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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Light of Scarthey, by Egerton Castle
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Light of Scarthey
+
+
+Author: Egerton Castle
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2008  [eBook #26045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Karen Dalrymple, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY
+
+A Romance
+
+by
+
+EGERTON CASTLE
+
+  Author of
+  "The Pride of Jennico," "Young
+  April," etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Take whichsoever way thou wilt--the ways are all alike;
+But do thou only come--I bade my threshold wait thy coming.
+From out my window one can see the graves, and on my life
+The graves keep watch." _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+MCM
+
+Copyright, 1899,
+by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
+All rights reserved.
+
+Fourth Edition.
+
+
+
+
+  I Dedicate
+  THIS BOOK TO THE
+  MEMORY OF
+  FREDERICK ANDREWS LARKING
+  OF THE ROCKS, EAST MALLING, KENT
+  THAT, SO LONG AS ANYTHING OF MINE SHALL ENDURE,
+  THERE MAY ENDURE ALSO
+  A RECORD OF OUR FRIENDSHIP AND OF
+  MY SORROW
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
+
+
+_Among the works of every writer of Fiction there are generally one or
+two that owe their being to some_ haunting _thought, long communed
+with--a thought which has at last found a living shape in some story
+of deed and passion._
+
+_I say one or two advisedly: for the span of man's active life is
+short and such haunting fancies are, of their essence, solitary. As a
+matter of fact, indeed, the majority of a novelist's creations belong
+to another class, must of necessity (if he be a prolific creator) find
+their conception in more sudden impulses. The great family of the
+"children of his brain" must be born of inspirations ever new, and in
+alluring freshness go forth into the world surrounded by the
+atmosphere of their author's present mood, decked in the colours of
+his latest imaginings, strengthened by his latest passional
+impressions and philosophical conclusions._
+
+_In the latter category the lack of long intimate acquaintance between
+the author and the friends or foes he depicts, is amply compensated
+for by the enthusiasm appertaining to new discoveries, as each
+character reveals itself, often in quite unforeseen manner, and the
+consequences of each event shape themselves inevitably and sometimes
+indeed almost against his will._
+
+_Although dissimilar in their genesis, both kinds of stories can, in
+the telling, be equally life-like and equally alluring to the reader.
+But what of the writer? Among his literary family is there not one
+nearer his heart than all the rest--his_ dream-child? _It may be the
+stoutest of the breed or it may be the weakling; it may be the
+first-born, it often is the Benjamin. Fathers in the flesh know this
+secret tenderness. Many a child and many a book is brooded over with a
+special love even before its birth.--Loved thus, for no grace or merit
+of its own, this book is my dream-child._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Here, by the way, I should like to say my word in honour of
+_Fiction_--"fiction" contradistinguished from what is popularly termed
+"serious" writing._
+
+_If, in a story, the characters and the events are truly convincing;
+if the former are appealingly human and the latter are so carefully
+devised and described as never to evoke the idea of improbability,
+then it can make no difference in the_ intellectual pleasure _of the
+reader whether what he is made to realise so vividly is a record of
+fact or of mere fancy. Facts we read of are of necessity past: what is
+past, what is beyond the immediate ken of our senses, can only be
+realised in imagination; and the picture we are able to make of it for
+ourselves depends altogether on the sympathetic skill of the recorder.
+Is not Diana Vernon, born and bred in Scott's imagination, to the full
+as living now before us as Rob Roy Macgregor whose existence was so
+undeniably tangible to the men of his days? Do we not see, in our
+mind's eye, and know as clearly the lovable "girt John Ridd" of_ Lorna
+Doone _the romance as his contemporaries, Mr. Samuel Pepys of the hard
+and uncompromising_ Diary _or King James of_ English Annals?
+
+_Pictures, alike of the plainest facts or of the veriest imaginings,
+are but pictures: it matters very little therefore whether the man or
+the woman we read of but never can see in the flesh has really lived
+or not, if what we do read raises an emotion in our hearts. To the
+novelist, every character, each in his own degree, is almost as
+living as a personal acquaintance; every event is as clear as a
+personal experience. And if this be true of the story written_ à la
+grâce de la plume, _where both events and characters unfold themselves
+like the buds of some unknown plant, how much more strongly is it the
+case of the story that has so long been mused over that one day it had
+to be told! Then the marking events of the actors' lives, their
+adventures, whether of sorrow or of joy, their sayings and doings,
+noble or bright or mistaken, recorded in the book, are but a tithe of
+the adventures, sayings and doings with which the writer seems to be
+familiar. He might write or talk about them, in praise or
+vindictiveness as he loves or dreads them, for many a longer day--but
+he has one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect
+the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things
+therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will
+unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless
+consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on
+which, in a continuous life-drama, is based one particular episode._
+
+_Of such a kind is the story of Adrian Landale._
+
+_The haunting thought round which the tale of the sorely
+tempest-tossed dreamer is gathered is one which, I think, must at one
+time or other have occurred to many a man as he neared the maturity of
+middle-life:--What form of turmoil would come into his heart if, when
+still in the strength of his age but after long years of hopeless
+separation, he were again brought face to face with the woman who had
+been the one passion of his life, the first and only love of his
+youth? And what if she were still then exactly as he had last seen
+her--she, untouched by years even as she had so long lived in his
+thoughts: he, with his soul scarred and seamed by many encounters
+bravely sustained in the Battle of Life?_
+
+_The problem thus propounded is not solvable, even in fiction, unless
+it be by "fantastic" treatment. But perhaps the more so on this
+account did it haunt me. And out of the travail of my mind around it,
+out of the changing shadows of restless speculation, gradually
+emerged, clear and alive, the being of Adrian Landale and his two
+loves._
+
+_Here then was a man, whose mind, moulded by nature for grace and
+contemplation, was cast by fate amid all the turmoils of_ Romance _and
+action. Here was one of those whose warm heart and idealising
+enthusiasm must wreathe the beauty of love into all the beauties of
+the world; whose ideals are spent on one adored object; who, having
+lost it, seems to have lost the very sense of love; to whom love never
+could return, save by some miracle. But fortune, that had been so
+cruelly hard on him, one day in her blind way brings back to his door
+the miraculous restitution--and there leaves him to struggle along the
+new path of his fate! It is there also that I take up the thread of
+the speculation, and watch through its vicissitudes the working of the
+problem raised by such a strange circumstance._
+
+_The surroundings in a story of this kind are, of the nature of
+things, all those of_ Romance. _And by_ Romance, _I would point out,
+is not necessarily meant in tale-telling, a chain of events fraught
+with greater improbability than those of so-called real life. (Indeed
+where is now the writer who will for a moment admit, even tacitly,
+that his records are not of reality?) It simply betokens, a
+specialisation of the wider genus_ Novel; _a narrative of strong
+action and moving incident, in addition to the necessary analysis of
+character; a story in which the uncertain violence of the outside
+world turns the course of the actors' lives from the more obvious
+channels. It connotes also, as a rule, more poignant emotions--emotions
+born of strife or peril, even of horror; it tells of the shock of arms
+in life, rather than of the mere diplomacy of life._
+
+_Above all_ Romance _depends upon picturesque and varied setting; upon
+the scenery of the drama, so to speak. On the other hand it is not
+essentially (though this has sometimes been advanced) a narrative of
+mere adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of
+character and manners we find in the true "novel." Rather be it said
+that it is one in which the hidden soul is made patent under the
+touchstone of blood-stirring incidents, of hairbreadth risks, of
+recklessness or fierceness. There are soaring passions, secrets of the
+innermost heart, that can only be set free in desperate
+situations--and those situations are not found in the tenor in
+every-day, well-ordered life: they belong to Romance._
+
+_Spirit-fathers have this advantage that they can bring forth their
+dream-children in what age and place they list: it is no times of
+now-a-days, no ordinary scenery, that would have suited such
+adventures as befell Adrian Landale, or Captain Jack, or "Murthering
+Moll the Second."_
+
+_Romantic enough is the scene, which, in a manner, framed the display
+of a most human drama; and fraught it is, even to this day, in the
+eyes of any but the least imaginative, with potentialities for strange
+happenings.[A] It is that great bight of Morecambe; that vast of brown
+and white shallows, deserted, silent, mysterious, and treacherous with
+its dreaded shifting sands; fringed in the inland distance by the
+Cumbrian hills, blue and misty; bordered outwards by the Irish sea,
+cold and grey. And in a corner of that waste, the islet, small and
+green and secure, with its ancient Peel, ruinous even as the noble
+abbey of which it was once the dependant stronghold; with its still
+sturdy keep, and the beacon, whose light-keeper was once a Dreamer of
+Beautiful Things._
+
+[Footnote A: _Those who like to associate fiction with definite places
+may be interested to know that the prototype of Scarthey is the_ Piel
+of Foudrey, _on the North Lancashire coast, near the edge of Morecambe
+Bay, and that Pulwick was suggested by Furness Abbey. Barrow-in-Furness
+was then but a straggling village. A floating light, facing the mouth
+of the Wyre, now fulfils the duties devolving on the beacon of Scarthey
+at the time of this story._]
+
+_And romantic the times, if by that word is implied a freer scope than
+can be found in modern years for elemental passions, for fighting and
+loving in despite of every-day conventions; for enterprise, risks,
+temptations unknown in the atmosphere of humdrum peace and order. They
+are the early days of the century, days when easy and rapid means of
+communication had not yet destroyed all the glamour of distance, when
+a county like Lancashire was as a far-off country, with a spirit, a
+language, customs and ideas unknown to the Metropolis; days when, if
+there were no lifeboat crews, there could still be found rather
+experienced "wreckers," and when the keeping of a beacon, to light a
+dangerous piece of sea, was still within the province of a
+public-spirited landlord. They are the days when the spread of
+education had not even yet begun (for weal or for woe) its levelling
+work; days of cruel monopolies and inane prohibitions, and ferocious
+penal laws, inept in the working, baleful in the result; days of
+keel-hauling and flogging; when the "free-trader" still swung, tarred
+and in chains, on conspicuous points of the coast--even as the
+highwayman rattled at the cross-road--for the encouragement of the
+brotherhood; when it was naturally considered more logical (since hang
+you must for almost any misdeed) to hang for a sheep than a lamb, and
+human life on the whole was held rather cheap in consequence. They are
+the days when in Liverpool the privateers were daily fitting out or
+bringing in the "prizes," and when, in Lord Street Offices, distant
+cargoes of "living ebony" were put to auction by steady, intensely
+respectable, Church-going merchants. But especially they are the days
+of war and the fortunes of war; days of pressgangs, to kidnap
+unwilling rulers of the waves; of hulks and prisons filled to
+overflowing, even in a mere commercial port like Liverpool, with
+French prisoners of war._
+
+_A long course of relentless hostilities, lasting the span of a
+full-grown generation, had cultivated the predatory instinct of all
+men with the temperament of action, and seemed to justify it.
+Venturesome, hot-spirited youths, with their way to make in the world
+(who in a former age might have been reduced to "the road") took up
+privateering on a systematic scale. In such an atmosphere there could
+not fail to return a belief in the good old_ border rule, _"the simple
+plan: that they should take who have the power, and they should keep
+who can." And it must be remembered that an island country's border is
+the enemy's coast! On that ethical understanding many privateer owners
+built up large fortunes, still enjoyed by descendants who in these
+days would look upon high-sea looting of non-combatants with definite
+horror._
+
+_The years of the great French war, however, fostered a species of
+nautical enterprise more venturesome even than privateering, raiding,
+blockade-running and all the ordinary forms of smuggling that are
+usual when two coast lines are at enmity. I mean that smuggling of
+gold specie and bullion which incidentally was destined to affect the
+course of Sir Adrian's life so powerfully._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_As Captain Jack's last venture may, at this distance of time, appear
+a little improbable, it is well to state here some little-known facts
+concerning the now rather incomprehensible pursuit of gold
+smuggling--a romantic subject if ever there was one._
+
+_The existence at one time of this form of "free-trade" is all but
+forgotten. Indeed very little was ever heard of it in the world,
+except among parties directly interested, even at the time when it
+played an important part in the machinery of governments. Its rise
+during the years of Napoleonic tyranny on the continent of Europe, and
+its continuance during the factitious calm of the First Restoration in
+France, were due to circumstances that never existed before and are
+little likely to occur again._
+
+_The accumulation of a fund of_ gold _coin, reserved against sudden
+contingency, was one of Bonaparte's imperial ideas. In a modified and
+more modern form, this notion of a "war-chest," untouched and
+unproductive in peace-time, is still adhered to by the Germans: they
+have kept to heart many of their former conqueror's lessons, lessons
+forgotten by the French themselves--and the enormous treasure of gold
+bags guarded at Spandau is a matter of common knowledge. Napoleon,
+however, in his triumphant days never, and for obvious reasons, lacked
+money. It was less an actual treasure that he required and valued so
+highly for political and military purposes, than an ever ready reserve
+of wealth easily portable, of paramount value at all times;
+"concentrated," so to speak. And nothing could come nearer to that
+description than rolls of English guineas. Indeed the vast numbers of
+these coins which fitfully appeared in circulation throughout Europe
+justified the many weird legends concerning the power of "British
+Gold"_--l'or Anglais!
+
+_There is every reason to believe that, in days when the national
+currency consisted chiefly of lumbering silver_ écus, _the Bourbon
+government also appreciated to the full the value of a_ private _gold
+reserve. At any rate it was at the time of the first Restoration that
+the golden guinea of England found in France its highest premium._
+
+_Without going into the vexed and dreary question of single or double
+standard, it will suffice to say that during the early years of the
+century now about to close, gold coin was leaving England at a rate
+which not only appeared phenomenal but was held to be injurious to the
+community._
+
+_As a matter of fact most of it was finding its way to France, whilst
+Great Britain was flooded with silver. It was then made illegal to
+export gold coin or bullion. The prohibition was stringently, indeed
+at one time, ruthlessly, enforced. In this manner the new and highly
+profitable traffic in English guineas entered the province of the
+"free-trader"; the difference introduced in his practice being merely
+one of degree. Whereas, in the case of prohibited imports, the chief
+task lay in running the illicit goods and distributing them, in the
+case of guinea-smuggling its arduousness was further increased by the
+danger of collecting the gold inland and clearing from home harbours._
+
+_Very little, as I said, has ever been heard of this singular trade,
+and for obvious reasons. In the first place it obtained only for a
+comparatively small number of years, the latter part of the Great War:
+the last of it belonging to the period of the_ Hundred Days. _And in
+the second it was, at all times, of necessity confined to a very small
+number of free-trading skippers. Of adventurous men, in stirring days,
+there were of course a multitude. But few, naturally, were the men to
+whose honour the custody of so much ready wealth could safely be
+intrusted. "That is where," as Captain Jack says sometimes in this
+book, "the 'likes of me' come in."_
+
+_The exchange was enormously profitable. As much as thirty-two
+shillings in silver value could, at one time, be obtained on the other
+side of the water for an English guinea. But the shipper and broker,
+in an illegal venture where contract could not be enforced, had to be
+a man whose simple word was warranty--and indeed, in the case of large
+consignments, this blind trust had to be extended to almost every man
+of his crew. What a romance could be written upon this theme alone!_
+
+_In the story of Adrian Landale, however, it plays but a subsidiary
+part. Brave, joyous-hearted Captain Jack and his bold venture for a
+fortune appear only in the drama to turn its previous course to
+unforeseen channels; just as in most of our lives, the sudden
+intrusion of a new strong personality--transient though it may be, a
+tempest or a meteor--changes their seemingly inevitable trend to
+altogether new issues._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_It was urged by my English publishers that, in_ "The Light of
+Scarthey," _I relate two distinct love-stories and two distinct phases
+of one man's life; and that it were wiser (by which word I presume was
+meant more profitable) to distribute the tale between two books, one
+to be a sequel to the other. Happily I would not be persuaded to cut a
+fully composed canvas in two for the sake of the frames. "It is the
+fate of sequels," as Stevenson said in his dedication of _Catriona_,
+"to disappoint those who have waited for them." Besides, life is
+essentially continuous.--It may not be inept to state a truism of this
+kind in a world of novels where the climax of life, if not indeed its
+very conclusion, is held to be reached on the day of marriage! There
+is often, of course, more than one true passion of love in a man's
+life; and even if the second does not really kill the memory of the
+first, their course (should they be worth the telling) may well be
+told separately. But if, in the story of a man's love for two women,
+the past and the present are so closely interwoven as were the reality
+and the "might-have-been" in the mind of Adrian Landale, any
+separation of the two phases, youth and maturity, would surely have
+stultified the whole scheme of the story._
+
+_I have also been taken to task by some critics for having, the tale
+once opened at a given time and place, harked back to other days and
+other scenes: an inartistic and confusing method, I was told. I am
+still of contrary opinion. There are certain stories which_ belong,
+_by their very essence, to certain places. All ancient buildings have,
+if we only knew them, their human dramas: this is the very soul of the
+hidden but irresistible attraction they retain for us even when
+deserted and dismantled as now the Peel of Scarthey. For the sake of
+harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere,
+it was imperative that in this drama--wherever the intermediate scenes
+might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea,
+or in Lancaster Castle--the Prologue should be witnessed on the green
+islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing
+Scene of rest and tenderness._
+
+  _E. C.,
+  49, Sloane Gardens,
+  London, S. W.
+
+  October 1899._
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+
+SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY
+
+  CHAP.                                                         PAGE
+
+       I. The Peel of Scarthey                                     1
+      II. The Light-Keeper                                         6
+     III. Day Dreams: A Philosopher's Fate                        16
+      IV. Day Dreams: A Fair Emissary                             32
+       V. The Awakening                                           43
+      VI. The Wheel of Time                                       53
+     VII. Forebodings of Gladness                                 63
+    VIII. The Path of Wasted Years                                70
+      IX. A Genealogical Epistle                                  85
+
+
+PART II
+
+"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"
+
+       X. The Threshold of Womanhood                              97
+      XI. A Masterful Old Maid                                   113
+     XII. A Record and a Presentment                             122
+    XIII. The Distant Light                                      136
+     XIV. The Tower of Liverpool: Master and Man                 144
+      XV. Under the Light                                        156
+     XVI. The Recluse and the Squire                             174
+
+
+PART III
+
+"CAPTAIN JACK," THE GOLD SMUGGLER
+
+    XVII. Gold Smuggler and the Philosopher                      191
+   XVIII. "Love Gilds the Scene and Woman Guides the Plot"       211
+     XIX. A Junior's Opinion                                     224
+      XX. The Quick and the Dead                                 244
+     XXI. The Dawn of an Eventful Day                            252
+    XXII. The Day: Morning                                       262
+   XXIII. The Day: Noon                                          276
+    XXIV. The Night                                              294
+     XXV. The Fight for the Open                                 309
+    XXVI. The Three Colours                                      323
+   XXVII. Under the Light Again: The Lady and the Cargo          335
+  XXVIII. The End of the Thread                                  349
+    XXIX. The Light Goes Out                                     364
+     XXX. Husband and Wife                                       375
+    XXXI. In Lancaster Castle                                    382
+   XXXII. The One He Loved and the One Who Loved Him             393
+  XXXIII. Launched on the Great Wave                             406
+   XXXIV. The Gibbet on the Sands                                413
+    XXXV. The Light Rekindled                                    430
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY
+
+    _We all were sea-swallowed, though some cast again;
+    And by that destiny to perform an act,
+    Whereof what's past is Prologue._
+
+    THE TEMPEST
+
+
+
+
+THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PEEL OF SCARTHEY
+
+    He makes a solitude and calls it peace.
+
+    BYRON.
+
+
+Alone in the south and seaward corner of the great bight on the
+Lancastrian coast--mournfully alone some say, gloriously alone to my
+thinking--rises in singular unexpected fashion the islet of Scarthey;
+a green oasis secure on its white rocky seat amidst the breezy
+wilderness of sands and waters.
+
+There is, in truth, more sand than water at most times round Scarthey.
+For miles northward the wet strand stretches its silent expanse, tawny
+at first, then merging into silver grey as in the dim distance it
+meets the shallow advance of briny ripple. Wet sand, brown and dull,
+with here and there a brighter trail as of some undecided river
+seeking an aimless way, spreads westward, deep inland, until stopped
+in a jagged line by bluffs that spring up abruptly in successions of
+white rocky steps and green terraces.
+
+Turn you seaward, at low tide there lies sand again and shingle
+(albeit but a narrow beach, for here a depth of water sinks rapidly)
+laved with relentless obstinacy by long, furling, growling rollers
+that are grey at their sluggish base and emerald-lighted at their
+curvetting crest. Sand yet again to the south, towards the nearer
+coast line, for a mile or perhaps less, dotted, along an irregular
+path, with grey rocks that look as though the advance guard of a giant
+army had attempted to ford its insecure footing, had sunk into its
+treacherous shifting pits, and left their blanching skull-tops half
+emerging to record the disaster.
+
+On the land side of the bight, far away beyond the grandly desolate,
+silent, yellow tract, a misty blue fringe on the horizon heralds the
+presence of the North Country; whilst beyond the nearer beach a
+sprinkling of greenly ensconced homesteads cluster round some peaceful
+and paternal looking church tower. Near the salty shore a fishing
+village scatters its greystone cabins along the first terrace of the
+bluffs.
+
+Outwards, ever changing in colour and temper roll and fret the grey
+waters of the Irish Sea, turbulent at times, but generally lenient
+enough to the brown-sailed ketches that break the regular sweep of the
+western horizon as they toil at the perpetual harvest of the deep.
+
+Thus stands Scarthey. Although appearing as an island on the charts,
+at low tides it becomes accessible dry-foot from the land by a narrow
+causeway along the line of the white shallow reefs, which connect the
+main pile to the rocky steps and terraces of the coast. But woe betide
+man or beast that diverges many feet from the one secure path! The
+sands of the great bay have already but too well earned their sinister
+reputation.
+
+During the greater part of the day, however, Scarthey justifies its
+name--Skard- or Scarth-ey, the Knoll Island in the language of the old
+Scandinavian masters of the land.
+
+In fair weather, or in foul, whether rising out of sunny sands when
+the ebbing waters have retired, or assailed on all sides by ramping
+breakers, Scarthey in its isolation, with its well-preserved ruins and
+its turret, from which for the last hundred years a light has been
+burning to warn the seafarer, has a comfortable look of security and
+privacy.
+
+The low thick wall which in warlike times encompassed the bailey (now
+surrounding and sheltering a wide paddock and neat kitchen gardens)
+almost disappears under a growth of stunted, but sturdy trees; dwarf
+alders and squat firs that shake their white-backed leaves, and swing
+their needle clusters, merrily if the breeze is mild, obstinately if
+the gale is rousing and seem to proclaim: "Here are we, well and
+secure. Ruffle and toss, and lash, O winds, the faithless waters, _we_
+shall ever cling to this hospitable footing, the only kindly soil
+amid this dreariness; here you once wafted our seed; here shall we
+live and perpetuate our life."
+
+On the sea front of the bailey walls rise, sheer from the steep rock,
+the main body and the keep of the Peel. They are ruinous and shorn of
+their whilom great height, humbled more by the wilful destruction of
+man than by the decay of time.
+
+But although from a distance the castle on the green island seems
+utterly dismantled, it is not, even now, all ruin. And, at the time
+when Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick, eighth baronet, adopted it as his
+residence, it was far from being such.
+
+True, the greater portion of that mediæval building, half monastic,
+half military, exposed even then to the searching winds many bare and
+roofless chambers; broken vaults filled with driven sands; more than
+one spiral stair with hanging steps leading into space. But the
+massive square keep had been substantially restored. Although roofless
+its upper platform was as firm as when it was first built; and in a
+corner, solidly ensconced, rose the more modern turret that sheltered
+the honest warning light.
+
+The wide chambers of the two remaining floors, which in old warlike
+days were maintained bare and free, and lighted only by narrow
+watching loopholes on all sides, had been, for purposes of peaceful
+tenanncy, divided into sundry small apartments. New windows had been
+pierced into the enormous thickness of stone and cement; the bare
+coldness of walls was also hidden under more home-like panellings.
+Close-fitting casements and solid doors insured peace within; the wind
+in stormy hours might moan or rage outside this rocky pile, might hiss
+and shriek and tear its wings among the jagged ruins, bellow and
+thunder in and out of opened vaults, but it might not rattle a window
+of the modern castellan's quarters or shake a latch of his chamber
+door.
+
+There, for reasons understood then only by himself, had Sir Adrian
+elected, about the "year seven" of this century and in the prime of
+his age, to transplant his lares and penates.
+
+The while, this Adrian Landale's ancestral home stood, in its placid
+and double pride of ancient and settled wealth, only some few miles
+away as the bee flies, in the midst of its noble park, slightly
+retired from the coast-line; and from its upper casements could be
+descried by day the little green patch of Scarthey and the jagged
+outline of its ruins on the yellow or glimmering face of the great
+bay, and by night the light of its turret. And there he was still
+living, in some kind of happiness, in the "year fourteen," when, out
+of the eternal store of events, began to shape themselves the latter
+episodes of a life in which storm and peace followed each other as
+abruptly as in the very atmosphere that he then breathed.
+
+For some eight years he had nested on that rock with no other
+companions but a dog, a very ancient housekeeper who cooked and washed
+for "t' young mester" as she obstinately persisted in calling the man
+whom she had once nursed upon her knee, and a singular sturdy foreign
+man (René L'Apôtre in the language of his own land, but known as Renny
+Potter to the land of his adoption); which latter was more than
+suspected of having escaped from the Liverpool Tower, at that time the
+lawful place of custody of French war prisoners.
+
+His own voluntary captivity, however, had nothing really dismal for
+Adrian Landale. And the inhabited portions of Scarthey ruins had
+certainly nothing prison-like about them, nothing even that recalled
+the wilful contrition of a hermitage.
+
+On the second floor of the tower (the first being allotted to the use,
+official and private, of the small household), clear of the
+surrounding walls and dismantled battlements, the rooms were laid out
+much as they might have been up at Pulwick Priory itself, yonder
+within the verdant grounds on the distant rise. His sleeping quarters
+plainly, though by no means ascetically furnished, opened into a large
+chamber, where the philosophic light-keeper spent the best part of his
+days. Here were broad and deep windows, one to the south with a wide
+view of the bay and the nearer coast, the other to the west where the
+open sea displayed her changeable moods. On three sides of this room,
+the high walls, from the white stone floor to the time-blackened beams
+that bore the ceiling, almost disappeared under the irregular rows of
+many thousand of volumes. Two wooden arm-chairs, bespeaking little
+aversion to an occasional guest, flanked the hearth.
+
+The hearth is the chief refuge of the lone thinker; this was a cosy
+recess, deep cut in the mediæval stone and mortar; within which, on
+chilly days, a generous heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shot
+forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing
+cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched
+to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls
+and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants
+as the briny air would favour.
+
+At the far end of the room rose in systematical clusters the pipes of
+a small organ, built against the walls where it bevelled off a corner.
+And in the middle of the otherwise bare apartment stood a broad and
+heavy table, giving support to a miscellaneous array of books, open or
+closed, sundry philosophical instruments, and papers in orderly
+disorder; some still in their virginal freshness, most, however,
+bearing marks of notemaking in various stages.
+
+Here, in short, was the study and general keeping-room of the master
+of Scarthey, and here, for the greater part, daily sat Sir Adrian
+Landale, placidly reading, writing, or thinking at his table; or at
+his organ, lost in soaring melody; or yet, by the fireside, in his
+wooden arm-chair musing over the events of that strange world of
+thought he had made his own; whilst the aging black retriever with
+muzzle stretched between his paws slept his light, lazy sleep, ever
+and anon opening an eye of inquiry upon his master when the latter
+spoke aloud his thoughts (as solitary men are wont to do), and then
+with a deep, comfortable sigh, resuming dog-life dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LIGHT-KEEPER
+
+    He who sits by the fire doth dream,
+    Doth dream that his heart is warm.
+    But when he awakes his heart is afraid for the bitter cold.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+The year 1814 was eventful in the annals of the political world.
+Little, however, of the world's din reached the little northern
+island; and what there came of it was not willingly hearkened to.
+There was too much of wars past and present, too many rumours of wars
+future about it, for the ear of the recluse.
+
+Late in the autumn of that red-letter year which brought a short
+respite of peace to war-ridden Europe--a fine, but rather tumultuous
+day round Scarthey--the light-keeper, having completed the morning's
+menial task in the light-turret (during a temporary absence of his
+factotum) sat, according to custom, at his long table, reading.
+
+With head resting on his right hand whilst the left held a page ready
+to turn, he solaced himself, pending the appearance of the mid-day
+meal, with a few hundred lines of a favourite work--the didactic
+poems, I believe, of a certain Doctor Erasmus Darwin, on the analogies
+of the outer world.
+
+There was quite as little of the ascetic in Adrian Landale's physical
+man as of the hermitage in his chosen abode.
+
+With the exception of the hair, which he wore long and free, and of
+which the fair brown had begun to fade to silver-grey, the master of
+Scarthey was still the living presentment of the portrait which, even
+at that moment, presided among the assembly of canvas Landales in the
+gallery of Pulwick Priory. Eight years had passed over the model since
+the likeness had been fixed. But in their present repose, the features
+clear cut and pronounced, the kindly thoughtful eyes looked, if
+anything, younger than their counterfeit; indeed, almost
+incongruously young under the flow of fading hair.
+
+Clean shaven, with hands of refinement, still fastidious, his long
+years of solitude notwithstanding, as to general neatness of attire,
+he might at any moment of the day have walked up the great stair of
+honour at Pulwick without by his appearance eliciting other remarks
+than that his clothes, in cut and colour, belonged to fashions now
+some years lapsed.
+
+The high clock on the mantelshelf hummed and gurgled, and with much
+deliberation struck one. Only an instant later, lagging footsteps
+ascended the wooden, echoing stairs without, and the door was pushed
+open by the attendant, an old dame. She was very dingy as to garb,
+very wrinkled and feeble as to face, yet with a conscious achievement
+of respectability, both in appearance and manner, befitting her post
+as housekeeper to the "young master." The young master, be it stated
+at once, was at that time fast approaching the end of his second score
+years.
+
+"Margery," said Adrian, rising to take the heavy tray from the
+knotted, trembling hands; "you know that I will not allow you to carry
+those heavy things upstairs yourself." He raised his voice to
+sing-song pitch near the withered old ear. "I have already told you
+that when Renny is not at home, I can take my food in your kitchen."
+
+Margery paused, after her wont, to wait till the sounds had filtered
+as far as her intellect, then proceeded to give a few angry
+headshakes.
+
+"Eh! Eh! It would become Sir Adrian Landale o' Pulwick--Barrownite--to
+have 's meat i' the kitchen--it would that. Nay, nay, Mester Adrian,
+I'm none so old but I can do my day's work yet. Ah! an' it 'ud be well
+if that gomerl, Renny Potter, 'ud do his'n. See here, now, Mester
+Adrian, nowt but a pint of wine left; and it the last," pointing her
+withered finger, erratically as the palsy shook it, at a cut-glass
+decanter where a modicum of port wine sparkled richly under the
+facets. "And he not back yet, whatever mischief's agate wi' him,
+though he kens yo like your meat at one." And then circumstances
+obliged her to add: "He is landing now, but it's ower late i' the
+day."
+
+"So--there, Margery," sang the "Squire," giving his old nurse
+affectionate little taps on the back. "Never fash yourself; tides
+cannot always fit in with dinner-hours, you know. And as for poor
+Renny, I believe after all you are as fond of him, at the bottom of
+your heart, as I am. Now what good fare have you got for me to-day?"
+bending from his great height to inspect the refection, "Ah--hum,
+excellent."
+
+The old woman, after another pause for comprehension, retired battling
+with dignity against the obvious pleasure caused by her master's
+affectionate familiarity, and the latter sat down at a small table in
+front of the south window.
+
+Through this deep, port-hole-like aperture he could, whilst disposing
+of his simple meal, watch the arrival of the yawl which did ferrying
+duty between Scarthey and the mainland. The sturdy little craft,
+heavily laden with packages, was being hauled up to its usual place of
+safety high on the shingle bank, under cover of a remnant of walling
+which in the days of the castle's strength had been a secure
+landing-place for the garrison's boats, but which now was almost
+filled by the cast-up sands and stone of the beach.
+
+This was done under the superintendence of René, man of all work, and
+with the mechanical intermediary of rollers and capstan, by a small
+white horse shackled to a lever, and patiently grinding his steady
+rounds on the sand.
+
+His preliminary task achieved, the man, after a few friendly smacks,
+set the beast free to trot back to his loose pasture: proceeding
+himself to unship his cargo.
+
+Through the narrow frame of his window, the master, with eyes of
+approval, could see the servant dexterously load himself with a
+well-balanced pile of parcels, disappearing to return after intervals
+empty-handed, within the field of view, and select another burden, now
+heavier now more bulky.
+
+In due course René came up and reported himself in person, and as he
+stopped on the threshold the dark doorway framed a not unstriking
+presentment; a young-looking man for his years (he was a trifle junior
+to his master), short and sturdy in build, on whose very broad
+shoulders sat a phenomenally fair head--the hair short, crisp, and
+curly, in colour like faded tow--and who, in smilingly respectful
+silence, gazed into the room out of small, light-blue eyes, brimful of
+alertness and intelligence, waiting to be addressed.
+
+"Renny," said Adrian Landale, returning the glance with one of
+comfortable friendliness, "you will have to make your peace with
+Margery; she considers that you neglect me shamefully. Why, you are
+actually twenty minutes late after three days' journeying, and perils
+by land and sea!"
+
+The Frenchman answered the pleasantry by a broader smile and a scrape.
+
+"And, your honour," he said, "if what is now arriving on us had come
+half an hour sooner, I should have rested planted there" (with a jerk
+of the flaxen head towards the mainland), "turning my thumbs, till
+to-morrow, at the least. We shall have a grain, number one, soon."
+
+He spoke English fluently, though with the guttural accent of
+Brittany, and an unconquerable tendency to translate his own jargon
+almost word for word.
+
+In their daily intercourse master and man had come for many years past
+to eschew French almost entirely; René had let it be understood that
+he considered his proficiency in the vernacular quite undeniable, and
+with characteristic readiness Sir Adrian had fallen in with the little
+vanity. In former days the dependant's form of address had been
+_Monseigneur_ (considering, and shrewdly so, an English landowner to
+stand in that relation to a simple individual like himself); in later
+days "Monseigneur" having demurred at the appellation, "My lord," in
+his own tongue, the devoted servant had discovered "Your honour" as a
+happy substitute, and adhered to this discovery with satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, we are going to have a squall, say you," interpreted the master,
+rising to inspect the weather-glass, which in truth had fallen deep
+with much suddenness. "More than a squall, I think; this looks like a
+hurricane coming. But since you are safe home, all's well; we are
+secure and sound here, and the fishing fleet are drawing in, I see,"
+peering through the seaward window. "And now," continued Adrian,
+laying down his napkin, and brushing away a few crumbs from the folds
+of a faultless silk stock, "what have you for me there--and what
+news?"
+
+"News, your honour! Oh, for that I have news this time," said Mr.
+Renny Potter, with an emphatic nod, "but if your honour will permit, I
+shall say them last. I have brought the clothes and the linen, the
+wine, the brandy, and the books. Brandy and wine, your honour, I
+heard, out of the last prize brought into Liverpool, and a Nantes ship
+it was, too"--this in a pathetically philosophical tone. Then after a
+pause: "Also provisions and bulbs for the devil's pot, as Margery will
+call it. But there is no saying, your honour eats more when I have
+brought him back onions, eschalot, and _ail_; now do I lie, your
+honour? May I?" added the speaker, and forthwith took his answer from
+his master's smile; "may I respectfully see what the old one has
+kitchened for you when I was not there?"
+
+And Adrian Landale with some amusement watched the Frenchman rise from
+the package he was then uncording to examine the platters on the table
+and loudly sniff his disdain.
+
+"Ah, ah, boiled escallops again. Perfectly--boiled cabbage seasoned
+with salt. Not a taste in the whole affair. Prison food--oh, yes, old
+woman! Why, we nourished ourselves better in the Tower, when we could
+have meat at all. Ah, your honour," sighed the man returning to his
+talk; "you others, English, are big and strong, but you waste great
+things in small enjoyment!"
+
+"Oho, Renny," said the light-keeper squire, as he leant against the
+fireplace leisurely filling a long clay pipe, "this is one of your
+epigrams; I must make a note of it anon; but let me see now what you
+really have in those parcels of books--for books they are, are they
+not? so carefully and neatly packed."
+
+"Books," assented the man, undoing the final fold of paper. "Mr. Young
+in the High Street of Liverpool had the packets ready. He says you
+must have them all; and all printed this year. What so many people can
+want to say, I for my count cannot comprehend. Three more parcels on
+the stairs, your honour. Mr. Young says you must have them. But it
+took two porters to carry them to the Preston diligence."
+
+Not without eagerness did the recluse of Scarthey bend over and finger
+the unequal rows of volumes arrayed on the table, and with a smile of
+expectation examine the labels.
+
+"The Corsair" and "Lara" he read aloud, lifting a small tome more
+daintily printed than the rest. "Lord Byron. What's this? Jane Austen,
+a novel. 'Roderick, last of the Goths.' Dear, dear," his smile fading
+into blankness; "tiresome man, I never gave him orders for any such
+things."
+
+René, battling with his second parcel, shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The librarian," he explained, "said that all the world read these
+books, and your honour must have them."
+
+"Well, well," continued the hermit, "what else? 'Jeremy Bentham,' a
+new work; Ricardo, another book on economy; Southey the Laureate,
+'Life of Nelson.' Really, Mr. Young might have known that naval deeds
+have no joy for me, hardly more than for you, Renny," smiling grimly
+on his servant. "'Edinburgh Review,' a London magazine for the last
+six months; 'Rees's Cyclopædia,' vols. 24-27; Wordsworth, 'The
+Recluse.' Ah, old Willie Wordsworth! Now I am anxious to see what he
+has to say on such a topic."
+
+"Dear Willie Wordsworth," mused Sir Adrian, sitting down to turn over
+the pages of the 'Excursion,' "how widely have our lives drifted apart
+since those college days of ours, when we both believed in the coming
+millennium and the noble future of mankind--noble mankind!"
+
+He read a few lines and became absorbed, whilst René noiselessly
+busied himself in and out of the chamber. Presently he got up, book in
+hand, slowly walked to the north window, and passively gazed at the
+misty distance where rose the blue outline of the lake hills.
+
+"So my old friend, almost forgotten," he murmured, "that is where you
+indite such worthy lines. It were enough to tempt me out into men's
+world again to think that there would be many readers and lovers
+abroad of these words of yours. So, that is what five and twenty years
+have done for you--what would you say to what they have done for
+me...?"
+
+It was a long retrospect.
+
+Sir Adrian was deeply immersed in thought when he became aware that
+his servant had come to a standstill, as if waiting for a return of
+attention. And in answer to the mute appeal he turned his head once
+more in René's direction.
+
+"Your honour, everything is in its place," began the latter, with a
+fitting sense of his own method. "I have now to report that I saw your
+man of business in Lancaster, and he has attended to the matter of the
+brothers Shearman's boat that was lost. I saw the young men themselves
+this morning. They are as grateful to Sir Adrian as people in this
+country can express." This last with a certain superiority.
+
+Sir Adrian received the announcement of the working of one of his
+usual bounties with a quiet smile of gratification.
+
+"They also told me to say that they would bring the firewood and the
+turf to-morrow. But they won't be able to do that because we shall
+have dirty weather. Then they told me that when your honour wants fish
+they begged your honour to run up a white flag over the lantern--they
+thought that a beautiful idea--and they would bring some as soon as
+possible. I took on myself to assure them that I could catch what fish
+your honour requires; and the prawns, too ... but that is what they
+asked me to say."
+
+"Well, well, and so you can," said the master, amused by the show of
+sub-acute jealousy. "What else?"
+
+"The books of the man of business and the banker are on the table. I
+have also brought gazettes from Liverpool." Here the fellow's
+countenance brimmed with the sense of his news' importance. "I know
+your honour cares little for them. But this time I think you will read
+them. Peace, your honour, it is the peace! It is all explained in
+these journals--the 'Liverpool Mercury.'"
+
+Renny lifted the folded sheets from the table and handed them with
+contained glee. "There has been peace these six months, and we never
+knew it. I read about it the whole way back from the town. The Emperor
+is shut up on an island--but not so willingly as your Honour, ah,
+no!--and there is an end of citizen Bonaparte. Peace, France and
+England no longer fighting, it is hard to believe--and our old kings
+are coming back, and everything to be again as in the old days."
+
+Sir Adrian took the papers, not without eagerness, and glanced over
+the narrative of events, already months old, with all the surprise of
+one who, having wilfully shut himself out from the affairs of the
+world, ignored the series of disasters that had brought about the
+tyrant's downfall.
+
+"As you say, my friend, it is almost incredible," he said, at length.
+Then thoughtfully: "And now you will be wanting to return home?" said
+he.
+
+René, who had been scanning his master's face with high expectation,
+felt his heart leap as he thought he perceived a hidden tone of regret
+in the question.
+
+He drew himself up to his short height, and with a very decided voice
+made answer straightway:
+
+"I shall go away from your honour the day when your honour dismisses
+me. If your honour decides to live on this rock till my hour, or his,
+strikes--on this rock with him I remain. I am not conceited, I hope,
+but what, pray, will become of your honour here without me?"
+
+There was force in this last remark, simply as it was pronounced.
+Through the mist of interlacing thoughts suggested by the word Peace!
+(the end of the Revolution, that distant event which, nevertheless,
+had had such sweeping influence over the course of his whole life), it
+brought a faint smile to Sir Adrian's lips.
+
+He took two steps forward and laid his hand familiarly on the man's
+broad shoulder, and, in a musing way, he said at intervals:
+
+"Yes, yes, indeed, good Renny, what would become of me?--what would
+have become of me?--how long ago it seems!--without you? And yet it
+might have been as well if two skeletons, closely locked in embrace,
+blanched by the grinding of the waters and the greed of the crabs, now
+reposed somewhere deep in the sands of that Vilaine estuary.... This
+score of years, she has had rest from the nightmare that men have made
+of life on God's beautiful earth. I have been through more of it, my
+good Renny."
+
+René's brain was never equal to coping with his master's periodic fits
+of pessimism, though he well knew their first and ever-present cause.
+In a troubled way he looked about the room, so peaceful, so retired
+and studious; and Sir Adrian understood.
+
+"Yes, yes, you are right; I have cut off the old life," he made answer
+to the unspoken expostulation, "and that I can live in my own small
+world without foregoing all my duties, I owe to you, my good friend;
+but startling news like this brings back the past very livingly, dead
+though it be--dead."
+
+René hesitated; he was pondering over the advisability of disburdening
+himself of yet another strange item of information he had in reserve;
+but, as his master, rousing himself with an effort as if to dismiss
+some haunting thought, turned round again to the table, he decided
+that the moment was not propitious.
+
+"So you have seen to all these things," said Sir Adrian wearily.
+"Good; I will look over them."
+
+He touched the neat pile of books and papers, listlessly, as he spoke,
+yet, instead of sitting down, remained as he was, with eyes that had
+grown wondering, staring out across the sea.
+
+"Look," he said presently, in a low voice, and René noticed a rare
+flush of colour rise to the thin cheeks. "Look--is not this day just
+like--one we both remember well...? Listen, the wind is coming up as
+it did then. And look at yonder sky!"
+
+And taking the man by the arm, he advanced slowly with him towards the
+window.
+
+In the west the heavens on the horizon had grown threateningly dark;
+but under the awe-inspiring slate-coloured canopy of clouds there
+opened a broad archway filled with primrose light--the luminous arch,
+well known to seafarers, through which charge the furious southwestern
+squalls. The rushing of the storm was already visible in the distance
+over the grey waters, which having been swayed for days by a steady
+Aquilon were now lashed in flank by the sudden change of wind.
+
+The two men looked out for a while in silence at the spectacle of the
+coming storm. In the servant's mind ran various trivial thoughts
+bearing on the present--what a lucky matter it was that he should have
+returned in time; only just in time it was; from the angry look of the
+outer world the island would now, for many a day be besieged by seas
+impassable to such small craft as alone could reach the reef. Had he
+tarried but to the next tide (and how sorely he had been tempted to
+remain an hour more in the gatekeeper's lodge within sight and hearing
+of buxom Moggie, Margery's grand-daughter), had he missed the tide,
+for days, maybe for weeks, would the master have had to watch and
+tend, alone, the beacon fire. But here he was, and all was well; and
+he had still the marvellous news to tell. Should he tell them now? No,
+the master was in one of his trances--lost far away in the past no
+doubt, that past that terminated on such a day as this. And Sir
+Adrian, with eyes fixed on the widening arch of yellow light, was
+looking inwards on the far-away distance of time.
+
+Men, who have been snatched back to life from death in the deep,
+recall how, before seeming to yield the ghost, the picture of their
+whole existence passed in vivid light before the eye of their mind.
+Swift beyond the power of understanding are such revelations; in one
+flash the events of a good or an evil life leap before the seeing
+soul--moment of anguish intolerable or of sublime peace!
+
+On such a boisterous day as this, some nineteen years before, by the
+sandy mouth of the river Vilaine, on the confines of Brittany and
+Vendée had Adrian Landale been drowned; under such a sky, and under
+the buffets of such an angry wind had he been recalled to life, and in
+the interval, he had seen the same pictures which now, coursing back
+many years in a few seconds, passed before his inward vision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DAY DREAMS: A PHILOSOPHER'S FATE
+
+Le beau temps de ma jeunesse ... quand j'étais si malheureux.
+
+
+The borderland between adolescence and manhood, in the life of men of
+refined aspirations and enthusiastic mettle, is oftener than not an
+unconsciously miserable period--one which more mature years recall as
+hollow, deceiving, bitterly unprofitable.
+
+Yet there is always that about the memories of those far-off young
+days, their lofty dreams long since scattered, their virgin delights
+long since lost in the drudgery of earthly experience, which ever and
+anon seizes the heart unawares and fills it with that infinite
+weakness: that mourning for the dead and gone past, which yet is not
+regret.
+
+In the high days of the Revolutionary movement across the water,
+Adrian Landale was a dreamy student living in one of those venerable
+Colleges on the Cam, the very atmosphere of which would seem
+sufficient to glorify the merits of past ages and past institutions.
+
+Amidst such peaceful surroundings this eldest scion of an ancient,
+north-country race--which had produced many a hardy fighter, though
+never yet a thinker nor even a scholar--amid a society as prejudiced
+and narrow-minded as all privileged communities are bound to become,
+had nevertheless drifted resistlessly towards that unfathomable sea
+whither a love for the abstract beautiful, a yearning for
+super-earthly harmony and justice, must inevitably waft a young
+intelligence.
+
+As the academical years glided over him, he accumulated much classical
+lore, withal read much latter-day philosophy and developed a fine
+youthful, theoretical love for the new humanitarianism. He dipped
+æsthetically into science, wherein he found a dim kind of help
+towards a more recondite appreciation of the beauties of nature. His
+was not a mind to delight in profound knowledge, but rather in
+"intellectual cream."
+
+He solaced himself with essays that would have been voted brilliant
+had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and
+Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitted to be highly
+polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the
+understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was
+conceded an interpreter of no mean order.
+
+In fact the worship of his soul might have been said to be the
+Beautiful in the abstract--the Beautiful in all its manifestations
+which include Justice, Harmony, Truth, and Kindliness--the one
+indispensable element of his physical happiness, the Beautiful in the
+concrete.
+
+This is saying that Adrian Landale, for all his array of definite
+accomplishments, which might have been a never-failing source of
+interest in an easy existence, was fitted in a singularly unfortunate
+manner for the life into which one sudden turn of fortune's wheel
+unexpectedly launched him.
+
+During the short halcyon days of his opening independence, however, he
+was able to make himself the centre of such a world as he would have
+loved to live in. He was not, of course, generally popular, either at
+college or at home; nor yet in town, except among that small set in
+whose midst he inevitably found his way wherever he went; his
+inferiors in social status perhaps, these chosen friends of his; but
+their lofty enthusiasms were both appreciative of and congenial to his
+own. Most of them, indeed, came in after-life to add their names to
+England's roll of intellectual fame, partly because they had that in
+them which Adrian loathed as unlovely--the instinct and will of
+strife, partly; it must be added, because they remained free in their
+circumstances to follow the lead of their nature. Which freedom was
+not allotted to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On one magnificent frosty afternoon, early in the year 1794, the
+London coach deposited Adrian Landale in front of the best hostelry in
+Lancaster, after more than a year's separation from his family.
