“With hair that gilds the water as it glides
And …
One like Actæon peeping through the grove.”
—MARLOWE, in _Edward the Second_.
Weeks passed, and still the Spanish, for some unaccountable reason,
delayed their invasion.
At noon on the last day of August, Vytal, accompanied by Manteo, started
southward on a short reconnoissance. Before going, he left strict
injunctions with Marlowe to admit none to the fortress save those who
knew the countersign. He had left the poet, who was now well skilled in
military methods, to maintain a watchful guard in the absence of Hugh
Rouse and Roger Prat. Furthermore, he gave Dyonis Harvie positive orders
to preserve a similar caution respecting the _Admiral_ and fly-boat, of
which the worthy mate was now temporarily in command.
On receiving this instruction, the seaman scratched his head in
perplexity. “There is one who pesters me,” he said, “with importunate
demands to come aboard, and as he is but a harmless lunatic—poor
soul!—who says he longs to be on the deck of an English ship, and to
imagine himself homeward bound, perhaps you will not refuse him.”
“You speak of Master Ralph Contempt?”
“Yes.”
“Even to him make no exception. Admit one, admit all. Only the few who
know our sign must learn the condition of these vessels.”
“And Simon Ferdinando?”
“For the form’s sake you cannot question his authority. But he is well
watched;” and Vytal rowed back to the shore. Here he met Marlowe.
“Our guest,” said the poet, “even now seeks admittance to the fortress,
longing, he pitifully declares, for the sight of weapons that can avenge
his comrades’ lives.”
“It is hard to forbid him entrance,” returned the soldier, “but there
must be no exception. The example is needed to maintain secrecy;” with
which Vytal joined Manteo in the woods.
Marlowe stood for a moment watching him, and then, turning, caught sight
of another figure even more of interest than his friend’s. Eleanor Dare
was walking alone on the shore. He started forward impulsively to join
her, but, remembering Ralph Contempt, whom he had left at the entrance of
the fortress, he returned to enforce the rule. Ralph, however, no longer
awaited him. Having stood idly, first on one foot, then on the other,
looking plaintively into the stolid eyes of an armed sentinel, the youth,
his patience exhausted, had wandered, with an apparent aimlessness, down
to the sea. At the water’s edge he stepped into a barge, and, with a long
pole pushing the cumbrous craft out to the _Admiral_, once more accosted
Dyonis Harvie. But, as the mate proved obdurate, he returned again,
looking off now and then to the southward as he went back leisurely to
land.
Then an unexpected circumstance favored him. He left the barge and struck
inland behind the town. Once within shelter of the forest, he hastened
by a circuitous route through almost impenetrable undergrowth to a point
directly behind but about a mile to the south of the fortress. Here a
stream, secluded from the sight of any one not on its immediate margin,
met his view. It was the continuation of the inlet in which Mistress
Croyden had been crabbing.
To his surprise, a canoe of birch-bark, a single paddle in the bottom,
floated idly, nosing the bank, and farther on, to his yet greater
astonishment, a small heap of clothing lay on the sprawling roots
of an oak-tree. He examined the apparel, and found a woman’s linen
undergarments, a long frock, kirtle, and richly garnished stomacher.
Fearing that some foul play had befallen the wearer, he glanced about
him, not without alarm. The spot, utterly sequestered, and only
approached by the inlet, or with much difficulty, as he had approached
it, by the woods, offered adequate concealment for deeds of violence.
But suddenly he heard a splashing sound from the near distance, and the
expression of his eyes as they looked through the foliage to a bend in
the stream, some fifty yards farther inland, changed instantly. For there
was Mistress Croyden, all unheedful of his proximity, disporting herself
to her heart’s content, the silver ripples of the water forming an
adequate covering for all save her head, which glistened in the sunlight,
a pond-lily of white and gold.
Ralph hurried forward along the border of the woods until he came within
easy speaking distance of the bather. A curtain of leaves hung before
him, but through the interstices he could see her plainly as she melted
like a water-nymph into the bosom of the stream. His eyes shone; his
lips parted as though he would have called to her, but hesitating, with
a new consideration in which she was evidently not the foremost subject,
he returned silently to the oak about which the clothes were scattered.
