In which I am Rid of an Unprofitable Servant
The next day, Governor and Councillors sat to receive presents from the
Paspaheghs and to listen to long and affectionate messages from
Opechancanough, who, like the player queen, did protest too much. The
Council met at Yeardley's house, and I was called before it to make my
report of the expedition of the day before. It was late afternoon when
the Governor dismissed us, and I found myself leaving the house in
company with Master Pory.
"I am bound for my lord's," said that worthy, as we neared the guest
house. "My lord hath Xeres wine that is the very original nectar of the
gods, and he drinks it from goblets worth a king's ransom. We have heard
a deal to-day about burying hatchets: bury thine for the nonce, Ralph
Percy, and come drink with us."
"Not I," I said. "I would sooner drink with--some one else."
He laughed. "Here's my lord himself shall persuade you."
My lord, dressed with his usual magnificence and darkly handsome as
ever, was indeed standing within the guest-house door. Pory drew up
beside him. I was passing on with a slight bow, when the Secretary
caught me by the sleeve. At the Governor's house wine had been set forth
to revive the jaded Council, and he was already half seas over. "Tarry
with us, captain!" he cried. "Good wine's good wine, no matter who pours
it! 'S bud! in my young days men called a truce and forgot they were
foes when the bottle went round!"
"If Captain Percy will stay," quoth my lord, "I will give him welcome
and good wine. As Master Pory says, men cannot be always fighting. A
breathing spell to-day gives to-morrow's struggle new zest."
He spoke frankly, with open face and candid eyes. I was not fooled. If
yesterday he would have slain me only in fair fight, it was not so
to-day. Under the lace that fell over his wrist was a red cirque, the
mark of the thong with which I had bound him. As if he had told me, I
knew that he had thrown his scruples to the winds, and that he cared not
what foul play he used to sweep me from his path. My spirit and my wit
rose to meet the danger. Of a sudden I resolved to accept his
invitation.
"So be it," I said, with a laugh and a shrug of my shoulders. "A cup of
wine is no great matter. I'll take it at your hands, my lord, and drink
to our better acquaintance."
We all three went up into my lord's room. The King had fitted out his
minion bravely for the Virginia voyage, and the riches that had decked
the state cabin aboard the _Santa Teresa_ now served to transform the
bare room in the guest house at Jamestown into a corner of Whitehall.
The walls were hung with arras, there was a noble carpet beneath as
well as upon the table, and against the wall stood richly carved trunks.
On the table, beside a bowl of late flowers were a great silver flagon
and a number of goblets, some of chased silver and some of coloured
glass, strangely shaped and fragile as an eggshell. The late sun now
shining in at the open window made the glass to glow like precious
stones.
My lord rang a little silver bell, and a door behind us was opened.
"Wine, Giles!" cried my lord in a raised voice. "Wine for Master Pory,
Captain Percy, and myself! And Giles, my two choice goblets."
Giles, whom I had never seen before, advanced to the table, took the
flagon, and went toward the door, which he had shut behind him. I
negligently turned in my seat, and so came in for a glimpse, as he
slipped through the door, of a figure in black in the next room.
The wine was brought, and with it two goblets. My lord broke off in the
midst of an account of the mornings bear-baiting which the tediousness
of the Indians had caused us to miss. "Who knows if we three shall ever
drink together again?" he said. "To honour this bout I use my most
precious cups." Voice and manner were free and unconstrained. "This gold
cup"--he held it up--"belonged to the Medici. Master Pory, who is a man
of taste, will note the beauty of the graven mænads upon this side, and
of the Bacchus and Ariadne upon this. It is the work of none other than
Benvenuto Cellini. I pour for you, sir." He filled the gold cup with the
ruby wine and set it before the Secretary, who eyed it with all the
passion of a lover, and waited not for us, but raised it to his lips at
once. My lord took up the other cup. "This glass," he continued, "as
green as an emerald, freckled inside and out with gold, and shaped like
a lily, was once amongst a convent's treasures. My father brought it
from Italy, years ago. I use it as he used it, only on gala days. I fill
to you, sir." He poured the wine into the green and gold and twisted
bauble and set it before me, then filled a silver goblet for himself.
"Drink, gentlemen," he said.
"Faith, I have drunken already," quoth the Secretary, and proceeded to
fill for himself a second time. "Here's to you, gentlemen!" and he
emptied half the measure.
"Captain Percy does not drink," remarked my lord.