+
+This separation was not due to estrangement, but rather to the
+instigation of his own sire, Sir Thomas--a gentleman of the "fine old
+school"--who, exasperated by the, to him, incomprehensible and
+insupportable turn of mind developed by his heir (whom he loved well
+enough, notwithstanding, in his own way), had hoped, in good
+utilitarian fashion, that a prolonged period of contact with the
+world, lubricated by a plentiful supply of money, might shake his "big
+sawney of a son" out of his sickly-sentimental views; that it would
+show him that _gentlemen's_ society--and, "by gad, ladies' too"--was
+not a thing to be shunned for the sake of "wild-haired poets, dirty
+firebrands, and such cattle."
+
+The downright old baronet was even prepared, in an unformed sort of
+way, to see his successor that was to be return to the paternal hearth
+the richer for a few gentlemanly vices, provided he left his nonsense
+behind him.
+
+As the great lumbering vehicle, upon the box seat of which sat the
+young traveller, lost in dreamy speculation according to his wont,
+drew clattering to a halt, he failed at first to notice the central
+figure in the midst of the usual expectant crowd of inn guests and inn
+retainers, called forward by the triumphant trumpeting which heralds
+the approach of the mail. There, however, stood the Squire of Pulwick,
+"Sir Tummus" himself, in portly and jovial importance.
+
+The father's eyes, bright and piercing under his bushy white brows,
+had already detected his boy from a distance; and they twinkled as he
+took note, with all the pride of an author in his work, of the
+symmetry of limb and shoulders set forth by the youth's faultless
+attire--and the dress of men in the old years of the century was
+indeed calculated to display a figure to advantage--of the lightness
+and grace of his frame as he dismounted from his perch; in short of
+the increased manliness of his looks and bearing.
+
+But a transient frown soon came to overshade Sir Thomas's ruddy
+content as he descried the deep flush (an old weakness) which mantled
+the young cheeks under the spur of unexpected recognition.
+
+And when, later, the pair emerged from the inn after an hour's
+conversation over a bottle of burnt sherry--conversation which, upon
+the father's side, had borne, in truth, much the character of
+cross-examination--to mount the phaeton with which a pair of
+high-mettled bays were impatiently waiting the return homewards, there
+was a very definite look of mutual dissatisfaction to be read upon
+their countenances.
+
+Whiling away the time in fitful constrained talk, parcelled out by
+long silences, they drove again through the gorgeous, frost-speckled
+scenery of rocky lands until the sheen of the great bay suddenly
+peered between two distant scars, proclaiming the approach to the
+Pulwick estate. The father then broke a long spell of muteness, and
+thus to his son, in his ringing country tones, as if pursuing aloud
+the tenor of his thoughts:
+
+"Hark'ee, Master Adrian," said he, "that you are now a man of parts,
+as they say, I can quite see. You seem to have read a powerful lot of
+things that do not come our way up here. But let us understand each
+other. I cannot make head or tail of these far-fetched new-fangle
+notions you, somehow or other, have fallen in love with--your James
+Fox, your Wilberforce, your Adam Smith, they may be very fine fellows,
+but to my humble thinking they're but a pack of traitors to king and
+country, when all is said and done. All this does not suit an English
+gentleman. You think differently; or perhaps you do not care whether
+it does or not. I admit I can't hold forth as you do; nor string a lot
+of fine words together. I am only an old nincompoop compared to a
+clever young spark like you. But I request you to keep off these
+topics in the company I like to see round my table. They don't like
+Jacobins, you know, no more do I!"
+
+"Nor do I," said Adrian fervently.
+
+"Nor do you? Don't you, sir, don't you? Why, then what the devil have
+you been driving at?"
+
+"I am afraid, sir, you do not understand my views."
+
+"Well, never mind; I don't like 'em, that's short, and if you bring
+them out before your cousin, little Madame Savenaye, you will come off
+second best, my lad, great man as you are, and so I warn you!"
+
+In tones as unconcerned as he could render them the young man sought
+to turn the intercourse to less personal topics, by inquiring further
+anent this unknown cousin whose very name was strange to him.
+
+Sir Thomas, easily placable if easily roused, started willingly enough
+on a congenial topic. And thus Adrian conceived his first impression
+of that romantic being whose deeds have remained legendary in the
+French west country, and who was destined to exercise so strong an
+influence upon his own life.
+
+"Who is she?" quoth the old gentleman, with evident zest. "Ay. All
+this is news to you, of course. Well: she _was_ Cécile de Kermelégan.
+You know your mother's sister Mary Donoghue (murthering Moll, they
+called her on account of her killing eyes) married a M. de Kermelégan,
+a gentleman of Brittany. Madame de Savenaye is her daughter (first
+cousin of yours), that means that she has good old English blood in
+her veins and Irish to boot. She speaks English as well as you or I,
+her mother's teaching of course, but she is French all the same; and,
+by gad, of the sort which would reconcile even an Englishman with the
+breed!"
+
+Sir Thomas's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm; his son examined him with
+grave wonder.
+
+"The very sight of her, my boy, is enough to make a man's heart warm.
+Wait till you see her and she begins to talk of what the red-caps are
+doing over there--those friends of yours, who are putting in practice
+all your fine theories! And, bookworm as you are, I'll warrant she'll
+warm your sluggish blood for you. Ha! she's a rare little lady. She
+married last year the Count of Savenaye."
+
+Adrian assumed a look of polite interest.
+
+"Emigré, I presume?" he said, quietly.
+
+"Emigré? No, sir. He is even now fighting the republican rapscallions,
+d--n them, and thrashing them, too, yonder in his country. She stuck
+by his side; ay, like a good plucked one she did, until it became
+palpable that, if there was to be a son and heir to the name, she had
+better go and attend to its coming somewhere else, in peace. Ho, ho,
+ho! Well, England was the safest place, of course, and, for her, the
+natural one. She came and offered herself to us on the plea of
+relationship. I was rather taken aback at first, I own; but, gad, boy,
+when I saw the woman, after hearing what she had had to go through to
+reach us at all, I sang another song. Well, she is a fine
+creature--finer than ever now that the progeny has been satisfactorily
+hatched; a brace of girls instead of the son and heir, after all! Two
+of them; no less. Ho, ho, ho! And she was furious, the pretty dear!
+However, you'll soon see for yourself. You will see a woman, sir, who
+has loaded and fired cannon with her own hands, when the last man to
+serve it had been shot. Ay, and more than that, my lad--she's brained
+a hulking sans-culotte that was about to pin her servant to the floor.
+The lad has told me so himself, and I daresay he can tell you more if
+you care to practise your French with master René L'Apôtre, that's the
+fellow! A woman who sticks to her lord and master in mud and
+powder-smoke until there is precious little time to spare, when she
+makes straight for a strange land, in a fishing-smack, with no other
+protector than a peasant; and now, with an imp of a black-eyed infant
+to her breast (Sally Mearson's got the other; you remember Sally, your
+own nurse's daughter?), looks like a chit of seventeen. That's what
+you'll see, sir. And when she sails downstairs for dinner, dressed up,
+powdered and high-heeled, she might be a princess, a queen who has
+never felt a crumpled roseleaf in her life. Gad! I'm getting poetical,
+I declare."
+
+In this strain did the Squire, guiding his horses with strong,
+dexterous hand, expatiate to his son; the crisp air rushing past them,
+making their faces glow with the tingling blood until, burning the
+ground, they dashed up the avenue that leads to the white mansion of
+Pulwick, and halted amidst a cloud of steam before its Palladian
+portico.
+
+What happened to Adrian the moment after happens, as a rule, only once
+in a man's lifetime.
+
+Through the opening portals the guest, whose condensed biography the
+Squire had been imparting to his son (all unconsciously eliciting
+thereby more repulsion than admiration in the breast of that
+fastidious young misogynist), appeared herself to welcome the return
+of her host.
+
+Adrian, as he retired a pace to let his father ascend the steps, first
+caught a glimpse of a miraculously small and arched foot, clad in pink
+silk, and, looking suddenly up, met fully the flash of great dark
+eyes, set in a small white face, more brilliant in their immense
+blackness than even the glinting icicles pendant over the lintel that
+now shot back the sun's sinking glory.
+
+The spell was of the kind that the reason of man can never sanction,
+and yet that have been ever and will be while man is. This youth,
+virgin of heart, dreamy of head who had drifted to his twentieth
+year, all unscathed by passion or desire, because he had never met
+aught in flesh and blood answering to his unconscious ideal, was
+struck to the depth of his soul by the presence of one, as unlike this
+same ideal as any living creature could be; struck with fantastic
+suddenness, and in that all-encompassing manner which seizes the
+innermost fibres of the being.
+
+It was a pang of pain, but a revelation of glory.
+
+He stood for some moments, with paling cheeks and hotly-beating heart,
+gazing back into the wondrous eyes. She, yielding her cheek carelessly
+to the Squire's hearty kiss, examined the new-comer curiously the
+while:
+
+"Why--how now, tut, tut, what's this?" thundered the father, who,
+following the direction of her eyes, wheeled round suddenly to
+discover his son's strange bearing, "Have you lost all the manners as
+well as the notions of a gentleman, these last two years? Speak to
+Madame de Savenaye, sir!--Cécile, this is my son; pray forgive him, my
+dear; the fellow's shyness before ladies is inconceivable. It makes a
+perfect fool of him, as you see."
+
+But Madame de Savenaye's finer wits had already perceived something
+different from the ordinary display of English shyness in the young
+man, whose eyes remained fixed on her face with an intentness that
+savoured in no way, of awkwardness. She now broke the spell with a
+broader smile and a word of greeting.
+
+"You are surprised," said she in tripping words, tinged with a
+distinct foreign intonation, "to see a strange face here, Mr.
+Adrian--or, shall I say cousin? for that is the style I should adopt
+in my Brittany. Yes, you see in me a poor foreign cousin, fleeing for
+protection to your noble country. How do you do, my cousin?"
+
+She extended a slender, white hand, one rosy nail of which, bending
+low, Adrian gravely kissed.
+
+"_Mais, comment donc!_" exclaimed the lady, "my dear uncle did you
+chide your son just now? Why, but these are Versailles manners--so
+gallant, so courtly!"
+
+And she gave the boy's fingers, as they lingered under hers, first a
+discreet little pressure, and then a swift flip aside.
+
+"Ah! how cold you are!" she exclaimed; and then, laughing, added
+sweetly: "Cold hands, warm heart, of course."
+
+And with rapping heels she turned into the great hall and into the
+drawing-room whither the two men--the father all chuckles, and the son
+still struck with wonder--followed her.
+
+She was standing by the hearth holding each foot alternately to the
+great logs flaming on the tiles, ever and anon looking over her shoulder
+at Adrian, who had advanced closer, without self-consciousness, but
+still in silence.
+
+"Now, cousin," she remarked gaily, "there is room for you here, big as
+you are, to warm yourself. You must be cold. I know already all about
+your family, and I must know all about you, too! I am very curious, I
+find them all such good, kind, handsome people here, and I am told to
+expect in you something quite different from any of them. Now, where
+does the difference come in? You are as tall as your father, but in
+face--no, I believe it is your pretty sisters you are like in face."
+
+Here the Squire interrupted with his loud laugh, and, clapping his
+hand on his stalwart son's head:
+
+"You have just hit it, Cécile, it's here the difference lies. Adrian,
+I really believe, is a little mistake of Dame Nature; his brain was
+meant for a girl and was tacked on to that big body by accident, ho,
+ho, ho! He is quite lady-like in his accomplishments--loves music, and
+plays, by gad, better than our organist. Writes poetry, too. I found
+some devilish queer things on his writing-table once, which were not
+_all_ Latin verses, though he would fain I thought so. And as for
+deportment, Madame Cécile, why there is more propriety, in that
+hobbedehoy, at least, more blushing in him, than in all the
+bread-and-butter misses in the county!"
+
+Adrian said nothing; but, when not turned towards the ground, his gaze
+still sought the Countess, who now returned the look with a ripening
+smile open to any interpretation.
+
+"Surely," she remarked, glancing then at the elder for an instant with
+some archness, "surely you English gentlemen, who have so much
+propriety, would not rather ... there was young Mr. Bradbury, we heard
+talked of yesterday, whom every farmer with a red-cheeked lass of his
+own--"
+
+"No, no!" hastily interrupted the baronet, with a blush himself, while
+Adrian's cheek in spite of the recent indictment preserved its smooth
+pallor--in truth, the boy, lost in his first love-dream, had not
+understood the allusion. "No, I don't want a Landale to be a
+blackguard, you know, but--" And the father, unable to split this
+ethical hair, to logical satisfaction, stopped and entered another
+channel of grumbling vituperation, whilst the Countess, very much
+amused by her private thoughts, gave a little rippling laugh, and
+resumed her indulgent contemplation of the accused.
+
+"What a pity, now, school-boy Rupert is not the eldest; there would be
+a country gentleman for you! Whereas, this successor that is to be of
+mine is a man of books and a philosopher. Forsooth, a first-class
+bookworm; by gad, I believe the first of our race! And he might make a
+name for himself, I've been told, among that lot, though the pack o'
+nonsense he treats us to at times cannot, I'm thinking, really go down
+even among those college fuzzle-heads. But I am confounded if that
+chap will ever be of any use as a landlord whenever he steps into my
+shoes. He hates a gun, and takes more pleasure--what was it he said
+last time he was here?--oh, yes, more pleasure in watching a bird dart
+in the blue than bringing it down, be it never so neat a shot. Ho, ho!
+did ye ever hear such a thing? And though he can sit a horse--I will
+say that for him (I should like to see a Landale that could not!)--I
+have seen this big boy of mine positively sicken, ay! and scandalise
+the hunt by riding away from the death. Moreover, I believe that, when
+I am gone, he will always let off any poaching scoundrel on the plea
+that the vermin only take for their necessity what we preserve for
+sport."
+
+The little foreign lady, smiling no longer, eyed her big cousin with
+wondering looks.
+
+"Strange, indeed," she remarked, "that a man should fail to appreciate
+the boon of man's existence, the strength and freedom to dominate, to
+be up and doing, to _live_ in fact. How I should long to be a man
+myself, if I ever allowed myself to long for anything; but I am a
+woman, as you see," she added, rising to the full height of her
+exquisite figure, "and must submit to woman's lot--and that is just
+now to the point, for I must leave you to go and see to the wants of
+that _mioche_ of mine which I hear whining upstairs. But I do not
+believe my uncle's account of you is a complete picture after all,
+cousin Adrian. I shall get it out of you anon, catechise you in my own
+way, and, if needs be, convert you to a proper sense of the glorious
+privileges of your sex."
+
+And she ran out of the room.
+
+"Well, my lad," said Sir Thomas, that evening, when the ladies had
+left the two men to their decanter, "I thought my Frenchwoman would
+wake you up, but, by George, I hardly expected she would knock you all
+of a heap so quick. Hey! you're winged, Adrian, winged, or this is not
+port."
+
+"I cannot say, sir," answered Adrian, musing.
+
+The old man caught up the unsatisfactory reply in an exasperated
+burlesque of mimicry: "I cannot say, sir--you cannot say? Pooh, pooh,
+there is no shame in being in love with her. We all are more or less;
+pass the bottle. As for you, since you clapped eyes on her you have
+been like a man in the moon, not a word to throw to a dog, no eyes, no
+ears but for your own thoughts, so long as madam is not there. Enter
+madam, you're alive again, by George, and pretty lively, too! Gad, I
+never thought I'd ever see _you_ do the lady's man, all in your own
+queer way, of course; but, hang it all, she seems to like it, the
+little minx! Ay, and if she has plenty of smiles for the old man she's
+ready to give her earnest to you--I saw her, I saw her. But don't you
+forget she's married, sir, very much married, too. She don't forget it
+either, I can tell you, though you may think she does. Now, what sort
+of game is she making of you? What were you talking about in the
+picture gallery for an hour before dinner, eh?"
+
+"To say the truth," answered the son, simply, "it was about myself
+almost the whole time."
+
+"And she flattered you finely, I'll be bound, of course," said his
+elder, with a knowing look. "Oh, these women, these women!"
+
+"On the contrary, sir, she thinks even less of me than you do. That
+woman has the soul of a savage; we have not one thought in common."
+
+The father burst into a loud laugh. "A pretty savage to look at,
+anyhow; a well-polished one in the bargain, ho, ho, ho! Well, well, I
+must make up my mind, I suppose, that my eldest son is a lunatic in
+love with a savage."
+
+Adrian remained silent for a while, toying with his glass, his young
+brow contracted under a painful frown. At length, checking a sigh, he
+answered with deliberation:
+
+"Since it is so palpable to others, I suppose it must be love, as you
+say. I had thought hitherto that love of which people talk so much was
+a feeling of sweetness. What I feel in this lady's presence is much
+more kin to anguish; for all that, as you have noticed, I appear to
+live only when she is nigh."
+
+The father looked at his son and gaped. The latter went on, after
+another pause:
+
+"I suppose it is so, and may as well own it to myself and to you,
+though nothing can come of it, good or bad. She is married, and she is
+your guest; and even if any thought concerning me could enter her
+heart, the merest show of love on my part would be an insult to her
+and treason to you. But trust me, I shall now be on my guard, since my
+behaviour has already appeared strange."
+
+"Tut, tut," said the Baronet, turning to his wine in some dudgeon, his
+rubicund face clouding as he looked with disfavour at this strange
+heir of his, who could not even fall in love like the rest of his
+race. "What are you talking about? Come, get out of that and see what
+the little lady's about, and let me hear no more of this. She'll not
+compromise herself with a zany like you, anyhow, that I'll warrant."
+
+But Adrian with all the earnestness of his nature and his very young
+fears was strenuously resolved to watch himself narrowly in his
+intercourse with his too fascinating relative; little recking how
+infinitesimal is the power of a man's free-will upon the conduct of
+his life.
+
+The next morning found the little Countess in the highest spirits.
+Particularly good news had arrived from her land with the early
+courier. True, the news were more than ten days old, but she had that
+insuperable buoyancy of hopefulness which attends active and healthy
+natures.
+
+The Breton peasants (she explained to the company round the breakfast
+table), headed by their lords (among whom was her own _Seigneur et
+Maître_) had again crushed the swarms of ragged brigands that called
+themselves soldiers. From all accounts there was no hope for the
+latter, their atrocities had been such that the whole land, from
+Normandy to Guyenne, was now in arms against them.
+
+And in Paris, the hot pit whence had issued the storm of foulness that
+blasted the fair kingdom of France after laying low the hallowed heads
+of a good king and a beautiful queen, in Paris, leaders and led were
+now chopping each other's heads off, _à qui mieux mieux_. "Those
+thinkers, those lofty patriots, _hein, beau cousin_, for whom, it
+seems, you have an admiration," commented the lady, interrupting her
+account to sip her cup of cream and chocolate, with a little finger
+daintily cocked, and shoot a mocking shaft at the young philosopher
+from the depth of her black eyes.
+
+"Like demented wolves they are destroying each other--Pray the God of
+Justice," quoted she from her husband's letter, "that it may only
+last; in a few months, then, there will be none of them left, and the
+people, relieved from this rule of blood, will all clamour for the
+true order of things, and the poor country may again know peace and
+happiness. Meanwhile, all has yet to be won, by much devotion and
+self-sacrifice in the cause of God and King; and afterwards will come
+the reward!...
+
+"And the revenge," added Madame de Savenaye, with a little, fierce
+laugh, folding the sanguine budget of news. "Oh! they must leave us a
+few for revenge! How we shall make the hounds smart when the King
+returns to his own! And then for pleasures and for life again. And we
+may yet meet at the mansion of Savenaye, in Paris," she went on gaily,
+"my good uncle and fair cousins, for the King cannot fail to recall
+his faithful supporter. And there will be feasts and balls. And there,
+maybe, we shall be able to repay in part some of your kindness and
+hospitality. And you, cousin Adrian, you will have to take me through
+pavanne and gavotte and minuet; and I shall be proud of my northern
+cavalier. What! not know how one dances the gavotte? _Fi donc!_ what
+ignorance! I shall have to teach you. Your hand, monsieur," slipping
+the missive from the seat of war into her fair bosom. "La! not that
+way; with a _grace_, if you please," making a profound curtsey. "Ah,
+still that cold hand; your great English heart must be a very
+furnace. Come, point your right foot--so. And look round at your
+partner with--what shall I say--_admiration sérieuse_!"
+
+That she saw admiration, serious enough in all conscience in Adrian's
+eyes, there was little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark
+every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty,
+the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable
+foot--pointed _so_--and treading the ground with the softness of a
+kitten at play; the maddening curve of her waist, which a sacque,
+depending from an exquisite nape, partly concealed, only to enhance
+its lithe suppleness; the divinely young throat and bust; and above
+all the dazzling black rays from eyes alternately mocking, fierce or
+caressing.
+
+Well might his hand be cold with all his young untried blood, biting
+at his heart, singing in his head. Why did God place such creatures on
+His earth to take all savour from aught else under the sun?
+
+"Fair cousin, fair cousin, though I said serious admiration, I did not
+mean you to look as if you were taking me to a funeral. You are
+supposed to be enjoying yourself, you know!"
+
+The youth struggled with a ghastly smile; and the father laughed
+outright. But Madame de Savenaye checked herself into gravity once
+more.
+
+"Alas! _Nous n'en sommes pas encore là_," she said, and relinquished
+her adorer's hand. "We have still to fight for it.... Oh! that I were
+free to be up and doing!"
+
+The impatient exclamation was wrung out of her, apparently, by the
+appearance of two nurses, each bearing an infant in long, white robes
+for the mother's inspection; a preliminary to the daily outing.
+
+The elder of these matrons was Adrian's own old nurse who, much
+occupied with her new duties of attendant to Madame de Savenaye and
+one of her babies, now beheld her foster-son again for the first time
+since his return.
+
+"Eh--but you've grown a gradely mon, Mester Adrian!" she cried, in her
+long-drawn Lancastrian, dandling her bundle energetically from side to
+side in the excess of her admiration, and added with a laugh of
+tender delight: "Eh, but you're my own lad still, as how 'tis!" when,
+blushing, the young man crossed the room and stooped to kiss her,
+glancing shyly the while at the white bundle in her arms.
+
+"Well, and how are the little ones?" quoth Madame de Savenaye,
+swinging her dainty person up to the group and halting by beaming
+Sally--the second nurse, who proudly held forth her charge--merely to
+lay a finger lightly on the infant's little cheek.
+
+"Ah, my good Sally, your child does you credit!--Now Margery, when you
+have done embracing that fine young man, perhaps you will give me my
+child, _hein_?"
+
+Both the nurses blushed; Margery at the soft impeachment as she
+delivered over the minute burden; her daughter in honest indignation
+at the insulting want of interest shown for her foster-babe.
+
+"No, I was not made to play with puppets like you, mademoiselle," said
+the comtesse, addressing herself to the unconscious little being as
+she took it in her arms, but belying her words by the grace and
+instinctive maternal expertness with which she handled and soothed the
+infant. "Yes, you can go, Sarah--_au revoir_, Mademoiselle Madeleine.
+Fie the little wretch, what faces she pulls! And you, Margery, you
+need not wait either; I shall keep this creature for a while. Poor
+little one!" sang the mother, walking up and down, and patting the
+small back with her jewelled hand as she held the wee thing against
+her shoulder, "indeed I shall have soon to leave you----"
+
+"What's this--what's this?" exclaimed the master of the house with
+sudden sharpness. He had been surveying the scene from the hearthrug,
+chuckling in benevolent amusement at little Madam's ways.
+
+Yes, it was her intention to return to her place by the side of her
+lord, she explained, halting in her walk to face him gravely; she had
+come to that resolution. No doubt her uncle would take the children
+under his care until better times--those good times that were so fast
+approaching. Buxom Sally could manage them both--and to spare, too!
+
+Adrian felt his heart contract at the unexpected announcement; a look
+of dismay overspread Sir Thomas's face.
+
+"Why--what? what nonsense, child!" cried he again in rueful tones.
+"_You_, return to that place now ... what good do you think you could
+do--eh?" But here recollecting himself, he hesitated and started upon
+a more plausible line of expostulation. "Pooh, pooh! You can't leave
+the little ones, your husband does not ask you to come back and leave
+them, does he? In any case," with assumed authority, "I shall not let
+you go."
+
+She looked up with a smile.
+
+"Would _you_ allow your friends to continue fighting alone for all you
+love, because you happened to be in safe and pleasant circumstances
+yourself?" she asked. Then she added ingenuously: "I have heard you
+say of one that was strong of will and staunch to his purpose, that he
+was a regular Briton. I thought that flattering: I am a Briton, of
+Brittany, you know, myself, uncle: would you have _me_ be a worthless
+Briton? As to what a woman can do there--ah, you have no idea what it
+means for all these poor peasants of ours to see their lords remain
+among them, sharing their hardship in defence of their cause.
+Concerning the children," kissing the one she held and gazing into its
+face with wistful look, "they can better afford to do without me than
+my husband and our men. A strong woman to tend them till we come back,
+is all that is wanted, since a good relative is willing to give them
+shelter. René cannot be long in returning now, with the last news.
+Indeed, M. de Savenaye says that he will only keep him a few days
+longer, and, according to the tidings he brings must I fix the date
+for my departure."
+
+Sir Thomas, with an inarticulate growl, relapsed into silence; and she
+resumed her walk with bent head, lost in thought, up and down the
+great room, out of the pale winter sunshine into the shadow, and back
+again, to the tune of "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre," which she hummed
+beneath her breath, while the baby's foolish little head, in its white
+cap from which protruded one tiny straight wisp of brown hair, with
+its beady, unseeing black eyes and its round mouth dribbling
+peacefully, bobbed over her shoulder as she went.
+
+Adrian stood in silence too, following her with his eyes, while the
+picture, so sweet to see, so strange to one who knew all that was
+brewing in the young mother's head and heart, stamped itself upon his
+brain.
+
+At the door, at length, she halted a moment, and looked at them both.
+
+"Yes, my friends," she said, and her eyes shot flame; "I must go
+soon." The baby bobbed its head against her cheek as if in
+affirmative; then the great door closed upon the pair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DAY DREAMS: A FAIR EMISSARY
+
+
+Many guests had been convened to the hospitable board of Pulwick upon
+the evening which followed Adrian's return home; and as, besides the
+fact that the fame of the French lady had spread enthusiasm in most of
+the male breasts of the district and anxious curiosity in gentler
+bosoms, there was a natural neighbourly desire to criticise the young
+heir of the house after his year's absence, the county had responded
+in a body to the invitation.
+
+It was a goodly company therefore that was assembled in the great
+withdrawing rooms, when the Countess herself came tripping down the
+shallow oaken stairs, and found Adrian waiting for her in the hall.
+
+He glanced up as she descended towards him to cover her with an ardent
+look and feast his eyes despairingly on her beauty; and she halted a
+moment to return his gaze with a light but meaning air of chiding.
+
+"Cousin!" she said, "you have very singular manners for one supposed
+to be so shy with ladies. Do you know that if my husband were here to
+notice them you might be taken to task?"
+
+Adrian ran up the steps to meet her. The man in him was growing apace
+with the growth of a man's passion, and by the boldness of his answer
+belying all his recent wise resolutions, he now astonished himself
+even more than her.
+
+"You are going back to him," he said, with halting voice. "All is
+well--for him; perhaps for you. For us, who remain behind there is
+nothing left but the bitterness of regret--and envy."
+
+Then in silence they descended together.
+
+As they were crossing the hall there entered suddenly to them,
+stumbling as he went, René, the young Breton retainer, whom the lord
+of Savenaye had appointed as squire to his lady upon her travels, and
+who, since her establishment at Pulwick, had been sent to carry news
+and money back to Brittany.
+
+No sooner had the boy--for such he was, though in intelligence and
+blind devotion beyond his years--passed into the light, than on his
+haggard countenance was read news of disastrous import. Recent tears
+had blurred his sunburnt cheek, and the hand that tore the hat from
+his head at the unexpected sight of his mistress, partly in
+instinctive humility, partly, it seemed, to conceal some papers he
+held against his breast, twitched with nervous anguish.
+
+"René!" cried the Countess, eagerly, in French. "What hast thou
+brought? Sweet Jesu! Bad news--bad news? Give!"
+
+For an instant the courier looked around like a hunted animal seeking
+a retreat, and then up at her in dumb pleading; but she stamped her
+foot and held him to the spot by the imperiousness of her eye.
+
+"Give, I tell thee," she repeated; and, striking the hat away,
+snatched the papers from his hand. "Dost thou think I cannot bear ill
+news--My husband?"
+
+She drew nearer to a candelabra, and the little white hands
+impatiently broke the seals and shook the sheets asunder.
+
+Sir Thomas, attracted by his favourite's raised tones and uneasy at
+her non-appearance, opened the drawing-room door and came forward
+anxiously, whilst his assembled guests, among whom a sense that
+something of importance was passing had rapidly spread, now gathered
+curiously about the open doorway.
+
+The Countess read on, unnoticing, with compressed lips and knitted
+brows--those brows that looked so black on the fair skin, under the
+powdered hair.
+
+"My husband! ah, I knew it, my André ... the common fate of the
+loyal!" A sigh lifted the fair young bosom, but she showed no other
+sign of weakness.
+
+Indeed those who watched this unexpected scene were struck by the
+contrast between the bearing of this young, almost girlish creature,
+who, holding the written sheets with firm hands to the light, read
+their terrible contents with dry eyes, and that of the man who had
+sunk, kneeling, at her feet, all undone, to have had the bringing of
+the news.
+
+The silence was profound, save for the crackling of the pages as she
+turned them over, and an occasional long-drawn sob from the messenger.
+
+When she came to the end the young widow--for such she was
+now--remained some moments absorbed in thought, absently refolding the
+letter into its original neatness. Then her eyes fell on René's
+prostrate figure and she stooped to lay a kind hand for an instant on
+his shoulder.
+
+"Bear up, my good René," she said. At her voice and touch he dragged
+his limbs together and stood humbly before her.
+
+"We must be brave," she went on; "your master's task is done--ours,
+yours and mine, is not."
+
+He lifted his bloodshot eyes to her with the gaze of a faithful dog in
+distress, scraped an uncouth bow and abruptly turned away, brushing
+the tears from his cheek with his sleeve, and hurrying, to relieve his
+choking grief in solitude. She stood a while, again absorbed in her
+own reflection, and of those who would have rushed to speak gentle
+words to her, and uphold her with tender hands, had she wept or
+swooned, there was none who dared approach this grief that gave no
+sign.
+
+In a short time, however, she seemed to recollect herself and awaken
+to the consciousness of the many watching eyes.
+
+"Good uncle," she said, going up to the old man and kissing his cheek,
+after sweeping the assembled company with dark, thoughtful gaze. "Here
+are news that I should have expected sooner--but that I would not
+entertain the thought. It has come upon us at last, the fate of the
+others ... André has paid his debt to the king, like many hundreds of
+true people before--though none better. He has now his reward. I glory
+in his noble death," she said with a gleam of exaltation in her eyes,
+then added after a pause, between clenched teeth, almost in a whisper:
+
+"And my sister too--she too is with him--but I will tell you of it
+later; they are at rest now."
+
+Jovial Sir Thomas, greatly discomposed and fairly at a loss how to
+deal with the stricken woman, who was so unlike any womankind he had
+ever yet come across, patted her hand in silence, placed it within his
+arm and quietly led her into the drawing-room, rolling, as he did so,
+uneasy eyes upon his guests. But she followed the current of her
+thoughts as her little feet kept pace beside him.
+
+"That is bad--but worse--the worst of all, the cause of God and king
+is again crushed; everything to begin afresh. But, for the present,
+we"--here she looked round the room, and her eyes rested an instant
+upon a group of young men, who were surveying her from a corner with
+mingled admiration and awe--"we, that is René and I, have work to do
+in this country before we return. For you will keep us a little
+longer?" she added with an attempt at a smile.
+
+"Will I keep you a little longer?" exclaimed the squire hotly, "will I
+ever let you go, now!"
+
+She shook her head at him, with something of her natural archness.
+Then, turning to make a grave curtsey to the circle of ladies around
+her:
+
+"I and my misfortune," she said, "have kept your company and your
+dinner waiting, I hardly know how long. No doubt, in their kindness
+they will forgive me."
+
+And accepting again her uncle's arm which, delighted at the solution
+of the present difficulty, and nodding to Adrian to start the other
+guests, he hastened to offer her, she preceded the rest into the
+dining-hall with her usual alert bearing.
+
+The behaviour of the Countess of Savenaye, had affected the various
+spectators in various ways. The male sex, to a man, extolled her
+fortitude; the ladies, however, condemned such unfeminine strength of
+mind, while the more charitable prophesied that she would pay dearly
+for this unnatural repression. And the whispered remark of one of the
+prettier and younger damsels, that the loss of a husband did not seem
+to crush her, at any rate, met, on the whole, with covert approval.
+
+As for Adrian, who shall describe the tumult of his soul--the regret,
+the hungering over her in her sorrow, the wild unbidden hopes and his
+shame of them? Careful of what his burning eyes might reveal, he
+hardly dared raise them from the ground; and yet to keep them long
+from her face was an utter impossibility. The whispered comments of
+the young men behind him, their admiration, and astonishment drove him
+to desperation. And the high-nosed dowager, whom it was his privilege
+to escort to his father's table, arose from it convinced that Sir
+Thomas's heir had lost in his travels the few poor wits he ever
+possessed.
+
+The dinner that evening was without doubt the most dismal meal the
+neighbourhood had ever sat down to at the hospitable board of Pulwick,
+past funeral refections not excepted. The host, quite taken up with
+his little foreign relative, had words only for her; and these,
+indeed, consisted merely in fruitless attempts to induce her to
+partake largely of every course--removes, relieves, side-dishes,
+joints, as their separate turn came round. Long spells of silence fell
+upon him meantime, which he emphasised by lugubriously clearing his
+throat. Except for the pretty courtesy with which she would answer
+him, she remained lost in her own thoughts--ever and anon consulting
+the letter which lay beside her to fall again, it seemed, into a
+deeper muse; but never a tear glinted between her black lashes.
+
+More than once Adrian from his distant end of the table, met her eyes,
+fixed on him for a moment, and the look, so full of mysterious
+meanings made his heart beat in anguish, expecting he knew not what.
+
+Among the rest of the assembly, part deference to a calamity so
+stoutly borne, part amazement at such strange ways, part discomfort at
+their positions as feasters in the midst of mourning, had reduced
+conversation to the merest pretence. The ladies were glad enough when
+the time came for them to withdraw; nor did most of the men view with
+reluctance a moment which would send the decanters gliding freely over
+the mahogany, and relieve them from this unwonted restraint.
+
+Madame de Savenaye had, however, other interests in store for these
+latter.
+
+She rose with the rest of the ladies, but halted at the door, and
+laying her hand upon her uncle's arm, said an earnest word in his ear,
+in obedience to which he bundled out his daughters, as they hung back
+politely, closed the door upon the last skirt, and reconducted the
+Countess to the head of the table, scratching his chin in some
+perplexity, but ready to humour her slightest whim.
+
+She stood at her former place and looked for a moment in silence from
+one to another of the faces turned with different expressions of
+astonishment and anticipation towards her--ruddy faces most of them,
+young, or old, handsome or homely, the honest English stamp upon each;
+and distinct from them all, Adrian's pallid, thoughtful features and
+his ardent eyes.
+
+Upon him her gaze rested the longest. Then with a little wave of her
+hand she prayed them to be seated, and waited to begin her say until
+the wine had passed round.
+
+"Gentlemen," then quoth she, "with my good uncle's permission I shall
+read you the letter which I have this night received, so that English
+gentlemen may learn how those who are faithful to their God and their
+King are being dealt with in my country. This letter is from Monsieur
+de Puisaye, one of the most active partisans of the Royal cause, a
+connection of the ancient house of Savenaye. And he begins by telling
+me of the unexpected reverses sustained by our men so close upon their
+successes at Chateau-Gonthier, successes that had raised our loyal
+hopes so high. 'The most crushing defeat,' he writes, 'has taken place
+near the town of Savenaye itself, on your own estate, and your
+historic house is now, alas! in ruins.... During the last obstinate
+fight your husband had been wounded, but after performing prodigies of
+valour--such as, it was hoped or trusted, the king should in time hear
+of--he escaped from the hands of his enemies. For many weeks with a
+few hundred followers he held the fields in the Marais, but he was at
+last hemmed in and captured by one of the monster Thureau's _Colonnes
+Infernales_, those hellish legions with an account of whose deeds,' so
+says this gallant gentleman our friend, 'I will not defile my pen, but
+whose boasts are like those of Attila the Hun, and who in their malice
+have invented obscene tortures worthy of Iroquois savages for all who
+fall into their clutches, be they men, women, or children.... But, by
+Heaven's mercy, dear Madame,' says M. de Puisaye to me, 'your noble
+husband was too weak to afford sport to those demons, and so he has
+escaped torment. He was hanged with all speed indeed, for fear he
+might die first of his toils and his wounds, and so defeat them at the
+last.'"
+
+A rustling murmur of horror and indignation went round the table; but
+the little woman faced the audience proudly.
+
+"He died," she said, "as beseems a brave man. But this is not all. I
+had a sister, she was very fair--like me some people said, in
+looks--she used to be the merry one at home in the days of peace," she
+gave a little smile, far more piteous than tears would be--"She chose
+to remain among her people when they were fighting, to help the
+wounded, the sick." Here Madame de Savenaye paused a moment and put
+down the letter from which she had been reading; for the first time
+since she had begun to speak she grew pale; knitting her black brows
+and with downcast eyes she went on: "Monsieur de Puisaye says he asks
+my pardon humbly on his knees for writing such tidings to me, bereaved
+as I am of all I hold dear, but 'it is meet,' he says, 'that the
+civilised world should know the deeds these followers of _liberty_ and
+_enlightenment_ have wrought upon gallant men and highborn ladies,'
+and I hold that he says well."
+
+She flashed once more her black gaze round upon the men, who with
+heads all turned towards her and forgetting their wine, hung upon her
+words. "It is right that I should know, and you too! It is meet that
+such deeds should be made known to the world: my sister was taken by
+these men, but less fortunate than my husband she had life enough left
+for torture--she too is dead now; M. de Puisaye adds: Thank God! And
+that is all that I can say too--Thank God!"
+
+There was a dead silence in the room as she ceased speaking, broken at
+last, here and there, along the table by exclamations and groans and a
+deep execration from Sir Thomas, which was echoed deep-mouthed by his
+guests.
+
+Adrian himself, the pacific, the philosopher, with both arms,
+stretched out on the table, clenched his hands, and set his teeth and
+gazed into space with murderous looks.
+
+Then the clear young voice went on again:
+
+"You, who have honoured mothers and wives of your own, and have young
+sweethearts, or sisters or daughters--you English gentlemen who love
+to see justice, how long will you allow such things to be done while
+you have arms to strike? We are not beaten yet; there are French
+hearts still left that will be up and doing so long as they have a
+drop of blood to shed. Our gallant Bretons and Vendéens are uniting
+once more, our émigrés are collecting, but we want aid, brave English
+friends, we want arms, money, soldiers. My task lies to my hand; the
+sacred legacy of my dead I have accepted; is there any of you here who
+will help the widow to maintain the fight?"
+
+She had risen to her feet; the blood glowed on her cheek as she
+concluded her appeal; a thousand stars danced in her eyes.
+
+Old men and young they leapt up, with a roar; pressing round her,
+pouring forth acclamations, asseverations and oaths--Would they help
+her? By God--they would die for her--Never had the old rafters of
+Pulwick rung to such enthusiasm.
+
+And when with proud smiles and crimsoned face she withdraws at last
+from so much ardour, the door has scarcely fallen behind her before
+Sir Thomas proposes her health in a bellow, that trembles upon tears:
+
+"Gentlemen, this lady's courage is such as might put most men's
+strength to shame. Here is, gentlemen, to Madame de Savenaye!"
+
+And she, halting on the stairs for a moment, to still her high-beating
+heart, before she lay her babe against it, hears the toast honoured
+with three times three.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the Lancastrian ladies had succeeded at length in collecting and
+carrying off such among the hiccupping husbands, and maudlin sons, who
+were able to move, Sir Thomas re-entering the hall, after speeding the
+last departing chariot, and prudently leaning upon his tall son--for
+though he had a seasoned head the night's potations had been deep and
+fiery--was startled well-nigh into soberness, at the sight of his
+niece waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
+
+"Why, Cis, my love, we thought you had been in bed this long while!
+why--where have you been then since you ran away from the dining-room?
+By George!" chuckling, "the fellows were mad to get another glimpse of
+you!"
+
+His bloodshot eye hung over her fondly. There was not a trace of
+fatigue upon that delicate, pretty face.
+
+"I wanted to think--I have much to think on now. I have had to read
+and ponder upon my instructions here,"--tapping her teeth with the
+letter, she still carried, "Good uncle, I would speak with you--yes,
+even now," quick to notice Adrian's slight frown of disapproval (poor
+fellow, he was sober enough at any rate!), "there is no time like the
+present. I have my work to do, and I shall not rest to-night, till I
+have planned it in my head."
+
+Surely the brilliancy of those eyes was feverish; the little hands she
+laid upon them to draw them into the dim-lit library were hot as fire.
+
+"Why, yes, my pretty," quoth the good uncle, stifling a portentous
+yawn, and striving to look wondrous wise, "Adrian, she wants to
+consult me, sir, hic!"
+
+He fell into an arm-chair as he spoke, and she sank on her knees
+beside him, the firelight playing upon her eager face, while Adrian,
+in the shadow, watched.
+
+"Do you think," she asked of the old man, eagerly, "that these
+gentlemen, who spoke so kindly to me a few hours ago, will be as much
+in earnest in the morning?"
+
+"Why d--n them! if they go back on their word, I'll call them out!"
+thundered Sir Thomas, in a great rage all of a sudden. She surveyed
+him inquiringly, and shot a swift keen glance from the placid, bulky
+figure in the chair, to Adrian pale and erect, behind it, then rose to
+her feet and stood a few paces off, as it were pondering.
+
+"What is now required of me--I have been thinking it well over," she
+said at last, "can hardly be achieved by a woman alone. And yet, with
+proper help and support, I think I could do more than any man by
+himself. There is that in a woman's entreaties which will win, when a
+man may fail. But I must have a knight at my side; a protector, at the
+same time as a faithful servant. These are not the times to stand on
+conventional scruples. Do you think, among these gentlemen, any could
+be found with sufficient enthusiasm, for the Royal cause, here
+represented by me, to attend, and support me through all the fatigues,
+the endless errands, the interviews--ay, also the rebuffs, the
+ridicule at times, perhaps the danger of the conjuration, which must
+be set on foot in this country--to do all that, without hope of other
+reward than the consciousness of helping a good cause, and--and the
+gratitude of one, who may have nothing else to give?"
+
+She stopped with a little nervous laugh: "No, it is absurd! no man,
+on reflection would enter into such a service unless it were for his
+own country."
+
+As the last words fell from her lips, she suddenly turned to Adrian
+and met his earnest gaze.
+
+"Or for his kindred," said the young man, coming up to her with grave
+simplicity, "if his kindred required it."
+
+A gleam of satisfaction passed across her face. The father, who had
+caught her meaning--sharp enough, as some men can be in their
+cups--nodded his head with great vigour.
+
+"Yes, why should you think first of strangers," he grumbled, "when you
+have your own blood, to stand by you--blood is thicker than water,
+ain't it? Am I too old, or is he too young, to wait on you--hey,
+madam?"
+
+She extended her hand, allowing it to linger in Adrian's grasp, whilst
+she laid the other tenderly on the old man's shoulder.
+
+"My good uncle! my kind cousin! Have I the choice already between two
+such cavaliers? I am fortunate indeed in my misfortune. In other
+circumstances to decide would be difficult between two men, each so
+good; but," she added, after a moment's hesitation, and looking at
+Adrian in a manner that made the young man's heart beat thickly, "in
+this case it is obvious I must have some one whom I need not fear to
+direct."
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered the baronet, "I'd go with you, my darling, to the
+world's end; but there's that young philosopher of mine breaking his
+heart for you. And when all's said and done, it's the young fellow
+that'll be the most use to you, I reckon. Ay, you've chosen already,
+I'll be bound. The gouty old man had best stop at home. Ho, ho, ho!
+You've the luck, Adrian; more luck than you deserve."
+
+"It is I who have more luck than I deserve," answered Madame de
+Savenaye, smiling upon her young knight as, taking heart of grace, he
+stooped to seal the treaty upon her hand. "To say the truth, I had
+hoped for this, yet hardly dared to allow myself to count upon it. And
+really, uncle, you give your own son to my cause?--and you, cousin,
+you are willing to work for me? I am indeed strengthened at the outset
+of my undertaking. I shall pray that you may never have cause to
+regret your chivalrous goodness."
+
+She dropped Adrian's hand with a faint pressure, and moved sighing
+towards the door.
+
+"Do you wonder that I have no tears, cousin?" she said, a little
+wistfully; "they must gather in my heart till I have time to sit down
+and shed them."
+
+Thus it was that a letter penned by this unknown M. de Puisaye from
+some hidden fastness in the Bocage of Brittany came to divert the
+course of Adrian Landale's existence into a channel where neither he,
+nor any of those who knew him, would ever have dreamed to see it
+drift.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+    Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,
+    Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee?
+
+    LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Sir Adrian Landale, in his sea-girt fastness, still absorbed in dreams
+of bygone days, loosed his grasp of faithful René's shoulder and fell
+to pacing the chamber with sombre mien; while René, to whom these fits
+of abstraction in his master were not unfamiliar, but yet to his
+superstitious peasant soul, eerie and awe-inspiring visitations,
+slipped unnoticed from his presence.
+
+The light-keeper sate down by his lonely hearth and buried his gaze in
+the glowing wood-embers, over which, with each fitful thundering rush
+of wind round the chimney, fluttered little eddies of silvery ash.
+
+So, that long strife was over, which had wrought such havoc to the
+world, had shaped so dismally the course of his own life! The monster
+of selfish ambition, the tyrannic, insatiable conqueror whose very
+existence had so long made peaceable pursuits unprofitable to mankind,
+the final outcome of that Revolution that, at the starting point, had
+boded so nobly for human welfare--he was at last laid low, and all the
+misery of the protracted struggle now belonged to the annals of the
+past.
+
+It was all over--but the waste! The waste of life and happiness, far
+and wide away among innocent and uninterested beings, the waste
+remained.
+
+And, looking back on it, the most bitter portion of his own wrecked
+life was the short time he had yet thought happy; three months, spent
+as knight-errant.
+
+How far they seemed, far as irrevocable youth, those days when, in the
+wake of that love-compelling emissary, he moved from intrigue to
+intrigue among the émigrés in London, and their English sympathisers,
+to bustling yet secret activity in seafaring parts!
+
+The mechanical instrument directed by the ingenious mind of Cécile de
+Savenaye; the discreet minister who, for all his young years, secured
+the help of some important political sympathiser one day, scoured the
+country for arms and clothing, powder and _assignats_ another; who
+treated with smuggling captains and chartered vessels that were to run
+the gauntlet on the Norman and Breton coast, and supply the means of
+war to struggling and undaunted loyalists. All this relentless work,
+little suited, on the whole, to an Englishman, and in a cause the
+rights of which he himself had, up to then, refused to admit, was then
+repaid a hundredfold by a look of gratitude, of pleasure even, a few
+sweet moments of his lady's company, before being sent hence again
+upon some fresh enterprise.
+
+Ah, how he loved her! He, the youth on the threshold of manhood, who
+had never known passion before, how he loved this young widowed mother
+who used him as a man to deal for her with men, yet so loftily treated
+him as a boy when she dealt with him herself. And if he loved her in
+the earlier period of his thraldom, when scarce would he see her one
+hour in the twenty-four, to what all-encompassing fervour did the
+bootless passion rise when, the day of departure having dawned and
+sunk, he found himself on board the privateer, sailing away with her
+towards unknown warlike ventures, her knight to protect her, her
+servant to obey!
+
+On all these things mused the recluse of Scarthey, sinking deeper and
+deeper into the past: the spell of haunting recollection closing on
+him as he sat by his hearthside, whilst the increasing fury of the
+gale toiled and troubled outside fighting the impassable walls of his
+tower.