Stooping, he picked up all the garments, and, re-entering the forest,
hid them beneath the underbrush far within its shade. Then, with a smile
almost mischievous in his boyish enjoyment of the proceeding, he made his
way hastily to the town. On coming to the fortress he hallooed loudly and
called to Marlowe as if in impatience and alarm.
The poet, who had relieved the sentinel, and was seated, reading, near
the door, came out hurriedly. But before he could inquire concerning the
other’s clamor, Ralph, trembling with a well-assumed excitement, pointed
wildly in quite the opposite direction from which he had come, and seemed
to strive the while vainly for utterance. Marlowe, catching much of his
excitement, nevertheless bade him compose himself and speak. In this the
youth finally succeeded.
“They have taken her,” he said, lowering his voice that no chance
passer-by might hear; “they have taken her as they took me, by the hair
of the head. Oh, she will be a plaything—it is very sad.”
The vagueness of the announcement only added to Marlowe’s disquiet. “Who?
Where?”
“Oh, they have dragged her off. I saw them, the red devils, at the
northeast end of the island. The game is to be played again.” The words
seemed fraught with an under-meaning, but to the excited listener there
was no change. “The game is to be played,” repeated Ralph, now in a
dreary monotone, “with Gyll Croyden.”
“Gyll Croyden—Gyll!” And the impetuous poet, beside himself with alarm,
not stopping to hear another word, rushed away. When he had passed
through the north gate of the palisade, Ralph Contempt, who had watched
his headlong pursuit, turned, with an amused look, and entered the
fortress. In its main apartment, a long mess-room that served also as
an armory, he found a small company of soldiers, who sat about in groups
playing at cards and “tables.”[5] Believing that Marlowe had admitted
him, they made no remonstrance, and soon he was throwing dice and jesting
with the merriest, his eyes roving now and then over the massive oaken
walls and stacked muskets.
But as there was no great show of weapons here, he grew listless and
unheedful of the game. The heavier pieces, if such there were, must be
elsewhere.
Laying down his dice-cup with a yawn, he sauntered into the hallway,
closing the mess-room door behind him. But here he started back quickly,
as though to return to the armory, for some one who had just entered the
fort was approaching him with light footsteps. Recognizing the tread as
a woman’s, however, he went forward more easily and met the new-comer in
the middle of the hall. The light, coming from the door behind, threw
out her figure in relief, but failed to reveal her face. In the next
instant, though, when his eyes had become accustomed to the glare of the
entrance, he started back more suddenly but less perceptibly than before.
Then, quickly regaining his composure, he bowed low as to a woman and a
stranger.
As the light from the doorway fell full upon his face, it became the
other’s turn to show surprise. Instinctively she recoiled, a world of
meaning memory in her hazel eyes. But he gave no sign of notice.
“’Tis Mistress Eleanor Dare, I think,” he said, with a courtly deference.
“She hath been well described by all. These colonists laud her to the
skies. Moreover, I have watched her many times from beneath her window.”
“Your name, sir?” The voice contained no recognition or repulsion now,
but only a natural inquiry.
“Ralph Contempt, yours to be commanded.”
“Ah, Master Ralph Contempt, of whom I have heard much lately. The sole
survivor of that brave company which perished.”
“Madam,” he returned, in a lower tone of double meaning, “I, too, may
perish.”
“Why, sir, what mean you? Are you not safe and sound among your
countrymen?” There was an accusatory stress on the last word, but he only
answered with a shrug of his shoulders, and reassumed his old, wandering
manner.
“Are you, too,” he asked, vaguely, “a dream, as I am? But oh, how
different! Your eyes fire my brain, madam. Women have offered to die for
me—” he was running on now with a wild impetuosity—“it is refreshing to
meet one at least for whom I myself would die.”
