To Have and to Hold Part 19

"When was it that we last sat to see men bowl, lady?" he said. "I remember a gay match when I bowled against my Lord of Buckingham, and fair ladies sat and smiled upon us. The fairest laughed, and tied her colors around my arm."

The lady whom he addressed sat quietly, with hands folded in her silken lap and an untroubled face. "I did not know you then, my lord," she answered him, quite softly and sweetly. "Had I done so, be sure I would have cut my hand off ere it gave color of mine to"--"To whom?" he demanded, as she paused.

"To a coward, my lord," she said clearly.

As if she had been a man, his hand went to his sword hilt. As for her, she leaned back in her chair and looked at him with a smile.

He spoke at last, slowly and with deliberate emphasis. "I won then," he said. "I shall win again, my lady,--my Lady Jocelyn Leigh."

I dropped my hand from her chair and stepped forward. "It is my wife to whom you speak, my Lord Carnal," I said sternly. "I wait to hear you name her rightly."

Rolfe rose from the gra.s.s and stood beside me, and Jeremy Sparrow, shouldering aside with scant ceremony Burgess and Councilor, came also.

The Governor leaned forward out of his chair, and the crowd became suddenly very still.

"I am waiting, my lord," I repeated.

In an instant, from what he had been he became the frank and guileless n.o.bleman. "A slip of the tongue, Captain Percy!" he cried, his white teeth showing and his hand raised in a gesture of deprecation. "A natural thing, seeing how often, how very often, I have so addressed this lady in the days when we had not the pleasure of your acquaintance." He turned to her and bowed, until the feather in his hat swept the ground. "I won then," he said. "I shall win again--Mistress Percy," and pa.s.sed on to the seat that had been reserved for him.

The game began. I was to lead one side, and young Clement the other. At the last moment he came over to me. "I am out of it, Captain Percy,"

he announced with a rueful face. "My lord there asks me to give him my place. When we were hunting yesterday, and the stag turned upon me, he came between and thrust his knife into the brute, which else might have put an end to my hunting forever and a day: so you see I can't refuse him. Plague take it all! and Dorothy Gookin sitting there watching!"

My lord and I stood forward, each with a bowl in his hand. We looked toward the Governor. "My lord first, as becometh his rank," he said.

My lord stooped and threw, and his bowl went swiftly over the gra.s.s, turned, and rested not a hands'-breadth from the jack. I threw. "One is as near as the other!" cried Master Mac.o.c.ke for the judges. A murmur arose from the crowd, and my lord swore beneath his breath. He and I retreated to our several sides, and Rolfe and West took our places.

While they and those that followed bowled, the crowd, attentive though it was, still talked and laughed, and laid wagers upon its favorites; but when my lord and I again stood forth, the noise was hushed, and men and women stared with all their eyes. He delivered, and his bowl touched the jack. He straightened himself, with a smile, and I heard Jeremy Sparrow behind me groan; but my bowl too kissed the jack. The crowd began to laugh with sheer delight, but my lord turned red and his brows drew together. We had but one turn more. While we waited, I marked his black eyes studying every inch of the ground between him and that small white ball, to strike which, at that moment, I verily believe he would have given the King's favor. All men pray, though they pray not to the same G.o.d. As he stood there, when his time had come, weighing the bowl in his hand, I knew that he prayed to his daemon, fate, star, whatever thing he raised an altar to and bent before. He threw, and I followed, while the throng held its breath. Master Mac.o.c.ke rose to his feet. "It's a tie, my masters!" he exclaimed.

The excited crowd surged forward, and a babel of voices arose. "Silence, all!" cried the Governor. "Let them play it out!"

My lord threw, and his bowl stopped perilously near the shining mark. As I stepped to my place a low and supplicating "O Lord!" came to my ears from the lips and the heart of the preacher, who had that morning thundered against the toys of this world. I drew back my arm and threw with all my force. A cry arose from the throng, and my lord ground his heel into the earth. The bowl, spurning the jack before it, rushed on, until both buried themselves in the red and yellow leaves that filled the trench.

