“As had you seen her ’twould have moved your heart,
Though countermined with walls of brass, to love,
Or at the least to pity.”
—MARLOWE, in _The Jew of Malta_.
On the third night following Manteo’s return, Vytal and Marlowe were
together in the secluded hut of their choosing. The cabin contained but
one room, scantily furnished by two pallets of straw, a rough-hewn table,
a couple of chairs, and other bare necessities of a home’s interior.
The weather was foul, the sky lowering. Occasionally a gleam of distant
lightning shot through chinks in the hovel wall, straight across Vytal’s
face, as, deep in thought, he sat beside the table. A tempestuous wind,
shrieking like a shrew in heated brawl, seemed bent on extinguishing a
cresset which had been thrust between the logs, but succeeded only in
causing the light to flare uncertainly, as though the torch were being
brandished aloft by an unseen hand.
As the gale increased, Marlowe, who had been half reclining on his pallet
in a dark corner, rose and peered out through the hole in the door
which he had made with the skull-like stone. The aperture, jagged and
splintered at the edges, had purposely been left uncovered, as the hut’s
original windows were still barred.
“I’ faith, ’tis a murky night,” said Marlowe, striving to determine the
outlines of trees against the sky. “This wind’s a very nightmare to the
woods.” He turned slowly and sat down at the table. “’Tis well that most
of the colonists have built and occupied their homes. Troth, I pity them
who sleep aboard the ships at anchor.”
Vytal inclined his head, and Christopher smiled comprehendingly. Eleanor,
at least, was safe and unharassed—hence Vytal’s unconcern. Mistress
Dare, of whom lately they had seen nothing, was housed in the governor’s
new-built dwelling, beyond the strip of woodland whose high outline
Marlowe had just found indeterminate between this cabin and the town.
But Gyll Croyden was still on board the _Admiral_. Marlowe remembered
this, and his thoughts pictured vividly the two women in contrast—one,
as he supposed, all content and comfort; the other at the mercy of every
wind and wave that crossed her life.
Listlessly he toyed with a sheet of paper on the table, and, picking up a
pen, dipped it in an ink-horn at his side.
“_Comparisons are odious_,” he wrote, slowly, little dreaming that
the words, born of that fleeting contrast in his mind, were to become
proverbial the world over. But, on raising his eyes to Vytal’s face, he
found in the deep expression none of the odiousness of comparison, for in
his friend’s thoughts there was only one woman to be considered.
Again the poet smiled, as one who half gladly, yet half sadly,
understands, and once more his reflections shaped themselves in words.
He wrote, carelessly, “_Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?_”
and, letting fall the pen, handed the paper to Vytal. The soldier read
and re-read, but made no response whatever, for, even as his eyes were
raised from the writing, his look changed suddenly, and Marlowe, with
astonishment, saw him gazing transfixedly toward the battered door.
As a dream comes in the night-time to recall the thoughts of day, so a
face, seemingly visionary, appeared now to the two men. The jagged edge
of the door’s orifice framed it uncertainly, but the cresset’s light fell
across the features in vivid revelation.
Vytal’s lips parted as though he would have spoken, but it was Marlowe
who voiced the name.
“Eleanor—Mistress Dare!”
And now slowly, yet before the two could recover from amaze, the door was
opened, and, like a white dove from the heart of the gale, Eleanor came
within the cabin.
The door slammed, and then all was quiet, both men sitting spellbound,
for a single glance had told them that she was walking in her sleep. Her
eyes were open, but evidently unseeing, with that vaguely transcendental
look of the somnambulist; and she was clad only in a white simar of silk.
Her russet hair, with which the wind had rioted, hung in profuse disorder
about her shoulders and beneath her throat, where now it rose and fell
more gently with the undulation of her breast. Her hands, clasped
before her, added an effect of rest to the blind bewilderment of her
all-unconscious pose.
For a moment she stood mutely facing them and looking, as it were,
through them to a limitless beyond.
Vytal rose. “Mistress Dare, I pray you—” but as the name Dare seemed to
be borne in upon her mind she cried out terrifiedly, and, swaying, would
have fallen, had he not supported her and led her to his pallet of straw.
As his hand touched hers, Vytal started. “She hath a fever,” he said
to Marlowe. “Do you seek the chirurgeon. He sleeps on the _Admiral_
to-night—also her tire-woman, Margery Harvie, at the governor’s house.”
Hastily Marlowe started out, and the two were left alone.
In silence, Vytal covered Eleanor with his cloak, then, kneeling beside
her with all of a man’s tender concern and helplessness, held her hand.
Her mind was wandering now, and she spoke brokenly. The torchlight
revealed her expression to him, and every look betokened change of
subject in her thoughts, or, rather, change of subconscious impression,
for the words never forsook a central theme, around which her mind seemed
to revolve in desperate fascination.
Occasionally a glimmer of the distant lightning fell across the
listener’s face, showing it tense and deep-cut with the lines of a new
resignation.
