The Light of Scarthey Part 47

The revulsion of feeling was so cruel that for a while he seemed turned to stone, even his mind becoming blank. The waves lashed in up to his knees; he never felt them.

Rene's strong hands came at last to drag him away, and then Rene's voice, in a hot whisper close to his ear, aroused him:

"It is good news, your honour, after all, good news. My Lady is on board the _Peregrine_. I made these men speak. They are the revenue men--that G.o.d may d.a.m.n them! and they were after the captain; but he ran down their cutter, that brave captain. And these are all that were saved from her, for she sank like a stone. The _Peregrine_ is as sound as a bell, they say--ah, she is a good ship! And the captain, out of his kind heart, sent these villains ash.o.r.e in his own boat, instead of braining them or throwing them overboard. But they saw a lady beside him the whole time, tall, in a great black cloak. My Lady in her black cloak, just as she landed here. Of course Monsieur the Captain could not have sent her back home with these brigands then--not even a message--that would have compromised his honour. But his honour can see now how it is. And though My Lady has been carried out to sea, he knows now that she is safe."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE THREE COLOURS

The sun was high above the Welsh hills; the _Peregrine_ had sheered her way through a hundred miles or more of fretted waters before her captain, in his hammock slung for the nonce near the men's quarters, stirred from his profound sleep--nature's kind restorer to healthy brain and limbs--after the ceaseless fatigue and emotions of the last thirty-six hours.

As he leaped to his feet out of the swinging canvas, the usual vigour of life coursing through every fibre of him, he fell to wondering, in half-awake fashion, at the meaning of the unwonted weight lurking in some back recess of consciousness.

Then memory, the ruthless, arose and buffeted his soul.

The one thing had failed him without which all else was as nothing; fate, and his own hot blood, had conspired to place his heart's desire beyond all reasonable hope. Certain phrases in Madeleine's letter crossed and re-crossed his mind, bringing now an unwonted sting of anger, now the old cruel pain of last night. The thought of the hateful complication introduced into his already sufficiently involved affairs by the involuntary kidnapping of his friend's wife filled him with a sense of impotent irritation, very foreign to his temper; and as certain looks and words of the unwished-for prisoner flashed back upon him, a hot colour rose, even in his solitude, to his wholesome brown cheek.

But in spite of all, in spite of reason and feeling alike his essential buoyancy a.s.serted itself. He could not despair. He had not been given this vigour of soul and body to sit down under misfortune.

Resignation was for the poor of heart; only cravens gave up while it was yet possible to act. His fair ship was speeding with him as he loved to feel her speed; around him spread the vast s.p.a.ces in which his spirit rejoiced--salt sea and vaulted heavens; the full air of the open, the brisk dash of the wind filled him with physical exhilaration at every breath, and tingled in his veins; the sporting blood, which had come to him from generations of hunting squires, found all its craving satisfied in this coursing across the green ocean fields, and the added element of danger was as the sting of the brine to his palate. What--despair now? with his perilous enterprise all but accomplished, the whole world, save one country, before him, and Madeleine unwed! Another might, but not Jack Smith; not Hubert Cochrane!

He was actually trolling out the stave of a song as he sprang up the companion ladder after his rough breakfast in the galley, but the sound expired at the sight of the distant flutter of a woman's scarf in the stern of the ship. He halted and ran his fingers through his crisp hair with an expressive gesture of almost comical perplexity; all would be plain sailing enough, with hope at the prow again, but for this--he stamped his foot to choke down the oath of qualification--this enc.u.mbrance. Adrian's wife and Madeleine's sister, as such ent.i.tled to all honour, all care, and devotion; and yet, as such again, hideously, doubly unwelcome to him!

As he stood, biting his lips, while the gorgeous sunshine of the young spring morning beat down upon his bare head, the brawny figure of the mate, his mahogany-tinted face wrinkled into as stiff a grin as if it had been indeed carved out of the wood in question, intervened between his abstracted gaze and the restless amber beyond.

"It's a fine day, sir," by way of opening conversation.

The irrepressible satisfaction conveyed by the wide display of tobacco-stained teeth, by the twinkle in the hard, honest eyes called up a queer, rueful grimace to the other man's face.

"Do you know, Curwen," he said, "that you brought me the wrong young lady last night?"

The sailor jumped back in amazement. "The wrong young lady, sir,"

staring with starting, incredulous eyeb.a.l.l.s, "the wrong, young lady!"

here he clapped his thigh, "Well of all--the wrong young lady! Are you quite sure, sir?"

Captain Jack laughed aloud. But it was with a bitter twist at the corners of his lips.

"Well I'm----," said poor Curwen. All his importance and self-satisfaction had left him as suddenly as the starch a soused collar. He scanned his master's face with almost pathetic anxiety.

"Oh, I don't blame you--you did your part all right. Why, I myself fell into the same mistake, and we had not much time for finding it out, had we? The lady you see--the lady--she is the other lady's sister and she came with a message. And so we carried her off before we knew where we were--or she either," added Captain Jack as a mendacious after thought.

"Well I'm----," reiterated Curwen who then rubbed his scrubby, bristling chin, scratched his poll and finally broke into another grin--this time of the kind cla.s.sified as sheepish.

"And what'll be to do now?"

"By the G.o.d that made me, I haven't a notion! We must take all the care of her we can, of course. Serve her her meals in her cabin, as was arranged, and see that she is attended to, just as the other young lady would have been you know, only that I think she had better be served alone, and I shall mess downstairs as usual. And then if we can leave her at St. Malo, we shall. But it must be in all safety, Curwen, for it's a terrible responsibility. Happily we have now the time to think. Meanwhile I have slept like a log and she--I see is astir before me."