She turned to him with a look of intense hatred and repugnance, but it
died suddenly; and, smiling, so that he might see the smile, whereas
the scorn had been concealed, she retreated slowly toward the door. He
hesitated for a moment, seeming to be drawn two ways, then followed
her. Once outside the fortress she sat down upon a rusty caliver which
had been found among the débris of the first settlement—sat down and
waited, fearing doubtfully that her magnetism might not avail to bring
him even to so short a distance from the secrets of the fort. But the
chape of his scabbard grated on the threshold, and in a minute he stood
bending over her with ardent eyes, yet evidently against his will.
Youthful _insouciance_, which, warring with a certain haughtiness and
scorn, played so often across his features, had left him a suppliant
before her, yet a suppliant who would, she felt, as a last resort, throw
supplication to the winds.
“Since the description,” he said, “I have dreamed of you often.”
The square before the fortress was now deserted, a large crowd having
followed Marlowe in his excited quest, for, despite her unpleasant
notoriety, Gyll Croyden was by no means unpopular in the colony. The
women might shake their heads and, justly enough, gossip as they would,
but the men had been glad now to take up arms and go in search of her.
And with many it was but the spirit of comradeship that inspired them.
“My queen!” The two words came in a low whisper, nevertheless with all
the colossal self-assurance by which the youth, now known as Ralph
Contempt, was long remembered.
The effrontery almost caused Eleanor to lose her hold on him. She rose
from the cannon as though, in all the majesty of her pure womanhood, to
smite and cast him from her with a mere glance from the very eyes that
held him spellbound. But she realized instinctively that this man must
at all costs be kept her prisoner until the return of Vytal. She felt
sure that he had come as a spy from the Spanish ranks, and that, if he
were allowed to rejoin them, it must mean disaster. She did not know
how far he had unravelled Vytal’s plan, or how deeply he had penetrated
the secrets of the ships and fortress. The welfare of the whole colony,
however, seemed at stake, and she must play for it against a keen,
resourceful opponent. This realization, quick-born and vivid, though
formless, caused her to sink down once more breathlessly to the caliver.
And then a deeper shade of trouble crossed her face. It was the look of a
penitent who seeks forgiveness before some invisible tribunal, with the
justifying excuse of unblemished innocence. She knew that in her heart
the judge’s name was Vytal, and that to him alone she was answering:
“It is for our colony—_our_ colony.” Her mind kept repeating this,
feverishly, for thus she always spoke of the settlement to herself. That
night, long months ago, when she had led Vytal to Ananias, and had fought
against her shame in order to reveal her husband’s condition—for had
not her duty to the colony demanded instant action?—that night saw the
beginning of her sacrifice.
But the word “sacrifice” was not now in her mind. It is rarely those who
name a crisis that live up to its demands. The details of the moment
must be paramount; the troubling, perplexing flux of thought on thought,
act on act, seeming chaotic in their onrush, must blind a person to the
perfect whole.
“My queen!”
She raised her eyes and looked into his own. He grasped her hand. For an
instant, as a last resort, she thought of alarming the soldiers, the dull
murmur of whose voices reached her from within. But recognizing the folly
of an outcry—for he could readily have escaped within the forest—she
forbore to give alarm, and only sat there, her head drooping, for the
moment seeming to yield. To voice her encouragement was impossible. While
she could force herself to remain impassive, by look and gesture drawing
on herself his sudden, passionate avowal, she could by no means bring a
word of answer to her lips. Fortunately, he seemed content for the moment
with his own reckless wooing, and so she merely listened and met his
eyes—met his eyes without remonstrance—that was all, and yet to her it
meant that her heart was guilty of a lie.
At length he would have had her go with him “for a walk,” he
said,“within the silent forest of dreams.” But to this she could not
bring herself, even though it would have beguiled him from the fort and
vessels.
“Nay,” she replied, “we are alone here.”
“But I have dreamed of you,” he persisted, “as walking beside me, your
hand in mine, through a vista of green and gold. And I dreamed that we
stood on the brink of a silver stream—stood, oh, so long—until at last
I carried you across. Yet, before that, I had called you queen—Queen of
England—was it not strange? But you broke my heart by refusing to call me
king. Come.”
