fro, the most
grimly silent, but a few talking loudly. Not all of the faces in the
crowd belonged to the town: there were Kingsmell and his wife from the
main, and John Ellison from Archer's Hope, and the Italians Vincencio
and Bernardo from the Glass House. The nearer plantations, then, had
been warned, and their people had come for refuge to the city. A negro
passed, but on that morning, alone of many days, no Indian aired his
paint and feathers in the white man's village.
I could not see the palisade across the neck, but I knew that it was
there that the fight--if fight there were--would be made. Should the
Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the town,
and, last of all, the fort in which to make a stand. I believed not that
they would take it. Long since we had found out their method of warfare.
They used ambuscade, surprise, and massacre; when withstood in force and
with determination they withdrew to their stronghold the forest, there
to bide their time until, in the blackness of some night, they could
again swoop down upon a sleeping foe.
The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came down the
street at a run. “They're in the woods over against us, thicker than
ants!” he cried to West as he passed. “A boat has just drifted ashore
yonder, with two men in it, dead and scalped!”
I turned to leave the room, and ran against Master Pory coming in on
tiptoe, with a red and solemn face. He started when he saw me.
“The roll of the drum brought you to your feet, then!” he cried. “You've
lain like the dead all night. I came but to see if you were breathing.”
“When I have eaten, I shall be myself again,” I said. “There's no attack
as yet?”
“No,” he answered. “They must know that we are prepared. But they
have kindled fires along the river bank, and we can hear them yelling.
Whether they'll be mad enough to come against us remains to be seen.”
“The nearest settlements have been warned?”
“Ay. The Governor offered a thousand pounds of tobacco and the perpetual
esteem of the Company to the man or men who would carry the news. Six
volunteered, and went off in boats, three up river, three down. How
many they reached, or if they still have their scalps, we know not. And
awhile ago, just before daybreak, comes with frantic haste Richard
Pace, who had rowed up from Pace's Pains to tell the news which you had
already brought. Chanco the Christian had betrayed the plot to him, and
he managed to give warning at Powel's and one or two other places as he
came up the river.”
He broke off, but when I would have spoken interrupted me with: “And so
you were on the Pamunkey all this while! Then the Paspaheghs fooled us
with the simple truth, for they swore so stoutly that their absent chief
men were but gone on a hunt toward the Pamunkey that we had no choice
but to believe them gone in quite another direction. And one and all of
every tribe we questioned swore that Opechancanough was at Orapax. So
Master Rolfe puts off up river to find, if not you, then the Emperor,
and make him give up your murderers; and the Governor sends a party
along the bay, and West another up the Chickahominy. And there you were,
all the time, mewed up in the village above the marshes! And Nantauquas,
after saving our lives like one of us, is turned Indian again! And your
man is killed! Alackaday! there's naught but trouble in the world. 'As
the sparks fly upwards,' you know. But a brave man draws his breath and
sets his teeth.”
In his manner, his rapid talk, his uneasy glances toward the door, I
found something forced and strange. “I thought Rolfe was behind me,” he
said, “but he must have been delayed. There are meat and drink set out
in the great room, where the Governor and those of the Council who
are safe here with us are advising together. Let's descend; you've not
eaten, and the good sack will give you strength. Wilt come?”
“Ay,” I answered, “but tell me the news as we go. I have been gone ten
days,--faith, it seems ten years! There have no ships sailed, Master
Pory? The George is still here?” I looked him full in the eye, for a
sudden guess at a possible reason for his confusion had stabbed me like
a knife.
“Ay,” he said, with a readiness that could scarce be feigned. “She was
to have sailed this week, it is true, the Governor fearing to keep
her longer. But the Esperance, coming in yesterday, brought news which
removed his Honor's scruples. Now she'll wait to see out this hand at
the cards, and to take home the names of those who are left alive
in Virginia. If the red varlets do swarm in upon us, there are her
twelve-pounders; they and the fort guns”--
I let him talk on. The George had not sailed. I saw again a firelit
hut, and a man and a panther who went down together. Those claws had dug
deep; the man across whose face they had torn their way would keep his
room in the guest house at Jamestown until his wounds were somewhat
healed. The George would wait for him, would scarcely dare to sail
without him, and I should find the lady whom she was to carry away to
England in Virginia still. It was this that I had built upon, the
grain of comfort, the passionate hope, the sustaining cordial, of those
year-long days in the village above the Pamunkey.
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.
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.