+
+Could it have been possible that she--the only woman that had ever
+existed for him, the love for whom had so distorted his mind from its
+natural sympathies, had killed in him the spring of youth and the
+savour of life--never really learnt to love him in return till the
+last?
+
+And yet there was a woman's soul in that delicious woman's body--it
+showed itself at least once, though until that supreme moment of union
+and parting, it seemed as if a man's mind alone governed it, becoming
+sterner, more unbendable, as hardships and difficulties multiplied.
+
+In the melancholy phantasm passing before his mind's eye, of a period
+of unprecedented bloodshed and savagery, when on the one side Chouans,
+Vendéens, and such guerillas of which Madame de Savenaye was the
+moving spirit, and on the other the _colonnes infernales_ of the
+revolutionary leaders, vied with each other in ferocity and cunning,
+she stood ever foremost, ever the central point of thought, with a
+vividness that almost a score of years had failed to dim.
+
+When the mood was upon him, he could unfold the roll of that story
+buried now in the lonely graves of the many, or in the fickle memories
+of the few, but upon his soul printed in letters of fire and blood--to
+endure for ever.
+
+Round this goddess of his young and only love clustered the sole
+impressions of the outer world that had ever stirred his heart: the
+grandeur of the ocean, of the storm, the glory of sunrise over a
+dishevelled sea, the ineffable melancholy of twilight rising from an
+unknown strand; then the solemn coldness of moonlight watches, the
+scent of the burnt land under the fierce sun, when all nature was
+hushed save the dreamy buzz of insect-life: the green coolness of
+underwood or forest, the unutterable harmony of the sighing breeze,
+and the song of wild birds during the long patient ambushes of
+partisan war; the taste of bread in hunger, of the stream in the fever
+of thirst, of approaching sleep in exhaustion--and, mixed with these,
+the acrid emotions of fight and carnage, anguish of suspense, savage
+exultation of victory--all the doings of a life which he, bred to
+intellectual pleasures and high moral ideas, would have deemed a
+nightmare, but which, lived as it was in the atmosphere of his longing
+and devotion, yet held for him a strange and pungent joy: a cup of
+cruel memories, yet one to be lingered over luxuriously till the
+savour of each cherished drop of bitterness be gathered to the
+uttermost.
+
+Now, in the brightness of the embers, between the fitful flames of
+crumbling wood, spreads before his eyes the dreary strand near
+Quiberon, immense in the gathering darkness of a boisterous evening.
+Well hidden under the stone table of a Druidical men-hir glows a small
+camp-fire sedulously kept alive by René for the service of The Lady.
+She, wrapped up in a coarse peasant-cloak, pensively gazes into the
+cheerless smoke and holds her worn and muddy boots to the smouldering
+wood in the vain hope of warmth.
+
+And Adrian stands silently behind her, brooding on many things--on the
+vicissitudes of that desultory war which has left them not a roof
+whereunder they can lay their heads, during which the little English
+contingent has melted from them one by one; on the critical action of
+the morrow when the republican columns, now hastening to oppose the
+landing of the great royalist expedition to Quiberon (that supreme
+effort upon which all their hopes centre) must be surprised and cut
+off at whatever cost; on the mighty doings to follow, which are to
+complete the result of the recent sea fight off Ushant and crown their
+devoted toil with victory at last....
+
+And through his thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous
+disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on
+the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming slipper and dainty
+silken stocking.
+
+Now and then an owl-cry, repeated from point to point, tells of
+unremitting guard, but for which, in the vast silence, none could
+suspect that a thousand men and more are lying stretched upon the
+plain all around them, fireless, well-nigh without food, yet patiently
+waiting for the morrow when their chiefs shall lead them to death; nor
+that, in a closer circle, within call, are some fifty _gars_, remnant
+of the indomitable "Savenaye band," and tacitly sworn bodyguard to The
+Lady who came back from ease and safety over seas to share their
+peril.
+
+No sound besides, but the wind as it whistles and moans over the
+heath--and the two are together in the mist which comes closing in
+upon them as if to shroud them from all the rest, for even René has
+crept away, to sleep perhaps.
+
+She turns at last towards him, her small face in the dying light of
+this sullen evening, how wan and weather-beaten!
+
+"Pensive, as usual, cousin?" she says in English, and extends her
+hand, browned and scratched, that was once so exquisite, and she
+smiles, the smile of a dauntless soul from a weary body.
+
+Poor little hands, poor little feet, so cold, so battered, so
+ill-used! He, who would have warmed them in his bosom, given his heart
+for them to tread upon, breaks down now, for the first time; and
+falling on his knees covers the cold fingers with kisses, and then
+lays his lips against those pitiful torn boots.
+
+But she spurns him from her--even from her feet:
+
+"Shame on you!" she says angrily; and adds, more gently, yet with some
+contempt: "_Enfant, va!_--is this the time for such follies?"
+
+And, suddenly recalled to honour and grim actuality, he realises with
+dismay his breach of trust--he, who in their earlier days in London
+had called out that sprightly little émigré merely for the vulgar
+flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that
+the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de
+Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own
+across the face--ay, and shot him in the shoulder, all in the secret
+early dawn of the day they left England--for daring to remark within
+his hearing: "By George, the handsome Frenchwoman and her cousin may
+be a little less than kin, but they are a little more than kind."
+
+But yet, as the rage of love contending in his heart with
+self-reproach, he rises to his feet in shame, she gives him her hand
+once more, and in a different voice:
+
+"Courage, cousin," says she, "perhaps some day we may both have our
+reward. But will not my knight continue to fight for my bidding, even
+without hope of such?"
+
+Pondering on this enigmatic sentence he leaves her to her rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When next he finds himself by her side the anticipated action has
+begun; and it is to be the last day that those beautiful burning eyes
+shall see the glory of the rising sun.
+
+The Chouans are fighting like demons, extended in long skirmishing
+lines, picking out the cluster of gunners, making right deadly use of
+their English powder; imperceptibly but unflinchingly closing their
+scattered groups until the signal comes and with ringing cries:
+"_Notre Dame d'Auray!_" and "_Vive le roi!_" they charge, undismayed
+by odds, the serried ranks of the Republicans.
+
+She, from the top of the druidical stone, watches the progress of the
+day. Her red, parted mouth twitches as she follows the efforts of the
+men. Behind her, the _gars_ of Savenaye, grasping with angry clutch,
+some a new musket, others an ancient straightened scythe, gaze
+fiercely on the scene from under their broad felts. Now and then a
+flight of republican bullets hum about their ears, and they look
+anxiously to Their Lady, but that fearless head never bends.
+
+Then the moment arrives, and with a fervent, "God be with you, brave
+people," she hurls, by a stirring gesture, the last reserve on to the
+fight.
+
+And now he finds himself in the midst of the furious medley, striking
+mechanically, his soul away behind on that stone, with her. Presently,
+as the frenzy waxes wilder, he is conscious that victory is not with
+them, but that they are pressed back and encompassed, and that for
+each blue coat cast down amidst the yells and oaths, two more seem to
+come out of the rain and smoke; whilst the bare feet and wooden shoes
+and the long hair of his peasants are seen in ever-lessening ranks.
+And, in time, they find themselves thrown back to the men-hir; she is
+there, still calm but ghastly white, a pistol in each hand. Around
+her, through the wet smoke, rise and fall with sickening thuds the
+clubbed muskets of three or four men, and then one by one these sink
+to the ground too. With a wailing groan like a man in a nightmare, he
+sees the inevitable end and rushes to place his body before hers. A
+bullet shatters his sword-blade; now none are left around them but the
+begrimed and sinister faces of their enemies.
+
+As they stand prisoners, and unheeding the hideous clamour, he, with
+despair thinking of her inevitable fate at the hands of such victors,
+and scarcely daring to look at her, suddenly sees _that_ in her eyes
+which fills his soul to overflowing.
+
+"All is lost," she whispers, "and I shall never repay you for all you
+have done, cousin!"
+
+The words are uttered falteringly, almost plaintively.
+
+"We are not long now for this world, friend," she adds more firmly.
+"Give me your forgiveness."
+
+How often has Adrian heard this dead voice during the strange
+vicissitudes of these long, long years! And, hearing it whisper in the
+vivid world of his brain, how often has he not passionately longed
+that he also had been able to yield his poor spark of life on the last
+day of her existence.
+
+For the usual fate of Chouan prisoners swiftly overtakes the surviving
+leaders of the Savenaye "band of brigands," as that doughty knot of
+loyalists was termed by their arch-enemy, Thureau.
+
+A long journey towards the nearest town, in an open cart, under the
+pitiless rain, amidst a crowd of evil-smelling, blaspheming, wounded
+republicans, who, when a more cruel jolt than usual awakens their
+wounds, curse the woman in words that should have drawn avenging bolts
+from heaven. She sits silent, lofty, tearless; but her eyes, when they
+are not lost in the grey distance, ever wistfully seek his face.
+
+The day is drawing to a close; they reach their goal, a miserable,
+grey, draggled town at the mouth of the Vilaine, and are roughly
+brought before the arbiter of their lives--Thureau himself, the
+monstrous excrescence of the times, who, like Marat and Carrier, sees
+nothing in the new freedom but a free opening for the lowest instincts
+of ferocity.
+
+And before this monstrous beast, bedizened in his general's frippery,
+in a reeking tavern-room, stand the noble lady of Savenaye and the
+young heir of Pulwick.
+
+The ruffian's voice rings with laughter as he gazes on the silent
+youthful pair.
+
+"Aha, what have we here; a couple of drowned rats? or have we trapped
+you at last, the ci-devant Savenaye and her _godam_ from England? I
+ought really to send you as a present to the Convention, but I am too
+soft-hearted, you see, my pigeons; and so, to save time and make sure,
+we will marry you to-day."
+
+One of the officers whispers some words in his ear, which Thureau,
+suddenly growing purple with rage, denies with a foul oath and an
+emphatic thump of his huge fist on the table.
+
+"Hoche has forbidden it, has he? Hoche does not command here. Hoche
+has not had to hunt down the brigands these last two years. Dead the
+beast, dead the venom, I say. And here is the order," scribbling
+hurriedly on a page torn from a pocket-book. "It shall not be said
+that I have had the bitch of Savenaye in my hands and trusted her on
+the road again. Hoche has forbidden it! Call the cantineer and hop:
+the marriage and quick--the soup waits."
+
+Unable to understand the hidden meaning of the order, Adrian looks at
+his lady askance, to find that, with eyes closed upon the sight of the
+grinning faces, she is whispering prayers and fervently crossing
+herself. When she turns to him again her face is almost serene.
+
+"They are going to drown us together; that is their republican
+marriage of aristocrats," she says in soft English. "I had feared
+worse. Thank heaven there is no time now for worse. We shall be firm
+to the last, shall we not, cousin?"
+
+There is a pathetic smile on her worn weather-stained face, as the
+cantineer and a corporal enter with ropes and proceed to pinion the
+prisoners.
+
+But, as they are marched away once more under the slanting rain, are
+forced into a worn-out boat and lashed face to face, her fortitude
+melts apace.
+
+"There, my turtle-doves," sneers the truculent corporal, "another
+kindness of the general. The Nantes way is back to back, but he
+thought it would amuse you to see each other's grimaces."
+
+On the strand resounds the muffled roll of wet drums, announcing the
+execution of national justice; with one blow of an axe the craft is
+scuttled; a push from a gaff sends it spinning on the swift swollen
+waters into the estuary. Adrian's lips are on her forehead, but she
+lifts her face; her eyes now are haggard.
+
+"Adrian," she sobs, "you have forgiven me? I have your death on my
+soul! Oh, Adrian, ... I could have loved you!"
+
+Helpless and palsied by the merciless ropes, she tries passionately to
+reach her little mouth to his. A stream of fire rushes through his
+brain--maddening frenzy of regret, furious clinging to escaping
+life!--Their lips have met, but the sinking craft is full, and, with a
+sudden lurch, falls beneath the eddies.... A last roll of the drums,
+and the pinioned bodies of these lovers of a few seconds are silently
+swirling under the waters of the Vilaine.
+
+And now the end of this poor life has come--with heart-breaking sorrow
+of mind and struggle of body, overpowering horror at the writhings of
+torture in the limbs lashed against his--and vainly he strives to
+force his last breath into her hard-clenched mouth.
+
+Such was the end of Adrian Landale, aged twenty--the end that should
+have been--The pity that it was not permitted!
+
+After the pangs of unwelcome death, the misery of unwelcome return to
+life. Oh, René, René, too faithful follower; thou and the other true
+men who, heedless of danger, hanging on the flanks of the victorious
+enemy, never ceased to watch your lady from afar. You would have saved
+her, could courage and faithfulness and cunning have availed! But,
+since she was dead, René, would thou hadst left us to drift on to the
+endless sea! How often have I cursed thee, good friend, who staked thy
+life in the angry bore to snatch two spent bodies from its merciless
+tossing. It was not to be endured, said you, that the remains of the
+Lady of Savenaye should drift away unheeded, to be devoured by the
+beasts of the sea! They now repose in sacred ground, and I live on!
+Oh, hadst thou but reached us a minute later!--ah, God, or a minute
+earlier!
+
+Rarely had Sir Adrian's haunting visions of the past assumed such
+lurid reality. Rising in torment from the hearth to pace unceasingly
+the length and breadth of the restful, studious room, so closely
+secure from the outer turmoil of heaven and earth, he is once more
+back in the unknown sea-cave, in front of the angry breakers. Slowly,
+agonisingly, he is recalled to life through wheeling spaces of pain
+and confusion, only that his bruised and smarting eyes may see the
+actual proof of his own desolateness--a small, stark figure wrapped in
+coarse sailcloth, which now two or three ragged, long-haired men are
+silently lifting between them.
+
+He wonders, at first, vaguely, why the tears course down those wild,
+dark faces; and then, as vainly he struggles to speak, and is gently
+held down by some unknown hand, the little white bundle is gone, and
+he knows that _there_ was the pitiful relict of his love--that he will
+never see her again!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Adrian halted in front of his seaward window, staring at the
+driven rain, which bounded and plashed and spread in minute torrents
+down the glass, obscuring the already darkening vision of furious sea
+and sky.
+
+The dog, that for some moments had shown an anxious restlessness in
+singular concert with his master's, now rose at last to sniff beneath
+the door. No sound penetrated the roar of the blast; but the old
+retriever's uneasiness, his sharp, warning bark at length recalled Sir
+Adrian's wandering thoughts to the present. And, walking up to the
+door, he opened it.
+
+Oh, God! Had the sea given up its dead?
+
+Sir Adrian staggered back, fell on his knees and clapped his hands
+together with an agonised cry:
+
+"Cécile...!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE WHEEL OF TIME
+
+                     And to his eye
+    There was but one beloved face on earth,
+    And that was shining on him.
+
+    BYRON.
+
+
+Upon the threshold she stood, looking in upon him with dark, luminous
+eyes; round the small wet face tangles of raven hair fell limp and
+streaming; dark raiments clung to her form, diapered with sand and
+sea-foam, sodden with the moisture that dripped from them to the
+floor; under the hem of her skirt one foot peered forth, shoeless in
+its mud-stained stocking.
+
+Sir Adrian stared up at her, his brain whirling with a frenzy of joy,
+gripped in its soaring ecstasy by terror of the incomprehensible.
+
+On the wings of the storm and the wind had she come to him, his
+love--across the awful barriers that divide life and death? Had his
+longings and the clamour of his desolate soul reached her, after all
+these years, in the far-beyond, and was her sweet ghost here to bid
+him cease from them and let her lie at rest? Or, yet, had she come to
+call him from the weary world that their souls might meet and be one
+at last?... Then let her but lay her lips against his, as once in the
+bitterness of death, that his sorely-tried heart may break with the
+exquisite pang and he, too, may die upon their kiss.
+
+Swift such thoughts were tossing in the turmoil of his mind when the
+vision smiled ... a young, rosy, living smile; and then reason,
+memory, the wonder of her coming, the haunting of her grave went from
+him; possessed by one single rapturous certainty he started up and
+gathered the wet form into his strong arms--yet gently as if he feared
+to crush the vision into void--and showered kisses on the wet face.
+
+Not death--but life! A beating heart beneath his; a lithe young form
+under his hand, warm lips to his kisses, ... Merciful Heaven! Were,
+then, these twenty years all an evil, fevered dream, and was he awake
+at length?
+
+She turned her face from him after a moment and put her hand against
+his breast to push him from her; and as she did so the wonder in the
+lovely, familiar eyes turned to merriment, and the lips parted into
+laughter.
+
+The sound of the girlish laughter broke the spell. Sir Adrian stepped
+back, and passed his hand across his forehead with a dazed look.
+
+And still she laughed on.
+
+"Why, cousin Landale," she said, at length between the peals; "I came
+to throw myself upon your kindness for shelter from the storm, but--I
+had not anticipated such a reception."
+
+The voice, clear and sweet, with just a tinge of outlandish
+intonation, struck Adrian to the heart.
+
+"I have not heard," he faltered, "that voice for twenty years...!"
+
+Then, coming up to her, he took her hands; and, drawing her towards
+the firelight, scanned her features with eager, hungering eyes.
+
+"Do not think me mad, child," he said at last; "tell me who you
+are--what has brought you here? Ah, God, at such a moment! Who is it,"
+he pursued, as if to himself, whilst still she smiled mockingly and
+answered not; "who is it, then, since Cécile de Savenaye is dead--and
+I am not dreaming--nor in fever? No vision either--this is flesh and
+blood."
+
+"Yes, indeed," mocked the girl with another burst of merriment; "flesh
+and blood, please, and very living! Why, cousin Landale, you that knew
+Cécile de Savenaye so well have you forgotten two babes that were born
+at your own house of Pulwick? I believe, 'tis true, I have somewhat
+altered since you saw me last."
+
+And again the old room echoed to the unwonted sound of a girl's
+laughter.
+
+Now was the hallucination clearing; but the reality evoked a new and
+almost as poignant tenderness. Cécile--phantom of a life-time's love,
+reborn in the flesh, young as on the last day of her earthly
+existence, coming back into his life again, even the same as she had
+left it! A second wonder, almost as sweet as the first! He clung to
+it as one clings to the presence of a dream, and, joy unspeakable, the
+dream did not melt away, but remained, smiling, beautiful, unchanged.
+
+"Cécile's daughter ..." he murmured: "Cécile's self again; but she was
+not so tall, I think," and drew trembling, reverent hands from her
+head to her straight young shoulders. And then he started, crying in a
+changed voice:
+
+"How wet and cold you are! Come closer to the fire--sit you into this
+chair, here, in the warmth."
+
+He piled up the hearth with faggots till the flames roared again. She
+dropped into the proffered chair with a little shiver; now that he
+recalled her to it, she was wet and cold too.
+
+He surveyed her with gathering concern.
+
+"My child," he began, and hesitated, continuing, after a short pause
+of musing--for the thought struck him as strange--"I may call you so,
+I suppose; I that am nearly old enough to be your father; my mind was
+so unhinged by your sudden appearance, by the wonderful resemblance,
+that I have neglected all my duties as host. You will suffer from
+this--what shall we do to comfort you? Here, Jem, good dog! Call
+René!"
+
+The old retriever who, concluding that the visitor was welcome, had
+returned to his doze, here gathered his stiff limbs together, hobbled
+out through the doorway to give two or three yelping barks at some
+point on the stairs, and then crawl back to his cosy corner by the
+hearth.
+
+The girl laughed again. It was all odd, new, exciting. Adrian looked
+down at her. Cécile, too, had had a merry heart, even through peril
+and misfortune.
+
+And now there were hasty steps upon the stairs, creaking above the
+outer tumult of sea and wind; and, in accordance with the
+long-established custom of summoning him, René appeared upon the
+threshold, holding a pair of candles.
+
+At the sight of the figure sitting by the fire he halted, as if rooted
+to the ground, and threw up his hands, each still clutching its
+candle.
+
+"Mademoiselle...!" he ejaculated. "Mademoiselle here!" Then, rapidly
+recovering his quick wits, he deposited his burden of light upon the
+table, advanced towards the lady, made an uncouth but profound bow,
+and turned to his master.
+
+"And this, your honour," he remarked, oracularly, and in his usual
+manner of literal adaptation, "was also part of the news I had for
+your honour from my last journey; but, my faith, I did not know how to
+take myself to it, as your honour was so much occupied with old times
+this evening. But I had seen Mademoiselle at the castle, as
+Mademoiselle can tell you herself. And if your honour," he added, with
+a look of astonishment, "will have the goodness to say how it is
+possible that Mademoiselle managed to arrive here on our isle, in this
+weather of all the devils--reverence speaking, and I humbly beg the
+pardon of Mademoiselle for using such words--when it was with pain I
+could land myself, and that before the storm--I should be grateful to
+your honour. For I avow I cannot comprehend it at all. Ah, your
+honour!" continued René, with an altered tone, "'tis a strange thing,
+this!"
+
+The looks of master and man crossed suddenly, and in the frank blue
+eyes of the Breton peasant, Sir Adrian read a reflex of his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Yes," he said, more in answer to the look than to the exclamation,
+"yes, it is a strange thing, friend."
+
+"And his Honour cannot read the riddle any more than you yourself,
+René," quoth Mademoiselle de Savenaye, composedly from her corner;
+"and, as for me, I can give no explanations until I am a little
+warmer."
+
+"Why, truly," exclaimed Sir Adrian, striking his forehead, "we are a
+very pair of dolts! Hurry, Renny, hurry, call up Margery, and bid her
+bring some hot drink--tea, broth, or what she has--and blankets. Stay!
+first fetch my furred cloak; quick, René, every moment is precious!"
+
+With all the agitation of a rarely excited man Sir Adrian threw more
+wood on the fire, hunted for a cushion to place beneath her feet, and
+then, seizing the cloak from René's hands, he helped her to rise, and
+wrapped its ample folds round her as carefully as if she were too
+precious almost to be touched.
+
+Thus enveloped she sank back in the great arm-chair with a cosy,
+deliberate, kitten-like movement, and stretched out her feet to the
+blaze, laying the little shoeless one upon Jem's grey muzzle.
+
+Adrian knelt beside her, and began gently to chafe it with both hands.
+And, as he knelt, silence fell between them, and the storm howled out
+yonder; he heard her give a little sigh--that sigh which would escape
+from Cécile's weariness in moments of rest, which had once been so
+familiar and so pathetic a sound in his ear. And once more the power
+of the past came over him; again he was upon the heath near Quiberon,
+and Cécile was sitting by him and seeking warmth by the secret fire.
+
+"Oh, my darling," he murmured, "your poor little feet were so cold;
+and yet you would not let me gather them to my breast." And, stooping
+slowly, he kissed the pretty foot in its torn, stained stocking with a
+passion he had not yet shown.
+
+The girl looked on with an odd little smile. It was a novel
+experience, to inspire--even vicariously--such feelings as these; and
+there was something not unpleasant in the sense of the power which had
+brought this strange handsome man prostrate before her--a maidenly
+tremor, too, in the sensation of those burning lips upon her feet.
+
+He raised his eyes suddenly, with the old expectation of a rebuff; and
+then, at the sight of the youthful, curious face above him, betook
+himself to sighing too; and, laying the little foot back tenderly upon
+the cushion, he rose.
+
+From between the huge fur collar which all but covered her head, the
+black eyes followed him as alertly as a bird's; intercepting the soft
+melancholy of his gaze, she smiled at him, mischievous, confident, and
+uncommunicative, and snuggled deeper into the fur.
+
+Leaning against the high mantel-board, he remained silent, brooding
+over her; the clock ticked off solemnly the fleeting moments of the
+wonderful hour; and ever and anon the dog drew a long breath of
+comfort and stretched out his gaunt limbs more luxuriously to the
+heat. After a while Sir Adrian spoke.
+
+"He who has hospitality to dispense," said he, smiling down at her
+mutinous grace, "should never ask whence or how the guest came to his
+hearth ... and yet--"
+
+She made a slight movement of laziness, but volunteered nothing; and
+he continued, his look becoming more wistful as he spoke:
+
+"Your having reached this rock, during such weather, is startling
+enough; it is God's providence that there should live those in these
+ruins who are able to give you succour. But that you should come in to
+me at the moment you did--" He halted before the bold inquisitive
+brightness of her eyes. "Some day perhaps you will let me explain," he
+went on, embarrassed. "Indeed I must have seemed the most absolute
+madman, to you. But he who thinks he sees one returned from death in
+angry waters, may be pardoned some display of emotion."
+
+The girl sat up briskly and shook herself as if in protest against the
+sadness of his smile and look.
+
+"I rise indeed from a watery grave," she said lightly, "or at least
+from what should have been my grave, had I had my deserts for my
+foolishness; as it has turned out I do not regret it now; though I
+did, about midway."
+
+The red lips parted and the little teeth gleamed. "I have found such
+kindness and welcome." She caressed the dog who, lazily, tried to lick
+her hand. "It is all such an adventure; so much more amusing than
+Pulwick; so much more interesting than ever I fancied it might be!"
+
+"Pulwick; you come from Pulwick?" said Sir Adrian musing; "true, René
+has said it but just now. Yet, it is of a piece with the strangeness
+of it all."
+
+"Yes," said Mademoiselle de Savenaye, once more collecting her cloak,
+which her hurried movement had thrown off her shoulder. "Madelon and I
+are now at Pulwick--I am Molly, cousin, please to remember--or rather
+I am here, very warm now, and comfortable, and she is somewhere along
+the shore--perhaps--she and John, as wet as drowned rats. Well, well,
+I had best tell you the tale from the beginning, or else we never
+shall be out of the labyrinth.--We started from Pulwick, for a ride by
+the shore, Madelon and I. When we were on the strand it came on to
+rain. There was smoke out of your chimney. I proposed a canter as far
+as the ruins, for shelter. I knew very well Madelon would not follow;
+but I threw poor Lucifer--you know Lucifer, Mr. Landale has reserved
+him for me; of course you know Lucifer, I believe he belongs to you!
+Well, I threw him along the causeway. John, he's the groom you know,
+and Madelon, shrieked after me. But it was beautiful--this magnificent
+tearing gallop in the rain--I was not going to stop.--But when we
+were half way, Lucifer and I, I saw suddenly that the foam seemed to
+cover the sand in front of me. Then I pulled up quick and turned round
+to look behind me. There was already a frightful wind, and the sand
+and the rain blinded me almost, but there was no mistake--the sea was
+running between the shore and me. Oh! my God! but I was frightened
+then; I beat poor Lucifer until my whip broke, and he started away
+with a will. But when his feet began to splash the water he too became
+frightened and stopped. I did not know what to do; I pulled out my
+broach to spur him with the pin, but, at the first prick I gave him,
+he reared, and swerved and I fell right on my face in the froth. I got
+up and began to run through the water; then I came to some stones and
+I knew I was saved, though the water was up to my knees and rushing by
+like a torrent. When I had clambered up the beach I thought again of
+poor Lucifer. I looked about and saw him a little way off. He was
+shaking and tossing his dear black head, and neighing, though I really
+did not hear him, for the wind was in my ears; his body was stock
+still, I could not see his legs.... And gradually he sank lower, and
+lower, and lower, and at last the water passed over his head. Oh! it
+was horrible, horrible!"
+
+The girl shuddered and her bright face clouded. After a moment she
+resumed:
+
+"It was only then I thought of the moving sands they spoke of the
+other day at Pulwick--and that was why Madelon and that poltroon groom
+would not follow me! Yet perhaps they were wise, after all, for the
+thought of being buried alive made me turn weak all of a sudden. My
+knees shook and I had to sit down, although I knew I had passed
+through the danger. But I was so sorry for poor Lucifer! I thought if
+I had come down and led him, poor fellow, he might have come with me.
+Death is so awful, so hideous; he was so full of life and carried me
+so bravely, only a few minutes before! Is it not a shame that there
+should be such a thing as death?" she cried, rebelliously, and looked
+up at the man above her, whose face had grown white at the thought of
+the danger she had barely escaped.
+
+"I waited," she resumed at length, "till I thought he must be quite
+dead, there below, and came up to the ruins, and looked for an
+entrance. I knocked at some doors and called, but the wind was so
+loud, no one heard. And then, at last, there was one door I could
+open, so I entered and came up the stairs and startled you, as you
+know. And that is how I came here and how Lucifer is drowned."
+
+As she finished her tale at last, she looked up at her companion. But
+Sir Adrian, who had followed her with ever-deepening earnestness of
+mien, remained silent; noticing which she added quickly and with a
+certain tinge of defiance:
+
+"And now, no doubt, you are not quite so pleased as you seemed at
+first with the apparition which has caused you the loss of one of your
+best horses!"
+
+"Why child," cried Sir Adrian, "so that you be safe you might have
+left all Pulwick at the bottom of the sands for me!" And René who
+entered the room at that moment, heading the advance of Dame Margery
+with the posset, here caught the extraordinary sound of a laugh on his
+master's lips, and stepped back to chuckle to himself and rub his
+hands.
+
+"Who would have believed that!" he muttered, "and I who was afraid to
+tell his honour! Oh, yes, there are better times coming. Now in with
+you, Mother Margery, see for yourself who is there."
+
+Holding in both hands a fragrant, steaming bowl, the old crone made
+her slow entrance upon the scene, peering with dim eyes, and dropping
+tremulous curtseys every two or three steps.
+
+"Renny towd me as you wanted summat hot for a lady," she began
+cautiously; and then having approached near for recognition at last,
+burst forth into a long-drawn cry!
+
+"Eh, you never says! Eh, dear o' me," and was fain to relinquish the
+bowl to her fellow-servant who narrowly watching, dived forward just
+in time to catch it from her, that she might clasp her aged hands
+together once and again with ever-renewed gestures of astonishment.
+"An' it were truth then, an' I that towd Renny to give over his
+nonsense--I didn't believe it, I welly couldn't. Eh, Mester Adrian,
+but she's like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit an' image
+she is--e-eh, she is!"
+
+Molly de Savenaye laughed aloud, stretched out her hand for the bowl,
+and began with dainty caution to sip its scalding contents.
+
+"Ah, my dear Margery," said the master, "we little thought what a
+guest the sea would cast up at our doors to-night! and now we must do
+our best for her; when she's finished your comforting mixture I shall
+give her into your charge. You ought to put her to bed--it will not be
+the first time."
+
+"Ah! it will not, and a troublesome child she was," replied Margery,
+after the usual pause for the assimilation of his remark, turning to
+the speaker from her palsied yet critical survey of her whilom
+nursling.
+
+"And I'll see to her, never fear, I'll fettle up a room for her at
+once--blankets is airing already, an' sheets, an' Renny he's seen to
+the fire, so that as soon as Miss, here, is ready, I am."
+
+Upon which, dropping a last curtsey with an assumed dignity which
+would have befitted a mistress of the robes, she took her departure,
+leaving Adrian smiling with amusement at her specious manner of
+announcing that his own bedroom--the only one available for the
+purpose in the ruins--was being duly converted into a lady's bower.
+
+"It grieves me to think," mused he after a pause, while René still
+bursting with ungratified curiosity, hung about the further end of the
+room, "of the terrible anxiety they must be in about you at Pulwick,
+and of our absolute inability to convey to them the good news of your
+safety."
+
+The girl gave a little laugh, with her lips over the cup, and shrugged
+her shoulders but said nothing.
+
+"My God, yes," quoth René cheerfully from his corner. "Notre Dame
+d'Auray has watched over Mademoiselle to-day. She would not permit the
+daughter to die like the mother. And now we have got her ladyship we
+shall keep her too. This, if your honour remembers his sailor's
+knowledge, looks like a three-days' gale."
+
+"You are right, I fancy," said Sir Adrian, going over to him and
+looking out of the window. "Mademoiselle de Savenaye will have to take
+up her abode in our lighthouse for a longer time than she bargained. I
+do not remember hearing the breakers thunder in our cave so loud for
+many years. I trust," continued the light-keeper, coming down to his
+fair guest again, "that you may be able to endure such rough
+hospitality as ours must needs be!"
+
+"It has been much more pleasant and I feel far more welcome already
+than at Pulwick," remarked Mademoiselle, between two deliberate sips,
+and in no way discomposed, it seemed, at the prospect held out to her.
+
+"How?" cried Sir Adrian with a start, while the unwonted flush mounted
+to his forehead, "you, not welcome at Pulwick! Have they not welcomed
+a child of Cécile de Savenaye at Pulwick?... Thank God, then, for the
+accident that has sent you to me!"
+
+The girl looked at him with an inquisitive smile in her eyes; there
+was something on her lips which she restrained. Surrendering her cup,
+she remarked demurely:
+
+"Yes, it was a lucky accident, was it not, that there was some one
+to offer shelter to the outcast from the sea? It is like a tale of
+old. It is delightful. Delightful, too, not to be drowned, safe and
+sound ... and welcome in this curious old place."
+
+She had risen and, as the cloak fell from her steaming garments, again
+she shivered.
+
+"But you are right," she said, "I must go to bed, and get these damp
+garments off. And so, my Lord of Scarthey, I will retire to my
+apartments; my Lady in Waiting I see yonder is ready for me."
+
+With a quaint mixture of playfulness and gravity, she extended her
+hand, and Adrian stooped and kissed it--as he had kissed fair Cécile
+de Savenaye's rosy finger-tip upon the porch of Pulwick, twenty years
+before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FOREBODINGS OF GLADNESS
+
+
+Molly de Savenaye in her improvised bedroom, wet as she was, could
+hardly betake herself to disrobing, so amused was she in surveying the
+fresh and romantic oddity of her surroundings, with their mixture of
+barbarous rudeness and almost womanish refinement.
+
+Old Margery's fumbling hands were not nimble either, and it was long
+since she had acted as attendant upon one of her own sex. And so the
+matter progressed but slowly; but the speed of Margery's tongue was
+apparently not affected by its length of service. It wagged
+ceaselessly; the girl between her own moods of curious speculation
+vouchsafing an amused, half-contemptuous ear.
+
+Presently, however, as the nurse's reminiscences wandered from the
+less interesting topic of her own vicissitudes, the children she had
+reared or buried, and the marvellous ailments she had endured, to an
+account of those days when she had served the French Madam and her
+babes, Molly, slowly peeling a clinging sleeve from her arm, turned a
+more eager and attentive face to her.
+
+"Ah," quoth Margery, appraising her with blear eyes, "it's a queer
+thing how ye favour your mother, miss. She had just they beautiful
+shoulders and arms, as firm an' as white; but you're taller, I think,
+and may be so, to speak, a stouter make altogether. Eh, dear, you were
+always a fine child and the poor lady set a deal of store on you, she
+did. She took you with her and left your sister with my Sally, when
+she was trapesing up to London and back with Mester Adrian, ay, and me
+with ye. And many the day that I wished myself safe at Pulwick! And I
+mind the day she took leave of you, I do that, well."
+
+Here Dame Margery paused and shook her head solemnly, then pursued in
+another key:
+
+"See now, miss, dear, just step out of they wet things, will ye now,
+and let me put this hot sheet round ye?"
+
+"But I want to hear about myself," said Molly, gratefully wrapping the
+hot linen round her young beauty, and beginning to rub her black locks
+energetically. "Where was it my mother parted from me?"
+
+"Why, I'll tell you, miss. When Madam--we allus used to call her
+Madam, ye know--was goin' her ways to the ship as was to take her to
+France, I took you after her mysel' down to the shore that she might
+have the very last of ye. Eh, I mind it as if it were yesterday.
+Mester Adrian was to go with her--Sir Adrian, I should say, but he was
+but Mester Adrian then--an' a two three more o' th' gentry as was all
+fur havin' a share o' th' fightin'. Sir Thomas himsel' was theer--I
+like as if I could see him now, poor owd gentleman, talkin' an'
+laughin' very hard an' jov'al, an' wipin' 's e'en when he thought
+nobody noticed. Eh, dear, yes! I could ha' cried mysel' to see th'
+bonny young lady goin' off fro' her bairns. An' to think she niver
+came back to them no more. Well, well! An' Mester Adrian too--such a
+fine well-set-up young gentleman as he were--and _he_ niver comed back
+for ten year an' when he did, he was that warsened--" she stopped,
+shook her head and groaned.
+
+"Well, but how about me, nurse," observed Molly, "what about _me_?"
+
+"Miss, please it was this way. Madam was wantin' a last look at her
+bairn--eh, she did, poor thing! You was allus her favoryite, ye know,
+miss--our Sally was wet-nurse to Miss Maddyline, but Madam had you
+hersel'. Well, miss, I'd brought you well lapped up i' my shawl an'
+William Shearman--that was Thomas Shearman's son, feyther to William
+an' Tom as lives over yonder at Pulwick village--well, William was
+standin' in 's great sea-boots ready to carry her through th' surf
+into the boat; an' Mester Adrian--Sir Adrian, I mean--stood it might
+be here, miss, an' there was Renny, an' yon were th' t'other gentry.
+Well, Madam stopped an' took you out o' my arms, an' hugged you to her
+breast--an' then she geet agate o' kissin' you--your head an' your
+little 'ands. An' you was jumpin' an' crowin' in her arms--the wind
+had blown your cap off, an' your little downy black hair was standing
+back. (Just let me get at your hair now, miss, please--Eh! it's cruel
+full of sand, my word, it is.)"
+
+"It's 'ard, when all's said an' done, to part wi' th' babe ye've
+suckled, an' Madam, though there was niver nought nesh about 'er same
+as there is about most women, an' specially ladies--she 'ad th'
+mother's 'eart, she 'ad, miss, an when th' time coom for her to leave
+th' little un, I could see, as it were, welly burstin'. There we stood
+wi' th' wind blowin' our clothes an' our 'air, an' the waves roarin',
+an' one bigger nor th' t'others ran up till th' foam reached Madam's
+little feet, but she niver took no notice. Then all of a sudden she
+gets th' notion that she'd like to take you with 'er, an' she turns
+an' tells Mester Adrian so. 'She shall come with me,' she says, quite
+sharp an' determined, an' makes a sign to William Shearman to carry
+'em both over. 'No, no,' says Mester Adrian, 'quite impossible,' says
+he, as wise as if he'd been an owd man i' stead o' nobbut a lad, ye
+might say. 'It would be madness both for you an' th' child. Now,' he
+says, very quiet an' gentle, 'if I might advise, I should say stay
+here with the child.' Eh, I couldn't tell ye all he said, an' then Sir
+Tummas coom bustlin' up, 'Do, now, my dear; think of it,' he says,
+pattin' her o' th' hand. 'Stay with us,' he says, 'ye'll be welcome as
+th' flowers in May!' An' there was Renny wi' 's 'at off, an' th' tears
+pourin' down his face, beggin' an' prayin' Madam to stop--at least, I
+reckoned that was what he were sayin' for it was all in 's own
+outlandish gibberish. The poor lady! she'd look from one to th'
+t'other an' a body a' must think she'd give in--an' then she'd
+unbethink hersel' again. An' Sir Thomas, he'd say, 'Do now, my dear,'
+an' then when she'd look at him that pitiful, he'd out wi' 's red
+'andkercher an' frown over at Mester Adrian, an', says he, 'I wonder
+ye can ax her!' Well, all of a sudden off went th' big gun in th'
+ship--that was to let 'em know, miss, do ye see--an' up went Madam's
+head, an' then th' wind fetched th' salt spray to her face, an' a kind
+o' change came over her. She looked at the child, then across at the
+ship--an' then she fair tossed ye back to me. Big William catched her
+up in his arms just same as another bairn, an' carried her to the
+boat."
+
+"Yes," said Molly, gazing into the burning logs with brilliant eyes,
+but speaking low, as if to herself, so that her attendant's deaf ears
+failed to catch the meaning of the words. "Ah, that was life indeed!
+Happy mother to have seen such life--though she did die young."
+
+"As ye say, miss," answered Margery, making a guess at the most likely
+comment from a daughter's lips, "it was cruel hard--it was that.
+'Come, make haste!' cries the other young gentlemen: my word, they
+were in a hurry lest Madam happen to change her mind. I could welly
+have laughed to see their faces when Mester Adrian were trying to
+persuade her to stop at Pulwick, and let the men go alone. 'T wern't
+for that they reckoned to go all that road to France, ye may think,
+miss. Well, miss, in a few minutes they was all out i' the boat wi'
+th' waves tossin' 'em--an' I stood watchin' with you i' my arms,
+cryin' and kickin' out wi' your little legs, an' hittin' of me wi'
+your little 'ands, same as if ye knowed summat o' what was agate, poor
+lamb, an' was angry wi' me for keepin' ye. Then in a little while the
+big, white sails o' th' ship went swellin' out an' soon it was gone.
+An' that was th' last we saw o' Madam. A two-three year arter you an'
+Miss Maddyline was fetched away, to France, as I've been towd. I doubt
+you didn't so much as think there was such a place as Pulwick, though
+many a one there minds how they dandled and played wi' you when you
+was a wee bairn, miss."
+
+"Well, I am very glad to be back in England, anyhow," said Molly,
+nimbly slipping into bed. "Oh, Margery, what delicious warm sheets,
+and how good it is to be in bed alive, dry, and warm, after all!"
+
+A new atmosphere pervaded Scarthey that night. The peaceful monotony
+of years, since the master of Pulwick had migrated to his "ruins," was
+broken at last, and happily. A warm colour seemed to have crept upon
+the hitherto dun and dull surroundings and brightened all the
+prospects.
+
+At any rate René, over his busy work in the lantern, whistled and
+hummed snatches of song with unwonted blithesomeness, and, after
+lighting the steady watch-light and securing all his paraphernalia
+with extra care, dallied some time longer than usual on the outer
+platform, striving to snatch through the driven wraith a glance of the
+distant lights of Pulwick. For there, in the long distance, ensconced
+among the woods, stood a certain gate-lodge of greystone, much covered
+with ivy, which sheltered, among other inmates, the gatekeeper's
+blue-eyed, ripe and ruddy daughter--Dame Margery's pet grandchild.
+
+The idea of ever leaving the master--even for the sake of the
+happiness to be found over yonder--was not one to be entertained by
+René. But what if dreams of a return to the life of the world should
+arise after to-day in the recluse's mind? Ah, the master's eyes had
+been filled with light!... and had he not actually laughed?
+
+René peered again through the wind, but nothing could be seen of the
+world abroad, save grey, tumbling waters foaming at the foot of the
+islet; fretful waters coalescing all around with the driven, misty
+air. A desolate view enough, had there been room for melancholy
+thoughts in his heart.
+
+Blithely did he descend the steep wooden stairs from the roaring,
+weather-beaten platform, to the more secure inhabited keep; and,
+humming a satisfied tune, he entered upon Margery in her flaming
+kitchen, to find the old lady intent on sorting out a heap of feminine
+garments and spreading them before the fire.
+
+René took up a little shoe, sand-soiled and limp, and reverentially
+rubbed it on his sleeve.
+
+"Well, mother," he said, cheerfully, "it is a long while since you had
+to do with such pretty things. My faith, these are droll doings,
+ah--and good, too! You will see, Mother Margery, there will be good
+out of all this."
+
+But Margery invariably saw fit, on principle, to doubt all the
+opinions of her rival.
+
+Eh, she didn't hold so much wi' wenches hersel', an' Mester Adrian,
+she reckoned, hadn't come to live here all by himsel' to have visitors
+breaking in on him that gate!
+
+"There be visitors _and_ visitors, mother--I tell you, I who speak to
+you, that his honour is happy."
+
+Margery, with a mysterious air, smoothed out a long silk stocking and
+gave an additional impetus to the tremor Nature had already bestowed
+upon her aged head.
+
+Well, it wasn't for her to say. She hoped and prayed there was nowt
+bad a coomin' on the family again; but sich likenesses as that of Miss
+to her mother was not lucky, to her minding; it was not. Nowt good had
+come to Mester Adrian from the French Madam. Ah, Mester Adrian had
+been happy like with her too, and she had taken him away from his
+home, an' his people, an' sent him back wi'out 's soul in the end.
+
+"And now her daughter has come to give it him back," retorted René,
+as he fell to, with a zest, on the savoury mess he had concocted for
+his own supper.
+
+"Eh, well, I hope nowt bad's i' the road," said Margery with senile
+iteration. "They do say no good ever comes o' saving bodies from
+drowning; not that one 'ud wish the poor Miss to have gone into the
+sands--an' she the babby I weaned too!"
+
+René interrupted her with a hearty laugh. "Yes, every one knows it
+carries misfortune to save people from the drowning, but there, you
+see, her ladyship, she saved herself--so that ought to bring good
+fortune. Good-night, Mother Margery, take good care of the lady....
+Ah, how I wish I had the care of her!" he added simply, and, seizing
+his lantern, proceeded to ascend once more to his post aloft.
+
+He paused once on his way, in the loud sighing stairs, struck with a
+fresh aspect of the day's singular events--a quaint thought, born of
+his native religious faith: The Lady, the dear Mistress had just
+reached Heaven, no doubt, and had straightway sent them the young one
+to console and comfort them. Eh bien! they had had their time of
+Purgatory too, and now they might be happy.
+
+Pleasant therefore were René's musings, up in the light watcher's
+bunk, underneath the lantern, as, smoking a pipe of rest, he listened
+complacently to the hissing storm around him.
+
+And in the master's sleeping chamber beneath him, now so curiously
+turned into a feminine sanctum, pleasant thoughts too, if less formed,
+and less concerned with the future, lulled its dainty occupant to
+rest.
+
+Luxuriously stretched between the warm lavender-scented sheets,
+watching from her pillow the leaping fire on the hearth, Miss Molly
+wondered lazily at her own luck; at the many possible results of the
+day's escapade; wondered amusedly whether any poignant sorrow--except,
+indeed poor Madeleine's tears--for her supposed demise, really
+darkened the supper party at Pulwick this evening; wondered agreeably
+how the Lord of the Ruined Castle would meet her on the morrow, after
+his singular reception of her this day; how long she would remain in
+these romantic surroundings and whether she would like them as well at
+the end of the visitation.
+
+And as the blast howled with increasing rage, and the cold night drew
+closer on, and the great guns in the sea-cave boomed more angrily with
+the risen tide, she dimly began to dwell upon the thought of poor
+Lucifer being sucked deeper into his cold rapacious grave, whilst she
+was held in the warm embrace of a man whose eyes were masterful and
+yet gentle, whose arm was strong, whose kisses were tender.
+
+And in the delight of the contrast, Mademoiselle de Savenaye fell into
+the profound slumber of the young and vigorous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE PATH OF WASTED YEARS
+
+    And I only think of the woman that weeps;
+    But I forget, always forget, the smiling child.
+                                          _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+That night, even when sheer fatigue had subdued the currents of blood
+and thought that surged in his head, Sir Adrian was too restless to
+avail himself of the emergency couch providently prepared by René in a
+corner. But, ceasing his fretful pacing to and fro, he sat down in the
+arm-chair by the hearth where she had sat--the waif of the
+sea--wrapped round him the cloak that had enfolded the young body,
+hugging himself in the salt moisture the fur still retained, to spend
+the long hours in half-waking, firelight dreams.
+
+And every burst of tempest rage, every lash of rain at the window,
+every thud of hurricane breaking itself on impassable ramparts, and
+shriek of baffled winds searching the roofless halls around, found a
+strangely glad echo in his brain--made a sort of burden to his
+thoughts:
+
+Heap up the waters round this happy island, most welcome winds--heap
+them up high and boiling, and retain her long captive in these lonely
+ruins!
+
+And ever the image in his mind's eye was, as before, Cécile--Cécile
+who had come back to him, for all sober reason knew it was but the
+child.
+
+The child----! Why had he never thought of the children these weary
+years? They, all that remained of Cécile, were living and might have
+been sought. Strange that he had not remembered him of the children!
+
+Twenty years since he had last set eyes upon the little living
+creature in her mother's arms. And the picture that the memory evoked
+was, after all, Cécile again, only Cécile--not the queer little
+black-eyed puppet, even then associated with sea-foam and salty
+breeze. Twenty years during which she was growing and waxing in
+beauty, and unawares, maturing towards this wonderful meeting--and he
+had never given a thought to her existence.
+
+In what sheltered ways had this fair duplicate of his love been
+growing from a child to womanhood during that space of life, so long
+to look back upon--or so short and transient, according to the mood of
+the thinker?
+
+And, lazily, in his happier and tender present mood he tried to
+measure once again the cycles of past discontent, this time in terms
+of the girl's own lifetime.
