The Pocahontas-John Smith Story Part 6

From the moment she walked off the boat, she moved with a strange new majesty that baffled her own husband as much as others. How could a mere man explain the unaccountable poise which a clever woman could affect in the most unfamiliar setting?

In their own modest lodgings, Rolfe could scarcely keep off curiosity seekers, especially fine lords in elaborate dress who cantered into the cobblestone court and called for Madame Rolfe.

John Rolfe bowed low, contending that Madame was indisposed after her trip, and could not see strangers, no matter of what importance. He would not have them mocking his strange, proud wife. Yet when she met the same lords at b.a.l.l.s, he was surprised to find himself in an humble, obscure place in the background. A sn.o.bbish Britisher, he was secretly proud of her, though his eyes smouldered occasionally with resentment at some sn.o.bbery to himself. It was enough to turn the impressionable woman's head, but he told himself she was at heart a sincere sweet thing.

John Rolfe heard that the King thought that he had aspirations to become Powhatan's heir, and as such James's rival over there, and for that reason was snubbing him to keep him in his place.

John Smith, very much alive after all, was just out of three weeks in jail where he had been put for fancying himself king of Virginia.

Because he should show his grat.i.tude, he thought that England should show hers, and that the latter was good business, he wrote a "little book" to the Queen telling her how things were. Now, for the first time he told her of the rescue, hitherto kept secret by his discretion. Queen Anne just must do the right thing by Powhatan's girl.

He wrote of how, when he had but eighteen men with him, Pocahontas came to warn him of her father's plot, and "the dark night could not affright her from coming through the irksome woods and with watered eyes, gave me intelligence with her best advice to escape his fury, which had he known, he had surely slain her. Jamestown with her wild train, she as freely frequented as her father's habitation; and during the time, two or three years, she, next under G.o.d, was still the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion."

The queen was duly persuaded, commanding, "Bring her on." All the court was as keen as the people in the street to get a close-up view of the tamed Pocahontas and her wild retinue. Fastidious Anne saw that these kept their distance, but she offered her plump, white, jewelled hand to Pocahontas.

"What do you mean, Mr. Rolfe," King James scolded John, "by marrying a princess of the blood, you, a mere commoner?"

Royal society t.i.ttered behind its hands. Was the king pulling poor John's leg, or was he really jealous of his share of Powhatan's realm?

After all, John Smith had been put in jail recently. Rolfe had imported quite a fortune in tobacco, and he had been no fool in marrying Powhatan's daughter who did him honor as Lady Delaware presented her.

"Captain Smith wrote me of your indispensable aid to our forlorn colony, my Lady Rebecca, and I thank you for all my people. For myself, I would say, now that I see how pretty you are, I wonder that John did not speak for himself."

"I was a child when I saved the brave Captain," murmured Pocahontas modestly.

She felt here like the princess whose fairy-tale had come true in climactic palace scenes. There was more of a kind to come because she was now the fas.h.i.+on--having her portrait painted, and numerous engagements sought after. The Bishop of London gave a masquerade ball in her honor, at which she danced with court celebrities. The Bishop, John King, whom Queen Elizabeth had called the "king of preachers," never honored a lady more. Her brother-in-law Tacomoco looked on with more pride than Rolfe, who was too much of a provincial Puritan to enjoy court circles, especially those at which he was improperly snubbed. He was repeatedly confounded by his wife's poise. They went to "Twelfth Night," other theatrical occasions, and one masqued ball after another.

Pocahontas's acquiline features were as inscrutable as Mona Lisa's.

Powdered and painted, dressed up like an English lady in small tailored hats, and billowing swis.h.i.+ng skirts, she kept her face the very mask of fas.h.i.+on, concealing its Indian thoughts.

"The Masque of Christmas" was attended by King James, Queen Anne and Pocahontas. There the queen danced with the Earl of Buckingham and the Earl of Montgomery and Pocahontas had her n.o.ble partners too.

In February she would attend the "Masque of Lovers Made Men" as would the King and Queen. The Lord Mayor would be there as well as the Duke of Lenox and Lord Hay, the entertainment being in honor of the French amba.s.sador.

Rolfe, piqued at his own unimportance at these festive occasions, wrote a political and economic treatise on the colony. Pocahontas objected to any plans for an early return home.

The Lady Rebecca liked London, even though the foggy climate was giving her a hacking cough that worried Rolfe, who wanted her to get on to the country to meet his family. Neither rolling wagons and carriages on the cobblestone street, nor roistering revellers downstairs beneath their lodgings disturbed her, she said.

Nave, ordinary Indians did not admit themselves so pleased as she was.

John Smith ran into Uttamatomakkin in London.

"Powhatan did bid me to find you out to show me your G.o.d, the King, Queen, and Prince, you so much told us of."

"G.o.d is not to be seen by human eye. The King you have seen. And the rest you shall see when you choose."

The Indian shook his head. "Nay, not yet have I seen the King."

"You did see him, just yesterday," insisted Smith.

"He did not look as much like a king as our Powhatan. And he didn't give me a present. You gave Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan fed as himself; but your king gave me nothing, and I am better than your white dog." He had long since given up counting white men since he was quickly weary of that task.

Smith could not do anything about that, but he could and did go calling on the Rolfes, having no idea that Pocahontas considered him long under the sod. He knew that now as the pet of society in London, she must have changed, but he had not known how much, and he was impressed with her formal appearance when he went to Brentford to see her.

"The Lady Rebecca!" he greeted her with a flouris.h.i.+ng bow.

