To Have and to Hold Part 4

I bowed again. "You have no need to tell me that, madam," I said. "I have eyes. I desire to know why you were there at all, and why you married me."

She turned from me, until I could see nothing but the coiled wealth of her hair and the bit of white neck between it and the ruff. We stood so in silence, she with bent head and fingers clasping and unclasping, I leaning against the wall and staring at her, for what seemed a long time. At least I had time to grow impatient, when she faced me again, and all my irritation vanished in a gasp of admiration.

Oh, she was beautiful, and of a sweetness most alluring and fatal! Had Medea worn such a look, sure Jason had quite forgot the fleece, and with those eyes Circe had needed no other charm to make men what she would.

Her voice, when she spoke, was no longer imperious; it was low pleading music. And she held out entreating hands.

"Have pity on me," she said. "Listen kindly, and have pity on me. You are a strong man and wear a sword. You can cut your way through trouble and peril. I am a woman, weak, friendless, helpless. I was in distress and peril, and I had no arm to save, no knight to fight my battle. I do not love deceit. Ah, do not think that I have not hated myself for the lie I have been. But these forest creatures that you take,--will they not bite against springe and snare? Are they scrupulous as to how they free themselves? I too was in the toils of the hunter, and I too was not scrupulous. There was a thing of which I stood in danger that would have been bitterer to me, a thousand times, than death. I had but one thought, to escape; how, I did not care,--only to escape. I had a waiting woman named Patience Worth. One night she came to me, weeping.

She had wearied of service, and had signed to go to Virginia as one of Sir Edwyn Sandys' maids, and at the last moment her heart had failed her. There had been pressure brought to bear upon me that day,--I had been angered to the very soul. I sent her away with a heavy bribe, and in her dress and under her name I fled from--I went aboard that s.h.i.+p. No one guessed that I was not the Patience Worth to whose name I answered.

No one knows now,--none but you, none but you."

"And why am I so far honored, madam?" I said bluntly.

She crimsoned, then went white again. She was trembling now through her whole frame. At last she broke out: "I am not of that crew that came to marry! To me you are the veriest stranger,--you are but the hand at which I caught to draw myself from a pit that had been digged for me.

It was my hope that this hour would never come. When I fled, mad for escape, willing to dare anything but that which I left behind, I thought, 'I may die before that s.h.i.+p with its shameless cargo sets sail.' When the s.h.i.+p set sail, and we met with stormy weather, and there was much sickness aboard, I thought, 'I may drown or I may die of the fever.' When, this afternoon, I lay there in the boat, coming up this dreadful river through the glare of the lightning, and you thought I slept, I was thinking, 'The bolts may strike me yet, and all will be well.' I prayed for that death, but the storm pa.s.sed. I am not without shame. I know that you must think all ill of me, that you must feel yourself gulled and cheated. I am sorry--that is all I can say--I am sorry. I am your wife--I was married to you to-day--but I know you not and love you not. I ask you to hold me as I hold myself, a guest in your house, nothing more. I am quite at your mercy. I am entirely friendless, entirely alone. I appeal to your generosity, to your honor"--

Before I could prevent her she was kneeling to me, and she would not rise, though I bade her do so.

I went to the door, unbarred it, and looked out into the night, for the air within the room stifled me. It was not much better outside. The clouds had gathered again, and were now hanging thick and low. From the distance came a rumble of thunder, and the whole night was dull, heavy, and breathless. Hot anger possessed me: anger against Rolfe for suggesting this thing to me; anger against myself for that unlucky throw; anger, most of all, against the woman who had so cozened me. In the servants' huts, a hundred yards away, lights were still burning, against rule, for the hour was late. Glad that there was something I could rail out against, I strode down upon the men, and caught them a.s.sembled in Diccon's cabin, dicing for to-morrow's rum. When I had struck out the light with my rapier, and had rated the rogues to their several quarters, I went back through the gathering storm to the brightly-lit, flower-decked room, and to Mistress Percy.

She was still kneeling, her hands at her breast, and her eyes, wide and dark, fixed upon the blackness without the open door. I went up to her and took her by the hand.

"I am a gentleman, madam," I said. "You need have no fear of me. I pray you to rise."

She stood up at that, and her breath came hurriedly through her parted lips, but she did not speak.

"It grows late, and you must be weary," I continued. "Your room is yonder. I trust that you will sleep well. Good-night."

I bowed low, and she curtsied to me. "Good-night," she said.

On her way to the door, she brushed against the rack wherein hung my weapons. Among them was a small dagger. Her quick eye caught its gleam, and I saw her press closer to the wall, and with her right hand strive stealthily to detach the blade from its fastening. She did not understand the trick. Her hand dropped to her side, and she was pa.s.sing on, when I crossed the room, loosened the dagger, and offered it to her, with a smile and a bow. She flushed scarlet and bit her lips, but she took it.