+
+It is bitter in misery to recall past misery--almost as bitter, for
+all Dante's cry, as to dwell on past happiness. But, be the past
+really dead, and a new and better life begun, the scanning back of a
+sombre existence done with for ever, may bring with it a kind of
+secret complacency.
+
+Truly, mused Sir Adrian, for one who ever cherished ideal aspirations,
+for the student, the "man of books" (as his father had been
+banteringly wont to term him), worshipper of the muses, intellectual
+Epicurean, and would-be optimist philosopher, it must be admitted he
+had strangely dealt, and been dealt with, since he first beheld that
+face, now returned to light his solitude! Ah, God bless the child!
+Pulwick at least nursed it warmly, whilst unhappy Adrian, ragged and
+degraded into a mere fighting beast, roamed through the Marais with
+Chouan bands, hunted down by the merciless revolutionists, like
+vermin; falling, as months of that existence passed over him, from his
+high estate to the level of vermin indeed; outlawed, predatory,
+cunning, slinking, filthy--trapped at last, the fit end of vermin!
+
+Scarcely better the long months of confinement in the hulks of
+Rochelle. How often he had regretted it, then, not to have been one of
+the chosen few who, the day after capture, stood in front of six
+levelled muskets, and were sped to rest in some unknown charnel!
+Then!--not now. No, it was worth having lived to this hour, to know of
+that fair face, in living sleep upon his pillow, under the safeguard
+of his roof.
+
+Good it was, that he had escaped at last, though with the blood of one
+of his jailors red upon his hands; the blood of a perhaps innocent
+man, upon his soul. It was the only time he had taken a life other
+than in fair fight, and the thought of it had been wont to fill him
+with a sort of nausea; but to-night, he found he could face it, not
+only without remorse, but without regret. He was glad he had listened
+to René's insidious whispers--René, who could not endure the captivity
+to which his master might, in time, have fallen a passive, hopeless
+slave, and yet who would have faced a thousand years of it rather than
+escape alone--the faithful heart!
+
+Yes, it was good, and he was glad of it, or time would not have come
+when she (stay, how old was the child then?--almost three years, and
+still sheltered and cherished by the house of Landale)--when she would
+return, and gladden his eyes with a living sight of Cécile, while René
+watched in his tower above; ay, and old Margery herself lay once more
+near the child she had nursed.
+
+Marvellous turn of the wheel of fate!
+
+But, who had come for the children, and where had they been taken? To
+their motherland, perhaps; even it might have been before he himself
+had left it; or yet to Ireland, where still dwelt kinsfolk of their
+blood? Probably it was at the breaking up of the family, caused by the
+death of Sir Thomas, that these poor little birds had been removed
+from the nest, that had held them so safe and close.
+
+That was in '97, in the yellow autumn of which year Adrian Landale,
+then French fisherman, parted from his brother René L'Apôtre upon the
+sea off Belle Isle; parted one grizzly dawn after embracing, as
+brothers should. Oh, the stealthy cold of that blank, cheerless
+daybreak, how it crept into the marrow of his bones, and chilled the
+little energy and spirits he had left! For a whole year they had
+fruitlessly sought some English vessel, to convey this English
+gentleman back to his native land. He could remember how, at the
+moment of separation, from the one friend who had loved both him and
+her, his heart sank within him--remember how he clambered from aboard
+the poor little smack, up the forbidding sides of the English brig;
+how René's broken words had bidden God bless him, and restore him
+safely home (home!); remember how swiftly the crafts had moved apart,
+the mist, the greyness and desolateness; the lapping of the waters,
+the hoarse cries of the seamen, all so full of heart-piercing
+associations to him, and the last vision of René's simple face, with
+tears pouring down it, and his open mouth spasmodically trying to give
+out a hearty cheer, despite the sobs that came heaving up to it. How
+little the simple fellow dreamed of what bitterness the future was yet
+holding for his brother and master, to end in these reunions at last!
+
+The vessel which had taken Adrian Landale on board, in answer to the
+frantic signals of the fishing-smack, that had sailed from Belle Isle
+obviously to meet her, proved to be a privateer, bound for the West
+Indies, but cruising somewhat out of her way, in the hope of outgoing
+prizes from Nantes.
+
+The captain, who had been led to expect something of importance from
+the smack's behaviour, in high dudgeon at finding that so much bustle
+and waste of time was only to burden him with a mere castaway seeking
+a passage home--one who, albeit a countryman, was too ragged and
+disreputable in looks to be trusted in his assurances of
+reward--granted him indeed the hospitality of his ship, but on the
+condition of his becoming a hand in the company during the forthcoming
+expedition.
+
+There was a rough measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrian
+accepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jump
+overboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removed
+from his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruise
+lasting over a year, during which the only changes rung in the gamut
+of its purpose were the swooping down, as a vulture might, upon
+unprotected ships; flying with superior speed from obviously stronger
+crafts; engaging, with hawk-like bravery, everything afloat that
+displayed inimical colours, if it offered an equal chance of fight.
+
+And this for more than a year, until the privateer, much battered, but
+safe, despite her vicissitudes made Halifax for refitting. Here, at
+the first suitable port she had touched, Adrian claimed and obtained
+his release from obligations which made his life almost unendurable.
+
+Then ensued a period of the most absolute penury; unpopular with most
+of his messmates for his melancholy taciturnity, despised by the more
+brutal as one who had as little stomach for a carouse as for a bloody
+fight, he left the ship without receiving, or even thinking of his
+share of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such mean
+mechanical employment as came in his way, till an opportunity was
+offered of engaging himself as seaman, again from sheer necessity, on
+a homeward-bound merchantman--an opportunity which he seized, if not
+eagerly, for there was no eagerness left in him, yet under the
+pressure of purpose.
+
+Next the long, slowly plodding, toilsome, seemingly eternal course
+across the ocean.
+
+But even a convoy, restricted to the speed of its slowest member, if
+it escape capture or natural destruction, must meet the opposite shore
+at length, and the last year of the century had lapsed in the even
+race of time when, after many dreary weeks, on the first of January
+1801, the long low lines of sandhills on the Lancastrian coast loomed
+in sight. The escort drew away, swiftly southwards, as if in joyful
+relief from the tedious task, leaving the convoy to enter the Mersey,
+safe and sound.
+
+That evening Adrian, the rough-looking and taciturn sailor, set foot,
+for a short while, on his native land, after six years of an exile
+which had made of him at five and twenty a prematurely aged and
+hopelessly disillusioned man.
+
+And Sir Adrian, as he mused, wrapped in the honoured fur cloak, with
+eyes half closed, by his sympathetic fire, recalled how little of joy
+this return had had for him. It was the goal he had striven to reach,
+and he had reached it, that was all; nay, he recalled how, when at
+hand, he had almost dreaded the actual arrival home, dreaded, with the
+infinite heart-sickness of sorrow, the emotions of the family welcome
+to one restored from such perils by flood and field--if not indeed
+already mourned for and forgotten--little wotting how far that return
+to Pulwick, that seemed near and certain, was still away in the dim
+future of life.
+
+Yet, but for the fit of hypochondriacal humour which had fallen black
+upon him that day of deliverance and made him yearn, with an intensity
+increasing every moment, to separate himself from his repugnant
+associates and haste the moment of solitude and silence, he might have
+been rescued, then and for ever, from the quagmire in which perverse
+circumstances had enslaved him.
+
+"Look'ee here, matey," said one of his fellow-workers to him, in a
+transient fit of good-fellowship which the prospect of approaching
+sprees had engendered in him even towards one whom all on board had
+felt vaguely to be of a different order, and disliked accordingly,
+"you don't seem to like a jolly merchantman--but, maybe, you wouldn't
+take more kindly to a man-o'-war. Do you see that there ship?--a
+frigate she is; and, whenever there's a King's ship in the Mersey that
+means that it's more wholesome for the likes of us to lie low. You
+take a hint, matey, and don't be about Liverpool to-night, or until
+she's gone. Now, I know a crib that's pretty safe, Birkenhead way;
+Mother Redcap's, we call it--no one's ever been nabbed at Mother
+Redcap's, and if you'll come along o' me--why then if you won't, go
+your way and be damned to you for a----"
+
+This was the parting of Adrian Landale from his fellow-workers. The
+idea of spending even one night more in that atmosphere of rum and
+filth, in the intimate hearing of blasphemous and obscene language,
+was too repulsive to be entertained, and he had turned away from the
+offer with a gesture of horror.
+
+With half a dozen others, in whose souls the attractions of the town
+at night proved stronger than the fear of the press party, he
+disembarked on the Lancashire side, and separating from his
+companions, for ever, as he thought, ascended the miserable lanes
+leading from the river to the upper town.
+
+His purpose was to sleep in one of the more decent hotels, to call the
+next day for help at the banking-house with which the Landales had
+dealt for ages past, and thence to take coach for Pulwick. But he had
+planned without taking reck of his circumstances. No hotel of repute
+would entertain this weather-beaten common sailor in the meanest of
+work-stained clothes. After failing at various places even to obtain a
+hearing, being threatened with forcible ejectment, derisively referred
+to suitable cribs in Love Lane or Tower Street, he gave up the
+attempt; and, in his usual dejection of spirit, intensified by
+unavowed and unreasonable anger, wandered through the dark streets,
+brooding. Thus aimlessly wandering, the remembrance of his young
+Utopian imaginings came back to him to mock him. Dreams of universal
+brotherhood, of equality, of harmony. He had already seen the apostles
+of equality and brotherhood at work--on the banks of the Vilaine. And
+realising how he himself, now reduced to the lowest level in the
+social scale, hunted with insult from every haunt above that level,
+yet loathed and abhorred the very thought of associating again with
+his recent brothers in degradation, he laughed a laugh of bitter
+self-contempt.
+
+But the night was piercing cold; and, in time, the question arose
+whether the stench and closeness of a riverside eating-house would not
+be more endurable than the cutting wind, the sleet, and the sharper
+pangs of hunger.
+
+His roaming had brought him once more to that quarter of the town
+"best suited to the likes of him," according to the innkeeper's
+opinion, and he found himself actually seeking a house of
+entertainment in the slimy, ill-lighted narrow street, when, from out
+the dimness, running towards him, with bare feet paddling in the
+sludge, came a slatternly girl, with unkempt wisps of red hair hanging
+over her face under the tartan shawl.
+
+"Run, run, Jack," she cried, hoarsely, as she passed by breathless,
+"t' gang's comin' up...."
+
+A sudden loathly fear seized Adrian by the heart. He too, took to his
+heels by the side of the slut with all the swiftness his tired frame
+could muster.
+
+"I'm going to warn my Jo," she gasped, as, jostling each other, they
+darted through a maze of nameless alleys.
+
+And then as, spent with running, they emerged at last into a broader
+street, it was to find themselves in the very midst of another party
+of man-of-war's men, whose brass belt-buckles glinted under the
+flickering light of the oil-lamp swinging across the way.
+
+Adrian stopped dead short and looked at the girl in mute reproach.
+
+"May God strike me dead," she screamed, clapping her hands together,
+"if I knew the bloody thieves were there! Oh, my bonny lad, I meant to
+save ye!" And as her words rang in the air two sailors had Adrian by
+the collar and a facetious bluejacket seized her round the waist with
+hideous bantering.
+
+A very young officer, wrapped up in a cloak, stood a few paces apart
+calmly looking on. To him Adrian called out in fierce, yet anguished,
+expostulation:
+
+"I am a free and independent subject, sir, an English gentleman. I
+demand that you order your men to release me. For heaven's sake," he
+added, pleadingly, "give me but a moment's private hearing!"
+
+A loud guffaw rang through the group. In truth, if appearances make
+the gentleman, Adrian was then but a sorry specimen.
+
+The officer smiled--the insufferable smile of a conceited boy raised
+to authority.
+
+"I can have no possible doubt of your gentility, sir," he said, with
+mocking politeness, and measuring, under the glimmering light, first
+the prisoner, from head to foot, and then the girl who, scratching and
+blaspheming, vainly tried to make her escape; "but, sir, as a
+free-born English gentleman, it will be your duty to help his Majesty
+to fight his French enemies. Take the English gentleman along, my
+lads!"
+
+A roar of approbation at the officer's facetiousness ran through the
+party.
+
+"An' his mother's milk not dry upon his lips," cried the girl, with a
+crow of derisive fury, planting as she spoke a sounding smack on a
+broad tanned face bent towards her. The little officer grew pink.
+"Come, my men, do your duty," he thundered, in his deepest bass.
+
+A rage such as he never had felt in his life suddenly filled Adrian's
+whole being. He was a bigger man than any of the party, and the rough
+life that fate had imposed on him, had fostered a strength of limb
+beyond the common. A thrust of his knee prostrated one of his captors,
+a blow in the eye from his elbow staggered the other; the next instant
+he had snatched away the cutlass which a third was drawing, and with
+it he cleared, for a moment, a space around him.
+
+But as he would have bounded into freedom, a felling blow descended on
+his head from behind, a sheet of flame spread before his eyes, and
+behind this blaze disappeared the last that Adrian Landale was to see
+of England for another spell of years.
+
+When he came back to his senses he was once more on board ship--a
+slave, legally kidnapped; degraded by full and proper warrant from his
+legitimate status for no crime that could even be invented against
+him; a slave to be retained for work or war at his master's pleasure,
+liable like a slave to be flogged to death for daring to assert his
+light of independence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The memory of that night's doing and of the odious bondage to which
+it was a prelude, rarely failed to stir the gall of resentment in Sir
+Adrian; men of peaceable instincts are perhaps the most prone to the
+feeling of indignation.
+
+But, to-night, a change had come over the spirit of his dreams; he
+could think of that past simply as the past--the period of time which
+would have had to be spent until the advent of the wonder-working
+present: these decrees of Fate had had a purpose. Had the past, by one
+jot, been different, the events of this admirable day might never have
+been.
+
+The glowing edifice on the hearth collapsed with a darting of sudden
+flame and a rolling of red cinders. Sir Adrian rose to rebuild his
+fire for the night; and, being once roused, was tempted by the
+ruddiness of the wine, glinting under the quiet rays of the lamp, to
+advance to the table and partake of his forgotten supper.
+
+The calm atmosphere, the warmth and quiet of the room, in which he
+broke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by the
+hearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiry
+concerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; the
+serene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angry
+voices of elements without, answered to the peace--the strange
+peace--that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of such
+uncongenial memories as now rose up before him in vivid concatenation.
+
+She was then five years old. Where was she, when he began that
+seemingly endless cruise with the frigate _Porcupine_? He tried to
+fancy a Cécile five years old--a chubby, curly-headed mite, nursing
+dolls and teasing kittens, whilst he was bullied and browbeaten by
+coarse petty officers, shunned and hated by his messmates, and flogged
+at length by a tyrannizing captain for obduracy--but he could only see
+a Cécile in the spring of womanhood, nestling in the arm-chair yonder
+by the fire and looking up at him from the folds of a fur cloak.
+
+She was seven years old when he was flogged. Ah, God! those had been
+days! And yet, in the lofty soul of him he had counted it no disgrace;
+and he had been flogged again, ay, and a third time for that obstinate
+head that would not bend, that obstinate tongue that would persist in
+demanding restitution of liberty. The life on board the privateer had
+been a matter of bargain; he had bartered also labour and obedience
+with the merchantman for the passage home, but the king had no right
+to compel the service of a free man!
+
+She was but twelve years old when he was finally released from
+thraldom--it had only lasted four years after all; yet what a cycle
+for one of his temper! Four years with scarce a moment of
+solitude--for no shore-leave was ever allowed to one who openly
+repudiated any service contract: four years of a life, where the sole
+prospect of change was in these engagements, orgies of carnage, so
+eagerly anticipated by officers and men alike, including himself,
+though for a reason little suspected by his companions. But even the
+historic sea-fights of the _Porcupine_, so far as they affected Adrian
+Landale, formed in themselves a chain of monotony. It was ever the
+same hurling of shot from ship to ship, the same fierce exchange of
+cutlass-throws and pike-pushes between men who had never seen each
+other before; the same yelling and execrations, sights, sounds, and
+smells ever the same in horror; the same cheers when the enemy's
+colours were lowered, followed by the same transient depression; the
+cleansing of decks from stains of powder and mire of human blood, the
+casting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work,
+broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste
+blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all
+the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him
+again. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, the
+next occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate of
+Adrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber or
+falling tackles should put an end to his dreary life, welcome as such
+an end would have been to him then.
+
+Then ... but not now. Remembering now his unaccountable escape from
+the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose
+eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a
+desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind
+the trite old adage:
+
+"Man proposeth..."
+
+God had disposed otherwise.
+
+It was not destined that Adrian Landale should be shot on the high
+seas any more than he should be drowned in the rolling mud of the
+Vilaine--he was reserved for this day as a set-off to all the
+bitterness that had been meted out to him; he was to see the image of
+his dead love rise from the sea once more. And, meanwhile, his very
+despair and sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not be
+said, if history should take count of the fact, that while the Lord of
+Pulwick had served four years before the mast, he had ever disgraced
+his name by cowardice....
+
+Whether such reasonings were in accordance even with the most
+optimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might have
+doubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with the
+grateful relaxation that a happy break brings in the midst of
+long-drawn melancholy.
+
+Everything had been working towards this end--that he should be the
+light-keeper of Scarthey on the day when out of the raging waters
+Cécile would rise and knock and ask for succour at his chamber.
+
+Cécile! pshaw!--raving again.
+
+Well, the child! Where was she on the day of the last engagement of
+that pugnacious _Porcupine_, in the year 1805, when England was freed
+from her long incubus of invasion? She was then twelve.
+
+It had seemed if nothing short of a wholesale disaster could terminate
+that incongruous existence of his.
+
+The last action of the frigate was a fruitless struggle against
+fearful odds. After a prolonged fight with an enemy as dauntless as
+herself, with two-thirds of her ship's company laid low, and commanded
+at length by the youngest lieutenant, she was tackled as the sun went
+low over the scene of a drawn battle, by a fresh sail errant; and, had
+it not been for a timely dismasting on board the new-comer, would have
+been captured or finally sunk then and there. But that fate was only
+held in reserve for her. Bleeding and disabled, she had drawn away
+under cover of night from her two hard-hit adversaries, to encounter a
+squall that further dismantled her, and, in such forlorn conditions,
+was met and finally conquered by the French privateer _Espoir de
+Brest_, that pounced upon her in her agony as the vulture upon his
+prey.
+
+Among the remainder of the once formidable crew, now seized and
+battened down under French hatches, was of course Adrian Landale--he
+bore a charmed life. And for a short while the only change probable in
+his prospects was a return to French prisons, until such time as it
+pleased Heaven to restore peace between the two nations.
+
+But the fortune of war, especially at sea, is fickle and fitful.
+
+The daring brig, lettre de marque, _L'Espoir de Brest_, soon after her
+unwonted haul of English prisoners, was overtaken herself by one of
+her own species, the _St. Nicholas_ of Liverpool, from whose swiftness
+nothing over the sea, that had not wings, could hope to escape if she
+chose to give the chase.
+
+Again did Adrian, from the darkness among his fellow-captives, hear
+the familiar roar and crash of cannon fight, the hustling and the thud
+of leaping feet, the screams and oaths of battle, and, finally, the
+triumphant shouts of English throats, and he knew that the Frenchman
+was boarded. A last ringing British cheer told of the Frenchman's
+surrender, and when he and his comrades were once more free to breathe
+a draught of living air, after the deathly atmosphere under hatches,
+Adrian learned that the victor was not a man-of-war, but a free-lance,
+and conceived again a faint hope that deliverance might be at hand.
+
+It was soon after this action, last of the fights that Adrian the
+peace-lover had to pass through, and as the two swift vessels, now
+sailing in consort, and under the same colours cleaved the waters,
+bound for the Mersey, that a singular little drama took place on board
+the _Espoir de Brest_.
+
+Among the younger officers of the English privateer, who were left in
+charge of the prize, was a lad upon whom Adrian's jaded eyes rested
+with a feeling of mournful sympathy, so handsome was he, and so young;
+so full of hope and spirits and joy of life, of all, in fact, of which
+he himself had been left coldly bare. Moreover, the ring of the merry
+voice, the glint of the clear eye awakened in his memory some fitful
+chord, the key of which he vainly sought to trace.
+
+One day, as the trim young lieutenant stood looking across the waters,
+with his brave eager gaze that seemed to have absorbed some of the
+blue-green shimmer of the element he loved, all unnoting the haggard
+sailor at his elbow, a sudden flourish of the spy-glass which he, with
+an eager movement, swung up to bear on some distant speck, sent his
+watch and seals flying out of his fob upon the deck at Adrian's feet.
+
+Adrian picked them up, and as he waited to restore them to their
+owner, who tarried some time intent on his distant peering, he had
+time to notice the coat and crest engraved upon one of the massive
+trinkets hanging from their black ribbons.
+
+When at last the officer lowered his telescope, Adrian came forward
+and saluted him with a slight bow, all unconsciously as unlike the
+average Jack Tar's scrape to his superior as can be well imagined:
+
+"Am I not," he asked, "addressing in you, sir, one of the Cochranes of
+the Shaws?"
+
+The question and the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough
+to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian
+surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very
+school-boy found at fault. Speaking with much sharpness:
+
+"My name is Smith, my man," cried he, seizing his belongings, "and
+you--just carry on with that coiling!"
+
+"And my name, sir, is Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory. I would like
+a moment's talk with you, if you will spare me the time. The Cochranes
+of the Shaws have been friends of our family for generations."
+
+A guffaw burst from a group of Adrian's mates working hard by, at this
+recurrence of what had become with them a standing joke; but the
+officer, who had turned on his heels, veered round immediately, and
+stood eyeing the speaker in profound astonishment.
+
+"Great God, is it possible! Did you say you were a Landale of Pulwick?
+How the devil came you here then, and thus?"
+
+"Press-gang," was Adrian's laconic answer.
+
+The lad gave a prolonged whistle, and was lost for a moment in
+cogitation.
+
+"If you are really Mr. Landale," he began, adding hastily, as if to
+cover an implied admission--"of course I have heard the name: it is
+well known in Lancashire--you had better see the skipper. It must have
+been some damnable mistake that has caused a man of your standing to
+be pressed."
+
+The speaker ended with almost a deferential air and the smile that had
+already warmed Adrian's heart. At the door of the Captain's quarters
+he said, with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye:
+
+"A curious error it was you made, I assure you my name is Smith--Jack
+Smith, of Liverpool."
+
+"An excusable error," quoth Adrian, smiling back, "for one of your
+seals bear unmistakably the arms of Cochrane of the Shaws, doubtless
+some heirloom, some inter-marriage."
+
+"No, sir, hang it!" retorted Mr. Jack Smith of Liverpool, his boyish
+face flushing again, and as he spoke he disengaged the trinket from
+its neighbours, and jerked it pettishly overboard, "I know nothing of
+your Shaws or your Cochranes."
+
+And then he rapped loudly at the cabin-door, as if anxious to avoid
+further discussion or comment on the subject.
+
+The result of the interview which followed--interview during which
+Adrian in a few words overcame the skipper's scepticism, and was
+bidden with all the curiosity men feel at sea for any novelty, to
+relate, over a bottle of wine, the chain of his adventures--was his
+passing from the forecastle to the officers' quarters, as an honoured
+guest on board the _St. Nicholas_, during the rest of her cruise.
+
+Thinking back now upon the last few weeks of his sea-going life, Sir
+Adrian realised with something of wonder that he had always dwelt on
+them without dislike. They were gilded in his memory by the rays of
+his new friendship.
+
+And yet that this young Jack Smith (to keep for him the nondescript
+name he had for unknown reasons chosen to assume) should be the first
+man to awaken in the misanthropic Adrian the charm of human
+intercourse, was singular indeed; one who followed from choice the
+odious trade of legally chartered corsair, who was ever ready to
+barter the chance of life and limb against what fortune might bring in
+his path, to sacrifice human life to secure his own end of enrichment.
+
+Well, the springs of friendship are to be no more discerned than
+those of love; there was none of high or low degree, with the
+exception of René, whose appearance at any time was so welcome to the
+recluse upon his rock, as that of the privateersman.
+
+And so, turning to his friend in to-night's softened mood, Sir Adrian
+thought gratefully that to him it was that he owed deliverance from
+the slavery of the King's service, that it was Jack Smith who had made
+it possible for Adrian Landale to live to this great day and await its
+coming in peace.
+
+The old clock struck two; and Jem shivered on the rug as the
+light-keeper rose at length from the table and sank in his arm-chair
+once more.
+
+Visions of the past had been ever his companions; now for the first
+time came visions of the future to commingle with them. As if caught
+up in the tide of his visitor's bright young life, it seemed as though
+he were passing at length out of the valley of the shadow of death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+René, coming with noiseless bare feet, in the angry yellow dawn of the
+second day of the storm, to keep an eye on his master's comfort, found
+him sleeping in his chair with a new look of rest upon his face and a
+smile upon his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A GENEALOGICAL EPISTLE
+
+                    ... and braided thereupon
+    All the devices blazoned on the shield,
+    In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
+    A border fantasy of branch and flower.
+
+                                _Idylls of the King._
+
+
+Pulwick Priory, the ancestral home of the Cumbrian Landales, a
+dignified if not overpoweringly lordly mansion, rises almost on the
+ridge of the green slope which connects the high land with the sandy
+strand of Morecambe; overlooking to the west the great brown breezy
+bight, whilst on all other sides it is sheltered by its wooded park.
+
+When the air is clear, from the east window of Scarthey keep, the tall
+garden front of greystone is visible, in the extreme distance, against
+the darker screen of foliage; whitely glinting if the sun is high;
+golden or rosy at the end of day.
+
+As its name implies, Pulwick Priory stands on the site of an extinct
+religious house; its oldest walls, in fact, were built from the spoils
+of once sacred masonry. It is a house of solid if not regular
+proportions, full of unexpected quaintness; showing a medley of
+distinct styles, in and out; it has a wide portico in the best
+approved neo-classic taste, leading to romantic oaken stairs; here
+wide cheerful rooms and airy corridors, there sombre vaulted basements
+and mysterious unforeseen nooks.
+
+On the whole, however, it is a harmonious pile of buildings, though
+gathering its character from many different centuries, for it has been
+mellowed by time, under a hard climate. And it was, in the days of the
+pride of the Landales, a most meet dwelling-place for that ancient
+race, insomuch as the history of so many of their ancestors was
+written successively upon stone and mortar, brick and tile, as well
+as upon carved oak, canvas-decked walls, and emblazoned windows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Exactly one week before the disaster, which was supposed to have
+befallen Mademoiselle Molly de Savenaye on Scarthey sands, the acting
+Lord of Pulwick, if one may so term Mr. Rupert Landale, had received a
+letter, the first reading of which caused him a vivid annoyance,
+followed by profound reflection.
+
+A slightly-built, dark-visaged man, this younger brother of Sir
+Adrian, and vicarious master of his house and lands; like to the
+recluse in his exquisite neatness of attire, somewhat like also in the
+mould of his features, which were, however, more notably handsome than
+Sir Adrian's; but most unlike him, in an emphasised artificiality of
+manner, in a restless and wary eye, and in the curious twist of a thin
+lip which seemed to give hidden sarcastic meaning even to the most
+ordinary remark.
+
+As now he sat by his desk, his straight brows drawn over his
+amber-coloured eyes, perusing the closely written sheets of this
+troublesome missive, there entered to him the long plaintive figure of
+his maiden sister, who had held house for him, under his own minute
+directions, ever since the death in premature child-birth of his young
+year-wed wife.
+
+Miss Landale, the eldest of the family, had had a disappointment in
+her youth, as a result of which she now played the ungrateful _rôle_
+of old maid of the family. She suffered from chronic toothache, as
+well as from repressed romantic aspirations, and was the _âme damnée_
+of Rupert. One of the most melancholy of human beings, she was tersely
+characterised by the village folk as a "_wummicky_ poor thing."
+
+At the sight of Mr. Landale's weighted brow she propped up her own
+long sallow face, upon its aching side, with a trembling hand, and,
+full of agonised prescience, ventured to ask if anything had happened.
+
+"Sit down," said her brother, with a sort of snarl--He possessed an
+extremely irritable temper under his cool sarcastic exterior, a temper
+which his peculiar anomalous circumstances, whilst they combined to
+excite it, forced him to conceal rigidly from most, and it was a
+relief to him to let it out occasionally upon Sophia's meek, ringleted
+head.
+
+Sophia collapsed with hasty obedience into a chair, and then Mr.
+Landale handed to her the thin fluttering sheets, voluminously crossed
+and re-crossed with fine Italian handwriting:
+
+"From Tanty," ejaculated Miss Sophia, "Oh my dear Rupert!"
+
+"Read it," said Rupert peremptorily. "Read it aloud."
+
+And throwing himself back upon his chair, he shaded his mouth with one
+flexible thin hand, and prepared himself to listen.
+
+"CAMDEN PLACE, BATH, October 29th," read the maiden lady in those
+plaintive tones, which seemed to send out all speech upon the breath
+of a sigh. "MY DEAR RUPERT,--You will doubtless be astonished, but
+your invariably affectionate Behaviour towards myself inclines me to
+believe that you will also be _pleased_ to hear, from these few lines,
+that very shortly after their receipt--if indeed not before--you may
+expect to see me arrive at Pulwick Priory."
+
+Miss Landale put down the letter, and gazed at her brother through
+vacant mists of astonishment.
+
+"Why, I thought Tanty said she would not put foot in Pulwick again
+till Adrian returned home."
+
+Rupert measured the innocent elderly countenance with a dark look. He
+had sundry excellent reasons, other than mere family affection, for
+remaining on good terms with his rich Irish aunt, but he had likewise
+reasons, these less obvious, for wishing to pay his devoirs to her
+anywhere but under the roof of which he was nominal master.
+
+"She has found it convenient to change her mind," he said, with his
+twisting lip. "Constancy in your sex, my dear, is merely a matter of
+convenience--or opportunity."
+
+"Oh Rupert!" moaned Sophia, clasping the locket which contained her
+dead lover's hair with a gesture with which all who knew her were very
+familiar. Mr. Landale never could resist a thrust at the faithful
+foolish bosom always ready to bleed under his stabs, yet never
+resenting them. Inexplicable vagary of the feminine heart! Miss
+Sophia worshipped before the shrine of her younger brother, to the
+absolute exclusion of any sentiment for the elder, whose generosity
+and kindness to her were yet as great as was Rupert's tyranny.
+
+"Go on," said the latter, alternately smiling at his nails and biting
+them, "Tanty O'Donoghue observes that I shall be surprised to hear
+that she will arrive very shortly after this letter, if not before it.
+Poor old Tanty, there can be no mistake about her nationality. Have
+the kindness to read straight on, Sophia. I don't want to hear any
+more of your interesting comments. And don't stop till you have
+finished, no matter how amazed you are."
+
+Again he composed himself to listen, while his sister plunged at the
+letter, and, after several false starts, found her place and
+proceeded:
+
+"Since, owing to his most _unfortunate_ peculiarity of Temperament and
+consequent strange choice of abode, I cannot apply to my nephew
+Adrian, _à qui de droit_ (as Head of the House) I must needs address
+myself to you, my dear Rupert, to request hospitality for myself and
+the two young Ladies now under my Charge."
+
+The letter wavered in Miss Sophia's hand and an exclamation hung upon
+her lip, but a sudden movement of Rupert's exquisite crossed legs
+recalled her to her task.
+
+"These young ladies are _Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye_, and the
+daughters of Madame la Comtesse de Savenaye, who was my sister Mary's
+child. She and I, and Alice your mother, were sister co-heiresses as
+you know, and therefore these young ladies are _my_ grand-nieces and
+your _own_ cousins once removed. Of Cécile de Savenaye, her _strange_
+adventures and ultimate _sad_ Fate in which your own brother was
+implicated, you cannot but have heard, but you may probably have
+forgotten even to the _very existence_ of these charming young women,
+who were nevertheless born at Pulwick, and whom you must at some time
+or other have beheld as infants during your _excellent_ and _lamented_
+father's lifetime. They are, as you are doubtless also unaware--for I
+have remarked a _growing_ Tendency in the younger generations to
+neglect the study of Genealogy, even as it affects their own
+Families--as well born on the father's side as upon the maternal. M.
+de Savenaye bore _argent à la fasce-canton d'hermine_, with an
+_augmentation of the fleurs de lis d'or_, _cleft in twain_ for his
+ancestor's _memorable_ deed at the siege of Dinan."
+
+"There is Tante O'Donoghue fully displayed, _haut volante_ as she
+might say herself," here interrupted Mr. Landale with a laugh. "Always
+the same, evidently. The first thing I remember about her is her
+lecturing me on genealogy and heraldry, when I wanted to go fishing,
+till, school-boy rampant as I was, I heartily wished her impaled and
+debruised on her own Donoghue herse proper. For God's sake, Sophia, do
+not expect me to explain! Go on."
+
+"He was entitled to eighteen quarters, and related to such as Coucy
+and Armagnac and Tavannes," proceeded Miss Sophia, controlling her
+bewilderment as best she might, "also to Gwynne of Llanadoc in this
+kingdom--Honours to which Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye, being sole
+heiresses both of Kermelégan and Savenaye, not to speak of their own
+mother's share of O'Donoghue, which now-a-days is of greater
+substance--are personally entitled.
+
+"If I am the _sole_ Relative they have left in these Realms, Adrian
+and you are the next. I have had the charge of my two young Kinswomen
+during the last six months, that is since they left the Couvent des
+Dames Anglaises in Jersey.
+
+"Now, I think it is time that your Branch of the Family should incur
+the share of the _responsibility_ your relationship to them entails.
+
+"If Adrian were _as_ and _where_ he should be, I feel sure he would
+embrace this opportunity of doing his duty as the Head of the House
+without the smallest hesitation, and I have no doubt that he would
+offer the _hospitality_ of Pulwick Priory and his _Protection_ to
+these amiable young persons for as long as they _remain unmarried_.
+
+"From you, my dear Nephew, who have undertaken under these melancholy
+family circumstances to fill your Brother's place, I do not, however,
+_expect_ so much; all I ask is that you and my niece Sophia be kind
+enough to _shelter_ and _entertain_ your cousins for the space of two
+months, while I remain at Bath for the benefit of my Health.
+
+"At my age (for it is of no use, nephew, for us to deny our years when
+any Peerage guide must reveal them pretty closely to the curious),
+and I am this month passing sixty-nine, at my _age_ the charge of two
+high-spirited young Females, in whom conventional education has failed
+to subdue Aspirations for worldly happiness whilst it has left them
+somewhat inexperienced in the Conventions of Society, I find a _little
+trying_. It does not harmonise with the retired, peaceful existence to
+which I am accustomed (and at my time of life, I think, entitled), in
+which it is my humble endeavour to wean myself from this earth which
+is so full of Emptiness and to prepare myself for that other and
+_better_ Home into which we must all resign ourselves to enter. And
+happy, indeed, my dear Rupert, such of us as will be found worthy; for
+come to it we all must, and the longer we live, the sooner we may
+expect to do so.
+
+"The necessity of producing them in Society, is, however, rendered a
+matter of greater responsibility by the fact of the _handsome_
+Fortunes which these young creatures possess already, not to speak of
+their expectations."
+
+Rupert, who had been listening to his aunt's letter, through the
+intermediary of Miss Sophia's depressing sing-song, with an abstracted
+air, here lifted up his head, and commanded the reader to repeat this
+last passage. She did so, and paused, awaiting his further pleasure,
+while he threw his handsome head back upon his chair, and closed his
+eyes as if lost in calculations.
+
+At length he waved his hand, and Miss Sophia proceeded after the usual
+floundering:
+
+"A neighbour of mine at Bunratty, Mrs. Hambledon of Brianstown, a
+_lively_ widow (herself one of the Macnamaras of the Reeks, and thus a
+distant connection of the Ballinasloe branch of O'Donoghues), and whom
+I had reason to believe I could trust--but I will not anticipate--took
+a prodigious fancy to Miss Molly and proposed, towards the beginning
+of the Autumn, carrying her away to Dublin. At the same time the wet
+summer, producing in me an acute recurrence of that Affection from
+which, as you know, I suffer, and about which you _never fail_ to make
+such kind Enquiries at Christmas and Easter, compelled me to call in
+Mr. O'Mally, the apothecary, who has been my very _obliging_ medical
+adviser for so many years, and who strenuously advocated an immediate
+course of waters at Bath. In short, my dear Nephew, thus the matter
+was settled, your cousin Molly departed _radiant_ with _good_ spirits,
+and _good_ looks for a spell of gayety in Dublin, while your cousin
+Madeleine, prepared (with _equal_ content) to accompany her old aunt
+to Bath. It being arranged with Mrs. Hambledon that she should herself
+conduct Molly to us later on.
+
+"We have been here about three weeks. Though persuaded by good Mr.
+O'Mally that the waters would benefit my old bones, I was actuated, I
+must confess, by another motive in seeking this Fashionable Resort. In
+such a place as this, thronged as it is by all the Rank and Family of
+England, one can at least know _who is who_, and I was not without
+hopes that my nieces, with their faces, their name, and their
+fortunes, would have the opportunity of contracting suitable
+Alliances, and thus relieve me of a charge for which I am, I fear,
+little fitted.
+
+"But, alas! my dear Rupert, I was most woefully mistaken. Bath is
+_distinctly not_ the place for two beautiful and unsophisticated
+Heiresses, and I am certainly neither possessed of the Spirits, nor of
+the Health to guard them from fortune-hunters and _needy nameless_
+Adventurers. While it is my desire to impress upon you, and my niece
+Sophia, that the conduct of these young ladies has been _quite_ beyond
+reproach, I will not conceal from you that the attentions of a certain
+person, of the name of _Smith_, known here, and a favorite in the
+circles of frivolity and fashion as _Captain Jack_, have already made
+Madeleine _conspicuous_, and although the dear girl conducts herself
+with the utmost propriety, there is an air of _Romance_ and _mystery_
+about the Young Man, not to speak of his unmistakable good looks,
+which have determined me to remove her from his vicinity before her
+Affections be _irreparably_ engaged. As for Molly, who is a thorough
+O'Donoghue and the image of her grandmother, that celebrated
+Murthering Moll (herself the toast of Bath in our young days), whose
+elopement with the Marquis de Kermelégan, after he had killed an
+English rival in a duel, was once a nine-days' wonder in this very
+town, and of whom you must have heard, Mrs. Hambledon restored her to
+my care only three days ago, and she has already twenty Beaux to her
+String, though favouring _nobody_, I am bound to say, but her own
+amusement. Yesterday she departed under Mrs. Hambledon's chaperonage,
+in the Company of a dozen of the highest in rank here, on an
+expedition to Clifton; the while my demure Madeleine spends the day at
+the house of her dear friend Lady Maria Harewood, whither, I only
+learnt upon her return at ten o'clock under his escort, _Captain
+Jack_--in my days that sort of _captain_ would have been strongly
+suspected, of having a shade too much of the _Heath_ or the _London
+Road_ about him--had likewise been convened. It was long after
+midnight when, with a great _tow-row_, a coach full of very merry
+company (amongst whom the widow Hambledon struck me as over-merry,
+perhaps) landed my other Miss _sur le perron_.
+
+"This has decided me. We shall decamp _sans tambou ni trompette_.
+To-morrow, without allowing discussion from the girls (in which I
+should probably be worsted), we pack ourselves into my travelling
+coach, and find our Way to you. But, until we are fairly on the Road,
+I shall not even let these ladies know _whither_ we are bound.
+
+"With your kind permission, then, I shall remain a few days at
+Pulwick, to recruit from the _fatigues_ of such a long Journey, before
+leaving your fair cousins in your charge, and in that of the gentle
+Sophia (whom I trust to entertain them with something besides her
+usual melancholy), till the time comes for me to bring them back with
+me to Bunratty.
+
+"Unless, therefore, you should hear to the contrary, you will know
+that on Tuesday your three _unprotected_ female relatives will be
+hoping to see your travelling carriage arrive to fetch them at the
+Crown in Lancaster.
+
+"Your Affectionate Aunt,
+
+  "ROSE O'DONOGHUE."
+
+As Miss Landale sighed forth the concluding words, she dropped the
+little folio on her lap, and looked at her brother with a world of
+apprehension in her faded eyes.
+
+"Oh, Rupert, what shall we do?"
+
+"Do," said Mr. Landale, quickly turning on her, out of his absorption,
+"you will kindly see that suitable rooms are prepared for your aunt
+and cousins, and you will endeavour, if you please, to show these
+ladies a cheerful countenance, as your aunt requests."
+
+"The oak and the chintz rooms, I suppose," Sophia timidly suggested.
+"Tanty used to say she liked the aspect, and I daresay the young
+ladies will find it pleasant to look out on the garden."
+
+"Ay," returned Rupert, absently. He had risen from his seat, and
+fallen to pacing the room. Presently a short laugh broke from him.
+"Tolerably cool, I must say," he remarked, "tolerably cool. It seems
+to be a tradition with that Savenaye family, when in difficulties, to
+go to Pulwick."
+
+Miss Landale looked up with relief. Perhaps Rupert would think better
+of it, and make up his mind to elude receiving the unwelcome visitors
+after all. But his next speech dashed her budding hopes.
+
+"Ay, as in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to
+lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest--I wish they had
+been addled, I do indeed--we may expect to have the whole place turned
+topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, _faith_ (as Tanty
+says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent
+school--and of these, one a hoyden, and the other lovesick! Faugh!
+Sophia you will have to keep your eyes open when the old lady is gone.
+I'll have no unseemly pranks in this house."
+
+"Oh, Rupert," with a moan of maidenly horror, and conscious
+incompetence.
+
+"Stop that," cried the brother, with a contained intensity of
+exasperation, at which the poor lady jumped and trembled as if she had
+been struck. "All your whining won't improve matters. Now listen to
+me," sitting down beside her, and speaking slowly and impressively,
+"you are to make our relatives feel welcome, do you understand?
+Everything is to be of the best. Get out the embroidered sheets, and
+see that there are flowers in the rooms. Tell the cook to keep back
+that haunch of venison, the girls won't like it, but the old lady
+knows a good thing when she gets it--let there be lots of sweet things
+for the young ones too. I shall be giving some silver out this
+afternoon. I leave it to you to see that it is properly cleaned. What
+are you mumbling about to yourself? Write it down if you can't
+remember, and now go, go--I am busy."
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"
+
+
+    _Then did the blood awaken in the veins
+    Of the young maiden wandering in the fields._
+
+    LUTEPLAYER'S SONG.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE THRESHOLD OF WOMANHOOD
+
+    Onward floweth the water, onward through meadows broad,
+    "How happy," the meadows say, "art thou to be rippling onward."
+    "And my heart is beating, beating beneath my girdle here;"
+    "O Heart," the girdle saith, "how happy art thou that thou beatest."
+
+                             _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+DUBLIN, _October 15th, 1814_.--This day do I, Molly de Savenaye, begin
+my diary.
+
+Madeleine writes to me from Bath that she has purchased a very fine
+book, in which she intends to set forth each evening all that has
+happened her since the morning; she advises me to do so too. She says
+that since _real life_ has begun for us; life, of which every
+succeeding day is not, as in the convent, the repetition of the
+previous day, but brings some new discovery, pleasure, or pain, we
+ought to write down and preserve their remembrance.
+
+It will be so interesting for us to read when a new life once more
+begins for us, and we are _married_. Besides it is the _fashion_, and
+all the young ladies she knows do it. And she has, she says, already
+plenty to write down. Now I _should_ like to know what about.
+
+When ought one to start such a record? Surely not on a day like this.
+
+"Why _demme_" (as Mrs. Hambledon's nephew says), "_what the deyvil_
+have I got to say?"
+
+_Item:_ I went out shopping this morning with Mrs. Hambledon, and,
+bearing Madeleine's advice in mind, purchased at Kelly's, in Sackville
+Street, an album book, bound in green morocco, with clasp and lock,
+which Mr. Kelly protests is quite secure.
+
+_Item:_ We met Captain Segrave of the Royal Dragoons (who was so
+attentive to me at Lady Rigtoun's rout, two days ago). He looked very
+well on his charger, but how conceited! When he saw me, he rolled his
+eyes and grew quite red; and then he stuck his spurs into his horse,
+that we might admire how he could sit it; which he did, indeed, to
+perfection.
+
+Mrs. Hambledon looked vastly knowing, and I laughed. If ever I try to
+fancy myself married to such a man I cannot help laughing.
+
+This, however, is not diary.--_Item:_ We returned home because it
+began to rain, and to pass the time, here am I at my book.
+
+But is _this_ the sort of thing that will be of interest to read
+hereafter? I have begun too late; I should have written in those days
+when I saw the dull walls of our convent prison for the last time. It
+seems so far back now (though, by the calendar it is hardly six
+months), that I cannot quite recall how it felt to live in prison. And
+yet it was not unhappy, and there was no horror in the thought we both
+had sometimes then, that we should pass and end our lives in the cage.
+It did not strike us as hard. It seemed, indeed, in the nature of
+things. But the bare thought of returning to that existence now, to
+resume the placid daily task, to fold up again like a plant that has
+once expanded to sun and breeze, to have never a change of scene, of
+impression, to look forward to nothing but _submission_, sleep, and
+_death_; oh, it makes me turn cold all over!
+
+And yet there are women who, of their own will, give up the _freedom
+of the world_ to enter a convent _after_ they have tasted life! Oh, I
+would rather be the poorest, the ugliest peasant hag, toiling for
+daily bread, than one of these cold cloistered souls, so that the free
+air of heaven, be it with the winds or the rain, might beat upon me,
+so that I might live and love _as I like_, do right _as I like_; ay,
+and do wrong _if_ I liked, with the free will which is my _own_.
+
+We were told that the outer world, with all its sorrows and trials,
+and dangers--how I remember the Reverend Mother's words and face, and
+how they impressed me then, and how I should laugh at them,
+_now!_--that the world was but a valley of tears. We were warned that
+all that awaited us, if we left the fold, was _misery_; that the joys
+of this world were _bitter_ to the taste, its pleasures _hollow_, and
+its griefs _lasting_.
+
+We believed it. And yet, when the choice was actually ours to make,
+we chose all we had been taught to dread and despise. Why? I wonder.
+For the same reason as Eve ate the apple, I suppose. I would, if I had
+been Eve. I almost wish I could go back now, for a day, to the cool
+white rooms, to see the nuns flitting about like black and white
+ghosts, with only a jingle of beads to warn one of their coming, see
+the blue sky through the great bare windows, and the shadows of the
+trees lengthening on the cold flagged floors, hear the bells going
+ding-dong, ding-dong, and the murmur of the sea in the distance, and
+the drone of the school, and the drone of the chapel, to go back, and
+feel once more the dull sort of content, the calmness, the rest!
+
+But no, no! I should be trembling all the while lest the blessed doors
+leading back to that _horrible_ world should never open to me again.
+
+The sorrows and trials of the world! I suppose the Reverend Mother
+really meant it; and if I had gone on living there till my face was
+wrinkled like hers, poor woman, I might have thought so too, in the
+end, and talked the same nonsense.
+
+Was it really I that endured such a life for seventeen years? O God! I
+wonder that the sight of the swallows coming and going, the sound of
+the free waves, did not drive me mad. Twist as I will my memory, I
+cannot recall _that_ Molly of six months ago, whose hours and days
+passed and dropped all alike, all lifeless, just like the slow tac,
+tac, tac of our great horloge in the Refectory, and were to go on as
+slow and as alike, for ever and ever, till she was old, dried,
+wrinkled, and then died. The real Molly de Savenaye's life began on
+the April morning when that dear old turbaned fairy godmother of ours
+carried us, poor little Cinderellas, away in her coach. Well do I
+remember my birthday.
+
+I have read since in one of those musty books of Bunratty, that
+_moths_ and _butterflies_ come to life by shaking themselves out, one
+fine day, from a dull-looking, shapeless, ugly thing they call a
+_grub_, in which they have been buried for a long time. They unfold
+their wings and fly out in the sunshine, and flit from flower to
+flower, and they look beautiful and happy--the world, the wicked
+world, is open to them.
+
+There were pictures in the book; the ugly grub below, dreary and
+brown, and the lovely _butterfly_ in all its colours above. I showed
+them to Madeleine, and said: "Look, Madeleine, as we were, and as we
+are."
+
+And she said: "Yes, those brown gowns they made us wear were ugly; but
+I should not like to put on anything so bright as red and yellow.
+Would you?"