"Lord bless you, sir, she has been up these two hours! Walking the deck like a sailor, and asking about things and enjoying them like.

Ah, she is a rare lady, that she is! And it is the wrong one--well this is a go! And I was remarking to Bill Baxter, just now, that it was just our captain's luck to have found such a regular sailor's young woman, so I said--begging pardon for the word. And not more than he is worth, says he, and so said I also. And she the wrong lady after all! Well, it's a curious thing, sir, n.o.body could be like to guess it from her. She's a well-plucked one, with her wound and all. She made me look at it this morning, when I brought her a cup of coffee and a bite: 'You're old enough to be my father,' says she, as pretty as can be, 'so you shall be doctor as well as lady's maid; and, if you've got a girl of your own, it'll be a story to tell her by the fire at night, when you're home again,' so she said; and never winced when I put my great fingers on her arm. I was all of a tremble, I declare, with her a smiling up at me, but the wound--it's doing finely; healing as nice as ever I see, and not a sign of sickness on her. The very lady as I was saying, for our captain--but here she comes."

This was an unwontedly long speech for Curwen; and, silent again, he effaced himself discreetly, just in time to avoid the angry e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n that had sprung to his captain's lips, but not without a backward glance of admiration at the tall, alert figure now bearing down in their direction with steps already firmly balanced to the movement of the ship.

At a little distance from Captain Jack, Molly paused as if to scrutinise the horizon, and enjoy the invigorating atmosphere. In reality her heart was beating fast, her breath came short; and the gaze she flung from the faint outline of coast upon one side to the vast monotony of sparkling sea upon the other conveyed no impression to her troubled mind. The next instant he was by her side. As she smiled at him, he noticed that her face was pale, and her eyes darkly encircled.

"Ah, madam," said he, as he drew close and lifted his hand to his head, with a gesture of formal courtesy that no doubt somewhat astonished a couple of his men who were watching the group with covert smiles and nudges, being as yet unaware of the misadventure, "you relieve my mind of anxiety. How is the arm? Does it make you suffer much? No! You must be strong indeed."

"Yes, I am strong," answered she, and flushed, and looked out across the sea, inhaling the air with dilated nostrils.

Within her, her soul was crying out to him. It was as if there was a tide there, as fierce and pa.s.sionate as the waves around her, all bearing, straining to him, and this with a struggle and flow so resistless, that she could neither remember the past, nor measure the future, but only feel herself carried on, beaten and tossed upon these great waters, like a helpless wreck.

"I trust you are well attended to," began the man constrainedly again.

"I fear you will have to endure much discomfort. I had reckoned----."

Here he halted galled by the thought of what it was he had reckoned upon, the thought of the watchful love that was to have made of the little ship a very nest for his bride, of the exquisite joy it was to have harboured! And he set his teeth at fate.

She played for a while with her little finger tips upon the rail, then turned her gaze, full and bold, upon him.

"I do not complain," she said.

He bowed gravely. "We will do our best for you, and if you will take patience, the time will pa.s.s at last, as all time pa.s.ses. I have a few books, they shall be brought into your cabin. In three days we shall be in St. Malo--There, if you like----" he hesitated, embarra.s.sed.

"There!" echoed Lady Landale with her eyes still fixed upon his downcast face--"If I like--what?"

"We could leave you----"

Her bosom rose and fell quickly with stormy breaths. "Alone, moneyless, in a strange town--that is well and kindly thought!" she said.

Whence had come to her this strange power of feeling pain? She had not known that one could suffer in one's heart like this; she, whose quarrel with life hitherto had been for its too great comfort, security and peace. She felt a lump rise to her throat, and tears well into her eyes, blurring all the sunlit vision and she turned her head away and beat her sound left hand clenched upon the ledge.

"Before heaven," cried Jack, distressed out of his unnatural stiffness, "you mistake me, Lady Landale! I am only anxious to do what is best for you, what Adrian would wish. To leave you alone, deserted, helpless at St. Malo, you could not have thought I should mean that?

No, indeed, I would have seen you into safe hands, in some comfortable hotel, with a maid to wait upon you--I know of such a place--Adrian could not have been long in coming to fetch you. I should have had a letter ready to post to him the instant we landed. As to money,"

flushing boyishly, "that is the least consideration--there is no dearth of that to fear. If you prefer it I can, however, convey you somewhere upon the English coast after we quit St. Malo; but that will entail a longer residence for you here on board ship; and it is no fit place for you."

Still looking out across the sea, Molly replied, in a deep shaken voice, unlike her own, "You did not think it unfit for my sister."

"Your sister? But your sister was to have been my wife!"

Burning through the mists of her unshed tears once more her glance returned to his: "And I--" she cried and here was suddenly silent again, gazing at the thin circlet of gold upon her left hand, beneath the flashing diamonds. After a moment then, she broke out fiercely--"Oh do with me what you will, but for G.o.d's sake leave me in peace!" And stamping, turned her shoulder on him to stare straight outwards as before.

Captain Jack drew back, paused an instant, clutched his hair with a desperate gesture and slowly walked away.

The voyage of the _Peregrine_ was as rapid as her captain had hoped, and the dawn of the fourth day broke upon them from behind the French coast, where Normandy joins old Armorica.

For a little while, Lady Landale, awakened from her uneasy sleep by the unusual stir on deck, lay languidly watching the light as it filtered through the port-hole of her little cabin, the colours growing out of greyness on the walls; listening to the tramp of feet and the mate's husky voice without. Then her heart tightened with a premonition of the coming separation. She sat up and looked out of her window: as the horizon rose and fell giddily to her eye there lay the fatal line of land. The land of her blood but to her now, the land of exile!