“Oh, I am but a child,” he heard her say, as her speech grew more
coherent. “I pray thee, father, take me not to London … ’twill ne’er be
the same to me as this … these vagrant flowers … they grow not thus in
the streets of towns.” Her voice was tremulous with tears. “Is’t true,
father, that the queen … hath sent for thee … oh, then, thou’lt go … I
prove no hinderance … thou’lt go, and I’ll play at happiness in London.…
’Tis best.” She paused and tossed feverishly on the narrow pallet; but
at length, as Vytal’s firm grasp seemed to comfort her, she lay quite
still and spoke again. Several years had apparently elapsed in the life
she was re-living. “Alack, I knew we’d find no content in London.… What
is’t worries thee so, my father?” Suddenly a second cry escaped her.
“What sayest thou? Her Majesty would have me married! … and ’tis the only
way … nay, nay.… Will she not spare thee, father? Thou hast done naught
amiss.… ’Tis most unjust.… Ah, nay, in troth, I cannot … yet ’tis all for
thee … for thee … then tell her Majesty I will.”
Her look changed, and she smiled sadly, as though resigned, a second
person seeming to enter in upon her dream. “Ananias, it shall be as you
desire.… If thou’lt rest content with friendship for a time, perchance in
the coming days I’ll learn to love thee, cousin, but now I cannot.… My
father alone is in my heart.”
She broke off abruptly and grasped Vytal’s hand, as though upon that
grasp depended her salvation from a fate far worse than death. Evidently
behind all the foremost people of her delirium a dominant personality
influenced her mind—the same personality, perhaps, whose thrall had in
some strange way drawn her to the cabin. And now she fell to sobbing,
sobbing in anguish, and her helplessly childlike expression tortured
Vytal’s soul. “Oh, Ananias, I knew not of this great weakness.… I reck’d
not against thy love of wine … God pity me.…”
Then for long she lay moaning and whispering inarticulately, Vytal
kneeling beside her, scarcely more conscious than herself. The wind,
subsiding, wailed about the cabin, leaving the torchlight steadier
within. The damp earth, as yet unfloored, lent to the room a tomblike
chill, and leaves rustled across the rafters.
Eleanor, turning restlessly, gazed into a dark corner, as if yet another
figure had defined itself amid all the complexity of fevered thought.
“Margery, I must tell thee,” she said, with the impassivity of one who
has no interest in life. “I am with child.”
Then again all was silent save for the low moan and whisper of the wind
as it died slowly in the forest.
Vytal rose and went to the door, acutely realizing that to remain longer
beside the bed and hear these words of a breaking heart was not only to
torture himself, but to profane the soul that, all unknowing, gave them
utterance. “John Vytal, I love thee … thee only … always.”
He trembled, then mechanically opened the door, passed out, and, closing
it again, stood outside before it, fixed and rigid like a sentinel
on duty. Only incoherent phrases came to him now, inarticulate and
meaningless in language, yet fraught with so terrible a significance that
he strove to force upon his mind a condition utterly devoid of thought.
But with Vytal this was ever impossible, and so at the last, with a
great mental effort, he clutched at the consideration of outward and
practical necessity. Would Marlowe never return with aid? He listened
desperately for footsteps. Every slight rustle, every sound of wind and
wood that came instead, filled his ears and brain, until all the world
and existence seemed but a medley of sounds, trivial, but wonderfully
important; low, but always audible and intently to be heeded in the night.
When at last he heard a footfall he realized dimly that this was not what
he had expected; it was not from the woods, but from within the hut.
Slowly the door opened, and Eleanor stood looking into his face. Her
eyes, though bewildered, were calm and recognizing, while her whole
expression seemed indicative of consciousness regained. The somnambulism
and delirium, not unnatural to one in her condition, had left her very
feeble in body but mentally aroused. As Vytal realized this, the demands
of the moment became paramount to him, his own terrible lethargy being
broken to meet her needs.
“Mistress Dare,” he said, calmly, “I pray you rest here longer. I have
sent for aid.”
For a moment she made no response, but stood looking about her at the
room’s interior. The torchlight fell across a sheet of paper on the
table. First a single written sentence met her eye:
“_Comparisons are odious._”
She shivered and would have turned away, but there was more writing,
which seemed to speak to her, though she was not sensible of reading the
lines, even to herself:
“_Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?_”
She looked from the table out into the darkness, and then at Vytal. “Oh,
sir, tell me how came I hither—thus—at night!” She clasped his cloak
tightly about her, leaning against the door-post for support.
“You have been stricken, madam, with a fever. I pray you rest.”
At this a new apprehension came into her eyes. “Oh, John Vytal, have I
spoken in feverish way? Tell me, tell me—”
A quick denial sprang to his lips. He believed that deception then would
have been no lie, but to the man who had ever fought for truth, to the
simple, direct nature, even that deception was impossible.
“You spoke, madam; yet, believe me, your words I shall withhold forever,
even from myself.”
Long they stood in silence, conveying no thought one to the other, by
word, or look, or slightest gesture, their spirits, at the end of that
silent lifetime, seeming to meet and become one; yet even in the instant
of their acute conception of the union they stood apart, as if denying
the bond.
Finally he saw her tremble, and a keen realization of her own despair
rose above all thoughts of self. “Thank God,” he said, “our colony hath
need of us. There’s work to do—not for me only, but for you.”
Thereafter she passed him, inclining her head in vague assent, and with a
strenuous effort started out in the darkness toward the gate of the main
enclosure.
He could not follow, knowing that her silence prayed him to withhold
assistance, yet every instinct fought against his self-control.
“I will send the chirurgeon,” he said, “to your father’s house.”