+
+That is the worst of Madeleine; she never realises in the least what I
+mean. And she _does_ love her clothes; that is the difference between
+her and me, she loves fine things because they are fine and dainty and
+all that--I like them because they make _me_ fine.
+
+And yet, how she did weep when she left the convent. Madeleine would
+have made a good nun after all; she does so hate anything ugly or
+coarse. She grows quite white if she hears people fighting; if there
+is a "row" or a "shindy," as they say here. Whereas Tanty and I think
+it all the fun in the world, and would enjoy joining in the fray
+ourselves, I believe, if we dared. I know _I_ should; it sets my blood
+tingling. But Madeleine is a real princess, a sort of Ermine; and yet
+she enjoys her new life, too, the beauty of it, the refinement, being
+waited upon and delicately fed and clothed. But although she has
+ceased to weep for the convent, if it had not been for me she would be
+there still. The only thing, I believe, that could make me weep now
+would be to find one fine morning that this had only been a dream, and
+that I was once more _the grub_! To find that I could not open my
+window and look into the wide, wide world over to the long, green
+hills in the distance, and know that I could wander or gallop up to
+them, as I did at Bunratty, and see for myself _what lies
+beyond_--surely that was a taste of heaven that day when Tanty Rose
+first allowed me to mount her old pony, and I flew over the turf with
+the wind whistling in my ears--to find that I could not go out when I
+pleased and hear new voices and see new faces, and men and women who
+_live each their own life_, and not the _same_ life as mine.
+
+When I think of what I am now, and what I might have remained, I
+breathe deep and feel like singing; I stretch my arms out and feel
+like flying.
+
+Our aunt told us she thought Bunratty would be dull for us, and so it
+was in comparison with this place. Perhaps _this_ is dull in
+comparison with what _may_ come. For good Tanty, as she likes us to
+call her, is intent on doing great things for us.
+
+"Je vous marierai," she tells us in her funny old French, "Je vous
+marierai bien, mes filles, si vous êtes sages," and she winks both
+eyes.
+
+_Marriage!_ _That_, it is quite evident, is the goal of every properly
+constituted young female; and every respectable person who has the
+care of said young female is consequently bent upon her reaching that
+goal.
+
+So marriage is _another_ good thing to look forward to. And _love_,
+that love all the verses, all the books one reads are so full of;
+_that_ will come to us.
+
+They say that _love is life_. Well, all I want is to live. But with a
+grey past such as we have had, the present is good enough to ponder
+upon. We now can lie abed if we have sweet dreams and pursue them
+waking, and be lazy, yet not be troubled with the self-indulgence as
+with an enormity; or we can rise and breathe the sunshine at our own
+time. We can be frivolous, and yet meet with smiles in response, dress
+our hair and persons, and be pleased with ourselves, and with being
+admired or envied, yet not be told horrid things about death and
+corruption and skeletons. And, above all--oh, above _all_, we can
+think of the future as different from the past, as _changing_, be it
+even for the worse; as unknown and fascinating, not as a repetition,
+until death, of the same dreary round.
+
+In Mrs. Hambledon's parlour here are huge glasses at either end;
+whenever you look into them you see a never-ending chain of rooms with
+yourself standing in the middle, vanishing in the distance, every one
+the same, with the same person in the middle, only a little smaller, a
+little more insignificant, a little darker, till it all becomes
+_nothing_. It always reminds me of life's prospects in the convent.
+
+I dislike that room. When I told Mrs. Hambledon the reason why, she
+laughed, and promised me that, with my looks and disposition, my life
+would be eventful enough. I have every mind that it shall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_October 18th._--Yesterday, I woke up in an amazing state of
+happiness, though for no particular reason that I can think of. It
+could not be simply because we were to go out for a visit to the
+country and see new people and places, for I have already learned to
+find that most new people are cut out on the same pattern as those one
+already knows. It must have been rather because I awoke under the
+impression of one of my lovely dreams--such dreams as I have only had
+since I left my _grub_ state; dreams of space, air, long, long views
+of beautiful scenery, always changing, always wider, such as swallows
+flying between sky and earth might see, under an exquisite and
+brilliant light, till for very joy I wake up, my cheeks covered with
+tears.
+
+This time, I was sitting on the prow of some vessel with lofty white
+sails, and it was cutting through the water, blue as the sky, with
+wreaths of snow-like foam, towards some unknown shores, ever faster
+and faster, and I was singing to some one next to me on the prow--some
+one I did not know, but who felt with me--singing a song so perfect,
+so sweet (though it had no human words) that I thought _it explained
+all_: the blue of the heaven, the freshness of the breeze, the
+fragrance of the earth, and why we were so eagerly pressing onwards. I
+thought the melody was such that when once heard it could never be
+forgotten. When I woke it still rang in my ears, but now I can no more
+recall it. How is it we never know such delight in waking hours? Is
+that some of the joy we are to feel in Heaven, the music we are to
+hear? And yet it can be heard in this life if one only knew where to
+go and listen. And this life is beautiful which lies in front of us,
+though they would speak of it as a sorrowful span not to be reckoned.
+It is good to be young and think of the life still to come. Every
+moment is precious for its enjoyment, and yet sometimes I find that
+one only knows of a pleasure when it is just gone. One ought to try
+and be more awake at each hour to the happiness it may bring. I shall
+try, and you, my diary, shall help me.
+
+This is really _no_ diary-keeping. It is not a bit like those one
+reads in books. It ought to tell of other people and the events of
+each day. But other people are really very uninteresting; as for
+events, well, so far, they are uninteresting too; it is only what they
+cause to spring up in our hearts that is worth thinking upon; and that
+is so difficult to put in words that mostly I spend my time merely
+pondering and not writing.
+
+Last night Mrs. Hambledon took me to the _play_. It was for the first
+time in my life, and I was full of curiosity. It was a long drama,
+pretty enough and sometimes very exciting. But I could see that though
+the actress was very handsome and mostly so unhappy as to draw tears
+from the spectators, there were people, especially some gentlemen, who
+were more interested in looking at the box where I sat with Mrs.
+Hambledon. Indeed, I could not pretend, when I found myself before my
+glass that night, that I was not amazingly prettier than that Mrs.
+Colebrook, about whose beauty the whole town goes mad.
+
+When I recalled the hero's ravings about his Matilda's eyes and
+cheeks, and her foot and her sylph-like waist, and her raven hair, I
+wondered what _that_ young man would say of me if he were my lover and
+I his persecuted mistress. The Matilda was a pleasing person enough;
+but if I take her point by point, it would be absurd to speak of her
+charms in the same breath with mine. Oh, my dear Molly, how beautiful
+I thought you last night! How happy I should be, were I a dashing
+young lover and eyes like _yours_ smiled on me. I never before thought
+myself prettier than Madeleine, but now I do.
+
+Lovers, love, mistress, bride; they talked of nothing else in the
+play. And it was all ecstasy in their words, and nothing but _misery_
+in fact (just as the Reverend Mother would have had it).
+
+The young man who played the hero was a very fine fellow; and yet when
+I conceive _him_ making love to me as he did last night to Mrs.
+Colebrook, the notion seems really _too_ ludicrous!
+
+What sort of man then is it I would allow to love me? I do not mind
+the thought of lovers sighing and burning for me (as some do now
+indeed, or pretend to) I like to feel that I can crush them with a
+frown and revive them with a smile; I like to see them fighting for my
+favour. But to give a man the right to love me, the right to my
+smiles, the _right to me_! Indeed, I have yet seen _none_ who could
+make me bear the thought.
+
+And yet I think that I could love, and I know that the man that I am
+to love must be living somewhere till fate brings him to me. He does
+not think of me. He does not know of me. And neither of us, I suppose,
+will taste life as life is till the day when we meet.
+
+CAMDEN PLACE, BATH, _November 1st_.--Bath at last, which, must please
+poor Mrs. Hambledon exceedingly, for she certainly did _not_ enjoy the
+transit. I cannot conceive how people can allow themselves to be so
+utterly distraught by illness. I feel I can never have any respect for
+her again; she moaned and lamented in such cowardly fashion, was so
+peevish all the time on board the vessel, and looked so very begrimed
+and untidy and _plain_ when she was carried out on Bristol quay. The
+captain called it _dirty_ weather, but I thought it _lovely_, and I
+don't think I ever enjoyed myself more--except when Captain Segrave's
+Black Douglas ran away with me in Phoenix Park.
+
+It was beautiful to see our brave boat plough the sea and quiver with
+anger, as if it were a living thing, when it was checked by some great
+green wave, then gather itself again under the wind and dash on to the
+fight, until it conquered. And when we came into the river and the sun
+shone once more it glided on swiftly, though looking just a little
+tired for a while until its decks and sails were dry and clean again,
+and I thought it was just like a bird that has shaken and plumed
+itself. I was sorry to leave it. The captain and the mate and the
+sailors, who had wrapped me up in their great, stiff tarpaulin coats
+and placed me in a safe corner where I could sit out and look, were
+also sorry that I should go.
+
+But it was good to be with Madeleine again and Tanty Donoghue, who
+always has such a kind smile on her old wrinkled face when she looks
+at me.
+
+Madeleine was astonished when I told her I had loved the storm at sea
+and when I mimicked poor Mrs. Hambledon. She says she also thought she
+was dying, so ill was she on her crossing, and that she was quite a
+week before she got over the impression.
+
+It seems odd to think that we are sisters, and twin sisters too; in so
+many things she is different from me. She has changed in manner since
+I left her. She seems so absorbed in some great thought that all her
+words and smiles have little meaning in them. I told her I had tried
+to keep my diary, but had not done much work, and when I asked to see
+hers (for a model) Madeleine blushed, and said I should see it this
+day year.
+
+_Madeleine is in love_; that is the only way I can account for that
+blush. I fear she is a sly puss, but there is such a bustle around us,
+and so much to do and see, I have no time to make her confess. So I
+said I would keep mine from her for that period also.
+
+It seems a long span to look ahead. What a number of things will
+happen before this day year!
+
+BATH, _November 3rd_.--Bath is delightful! I have only been here two
+days, and already I am what Tanty, in her old-fashioned way, calls
+_the belle_. Already there are a dozen sparks who declare that my eyes
+have _shot death_ to them. This afternoon comes my Lord of Manningham,
+nicknamed _King of Bath_, to "drink a dish of tea," as he has it, with
+his "dear old friend Miss O'Donoghue."
+
+Tanty has been here three weeks, and he has only just discovered her
+existence, and remembered their tender friendship. Of course, I know
+very well what has really brought him. He is Lord Dereham's
+grandfather on the mother's side, and Lord Dereham, who is the son of
+the Duke of Wells, is "the catch," as Mrs. Hambledon vows, of the
+fashionable world this year. And Lord Dereham has seen me twice, and
+_is in love with me_.
+
+But as Lord Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and
+swears more than he converses--which would be very shocking if it were
+not for his lisp, which makes it very funny--needless to say, my diary
+dear, your Molly is not in love with him--He has no chance.
+
+And so Lord Manningham comes to tea, and Tanty orders me to remain and
+see her "old friend" instead of going to ride with the widow
+Hambledon. The widow Hambledon and I are everywhere together, and she
+knows all the most entertaining people in Bath, whereas Madeleine,
+whom I have hardly seen at all except at night, when I am so dead
+tired that I go to sleep as soon as my head touches the pillow (I vow
+Tanty's manner of speech is catching), Miss Madeleine keeps to her own
+select circle, and turns up her haughty little nose at _my_ friends.
+
+So now Madeleine is punished, for Tanty and I have had the honour of
+receiving the _King of Bath_, and I have been vouchsafed the stamp of
+his august approval.
+
+"My dear Miss O'Donoghue," he cried, as I curtsied, "do my senses
+deceive me, or do I not once more behold _Murthering Moll_?"
+
+"I thought you could not fail to notice the likeness; my niece is,
+indeed, a complete O'Donoghue," says Tanty, amazingly pleased.
+
+"Likeness, ma'am," cried the old wretch, bowing again, and scattering
+his snuff all over the place, while I sweep him another splendid
+curtsey, "likeness, ma'am, why this is no feeble copy, no humble
+imitation, 'tis _Murdering Moll herself_, and glad I am to see her
+again." And then he catches me under the chin, and peers into my face
+with his dim, wicked old eyes. "And so you are Murdering Moll's
+daughter," says he, chuckling to himself. "Ay, she and I were very
+good friends, my pretty child, very good friends, and that not so long
+ago, either. Ay, _Mater pulchra, filia pulchrior_."
+
+"But I happen to be her grand-daughter, please my lord," said I, and
+then I ran to fetch him a chair (for I was dreadfully afraid he was
+going to kiss me). But though no one has ever accused me of speaking
+too modestly to be heard, my lord had a sudden fit of deafness, and I
+saw Tanty give me a little frown, while the old thing--he must be much
+older than Tanty even--tottered into a chair, and went on mumbling.
+
+"I was only a boy in those days, my dear, only a boy, as your good
+aunt will tell you. I can remember how the bells rang the three
+beautiful Irish sisters into Bath, and I and the other dandies stood
+to watch them drive by. The bells rang in the _belles_ in those days,
+my dear, he, he, he! only we used to call them 'toasts' then, and your
+mother was the most beautiful of 'the three Graces'--we christened
+them 'the three Graces'--and by gad she led us all a pretty dance!"
+
+"Ah, my lord," says Tanty, and I could see her old eyes gleam though
+her tone was so pious, "I fear we were three wild Irish girls indeed!"
+
+Lord Manningham was too busy ogling me to attend to her.
+
+"Your mother was just such another as you, and she had just such a
+pair of dimples," said he.
+
+"You mean my grandmother," shouted I in his ear, just for fun, though
+Tanty looked as if she were on pins and needles. But he only pinched
+my cheek again and went on:
+
+"Before she had been here a fortnight all the bucks in the town were
+at her feet. And so was I, so was I. Only, by gad, I was too young,
+you know, as Miss O'Donoghue here will tell you. But she liked me; she
+used to call me her 'little manny.' I declare I might have married
+her, only there were family reasons, and I was such a lad, you know.
+And then Jack Waterpark, some of us thought she would have had _him_
+in the end--being an Irishman, and a rich man, and a marquis to
+boot--he gave her the name of _Murthering Moll_, because of her
+killing eyes, young lady--he! he! he!--and there was Ned Cuffe ready
+to hang himself for her, and Jim Denham, and old Beau Vernon, ay, and
+a score of others. And then one night at the Assembly Rooms, after the
+dancing was over and we gay fellows were all together, up gets
+Waterpark, he was a little tipsy, my dear, and by gad I can hear him
+speak now, with that brogue of his. 'Boys,' he says, 'it's no use your
+trying for her any more, for by God _I've won her_.' And out of his
+breast-pocket he pulls a little knot of blue ribbon. Your mother, my
+dear, had worn a very fine gown that evening, with little knots of
+blue ribbon all over the bodice of it. The words were not out of his
+mouth when Ned Cuffe starts to his feet as white as a sheet: 'It's a
+damned lie,' he cries, and out of his pocket _he_ pulls another little
+knot. 'She gave it to me with her own hands,' he cried and glares
+round at us all. And then Vernon bursts out laughing and flourishes a
+third little bow in our eyes, and I had one too, I need not tell you,
+and so had all the rest, all save a French fellow--I forget his
+name--and it was he she had danced with the most of all. Ah, Miss
+O'Donoghue, how the little jade's eyes sparkle! I warrant you have
+never told her the story for fear she would want to copy her mother in
+other ways besides looks--Hey? Well, my pretty, give me your little
+hand, and then I shall go on--pretty little hand, um--um--um!" and
+then he kissed my hand, the horrid, snuffy thing! but I allowed it,
+for I did so want to hear how it all ended.
+
+"And then, and then," I said.
+
+"And then, my dear, this French fellow, your papa he must have
+been--so I suppose I must not abuse him, and he was a very fine young
+man after all, and a man of honour as well--he stood and cursed us
+all."
+
+"'You English fools,' he said, 'you braggards--cowards.' And he
+seized a glass of wine from the table and with a sweep he dashed it at
+us and ended by flinging the empty glass in Lord Waterpark's face. It
+was the neatest thing you ever saw, for we all got a drop except
+Waterpark, and he got the glass. 'I challenge you all,' said the
+Frenchman, 'I'll fight you one by one, and I shall have her into the
+bargain.' And so he did, my dear, he fought us all, one after the
+other; there were five of us; he was a devil with the sword, but Ned
+Cuffe ran him through for all that--and he was a month getting over
+it, but as soon as he could crawl again he vowed himself ready for
+Waterpark, and weak as he was he ran poor Waterpark through the lungs.
+Some said Jack spitted himself on his sword--but dead he was anyhow,
+and monsieur your father--what was his name? Kerme-something--was off
+with your mother before the rest of us were well out of bed."
+
+"Fie, fie, my lord," said Tanty, "you should not recall old stories in
+this manner!"
+
+"Gad, ma'am, I warrant this young lady is quite ready to provide you
+with a few new ones," chuckled my lord; and as there was no more to be
+extracted from him but foolish old jokes and dreadful smiles, I
+contrived to free my "pretty little hand," and sit down demurely by
+Tanty's side like the modest retiring young female I should be.
+
+But my blood was dancing in my veins--the blood of Murthering
+Moll--doddering old idiot as he is, Lord Manningham is right for once,
+I mean to take quite as much out of life as she did. That indeed is
+worth being young and beautiful for! We know nothing of our family,
+save that both father and mother were killed in Vendée. Tanty never
+will tell us anything about them (except their coats of arms), and I
+am afraid even to start the subject, for she always branches off upon
+heraldry and then we are in for hours of it. But after Lord Manningham
+was gone I asked her when and how my grandmother died.
+
+"She died when your mother was born, my dear," said Tanty, "she was
+not as old as you are now, and your grandfather never smiled again, or
+so they said."
+
+That sobered me a little. Yet she lived her life so well, while she
+did live, that I who have wasted twenty precious years can find in my
+heart rather to envy than to pity my beautiful grandmother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_November 5th._--It is _three o'clock in the morning_, but I do not
+feel at all inclined to go to bed. Madeleine is sleeping, poor pretty
+pale Madeleine! with the tears hardly dry upon her cheeks and I can
+hear her sighing in her sleep.
+
+I was right, she is in love, and the gentleman she loves is not
+approved of by Tanty and the upshot of it all is we are to leave dear
+Bath, delightful Bath, to-morrow--to-day rather--for some unknown
+penitential region which our stern relative as yet declines to name. I
+am longing to hear more about it; but Tanty, who, though she talks so
+much, can keep her own counsel better than any woman I know, will not
+give me any further information beyond the facts that the delinquent
+who has dared to aspire to my sister is a person of _the name of
+Smith_, and that it would not do at all.
+
+I have not the heart to wake Madeleine to make her tell me more, though
+I really ought to pinch her well for being so secretive--besides, my
+head is so full of my own day that I want to get it all written down,
+and I shall never have done so unless I begin at the beginning.
+
+Yesterday, then, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon Lord Dereham's coach
+and four came clattering up to our door to call for me. Mrs. Hambledon
+was already installed and Lady Soames and a dozen other of the
+_fashionables_ of Bath. My little Lord Marquis had kept the box seat
+for me, at which the other ladies, even my dear friend and chaperon,
+looked rather green. The weather was glorious, and off we went with a
+flourish of trumpets and whips, and I knew I should enjoy myself
+monstrously.
+
+And so I did. But it was the drive back that was the _best_ of all. We
+never started till near nine o'clock, and Lord Dereham insisted on my
+sitting beside him again--at which all the ladies looked daggers _at
+me_ and all the gentlemen daggers _at him_. And then we sang songs and
+tore along uphill and down dale, under the beautiful moonlight,
+through the still air, till all at once we found we had lost our way.
+We had to drive on till we came to an inn and we could make inquiries.
+There the gentlemen opened another hamper of wine, and when we set
+off again I promise you they were all pretty _lively_ (and most of
+the ladies too, for the matter of that). As for me, who never drank
+anything but milk or water till six months ago, I have not learnt to
+like wine yet, so, though I sipped out of the glass to keep the fun
+going, I contrived to dispose of the contents, quietly over the side
+of the coach, when no one was looking.
+
+It was a drive to remember. We came to a big hill, and as we were
+going down it at a smart pace the coach began to sway, then the ladies
+began to screech, and even the men looked so scared that I laughed
+outright. Lord Dereham was perfectly tipsy and he did not know the
+road a bit, but he drove in beautiful style and was extraordinarily
+amusing; as soon as the coach took to swaying, instead of slackening
+speed as they all begged him, he _lashed_ the horses into a tearing
+gallop, looking over his shoulder at the rest and cursing them with
+the greatest energy, grinning with rage, and looking more like a
+little white rat than _ever_.
+
+"Give me the whip," said I, "and I shall whip the team while you
+drive."
+
+"_Cuth me_," cried he, "if you are not worth the whole coach-load a
+dozen times over."
+
+On we went; the coach rocked, the horses galloped, and I knew at any
+moment the whole thing might upset, and I flourished my whip and
+lashed at the steaming flanks and I never felt what it was to really
+enjoy myself before.
+
+Presently, although we were tearing along so fast, the coach steadied
+itself and went as straight as an arrow; and this, it seems, it would
+never have done had not Lord Dereham kept up the pace.
+
+And all the rest of the drive his lordship wanted to kiss me. I was
+not a bit frightened, though he was drunk, but every time he grew too
+forward I just flicked at the horses with the whip, and I think he saw
+that I would have cracked him across the face quite as readily if he
+dared to presume.
+
+No doubt a dozen times during the day I could have secured a coronet
+for myself, not to speak of future 'strawberry leaves,' as my aunt
+says, if I had cared to; but who could think of loving a man like
+_that_? He can manage four horses, and he has shot two men in a duel,
+and he can drink three bottles of wine at a sitting, and when one
+tries to find something more to say for him, lo! that is all!
+
+When we at length arrived at Camden Place, for I vowed they must leave
+me home the first, there was the rarest sport. My lord's grooms must
+set to blow the horns, for they were as drunk as their master, while
+one of the gentlemen played upon the knocker till the whole crescent
+was aroused.
+
+Then the doors opened suddenly, _and Tanty appears_ on the threshold,
+holding a candle. Her turban was quite crooked, with the birds of
+Paradise over one eye, and I never saw her old nose look so hooked.
+All the gentlemen set up a shout, and Sir Thomas Wrexham began to crow
+like a cock for no reason on earth that I can think of. The servants
+were holding up lanterns, but the moon was nigh as bright as day.
+
+Tanty just looked round upon them one after another, and in spite of
+her crooked turban I think they all grew frightened. Then she caught
+hold of me, and just whisked me behind her. Next she spied out Mrs.
+Hambledon, who had been asleep inside the coach, and now tumbled
+forth, yawning and gaping.
+
+"And so, madam," cries Tanty to her, not very loud, but in a voice
+that made even me tremble; "so, madam, this is how you fulfil the
+confidence I placed in you. A pretty chaperon you are to have the
+charge of a young lady; though, indeed, considering your years, madam,
+I might have been justified in trusting you."
+
+Mrs. Hambledon, cut short in the middle of a loud yawn by this attack,
+was a sight to see.
+
+"Hoighty-toighty, ma'am!" she cried, indignantly, as soon as she could
+get her voice; "here's a fine to-do. It is my fault, of course, that
+Lord Dereham should mistake the road. And my fault too, no doubt, that
+your miss should make an exhibition of herself riding on the box with
+the gentlemen at this hour of night, when I implored her to come
+inside with me, were it only for the sake of common female propriety."
+
+"Common female indeed!" echoed Tanty, with a snort; "the poor child
+knew better."
+
+"Cuth the old cats! they'll have each other'th eyeth out," here cried
+my lord marquis, interposing his little tipsy person between them. He
+had scrambled down the box after me, and was listening with an air of
+profound wisdom that made me feel fit to die laughing. "Don't you mind
+her, old lady," he went on, addressing Tanty; "Mith Molly ith quite
+able to take care of herself--damme if she'th not."
+
+Aunt Donoghue turned upon him majestically.
+
+"And then that is more than can be said for you, my poor young man,"
+she exclaimed; and I vow he looked as sobered as if she had flung a
+bucket of cold water over him. Upon this she retired and shut the
+door, and marched me upstairs before her without a word.
+
+Before my room door she stopped.
+
+"Mrs. Dempsey has already packed your sister's trunks," she said, in a
+very dry way; "and she will begin to pack yours early--I was going to
+say to-morrow--but you keep such hours, my dear--it will be _to-day_."
+
+I stared at her as if she had gone mad.
+
+"You and your sister," she went on, "have got beyond me. I have taken
+my resolution and given my orders, and there is not the least use
+making a scene."
+
+And then it came out about Madeleine. At first I thought I would go
+into a great passion and refuse to obey, but after a minute or two I
+saw it was, as she said, no use. Tanty was as cool as a cucumber. Then
+I thought perhaps I might mollify her if I could cry, but I couldn't
+pump up a tear; I never can; and at last when I went into my room and
+saw poor Madeleine, who has cried herself to sleep, evidently, I
+understood that there was nothing for us but to do as we were told.
+
+And now I can hear Tanty fussing about her room still--she has been
+writing, too--cra, cra, cra--this last hour. I wonder who to? After
+all there is some fun in being taken off mysteriously we don't know
+where. I should like to go and kiss her, but she thinks I am abed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A MASTERFUL OLD MAID
+
+
+No contrary advice having reached Pulwick since Miss O'Donoghue's
+_letter of invoice_, as Mr. Landale facetiously described it, he drove
+over to Lancaster on the day appointed to meet the party.
+
+And thus it came to pass that through the irresistible management of
+Miss O'Donoghue, who put into the promotion of her scheme all the
+energy belonging to her branch of the family, together with the long
+habit of authority of the _Tante à héritage_, the daughters of Cécile
+de Savenaye returned to that first home of theirs, of which they had
+forgotten even the name.
+
+Mr. Landale had not set eyes on his valuable relative for many years,
+but her greeting, at the first renewal of intercourse which took place
+in the principal parlour of the Lancaster Inn, was as easily detached
+in manner as though they had just met again after a trifling absence
+and she was bringing her charges to his house in accordance with a
+mutual agreement.
+
+"My dear Rupert," cried she, "I am glad to see you again. I need not
+ask you how you are, you look so extremely sleek and prosperous.
+Adrian's wide acres are succulent, hey? I should have known you
+anywhere; though to be sure, you are hardly large enough for the
+breed, you have the true Landale stamp on you, the unmistakable
+Landale style of feature. _Semper eadem._ In that sense, at least, one
+can apply your ancient and once worthy motto to you; and you know,
+nephew, since you have conveniently changed your faith, both to God
+and king, this sentiment strikes one as a sarcasm amidst the
+achievements of Landale, you backsliders! Ah, we O'Donoghues have
+better maintained our device, _sans changier_."
+
+Rupert, to whom the well-known volubility of his aunt was most
+particularly disagreeable, but who had nevertheless saluted the
+stalwart old lady's cheek with much affection, here bent his supple
+back with a sort of mocking gallantry.
+
+"You maintain your _device_, permit me to say, my dear aunt, as
+ostentatiously in your person as we renegade Landales ourselves."
+
+"Pooh, pooh! I am too old a bird to be caught by such chaff, nephew;
+it is pearls before.... I mean it is too late in the day, my dear.
+Keep it for the young things. And indeed I see the sheep's eyes you
+have been casting in their direction. Come nearer, young ladies, and
+make your cousin's acquaintance," beckoning to her nieces, who,
+arrayed in warm travelling pelisses and beaver bonnets of fashionable
+appearance, stood in the background near the fireplace.
+
+"They are very like, are they not?" she continued. "Twins always are;
+as like as two peas. And yet these are as different as day and night
+when you come to know them. Madeleine is the eldest; that is she in
+the beaver fur; Molly prefers bear. Without their bonnets you will
+distinguish them by their complexion. Molly has raven hair (she is the
+truest O'Donoghue), whilst Madeleine is fair, _blonde_, like her
+Breton father."
+
+The sisters greeted their new-found guardian, each in her own way.
+And, in spite of the disguising bonnets and their surprising
+similarity of voice, height, and build, the difference was more marked
+than that of beaver and bear.
+
+Madeleine acknowledged her kinsman's greeting with a dainty curtsey
+and little half-shy smile, marked by that air of distinction and
+breeding which was her peculiar characteristic. Molly, however, who
+thought she had reasonable cause for feeling generally exasperated,
+and who did not see in Mr. Rupert Landale, despite his good looks and
+his good manner, a very promising substitute for her Bath admirers
+(nor in the prospect of Pulwick a profitable exchange for Bath), came
+forward with her bolder grace to flounce him a saucy "reverence,"
+measuring him the while with a certain air of mockery which his
+thin-skinned susceptibility was quick to seize.
+
+He looked back at her down the long tunnel of her bonnet, appraising
+the bloom and beauty within with cold and curious gaze, and then he
+turned to Madeleine and made to her his courteous speech of welcome.
+
+This was sufficient for Miss Molly, who, for six months already
+accustomed to compel admiration at first sight from all specimens of
+the male sex that came across her path, instantly vowed a deadly
+hatred to her cousin, and followed the party into the Landale family
+coach--Rupert preceding, with a lady on each arm--in a temper as black
+as her own locks.
+
+It fell to her lot to sit beside the objectionable relative on the
+back seat, while, by the right of her minute's seniority, Madeleine
+sat beside Tanty in the front. The projecting wings of her headgear
+effectively prevented her from watching his demeanour, unless, indeed,
+she had turned to him, which was, of course, out of the question; but
+certain fugitive conscious blushes upon the young face in front of
+her, certain castings down of long lashes and timid upward glances,
+made Molly shrewdly conjecture that Mr. Landale, through all the
+apparent devotion with which he listened to Tanty's continuous flow of
+observations, was able to bestow a certain amount of attention upon
+her pretty neighbour.
+
+Tanty herself conducted the conversation with her usual high hand,
+feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance;
+and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to
+plant her points where she chose.
+
+Thus the long drive wore to its end. The sun was golden upon Pulwick
+when the carriage at length drew up before the portico. Miss Sophia
+received them in the hall, in a state of painful flutter and timidity.
+She had a constitutional terror of her aunt's sharp eyes, and, though
+she examined her young cousins wistfully, Madeleine's unconscious air
+of dignity repelled her as much as Molly's deliberate pertness.
+
+Rupert conducted his aunt upstairs, and down the long echoing corridor
+towards her apartment.
+
+"Ha, my old quarters," quoth Tanty, disengaging herself briskly from
+her escort to enter the room and look round approvingly, "and very
+comfortable they are. And my two nieces are next door, I see, as gay
+as chintz can make them. Thank you, nephew, I shall keep you no
+longer. We shall dine shortly, I feel sure. Well, well, I do not
+pretend I am not quite ready to do justice to your excellent
+fare--beyond doubt, it will be excellent! Go to your room, girls, your
+baggage is coming up, you see; I shall send Dempsey to assist you
+presently. No, not you, Sophia, I was speaking to the young ones. I
+should like to have a little chat with you, my dear, if you have no
+objection."
+
+One door closed upon Rupert as he smiled and bowed himself out, the
+other upon Molly hustling her sister before her.
+
+Tanty in the highest good humour, having accomplished her desire, and
+successfully "established a lodgment" (to use a military term not
+inappropriate to such a martial spirit) for her troublesome nieces in
+the stronghold of Pulwick, once more surveyed her surroundings: the
+dim old walls, the great four-post bed, consecrated, of course, by
+tradition to the memory of some royal slumberer, the damask hangings,
+and the uncomfortable chairs, with the utmost favour, ending up with a
+humorous examination of the elongated figure hesitating on the
+hearthrug.
+
+"Be seated, Sophia. I am glad to stretch my old limbs after that
+terrible drive. So here we are together again. What are you sighing
+for? Upon my soul, you are the same as ever, I see, the same tombstone
+on your chest, and blowing yourself out with sighs, just as you used.
+That will never give you a figure, my poor girl; it is no wonder you
+are but skin and bones. Ah, can't you let the poor fellow rest in his
+grave Sophia? it is flying in the face of Providence, I call it, to go
+on perpetually stirring up his ashes like that. I hope you mean to try
+and be a little more cheerful with those poor girls. But, there, I
+believe you are never so happy as when you are miserable. And it's a
+poor creature you would be at any time," added the old lady to
+herself, after a second thoughtful investigation of Miss Landale's
+countenance, which had assumed an expression of mulishness in addition
+to an increase of dolefulness during this homily.
+
+Here, to Miss Landale's great relief, the dying sunset, wavering into
+crimson and purple, from its first glory of liquid gold, attracted her
+aunt's attention, and Miss O'Donoghue went over to the window.
+
+Beneath her spread the quaint garden, with its clipped box edges, and
+beyond the now leafless belt of trees, upon the glimmer of the bay,
+the outline of Scarthey, a dark silhouette rose fantastically against
+the vivid sky. Even as she gazed, there leapt upon its fairy turret a
+minute point of white.
+
+The jovial old countenance changed and darkened.
+
+"And Adrian is still at his fool's game over there, I suppose," she
+said irately turning upon Sophia. "When have you seen him last? How
+often does he come here? I gather Master Rupert is nothing if not the
+master. Why don't you answer me, Sophia?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner was as well cooked and served a meal as any under Rupert's
+rule, which is saying a good deal, and if the young ladies failed to
+appreciate the "floating island," the "golden nests," and "silver
+web," so thoughtfully provided for them, Tanty did ample justice to
+the venison.
+
+Indeed the cloud which had been visible upon her countenance at the
+beginning of dinner, and which according to that downright habit of
+mind, which rendered her so terrible or so delightful a companion, she
+made no attempt to conceal, began to lift towards the first remove,
+and altogether vanished over her final glass of port.
+
+After dinner she peremptorily ordered her grand-nieces into the
+retirement of their bedchambers, unblushingly alleging their exhausted
+condition in front of the perfect bloom of their beautiful young
+vigour.
+
+She then, over a cup of tea, luxuriously stretching her thin frame in
+the best arm-chair the drawing-room could afford, gave Rupert a brief
+code of directions as to the special attentions and care she desired
+to be bestowed upon her wards, during their residence at Pulwick,
+descanting generously upon their various perfections, gliding
+dexterously over her reasons for wishing to be rid of them herself,
+and concluding with the hint--either pregnant or barren of meaning as
+he chose to take it--that if he made their stay pleasant to them, she
+would not forget the service.
+
+Then, as Mr. Landale began, with apparent guilelessness, to put a few
+little telling questions to her anent the episodes which had made Bath
+undesirable as a residence for these young paragons, the old lady
+suddenly became overwhelmed with fatigue and sleepiness, and professed
+herself ready to be conducted to her bower immediately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, despite the _moue de circonstance_ which Molly thought it
+incumbent on her to assume, neither she nor Madeleine regretted their
+compulsory withdrawal from the social circle downstairs.
+
+Madeleine had her own thoughts to follow up, and that these were both
+engrossing and pleasant was easily evident; and Molly, bursting with a
+sense of injury arising from many causes, desired a special
+explanation with her sister, which the presence in and out upon them
+of Tanty's woman had prevented her from indulging in before dinner.
+
+"So here we are at last," cried she, indignantly, after she had walked
+round and severely inspected her quarters, pausing to "pull a lip" of
+extreme disfavour at the handsome portrait of Mr. Landale that hung
+between the windows, "we are, Madeleine, at last, kidnapped,
+imprisoned, successfully disposed of, in fact."
+
+"Yes, here we are at last," echoed Madeleine, abstractedly, warming
+her slender ankles by the fire.
+
+"Have you made out yet what particular kind of new frenzy it was that
+seized chère Tante?" asked Miss Molly, with great emphasis, as she sat
+down at her toilet-table. "You are the cause of it all, my dear, and
+so you ought to know. It is all very well for Tanty to pretend that I
+have brought it on myself by not coming home till three o'clock (as if
+that was _my_ fault). She cannot blink the fact that her Dempsey
+creature had orders to pack my boxes before bedtime. Your Smith must
+be a desperately dangerous individual. Well," she continued, looking
+round over her shoulder, "why don't you say something, you
+lackadaisical thing?"
+
+But Madeleine answered nought and continued gazing, while only the
+little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had
+heard the petulant speech.
+
+The smile put the finishing touch to Molly's righteous anger.
+Brandishing a hairbrush threateningly, she marched over to her sister
+and looked down upon the slender figure, in its clinging white dress,
+with blazing eyes.
+
+"Look here," she cried, "there must be an end of this. I can put up
+with your slyness no longer. How _dare_ you have secrets from me,
+miss?--your own twin sister! You and I, who used never to have a
+thought we did not share. How dare you have a lover, and not tell me
+all about him? What was the meaning of your weeping like a fountain
+all the way from Bath to Shrewsbury, and then, without rhyme or reason
+apparently, smiling to yourself all the way from there to Lancaster.
+You have had a letter, don't attempt to deny it, it is of no use....
+Oh, it is base of you, it is indeed! And to think that it is all
+through you that I am forced into this exile, through your _airs
+penchés_, and your sighing and dreaming, and your mysterous
+_Smith_.... To think that to-night, this very night, is the ball of
+the season, and we are going to bed! Oh, and to-morrow and to-morrow,
+and to-morrow, with nothing but a knave and a fool to keep us
+company--for I don't think much of your female cousin, Madeleine, and,
+as for your male cousin, I perfectly detest him--and all the tabbies
+of the country-side for diversion, with perhaps a country buck on high
+days and holidays for a relish! Pah!"
+
+Molly had almost talked her ill-humour away. Her energetic nature
+could throw off most unpleasant emotions easily enough so long as it
+might have an outlet for them; she now laid down the threatening
+brush, and, kneeling beside her, flung both her arms round Madeleine's
+shoulders.
+
+"Ma petite Madeleine," she coaxed, in the mother tongue, "tell thy
+little sister thy secrets."
+
+A faint flush crept to Madeleine's usually creamy cheeks, a light into
+her eyes. She turned impulsively to the face near hers, then, as if
+bethinking herself, pursed her lips together and shook her head
+slightly.
+
+"Do you remember, ma chèrie," she said, at last, "that French tale
+Mrs. Hambledon lent us in which it is said _'Qui fuit l'amour, l'amour
+suit.'_"
+
+"Well?" asked Molly, eagerly, her lips parted as if to drink in the
+expected confidence.
+
+"Well," replied the other, "well, perhaps things may not be so bad
+after all. Perhaps," rising from her seat, and looking at her sister
+with a little gentle malice, while she, too, began to disrobe her
+fairer beauty for the night, "some of your many lovers may come after
+you from Bath! Oh, Molly!" with a little scream, for Molly, with eyes
+flashing once more, had sprung up from her knees to inflict a vicious
+pinch upon the equivocator's arm.
+
+"Yes, miss, you shall be pinched till you confess." Then flouting her
+with a sudden change of mood, "I am sure I don't want to know your
+wonderful secret,"--seizing her comb and passing it crackling through
+her hair with quite unnecessary energy--"Mademoiselle la Cachotière.
+Anyhow, it cannot be very interesting.... _Mrs. Smith!_ Fancy caring
+for a man called Smith! If you smile again like that, Madeleine, I
+shall beat you."
+
+The two sisters looked at each other for a second as if hesitating on
+the brink of anger, and then both laughed.
+
+"Never mind, I shall pay you out yet," quoth Molly, tugging at her
+black mane. "So our lovers are to come after us, is _that_ it? Do you
+know, Madeleine," she went on, calming down, "I almost regret now that
+I would not listen to young Lord Dereham, simpleton though he be. He
+looked such a dreadful little fright that I only laughed at him.... I
+should have laughed at him all my life. But it would perhaps have been
+better than this dependence on Tanty, with her sudden whims and
+scampers and whisking of us away into the wilderness. Then I should
+have had my own way always. Now it's too late. Tanty told me yesterday
+that she sees he is a dissolute young man, and that his dukedom is
+only a Charles II. creation, and 'We know what that means,' she added,
+and shook her head. I am sure I had not a notion, but I shook my head
+too, and said, 'Of course, that made it impossible.' I was really
+afraid she would want me to marry him. She was dreadfully pleased and
+said I was a true O'Donoghue. Oh, dear! I don't know _anything_ about
+love. I can't imagine being in love; but one thing is certain, I could
+never, never, never allow a horrid little rat like Lord Dereham to
+make love to me, to kiss me, nor, indeed, any man--oh, horror! How you
+are blushing, my dear! Come here into the light. It would be good for
+your soul, indeed it would, to confess!"
+
+But Madeleine, burying her hot cheeks in her sister's neck and
+clasping her with gentle caresses, was not to be drawn from her
+reticence. Molly pushed her off at last, and gave a hard little
+good-night kiss like a bird-peck.
+
+"Very well; but you might as well have confessed, for I shall find out
+in the long run. And who knows, perhaps you may be sorry one day that
+you did not tell me of your own accord."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A RECORD AND A PRESENTMENT.
+
+
+The gallery of family portraits at Pulwick is one of the most
+remarkable features of that ancient house.
+
+It was a custom firmly established at the Priory--ever since the first
+heralds' visitation in Lancashire, when some mooted point of claims to
+certain quarterings had been cleared in an unexpected way by the
+testimony of a well-authenticated ancestral portrait--for each
+successive representative to add to the collection. One of the first
+cares of every Landale, therefore, on succeeding to the title was to
+be painted, with his proper armorial and otherwise distinguishing
+honours jealously delineated, and thus hung in the place of honour
+over the high mantelshelf of the gallery--displacing on the occasion
+his own immediate and revered predecessor.
+
+The chain was consequently unbroken from the Elizabethan descendants
+of the first acquirers of ecclesiastical property at Pulwick, down to
+the present Light-keeper of Scarthey.
+
+But whilst the late Sir Thomas appeared in all the majesty of
+deputy-lieutenant, colonel of Militia, magistrate, and sundry other
+honourable offices, in his due place on the right of the present
+baronet, the latter figured in a character so strange and so
+incongruous that it seemed as if one day the dignified array of
+Landales--old, young, middle-aged, but fine gentlemen, all of
+them--must turn their backs upon their degenerate kinsman.
+
+Over the chimney-piece, in the huge carved-oak frame (now already two
+centuries old), a common sailor, in the striped loose trousers, the
+blue jacket with red piping of a man-of-war's man, with pigtail and
+coarse open shirt--stood boldly forth as the representative of the
+present owner of Pulwick.
+
+Proud of their long line of progenitors, it was a not unusual thing
+for the Landales to entertain their guests at breakfast in a certain
+sunny bow-window in the portrait gallery rather than in the breakfast
+parlour proper, which in winter, unmistakably harboured more damp than
+was pleasant.
+
+It was, therefore, with no surprise that Miss Landale received an
+early order from her brother to have a fire lighted in the apartment
+sacred to the family honours, and the matutinal repast served there in
+due course.
+
+Whether Mr. Landale was actuated by a regard for the rheumatism of his
+worthy relative, or merely a natural family pride, or by some other
+and less simple motive, he saw no necessity for informing his docile
+housewife on the matter.
+
+As Sophia was accustomed to no such condescension on his part even in
+circumstances more extraordinary, she merely bundled out of bed
+unquestioningly in the darkness and cold of the morning to see his
+orders executed in the proper manner; which, indeed, to her credit was
+so successfully accomplished that Tanty and her charges, when they
+made their entry upon the scene, could not fail to be impressed with
+the comfortable aspect of the majestic old room.
+
+Mr. Landale examined his two young uninvited guests with new keenness
+in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a
+lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than
+accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual
+necessity of her delicate nature, there was more than resignation in
+the blushing radiance of her look and smile.
+
+"Portraits of their mother," said Rupert, bringing his critical survey
+to a close, and stepping forward with a nice action of the legs to
+present his arm to his aunt. "Portraits of their mother both of
+them--I trust to that miniature which used to grace our collection in
+the drawing-room rather than to the treacherous memory of a school-boy
+for the impression--but portraits by different masters and in
+different moods."
+
+There was something patronising in the tone from so young a man, which
+Molly resented on the spot.
+
+"Oh, we should be as like as two peas, only that we are as different
+as day and night, as Tanty says," she retorted, tossing her white chin
+at her host, while Miss O'Donoghue laughed aloud at her favourite's
+sauciness.
+
+"And after all," said Rupert, as he bestowed his venerable relative on
+her chair, with an ineffable air of politeness, contradicted, though
+only for an instant, by the look which he shot at Molly from the light
+hazel eyes, "Tanty is not so far wrong--the only difference between
+night and day is the difference between the _brunette_ and the
+_blonde_," with a little bow to each of the sisters, "an Irish bull,
+if one comes to analyse it, is but the expression of the too rapid
+working of quick wits."
+
+"Faith, nephew," said Tanty, sitting down in high good humour to the
+innumerable good things in which her Epicurean old soul delighted,
+"that is about as true a thing as ever you said. Our Irish tongues are
+apt to get behind a thing before it is there, and they call that
+making a bull."
+
+Rupert's sense of humour was as keen as most of his other faculties,
+and at the unconscious humour of this sally his laugh rang out
+frankly, while Molly and Madeleine giggled in their plates, and Miss
+O'Donoghue chuckled quietly to herself in the intervals of eating and
+drinking, content to have been witty, without troubling to discover
+how.
+
+Sophia alone remained unmoved by mirth; indeed, as she raised her
+drooping head, amazed at the clamour, an unwary tear trickled down her
+long nose into her tea. She was given to revelling in anniversaries of
+dead and gone joys or sorrows; the one as melancholy to her to look
+back upon as the other; and upon this November day, now very many
+years ago, had the ardent, consumptive rector first hinted at his
+love.
+
+"And now," said Miss O'Donoghue, who, having disposed of the most
+serious part of the breakfast, pushed away her plate with one hand
+while she stirred her second cup of well-creamed tea lazily with the
+other, "Now, Rupert, will you tell me the arrangements you propose to
+make to enable me to see your good brother?"
+
+Rupert had anticipated being attacked upon this subject, and had fully
+prepared himself to defend the peculiar position it was his interest
+to maintain. To encourage a meeting between his brother and the old
+lady (to whom the present position of affairs was a grievous offence)
+did not, certainly, enter into his plan of action; but Tanty had put
+the question in an unexpected and slightly awkward shape, and for a
+second or two he hesitated before replying.
+
+"I fear," said he then, gliding into the subject with his usual easy
+fluency, "that you will be disappointed if you have been reckoning
+upon an interview with Adrian, my dear aunt. The hermit will not be
+drawn from his shell on any pretext."
+
+"What," cried Tanty, while her withered cheek flushed, "do you mean to
+tell me that my nephew, Sir Adrian Landale, will decline to come a few
+hundred yards to see his old aunt--his mother's own sister--who has
+come three hundred miles, at seventy years of age, to see him in his
+own house--_in his own house_?" repeated the irate old lady, rattling
+the spoon with much emphasis against her cup. "If you _mean_ this,
+Rupert, it is an insult to me which I shall never forget--_never_."
+
+She rose from her seat as she concluded, shaking with the tremulous
+anger of age.
+
+"For God's sake, Tanty," cried Rupert, throwing into his voice all the
+generous warmth he was capable of simulating, "do not hold me
+responsible for Adrian in this matter. His strange vagaries are not of
+my suggesting, heaven knows."
+
+"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, loftily, "if you will kindly
+send the letter I am about to write to your brother, by a safe
+messenger, immediately, I shall believe that it is _your_ wish to
+treat me with proper respect, whatever may be Adrian's subsequent
+behaviour."
+
+Mr. Landale's countenance assumed an expression of very genuine
+distress; this was just the one proof of dutiful attachment that he
+was loth to bestow upon his cherished aunt.
+
+"I see how it is," he exclaimed earnestly, coming up to the old lady,
+and laying his hand gently upon her arm, "you entirely misunderstand
+the situation. I am not a free agent in this matter. I cannot do what
+you ask; I am bound by pledge. Adrian is, undoubtedly, more
+than--peculiar on certain points, and, really, I dare not, if I would,
+thwart him."
+
+"Oh!" cried Tanty, shooting off the ejaculation as from a pop-gun.
+Then, shaking herself free of Rupert's touch, she sat down abruptly in
+her chair again, and began fanning herself with her handkerchief. Not
+even in her interchange of amenities with Mrs. Hambledon, had Molly
+seen her display so much indignation.
+
+"You want me to believe he is mad, I suppose?" she snapped, at last.
