CHAPTER XXXVII
In which my Lord and I part Company
The door of the guest house stood wide, and within the lower room wereneither men that drank nor men that gave to drink. Host and drawers andchance guests alike had left pipe and tankard for sword and musket, andwere gone to fort or palisade or river bank.
I crossed the empty room and went up the creaking stairway. No one metme or withstood me; only a pigeon perched upon the sill of a sunnywindow whirred off into the blue. I glanced out of the window as Ipassed it, and saw the silver river and the _George_ and the_Esperance_, with the gunners at the guns watching for Indian canoes,and saw smoke rising from the forest on the southern shore. There hadbeen three houses there--John West's and Minifie's and Crashaw's. Iwondered if mine were burning, too, at Weyanoke, and cared not if 'twasso.
The door of the upper room was shut. When I raised the latch and pushedagainst it, it gave at the top and middle, but there was some pressurefrom within at the bottom. I pushed again, more strongly, and the doorslowly opened, moving away whatever thing had lain before it. Anothermoment, and I was in the room, and had closed and barred the door behindme.
The weight that had opposed me was the body of the Italian, lying facedownwards, upon the floor. I stooped and turned it over, and saw thatthe venomous spirit had flown. The face was purple and distorted; thelips were drawn back from the teeth in a dreadful smile. There was inthe room a faint, peculiar, not unpleasant odour. It did not seemstrange to me to find that serpent, which had coiled in my path, deadand harmless for evermore. Death had been busy of late; if he struckdown the flower, why should he spare the thing that I pushed out of myway with my foot?
Ten feet from the door stood a great screen, hiding from view all thatmight be beyond. It was very quiet in the room, with the sunshine comingthrough the window, and a breeze that smelt of the sea. I had not caredto walk lightly or to close the door softly, and yet no voice hadchallenged my entrance. For a minute I feared to find the dead physicianthe room's only occupant; then I passed the screen and came upon myenemy.
He was sitting beside a table, with his arms outstretched and his headbowed upon them. My footfall did not rouse him; he sat there in thesunshine as still as the figure that lay before the threshold. I thoughtwith a dull fury that maybe he was dead already, and I walked hastilyand heavily across the floor to the table. He was a living man, for withthe fingers of one hand he was slowly striking against a sheet of paperthat lay beneath them. He knew not that I stood above him; he waslistening to other footsteps.
The paper was a letter, unfolded and written over with great blackcharacters. The few lines above those moving fingers stared me in theface. They ran thus: "_I told you that you had as well cut your throatas go upon that mad Virginia voyage. Now all's gone--wealth, honours,favour. Buckingham is the sun in heaven, and cold are the shadows inwhich we walk who hailed another luminary. There's a warrant out for theBlack Death; look to it that one meets not you too, when you come atlast. But come, in the name of all the fiends, and play your last card.There's your cursed beauty still. Come, and let the King behold yourface once more----_" The rest was hidden.
I put out my hand and touched him upon the shoulder, and he raised hishead and stared at me as at one come from the grave.
Over one side of his face, from temple to chin, was drawn and fastened ablack cloth; the unharmed cheek was bloodless and shrunken, the liptwisted. Only the eyes, dark, sinister, and splendid, were as they hadbeen. "I dig not my graves deep enough," he said. "Is she behind youthere in the shadow?"
Flung across a chair was a cloak of scarlet cloth. I took it and spreadit out upon the floor, then unsheathed a dagger which I had taken fromthe rack of weapons in the Governor's hall. "Loosen thy poniard, thoumurderer," I cried, "and come stand with me upon the cloak."
"Art quick or dead?" he answered. "I will not fight the dead." He hadnot moved in his seat, and there was a lethargy and a dullness in hisvoice and eyes. "There is time enough," he said. "I too will soon be ofthy world, thou haggard, bloody shape. Wait until I come, and I willfight thee, shadow to shadow."
"I am not dead," I said, "but there is one that is. Stand up, villainand murderer, or I will kill you sitting there, with her blood upon yourhands!"
He rose at that, and drew his dagger from the sheath. I laid aside mydoublet, and he followed my example, but his hands moved listlessly andhis fingers bungled at the fastenings. I waited for him in some wonder,it not being like him to come tardily to such pastime.
He came at length, slowly and with an uncertain step, and we stoodtogether on the scarlet cloak. I raised my left arm and he raised his,and we locked hands. There was no strength in his clasp; his hand laywithin mine cold and languid. "Art ready?" I demanded.
"Yea," he answered in a strange voice, "but I would that she did notstand there with her head upon your breast.... I too loved thee,Jocelyn,--Jocelyn lying dead in the forest!"
I struck at him with the dagger in my right hand, and wounded him, butnot deeply, in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his poniard scarcedrew blood, so nerveless was the arm that would have driven it home. Istruck again, and he stabbed weakly at the air, then let his arm drop tohis side, as though the light and jewelled blade had weighed it down.
Loosening the clasp of our left hands, I fell back until the narrowscarlet field was between us. "Hast no more strength than that?" Icried. "I cannot murder you!"
He stood looking past me as into a great distance. He was bleeding, butI had as yet been able to strike no mortal blow. "It is as you choose,"he said. "I am as one bound before you. I am sick unto death."
Turning, he went back, swaying as he walked, to his chair, and sinkinginto it sat there a minute with half-closed eyes; then raised his headand looked at me, with a shadow of the old arrogance, pride, and disdainupon his scarred face. "Not yet, captain?" he demanded. "To the heart,man! So I would strike an you sat here and I stood there."
"I know you would," I said, and going to the window I flung the daggerdown into the empty street; then stood and watched the smoke across theriver, and thought it strange that the sun shone and the birds sang.