"There are bars to the door within," I said. "Again, good-night."

"Good-night," she answered, and, entering the room, she shut the door. A moment more, and I heard the heavy bars drop into place.

CHAPTER V IN WHICH A WOMAN HAS HER WAY

TEN days later, Rolfe, going down river in his barge, touched at my wharf, and finding me there walked with me toward the house.

"I have not seen you since you laughed my advice to scorn--and took it,"

he said. "Where's the farthingale, Bened.i.c.k the married man?"

"In the house."

"Oh, ay!" he commented. "It's near to supper time. I trust she's a good cook?"

"She does not cook," I said dryly. "I have hired old Goody Cotton to do that."

He eyed me closely. "By all the G.o.ds! a new doublet! She is skillful with her needle, then?"

"She may be," I answered. "Having never seen her with one, I am no judge. The doublet was made by the tailor at Flowerdieu Hundred."

By this we had reached the level sward at the top of the bank. "Roses!"

he exclaimed,--"a long row of them new planted! An arbor, too, and a seat beneath the big walnut! Since when hast thou turned gardner, Ralph?"

"It's Diccon's doing. He is anxious to please his mistress."

"Who neither sews, nor cooks, nor plants! What does she do?"

"She pulls the roses," I said. "Come in."

When we had entered the house he stared about him; then cried out, "Acrasia's bower! Oh, thou sometime Guyon!" and began to laugh.

It was late afternoon, and the slant suns.h.i.+ne streaming in at door and window striped wall and floor with gold. Floor and wall were no longer logs gnarled and stained: upon the one lay a carpet of delicate ferns and aromatic leaves, and glossy vines, purple-berried, tapestried the other. Flowers--purple and red and yellow--were everywhere. As we entered, a figure started up from the hearth.

"St. George!" exclaimed Rolfe. "You have never married a blackamoor?"

"It is the negress, Angela," I said. "I bought her from William Pierce the other day. Mistress Percy wished a waiting damsel."

The creature, one of the five females of her kind then in Virginia, looked at us with large, rolling eyes. She knew a little Spanish, and I spoke to her in that tongue, bidding her find her mistress and tell her that company waited. When she was gone I placed a jack of ale upon the table, and Rolfe and I sat down to discuss it. Had I been in a mood for laughter, I could have found reason in his puzzled face. There were flowers upon the table, and beside them a litter of small objects, one of which he now took up.

"A white glove," he said, "perfumed and silver-fringed, and of a size to fit t.i.tania."

I spread its mate out upon my palm. "A woman's hand. Too white, too soft, and too small."

He touched lightly, one by one, the slender fingers of the glove he held. "A woman's hand,--strength in weakness, veiled power, the star in the mist, guiding, beckoning, drawing upward!"

I laughed and threw the glove from me. "The star, a will-of-the-wisp; the goal, a slough," I said.

As he sat opposite me a change came over his face, a change so great that I knew before I turned that she was in the room.

The bundle which I had carried for her from Jamestown was neither small nor light. Why, when she fled, she chose to burden herself with such toys, or whether she gave a thought to the suspicions that might be raised in Virginia if one of Sir Edwyn's maids bedecked herself in silk and lace and jewels, I do not know, but she had brought to the forest and the tobacco fields the gauds of a maid of honor. The Puritan dress in which I first saw her was a thing of the past; she clothed herself now like the parrakeets in the forest,--or liker the lilies of the field, for verily she toiled not, neither did she spin.

Rolfe and I rose from our seats. "Mistress Percy," I said, "let me present to you a right worthy gentleman and my very good friend, Master John Rolfe."

She curtsied, and he bowed low. He was a man of quick wit and had been at court, but for a time he could find no words. Then: "Mistress Percy's face is not one to be forgotten. I have surely seen it before, though where"--

Her color mounted, but she answered him indifferently enough. "Probably in London, amongst the spectators of some pageant arranged in honor of the princess, your wife, sir," she said carelessly. "I had twice the fortune to see the Lady Rebekah pa.s.sing through the streets."

"Not in the streets only," he said courteously. "I remember now: 't was at my lord bishop's dinner. A very courtly company it was. You were laughing with my Lord Rich. You wore pearls in your hair"--

She met his gaze fully and boldly. "Memory plays us strange tricks at times," she told him in a clear, slightly raised voice, "and it hath been three years since Master Rolfe and his Indian princess were in London. His memory hath played him false."

She took her seat in the great chair which stood in the centre of the room, bathed in the sunlight, and the negress brought a cus.h.i.+on for her feet. It was not until this was done, and until she had resigned her fan to the slave, who stood behind her slowly waving the plumed toy to and fro, that she turned her lovely face upon us and bade us be seated.

An hour later a whippoorwill uttered its cry close to the window, through which now shone the crescent moon. Rolfe started up. "Beshrew me! but I had forgot that I am to sleep at Chaplain's to-night. I must hurry on."