+
+"Dear me! No, no, no!" responded the other, in his airy way. "I did
+not mean to go so far as that; but--well, there are very painful
+matters, and hitherto I have avoided all discussion upon them, even
+with Sophia. My affection for Adrian----"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted Tanty. "You meant something, I suppose;
+either the man's mad, or he is not. And I, for one, don't believe a
+word of it. The worst sign about him, that I can see, is the blind
+confidence the poor fellow seems to put in you."
+
+Here Molly, who had been listening to the discussion "with all her
+ears"--anything connected with the mysterious personality of the
+absent head of the house was beginning to have a special fascination
+for her--gave an irrepressible little note of laughter.
+
+Rupert looked up at her quickly, and their eyes met.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Miss," cried Miss O'Donoghue, sharply; aware that
+she had gone too far in her last remark, and glad to relieve her
+oppression in another direction, "how dare you laugh? Sophia, this is
+a terrible thing your brother wants me to believe--may I ask what
+_your_ opinion is? Though I'll not deny I don't think that will be
+worth much."
+
+Sophia glanced helplessly at Rupert, but he was far too carefully
+possessed of himself to affect to perceive her embarrassment.
+
+"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you
+need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose--you
+are not absolutely a drivelling idiot--_all_ the Landales are not
+ripening for lunatic asylums--collect your wits, Sophia, I know you
+have not got any, but you have _enough_ to be able to give a plain
+answer to a plain question, I suppose. Do you think your brother mad,
+child?"
+
+"God forbid," murmured Sophia, at the very extremity of those wits of
+which Miss O'Donoghue had so poor an opinion. "Oh, no, dear aunt, not
+_mad_, of course, not in the least _mad_."
+
+Then, gathering from a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not
+upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew
+forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if
+irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity
+had really fallen upon us--and of course there _are_ symptoms, no
+doubt there are symptoms...."
+
+"What are his symptoms--has he tried to murder any of you, hey?"
+
+"Oh, my dear aunt! No, indeed, dear Adrian is gentleness itself."
+
+"Does he bite? Does he gibber? Oh, away with you, Sophia! I am sure I
+cannot wonder at the poor fellow wanting to live on a rock, between
+you and Rupert. I am sure the periwinkles and the gulls must be
+pleasant company compared to you. That alone would show, I should
+think, that he knows right well what he is about. Mad indeed! There
+never was any madness among the O'Donoghues except your poor uncle
+Michael, who got a box on the ear from a windmill--and _he_ wasn't an
+O'Donoghue at all! You will be kind enough, nephew, to have delivered
+to Sir Adrian, no later than to-day, the letter which I shall this
+moment indite to him."
+
+"Perhaps," said Rupert, "if you will only favour me with your
+attention for a few minutes first, aunt, and allow me to narrate to
+you the circumstances of my brother's return here, and of his
+subsequent self-exile, you will see fit to change your opinion, both
+as regards him and myself."
+
+A self-controlled nature will in the long run, rightly or wrongly,
+always assume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness
+of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty
+rapidly down from her pinnacle of passion.
+
+Certainly, she said, she was not only ready, but anxious to hear all
+that Rupert could have to say for himself; and, smoothing down her
+black satin apron with a shaking hand, the old lady prepared to listen
+with as much judicial dignity as her flustered state allowed her to
+assume. Rupert drew his chair opposite to hers and leant his elbow on
+the table, and fixed his bright, hard eyes upon her.
+
+"You remember, of course," he began after a moment's pause, "how at
+the time of my poor father's death, Adrian was reported to have lost
+his life in the Vendée war--though without authoritative
+confirmation--at the same time as the fair and unhappy Countesse de
+Savenaye, to whose fortune he had so chivalrously devoted himself."
+
+Tanty bowed her head in solemn assent; but Molly, watching with the
+most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of
+mockery she thought to catch upon the speaker's curling lip.
+
+"It was," continued he, "the constant strain, the long months of
+watching in vain for tidings, that told upon my father, rather than
+the actual grief of loss. When he died, the responsibilities of the
+headship of the house devolved naturally upon me, the only male
+representative left, seemingly, to undertake them. The months went by;
+to the most sanguine the belief in Adrian's death became inevitable.
+Our hopes died slowly, but they died at last; we mourned for him,"
+here Rupert cast down his eyes till the thick black lashes which were
+one of his beauties swept his cheek; his tone was perfect in its
+simple gravity. "At length, urged thereto by all the family, if I
+remember rightly by yourself as well, dear aunt, I assumed the title
+as well as the position which seemed mine by right. I was very young
+at the time, but I do not think that either then, or during the ten
+years that followed, I unworthily filled my brother's place."
+
+There was a proud ring of sincerity in the last words, and the old
+lady knew that they were true; that during the years of his absolute
+power as well as of his present more restricted mastership, Rupert's
+management of the estate was unimpeachable.
+
+"Certainly not, my dear Rupert," she said in softer tones than she had
+hitherto used to him, "no one would dream of suggesting such a
+thing--pray go on."
+
+"And so," pursued the nephew, with a short laugh, relapsing into that
+light tone of banter which was his most natural mode of expression;
+"when, one fine day, a hired coach clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's
+avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who announced
+himself, in melancholy tones that would have befitted the ghost no
+doubt many took him for, as the rightful Sir Adrian, erroneously
+supposed defunct, I confess that it required a little persuasion to
+make me recognise my long-lost brother--and yet there could be no
+doubt of it. The missing heir had come to his own again; the dead had
+come back to life. Well, we killed the fatted calf, and all the rest
+of it--but I need not inflict upon you the narrative of our
+rejoicing."
+
+"Faith, no," said Tanty, drily, "I can see it with half an eye."
+
+"You know, too, I believe, the series of extraordinary adventures, or
+misadventures, which had kept him roaming on the high seas while we at
+home set up tablets to his memory and 'wore our blacks' as people here
+call it, and cultivated a chastened resignation. There was a good deal
+of correspondence going on at the time between Pulwick and Bunratty,
+if I remember aright, and you heard all about Adrian's divers attempts
+to land in England, about his fight with the King's men, his crack on
+the head and final impressment. At least you heard as much as we could
+gather ourselves. Adrian is not what one would call a garrulous person
+at the best of times. It was really with the greatest difficulty that
+we managed to extract enough out of him to piece together a coherent
+tale."
+
+"Well, well," quoth Tanty, with impatience, "you are glib enough for
+two anyhow, my dear! All this does not tell me how Adrian came to live
+on a lighthouse, and why you put him down as a lunatic."
+
+"Not as a lunatic," corrected Rupert, gently, "merely as slightly
+eccentric on certain points. Though, indeed, if you had seen him
+during those first months after his return, I think even you with your
+optimistic spirit would have feared, as we did, that he was falling
+into melancholia. Thank heaven he is better now. But, dear me, what we
+went through! I declare I expected every morning to be informed that
+Sir Adrian's corpse had been found hanging from his bedpost or
+discovered in a jelly at the bottom of the bluffs. And, indeed, when
+at length he disappeared for three days, after he had been last
+observed mooning along the coast, there was a terrible panic lest he
+should have sought a congenial and soothing end in the embraces of
+the quicksands.... It turned out, however, that he had merely strolled
+over to Scarthey--where, as you know, my father established a beacon
+and installed a keeper to warn boats off our shoals--and, finding the
+place to his liking, had remained there, regardless of our feelings."
+
+"Tut, tut!" said Tanty; but whether in reproof of Rupert's flippant
+language or of her elder nephew's erratic behaviour, it would have
+been difficult to determine.
+
+"Of course," went on Rupert, smoothly, "I had resolved, after a decent
+period, to remove my lares and penates from a house where I was no
+longer master and to establish myself, with my small patrimony (I
+believe I ought to call it _matrimony_, as we younger children benefit
+by our O'Donoghue mother) in an independent establishment. But when I
+first broached the subject, Adrian was so vastly distressed, expressed
+himself so well satisfied with my management of the estate and begged
+me so earnestly to consider Pulwick as my home, vowing that he himself
+would never marry, and that all he looked forward to in life was to
+see me wedded and with future heirs to the name springing around me,
+that it would have been actual unkindness to resist. Moreover, as you
+can imagine, Adrian is not exactly a man of business, and his
+spasmodic interferences in the control of the property being already
+then of a very injudicious nature, I confess that, having nursed it
+myself for eleven years with some success, I dreaded to think what it
+would become under his auspices. And so I agreed to remain. But the
+position increased in difficulty. Adrian's moroseness seemed to grow
+upon him; he showed an exaggerated horror of company; either flying
+from visitors as from the pest, and shutting himself up in his own
+apartments, or (on the few disastrous occasions when my persuasions
+induced him to show himself to some old family friends) entertaining
+them with such unusual sentiments concerning social laws, the
+magistracy, the government, his Majesty the King himself, that the
+most extraordinary reports about him soon spread over the whole
+county. This was about the time--as you may remember--of my own
+marriage."
+
+Here an alteration crept into Mr. Landale's voice, and Molly looked
+at him curiously, while Miss Sophia gave vent to an audible sniff.
+
+"To be sure," said Tanty, hastily. Comfortably egotistic old ladies
+have an instinctive dislike to painful topics. And that Rupert's
+sorrow for his young wife had been, if self-centred and reserved, of
+an intense and prolonged nature was known to all the family.
+
+The widower himself had no intention of dilating upon it. His wife's
+name he never mentioned, and no one could guess, heavily as the blow
+was known to have fallen upon him, the seething bitterness that her
+loss had left in his soul, nor imagine how different a man he might
+have been if that one strong affection of his life had been spared to
+soften it.
+
+"Adrian fled from the wedding festivities, as you may remember, for
+you were our honoured guest at the time, and greatly displeased at his
+absence," he resumed, after a few seconds of darkling reflection.
+"None of us knew where he had flown to, for he did not evidently
+consider his owl's nest sufficiently remote; but we had his fraternal
+blessing to sustain us. And after that he continued to make periodical
+disappearances to his retreat, stopping away each time longer and
+longer. One fine day he sent workmen to the island with directions to
+repair certain rooms in the keep, and he began to transfer thereto
+furniture, his books and his organ. A dilapidated little French
+prisoner next appeared on the scene (whom my brother had extracted
+from the Tower of Liverpool, which was then crammed with such gentry),
+and finally we were informed that, with this worthy companion, Sir
+Adrian Landale was determined to take up his abode altogether at
+Scarthey, undertaking the duties of the recently defunct light-keeper.
+So off he went, and there he is still. He has extracted from us a
+solemn promise that his privacy is to be absolutely respected, and
+that no communications, or, above all, visits are to be made to him.
+Occasionally, when we least expect it, he descends upon us from his
+tower, upsets all my accounts, makes the most absurd concessions to
+the tenants, rides round the estate with his eyes on the ground and
+disappears again. _Et voilà_, my dear aunt, how we stand."
+
+"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, "I am much obliged to you, I am
+sure, for putting me _au courant_ of the family affairs. It is all
+very sad--very sad and very deplorable; but----"
+
+But Mr. Landale was quite aware that Tanty was not yet convinced to
+the desired extent. He therefore here interrupted her to play his last
+card--that ace he had up his sleeve, in careful preparation for this
+trial of skill with his keen-witted relative, and to the suitable
+production of which he had been all along leading.
+
+Rising from his chair with slow, deliberate movement, he proceeded, as
+if following his own train of thought, without noticing that Miss
+O'Donoghue was intent on speech herself:
+
+"You have not seen him, I believe, since he was quite a lad. You would
+have some difficulty in recognising him, though he bears, like the
+rest of us, what you call the unmistakable Landale stamp. His portrait
+is here, by the way--duly installed in its correct position. That,"
+with a laugh, "was one of his freaks. It was his duty to keep up the
+family traditions, he said--and there you will approve of him, no
+doubt; but hardly, perhaps, of the manner in which he has had that
+laudable intention carried out. My own portrait was, of course,
+deposed (like the original)," added Mr. Landale, with something of a
+sneer; "and now hangs meekly in some bedroom or other--in that, if I
+mistake not, at present hallowed by my fair cousins' presence. Well,
+it is good for the soul of man to be humbled, as we are taught to
+believe from our earliest years!"
+
+Tanty was fumbling for her eye-glasses. She was glad to hear that
+Adrian had remembered some of his obligations (she observed,
+sententiously, as she hauled herself stiffly out of her chair to
+approach the chimney-piece); it was certainly a sign that he was more
+mindful of his duties as head of the house than one would expect from
+a person hardly responsible, such as Rupert had represented him to be,
+and ...
+
+Here, the glasses being adjusted and focussed upon the portrait, Miss
+O'Donoghue halted abruptly with a dropping jaw.
+
+"There is a curious inscription underneath the escutcheon," said Mr.
+Landale composedly, "which latter, by the way, you may notice is the
+only one in the line which has no room for an impaled coat (Adrian's
+way of indicating not only that he is single, but means to remain
+such); Adrian composed it himself and indeed attached a marked
+importance to it. Let me read it for you, dear Tanty, the picture
+hangs a little high and those curveting letters are hard to decipher.
+It runs thus:
+
+_Sir Adrian William Hugh Landale, Lord of Pulwick and Scarthey in the
+County Palatine of Lancaster, eighth Baronet, born March 12th, 1775.
+Succeeded to the title and estate on the 10th February 1799, whilst
+abroad. Iniquitously pressed into the King's service on the day of his
+return home, January 2nd, 1801. Twice flogged for alleged
+insubordination, and only released at last by the help of a friend
+after five years of slavery. Died_ [Here a space for the date.] It is
+a record with a vengeance, is it not? Notice my brother's
+determination to die unmarried and to retire, once for all, from all
+or any of the possible honours connected with his position!"
+
+They had all clustered in front of the picture; even Madeleine roused
+from her sweet day-dreams to some show of curiosity; Miss Landale's
+bosom, heaving with such sighs as to make the tombstone rise and fall
+like a ship upon a stormy sea; Molly with an eagerness she did not
+attempt to hide; and Miss O'Donoghue still speechless with horror and
+indignation.
+
+Mr. Landale had gauged his aunt's temperament correctly enough. To one
+whose ruling passion was pride of family, this mockery of a
+consecrated family custom, this heirloom destined to carry down a
+record of degradation into future generations, was an insult to the
+name only to be explained to her first indignation by deliberate
+malice--or insanity.
+
+And from the breezy background of blue sky and sea, contrasting as
+strangely with the dark solemnity of the other portraits as did the
+figure itself in its incongruous sailor dress, the face of the eighth
+baronet looked down in melancholy gravity upon the group gathered in
+judgment upon him.
+
+"Disgraceful! Positively disgraceful!" at length cried the last
+representative of the O'Donoghues of Bunratty, in scandalised tones.
+"My dear Rupert, you should have a curtain put up, that this
+exhibition of folly--of madness, I hardly know what to call it--be not
+exposed to every casual visitor. Dear me, dear me, that I should live
+to see any of my kin deliberately throw discredit on his family, if
+indeed the poor fellow is responsible! Rupert, my good soul, can you
+ascribe any reason for this terrible state of affairs ... that blow on
+the head?"
+
+"In part perhaps," said Mr. Landale. "And yet there have been other
+causes at work. If I could have a private word in your ear," glancing
+meaningly over his shoulder at the two young girls who were both
+listening, though with very different expressions of interest and
+favour, "I could give you my opinion more fully."
+
+"Go away now, my dear creatures," hereupon said Miss O'Donoghue,
+promptly addressing her nieces. "It is a fine morning, and you will
+lose your roses if you don't get the air. I don't care if it has begun
+to rain, miss! Go and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock then.
+Young people _must_ have exercise. Well, my dear Rupert, well!"--when
+Molly, with a pettish "battledore and shuttlecock indeed!" had taken
+her sister by the arm and left the room.
+
+"Well, my dear aunt, the fact is, I believe my unhappy brother has
+never recovered from--from his passion for Cécile de Savenaye, that
+early love affair, so suddenly and tragically terminated--well, it
+seems to have turned his brain!"
+
+"Pooh, pooh! why that was twenty years ago. Don't tell me it is in a
+man to be so constant."
+
+"In no _sane_ man perhaps; but then, you know, Tanty, that is just the
+point.... Remember the circumstances. He loved her madly; he followed
+her, lived near her for months and she was drowned before his eyes, I
+believe. I never heard, of course, any details of that strange period
+of his life, but we can imagine." This was a difficult, vague, subject
+to deal with, and Mr. Landale wisely passed on. "Moreover, his
+behaviour when in this house on his return at first has left me no
+doubt. I watched him closely. He was for ever haunting those rooms
+which she had inhabited. When he found her miniature in the
+drawing-room he went first as white as death, then he took it in his
+hand and stood gazing at it (I am not exaggerating) for a whole hour
+without moving; and, finally, he carried it off, and I know he used to
+talk to it in his room. And now, even if I had not given my poor
+brother my word of honour never to disturb his chosen solitude, I
+should have felt it a heavy responsibility to promote a meeting which
+would inevitably bring back past memories in a troublous manner upon
+him. In fact, were he to come across the children of his dead
+love--above all Molly, who must be startlingly like her mother--what
+might the result be? I hardly like to contemplate it. The human brain
+is a very delicately balanced organ, my dear aunt, and once it gets
+ever so slightly out of order one cannot be too careful to avoid
+risk."
+
+He finished his say with an expressive gesture of the hand. Miss
+O'Donoghue remained for a moment plunged in reflection, during which
+the cloud upon her countenance gradually lifted.
+
+"It is a strange thing," she said at last, "but constancy seems to run
+in the family. There is no denying that. Here is Sophia, a ridiculous
+spectacle--and you yourself, my dear Rupert.... And now poor Adrian,
+too, and his case of mere calf-love, as one would have thought."
+
+"A calf may grow into a fine bull, you know," returned Mr. Landale,
+who had winced at his aunt's allusion to himself and now spoke in the
+most unemotional tone he could assume, "especially if it is well
+fostered in its youth."
+
+"And I suppose," said Miss O'Donoghue, with a faint smile, "you think
+I ought to know all about bulls." She again put up her glasses to
+survey the portrait with critical deliberation; after which,
+recommending him once more strenuously to have a curtain erected, she
+observed, that it would break her heart to look at it one moment
+longer and requested to be conducted from the room.
+
+Mr. Landale could not draw any positive conclusion from his aunt's
+manner of receiving his confidence, nor determine whether she had
+altogether grasped the whole meaning of what he had intended
+delicately to convey to her concerning his brother's past as well as
+present position; but he had said as much as prudence counselled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE DISTANT LIGHT
+
+
+In spite of their first petulant or dolorous anticipation, and of the
+contrast between the even tenor of country life and the constant
+stream of amusement which young people of fashion can find in a place
+like Bath, the two girls discovered that time glided pleasantly enough
+over them at Pulwick.
+
+Instead of the gloomy northern stronghold their novel-fed imagination
+had pictured (the more dismally as their sudden removal from town
+gaieties savoured distantly of punishment at the hand of their irate
+aunt), they found themselves delivered over into a bright,
+admirably-ordered house, replete with things of beauty, comfortable to
+the extremity of luxury; and allowed in this place of safety to enjoy
+almost unrestricted liberty.
+
+The latter privilege was especially precious, as the sisters at that
+time had engrossing thoughts of their own they wished to pursue, and
+found more interest in solitary roamings through the wide estate than
+in the company of the hosts.
+
+On the fifth day Miss O'Donoghue took her departure. Her own
+travelling coach had rumbled down the avenue, bearing her and her
+woman away, in its polished yellow embrace, her flat trunk strapped
+behind, and the good-natured old face nodding out of the window, till
+Molly and Madeleine, standing (a little disconsolate) upon the porch
+to watch her departure, could distinguish even the hooked nose no
+longer. Mr. Landale, upon his mettled grey, a gallant figure, as Molly
+herself was forced to admit, in his boots and buckskins, had cantered
+in the dust alongside, intent upon escorting his aged relative to the
+second stage of her journey.
+
+That night, almost for the first time since their arrival, there was
+no company at dinner, and the young guests understood that the
+household would now fall back into its ordinary routine.
+
+But without the small flutter of seeing strangers, or Tanty's lively
+conversation, the social intercourse soon waned into exceeding
+dulness, and at an early hour Miss Molly rose and withdrew to her
+room, pretexting a headache, for which Mr. Landale, with his usual
+high courtesy, affected deep concern.
+
+As she was slowly ascending the great oaken staircase, she crossed
+Moggie, the gatekeeper's daughter, who in her character of
+foster-sister to one of the guests had been specially allotted to them
+as attendant, during the remainder of their visit to Pulwick.
+
+Molly thought that the girl eyed her hesitatingly, as if she wished to
+speak:
+
+"Well, Moggie?" she asked, stopping on her way.
+
+"Oh, please, miss," said the buxom lass, blushing and dropping a
+curtsey, "Renny Potter, please, miss, is up at our lodge to-night, he
+don't care to come to the 'ouse so much, miss. But when he heard about
+you, miss, you could have knocked him down with a feather he was so
+surprised and that excited, miss, we have never seen him so. And he's
+so set on being allowed to see ye both!"
+
+Molly as yet failed to connect any memories of interest with the
+possessor of the patronymic mentioned, but the next phrase mentioned
+aroused her attention.
+
+"He is Sir Adrian's servant, now, miss, and goes back yonder to the
+island, that is where the master lives, to-morrow morning. But he
+would be so happy to see the young ladies before he goes, if the
+liberty were forgiven, he says. He was servant to the Madam your
+mother, miss.
+
+"Well, Moggie," answered Miss Molly, smiling, "if that is all that is
+required to make Renny Potter happy, it is very easily done. Tell
+Renny Potter: to-morrow morning." And she proceeded on her way
+pondering, while the successful emissary pattered down to the lodge in
+high glee to gather her reward in her sweetheart's company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When later on Madeleine joined her sister, she found her standing by
+the deep recessed window, the curtains of which were drawn back,
+resting her head on her hand against the wainscot, and gazing abroad
+into the night.
+
+She approached, and passing her hand round Molly's waist looked out
+also.
+
+"Again at your window?"
+
+"It is a beautiful night, and the view very lovely," said Molly. And
+indeed the moon was riding high in a deep blue starry heaven, and
+shimmered on the strip of distant sea visible from the windows.
+
+"Yes, but yesterday the night was not fine, and nothing was to be seen
+but blackness; and it was the same the day before, and yet you stared
+out of this window, as you have every night since our coming. It is
+strange to see _you_ so. What is it, why don't you tell me?"
+
+"Madeleine," said Molly, suddenly, after a lengthy pause, "I am simply
+_haunted_ by that light over yonder, the Light of Scarthey. There is a
+mystery about those ruins, on which I keep meditating all day long. I
+want to know more. It draws me. I would give anything to be able, now,
+to set sail and land there all unknown to any one, and see what manner
+of life is led where that light is burning."
+
+But Madeleine merely gave a pout of little interest. "What do you
+think you would find? A half-witted middle-aged man, mooning among a
+litter of books, with an old woman, and a little Frenchman to look
+after him. Why, Mr. Landale himself takes no trouble to conceal that
+his poor brother is an almost hopeless lunatic."
+
+"Mr. Landale--" Molly began, with much contempt; but she interrupted
+herself, and went on simply, "Mr. Landale is a very fine gentleman,
+with very superior manners. He speaks like a printed book--but for all
+that I _would_ like to know."
+
+Madeleine laughed. "The demon of curiosity has a hold of you, Molly;
+remember the fable they made us repeat: _De loin c'est quelque chose,
+et de près ce n'est rien._ Now you shall go straight into your bed,
+and not take cold."
+
+And Miss Madeleine, after authoritatively closing the curtains, kissed
+her sister, and was about to commence immediate disrobing, when she
+caught sight of the shagreen-covered book, lying open on the table.
+
+"So your headache was your diary--how I should like to have a peep."
+
+"I daresay!" said Molly, sarcastically, and then sat down and, pen in
+hand, began to re-read her night's entry, now and then casting a
+tantalising glance over her shoulder at her sister. The lines, in the
+flowing convent hand, ran thus:
+
+"Aunt O'Donoghue left us this morning, and so here we are, planted in
+Pulwick; and she has achieved her plan, fully. But what is odd is that
+neither Madeleine nor I seem to mind it, now. What has come over
+Madeleine is her secret, and she keeps it close; but that _I_ should
+like being here is strange indeed.
+
+"And yet, every day something happens to make me feel connected with
+Pulwick--something more, I mean, than the mere fact that we were born
+here. So many of the older people greet me, at first, as if they knew
+me--they all say I am so like 'the Madam;' they don't see the same
+likeness in Madeleine for all her _grand air_. There was Mrs. Mearson,
+the gatekeeper, was struck in amazement. And the old housekeeper,
+whenever she has an opportunity tries to entertain me about the
+beautiful foreign lady and the grand times they had at Pulwick when
+she was here, and 'Sir Tummas' was still alive.
+
+"But, though we are made to feel that we are more than ordinary
+guests, it is not on account of Mr. Landale, but _on account of Sir
+Adrian_--the Master, as they call him, whom we never see, and whom his
+brother would make out to be mad. Why is he so anxious that Sir Adrian
+should not know that Aunt Rose has brought us here? He seemed willing
+enough to please her, and yet nothing that she could say of her wish
+could induce him even to send a messenger over to the rock. And now we
+may be here all these two months and never even have caught a sight of
+the _Master_. I wonder if he is still like that portrait--whether he
+bears that face still as he now sits, all alone, brooding as his
+brother says, up in those ruined chambers, while the light burns calm
+and bright in the tower! What can this man of his have to say to me?"
+
+Molly dotted her last forgotten "i," blotted it, closed and carefully
+locked the book. Then, rising, she danced over to her sister, and
+forced her into a pirouette.
+
+"And now," she cried gaily, "our dear old Tanty is pulling on her
+nightcap and weeping over her posset in the stuffy room at Lancaster
+regretting _me_; and I should be detesting her with all my energies
+for leaving me behind her, were it not that, just at present, I
+actually find Pulwick more interesting than Bath."
+
+Madeleine lifted her heavy-lidded eyes a little wonderingly to her
+sister's face, as she paused in her gyration.
+
+"What fly stings thee now?" she inquired in French.
+
+"You do not tell me about _your_ wounds, my dear, those wounds which
+little Dan Cupid has made upon your tender heart, with his naughty
+little arrow, and which give you such sweet pain, apparently, that you
+revel in the throes all day long. And yet, I am a good child; you
+shall guess. If you guess aright, I shall tell you. So now begin."
+
+They stood before the fire, and the leaping tongues of light played
+upon their white garments, Madeleine's nightgear scarcely more
+treacherously tell-tale of her slender woman's loveliness than the
+evening robe that clung so closely to the vigorous grace of Molly's
+lithe young figure.
+
+The elder, whose face bore a blush distinct from the reflected glow of
+the embers, fell to guessing, as commanded, a little wildly:
+
+"You begin to find the _beau cousin_ Rupert a little more interesting
+than you anticipated."
+
+"Bah," cried Molly, with a stamp of her sandalled foot, "it is not
+possible to guess worse! He is more insufferable to me, hour by hour."
+
+"I think him kind and pleasant," returned Madeleine simply.
+
+"Ah, because he makes sweet eyes at you, I suppose--yet no--I express
+myself badly--he could not make anything sweet out of those hard, hard
+eyes of his, but he is very--what they call here in England--attentive
+to you. And he looks at you and ponders you over when you little think
+it--you poor innocent--lost in your dream of ... _Smith_! There, I
+will not tease you. Guess again."
+
+"You are pleased to remain here because you are a true
+weather-cock--because you like one thing one day another the
+next--because the country peace and quiet is soothing to you after the
+folly and noise of the great world of Bath and Dublin, and reminds you
+refreshingly, as it does me, of our happy convent days." The glimmer
+of a dainty malice lurked in the apparent candour of Madeleine's
+grave blue eyes, and from thence spread into her pretty smile at the
+sight of Molly's disdainful lip, "Well then, I give it up. You have
+some mischief on foot, of that at least I am sure."
+
+"No mischief--a work of righteousness rather. Sister Madeleine, you
+heard all that that gallant gentleman you think so highly of--your
+cousin Rupert, my dear" (it was a little way of Molly's to throw the
+responsibility of anything she did not like, even to an obnoxious
+relationship, upon another person's shoulders), "narrated of his
+brother Sir Adrian, and how he persuaded Tanty that he was, as you
+said just now, a hopeless madman--"
+
+"But yes--he does mad things," said the elder twin, a little
+wonderingly.
+
+"Well, Madeleine, it is a vile lie. I am convinced of it."
+
+"But, my darling----"
+
+"Look here, Madeleine, there is something behind it all. I attacked
+that creature, that rag, you cannot call her a woman, that female
+cousin of yours, Sophia, and I pressed her hard too, but she could not
+give me a single instance about Sir Adrian that is really the least
+like insanity; and last night, when the young fool who escorted me to
+dinner, Coventry his name was, told me that every one says Sir Adrian
+is shut up on the island and that his French servant is really his
+keeper, and that it was a shame Rupert was not the eldest brother, I
+quite saw the sort of story Master Rupert likes to spread--don't
+interrupt, please! When you were wool-gathering over the fire last
+night (in the lively and companionable way, permit me to remark in
+parenthesis, that you have adopted of late), and you thought I was
+with Tanty, I had marched off with my flat candlestick to the picture
+gallery to have a good look at the so-called lunatic. I dragged over a
+chair and lit the candles in the candelabra each side of the
+chimney-piece, and then standing on my perch still, I held up my own
+torch and I saw the sailor really well. I think he has a beautiful
+face and that he is no more mad than I am. But he looks so sad, so
+sad! I longed to make those closed lips part and tell me their secret.
+And, as I was looking and dreaming, my dear, just as you might, I
+heard a little noise, and there was Rupert, only a few yards off,
+surveying me with such an angry gaze--Ugh!" (with a shiver) "I hate
+such ways. He came in upon me with soft steps like some animal. Look
+at his portrait there, Madeleine!--Stay! I shall hold up the light as
+I did last night to Sir Adrian--see, it flickers and glimmers and
+makes him seem as if he were alive--oh, I wish he were not hanging in
+front of our beds, staring out at us with those eyes! You think them
+very fine, I daresay, that is because his lashes are as thick and dark
+as a woman's--but the look in them, my dear--do you know what it
+reminds me of? Of the beautiful, cruel greyhound we saw at the
+coursing at that place near Bunratty (you remember, just before they
+started the hare), when he stood for a moment motionless, looking out
+across the plain. I can never forget the expression of those
+yellow-circled eyes. And, when I see Rupert look at you as if he were
+fixing something in the far distance, it gives me just the feeling of
+horror and sickness I had then. (You remember how dreadful it was?)
+Rupert makes me think of a greyhound, altogether he is so lithe and so
+clean-cut, and so full of eagerness, a sort of trembling eagerness
+underneath his seeming quiet, and I think he could be cruel."
+
+Molly paused with an unusually grave and reflective look; Madeleine
+yawned a little, not at all impressed.
+
+"How you exaggerate!" she said. "Well what happened when he came in
+and caught you? The poor man! I suppose, he thought you were setting
+the house on fire."
+
+"My dear, I turned as red as a poppy and began blowing out all my
+illumination, feeling dreadfully guilty, and then he helped me off my
+chair with such an air of politeness that I could have struck him with
+pleasure, but I soon gathered my wits again. And, vexed with myself
+for being a ninny, I just dropped him a little curtsey and said, 'I've
+been examining my mad cousin.' 'Well, and what do you think of him?'
+he asked me, smiling (his abominable smile!). But I can keep my
+thoughts to myself as well as other people. 'I think he is very
+handsome,' I answered, and then I wagged my head and added, 'Poor
+fellow,' just as if I thought he was really mad. 'Poor fellow!' said
+cousin Rupert, still with his smile. Whereupon we interchanged
+good-nights, and he ceremoniously reconducted me to my door. What was
+he spying after me for, like that? My dear, your cousin has a bad
+conscience.--But I can spy too--I have been questioning the servants
+to-day, and some of the people on the estate."
+
+"Oh, Molly!"
+
+"Come, don't be so shocked. It was diplomatically, of course, but I am
+determined to find out the truth. Well, so far from looking upon Sir
+Adrian as a lunatic, they all adore him, it seems to me. He comes here
+periodically--once every three months or so--and it is like the King's
+Justices, you know--St. Louis of France--he redresses all wrongs, and
+listens to grievances and gives alms and counsel, and every one can
+come with his story, down to the poorest wretch on the estate, and
+they certainly gave me to understand that they would fare pretty
+hardly under Mr. Landale if it were not for that mild beneficent
+restraining influence in his tower yonder. It is very romantic, do you
+know (you like romance, Madeleine). I wonder if Sir Adrian will come
+over while we are here. Oh, I hope, I hope he will. I shall never rest
+till I have seen him."
+
+"Silly child," said Madeleine, "and so that is the reason you are glad
+to remain here?"
+
+"Even so, my dear," answered the other, skipped into the big four-post
+bed, carefully ascertained and selected the softest pillow, and then,
+smiling sweetly at her sister from under a frame of dark curls, let
+her white lids drop over the lustre of her eyes and so intimated she
+desired to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE TOWER OF LIVERPOOL: MASTER AND MAN
+
+    A prison is a house of care,
+    A place where none can thrive,
+    A Touchstone True to try a friend,
+    A Grave for man alive.
+    Sometimes a place of right,
+    Sometimes a place of wrong,
+    Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves,
+    And honest men among.
+
+    _Old Inscription._
+
+It was soon after sunrise--at that time of year an hour not
+exorbitantly early--when Molly awoke from a tangle of fantastic dreams
+in which the haunting figure of her waking thoughts, the hermit of
+Scarthey, appeared to her in varied shapes; as an awe-inspiring,
+saintly ascetic with long, white hair; as a young, beautiful,
+imprisoned prince; even as a ragged imbecile staring vacantly at a
+lantern, somewhere in a dismal sea-cave.
+
+The last vision was uppermost in her mind when she opened her eyes;
+and the girl, under the impression of so disgusting a disillusion,
+remained for a while pondering and yawning, before making up her mind
+to exchange warmth and featherbed for her appointment without.
+
+But the shafts of light growing through the chinks in the shutters
+ever brighter and more full of dancing motes, decided her.
+
+"A beautiful morning, Madeleine," she said, leaning over and pulling
+one of the long fair strands upon her neighbour's pillow with sisterly
+authority. "Get up, lazy-bones, and come and have a walk with me
+before breakfast."
+
+The sleeping sister awoke, smiled with her usual exquisite serenity of
+temper, and politely refused. Molly insisted, threatened, coaxed, but
+to no avail. Madeleine was luxuriously comfortable, and was not to be
+disturbed either mentally or bodily; and Molly, aware of the resisting
+power of will hidden under that soft exterior, at length petulantly
+desisted; and wrapped up in furs, with hands plunged deep into the
+recesses of a gigantic muff, soon sallied forth herself alone into the
+park.
+
+Half-way down the avenue she met blue-eyed Moggie with round face
+shining out of the sharp, exhilarating atmosphere like a small sun.
+The damsel was overcome with blushes and rapture at her young
+mistress's unexpected promptitude in carrying out her promise, and ran
+back to warn her sweetheart of that lady's approach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Molly drew near the keeper's lodge--a sort of Doric temple,
+quaintly standing in the middle of a hedge-enclosed garden, and
+half-buried under thickly-clustering, interlacing creepers--from the
+side of the enormous nest of evergreen foliage there emerged, in a
+state of high excitement strenuously subdued, a short, square-built
+man (none other than René L'Apôtre), whilst between the boughs of the
+garden-hedge peeped forth the bashful, ruddy face of the lady of his
+fancy, eager to watch the interview.
+
+René ran forward, then stopped a few paces away, hat in hand, scraping
+and bowing in the throes of an overwhelming emotion that strove hard
+with humility.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!" he ejaculated between spells of
+amazed staring, and seemed unable to bring forth another word.
+
+"And so you have known my mother, René," said Miss Molly (in her
+native tongue) with a smile.
+
+At the sound of the voice and of the French words, René's face grew
+pale under its bronze, and the tears he had so strongly combated,
+glistened in his eyes.
+
+"If I had not heard last night," he said at length, "that these ladies
+had come back--it was Moggie Mearson who told me, who was foster
+sister to you, or was it Mademoiselle your sister? and proud she is of
+it--if I had not known that the young ladies were here again, when I
+saw Mademoiselle I would have thought that my lady herself had
+returned to us (may the good God have her soul!). Ah, to think that I
+should ever see her again in the light of the sun!"
+
+He stopped, suffocated with the sob that his respect would not allow
+him to utter.
+
+But Molly, who had had other objects in view when she rose from her
+couch this cold, windy morning, than to present an objective to a
+serving-man's emotion, now thought the situation had lasted long
+enough for her enjoyment and determined to put an end to it.
+
+"Eh bien, René," she said gaily, "or should I call you Monsieur
+Potter? which, by the way, is a droll name for a Frenchman, I am very
+glad to see that you are pleased to see me. If you would care to have
+some talk with me you may attend me if you like. But I freeze standing
+here," stamping her feet one after the other on the hard ground. "I
+must absolutely walk; and you may put on your hat again, please; for
+it is very cold for you too," she added, snuggling into her muff and
+under her fur tippet.
+
+The man obeyed after another of his quaint salutes, and as Molly
+started forward, followed her respectfully, a pace in rear.
+
+"I daresay you will not be sorry to have a little talk with a
+compatriot in your own tongue, all English as you may have grown,"
+said the young lady presently; "and as Moggie has told me that you
+were in my mother's service, there is a whole volume of things which,
+I believe, you alone can relate to me. You shall tell me all that, one
+day. But what seems to me the most curious, first of all, is your
+presence here. We ourselves are only at Pulwick by chance."
+
+"Mademoiselle," said René in an earnest voice, "if you knew the whole
+story, you would soon understand that, since it was not to be, that I
+should remain the humble servitor of Monseigneur le Comte de Savenaye,
+Mademoiselle's father, or of Madame, who followed him to heaven,
+notwithstanding all our efforts to preserve her, it is but natural
+that I should attach myself (since he would allow it) to my present
+master."
+
+"Mr. Landale?" asked Molly, affecting ignorance.
+
+"No, Mademoiselle," cried the Frenchman, hotly. "My master is Sir
+Adrian. Had Mr. Landale remained the lord of this place, I should have
+been left to die in my prison--or at least have remained there until
+this spring, for it seems there is peace again, and the Tower of
+Liverpool is empty now."
+
+"_Voyons, voyons, conte moi cela_, René," said Molly, turning her
+face, beautifully glowing from the caress of the keen air, eagerly to
+her companion. And he, nothing loth to let loose a naturally garrulous
+tongue in such company, and on such a theme, started off upon a long
+story illustrated by rapid gesticulation.
+
+"I will tell you," cried he, and plunged into explanation with more
+energy than coherence, "it was like this:
+
+"I had been already two years in that prison; we were some hundreds of
+prisoners, and it was a cruel place. A cruel place, Mademoiselle,
+almost as bad as that where we were shut up, my master and I together,
+years before, at La Rochelle--and that I will tell you, if you wish,
+afterwards.
+
+"I had been taken by the marine conscription, when their Republic
+became the French Empire. And a sailor I was then (just, as I heard
+later, as Sir Adrian also was at the time; but that I did not know,
+you understand), for they took all those that lived on the coast. Now
+I had only served with the ship six months, when she was taken by the
+English, and, as I say, we were sent to the prison in Liverpool, where
+we found so many others, who had been already there for years. When I
+heard it was Liverpool, I knew it was a place near Pulwick, and I at
+once thought of Mr. Landale, not him, of course, they _now_ call Mr.
+Landale, but him who had followed my mistress, Madame your mother, to
+help to fight the Republicans in the old time. And I thought I was
+saved: I knew he would get me out if it was possible to get any one
+out. For, you see, I thought his honour was home again, after we had
+been beaten, and there was no more to be done for my lady. We had
+contrived to find an English ship to take him home, and he had gone
+back, as I thought, Mademoiselle. Well, a prisoner becomes cunning,
+and besides, I had been in prison before; I managed to make up a
+letter, and as I knew already some English, I ended by persuading a
+man to carry it to Pulwick for me. It was a long way, and I had no
+money, but I made bold to assure him that Mr. Landale--oh, no! not
+_this_ one," René interrupted himself again with a gesture eloquent of
+resentful scorn, "but my master; I assured the man that he would
+receive recompence from him. You see, Mademoiselle, I knew his heart
+was so good, that he would not allow your mother's servant to rot in
+the tower.... But days afterwards the man came back. Oh, he was angry!
+terribly angry with me, and said he should pay me out--And so he did,
+but it is useless to tell you how. He had been to Pulwick, he said,
+and had seen Mr. Landale. Mr. Landale never knew anything of any
+French prisoner, and refused to give any money to the messenger. Ah,
+Mademoiselle, it was very sad! I had not signed my letter for fear of
+its getting into wrong hands, but I spoke of many things which I knew
+he could not have forgotten, and now I thought that he would not
+trouble his mind about such a wretch as René--triple brute that I was
+to conceive such thoughts, I should have deserved to remain there for
+ever!... I did remain, Mademoiselle, more than three years; many and
+many died. As for me, I am hard, but I thought I should never never
+walk free again; nor would I, Mademoiselle, these seven years, but for
+him."
+
+"He came, then?" said the girl with sympathetic enthusiasm. She was
+listening with attention, carried away by the speaker's earnestness,
+and knew instinctively to whom the "him," and the "he" referred.
+
+"He came," said René with much emphasis. "Of course he came--the
+moment he knew." And after a moment of half-smiling meditation he
+pursued:
+
+"It was one May-day, and there was some sun; and there was a smell of
+spring in the air which we felt even in that dirty place. Ah, how I
+remember me of it all! I was sitting against the wall in the courtyard
+with two others who were Bretons, like you and me, Mademoiselle,
+shifting with the sun now and then, for you must know a prisoner loves
+the sun above all; and there, we only had it a few hours in the day,
+even when it did shine. I was carving some stick-heads, and
+bread-plates in wood--the only thing I could do to put a little more
+than bread, into our own platters," with a grin, "and whistling,
+whistling, for if you can't be gay, it is best to play at it.... Well,
+that day into our courtyard there was shown a tall man--and I knew him
+at once, though he was different enough in his fine coat, and hat and
+boots, from the time when I had last seen him, when he was like me, in
+rags and with a woollen cap on his head, and no stockings under his
+shoes--I knew him at once! And when I saw him I stood still, with my
+mouth round, but not whistling more. My blood went phizz, phizz, all
+over my body, and suddenly something said in my head: 'René, he has
+come to look for you.' He was searching for some one, for he went
+round with the guardian looking into each man's face, and giving money
+to all who begged--and seeing that, they all got up, and surrounded
+him, and he gave them each a piece. But I could not get up; it was as
+if some one had cut out my knees and my elbows. And that was how he
+saw me the sooner. He noticed I remained there, looking at him like a
+dog, saying nothing. When he saw me, he stood a moment quite quiet;
+and without pretending anything he came to me and looked down
+smiling.--'But if I am not mistaken I know this man,' he said to the
+guardian, pretending to be astonished. 'Why, this is René L'Apôtre?
+Who would have thought of seeing you here, René L'Apôtre?' says he.
+And then he smiled again, as much as to say, 'You see I have come at
+last, René.' And once more, as if to explain: 'I have only lately come
+back to England,' in a gentle way, all full of meaning.... I don't
+know what took me, but I cried like an infant, in my cap. And the
+guardian and some of the others laughed, but when I looked up again,
+his eyes shone also. He looked so good, so kind, Mademoiselle, that it
+was as if I understood in words all he meant, but thought better not
+to say at the time. Then he spoke to the guardian, who shook his head
+doubtfully. And after saying, 'Have good courage, René L'Apôtre,' and
+giving me the rest of his money, he went away--but I knew I was not
+forgotten, and I was so happy that the black, black walls were no more
+black. And I sang, not for pretence this time, ah no! and I spent all
+my money in buying a dinner for those at our end of the prison, and we
+even had wine! You may be sure we drank to his happiness."
+
+Here the man, carried away by his feelings, seized his hat and waved
+it in the air. Then, ashamed of his ebullition, halted and glanced
+diffidently at the young lady. But Molly only smiled in encouragement.
+
+"Well, and then?" she asked.
+
+"Well, Mademoiselle," he resumed, "it was long before I saw him again;
+but I kept good courage, as I was told. One day, at last, the guardian
+came to fetch me and took me to the governor's cabinet; and my master
+was there--I was told that my release had been obtained, though not
+without trouble, and that Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory, had
+gone warranty for me that I should not use my liberty to the prejudice
+of His Majesty, the King of England, and that I was to be grateful to
+Sir Adrian. I almost laughed at him, Mademoiselle. Oh! he took care to
+advise me to be grateful!" And here René paused ironically, but there
+was a quiver on his lips. "Ah, he little knew, Monsieur the Governor,
+that when my master had taken me to an inn, and the door was closed
+over the private room, he who had looked so grand and careless before
+the governor, took me by both hands and then, in his fine clothes,
+embraced me--me the dirty prisoner--just as he did when he left me in
+the old days, and was as poor and ragged as I was! And let me weep
+there on his breast, for I had to weep or my heart would have broken.
+But I wander, Mademoiselle, you only wanted to know how I came to be
+in his service still. That is how it was; as I tell you."
+
+Molly was moved by this artless account of fidelity and gratitude, and
+as she walked on in attentive silence, René went on:
+
+"It was then his honour made me know how, only by accident, and months
+after his own return, he chanced to hear of the letter that some one
+had sent to Mr. Landale from the Tower of Liverpool, and that Mr.
+Landale had said he knew nothing of any French prisoner and had
+thought it great impudence indeed. And how he--my master--had suddenly
+thought (though my letter had been destroyed) that it might be from
+me, the servant of my lady your mother, and his old companion in arms
+(for his honour will always call me so). He could not sleep, he told
+me, till he had found out. He started for Liverpool that very night.
+And, having discovered that it was me, Mademoiselle, he never rested
+till he had obtained my liberty."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Walking slowly in the winter sunshine, the one talking volubly, the
+other intently listening, the odd pair had reached a rising knoll in
+the park where, under the shelter of a cluster of firs, stood a row of
+carved stone seats that had once been sedillas in the dismantled
+Priory Church.
+
+From this secluded spot could be obtained the most superb view of the
+whole country-side. At the end of the green, gently-sloping stretch of
+pasture-land, which extended, broken only by irregular clusters of
+trees, down to the low cliffs forming the boundary of the strand, lay
+the wide expanse of brown sand, with its streamlets and salt pools
+scintillating under the morning sun.
+
+Further in the western horizon, a crescent of deep blue sea, sharply
+defined under a lighter blue sky and fringed landwards with a
+straggling border of foam, advanced slowly to the daily conquest of
+the golden bay. In the midst of that frame the eye was irresistibly
+drawn, as to the chief object in the picture, to the distant rock of
+Scarthey--a green patch, with the jagged red outline of the ruins
+clear cut against the sky.
+
+Since this point of view in the park had been made known to her, on
+the first day when she was piloted through the grounds, Molly had more
+than once found her way to the sedillas, yielding to the fascination
+of the mysterious island, and in order to indulge in the fancies
+suggested by its ever-changing aspect.
+
+At the fall of day the red glow of the sinking sun would glint through
+the dismantled windows; and against the flaming sky the ruins would
+stand out black and grim, suggesting nought but abandonment and
+desolation until suddenly, as the gloom gathered upon the bay, the
+light of the lamp springing to the beacon tower, would reverse the
+impression and bring to mind a picture of faithful and patient
+watching.
+
+When the sun was still in the ascendant, the island would be green and
+fresh to the gaze, evoking no dismal impression; and as the rays
+glanced back from the two or three glazed windows, and from the roofed
+beacon-tower, the little estate wore a look of solid security and
+privacy in spite of its crumbling walls, which was almost as
+tantalising to her romantic curiosity.
+
+It was with ulterior motives, therefore, that she had again wended her
+way to the knoll this sunny, breezy morning. She now sat down and let
+her eyes wander over the wide panorama, whilst René stood at a humble
+distance, looking with eyes of delight from her to the distant abode
+of his master.
+
+"And now you live with Sir Adrian, in that little isle yonder," said
+she, at length. "How came it that you never sought to go back to your
+country?"
+
+"There was the war then, Mademoiselle, and it was difficult to
+return."
+
+"But there has been peace these six months," insisted Molly.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, though I only learned it yesterday. But then, bah!