I leaned my elbow upon the table, and, holding up the glass against the
light, began to admire its beauty. "The tint is wonderful," I said, "as
lucent a green as the top of the comber that is to break and overwhelm
you. And these knobs of gold, within and without, and the strange shape
the tortured glass has been made to take. I find it of a quite sinister
beauty, my lord."
"It hath been much admired," said the nobleman addressed.
"I am strangely suited, my lord," I went on, still dreamily enjoying the
beauty of the green gem within my clasp. "I am a soldier with an
imagination. Sometimes, to give the rein to my fancy pleases me more
than wine. Now, this strange chalice,--might it not breed dreams as
strange?"
"When I had drunken, I think," replied my lord. "The wine would be a
potent spur to my fancy."
"What saith honest Jack Falstaff?" broke in the maudlin Secretary. "Doth
he not bear testimony that good sherris maketh the brain apprehensive
and quick; filleth it with nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which
being delivered by the tongue become excellent wit? Wherefore let us
drink, gentlemen, and beget fancies." He filled for himself again, and
buried his nose in the cup.
"'Tis such a cup, methinks," I said, "as Medea may have filled for
Theseus. The white hand of Circe may have closed around this stem when
she stood to greet Ulysses, and knew not that he had the saving herb in
his palm. Goneril may have sent this green and gilded shape to Regan.
Fair Rosamond may have drunk from it while the Queen watched her. At
some voluptuous feast, Cæsar Borgia and his sister, sitting crowned with
roses, side by side, may have pressed it upon a reluctant guest, who
had, perhaps, a treasure of his own. I dare swear René, the Florentine,
hath fingered many such a goblet before it went to whom Catherine
de'Medici delighted to honour."
"She had the whitest hands," maundered the Secretary. "I kissed them
once before she died, in Blois, when I was young. René was one of your
slow poisoners. Smell a rose, draw on a pair of perfumed gloves, drink
from a certain cup, and you rang your own knell, though your bier might
not receive you for many and many a day,--not till the rose was dust,
the gloves lost, the cup forgotten."
"There's a fashion I have seen followed abroad, that I like," I said.
"Host and guest fill to each other, then change tankards. You are my
host to-day, my lord, and I am your guest. I will drink to you, my lord,
from your silver goblet."
With as frank a manner as his own of a while before, I pushed the green
and gold glass over to him, and held out my hand for the silver goblet.
That a man may smile and smile and be a villain is no new doctrine. My
lord's laugh and gesture of courtesy were as free and ready as if the
poisoned splendour he drew toward him had been as innocent as a pearl
within the shell. I took the silver cup from before him. "I drink to the
King," I said, and drained it to the bottom. "Your lordship does not
drink. 'Tis a toast no man refuses."
He raised the glass to his lips, but set it down before its rim had
touched them. "I have a headache," he declared. "I will not drink
to-day."
Master Pory pulled the flagon toward him, tilted it, and found it empty.
His rueful face made me laugh. My lord laughed too,--somewhat
loudly,--but ordered no more wine. "I would I were at the Mermaid
again," lamented the now drunken Secretary. "There we didn't split a
flagon in three parts.... The Tsar of Muscovy drinks me down a quartern
of aqua vitæ at a gulp,--I've seen him do it.... I would I were the
Bacchus on this cup, with the purple grapes adangle above me.... Wine
and women--wine and women ... good wine needs no bush ... good sherris
sack".... His voice died into unintelligible mutterings, and his gray
unreverend head sank upon the table.
I rose, leaving him to his drunken slumbers, and, bowing to my lord,
took my leave. My lord followed me down to the public room below. A
party of up-river planters had been drinking, and a bit of chalk lay
upon a settle behind the door upon which the landlord had marked their
score. I passed it; then turned back and picked it up. "How long a line
shall I draw, my lord?" I asked with a smile.
"How does the length of the door strike you?" he answered.
I drew the chalk from top to bottom of the wood. "A heavy score makes a
heavy reckoning, my lord," I said, and, leaving the mark upon the door,
I bowed again and went out into the street.
The sun was sinking when I reached the minister's house, and going into
the great room drew a stool to the table and sat down to think. Mistress
Percy was in her own chamber; in the room overhead the minister paced up
and down, humming a psalm. A fire was burning briskly upon the hearth,
and the red light rose and fell,--now brightening all the room, now
leaving it to the gathering dusk. Through the door, which I had left
open, came the odour of the pines, the fallen leaves, and the damp
earth. In the churchyard an owl hooted, and the murmur of the river was
louder than usual.
