Major Vigoureux Part 13

Mrs. Pope's timid knock was answered by her astonished husband, who, having just returned from the harbour, and a.s.suming his spouse to be long since in bed and asleep, had lit a candle to explore the dining-room cellaret.

The front door was shut on their reciprocal surprise, and the Commandant withdrew. He had sighed, before now, as he had shut Mr. and Mrs. Pope's front gate after an evening's whist. Doubtless they were a stupid couple.

A light shone from the Barracks--from the office window to the right of the door. Within the office Vashti had dragged the sofa across the room and sat, with her fur cloak thrown back, toasting her shoes before a warm fire. In the dancing flame of it her diamonds sparkled as she turned to him.

"Mrs. Treacher is upstairs," she said, "hunting out sheets to air for me. Now fill your pipe, please, and sit down and tell me all about it."

Major Vigoureux found an old pipe on the mantel-shelf, dived in the tobacco jar for a few dry crumbs, filled, and lit and stamped out a spark that had dropped on the hearth-rug.

"It isn't a creditable story," said he, puffing slowly, and blinking at the flash of jewels below her white throat. "In fact, I behaved like a brute."

"Tell me about it," she repeated.

So he told her; and found himself smoking and watching her, while she laughed softly, leaning forward to the fire, and gazing into the heart of it.

CHAPTER IX

THE SALVING OF S.S. MILO

Major Vigoreux awoke at daybreak with a vague sense that something important had happened or was going to happen--a feeling he had not known for years. It was so strange that he sat up wondering, rubbing the back of his head.

Then he remembered, and called out to Sergeant Archelaus.

Sergeant Archelaus appeared, a moment later, ready dressed, and on more than usually good terms with himself. He had indued his master's trousers, and, save for an unfashionable bagginess at the hips, they fitted him surprisingly well.

"Good morning, Archelaus. Did you happen to hear, last night, at what time the _Milo_ weighs anchor?"

"I heard the captain, sir, tell the pilots to be aboard at half-after-seven. But with a vessel of her size you may count on their waiting till high-water or thereabouts."

"In any case"--the Commandant consulted his watch--"we have not too much time. Where is Treacher?"

"Downstairs, sir, along with his missus, stoking the kitchen fire, with mattresses built up before it like a sandbag battery. Seems to me the woman's been spending half the night airing one thing and another. She says the place is like a vault. Not," added Archelaus, magnanimously, "that I mind her talk."

"Quite right, Archelaus. I particularly hope you won't quarrel with Mrs. Treacher while she is here waiting on Miss--er--on the lady."

"If," said Archelaus, darkly, "as how I wanted to quarrel with a female, I should have taken and married one long ago. As 'tis, when the woman's tongue becomes afflicting, I turns round and pities Treacher.

There's more ways of doing that than in so many words, and you'd be astonished how they both dislikes it."

"At any rate," said the Commandant, mildly, "they have saved you the trouble of being late with the fire this morning. So you may fetch me my shaving-water at once, please."

He sprang out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown, astonished at his own good spirits. "It does make a difference," said he aloud, though the remark was addressed to himself.

"It do," said Archelaus, turning in the doorway.

"I--I beg your pardon?" The Commandant turned about, a trifle confused.

"It may seem a little thing; but it gives a man self-respect, and I'm glad you noticed 'em." Archelaus looked down at his legs, complacently.

"Always supposin'," he added, "they don't take me for a Frenchman, owing to the fulness hereabouts."

Yes, certainly, it made a difference--to rise in the morning with a sense of something waiting to be done. So the Commandant put it to himself while he shaved, standing at his dressing-table under the barrack window. The window was set high in the wall: too high to afford him a view of the Islands, even though he stood on tip-toe. But through it and above the open pane he caught a glimpse of blue sky and lilac-coloured cloud, touched with gold by the risen sun. He could guess the rest. A perfect morning!--clean and crisp, with the sea a translucent blue, and sunlight glittering on the Island beaches; the air still, yet bracing, and withal ineffably pure--a morning mysterious with the sense of autumn, but of autumn rarified by its pa.s.sage over the salt strait, deodorised, made pure of marsh fog and the rotting leaf.