+What is that? His honour needs me. I have stopped with him seven
+years, and my faith, I shall stop with him for ever."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Does any one know," asked Molly, at length, with a vague air of
+addressing the trees, mindful, as she spoke, of the manner in which
+Mr. Landale had practically dismissed her and her sister at a certain
+point of his version of his brother's history, "_why_ Sir Adrian has
+shut himself up in that place instead of living at the Hall all this
+time?"
+
+A certain dignity seemed to come over the servant's squat figure. He
+hesitated for a moment, and then said very simply, his honest eyes
+fixed upon the girl's face: "I am only his humble servant,
+Mademoiselle, and it is enough for me that it is his pleasure to live
+alone."
+
+"You are indeed faithful," said Molly, with a little generous flush of
+shame at this peasant's delicacy compared to her own curiosity. And,
+after another pause, she added, pensively: "But tell me, does Sir
+Adrian never leave his solitude? I confess I should like to meet one
+who had known my mother, who could talk of her to me."
+
+René looked at the young girl with a wistful countenance, as though
+the question had embarked him on a new train of thought. But he
+answered evasively: "His honour comes rarely to Pulwick--rarely."
+
+Molly, with a little movement of pique, rose abruptly from her seat.
+But quickly changing her mood again she turned round as she was about
+to depart, and smiling: "Thank you, René," she said, and held out her
+dainty hand, which he, blushing, engulfed in his great paw, "I am
+going in, I am dreadfully hungry. We shall be here two months or more,
+and I shall want to see you again ... if you come back to Pulwick."
+
+She walked quickly away towards the house. René followed the
+retreating figure with a meditative look, so long as he could keep her
+in sight, then turned his gaze to the island and there stood lost in a
+deep muse, regardless of the fact that his sweetheart, Moggie, was
+awaiting a parting interview at the lodge, and that the tide that
+would wait for no man was swelling under his boat upon the beach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden resolution was formed in Molly's mind as the immediate result
+of this conversation, and she framed her behaviour that morning solely
+with a view to its furtherance.
+
+Breakfast was over when, glowing from her morning walk, she entered
+the dining-room; but, regardless of Mr. Landale's pointedly elaborate
+courtesy in insisting upon a fresh repast being brought to her, his
+sarcastically overacted solicitude, intended to point out what a deal
+of avoidable trouble she gave to the household, Molly remained
+perfectly gracious, and ate the good things, plaintively set before
+her by Miss Landale, with the most perfect appetite and good humour.
+
+She expatiated in terms of enthusiasm on the beauty of the estate and
+the delight of her morning exploration, and concluded this
+condescending account of her doings (in which the meeting with René
+did not figure) with a request that Mr. Landale should put horses at
+the disposal of herself and her sister for a riding excursion that
+very afternoon. And with determined energy she carried the point,
+declaring, despite his prognostications of coming bad weather, that
+the sunshine would last the day.
+
+In this wise was brought about the eventful ride which cost the life
+of Lucifer, and introduced such heart-stirring phantasmagories into
+the even tenor of Sir Adrian Landale's seclusion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening the news rapidly spread throughout Pulwick that the cruel
+sands of the bay had secured yet another victim.
+
+In an almost fainting condition, speechless with horror, and hardly
+able yet to realise to the full her own anguish, Madeleine was
+conducted by the terrified groom, through the howling wind and
+drenching rain, back to the Priory.
+
+And there, between the fearful outcries of Miss Landale, and the deep
+frowning gravity of her brother, the man stammered out his tale.--How
+the young lady when the rain first began, had insisted,
+notwithstanding his remonstrances, upon taking the causeway to the
+island, and how it was actually by force that he prevented the other
+lady from following so soon as she understood the danger into which
+her sister was running.
+
+There was no use, he had thought (explained the man, half
+apologetically), for two more to throw away their lives, just for no
+good, that way. And so they had sat on their horses and watched in
+terror, as well as they could through the torrents of rain. They had
+seen in the distance Lucifer break from the young lady's control, and
+swerve from the advancing sea. And then had come the great gust that
+blew the rain and the sand in their faces and set their horses
+dancing; and, when they could see again, all traces of horse and rider
+had disappeared, and there lay nothing before them but the advancing
+tide, though the island and its tower were still just visible through
+the storm.
+
+No amount of cross-examination could elicit any further information.
+The girl's impulse seemed to have been quite sudden, and she had only
+laughed back at the groom over her shoulder upon his earnest shout of
+warning, though she had probably expected them to follow her. And as
+there could be no doubt about the calamity which had ensued, and no
+possible rescue even of the body, he had returned home at once to
+bring the disastrous news.
+
+Madeleine had been carried completely unconscious to her bed, but
+presently Miss Sophia was summoned to her side as the girl showed
+signs of returning animation, and Rupert was left alone.
+
+He fell to pacing the room, lost in a labyrinth of complicated and
+far-reaching reflections.
+
+Beyond doubt he was shocked and distressed by the sudden and horrible
+disaster; and yet as an undercurrent to these first natural thoughts,
+there ran presently a distinct notion that he would have felt the
+grievousness of it more keenly had Madeleine perished in that cruel
+manner and her sister survived to bring the tale home.
+
+The antagonism which his cousin, in all the insolence of her young
+beauty and vigorous self-esteem, had shown for him had been mutual. He
+had instinctively felt that she was an enemy, and more than that--a
+danger to him. This danger was now removed from his path, and by no
+intervention or even desire of his own.
+
+The calamity which had struck the remaining sister into such
+prostration would make her rich indeed; by anticipation one of the
+great heiresses in England.
+
+"Sorrow," thought Mr. Landale, and his lip curled disdainfully, "a
+girl's sorrow, at least, is a passing thing. Wealth is an everlasting
+benefit."
+
+Madeleine was a desirable woman upon all counts, even pecuniary
+considerations apart, or would be to one who had a heart to give--and
+even if the heart was dead...?
+
+Altogether the sum of his meditations was assuming a not unpleasing
+aspect; and the undercurrent in time assumed almost the nature of
+self-congratulation. Even the ordeal which was yet to come when he
+would have to face Miss O'Donoghue and render an account of his short
+trust, could not weigh the balance down on the wrong side.
+
+And yet a terrible ordeal it would be; women are so unreasonable, and
+Aunt Rose so much more so even than the average woman. Still it had to
+be done; the sooner the better; if possible while the storm lasted and
+while roaring waters kept all ill news upon land and the interloping
+heir on his island.
+
+And thus that very evening, whilst Madeleine sobbed on her pillow and
+Molly was snugly enjoying the warm hospitality of Scarthey, a mounted
+messenger departed from the Priory to overtake Miss O'Donoghue on the
+road to Bath and acquaint her with the terrible fatality that had
+befallen her darling and favourite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+UNDER THE LIGHT
+
+
+DECEMBER 16TH.--Again I separate your green boards, my diary. No one
+has opened you; for your key, now a little rusty, still hangs upon my
+watch--my poor watch whose heart has ceased to beat, who, unlike its
+mistress, has _not_ survived the ordeal by sand and water! What is
+better, no one has attempted to force your secrets from you; which,
+since it appears that it had been agreed that Molly de Savenaye was
+dead and buried in Scarthey sands, speaks well for all concerned. But
+she is not dead. She is very much alive; and very happy to be so.
+
+This will indeed be an adventure worth reading, in the days to come;
+and it must be recounted--though were I to live to a hundred years I
+do not think I could ever forget it. Tanty Rose (she has not yet
+stopped scolding everybody for the fright she has had) is in the next
+room with Madeleine, who, poor dear, has been made quite ill by this
+prank of mine; but since after the distress caused by her Molly's
+death she has had the joy of finding her Molly alive again, things are
+balanced, I take it; and all being well that ends well, the whole
+affair is pleasant to remember. It has been actually as interesting as
+I expected--now that I think it over--even more.
+
+Of all the many pictures that I fancied, not one was at all like the
+reality--and this reality I could not have rested till I had found. It
+was René's account decided me. I laid my plans very neatly to pay the
+recluse a little visit, and plead necessity for the intrusion. My
+machinations would have been perfect if they had not caused Madeleine
+and poor old Tanty unnecessary grief.
+
+But now that I know the truth, I cannot distinctly remember what it
+was that I _did_ expect to find on that island.
+
+If it had not been that I had already gone through more excitement
+than I bargained for to reach that mysterious rock, how exciting I
+should have found it to wander up to unknown ruins, to knock at the
+closed doors of an enchanted castle, ascend unknown stairs and engage
+in devious unknown passages--all the while on the tiptoe of
+expectation!
+
+But when I dragged myself giddy and faint from the boiling breakers
+and scrambled upon the desolate island under the rain that beat me
+like the lashes of a whip, pushing against a wind that bellowed and
+rushed as though determined to thrust me back to the waters I had
+cheated of their prey, my only thoughts were for succour and shelter.
+
+Such warm shelter, such loving welcome, it was of course impossible
+that I could for a moment have anticipated!
+
+Conceive, my dear diary, the feelings of a poor, semi-drowned
+wanderer, shivering with cold, with feet torn by cruel stones, who
+suddenly emerges from howl and turmoil into a warm, quiet room to be
+received as a long and eagerly expected guest, whose advent brings
+happiness, whose presence is a highly prized favour; in fact not as
+one who has to explain her intrusion, but as one who in the situation
+holds the upper hand herself.
+
+And _this_ was my welcome from him whose absence from Pulwick was more
+haunting than any presence I can think of!
+
+Of course I knew him at once. Even had I not expected to see him--had
+I not come to seek him in fact--I should have known him at once from
+the portrait whose melancholy, wide-open eyes had followed me about
+the gallery. But I had not dreamed to see him so little altered. Now,
+apart from the dress, if he is in any way changed from the picture, it
+is in a look of greater youth and less sombreness. The portrait is
+handsome, but the original is better.
+
+Had it not been so, I imagine I might have felt vastly different when
+I was seized and enfolded and--kissed! As it was I cannot remember
+that, even at the moment of this extraordinary proceeding, I was
+otherwise than pleased, nor that the dark hints of Mr. Landale
+concerning Sir Adrian's madness returned to disturb my mind in the
+least.
+
+And yet I found myself enveloped in great strong arms out of which I
+could not have extricated myself by the most frantic efforts--although
+the folding was soft and tender--and I loved that impression. Why? I
+cannot say.
+
+His words of love were not addressed to me; from his exclamation I
+knew that the real and present Molly was not the true object of his
+sudden ecstasy.
+
+And yet I am glad that this is the first man who has been able to kiss
+Molly de Savenaye. It is quite incomprehensible; I ought to be
+indignant.
+
+Now the whole secret of my reception is plain to see, and it is
+pathetic; Sir Adrian Landale was in love with my mother; when she was
+an unprotected widow he followed her to our own country; if she had
+not died soon after, he would have married her.
+
+What a true knight must this Sir Adrian be, to keep so fresh for
+twenty years the remembrance of his boyish love that when I came in
+upon him to look at him with _her_ eyes, it was to find him pondering
+upon her, and to fill his soul with the rapturous thought that his
+love had come back to him. Though I was aware that all this fervour
+was not addressed to me, there was something very gratifying in being
+so like one who could inspire such long-lived passion.--Yes, it was
+unexpectedly pleasant and comforting to be so received. And the tender
+care, the thoughtful solicitude next bestowed on the limp and
+dishevelled waif of the sea by my _beau ténébreux_ were unmistakably
+meant for Molly and no one else, whatever his first imaginings may
+have been, and they were quite as interesting to receive.
+
+The half-hour I spent, cosily ensconced by his hands, and waited upon
+by his queer household, was perhaps the best I have ever known. He
+stood by the fireplace, looking down from his great height, with a
+wondering smile upon me. I declare that the loving kindness of his
+eyes, which he has wide, grey, and beautiful, warmed me as much as the
+pyramid of logs he had set burning on the hearth!
+
+I took a good reckoning of the man, from under the gigantic collar, in
+which, I felt, my head rested like a little egg at the bottom of a
+warm nest. "And so," I thought, "here is the Light-keeper of Scarthey
+Island!" And I was obliged to confess that he was a more
+romantic-looking person than even in my wildest dreams I had pictured
+to myself--that in fact I had found out for the first time _the man_
+really approved of.
+
+And I congratulated myself on my own cleverness--for it was evident
+that, just as I had suspected from René's reticent manner, even by him
+our existence at Pulwick had not been mentioned to "the master."
+
+And as Mr. Landale was quite determined to avail himself of his
+brother's _sauvagerie_ not to let him know anything about us, on his
+side, but for me we might have remained at and departed from Pulwick
+unknown to the head of the house! And what a pity that would have
+been!
+
+Now, _why_ did not Mr. Landale wish his brother to know? Did he think
+(as indeed has happened) that the Light-keeper would take too kindly
+to the Savenaye children? Or to one of them? If so, he will be _bien
+attrappé_, for there is no doubt that my sudden and dramatic arrival
+upon his especial domain has made an impression on him that no meeting
+prepared and discussed beforehand could have produced.
+
+Adrian Landale may have been in love with our beautiful mamma in his
+boyish days, but now, Sir Adrian, the _man_ is in love with the
+beautiful Molly!
+
+That is positive.
+
+I was a long time before I could go to sleep in the tower; it was too
+perfect to be in bed in such a place, safe and happy in the midst of
+the rage I could hear outside; to have seen the unknown, to have found
+him such as he is--to be under _the Light_!
+
+What would have happened if my cousin had really been mad (and René
+his keeper, as that stupid country-side wit suggested in my ear the
+other night at dinner)? It would have been still more of an adventure
+of course, but not one which even "Murthering Moll the Second" can
+regret. Or if he had been a dirty, untidy hermit, as Madeleine
+thought? That would have spoilt all.
+
+Thus in the owl's nest, as Mr. Landale (spiteful creature!) called it
+to Tanty, there lives not owl any more than lunatic. A polished
+gentleman, with white, exquisite hands, who, when he is discovered by
+the most unexpected of visitors, is shaven as smooth as Rupert
+himself; has the most unexceptionable of snowy linen and
+old-fashioned, it is true, but most well-fitting clothes.
+
+As for the entertainment for the said casual visitor, not even Pulwick
+with all its resources (where housekeeping, between the fussy brother
+and the docile sister is a complicated science) could have produced
+more real comfort.
+
+In the morning, when I woke late (it was broad daylight), feeling as
+if I had been beaten and passed through a mangle, for there was not an
+inch of my poor body that was not sore, I had not turned round and so
+given sign of life, before I heard a whisper outside my door; then
+comes a sturdy knock and in walks old Margery, still dignified as a
+queen's housekeeper, bearing a bowl of warm frothy milk.
+
+And this being gratefully drunk by me, she gravely inquires, in her
+queer provincial accent, how I am this morn; and then goes to report
+to some anxious inquirer (whom?--I can easily guess) that with the
+exception of my cut foot I am very well.
+
+Presently she returns and lights a blazing fire. Then in come my dress
+and linen and my one shoe, all cleaned, dried and mended, only my poor
+habit is so torn and so stiff that I have to put up with Margery's
+best striped skirt in lieu of it, till she has time to mend and wash
+it. As it is she must have been at work all night upon these repairs
+for me.
+
+Again she goes out--for another consultation, I suppose--and comes
+back to find me half clad, hopping about the room; this time she has
+got nice white linen bandages and with them ties up my little foot,
+partly for the cuts, partly for want of a sandal, till it is twice the
+size of its companion. But I can walk on it.
+
+Then my strange handmaid--who by the way is a droll, grumbling old
+soul, and orders me about as if she were still my nurse--dresses me
+and combs my hair, which will not yet awhile be rid of all its sand.
+And so, in due course, Molly emerges from her bower, as well tended
+almost as she might have been at Bath, except that Margery's striped
+skirt is a deal too short for her and she displays a little more of
+one very nice ankle and one gouty foot than fashion warrants.
+
+And in this manner the guest goes to meet her host in the great room.
+
+He was walking up and down as if impatiently expecting me, and when I
+hobbled in, he came forward with a smile on his face which, once more,
+I thought beautiful.
+
+"God be praised!" he said, taking both my hands and kissing one of
+them, with his fine air of gallantry which was all the more delightful
+on account of his evident earnestness, "you seem none the worse for
+this terrible adventure. I dreaded this morning to hear that you were
+in a fever. You know," he added so seriously that I had to smile, "you
+might easily have had a fever from this yesterday's work; and what
+should we have done without doctor and medicines!"
+
+"You have a good surgeon, at least," said I laughing and pointing at
+my swaddled extremity. He laughed too at the _enmitouflage_. "I tried
+to explain how it was to be done," he said, "but I think I could have
+managed it more neatly myself."
+
+Then he helped me to the arm-chair, and René came in, and, after a
+profound bow (which did not preclude much staring and smiling at me
+afterwards), laid, on a dazzling tablecloth, a most tempting
+breakfast, explaining the while, in his odd English, "The bread is
+stale, for we bake only twice a month. But there are some cakes hot
+from the fire, some eggs, new laid last evening, some fresh milk, some
+tea. It was a happy thing I arrived yesterday for there was no more
+tea. The butter wants, but Mistress Margery will have some made
+to-morrow, so that the demoiselle will not leave without having tasted
+our Scarthey butter."
+
+All the while Sir Adrian looked on with a sort of dreamy smile--a
+happy smile!
+
+"Poor René!" he said, when the man had left the room, "one would think
+that you have brought to him almost as much joy as to me."
+
+I wondered what Mr. Landale would have said had he through some magic
+glass been able to see this little feast. I never enjoyed a meal more.
+As for my host, he hardly touched anything, but, I could see, was all
+absorbed in the delight of looking at me; and this he showed quite
+openly in the most child-like manner.
+
+Not one of the many fine gentlemen it has been my fate to meet in my
+six months' apprenticeship to the "great world," not cousin Rupert
+himself with all his elaborate politeness (and Rupert has de _grandes
+manières_, as Tanty says), could have played the host with a more
+exquisite courtesy, and more true hospitality. So I thought, at least.
+Now and again, it is true, while his eyes were fixed on me, I would
+see how the soul behind them was away, far in the past, and then at a
+word, even at a movement, back it would come to me, with the tenderest
+softening I have ever seen upon a human face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was only at the end of breakfast that he suddenly adverted to the
+previous day.
+
+"Of course," he said, hesitatingly, but keeping a frank gaze on mine,
+"you must have thought me demented when--when you first entered,
+yesterday."
+
+Now, I had anticipated this apology as inevitable, and I was prepared
+to put him at his ease.
+
+"I----? Not at all," I said quite gravely; and, seeing the puzzled
+expression that came upon his face, I hastened to add in lower tones:
+"I know I am very like my mother, and it was her name you called out
+upon seeing me." And then I stopped, as if that had explained
+everything.
+
+He looked at me with a wondering air, and fell again into a muse.
+After a while he said, with his great simplicity which seems somehow
+in him the last touch of the most perfect breeding: "Yes, such an
+apparition was enough to unhinge any one's mind for the moment. You
+never knew her, child, and therefore never mourned her death. But
+we--that is, René and I, who tried so hard to save her--though it is
+so long ago, we have not forgotten."
+
+It was then I asked him to tell me about the mother I had never known.
+At first it was as if he could not; he fell into a great silence,
+through which I could feel the working of his old sorrow. So then I
+said to him quickly, for I feared he thought me an indiscreet
+trespasser upon sacred ground, that he must remember my right to know
+more than the vague accounts I had been given of my mother's history.
+
+"No one will tell me of her," I said. "It is hard, for I am her own
+daughter."
+
+"It is wrong," he said very gently; "you ought to know, for you are
+indeed, most verily, her own daughter."
+
+And then by fragments he tried to tell me a little of her beauty, her
+loving heart, her faithfulness and bravery. At first it was with
+great tripping sighs as if the words hurt him, but by and by it came
+easier, and with his eyes fixed wistfully on me he took me, as it
+were, by his side through all their marvellous adventures.
+
+And thus I heard the stirring story of the "Savenaye band," and I felt
+prouder of my race than I had ever been before. Hitherto, being a
+Savenaye only meant the pride our aunt tried to instil into us of
+being undeniably _biennées_ and connected with numbers of great
+families. But the tale of the deeds mine had done for the King's
+cause, and especially the achievements of my own mother in starting
+such an expedition after my father's death, and following its fortunes
+to the bitter end, made my blood tingle with a new emotion.
+
+Little wonder that Sir Adrian should have devoted his life to her
+service. How madly enthralled I should have been, being a man, and
+free and strong, by the presence of a woman such as my mother. I, too,
+would have prostrated myself to worship her image returning to
+life--and I am that living, living portrait!
+
+When he came to the story of her death, he hesitated and finally
+stopped. It must have been horrible. I could see it in his eyes, and I
+dared not press him.
+
+Now, I suppose I am the only one in the world, besides René, who knows
+this man as he is. And I am proud of it.
+
+And it is for this constancy, which no vulgar soul of them can
+understand, that Rupert and his class have dubbed the gallant
+gentleman a madman. It fills me with scorn of them. I do not yet know
+what love is, therefore of course I cannot fathom its grief; but this
+much I know--that if I loved and yet could not reach as high as ever
+love may reach both in joy and sorrow, I should despise myself. I,
+too, would draw the utmost from life that life can give.
+
+He never even hinted at his love for my mother; speaking of himself
+throughout as René might, as of her humble devoted servant merely. And
+then the question began to gnaw at me. "Did she love him?" and
+somehow, I felt as if I could not rest till I knew; and I had it on my
+lips twenty times to cry out to him: "I know you loved her: oh! tell
+me, did she love you?" And yet I dared no more have done so, and
+overstepped the barrier of his gentle, reticent dignity, than I could
+have thrust the lighthouse tower down; and I could not think, either,
+whether I should be glad to hear that she had loved him, or that she
+had not. Not even here, alone with myself, can I answer that question.
+
+But though I respect him because he is as I have found him, and
+understand how rare a personality it takes to achieve such refinement
+of faithfulness, it seems to me, that to teach this constant lover to
+forget the past in the present, would be something worth living
+for--something worthy of _me_!
+
+Molly!--What is the meaning of this? You have never before put that
+thought in words, even to yourself! But let me be frank, or else what
+is the use of this diary?
+
+Looking back to those delightful three days, did not the _thought_
+come to me, if not the words? Well, well, it is better, sometimes, I
+believe, to let oneself drift, than to try and guide the boat; and I
+must hurry back to Scarthey or I shall never have told my story....
+
+How swiftly time had flown by us! I sitting in the arm-chair, with the
+old dog's muzzle on my lap, and Sir Adrian standing by his great
+chimney; the clock struck twelve, in the midst of the long silence,
+and I had thought that barely an hour had passed.
+
+I got up, and, seeing me limp in my attempt to walk, Sir Adrian gave
+me his arm; and so we went round the great room _bras dessus_, _bras
+dessous_, and it already seemed quite natural to feel like an intimate
+friend in that queer dwelling.
+
+We paused a long time in silence by the window, the tempest wind was
+still raging, but the sky was clear, and all round us was a wonderful
+sight; the sea, as far as eyes could reach, white with foam, lashed
+and tossing in frenzy round the rock on which we stood so safely, and
+rising in long jets of spray, which now and then dashed as far as our
+window; and when I looked down nearer, I could see the little stunted
+trees, bending backwards and forwards under the blast, and an odd idea
+came to my mind:--they looked to me when they caught my sight, as
+though they were bowing deep, hurriedly and frantically greeting me
+among them.
+
+I glanced up at my silent companion, the true knight, and found his
+wide grey eyes fixed upon me with the same expression that was
+already familiar to me, which I had especially noted as he told me his
+long tale of olden times.
+
+This time I felt the look go to my heart. _And then the thought first
+came to my mind, all unformed, but still sweet._
+
+I don't know exactly why, but in answer to his sad look, I smiled at
+him, without a word, upon which he suddenly grew pale. After a while
+he gave a sigh, and, as he drew my arm again through his, I fancy his
+hand trembled a little.
+
+When he had taken me back to my chair, he walked to and fro in
+silence, looking at me ever and anon.
+
+A long time we passed thus, without speaking; but it seemed as if our
+thoughts were intermixing in harmony in the midst of our silence. And
+then the spell was broken by René, who never came in without making me
+his great scrape, trying hard not to beam too obtrusively in the
+delight that evidently overtakes him whenever he sets eyes on me.
+
+It was after a prolonged talk between him and the master, I fancy,
+concerning the means of attending fitly upon my noble and delicate
+person, that Sir Adrian, brought back, evidently, to the consideration
+of present affairs, began to be exercised about the best means of
+whiling away my time. When he hinted at the difficulty, I very soon
+disposed of it.
+
+I told him I had never been so happy in my life before--that the hours
+went all too quickly--I told him there was so much he and René had yet
+to tell me of their wonderful adventures, that I thought I should have
+to carry them back to Pulwick with me. At the mention of Pulwick his
+brow darkened, and René turned away to cough into his hand, and I saw
+that I had gone too fast. (N.B.--Pulwick is evidently a sore subject;
+I am sure I am not surprised. I can conceive how Rupert and Sophia
+would drive a man of Sir Adrian's sensitiveness nearly to desperation.
+Yet I _have_ brought Sir Adrian back to Pulwick, in spite of all. Is
+not that a feather in my cap?)
+
+But to return; I next made René laugh aloud and Sir Adrian give his
+indulgent smile--such as a father might give to his child--by adding
+that when I was bored I would soon let them know. "I always do," I
+said, "for I consider that a duty to myself."
+
+"God knows," said this strange man then, half smiling, "I would we
+could keep you here for ever."
+
+It was almost a declaration, but his eyes were far off--it was not
+addressed to me.
+
+I soon found that the recollection of all the extraordinary incidents
+Sir Adrian had lived through, is one neither of pride nor pleasure to
+him, but, all the same, never has anything in books seemed to me so
+stirring, as the tale of relentless fate, of ever-recurring battles
+and struggles and misfortunes told by the man who, still in the
+strength of life, has now chosen to forego everything that might for
+the remainder of his days have compensated him.
+
+Willing as he was to humour me, however, and disproportionately
+anxious to amuse me, it was little more than the dry bones of his
+history, I was able to obtain from him.
+
+With René's help, however, and my own lively imagination I have been
+able to piece together a very wonderful skeleton, from these same dry
+bones, and, moreover, endow it with flesh and blood and life.
+
+René was very willing to descant upon his master's exploits, as far as
+he knew them: "Whew, Mademoiselle should have seen him fight!" he
+would say, "a lion, Mademoiselle, a real lion!"
+
+And then I would contrast the reposeful, somewhat immobile
+countenance, the dreaming eye, the almost womanly softness of his
+smile, with the picture, and find the contrast piquant in the extreme.
+
+Concerning his present home Sir Adrian was more willing to speak--I
+had told him how the light on the little island had fascinated me from
+the distance, and all the surmises I had made about it.
+
+"And so, it was in order to see what sort of dungeon they kept the
+madman in," he said, laughing quietly, "that you pushed the
+reconnaissance, which nearly sent you into the jaws of death!"
+
+I was so struck, at first, by his speaking of himself as the reputed
+"madman" that I could not answer. To think of him as serenely
+contemptuous of the world's imputation--and an imputation so galling
+as this one of being irresponsible for his actions--and deliberately
+continuing his even way without taking the trouble to refute it, has
+given me an insight into his nature, that fills me with admiration,
+and yet, at the same time, with a sort of longing to see him
+reinstated in his proper place, and casting out those slandering
+interlopers.
+
+But, as he was waiting to be answered, I had to collect my thoughts
+and admit, not without a little bashfulness, that my first account of
+my exploit had contained a slight prevarication.
+
+In all he has to say about his little Scarthey domain, about the
+existence he has made for himself there, I cannot help noticing with
+what affection he speaks of René. René, according to Sir Adrian, is
+everything and everywhere; a perfect familiar genius; he is counsellor
+as well as valet, plays his master's game of chess as well as shaves
+him, can tune his organ, and manage his boat, and cast his nets, for
+he is fisherman as well as gardener; he is the steward of this
+wonderful little estate, and its stock of one pony, one cow, and
+twelve hens; he tends the light, and can cook a dinner a great deal
+better than his great rival, old Margery.
+
+Of this last accomplishment we had good proof in the shape of various
+dainties that appeared at our dinner. For when I exclaimed in
+astonishment, the master said, well pleased, and pointing to the
+attentive major-domo: "This is René's way of spoiling me. But now he
+has surpassed himself to celebrate so unique an occasion."
+
+And René's face was all one grin of rapture. I observe that on
+occasions his eyes wander quite tenderly from me to his master.
+
+Shall I ever enjoy dinners again like those in that old ruined tower!
+Or hours like those during which I listened to tales of peril and
+adventure, or to the music that pealed forth from the distant corner,
+when Sir Adrian sat down to his organ and made it speak the wordless
+language of the soul: that language that made me at times shiver with
+a mad yearning for life, more life; at times soothed my heart with a
+caress of infinite softness.
+
+How is it that our organ-songs at the convent _never_ moved me in this
+fashion?
+
+Ah! those will be days to remember; all the more for being certain
+that they will not be forgotten by him. Yes, those days have brought
+some light into his melancholy life.
+
+Even René knows that. "Oh, my lady," said he to me as he was leaving
+the island yesterday. "You have come like the good fairy, you have
+brought back the joy of life to his honour: I have not heard him
+really laugh--before this year passed I did not believe he knew any
+more how to laugh--what you can call laugh!"
+
+It is quite true. I had made some droll remark about Tanty and Cousin
+Sophia, and when he laughed he looked like a young man.
+
+He was quick enough in grasping at a pretext for keeping me yet
+another day. Yesterday the wind having suddenly abated in the night,
+there was quite a bevy of little fishing-boats sailing merrily away.
+And the causeway at low water was quite visible. As we looked out I
+know the same idea came to both our minds, though there was no word
+between us. At last it was I who spoke. "The crossing is quite safe,"
+said I. And I added, as he answered nothing, "I almost wish now it was
+not. How quick the time has gone by, here!"
+
+His countenance when I looked up was darker. He kept his eyes fixed in
+the distance. At last he said in a low voice:
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is high time you should go back."
+
+"I am sure I don't wish it," I said quite frankly--he is not the sort
+of man with whom one would ever think of _minauderie_, "but Madeleine
+will be miserable about me."
+
+"And so you would really care to stop here," said he, with a smile of
+wonder on his face, "if it were not for that reason?"
+
+"Naturally I would," said I. "I feel already as cosy as a tame cat
+here. And if it were not for Madeleine, poor little Madeleine, who
+must be breaking her heart!--But then how can I go back?--I have no
+wraps and only one shoe?"
+
+His face had cleared again. He was walking up and down in his usual
+way, whilst I hopped back, with more limping than was at all
+necessary, to my favourite arm-chair.
+
+"True, true," he said, as if speaking to himself, "you cannot walk,
+with one shoe and a bandaged foot. And your clothes are too thin for
+the roundabout sea journey in this cold wind. This is what we shall
+do, child," he went on, coming up to me with a sage expression that
+struggled with his evident eager desire. "René shall go off, as soon
+as the tide permits, carrying the good news of your safety to your
+sister, and bring back some warm things for you to wear to-morrow
+morning, and I shall write to Rupert to send a carriage, to wait for
+you on the strand."
+
+And so, pleased like two children who have found a means of securing a
+further holiday, we wrote both our letters. I wonder whether it
+occurred to Sir Adrian, as it did to me, that, if we had been so very
+anxious that I should be restored to the care of Pulwick with the
+briefest delay, I might have gone with René that same day, wrapped up
+in a certain cloak which had done good warming service already; and
+that, as René had constructed with his cunning hands a sufficient if
+not very pretty sandal for my damaged foot out of some old piece of
+felt, I might have walked from the beach to the fishing village; and
+that there, no doubt, a cart or a donkey might have conveyed me home
+in triumph.
+
+Perhaps it did _not_ occur to him; and certainly I had no desire to
+suggest it on my side.
+
+Thus, soon after mid-day, Master René departed alone. And Sir Adrian
+and I, both very glad of our reprieve, watched, leaning side by side
+upon the window-sill, the brave little craft glide away on the still
+ruffled waters, until, when it had grown very small in the distance,
+we saw the sail lowered and knew René had reached mainland.
+
+And that was perhaps the best day of the three. René having been
+unexpectedly despatched, we had to help to do everything ourselves
+with old Margery, who is rather feeble. The sky was clear and
+beautiful; and, followed gravely by Jem the dog, we went round the
+little outer domain. I fed the hens, and Sir Adrian carried the pail
+when Margery had milked the cow; we paid a visit in his wide paddock
+to the pony, who trotted up to his master whinnying with pleasure. We
+looked at the waters rushing past like a mill race on the further side
+of the island, as the tide was rising, and he explained to me that it
+was this rush which makes the neighbourhood of Scarthey so dangerous
+to unwary crafts; we went down into the sea-caves which penetrate deep
+under the ruins.--They say that in olden days there was a passage
+under the rocky causeway that led as far as the old Priory, but all
+traces of it have been effaced.
+
+Then, later on, Sir Adrian showed me in detail his library.
+
+"I was made to be a man of books," he said, when I wondered at the
+number he had accumulated around him--there must be thousands, "a man
+of study, not of action. And you know how fate has treated me. These
+have been my one consolation of late years."
+
+And it marvelled me to think that one who had achieved so many manly
+deeds, should love musty old tiresome things so much. He really turned
+them over quite reverentially. I myself do not think much of books as
+companions.
+
+When I made that little confession he smiled rather sadly, and said
+that one like me never would lack the suitable companions of youth and
+happiness; but that a creature of his unfortunate disposition could
+find, in these long rows of folded leaves, the society of the best and
+the loftiest minds, not of our age, but of all ages, and, what was
+more, could find them ready for intercourse and at their best humour,
+just in those hours when he himself was fit and disposed for such
+intercourse--and this without dread of inflicting his own misery and
+dulness upon them.
+
+But I could not agree with his appreciation. I felt my nose curl with
+disdain at the breath of dust and must and age these old tomes gave
+forth, and I said again it was, to my mind, but a poor and tame sort
+of fellowship.
+
+He was perched on his ladder and had some odd volume in his hand, from
+which he was about to give an example in point; on hearing, however,
+this uncongenial sentiment he pushed back the book and came down
+quickly enough to talk to me. And this was the last of our excursions
+among the bookshelves.
+
+Of this I was glad, for I confess it was there I liked Sir Adrian the
+least.
+
+When the end of the short day drew near it was time to go and attend
+to the beacon. We ascended the ladder-like wooden stairs leading to
+the platform. Then I had the _reverse_ of that view that for so many
+days had engrossed my interest.
+
+_Pulwick from Scarthey!..._ What a long time it seemed then since I
+had left those rooms the windows of which now sent us back the rays of
+the setting sun! and I had no desire to return, though return I must
+on the morrow.
+
+René, of course, had left everything in his usual trim order, so all
+we had to do was to see to the lamp. It pleased my fantasy to light
+the beacon of Scarthey myself, and I struck the steel and kindled the
+brimstone and set fire to the huge, ill-smelling wicks until they gave
+a flame as big as my hand; and "there is the light of Scarthey at
+close quarters," I thought. And the Light-keeper was bending over me
+with his kindly look, humouring me like a child.
+
+As we sat there silently for a while in the twilight, there came from
+the little room adjoining the turret an odd sound of flapping and
+uncanny, melancholy cries. Sir Adrian rose, and we remembered the
+seagull by which he had played the part of good Samaritan.
+
+It had happened on the second day, as the storm was at its height.
+There had come a great crash at the window, and we saw something white
+that struggled on the sill outside; Sir Adrian opened the casement
+(when we had a little tornado of our own inside, and all his papers
+began dancing a sarabande in the room), and we gathered in the poor
+creature that was hurt and battered and more than half stunned,
+opening alternately its yellow bill and its red eyes in the most
+absurd manner.
+
+With a solicitude that it amused me to watch, Sir Adrian had tended
+the helpless, goose-like thing and then handed it to René's further
+care.
+
+René, it seemed, had thought of trying to tame the wild bird, and had
+constructed a huge sort of cage with laths and barrel-hoops, and
+installed it there with various nasty, sea-fishy, weedy things, such
+as seagulls consider dainty. But the prisoner, now its vigour had
+returned, yearned for nothing but the free air, and ever and anon
+almost broke its wings in sudden frenzy to escape.
+
+"I wonder at René," said Sir Adrian, contemplating the animal with his
+grave look of commiseration; "René, who, like myself, has been a
+prisoner! He will be disappointed, but we shall make one of God's
+creatures happy this day. There is not overmuch happiness in this
+world."
+
+And, regardless of the vicious pecks aimed at his hands, he with
+firmness folded the great strong wings and legs and carried the gull
+outside on the parapet.
+
+There the bird sat a moment, astonished, turning its head round at its
+benefactor before taking wing; and then it rose flying away in great
+swoops--flap, flap--across the waves till we could see it no longer.
+Ugly and awkward as the creature looked in its cage, it was beautiful
+in its joyful, steady flight, and I was glad to see it go. I must have
+been a bird myself in another existence, for I have often that longing
+to fly upon me, and it makes my heart swell with a great impatience
+that I cannot.
+
+But I could not help remarking to Sir Adrian that the bird's last look
+round had been full of anger rather than gratitude, and his answer, as
+he watched it sweep heavily away, was too gloomy to please me:
+
+"Gratitude," said he, "is as rare as unselfishness. If it were not so
+this world would be different indeed. As it is, we have no more right
+to expect the one than the other. And, when all is said and done, if
+doing a so-called kind action gives us pleasure, it is only a special
+form of self-indulgence."
+
+There is something wrong about a reasoning of this kind, but I could
+not exactly point out where.
+
+We both stood gazing out from our platform upon the darkening waters.
+Then across our vision there crept, round the promontory, a beautiful
+ship with all sails set, looking like some gigantic white bird;
+sailing, sailing, so swiftly yet so surely by, through the dim light;
+and I cried out in admiration: for there is something in the sight of
+a ship silently gliding that always sets my heart beating. But Sir
+Adrian's face grew stern, and he said: "A ship is a whitened
+sepulchre."
+
+But for all that he looked at it long and pensively.
+
+Now it had struck me before this that Sir Adrian, with all his
+kindness of heart, takes but a dismal view of human nature and human
+destiny; that to him what spoils the face of this world is that strife
+of life--which to me is as the breath of my nostrils, the absence of
+which made my convent days so grey and hateful to look back upon.
+
+I did not like to feel out of harmony with him, and so almost angrily
+I reproached him.
+
+"Would you have every one live like a limpet on a rock?" cried I.
+"Great heavens! I would rather be dead than not be up and doing."
+
+He looked at me gravely, pityingly.
+
+"May _you_ never see what I have seen," said he. "May you never learn
+what men have made of the world. God keep your fair life from such
+ways as mine has been made to follow."
+
+The words filled me, I don't know why, with sudden misgiving. Is this
+life, I am so eager for, but horror and misery after all? Would it be
+better to leave the book unopened? They said so at the convent. But
+what can they know of life at a convent?
+
+He bent his kind face towards mine in the thickening gloom, as though
+to read my thoughts, and his lips moved, but he did not speak aloud.
+Then, above the song of the waves as they gathered, rolled in, and
+fell upon the shingle all around, there came the beat of oars.
+
+"Hark," said Sir Adrian, "our good René!"
+
+His tone was cheerful again, and, as he hurried me away down the
+stairs, I knew he was glad to divert me from the melancholy into which
+he had allowed himself to drift.
+
+And then "good René" came, bringing breezy life and cheerfulness with
+him, and a bundle and a letter for me.
+
+Poor Madeleine! It seems she has been quite ill with weeping for
+Molly; and, indeed, her dear scrawl was so illegible that I could
+hardly read it. René says she was nearly as much upset by the joy as
+by the grief. Mr. Landale was not at home; he had ridden to meet Tanty
+at Liverpool, for the dear old lady has been summoned back in hot
+haste with the news of my decease!
+
+He for one, I thought to myself, will survive the shock of relief at
+learning that Molly has risen from the dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ting, ting, ting.... There goes my little clock, fussily counting the
+hour to tell me that I have written so long a time that I ought to be
+tired. And so I am, though I have not told you half of all I meant to
+tell!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE RECLUSE AND THE SQUIRE
+
+
+I thought I should never get away from supper and be alone! Rupert's
+air of cool triumph--it was triumph, however he may have wished to
+hide it--and Tanty's flow of indignation, recrimination, speculation,
+and amazement were enough to drive me mad. But I held out. I pretended
+I did not mind. My cheeks were blazing, and I talked _à tort et à
+travers_. I should have _died_ rather than that Rupert should have
+guessed at the tempest in my heart. Now I am alone at last, thank God!
+and it will be a relief to confide to my faithful diary the feelings
+that have been choking me these last two hours.
+
+"Pride must have a fall." Thus Rupert at supper, with reference, it is
+true, to some trivial incident, but looking at me hard and full, and
+pointing the words with his meaning smile. The fairies who attended at
+my birth endowed me with one power, which, however doubtful a blessing
+it may prove in the long run, has nevertheless been an unspeakable
+comfort to me hitherto. This is the reverse of what I heard a French
+gentleman term _l'esprit de l'escalier_. Thanks to this fairy
+godmother of mine, the instant some one annoys or angers me there
+rises on the tip of my tongue the most galling rejoinder that can
+possibly be made in the circumstances. And I need not add: _I make
+it_.
+
+To-night, when Rupert flung his scoff at me, I was ready for him.
+
+"I trust the old adage has not been brought home to you, _Sir_
+Rupert," said I, and then pretending confusion. "I beg your pardon," I
+added, "I have been so accustomed to address the head of the house
+these last days that the word escaped me unawares." The shot told
+_well_, and I was glad--glad of the murderous rage in Rupert's eyes,
+for I knew I had hit him on the raw. Even Tanty looked perturbed, but
+Rupert let me alone for the rest of supper.
+
+He is right nevertheless, that is what stung me. I am humbled, _and I
+cannot bear it_!
+
+Sir Adrian has left.
+
+I was so triumphant to bring him back to Pulwick this morning, to have
+circumvented Rupert's plans, and (let me speak the truth,) so happy to
+have him with me that I did not attempt to conceal my exultation. And
+now he has gone, gone without a word to me; only this miserable letter
+of determined farewell. I will copy it--for in my first anger I have
+so crumpled the paper that it is scarcely readable.
+
+"My child, I must go back to my island. The world is not for me, nor
+am I for the world, nor would I cast the shadow of my gloomy life
+further upon your bright one. Let me tell you, however, that you have
+left me the better for your coming; that it will be a good thought to
+me in my loneliness to know of your mother's daughters so close to me.
+When you look across at the beacon of Scarthey, child, through the
+darkness, think that though I may not see you again I shall ever
+follow and keep guard upon your life and upon your sister's, and that,
+even when you are far from Pulwick, the light will burn and the heart
+of Adrian Landale watch so long as it may beat."
+
+I have shed more tears--hot tears of anger--since I received this than
+I have wept in all my life before. Madeleine came in to me just now,
+too full of the happiness of having me back, poor darling, to be able
+to bear me out of sight again; but I have driven her from me with such
+cross words that she too is in tears. I must be alone and I must
+collect myself and my thoughts, for I want to state exactly all that
+has happened and then perhaps I shall be able to see my way more
+clearly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning then, early after breakfast, I started across the waters
+between René and Sir Adrian, regretting to leave the dear hospitable
+island, yet with my heart dancing within me, as gaily as did our
+little boat upon the chopping waves, to be carrying the hermit back
+with me. I had been deadly afraid lest he should at the last moment
+have sent me alone with the servant; but when he put on his big cloak,
+when I saw René place a bag at the bottom of the boat, I knew he
+meant to come--perhaps remain some days at Pulwick, and my spirits
+went up, up!
+
+It was a lovely day, too; the air had a crisp, cold sparkle, and the
+waters looked so blue under the clear, frosty sky. I could have sung
+as we rowed along, and every time I met Sir Adrian's eye I smiled at
+him out of the happiness of my heart. His look hung on me--we French
+have a word for that which is not translatable, _Il me couvait des
+yeux_--and, as every day of the three we had spent together I had
+thought him younger and handsomer, so this morning out in the bright
+sunlight I said to myself, I could never wish to see a more noble man.
+
+When we landed--and it was but a little way, for the tide was
+low--there was the carriage waiting, and René, all grins, handed over
+our parcels to the footman. Then we got in, the wheels began slowly
+dragging across the sand to the road, the poor horses pulling and
+straining, for it was heavy work. And René stood watching us by his
+boat, his hand over his eyes, a black figure against the dazzling
+sunshine on the bay; but I could see his white teeth gleam in that
+broad smile of his from out of his shadowy face. As, at length, we
+reached the high road and bowled swiftly along, I would not let Sir
+Adrian have peace to think, for something at my heart told me he hated
+the going back to Pulwick, and I so chattered and fixed his attention
+that as the carriage drew up he was actually laughing.
+
+When we stopped another carriage in front moved off, and there on the
+porch stood--Rupert and Tanty!
+
+Poor Tanty, her old face all disfigured with tears and a great black
+bonnet and veil towering on her head. I popped _my_ head out of the
+window and called to them.
+
+When they caught sight of me, both seemed to grow rigid with
+amazement. And then across Rupert's face came such a look of fury, and
+such a deathly pallor! I had thought, certainly, he would not weep the
+eyes out of his head for me; but that he should be stricken with
+_anger_ to see me alive I had hardly expected, and for the instant it
+frightened me.
+
+But then I had no time to observe anything else, for Tanty collapsed
+upon the steps and went off into as fine a fit of hysterics as I have
+ever seen. But fortunately it did not last long. Suddenly in the
+middle of her screams and rockings to and fro she perceived Sir Adrian
+as he leant anxiously over her. With the utmost energy she clutched
+his arm and scrambled to her feet.
+
+"Is it you, me poor child?" she cried, "Is it you?"
+
+And then she turned from him, as he stood with his gentle, earnest
+face looking down upon her, and gave Rupert a glare that might have
+slain him. I knew at once what she was thinking: I had experienced
+myself that it was impossible to see Sir Adrian and connect his
+dignified presence for one second with the scandalous impression
+Rupert would have conveyed.
+
+As for Rupert, he looked for the first time since I knew him
+thoroughly unnerved.
+
+Then Tanty caught me by the arm and shook me:
+
+"How _dare_ you, miss, how dare you?" she cried, her face was flaming.
+
+"How dare I what?" asked I, as I hugged her.
+
+"How dare you be walking about when it is dead you are, and give us
+all such a fright--there--there, you know what I mean.--Adrian," she
+whimpered, "give me your arm, my nephew, and conduct me into your
+house. All this has upset me very much. But, oh, am I not glad to see
+you both, my children!"
+
+In they went together. And my courage having risen again to its usual
+height, I waited purposely on the porch to tease Rupert a little. I
+had a real pleasure in noticing how he trembled with agitation beneath
+his mask.
+
+"Well, are you glad to see me, Cousin Rupert?" said I.
+
+He took my hand; his fingers were damp and cold.
+
+"Can you ask, my fair cousin?" he sneered. "Do you not see me overcome
+with joy? Am I not indeed especially favoured by Providence, for is
+not this the second time that a beloved being has been restored into
+my arms like Lazarus from the grave?"
+
+I was indignant at the heartlessness of his cynicism, and so the
+answer that leaped to my lips was out before I had time to reflect
+upon its unladylikeness.
+
+"Ay," said I, "and each time you have cried in your soul, like Martha,
+'Behold, he stinketh.'"
+
+My cousin laughed aloud.
+
+"You have a sharp tongue," he said, "take care you are not cut with it
+yourself some day."
+
+Just then the footmen who had been unpacking Tanty's trunks from the
+first carriage laid a great wooden box upon the porch, and one of them
+asked Rupert which room they should bring it to.
+
+Rupert looked at it strangely, and then at me.
+
+"Take it where you will," he exclaimed at last. "There lies good
+money-value wasted--though, after all, one never knows."
+
+"What is it?" said I, struck by a sinister meaning in his accents.
+
+"Mourning, beautiful Molly--mourning for
+you--crape--gowns--weepers--wherewith to have dried your sister's
+tears--but not needed yet, you see."
+
+He bared his teeth at me over his shoulder--I could not call it a
+smile--and then paused, as he was about to brush past into the hall,
+to give me the _pas_, with a mocking bow.
+
+He does not even attempt now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw
+for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is
+always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little
+Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to
+greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had
+circumvented the plotter.