I turned and bowed to my antagonist. "You bowl well, my lord," I said.

"Had you had the forest training of eye and arm, our fortunes might have been reversed."

He looked me up and down. "You are kind, sir," he said thickly.

"'To-day to thee, to-morrow to me.' I give you joy of your petty victory."

He turned squarely from me, and stood with his face downstream. I was speaking to Rolfe and to the few--not even all of that side for which I had won--who pressed around me, when he wheeled.

"Your Honor," he cried to the Governor, who had paused beside Mistress Percy, "is not the Due Return high-p.o.o.ped? Doth she not carry a blue pennant, and hath she not a gilt siren for figurehead?"

"Ay," answered the Governor, lifting his head from the hand he had kissed with ponderous gallantry. "What then, my lord?"

"Then to-morrow has dawned, sir captain," said my lord to me. "Sure, Dame Venus and her blind son have begged for me favorable winds; for the Due Return has come again."

The game that had been played was forgotten for that day. The hogshead of sweet scented, lying to one side, wreathed with bright vines, was unclaimed of either party; the servants who brought forward the keg of canary dropped their burden, and stared with the rest. All looked down the river, and all saw the Due Return coming up the broad, ruffled stream, the wind from the sea filling her sails, the tide with her, the gilt mermaid on her prow just rising from the rushing foam. She came as swiftly as a bird to its nest. None had thought to see her for at least ten days.

Upon all there fell a sudden realization that it was the word of the King, feathered by the command of the Company, that was hurrying, arrow-like, toward us. All knew what the Company's orders would be,--must needs be,--and the Tudor sovereigns were not so long in the grave that men had forgot to fear the wrath of kings. The crowd drew back from me as from a man plague-spotted. Only Rolfe, Sparrow, and the Indian stood their ground.

The Governor turned from staring downstream. "The game is played, gentlemen," he announced abruptly. "The wind grows colder, too, and clouds are gathering. This fair company will pardon me if I dismiss them somewhat sooner than is our wont. The next sunny day we will play again.

Give you G.o.d den, gentles."

The crowd stood not upon the order of its going, but streamed away to the river bank, whence it could best watch the oncoming ship. My lord, after a most triumphant bow, swept off with his train in the direction of the guest house. With him went Master Pory. The Governor drew nearer to me. "Captain Percy," he said, lowering his voice, "I am going now to mine own house. The letters which yonder ship brings will be in my hands in less than an hour. When I have read them, I shall perforce obey their instructions. Before I have them I will see you, if you so wish."

"I will be with your Honor in five minutes."

He nodded, and strode off across the green to his garden. I turned to Rolfe. "Will you take her home?" I said briefly. She was so white and sat so still in her chair that I feared to see her swoon. But when I spoke to her she answered clearly and steadily enough, even with a smile, and she would not lean upon Rolfe's arm. "I will walk alone," she said. "None that see me shall think that I am stricken down." I watched her move away, Rolfe beside her, and the Indian following with his noiseless step; then I went to the Governor's house. Master Jeremy Sparrow had disappeared some minutes before, I knew not whither.

I found Yeardley in his great room, standing before a fire and staring down into its hollows. "Captain Percy," he said, as I went up to him, "I am most heartily sorry for you and for the lady whom you so ignorantly married."

"I shall not plead ignorance," I told him.

"You married, not the Lady Jocelyn Leigh, but a waiting woman named Patience Worth. The Lady Jocelyn Leigh, a n.o.ble lady, and a ward of the King, could not marry without the King's consent. And you, Captain Percy, are but a mere private gentleman, a poor Virginia adventurer; and my Lord Carnal is--my Lord Carnal. The Court of High Commission will make short work of this fantastic marriage."

"Then they may do it without my aid," I said. "Come, Sir George, had you wed my Lady Temperance in such fashion, and found this hornets' nest about your ears, what would you have done?"