She laughed, with desperate coquetry. “And for a whimsical dream must we
lose ourselves in the gloomy forest?”
He grew restless. “To the shore, then. Perchance the river should have
been the sea. I did not read the dream aright. It must, indeed, have
meant the sea, else wherefore the King and Queen of England?”
“No,” she answered, forcing a pout to her lips. “The sound of the surf
oppresses me. Have you not more faith in the music of your voice? I had
not supposed you lacked self-confidence.”
“Until now nor had I supposed so.” He kissed her hand, which was cold and
lifeless. “But now—”
“You do not realize,” she interposed, striving strenuously to fight down
the meaning regret in her voice, “how much I have given you.” At this he
seized her hand again, to cover it with kisses, and, growing more bold,
bent down to kiss her lips; but she recoiled quickly, and, eluding him,
stepped back until the cannon lay between them. Then she forced herself
to laugh.
He vaulted over the caliver. “Even this great piece,” he cried, “although
it were ready primed, could scarce deter me,” and, seizing both of her
hands, he leaned down to repeat his first attempt. But she hung her
head, and his lips only brushed the velvet of her cap. Then, raising her
eyes to his, by sheer force of will she dominated his desire, held it in
check, yet kindled it the more.
“Stay,” she objected, calmly, “you little comprehend the ways of women;
they must be wooed before they can be won.”
He started back with an impatient gesture. “They can wait, then, to be
wooed,” and, turning, he would have re-entered the fortress.
Had she lost him? Must the humiliation of it all be bitterly deepened by
failure? No. She felt her woman’s power, her tingling wit and intuitive
diplomacy rise quickly to meet the crisis. “I pray you, do not go, Master
Contempt. Have I been so very unkind?”
He turned back smiling, his self-conceit actually leading him to believe
that his own little ruse of apparent indifference had worked success.
A bold, flashing plan came to her. She would play upon the man’s two
conflicting desires at one and the same time. A double spell must shackle
him.
“I have it,” she suggested, in a yielding voice. “Let us row out to the
_Admiral_, and pretend we have left this dangerous land for good and all.”
His eyes sparkled. Fortune had showered him with favors. He felt less
compunction now in making love. She little knew, he thought, how
opportunely her suggestion came. He even feigned reluctance for the
moment, to hide the eagerness of his steps.
They walked to the shore.
“I have not been on board my father’s ship,” she told him, “since we
landed in the fly-boat. You have heard, no doubt, of our mishaps?”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “But one thing I know
not, and that is the countersign. I fear Dyonis Harvie will forbid me the
ship.”
She laughed. “Nay, he is my tire-woman’s husband. You shall see.”
In a few minutes they were under the _Admiral’s_ side, and in one more
she had mounted to the deck.
“It is against Captain Vytal’s orders,” expostulated the mate, as Ralph
followed her. “Under your favor, Master Contempt must stay behind.”
But the youth was already beside them. “Nay, Dyonis,” remonstrated
Eleanor. “You forget ’tis the governor’s daughter who brings him.”
“I ask your pardon, Mistress Dare; but ’tis not that I forget too easily;
it is that I remember well a positive command.” And he made as though to
assist the subject of their talk down into the barge again.
“How now?” she demanded, imperiously. “Are any save my father’s orders
superior to mine own? I had not looked to find my maid-servant’s husband
so disloyal.”
At this the poor seaman wavered on the horns of a dilemma. Against
Mistress Dare, of all the colony, he could not persist further, for she
was regarded already as a kind of queen in the little settlement, who had
shown kindness to the very humblest in sickness and distress, and was
above all others most readily obeyed.
Harvie scratched his head. “You will explain, I pray, to Captain Vytal.”
“I will explain.”
The mate walked away mumbling to himself. Whereat, turning with a laugh
of feigned delight and mischief, Eleanor led her companion to the room
of state. “It is here,” she said, “that the king should hold his court.
And, besides, I am anxious to inspect the chamber in which my poor father
used to sit, head in hands, hoping against hope for my safe arrival.” She
paused. “Furthermore, there is wine within of a rare vintage.”
