To Have and to Hold Part 18

"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.

"'T is 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, Caesar 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 Rene, the Florentine, hath fingered many such a goblet before it went to whom Catherine de'

Medici delighted to honor."

"She had the whitest hands," maundered the Secretary. "I kissed them once before she died, in Blois, when I was young. Rene 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 gla.s.s 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 splendor he drew toward him had been as innocent as a pearl within the sh.e.l.l. I took the silver cup from before him. "I drink to the King," I said, and drained it to the bottom. "Your lords.h.i.+p does not drink. 'T is a toast no man refuses."

He raised the gla.s.s 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 did n't split a flagon in three parts.... The Tsar of Muscovy drinks me down a quartern of aqua vitae 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 upriver 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 pa.s.sed 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 Core 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 odor 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 color 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 color 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."

CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PLAY AT BOWLS

THE Governor had brought with him from London the year before, a set of boxwood bowls, and had made, between his house and the fort, a n.o.ble green. The generality must still use for the game that portion of the street that was not tobacco-planted; but the quality flocked to the Governor's green, and here, one holiday afternoon, a fortnight or more from the day in which I had drunk to the King from my lord's silver goblet, was gathered a very great company. The Governor's match was toward,--ten men to a side, a hogshead of sweet-scented to the victorious ten, and a keg of canary to the man whose bowl should hit the jack.

The season had been one of unusual mildness, and the suns.h.i.+ne was still warm and bright, gilding the velvet of the green, and making the red and yellow leaves swept into the trench to glow like a ribbon of flame. The sky was blue, the water bluer still, the leaves bright-colored, the wind blowing; only the enshrouding forest, wrapped in haze, seemed as dim, unreal, and far away as a last year's dream.

The Governor's gilt armchair had been brought from the church, and put for him upon the bank of turf at the upper end of the green. By his side sat my Lady Temperance, while the gayly dressed dames and the men who were to play and to watch were accommodated with stools and settles or with seats on the green gra.s.s. All were dressed in holiday clothes, all tongues spoke, all eyes laughed; you might have thought there was not a heavy heart amongst them. Rolfe was there, gravely courteous, quiet and ready; and by his side, in otterskin mantle, beaded moccasins, and feathered headdress, the Indian chief, his brother-in-law,--the bravest, comeliest, and manliest savage with whom I have ever dealt. There, too, was Master Pory, red and jovial, with an eye to the sack the servants were bringing from the Governor's house; and the commander, with his wife; and Master Jeremy Sparrow, fresh from a most moving sermon on the vanities of this world. Captains, Councilors, and Burgesses aired their gold lace, and their wit or their lack of it; while a swarm of younger adventurers, youths of good blood and bad living, come from home for the weal of England and the woe of Virginia, went here and there through the crowd like gilded summer flies.

Rolfe and I were to play; he sat on the gra.s.s at the feet of Mistress Jocelyn Percy, making her now and then some courtly speech, and I stood beside her, my hand on the back of her chair.

The King's ward held court as though she were a king's daughter. In the brightness of her beauty she sat there, as gracious for the nonce as the suns.h.i.+ne, and as much of another world. All knew her story, and to the daring that is in men's hearts her own daring appealed,--and she was young and very beautiful. Some there had not been my friends, and now rejoiced in what seemed my inevitable ruin; some whom I had thought my friends were gone over to the stronger side; many who in secret wished me well still shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders over what they were pleased to call my madness; but for her, I was glad to know, there were only good words. The Governor had left his gilt armchair to welcome her to the green, and had caused a chair to be set for her near his own, and here men came and bowed before her as if she had been a princess indeed.

A stir amongst the crowd, a murmur, and a craning of necks heralded the approach of that other at whom the town gaped with admiration. He came with his retinue of attendants, his pomp of dress, his arrogance of port, his splendid beauty. Men looked from the beauty of the King's ward to the beauty of the King's minion, from her costly silk to his velvet and miniver, from the air of the court that became her well to the towering pride and insolence which to the thoughtless seemed his fortune's proper mantle, and deemed them a pair well suited, and the King's will indeed the will of Heaven.

I was never one to value a man by his outward seeming, but suddenly I saw myself as in a mirror,--a soldier, scarred and bronzed, acquainted with the camp, but not with the court, roughened by a rude life, poor in this world's goods, the first flush of youth gone forever. For a moment my heart was bitter within me. The pang pa.s.sed, and my hand tightened its grasp upon the chair in which sat the woman I had wed. She was my wife, and I would keep my own.

My lord had paused to speak to the Governor, who had risen to greet him.

Now he came toward us, and the crowd pressed and whispered. He bowed low to Mistress Percy, made as if to pa.s.s on, then came to a stop before her, his hat in his hand, his handsome head bent, a smile upon his bearded lips.