第81章

There was a noise outside the door, and Rolfe's voice speaking to the gaoler. Impatient for his entrance I started toward the door, but when it opened he made no move to cross the threshold. "I am not coming in," he said, with a face that he strove to keep grave. "I only came to bring some one else." With that he stepped back, and a second figure, coming forward out of the dimness behind him, crossed the threshold. It was a woman, cloaked and hooded. The door was drawn to behind her, and we were alone together.

Beside the cloak and hood she wore a riding mask. "Do you know who it is?" she asked, when she had stood, so shrouded, for a long minute, during which I had found no words with which to welcome her.

"Yea," I answered: "the princess in the fairy tale."

She freed her dark hair from its covering, and unclasping her cloak let it drop to the floor. "Shall I unmask?" she asked, with a sigh.

"Faith! I should keep the bit of silk between your eyes, sir, and my blushes. Am I ever to be the forward one? Do you not think me too bold a lady?" As she spoke, her white hands were busy about the fastening of her mask. "The knot is too hard," she murmured, with a little tremulous laugh and a catch of her breath.

I untied the ribbons.

"May I not sit down?" she said plaintively, but with soft merriment in her eyes. "I am not quite strong yet. My heart - you do not know what pain I have in my heart sometimes. It makes me weep of nights and when none are by, indeed it does!"

There was a settle beneath the window. I led her to it, and she sat down.

"You must know that I am walking in the Governor's garden, that hath only a lane between it and the gaol." Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks pure rose.

"When did you first love me?" I demanded.

"Lady Wyatt must have guessed why Master Rolfe alone went not to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air was keen, and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors to embroider Samson in the arms of Delilah.'

"Was it here at Jamestown, or was it when we were first wrecked, or on the island with the pink hill when you wrote my name in the sand, or" -

"The George will sail in three days, and we are to be taken back to England after all. It does not scare me now."

"In all my life I have kissed you only once," I said.

The rose deepened, and in her eyes there was laughter, with tears behind. "You are a gentleman of determination," she said. "If you are bent upon having your way, I do not know that I - that I - can help myself. I do not even know that I want to help myself."

Outside the wind blew and the sun shone, and the laughter from below the fort was too far away and elfin to jar upon us. The world forgot us, and we were well content. There seemed not much to say: I suppose we were too happy for words. I knelt beside her, and she laid her hands in mine, and now and then we spoke. In her short and lonely life, and in my longer stern and crowded one, there had been little tenderness, little happiness. In her past, to those about her, she had seemed bright and gay; I had been a comrade whom men liked because I could jest as well as fight.

Now we were happy, but we were not gay. Each felt for the other a great compassion; each knew that though we smiled to-day, the groan and the tear might be to-morrow's due; the sunshine around us was pure gold, but that the clouds were mounting we knew full well.

"I must soon be gone," she said at last. "It is a stolen meeting. I do not know when we shall meet again."

She rose from the settle, and I rose with her, and we stood together beside the barred window. There was no danger of her being seen; street and square were left to the wind and the sunshine. My arm was around her, and she leaned her head against my breast.

"Perhaps we shall never meet again," she said.

"The winter is over," I answered. "Soon the trees will be green and the flowers in bloom. I will not believe that our spring can have no summer."

She took from her bosom a little flower that had been pinned there. It lay, a purple star, in the hollow of her hand. "It grew in the sun. It is the first flower of spring." She put it to her lips, then laid it upon the window ledge beside my hand. "I have brought you evil gifts, - foes and strife and peril. Will you take this little purple flower - and all my heart beside?"

I bent and kissed first the tiny blossom, and then the lips that had proffered it. "I am very rich," I said.

The sun was now low, and the pines in the square and the upright of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went past the window. "The snow is gone," I said. "The snowbirds are flying north."

"The woods will soon be green," she murmured wistfully. "Ah, if we could ride through them once more, back to Weyanoke" -

"To home," I said.

"Home," she echoed softly.

There was a low knocking at the door behind us. "It is Master Rolfe's signal," she said. "I must not stay. Tell me that you love me, and let me go."

I drew her closer to me and pressed my lips upon her bowed head.

"Do you not know that I love you?" I asked.

"Yea," she answered. "I have been taught it. Tell me that you believe that God will be good to us. Tell me that we shall be happy yet; for oh, I have a boding heart this day!"

Her voice broke, and she lay trembling in my arms, her face hidden. "If the summer never comes for us" - she whispered.

"Good-by, my lover and my husband. If I have brought you ruin and death, I have brought you, too, a love that is very great.

Forgive me and kiss me, and let me go."

"Thou art my dearly loved and honored wife," I said. "My heart forebodes summer, and joy, and peace, and home."

We kissed each other solemnly, as those who part for a journey and a warfare. I spoke no word to Rolfe when the door was opened and she had passed out with her cloak drawn about her face, but we clasped hands, and each knew the other for his friend indeed.

They were gone, the gaoler closing and locking the door behind them. As for me, I went back to the settle beneath the window, and, falling on my knees beside it, buried my face in my arms.