“Wine,” he said, eagerly—“golden wine. We shall drink to our realm, to
the England I pictured in my dreams. But no, first, first to our love.”
She felt his breath hot against her cheek. “And to solitude,” she added,
with an under-meaning in her thoughts. Then, daringly, for the game at
moments carried her away, “To an immemorial captivity in the room of
state.”
He had, however, thrown caution to the winds, being, as he believed,
at the very threshold of a double goal. Nevertheless, as they entered
the long apartment, he assumed his old, pitiable air. “It is cruel,” he
said, “to mention captivity to one who, having but just escaped so fell a
slavery, is again in direst bondage.”
“It was thoughtless,” she allowed, with subtle truth, “and reprehensible
to talk of victory when as yet we have neither of us won.”
He strove to encircle her waist with his arm, but once more, as if
with natural coquetry, she eluded him. “Not yet won?” he whispered,
passionately. “It is won; it shall be won—and by me.”
“Nay, sir, not so fast. You forget the wine; it is there.” She pointed to
a heavy sideboard of black oak near the wall, at the same time taking a
silver flagon from the table.
“Ah, the golden wine!”
He went to the sideboard, and, kneeling with his back toward her, thrust
a hand across the shelf of a lower cupboard. Finding a dusty bottle in
the corner, he withdrew it. “’Tis as old,” he said, closing the doors
and surveying the film of cobwebs, “as old as our love is new. Come,
dearest—” but, on turning, he broke off suddenly.
The flash of a white ruff, the soft whisper of slippers across a rug, and
he was alone—a prisoner.
But then—even then, as the key grated in the lock—he laughed like a boy
who has been caught in a game of blind-man’s-buff or hide-and-seek. Even
in the first moment of his plight, amusement and an uncontrollable sense
of the ludicrous sparkled in his blue eyes. Impulsively knocking off the
bottle’s neck against the sideboard, he picked up a silver cup which had
rolled to his feet from the cabin door and filled it to the brim.
“You remembered me,” he reflected, sipping the wine with a too-apparent
relish as though acting to himself. “You remembered me. That is one point
gained.”
In the meanwhile, Eleanor Dare, on the deck, was graciously explaining to
Dyonis her apparent unreasonableness and breach of discipline. “You will
guard the door until relieved.” And so saying, she returned in her barge
to the shore.
Early in the evening, Vytal, re-entering the town, was surprised to find
her evidently awaiting him at the fort.
“The man,” she exclaimed, breathlessly, without any prelude of greeting,
“the man you fought with on the bridge is here!”
“Frazer?”
“Yes, Frazer, known lately as Ralph Contempt.”
A sharp, sudden comprehension, all the keener for having been so long
deferred, sprang into the soldier’s face. “’Twas to set him a-land that
the Spanish vessel anchored to the southward. I knew the boy’s eyes.
’Twas his heavy beard deceived me.”
She smiled. “A woman knows from the heart,” she said, “while a man’s head
aches with perplexity. And, besides, whereas he only fought with you, me
he insulted.” Her cheeks flushed, her eyes revealing the pure hatred and
anger they had so long been forced to mask with smiles.
The look fired Vytal’s blood. But, following his first silent fury, an
expression which had never yet been in his eyes changed them to those
of a wounded animal, and he seemed for the moment almost ashamed.
The thought had cut him cruelly that his worst enemies on earth were
a mere careless stripling and a shallow drunkard, with not even the
boy’s bravery to commend him as a foe. There are a few men who regret
the lack of noble power in an enemy as deeply as the many deplore its
non-existence in a friend.
“Where is he?”
“I have imprisoned him in the _Admiral_.”
“You!”
“Yes.” Her look had a strange penitence in it and no triumph. He dimly
understood the reason, and an expression of pain crossed his own
features. But there was not a trace of condemnation in the deep-set eyes,
his faith being perfect. “Yes,” she added, in a whisper, as though half
to herself, “’twas for our colony I led him on. But oh, if by any chance
he should escape—”
“It would matter little,” broke in Vytal.
“How so?”
“He has failed. You have frustrated his plan to estimate our strength.