The Commandant hummed to himself in the intervals of his shaving, which nevertheless he performed meticulously by force of habit. It was his custom to shave, and very carefully, before taking his bath. For years he had made a ritual of his morning toilet: so many pa.s.ses of his razor across the strop (to be precise, one hundred and fifty, neither more nor less), so many douches with the sponge, so many pet.i.tions afterwards on his knees. Yes, it is to be feared that his prayers, no less than his shaving, had become a drill, though one may plead for him that he always went through it conscientiously. A stroke too few across the strop--a pet.i.tion to the Almighty missed--either would have worried him with a feeling that the day had been begun amiss. He was poor, but with the never-failing well on Garrison Hill he could come clean as the richest to his prayers. Even Miss Gabriel had to admit that the poor man (as she put it) knew how to take care of his person.

"We shall be in good time, Archelaus," said the Commandant, with a side glance at his watch; "that is, if you'll step down the hill and get the boat ready."

Archelaus, whose hearing had not improved of late, checked himself in the act of filling his master's tub.

"I didn't clearly catch what you said, for the splashing.... Boat? If you want the boat, I put her off to the moorings last night. Found her tied up and b.u.mping against the quay steps, quite as if money was no object to any of us."

"Thank you. Yes, I relied on your finding and mooring her properly.

Well, now, when you are ready I want you to unmoor her again. We are going off to the liner to fetch Miss--that is to say--the lady's boxes."

Sergeant Archelaus faced about slowly, cap in hand.

"Oh--oh!" said he slowly. "Relative of yours, sir?--making so bold."

"Dear me, no; nothing of the sort."

"Paying lodger, perhaps.... Or else we've come into a fortune all of a sudden, an' that accounts for Treacher's playing ad lib. with the coals--begging your pardon again."

The Commandant winced, and came within an ace of gashing himself severely. He had forgotten the penny in his pocket, the gulf between this and pay-day ... and Vashti, no doubt, was used to fare daintily, luxuriously!

"I really think"--he turned on Archelaus in sudden anger--"you might know better than to stare into the gla.s.s when I am shaving. Moreover, you forget your place, and inexcusably, even for an old servant."

Archelaus resumed his filling of the bath, and, having filled it, withdrew without another word.

Yes; but while the manner of Archelaus' speech had deserved rebuke, in the matter of it Archelaus was right. The matter of it was urgent, too, and not to be played with. In an hour or so Vashti would be awake....

She must delay dressing until her boxes arrived; but, once dressed, she would expect breakfast. The larder, to his knowledge, contained but the rusty end of a flitch of green bacon--that, and perhaps a couple of rusty eggs, a loaf, and some salt b.u.t.ter. Fool that he was! And a minute ago he had greeted the day so light-heartedly!

What was to be done? In the pauses of sponging and towelling himself, the Commandant asked the question again and again. Could he go to Mrs.

Treacher and borrow back the four shillings he had given her last night? Fish, new-laid eggs, fresh b.u.t.ter, marmalade, the best tea procurable in the Islands.... Yes, undoubtedly four shillings would go a long way towards providing breakfast. But after breakfast would come luncheon, and after luncheon--

There was Mr. Tregaskis, of the Shop. Mr. Tregaskis sold almost everything "advantageous to life"--as Shakespeare's exiles said upon another island: everything from bacon and pickles to boots, iron-mongery, and sun-bonnets. For twelve years the Commandant had dealt with Mr. Tregaskis, paying whatever Mr. Tregaskis charged him, and always in ready money. He knew, moreover, that Mr. Tregaskis gave credit: and yet, after twelve years of ready-money dealing, he winced as he saw himself entering the shop and proposing to open an account.

He foresaw himself inexorably driven to it. But he foresaw himself also stammering out the suggestion with every sign of conscious rascality.

And, after all, was it honest to enter a shop and open an account with one penny in pocket? Suppose that, next pay-day, no pay were forthcoming!

He must approach Mr. Tregaskis: there was no help for it. Yet the prospect pleased him so little that, as he walked down the hill to the quay, he decided to put off the interview, and was almost running past the shop (which had just been unshuttered) when Mr. Tregaskis himself appeared, framed of a sudden in the upper and open half of his shop doorway.

"Eh? Is it you, sir? Good morning!" he called.

"Good morning! And a fine morning, too, Mr. Tregaskis."

"After a night of marvels. You've heard about the liner, sir, out in the Roads?... 'Tis all a mystery to me how she ever found her way in."