I had sat staring at the table before me for perhaps half an hour, when
I chanced to raise my eyes to the opposite wall. Now, on this wall,
reflecting the firelight and the open door behind me, hung a small
Venetian mirror, which I had bought from a number of such toys brought
in by the _Southampton_, and had given to Mistress Percy. My eyes rested
upon it, idly at first, then closely enough as I saw within it a man
enter the room. I had heard no footfall; there was no noise now behind
me. The fire was somewhat sunken, and the room was almost in darkness; I
saw him in the glass dimly, as shadow rather than substance. But the
light was not so faint that the mirror could not show me the raised hand
and the dagger within its grasp. I sat without motion, watching the
figure in the glass grow larger. When it was nearly upon me, and the
hand with the dagger drawn back for the blow, I sprang up, wheeled, and
caught it by the wrist.
A moment's fierce struggle, and I had the dagger in my own hand and the
man at my mercy. The fire upon the hearth seized on a pine knot and
blazed up brightly, filling the room with light. "Diccon!" I cried, and
dropped my arm.
I had never thought of this. The room was very quiet as, master and man,
we stood and looked each other in the face. He fell back to the wall and
leaned against it, breathing heavily; into the space between us the past
came thronging.
I opened my hand and let the dagger drop to the floor. "I suppose that
this was because of last night," I said. "I shall never strike you
again."
I went to the table, and sitting down leaned my forehead upon my hand.
It was Diccon who would have done this thing! The fire crackled on the
hearth as had crackled the old camp fires in Flanders; the wind outside
was the wind that had whistled through the rigging of the _Treasurer_,
one terrible night when we lashed ourselves to the same mast and never
thought to see the morning. Diccon!
Upon the table was the minister's inkhorn and pen. I drew my tablets
from the breast of my doublet and began to write. "Diccon!" I called,
without turning, when I had finished.
He came slowly forward to the table, and stood beside it with hanging
head. I tore the leaf from the book and pushed it over to him. "Take
it," I ordered.
"To the commander?" he asked. "I am to take it to the commander?"
I shook my head. "Read it."
He stared at it vacantly, turning it now this way, now that.
"Did you forget how to read when you forgot all else?" I said sternly.
He read, and the colour rushed into his face.
"It is your freedom," I said. "You are no longer man of mine. Begone,
sirrah!"
He crumpled the paper in his hand. "I was mad," he muttered.
"I could almost believe it," I replied. "Begone!"
After a moment he went. Sitting still in my place, I heard him heavily
and slowly leave the room, descend the step at the door, and go out into
the night.
A door opened, and Mistress Jocelyn Percy came into the great room,
like a sunbeam strayed back to earth. Her skirt was of flowered satin,
her bodice of rich taffeta; between the gossamer walls of her French
ruff rose the whitest neck to meet the fairest face. Upon her dark hair
sat, as lightly as a kiss, a little pearl-bordered cap. A colour was in
her cheeks and a laugh on her lips. The rosy light of the burning pine
caressed her,--now dwelling on the rich dress, now on the gold chain
around the slender waist, now on rounded arms, now on the white forehead
below the pearls. Well, she was a fair lady for a man to lay down his
life for.
"I held court this afternoon!" she cried. "Where were you, sir? Madam
West was here, and my Lady Temperance Yeardley, and Master Wynne, and
Master Thorpe from Henricus, and Master Rolfe with his Indian
brother,--who, I protest, needs but silk doublet and hose and a month at
Whitehall to make him a very fine gentleman."
"If courage, steadfastness, truth, and courtesy make a gentleman," I
said, "he is one already. Such an one needs not silk doublet nor court
training."
She looked at me with her bright eyes. "No," she repeated, "such an one
needs not silk doublet nor court training." Going to the fire, she stood
with one hand upon the mantelshelf, looking down into the ruddy hollows.
Presently she stooped and gathered up something from the hearth. "You
waste paper strangely, Captain Percy," she said. "Here is a whole
handful of torn pieces."
She came over to the table, and with a laugh showered the white
fragments down upon it, then fell to idly piecing them together. "What
were you writing?" she asked. "'To all whom it may concern: I, Ralph
Percy, Gentleman, of the Hundred of Weyanoke, do hereby set free from
all service to me and mine----'"
I took from her the bits of paper, and fed the fire with them. "Paper is
but paper," I said. "It is easily rent. Happily a man's will is more
durable."