Even were he to return, he could impart naught of value to the others.
But stay, in what room have you imprisoned him?”
“In the main cabin.”
“That is well. His knowledge of the fortress would avail them nothing.
St. Magil, I doubt not, knows the force and number of our arms. ’Tis
mainly my new arrangement of the ships that holds the key to our defence.
Thus, Mistress Dare, even should he escape, which he must not, you have
accomplished that which I had not supposed within a woman’s range to
compass. I thank you—deeply.”
Her face brightened for the instant, but, as he walked away, she returned
to her home sadly, as though even the skilful winning of her first play
had brought only an ephemeral gladness.
Vytal had but just crossed the square when Marlowe, having entered the
town from the north, joined him. The poet was dishevelled from his hasty
pursuit through the forest and extremely agitated. “Gyll Croyden has been
captured by the Indians!”
“Who told you that?”
“Our guest.”
“And so you went in search of her?”
“Most naturally, for though she and I are naught save comrades, comrades
we shall be to the end.”
Vytal studied his face. “Our guest’s name, Kyt, is Frazer.”
“Frazer!” The poet started. “We are tricked. Tricked by a boy! Forgive
me. You must leave another to defend the fortress,” and Marlowe, drawing
his sword, held it out to the soldier. “Leave me the pen only, for I am
not worthy of this.”
But Vytal laid a hand on his shoulder kindly. “I was befooled myself.”
“Let us go to him,” suggested Christopher.
“Nay, I have just sent Hugh Rouse, who returned with me from his picket
duty. He will bring the fellow to the fort.”
“Let us wait in the armory, then. I long to see that bantering actor
pleading for our mercy. He would play excellent well upon the stage, with
his tales of torture and feigned idiocy.”
So they waited, waited long, and still Hugh Rouse did not return.
The cause of this delay is briefly told.
Hugh, having stepped into a canoe, had, with a few long sweeps of his
paddle, come to the _Admiral_; and the captive heard voices approaching
the cabin door. At this he rose from the table, and, with an air still
somewhat careless, yet of definite purpose, concealed himself behind the
arras with which the walls were hung.
Once more the key grated in its lock, and Frazer heard two men enter the
long cabin, which by now was enveloped in gloom. Seeming to stand near
the threshold, while their eyes were probably accustoming themselves
to the darkness, neither of these men spoke at first, but finally the
prisoner heard one whisper to the other and, with a deep oath, advance
farther into the room.
“He hides. Do you, Dyonis, guard the door.”
Harvie obeyed, while Rouse, growing more and more amazed, searched the
cabin without success. He might have searched until the crack of doom and
come no nearer to a trace of the cunning quarry.
For, even on their first entrance midway into the room, when Rouse had
supposed that Harvie held the door, and Harvie that the captive must
certainly be before them, the bird had flown. Softly, in that first
moment, the heavy arras undulated, as though a breeze were passing across
it from end to end of the apartment. Then, parting from the wall near the
entrance, it fell flat again—a motionless, innocent piece of tapestry in
darkness.
And, suppressing a laugh, Master Ralph lowered himself into Hugh’s canoe,
to paddle away under the cover of evening.
After propelling the light craft silently for several minutes, he
listened. An oath rang out in deep bass from the _Admiral’s_ deck.
Hearing this, he turned the prow of his canoe toward a narrow inlet,
and entered on a winding forest stream. The moon, just rising above the
trees, ensilvered his course with a radiance that found itself reflected
yet more brightly in his youthful eyes.
On and on he paddled with silent speed, until, coming to an abrupt bend
in the stream, he saw another canoe on the opposite shore. Looking about
him, he appeared to hesitate; but suddenly a golden thing, round like a
second moon, appeared over the edge of the lonely craft.
“You will find them,” he called, “on a direct line with your canoe, back
in the brushwood. Farewell, Gyll, and thank you.”
“Thank you!” came the answer, in exasperation, after him. “Here have I
been starving, fearing to move! Villanous—” but he was beyond earshot
now, as, running the prow of his boat onto a shelving bank in the
distance, he plunged straightway into the forest.