He gave his short, honest laugh. "It's beside the question, Ralph Percy, but I dare say you can guess what I would have done."

"I'll fight for my own to the last ditch," I continued. "I married her knowing her name, if not her quality. Had I known the latter, had I known she was the King's ward, all the same I should have married her, an she would have had me. She is my wife in the sight of G.o.d and honest men. Esteeming her honor, which is mine, at stake, Death may silence me, but men shall not bend me."

"Your best hope is in my Lord of Buckingham," he said. "They say it is out of sight, out of mind, with the King, and, thanks to this infatuation of my Lord Carnal's, Buckingham hath the field. That he strains every nerve to oust completely this his first rival since he himself distanced Somerset goes without saying. That to thwart my lord in this pa.s.sion would be honey to him is equally of course. I do not need to tell you that, if the Company so orders, I shall have no choice but to send you and the lady home to England. When you are in London, make your suit to my Lord of Buckingham, and I earnestly hope that you may find in him an ally powerful enough to bring you and the lady, to whose grace, beauty, and courage we all do homage, out of this coil."

"We give you thanks, sir," I said.

"As you know," he went on, "I have written to the Company, humbly pet.i.tioning that I be graciously relieved from a most thankless task, to wit, the governorship of Virginia. My health faileth, and I am, moreover, under my Lord Warwick's displeasure. He waxeth ever stronger in the Company, and if I put not myself out, he will do it for me. If I be relieved at once, and one of the Council appointed in my place, I shall go home to look after certain of my interests there. Then shall I be but a private gentleman, and if I can serve you, Ralph Percy, I shall be blithe to do so; but now, you understand"--

"I understand, and thank you, Sir George," I said. "May I ask one question?"

"What is it?"

"Will you obey to the letter the instructions the Company sends?"

"To the letter," he answered. "I am its sworn officer."

"One thing more," I went on: "the parole I gave you, sir, that morning behind the church, is mine own again when you shall have read those letters and know the King's will. I am free from that bond, at least."

He looked at me with a frown. "Make not bad worse, Captain Percy," he said sternly.

I laughed. "It is my aim to make bad better, Sir George. I see through the window that the Due Return hath come to anchor; I will no longer trespa.s.s on your Honor's time." I bowed myself out, leaving him still with the frown upon his face, staring at the fire.

Without, the world was bathed in the glow of a magnificent sunset.

Clouds, dark purple and dark crimson, reared themselves in the west to dizzy heights, and hung threateningly over the darkening land beneath.

In the east loomed more pallid ma.s.ses, and from the bastions of the east to the bastions of the west went hurrying, wind-driven cloudless, dark in the east, red in the west. There was a high wind, and the river, where it was not reddened by the sunset, was lividly green. "A storm, too!" I muttered.

As I pa.s.sed the guest house, there came to me from within a burst of loud and vaunting laughter and a boisterous drinking catch sung by many voices; and I knew that my lord drank, and gave others to drink, to the orders which the Due Return should bring. The minister's house was in darkness. In the great room I struck a light and fired the fresh torches, and found I was not its sole occupant. On the hearth, the ashes of the dead fire touching her skirts, sat Mistress Jocelyn Percy, her arms resting upon a low stool, and her head pillowed upon them. Her face was not hidden: it was cold and pure and still, like carven marble. I stood and gazed at her a moment; then, as she did not offer to move, I brought wood to the fire and made the forlorn room bright again.

"Where is Rolfe?" I asked at last.

"He would have stayed," she answered, "but I made him go. I wished to be alone." She rose, and going to the window leaned her forehead against the bars, and looked out upon the wild sky and the hurrying river. "I would I were alone," she said in a low voice and with a catch of her breath. As she stood there in the twilight by the window, I knew that she was weeping, though her pride strove to keep that knowledge from me.

My heart ached for her, and I knew not how to comfort her. At last she turned. A pasty and stoup of wine were upon the table.