At length Ananias summoned up his courage. “_We_ must go,” he said, in a voice that strove to hide eagerness beneath a tone suggesting sacrifice. “You and Eleanor, I, and as many others as choose to accompany us.”
The governor’s kindly eyes grew moist. “I go?” he asked, falteringly—“I?” He questioned them with a sorrowful look that embraced the whole gathering; but the men nodded their heads gravely. “Who, then, would remain to govern and foster you? I should be the stigma and laughing-stock of England. Our charter is in my name and in the names of my twelve assistants. Who, I ask you, has the right to become governor in my stead?”
To this the voice of all gave response, with one accord: “John Vytal.”
“Yes,” echoed Ananias, “John Vytal. He is best fitted for it; you for the request at court. Your influence, your—” but he was suddenly interrupted.
A clear, feminine voice spoke from the window, and Eleanor handed her child to Margery Harvie, who stood within the room. “It shall not be! Leave our colony, our home? Leave that which we have bought with so much blood and suffering? Desert our sacred trust? Cancel by cowardice the debt we owe to God and the queen? Oh, my friends, we came not hither for this. I beseech you, I command you, consider, and fling not your honor thus away!” Her eyes were flashing now, their first cold scorn of Ananias lost in love for the people, yet in burning indignation at their unforeseen demand. One hand was on the sill, the other on the casement at her side. Her cheeks, first pale with contempt for the spokesman, were flushed now with deep crimson; her voice was all the more eloquent of its tremor. “Can you not look beyond the present? Can you not see that, as my father says, many more will follow us from England? Sir Walter Raleigh hath promised that new expeditions and increased numbers shall share our home if we succeed. _If we succeed!_ Can there be an ‘if’ before that word ‘succeed’? Was there an ‘if’ in your hearts when you fought against our Spanish foe? Nay, nay, my brothers. Failure must not be within our ken. Have you no care for the great future? Is it no joy to think that by our own efforts a vast nation may build upon the cornerstone we lay? Who knows? Are we not perchance sowing that England and all the world may reap some unimaginable benefit thereby? The land is fair—you know better than I its bounteous offerings and boundless scope—and, being fair, shall we then desecrate it with the smirch of cowardice? Oh, my friends, I pray you reconsider!” Her voice sank lower in the final plea.