When I turned to the room again, he still sat there in the great chair,a tragic, splendid figure, with his ruined face and the sullen woe ofhis eyes. "I had sworn to kill you," I said. "It is not just that youshould live."
He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips."Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy," he said. "Within a week I shall begone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon thefloor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had Nicolo whom mencalled the Black Death,--poisons swift and strong, or subtle and slow.Day and night, the earth and sunshine have become hateful to me. I willgo to the fires of hell, and see if they can make me forget,--can makeme forget the face of a woman." He was speaking half to me, half tohimself. "Her eyes are dark and large," he said, "and there are shadowsbeneath them, and the mark of tears. She stands there day and night withher eyes upon me. Her lips are parted, but she never speaks. There was away that she had with her hands, holding them one within the other,thus----"
I stopped him with a cry for silence, and I leaned trembling against thetable. "Thou wretch!" I cried. "Thou art her murderer!"
He raised his head and looked beyond me with that strange, faint smile."I know," he replied, with the dignity which was his at times. "You mayplay the headsman, if you choose. I dispute not your right. But it isscarce worth while. I have taken poison."
The sunshine came into the room, and the wind from the river, and thetrumpet notes of swans flying to the north. "The _George_ is ready forsailing," he said at last. "To--morrow or the next day she will be goinghome with the tidings of this massacre. I shall go with her, and withina week they will bury me at sea. There is a stealthy, slow, and secretpoison.... I would not die in a land where I have lost every throw ofthe dice, and I would not die in England for Buckingham to come and lookupon my face, and so I took that poison. For the m
an upon the floor,there,--prison and death awaited him at home. He chose to flee atonce."
He ceased to speak, and sat with his head bowed upon his breast. "If youare content that it should be as it is," he said at length, "perhaps youwill leave me? I am not good company to-day."
His hand was busy again with the letter upon the table, and his gaze wasfixed beyond me. "I have lost," he muttered. "How I came to play mycards so badly I do not know. The stake was heavy,--I have notwherewithal to play again."
His head sank upon his outstretched arm. As for me, I stood a minutewith set lips and clenched hands, and then I turned and went out of theroom and down the stair and out into the street. In the dust beneath thewindow lay my dagger. I picked it up, sheathed it, and went my way.
The street was very quiet. All windows and doors were closed and barred;not a soul was there to trouble me with look or speech. The yelling fromthe forest had ceased; only the keen wind blew, and brought from the_Esperance_ upon the river a sound of singing. The sea was the home ofthe men upon her decks, and their hearts dwelt not in this port; theycould sing while the smoke went up from our homes and the dead layacross the thresholds.
I went on through the sunshine and the stillness to the minister'shouse. The trees in the garden were bare, the flowers dead. The door wasnot barred. I entered the house and went into the great room and flungthe heavy shutters wide, then stood and looked about me. Naught waschanged; it was as we had left it that wild November night. Even themirror which, one other night, had shown me Diccon still hung upon thewall. Master Bucke had been seldom at home, perhaps, or was feeble andcareless of altering matters. All was as though we had been but an hourgone, save that no fire burned upon the hearth.
I went to the table, and the books upon it were Jeremy Sparrow's: theminister's house, then, had been his home once more. Beside the bookslay a packet, tied with silk, sealed, and addressed to me. Perhaps theGovernor had given it, the day before, into Master Bucke's care,--I donot know; at any rate, there it lay. I looked at the "By the_Esperance_" upon the cover, and wondered dully who at home would careto write to me; then broke the seal and untied the silk. Within thecover there was a letter with the super--scription, "To a Gentleman whohas served me well."
I read the letter through to the signature, which was that of his Graceof Buckingham, and then I laughed, who had never thought to laugh again,and threw the paper down. It mattered naught to me now that GeorgeVilliers should be grateful, or that James Stewart could deny afavourite nothing. "_The King graciously sanctions the marriage of hissometime ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh, with Captain Ralph Percy; invitesthem home----_"
She was gone home, and I her husband, I who loved her, was left behind.How many years of pilgrimage ... how long, how long, O Lord?
The minister's great armchair was drawn before the cold and blackenedhearth. How often she had sat there within its dark clasp, the firelighton her dress, her hands, her face! She had been fair to look upon; thepride, the daring, the wilfulness, were but the thorns about the rose;behind those defences was the flower, pure and lovely, with a heart ofgold. I flung myself down beside the chair, and putting my arms acrossit, hid my face upon them, and could weep at last.
That passion spent itself, and I lay with my face against the wood andwell-nigh slept. The battle was done; the field was lost; the storm andstress of life had sunk into this dull calm, as still as peace, ashopeless as the charred log and white ash upon the hearth, cold, neverto be quickened again.
Time passed, and at length I raised my head, roused suddenly to theconsciousness that for a while there had been no stillness. The air wasfull of sound, shouts, savage cries, the beating of a drum, the noise ofmusketry. I sprang to my feet, and went to the door to meet Rolfecrossing the threshold.
He put his arm within mine and drew me out into the sunshine upon thedoorstep. "I thought I should find you here," he said; "but it is only aroom with its memories, Ralph. Out here is more breadth, more height.There is country yet, Ralph, and after a while, friends. The Indians arebeginning to attack in force. Humphry Boyse is killed, and MorrisChaloner. There is smoke over the plantations up and down the river, asfar as we can see, and awhile ago the body of a child drifted down tous."
"I am unarmed," I said. "I will but run to the fort for sword andmusket----"
"No need," he answered. "There are the dead whom you may rob." The noiseincreasing as he spoke, we made no further tarrying, but, leaving behindus house and garden, hurried to the palisade.