Suddenly the Lady Rebecca in her stiff, swis.h.i.+ng London costume vanished, and only a forlorn little maid was left. Her beating heart, like her frivolous London mood, nearly stopped with pain at this spectre from the past! There stood the one she had thought dead, come alive, too late to be alive for her. She who had saved him, and lost him, had found him too late, once again--or was it? Her heart seemed bare and wounded, although she was not disillusioned in the stocky figure in the shabby clothes of this man who was old in his thirties, because he had lived too many lives in one. His figure was paunchy and his eyes bloodshot, but she was blind to imperfections in her hero, for she saw him only in the colors of her caressing brush. He had come true in the make-believe world where he was the greatest wonder of all for the little princess, but this boon which she craved most was probably not for her.

"They told me you were dead," she muttered dully.

She rushed from the room, and it took her hours to compose herself. When she would have flung her arms about his neck, his cool English eyes had reproved her, calling her rebellious heart to a halt. For her there should be retreat from the Captain, who always had everything under control, including his own heart. Hers was bleeding unstaunched, for a red woman, when she has given her heart does not take it back. What they call Indian-giving was not the heart of Pocahontas, for its pulse measured out time, that of a country and its founder, if not of herself.

She was not aged, pious and resigned like Moses looking into un.o.btainable Canaan. She was a young, wild thing, untamed and hopeful yet.

When she came back she had washed away her hot tears, powdered and painted her face, trying to match her stiff London clothes. She was like a bird with its gay feathers taut and drawn, winging away no more ...

unless some merciful human opened a window. She reproached him, looking as sad as if death was in the house, as it was in her heart.

"They did always tell us that you were dead, and I did not know that you were not until after I came to England. Only Powhatan did not believe that you were, and ordered Tacomoco to seek you out because he said your people always lie so much."

He smiled, silent for once, and she went on hurting him who had hurt her so much. "You promised Powhatan that what was yours should be his, and he promised the same to you. You called him yours when you were a stranger in his country, and now that I am here in yours, I will call you 'Father'."

Again he thrust her shameless heart back behind her London lady's mask.

"You mustn't do that. You are a king's daughter, and I am a poor man looking for a boat."

She reproached him yet again. "You were not afraid to go into my father's country and put fear into all his people but myself." Perfect love, she knew casteth out fear--with the simple wisdom of a child of a childish people. "But now you are afraid to let me call you father. I tell you that I will, and that you shall ever call me your child, and remember that you and I are of one people, and that we are fellow countrymen."

"I cannot, Lady Rebecca Rolfe." He, master of every situation put her in her place in this.

Ah, if one of her could walk demurely down the dull road to "Heacham Hall," clinging to John Rolfe's arm, and keep on with him to "Varina"

near Powhatan, bearing other descendants for the pride of Rolfe and Powhatan, but if the other could wing away with Smith going far places!

Tragabigzanda had tried to keep him in chains for herself; Pocahontas had saved him only to lose him. He was a man belonging to the world, but to no woman.

She had to be the staid English housewife, not the princess of the wild woods. As she had her wild dreams of a different way out, she looked into his sea-faring blue eyes, and found there no response, only respect for Anglo-Saxon domestic respectability.

"You are the Lady Rebecca, the toast of London."

Toast, that should be a foaming, intoxicating drink, not a staid, insipid dose. She was a sick woman, but even sicker at heart.

"It is not seemly that a poor explorer be familiar with a lady of your position."

Position, she would snap her fingers at it! She wanted yesterday in Virginia fields where the corn ta.s.sels tossed in the sunny breeze, or an impossible dazzling tomorrow, but must take dull today. She was in Christian London, where the bells in the church spires chimed monotonously, chastening the savage din in her ears.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up small Tom who had been gazing at the captain who had strode out of a story book into the room. They left the two men to their boasting--Rolfe of his tobacco crop in the new world, Smith of newer worlds he would set out to conquer.

So John Smith pa.s.sed out of Pocahontas' life more finally than he had before, because he went deliberately. The hand of death was definitely upon her, not upon him, the more so because she scarcely resisted it.

Her Christian resignation, more like that of an elderly saint, than a youthful worldling now gratified, now confounded her serious husband.

Gone was her gay delight in the adulation of the London populace, and the frivolity of the court, which he had long since deplored. She had not minded the late hours, the murky London atmosphere, worsening her cough; nor the noise of the cobblestone streets, nor the roisterers beneath their lodgings before, but now she was as weary of London as he was.

She was meekly ready to accompany him to "Heacham Hall," his family's seat in Norfolk, where the sunny air seemed to him the healthiest atmosphere for a cough like hers. While his doubts about mating with a strange woman were long past, he wanted to set the seal of his family's approval upon her. Had there been any doubt about that, news of her London reception had dispelled it.

Sister Pocahontas was not nearly so savage as they had feared, and her amenability to their tutelage gratified their provincial vanity. She was willing to learn how primly a Rolfe wife should fold her hands in church of a Sabbath morning, and tastefully gather roses and stocks from the flower borders to arrange them in the parlor mantel vases. It was important too, to sew a fine seam, or mend to the last thread. Adept needle-women themselves, the Rolfe sisters made a picture in needlepoint of Pocahontas and little Tom. She would learn how to bake a steak and kidney pie, or a goodly pound cake as John liked it.

Strange that whatever they subsisted on over there agreed with John and little Tom, and after a while John decided that nothing else except Virginia air would revive his ailing wife. She was not acclimated to this small, neat isle. Only when she rode horseback, as she had longed to do, reining in beside the trim stable back of the substantial stone house was there the wild gay vein in her eyes that had ever led him where she would. Then she had raced away a while from the broken health and the broken heart.