+
+Alas, how foolish I was to laugh! Rupert is a dangerous enemy, and I
+have made him mine; and in a few hours he has shuffled the cards, and
+now he holds the trumps again. For that there is _du Rupert_ in this
+sudden departure of my knight, I am convinced. Of course, _his_
+reasons are plain to see. It is the vulgarest ambition that prompts
+him to oust his brother for as long as possible--for ever, if he can.
+
+And now, _I_ am outwitted. _Je rage._
+
+I have never been so unhappy. My heart feels all crushed. I see no
+help anywhere. I cannot in common decency go and seek Sir Adrian upon
+his island again, and so I sit and cry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Immediately upon his arrival Tanty was closeted with Sir Adrian in the
+chamber allotted to her for so long a space of time that Rupert,
+watching below in an inward fever, now flung back in his chair biting
+his nails, now restlessly pacing the room from end to end, his mind
+working on the new problem, his ears strained to catch the least sound
+the while, was fain at last to ring and give orders for the immediate
+sounding of the dinner bell (a good hour before that meal might be
+expected) as the only chance of interrupting a conference which boded
+so ill to his plans. Meanwhile Madeleine sobbed out the story of her
+grief and joy on Molly's heart; and Miss Sophia, who thus
+inconsiderately arrested in the full congenial flow of a new grief,
+was thrown back upon her old sorrows for consolation, had felt
+impelled to pay a visit to the rector's grave with the watering-can,
+and an extra pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Never perhaps since that worthy clergyman had gasped out his last
+struggling breath upon her bosom had she known more unmixed
+satisfaction than during those days when she hovered round poor
+prostrate Madeleine's bed and poured into her deaf ear the tale of her
+own woes and the assurances of her thoroughly understanding sympathy.
+She had been looking forward, with a chastened eagerness, to the
+arrival of the mourning, and had already derived a good deal of
+pleasure from the donning of certain aged weeds treasured in her
+wardrobe; it was therefore a distinct though quite unconscious
+disappointment when the news came which put an untimely end to all
+these funereal revels.
+
+At the shrill clamour of the bell, as Rupert anticipated, Adrian
+emerged instantly from his aunt's room, and a simultaneous jingle of
+minor bells announced that the ladies' attention was in all haste
+being turned to toilet matters.
+
+Whatever had passed between his good old relative and his sensitive
+brother, Rupert's quick appraising glance at the latter's face, as he
+went slowly down the corridor to his own specially reserved apartment,
+was sufficient to confirm the watcher in his misgiving that matters
+were not progressing as he might wish.
+
+Sir Adrian seemed absorbed, it is true, in grave thought, but his
+countenance was neither distressed nor gloomy. With a spasm of fierce
+annoyance, and a bitter curse on the meddling of old females and
+young, Rupert had to admit that never had he seen his brother look
+more handsome, more master of the house and of himself, more _sane_.
+
+A few minutes later the guests of Pulwick assembled in the library one
+by one, with the exception of Sophia, still watering the last
+resting-place of the Rev. Herbert Lee.
+
+Adrian came first, closely followed by Tanty, who turned a marked
+shoulder upon her younger nephew and devoted all her attention to the
+elder--in which strained condition of affairs the conversation between
+the three was not likely to be lively. Next the sisters, attired alike
+in white, entered together, bringing a bright vision of youth and
+loveliness into the old room.
+
+At sight of them Adrian sprang to his feet with a sudden sharp
+ejaculation, upon which the two girls halted on the threshold, half
+shy, half smiling. For the moment, in the shadow of the doorway, they
+were surprisingly like each other, the difference of colouring being
+lost in their curious similarity of contour.
+
+My God, were there then two Céciles?
+
+Beautiful, miraculous, consoling had been to the mourner in his
+loneliness the apparition of his dead love restored to life, every
+time his eyes had fallen upon Molly during these last few blessed
+days; but this new development was only like a troublous mocking
+dream.
+
+Tanty turned in startled amazement. She could feel the shudder that
+shook his frame, through the hand with which he still unconsciously
+grasped at the back of her chair. An irrepressible smile crept to
+Rupert's lips.
+
+The little interlude could not have lasted more than a few seconds
+when Molly, recovering her usual self-possession, came boldly forward,
+leading her sister by the tips of her fingers.
+
+"Cousin Adrian," she said, "my sister Madeleine has many things to say
+to you in thanks for your care of my valuable person, but just now she
+is too bashful to be able to utter one quarter of them."
+
+As the girls emerged into the room, and the light from the great
+windows struck upon Madeleine's fair curls and the delicate pallor of
+her cheek; as she extended her hand, and raised to Adrian's face,
+while she dropped her pretty curtsey, the gaze of two unconsciously
+plaintive blue eyes, the man dashed the sweat from his brow with a
+gesture of relief.
+
+Nothing could be more unlike the dark beauty of the ghost of his
+dreams or its dashing presentment now smiling confidently upon him
+from Tanty's side.
+
+He took the little hand with tender pressure: Cécile's daughter must
+be precious to him in any case. Madeleine, moreover, had a certain
+appealing grace that was apt to steal the favour that Molly won by
+storm.
+
+"But, indeed, I could never tell Sir Adrian how grateful I am," said
+she, with a timidity that became her as thoroughly as Molly's
+fearlessness suited her own stronger personality.
+
+At the sound of her voice, again the distressful nightmare-like
+feeling seized Sir Adrian's soul.
+
+Of all characteristics that, as the phrase is, "go in families,"
+voices are generally the most peculiarly generic.
+
+When Molly first addressed Sir Adrian, it had been to him as a voice
+from the grave; now Madeleine's gentle speech tripped forth upon that
+self-same note--Cécile's own voice!
+
+And next Molly caught up the sound, and then Madeleine answered again.
+What they said, he could not tell; these ghosts--these speaking
+ghosts--brought back the old memories too painfully. It was thus
+Cécile had spoken in the first arrogance of her dainty youth and
+loveliness; and in those softer tones when sorrow and work and failure
+had subdued her proud spirit. And now she laughs; and hark, the laugh
+is echoed! Sir Adrian turns as if to seek some escape from this
+strange form of torture, meets Rupert's eye and instinctively braces
+himself into self-control.
+
+"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, in her comfortable, commonplace,
+cheerful tone: "This dinner bell of yours, Adrian, has raised false
+hopes, which seem to tarry in their fulfilment. What are we waiting
+for, may I ask?"
+
+Adrian looked at his brother.
+
+"Rupert, you know, my dear aunt," he said, "has the ordering of these
+matters."
+
+"Sophia is yet absent," quoth Rupert drily, "but we can proceed
+without her, if my aunt wishes."
+
+"Pooh, yes. Sophia!" snorted Miss O'Donoghue, grasping Sir Adrian's
+arm to show herself quite ready for the march, "Sophia! We all know
+what she is. Why, my dear Adrian, she'll never hear the bell till it
+has stopped this half hour."
+
+"Dinner," cried Rupert sharply to the butler, whom his pull of the
+bell-rope had summoned. And dinner being served, the guests trooped
+into that dining-room which was full of such associations to Sir
+Adrian. It was a little thing, but, nevertheless, intensely galling to
+Rupert to have to play second gentleman, and give up his privileges as
+host to his brother. Usually indeed Adrian cared too little to stand
+upon his rights, and insisted upon Rupert's continuing to act in his
+presence as he did in his absence; but this afternoon Tanty had left
+him no choice.
+
+Nevertheless, as Mr. Landale sat down between the sisters, and turned
+smiling to address first one and then the other, it would have taken a
+very practised eye to discern under the extra urbanity of his
+demeanour the intensity of his inward mortification. He talked a great
+deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering
+Molly into scornful and eager retorts, and preventing Madeleine from
+relapsing into that state of dreaminess out of which the rapid
+succession of her recent sorrow and joy had somewhat shaken her.
+
+The girls were both excited, both ready to laugh and jest. Tanty,
+satisfied to see Adrian preside at the head of the table with a grave,
+courteous, and self-contained manner that completely fulfilled her
+notions of what family dignity required of him, cracked her jokes, ate
+her dinner, and quaffed her cup with full enjoyment, laughing
+indulgently at her grand-nieces' sallies, and showing as marked a
+disfavour to Rupert as she deemed consistent with good manners.
+
+The poor old lady little guessed how the workings in each brother's
+mind were all the while, silently but inevitably, tending towards the
+destruction of her newly awakened hopes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was silence between Sir Adrian and Rupert when at last they were
+left alone together. The elder's gaze wandering in space, his absent
+hand softly beating the table, his relaxed frame--all showed that his
+mind was far away from thought of the younger's presence. The relief
+to be delivered from the twin echoes of a haunting voice--once the
+dearest on earth to him--was immense. But his whole being was still
+quivering under the first acuteness of so disturbing an impression.
+
+His years of solitude, moreover, had ill prepared him for social
+intercourse; the laughter, the clash of conversation, the noise on
+every side, the length of the meal, the strain to maintain a fit and
+proper attitude as host, had tried to the utmost nerves by nature
+hypersensitive.
+
+Rupert, who had leisure to study the suddenly lined and tired
+lineaments of the abstracted countenance before him, noted with
+self-congratulation the change that a few hours seemed to have wrought
+upon it, and decided that the moment had come to strike.
+
+"So, Adrian," he said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the
+glass of wine he had been toying with--Rupert was an abstemious man.
+"So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous rôle of rescuer of
+distressed damsels--squire of dames and what not. The last one would
+have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing
+up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any of us would have
+thought what a blessing in disguise your freak of self-exile was
+destined to become to us!"
+
+At the sound of the incisive voice Adrian had returned with a slight
+shiver from distant musing to the consciousness of the other's
+presence.
+
+"And did you not always look upon my exile as a blessing undisguised,
+Rupert?" answered he, fixing his brother with his large grave gaze.
+
+Rupert's eyelids wavered a little beneath it, but his tone was coolly
+insolent as he made reply:
+
+"If it pleases you to make no count of our fraternal affection for
+you, my dear fellow; if by insisting upon _our_ unnatural depravity
+you contrive a more decent excuse for your own vagaries, you have my
+full permission to dub me Cain at once and have done with it."
+
+A light sigh escaped the elder man, and then he resolutely closed his
+lips. It was by behaviour such as this, by his almost diabolical
+ingenuity in the art of being uncongenial, that Rupert had so largely
+contributed to make his own house impossible to him. But where was the
+use of either argument or expostulation with one so incapable of even
+understanding the mainsprings of his actions? Moreover (_he_, above
+all, must not forget it) Rupert had suffered through him in pride and
+self-esteem. And yet, despite Sir Adrian's philosophic mind, despite
+his vast, pessimistic though benevolent tolerance for erring human
+nature, his was a very human heart; and it added not a little to the
+sadness of his lot at every return to Pulwick (dating from that first
+most bitter home-coming) to feel in every fibre of his being how
+little welcome he was where the ties of flesh and blood alone, not to
+speak of his most ceaseless yet delicate generosity, should have
+ensured him a very different reception.
+
+Again he sighed, this time more deeply, and the corners of Rupert's
+lips, the arch of his eyebrows, moved upwards in smiling
+interrogation.
+
+"It must have given you a shock," said Mr. Landale, carelessly, "to
+see the resemblance between Molly and poor Cécile; not, of course,
+that _I_ can remember her; but Tanty says it is something startling."
+
+Adrian assented briefly.
+
+"I daresay it seems quite painful to you at first," proceeded Rupert,
+much in the same deliberate manner as a surgeon may lay bare a wound,
+despite the knowledge of the suffering he is inflicting, "I noticed
+that you seemed upset during dinner. But probably the feeling will
+wear off."
+
+"Probably."
+
+"Madeleine resembles her father, I am told; but then you never saw the
+_feu Comte_, did you? Well, they are both fine handsome girls, full of
+life and spirits. It is our revered relative's intention to leave them
+here--as perhaps she has told you--for two months or so."
+
+"I have begged her," said Sir Adrian gravely, "to make them understand
+that I wish them to look upon Pulwick as their home."
+
+"Very right, very proper," cried the other; "in fact I knew that was
+what you would wish--and your wishes, of course, are my law in the
+matter. By the way, I hope you quite understand, Adrian, how it
+happened that I did _not_ notify to you the arrival of these guests
+extraordinary--knowing that you have never got over their mother's
+death, and all that--it was entirely from a wish to spare you.
+Besides, there was your general prohibition about my visitors; I did
+not dare to take the responsibility in fact. And so I told Tanty."
+
+"I do not wish to doubt the purity of your motives, though it would
+have grieved me had _these_ visitors (no ordinary ones as you yourself
+admit) come and gone without my knowledge. As it fell out, however,
+even without that child's dangerous expedition, I should have been
+informed in any case--René knew."
+
+"René knew?" cried Rupert, surprised; and "damn René" to himself with
+heart-felt energy.
+
+That the infernal little spy, as he deemed his brother's servant,
+should have made a visit to Pulwick without his knowledge was
+unpleasant news, and it touched him on his tenderest point.
+
+But now, replenishing his half-emptied glass to give Adrian no excuse
+for putting an end to the conference before he himself desired it, he
+plunged into the heart of the task he had set himself without further
+delay:
+
+"And what would you wish me to do, Adrian," he asked, with a pretty
+air of deference, "in the matter of entertaining these ladies? I have
+thought of several things likely to afford them amusement, but, since
+you are here, you will readily understand that I should like your
+authorisation first. I am anxious to consult you when I can," he
+added, apologetically. "So forgive my attacking you upon business
+to-night when you seem really so little fitted for it--but you know
+one cannot count upon you from one minute to another! What would you
+say if I were to issue invitations for a ball? Pulwick was noted for
+its hospitality in the days of our fathers, and the gloom that has
+hung over the old home these last eight years has been (I suppose)
+unavoidable in the circumstances--but none the less a pity. No fear
+but that our fair cousins would enjoy such a festivity, and I think I
+can promise you that the sound of our revels should not reach as far
+as your hermitage."
+
+A slow colour had mounted to Adrian's cheeks; he drew his brows
+together with an air of displeasure; Rupert, quick to read these
+symptoms, hastened to pursue the attack before response should be
+made:
+
+"The idea does not seem to please you," he cried, as if in hurt
+surprise. "'Tis true I have now no legal right to think of reviving
+the old hospitable traditions of the family; but you must remember,
+Adrian, you yourself have insisted on giving me a moral right to act
+host here in your absence--you have over and over again laid stress
+upon the freedom you wished me to feel in the matter. Hitherto I have
+not made use of these privileges; have not cared to do so, beyond an
+occasional duty dinner to our nearest neighbours. A lonely widower
+like myself, why should I? But now, with these gay young things in the
+house--so near to us in blood--I had thought it so much our duty to
+provide fitting entertainment for them that your attitude is
+incomprehensible to me. Come! does it not strike you as savouring a
+little of the unamiable dog in the fable? I know you hate company
+yourself, and all the rest of it; but how can these things here affect
+you upon your island? As for the budget, it will stand it, I assure
+you. I speak hotly; pray excuse me. I own I have looked forward to the
+thought of seeing once more young and happy faces around me."
+
+"You mistake me," said Sir Adrian with an effort; "while you are
+acting as my representative you have, as you know, all liberty to
+entertain what guests you choose, and as you see fit. It is natural,
+perhaps, that you should now believe me anxious to hurry back to the
+lighthouse, and I should have told you before that it is my intention
+this time to remain longer than my wont, in which circumstance the
+arrangements for the entertaining of our relatives will devolve upon
+myself."
+
+Rupert broke into a loud laugh.
+
+"Forgive me, but the idea is too ludicrous! What sort of funeral
+festivities do you propose to provide to the neighbourhood, with you
+and Sophia presiding, the living images of mourning and desolation?
+There, my dear fellow, I _must_ laugh. It will be the skeleton at the
+feast with a vengeance. Why, even to-night, in the bosom of your
+family, as it were, your presence lay so like a wet blanket upon us
+all that, 'pon my soul, I nearly cracked my voice trying to keep those
+girls from noticing it! Seriously, I am delighted, of course, that you
+should feel so sportive, and it is high time indeed that the
+neighbourhood should see something of you, but I fear you are
+reckoning beyond your strength. Anyhow, command me. I shall be anxious
+to help you all I can in this novel departure. What are your plans?"
+
+"I have laid no plans," answered Sir Adrian coldly, after a slight
+pause, "but you do not need me to tell you, Rupert, that to surround
+myself with such gaiety as you suggest is impossible."
+
+"You mean to make our poor little cousins lead as melancholy an
+existence as you do yourself then," cried Rupert with an angry laugh.
+Matters were not progressing as he could have wished. "I fear this
+will cause a good deal of disappointment, not only to them but to our
+revered aunt--for she is very naturally anxious to see her charges
+married and settled, and she told me that she more or less counted
+upon my aid in the matter. Now as you are here of course I have, thank
+Heaven, nothing more to say one way or another. But you will surely
+think of asking a few likely young fellows over to the house,
+occasionally? We are not badly off for eldest sons in the
+neighbourhood; Molly, who is as arrant a little flirt, they tell me,
+as she is pretty, will be grateful to you for the attention, on the
+score of amusement at least."
+
+Mr. Landale, speaking somewhat at random out of his annoyance to have
+failed in immediately disgusting the hermit of the responsibilities
+his return home might entail, here succeeded by chance in producing
+the desired impression.
+
+The idea of Molly--Cécile's double--marrying--worse still, making
+love, coquetting before his eyes, was intolerable to Adrian. To have
+to look on, and see _Cécile's_ eyes lavish glances of love; _her_
+lips, soft words and lingering smiles, upon some country fool; to have
+himself to give this duplicate of his love's sweet body to one
+unworthy perhaps--it stung him with a pain as keen as it was
+unreasonable. It was terrible to be so made, that the past was ever as
+living as the present! But he must face the situation, he must grapple
+with his own weakness. Tender memories had lured him from his retreat
+and made him for a short time almost believe that he could live with
+them, happy a little while, in his own home again; but now it was
+these very memories that were rising like avengers to drive him hence.
+
+Of course the child must marry if there her happiness lay. Ay, and
+both Cécile's children must be amused, made joyful, while they still
+could enjoy life--Rupert was right--right in all he said--but he,
+Adrian, could not be there to see. That was beyond his endurance.
+
+It was impossible of course, for one so single-minded himself, to
+follow altogether the doublings of such a mind as Rupert's; but
+through the melancholy relief of this sudden resolution, Adrian was
+distinctly conscious of the underlying duplicity, the unworthy motives
+which had prompted his brother's arguments.
+
+He rose from the table, and looked down with sad gaze at the younger's
+beautiful mask of a face.
+
+"God knows," he said, "God knows, Rupert, I do not so often inflict my
+presence upon you that you should be so anxious to show me how much
+better I should do to keep away. I admit nevertheless the justice of
+all you say. It is but right that Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye should be
+surrounded with young and cheerful society; and even were I in a state
+to act as master of the revels (here he smiled a little dreamily), my
+very presence, as you say, would cast a gloom upon their
+merrymaking--I will go. I will go back to the island to-night--I can
+rely upon you to assist me to do so quietly without unnecessary scenes
+or explanations--yes--yes--I know you will be ready to facilitate
+matters! Strange! It is only a few hours ago since Tanty almost
+persuaded me that it was my duty to remain here; now you have made me
+see that I have no choice but to leave. Have no fear, Rupert--I go. I
+shall write to Tanty. But remember only, that as you treat Cécile's
+children, so shall I shape my actions towards you in future."
+
+Slowly he moved away, leaving Rupert motionless in his seat; and long
+did the younger brother remain moodily fixing the purple bloom of the
+grapes with unseeing eyes.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+"CAPTAIN JACK," THE GOLD SMUGGLER
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE GOLD SMUGGLER AND THE PHILOSOPHER
+
+
+On the evening of the day which had seen Miss Molly's departure for
+the main land, René, after the usual brisk post-prandial altercation
+with old Margery by her kitchen fire, was cheerfully finding his way,
+lantern in hand, to his turret, when in the silence of the night he
+heard the door of the keep open and close, and presently recognised
+Sir Adrian's tread echoing on the flagged steps beneath him.
+
+Astonished at this premature return and full of vague dismay, he
+hurried down to receive his master.
+
+There was a cloud on Sir Adrian's face, plainly discernible in spite
+of the unaltered composure of his manner.
+
+"I did not expect your honour back so soon," said René, tentatively.
+
+"I myself did not anticipate to return. I had thought I might perhaps
+stay some days at Pulwick. But I find there is no home like this one
+for me, René."
+
+There was a long silence. But when René had rekindled a blaze upon the
+hearth and set the lamp upon the table, he stood a moment before
+withdrawing, almost begging by his look some further crumb of
+information.
+
+"My room is ready, I suppose?" inquired Sir Adrian.
+
+"Yes, your honour," quoth the man ruefully, "Margery and I put it back
+exactly as--as before."
+
+"Good-night then, good-night!" said the master after a pause, warming
+his hands as the flames began to leap through the network of twigs. "I
+shall go to bed, I am tired; I had to row myself across. You will take
+the boat back to-morrow morning."
+
+René opened his mouth to speak; caught the sound of a sigh coming from
+the hearthside, and, shaking his head, in silence obeyed the implied
+dismissal. And bitterly did he meditate in his bunk, that night, upon
+the swift crumbling of those air-castles he had built himself so
+gaily erstwhile, in the rose and blue atmosphere that _La Demoiselle_
+had seemed to bring with her to Scarthey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the morrow the old regular mode of life began again in the keep.
+
+Sir Adrian read a good deal, or at least appeared so to do; but René,
+who kept him more than ever under his glances of wistful sympathy,
+noted that far from being absorbed, as of old, in the pages of his
+book, the recluse's eyes wandered much off its edges into space; that
+when writing, or at least intent on writing, his pen would linger long
+in the bottle and hover listlessly over the paper; that he was more
+abstracted, even than his wont, when looking out of the eastern
+window; and that on the platform of the beacon it was the landward
+view which most drew his gaze.
+
+There was also more music in the keep than was the custom in evener
+days. Seated at his organ the light-keeper seemed to find a voice for
+such thoughts as were not to be spoken or written, and relief for the
+nameless pity of them. But never a word passed between the two men on
+the subject that filled both their hearts.
+
+It was Sir Adrian's pleasure that things at Scarthey should seem to be
+exactly the same as before, and that was enough for René.
+
+"And yet," mused the faithful fellow, within his disturbed mind, "the
+ruins now look like a house the day after an interment. If we were
+lonely before, my faith, now we are desolate?" and, trying to find
+something or somebody to charge with the curse of it, he invariably
+fell to upon Mr. Landale's sleek head, why, he could hardly have
+explained.
+
+Three new days had thus passed in the regularity, if not the serenity
+of the old--they seemed old already, buried far back in the past,
+those days that had lapsed so evenly before the brightness of youthful
+and beautiful life had entered the keep for one brief moment, and
+departing, again left it a ruin indeed--when the retirement of
+Scarthey was once more invaded by an unexpected visitor. It was about
+sundown of the shortest day. Sir Adrian was at his organ, almost
+unconsciously interpreting his own sadness into music. In time the
+yearning of his soul had had expression, the echo of the last sighing
+chord died away in the tranquil air, yet the musician, with head bent
+upon his breast, remained lost in far-away thoughts.
+
+A slight shuffling noise disturbed him; turning round to greet René as
+he supposed, he was astonished to see a man's figure lolling in his
+own arm-chair.
+
+As he peered inquiringly into the twilight, the intruder rose to his
+feet, and cried with a voice loud and clear, pleasant withal to the
+ear:
+
+"Sir Adrian, I am sorry you have stopped so soon; I never heard
+anything more beautiful! The door was ajar, and I crept in like a cat,
+not to disturb you."
+
+Still in doubt, but with his fine air of courtesy, the light-keeper
+advanced towards the uninvited guest.
+
+"Am I mistaken," he said, with some hesitation, "surely this is Hubert
+Cochrane's voice?"
+
+"Jack Smith's voice, my dear fellow; Jack Smith, at your service,
+please to remember," answered the visitor, with a genial ring of
+laughter in his words. "Not that it matters much here, I suppose! Had
+I not heard the peal of your organ I should have thought Scarthey
+deserted indeed. I could find no groom of the chambers to announce me
+in due form."
+
+As he spoke, the two had drawn near each other and clasped hands
+heartily.
+
+"Now, to think of your knowing my voice in this manner! You have a
+devilish knack of spotting your man, Sir Adrian. It is almost four
+years since I was here last, is it not?"
+
+"Four years?--so it is; and four years that have done well by you, it
+would appear. What a picture of strength and lustiness! It really
+seems to regenerate one, and put heart of grace in one, only to take
+you by the hand.--Welcome, Captain Smith!"
+
+Nothing could have more succinctly described the outer man of him who
+chose to be known by that most nondescript of patronymics. Sir Adrian
+stood for a moment, contemplating, with glances of approval such as he
+seldom bestowed on his fellow-man, the symmetrical, slender, yet
+vigorous figure of his friend, and responding with an unwonted
+cheerfulness to the smile that lit up the steel-blue eyes, and parted
+the shapely, strong, and good-humoured mouth of the privateersman.
+
+"Dear me, and what a buck we have become!" continued the baronet,
+"what splendid plumage! It is good to see you so prosperous. And so
+this is the latest fashion? No doubt it sets forth the frame of a
+goodly man, though no one could guess at the 'sea dog' beneath such a
+set of garments. I used to consider my brother Rupert the most
+especial dandy I had ever seen; but that, evidently, was my limited
+experience: even Rupert cannot display so perfect a fit in
+bottle-green coats, so faultless a silken stock, buckskins of such
+matchless drab!"
+
+Captain Jack laughed, blushed slightly under the friendly banter, and
+allowed himself to be thrust back into the seat he had just vacated.
+
+"Welcome again, on my lonely estate. I hope this is not to be a mere
+flying visit? You know my misanthropy vanishes when I have your
+company. How did you come? Not by the causeway, I should say," smiling
+again, and glancing at the unblemished top-boots.
+
+"I have two men waiting for me in the gig below; my schooner, the
+_Peregrine_, lies in the offing."
+
+The elder man turned to the window, and through the grey curtain of
+crepuscule recognised the rakish topsail schooner that had excited
+Molly's admiration some days before. He gazed forth upon it a few
+meditative moments.
+
+"Not knowing whether I would find you ready to receive me," pursued
+the captain, "I arranged that the _Peregrine_ was to wait for me if I
+had to return to-night."
+
+"Which, of course, is not to be heard of," said Sir Adrian. "Here is
+Renny; he will carry word that with me you remain to-night.... Come,
+Renny, do you recognise an old acquaintance?"
+
+Already well disposed towards any one who could call this note of
+pleasure into the loved voice, the Breton, who had just entered,
+turned to give a broad stare at the handsome stranger, then burst into
+a guffaw of pure delight. "By my faith, it is Mr. the Lieutenant!" he
+ejaculated; adding, as ingeniously as Tanty herself might have done,
+that he would never have known him again.
+
+"It is Mr. the Captain now, Renny," said that person, and held out a
+strong hand to grip that of the little Frenchman, which the latter,
+after the preliminary rubbing upon his trousers that his code of
+manners enjoined, readily extended.
+
+"Ah, it is a good wind that sent you here this day," said he, with a
+sigh of satisfaction when this ceremony had been duly gone through.
+
+"You say well," acquiesced his master, "it has ever been a good wind
+that has brought Captain Jack across my path."
+
+And then receiving directions to refresh the gig's crew and dismiss
+them back to their ship with instructions to return for orders on the
+morrow, the servant hurried forth, leaving the two friends once more
+alone.
+
+"Thanks," said Captain Jack, when the door had closed upon the
+messenger. "That will exactly suit my purpose. I have a good many
+things to talk over with you, since you so kindly give me the
+opportunity. In the first place, let me unburden myself of a debt
+which is now of old standing--and let me say at the same time," added
+the young man, rising to deposit upon the table a letter-case which he
+had taken from his breast-pocket, "that though my actual debt is now
+met, my obligation to you remains the same and will always be so. You
+said just now that I looked prosperous, and so I am--owing somewhat to
+good luck, it is true, but owing above all to you. No luck would have
+availed me much without _that_ to start upon." And he pointed to the
+contents of the case, a thick bundle of notes which his host was now
+smilingly turning over with the tip of his fingers.
+
+"I might have sent you a draft, but there is no letter-post that I
+know of to Scarthey, and, besides, it struck me that just as these
+four thousand pounds had privately passed between you and me, you
+might prefer them to be returned in the same manner."
+
+"I prefer it, since it has brought you in person," said Sir Adrian,
+thrusting the parcel into a drawer and pulling his chair closer
+towards his guest. "Dealings with a man like you give one a taste of
+an ideal world. Would that more human transactions could be carried
+out in so simple and frank a manner as this little business of ours!"
+
+Captain Jack laughed outright.
+
+"Upon my word, you are a greater marvel to me every time I see
+you--which is not by any means often enough!"
+
+The other raised his eyebrows in interrogation, and the sailor went
+on:
+
+"Is it really possible that it is to _my_ mode of dealing that you
+attribute the delightful simplicity of a transaction involving a
+little fortune from hand to hand? And where pray, in this terraqueous
+sublunary sphere--I heard that good phrase from a literary exquisite
+at Bath, and it seems to me comprehensive--where, then, on this
+terraqueous sublunary globe of ours, Sir Adrian Landale, could one
+expect to find another person ready to lend a privateersman, trading
+under an irresponsible name, the sum of four thousand pounds, without
+any other security than his volunteered promise to return it--if
+possible?"
+
+Sir Adrian, ignoring the tribute to his own merits, arose and placed
+his friendly hand on the speaker's shoulder: "And now, my dear Jack,"
+he said gravely, "that the war is over, you will have to turn your
+energies in another direction. I am glad you are out of that unworthy
+trade."
+
+Captain Jack bounded up: "No, no, Sir Adrian, I value your opinion too
+much to allow such a statement to pass unchallenged. Unworthy trade!
+We have not given back those French devils one half of the harm they
+have done to our own merchant service; it was war, you know, and you
+know also, or perhaps you don't--in which case let me tell you--that
+my _Cormorant_ has made her goodly name, ay, and brought her commander
+a fair share of his credit, by her energy in bringing to an incredible
+number of those d----d French sharks--beg pardon, but you know the
+pestilent breed. Well, we shall never agree upon the subject I fear.
+As for me, the smart of the salt air, the sting of the salt breeze,
+the fighting, the danger, they have got into my blood; and even now it
+sometimes comes over me that life will not be perfect life to me
+without the dancing boards under my feet and the free waves around me,
+and my jolly boys to lead to death or glory. Yet, could you but know
+it, this is the veriest treason, and I revoke the words a thousand
+times. You look amazed, and well you may: ah, I have much to tell you!
+But I take it you will not care to hear all I have been able to
+achieve on the basis of your munificent help at my--ahem, unworthy
+trade."
+
+"Well, no," said Sir Adrian smiling, "I can quite imagine it, and
+imagine it without enthusiasm, though, perhaps, as you say, such
+things have to be. But I should like to know of these present
+circumstances, these prospects which make you look so happy. No doubt
+the fruits of peace?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose in one way they may be called so. Yet without the war
+and your helping hand they would even now hang as far from me as the
+grapes from the fox.--When I arrived in England three months after the
+peace had been signed, I had accumulated in the books of certain banks
+a tolerably respectable account, to the credit of a certain person,
+whose name, oddly enough, you on one or two occasions have applied,
+absently, to Captain Jack Smith. I was, I will own, already feeling
+inclined to discuss with myself the propriety of assuming the name in
+question, when, there came something in my way of which I shall tell
+you presently; which something has made me resolve to remain Captain
+Smith for some time longer. The old _Cormorant_ lay at Bristol, and
+being too big for this new purpose, I sold her. It was like cutting
+off a limb. I loved every plank of her; knew every frisk of her! She
+served me well to the end, for she fetched her value--almost. Next,
+having time on my hands, I bethought myself of seeing again a little
+of the world; and when I tell you that I drove over to Bath, you may
+perhaps begin to see what I am coming to."
+
+Sir Adrian suddenly turned in his chair to face his friend again, with
+a look of singular attention.
+
+"Well, no, not exactly, and yet--unless--? Pshaw! impossible----!"
+upon which lucid commentary he stopped, gazing with anxious inquiry
+into Captain Jack's smiling eyes. "Ah, I believe you have just a
+glimmer of the truth with that confounded perspicacity of yours,"
+saying which the sailor laughed and blushed not unbecomingly. "This is
+how it came about: I had transactions with old John Harewood, the
+banker, in Bristol, transactions advantageous to both sides, but
+perhaps most to him--sly old dog. At any rate, the old fellow took a
+monstrous fancy to me, over his claret, and when I mentioned Bath,
+recommended me to call upon his wife (a very fine dame, who prefers
+the fashion of the Spa to the business of Bristol, and consequently
+lives as much in the former place as good John Harewood will allow).
+Well, you wonder at my looking prosperous and happy. Listen, for here
+is the _hic_: At Lady Maria Harewood's I met one who, if I mistake
+not, is of your kin. Already, then, somewhere at the back of my memory
+dwelt the name of Savenaye----Halloa, bless me! I have surely said
+nothing to----!"
+
+The young man broke off, disconcerted. Sir Adrian's face had become
+unwontedly clouded, but he waved the speaker on impatiently: "No, no,
+I am surprised, of course, only surprised; never mind me, my thoughts
+wandered--please go on. So you have met her?"
+
+"Ay, that I have! Now it is no use beating about the bush. You who
+know her--you do know her of course--will jump at once to the only
+possible conclusion. Ah, Adrian!" Captain Jack pursued, pacing
+enthusiastically about, "I have been no saint, and no doubt I have
+fancied myself as a lover once or twice ere this; but to see that
+girl, sir, means a change in a man's life: to have met the light of
+those sweet eyes is to love, to love in reality. It is to feel ashamed
+of the idiotic make-believes of former loves. To love her, even in
+vague hope, is to be glorious already; and, by George, to have her
+troth, is to be--I cannot say what ... to be what I am now!"
+
+The lover's face was illumined; he walked the room like one treading
+on air as the joy within him found its voice in words.
+
+Sir Adrian listened with an extraordinary tightness at his heart. He
+had loved one woman even so; that love was still with him, as the
+scent clings to the phial; but the sight of this young, joyful love
+made him feel old in that hour--old as he had never realised before.
+There was no room in his being for such love again. And yet...? There
+was a tremulous anxiety in the question he put, after a short pause.
+"There are _two_ Demoiselles de Savenaye, Jack; which is it?"
+
+Captain Jack halted, turned on his heels, and exclaimed
+enthusiastically: "To me there is but one--one woman in the
+world--Madeleine!" His look met that of Sir Adrian in full, and even
+in the midst of his own self-centred mood he could not fail to notice
+the transient gleam that shot in the elder's eyes, and the sudden
+relaxation of his features. He pondered for a moment or two, scanning
+the while the countenance of the recluse; then a smile lighted up his
+own bronzed face in a very sweet and winning way. "As her kinsman,
+have I your approval?" he asked and proceeded earnestly: "To tell the
+truth at once, I was looking to even more than your approval--to your
+support."
+
+Sir Adrian's mood had undergone a change: as a breeze sweeping from a
+new quarter clears in a moment a darkening mist from the face of the
+earth, Captain Jack's answer had blown away for the nonce the
+atmosphere of misgiving that enveloped him. He answered promptly, and
+with warmth: "Being your friend, I am glad to know of this; being her
+kinsman, I may add, my dear _Hubert_"--there was just a tinge of
+hesitation, followed by a certain emphasis, on the change of name--"I
+promise to support you in your hopes, in so far as I have any
+influence; for power or right over my cousin I have none."
+
+The sailor threw himself down once more in his arm-chair; and, tapping
+his shining hessians with the stem of his long clay in smiling
+abstraction, began, with all a lover's egotism, to expatiate on the
+theme that filled his heart.
+
+"It is a singular, an admirable, a never sufficiently-to-be-praised
+conjunction of affairs which has ultimately brought me near you when I
+was pursuing the Light o' my Heart, ruthlessly snatched away by a
+cunning and implacable dragon, known to you as Miss O'Donoghue. I say
+_dragon_ in courtesy; I called her by better names before I realised
+what a service she was unconsciously rendering us by this sudden
+removal."
+
+"Known to me!" laughed Sir Adrian. "My own mother's sister!"
+
+"Then I still further retract. Moreover, seeing how things have turned
+out, I must now regard her as an angel in disguise. Don't look so
+surprised! Has she not brought my love under your protection? I
+thought I was tolerably proof against the little god, but then he had
+never shot his arrows at me from between the long lashes of Madeleine
+de Savenaye. Oh, those eyes, Adrian! So unlike those southern eyes I
+have known so well, too well in other days, brilliant, hard,
+challenging battle from the first glance, and yet from the first
+promising that surrender which is ever so speedy. Pah! no more of such
+memories. Before _her_ blue eyes, on my first introduction, I
+felt--well, I felt as the novice does under the first broadside."
+
+The speaker looked dreamily into space, as if the delicious moment
+rose again panoramically before him.
+
+"Well," he pursued, "that did me no harm, after all. Lady Maria
+Harewood, who, I have learned since, deals strongly in sentiment, and,
+being unfortunately debarred by circumstances from indulgence in the
+soothing luxury on her own behalf, loves to promote matches more
+poetical--she calls it more 'harmonious'--than her own very prosaic
+one, she, dear lady, was delighted with such a rarity as a bashful
+privateersman--her 'tame corsair,' as I heard her call your humble
+servant.--I was a hero, sir, a perfect hero of romance in the course
+of a few days! On the strength of this renown thrust upon me I found
+grace before the most adorable blue eyes; had words of sympathy from
+the sweetest lips, and smiles from the most bewitching little mouth in
+all the world. So you see I owe poor Lady Maria a good thought.... You
+laugh?"
+
+Sir Adrian was smiling, but all in benevolence, at the artlessness of
+this eager youth, who in all the unconscious glory of his looks and
+strength, ascribed the credit of his entrance into a maiden's heart to
+the virtue of a few irresponsible words of recommendation.
+
+"Ah! those were days! Everything went on smoothly, and I was debating
+with myself whether I would not, at once, boldly ask her to be the
+wife of Hubert Cochrane; though the casting of Jack Smith's skin would
+have necessitated the giving up of several of his free-trading
+engagements."
+
+"Free trading! You do not mean to say, man alive, that you have turned
+smuggler now!" interrupted Sir Adrian aghast.
+
+"Smuggler," cried Jack with his frank laugh, "peace, I beg, friend!
+Miscall not a gentleman thus. Smuggler--pirate? I cut a pretty figure
+evidently in your worship's eyes. Lucky for me you never would be
+sworn as a magistrate, or where should I be ... and you too, between
+duty and friendship?--But to proceed: I was about, as I have said, to
+give that up for the reasons I mentioned, when, upon a certain fine
+evening, I crossed the path of one of the most masterful old maids I
+have ever seen, or even heard of; and, would you believe it?"--this
+with a quizzical look at his host's grave face--"this misguided old
+lady took such a violent dislike to me at first sight, and expressed
+it so thoroughly well, that, hang me if I was not completely brought
+to. And all for escorting my dear one from Lady Maria's house to her
+own! Well, the walk was worth it--though the old crocodile was on the
+watch for us, ready to snap; had got wind of the secret, somehow, a
+secret unspoken even between us two. This first and last interview
+took place on the flags, in front of No. 17 Camden Place, Bath. Oh! It
+was a very one-sided affair from the beginning, and ended abruptly in
+a door being banged in my face. Then I heard about Miss O'Donoghue's
+peculiarities in the direction of exclusiveness. And then, also, oddly
+enough, for the first time, of the great fortune going with my
+Madeleine's hand. Of course I saw it all, and, I may say, forgave the
+old lady. In short, I realised that, in Miss O'Donoghue's mind, I am
+nothing but an unprincipled fortune-seeker and adventurer. Now you,
+Adrian, can vouch that, whatever my faults, I am none such."
+
+Sir Adrian threw a quiet glance at his friend, whose eyes sparkled as
+they met it.
+
+"God knows," continued the latter, "that all I care for, concerning
+the money, is that _she_ may have it. This last venture, the biggest
+and most difficult of all, I then decided to undertake, that I might
+be the fitter mate for the heiress--bless her! Oh, Adrian, man, could
+you have seen her sweet tearful face that night, you would understand
+that I could not rest upon such a parting. In the dawn of the next
+morning I was in the street--not so much upon the chance of meeting,
+though I knew that such sweetness would have now to be all stolen--but
+to watch her door, her window; a lover's trick, rewarded by lover's
+luck! Leaning on the railings, through the cold mist (cold it was,
+though I never felt it, but I mind me now how the icicles broke under
+my hand), what should I see, before even the church-bells had set to
+chiming, or the yawning sluts to pull the kitchen curtains, but a
+bloated monster of a coach, dragging and sliding up the street to
+halt at her very door. Then out came the beldam herself, and two
+muffled-up slender things--my Madeleine one of course; but I had a
+regular turn at sight of them, for I swear I could not tell which was
+which! Off rattled the chariot at a smart pace; and there I stood,
+friend, feeling as if my heart was tied behind with the trunks."
+
+The sailor laughed, ran his fingers through his curls and stamped in
+lively recollection.
+
+"Nothing to be drawn from their landlady. But I am not the man to
+allow a prize to be snatched from under my very nose. So,
+anathematising Miss O'Donoghue's family-tree, root, stem, and
+branch--except that most lovely off-shoot I mean to transplant (you
+will forgive this heat of blood; it was clearing for action so to
+speak)--I ran out and overtook the ostler whom I had seen putting the
+finishing touch to the lashing of boxes behind! _'Gloucester!'_ says
+he. The word was worth the guinea it cost me, a hundred times
+over.--In less than an hour I was in the saddle, ready for pursuit,
+cantering boot to boot with my man--a trusty fellow who knows how to
+hold his tongue, and can sit a horse in the bargain. Neither at
+Gloucester, nor the next day, up to Worcester, could we succeed in
+doing more than keep our fugitives in view. When they had alighted at
+one inn, as ascertained by my squire, we patronised the opposition
+hostelry, and the ensuing morning cantered steadily in pursuit, on
+_our_ new post-horses half an hour after they had rumbled away with
+_their_ relays. But the evening of our arrival at Worcester, my fellow
+found out, at last, what the next stage was to be, and--clever chap,
+he lost nothing for his sharpness--that the Three Kings' Heads had
+been recommended to the old lady as the best house in Shrewsbury. This
+time we took the lead, and on to Shrewsbury, and were at the glorious
+old Kings' Heads (I in a private room, tight as wax) a good couple of
+hours before the chariot made its appearance. And there, man, there!
+my pretty one and I met again!"
+
+"That was, no doubt," put in Sir Adrian, in his gentle, indulgent way,
+"what made the Kings' Heads so glorious?"
+
+"Ay. Right! And yet it was but a few seconds, on the stair, under a
+smoky lamp, but her beauty filled the landing with radiance as her
+kindness did my soul.--It was but for a moment, all blessed moment,
+too brief, alas! Ah, Adrian, friend--old hermit in your cell--_you_
+have never known life, you who have never tasted a moment such as
+that! Then we started apart: there was a noise below, and she had only
+time to whisper that she was on her way to Pulwick to some
+relatives--had only heard it that very day--when steps came up the
+stairs, creaking. With a last promise, a last word of love, I leaped
+back into my own chamber, there to see (through the chink between door
+and post) the untimely old mischief-maker herself pass slowly, sour
+and solemn, towards her apartments, leaning upon her other niece's
+arm. How could I have thought _that_ baggage like my princess?
+Handsome, if you will; but, with her saucy eye, her raven head, her
+brown cheek, no more to be compared to my stately lily than brass to
+gold!"
+
+The host listening wonderingly, his eyes fixed with kindly gravity
+upon the speaker as he rattled on, here gave a slight start, all
+unnoticed of his friend.
+
+"The next morning, when I had seen the coach and its precious freight
+move on once more northward, I began the retreat south, hugging myself
+upon luck and success. I had business in Salcombe--perhaps you may
+have heard of the Salcombe schooners--in connection with the fitting
+out of that sailing wonder, the _Peregrine_. And so," concluded
+Captain Jack, laughing again in exuberance of joy, "you may possibly
+guess one of the reasons that has brought her and me round by your
+island."
+
+There ensued a long silence, filled with thoughts, equally pressing
+though of widely different complexion, on either side of the hearth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the meal, which was presently set forth and proclaimed ready by
+René, the talk, as was natural in that watchful attendant's presence,
+ran only on general topics, and was in consequence fitful and
+unspontaneous. But when the two men, for all their difference of age,
+temper, and pursuits so strongly, yet so oddly united in sympathy,
+were once more alone, they naturally fell back under the influence of
+the more engrossing strain of reflection. Again there was silence,
+while each mused, gazing into space and vaguely listening to the
+plash of high water under the window.
+
+"It must have been a strong motive," said Sir Adrian, after his dreamy
+fashion, like one thinking aloud, "to induce a man like you to abandon
+his honourable name."
+
+Captain Jack flushed at these words, drew his elbows from the table,
+and shot a keen, inquiring glance at his friend, which, however, fell
+promptly before the latter's unconscious gaze and was succeeded by one
+of reflective melancholy. Then, with a slight sigh, he raised his
+glass to the lamp, and while peering abstractedly through the ruby,
+"The story of turning my back upon my house," he said musingly,
+"shaking its very dust off my feet, so to speak, and starting life
+afresh unbeholden to my father (even for what he could not take away
+from me--my own name),--is a simple affair, although pitiful enough
+perhaps. But memories of family wrongs and family quarrels are of
+their nature painful; and, as I am a mirth-loving fellow, I hate to
+bring them upon me. But perhaps it has occurred to you that I may have
+brought some disgrace upon the name I have forsaken."
+
+"I never allowed myself to think so," said Sir Adrian, surprised.
+"Your very presence by my fireside is proof of it."
+
+Again the captain scrutinised his host; then with a little laugh:
+"Pardon me," he cried, "with another man one might accept that likely
+proof and be flattered. But with you? why, I believe I know you too
+well not to feel sure that you would have received me as kindly and
+unreservedly, no matter what my past if only you thought that I had
+repented; that you would forgive even a _crime_ regretted; and having
+forgiven, forget.... But, to resume, you will believe me when I say
+that there was nothing of the sort. No," he went on, with a musing
+air, "but I could tell you of a boy, disliked at home for his stubborn
+spirit, and one day thrashed, thrashed mercilessly--at a time when he
+had thought he had reached to the pride of man's estate, thrashed by
+his own father, and for no just cause.... Oh, Adrian, it is a terrible
+thing to have put such resentment into a lad's heart." He rose as he
+spoke, and placed himself before the hearth.
+
+"If ever I have sons," he added after a pause, and at the words his
+whole handsome face relaxed, and became suffused with a tender glow,
+"I would rather cut my right hand off than raise such a spirit in
+them. Well, I daresay you can guess the rest; I will even tell you in
+a few words, and then dismiss the subject.--I have always had a
+certain shrewdness at the bottom of my recklessness. Now there was a
+cousin of the family, who had taken to commerce in Liverpool, and who
+was therefore despised, ignored and insulted by us gentry of the
+Shaws. So when I packed my bundle, and walked out of the park gate, I
+thought of him; and two days later I presented myself at his mansion
+in Rodney Street, Liverpool. I told him my name, whereat he scowled;
+but he was promptly brought round upon hearing of my firm
+determination to renounce it and all relations with my father's house
+for ever, and of my reasons for this resolve, which he found
+excellent. I could not have lighted upon a better man. He hated my
+family as heartily as even I could wish, and readily, out of spite to
+them, undertook to aid me. He was a most enterprising scoundrel, had a
+share in half a dozen floating ventures. I expressed a desire for life
+on the ocean wave, and he started me merrily as his nephew, Jack
+Smith, to learn the business on a slaver of his. The 'ebony trade,'
+you know, was all the go then, Adrian. Many great gentlemen in
+Lancashire had shares in it. Now it is considered low. To say true, a
+year of it was more than enough for me--too much! It sickened me. My
+uncle laughed when I demurred at a second journey, but to humour me,
+as I had learned something of the sailing trade, he found me another
+berth, on board a privateer, the _St. Nicholas_. My fortune was made
+from the moment I set foot on that lucky ship, as you know."
+
+"And you have never seen your father since?"
+
+"Neither father, nor brothers, nor any of my kin, save the cousin in
+question. All I know is that my father is dead--that he disinherited
+me expressly in the event of my being still in the flesh; my eldest
+brother reigns; many of us are scattered, God knows where. And my
+mother"--the sailor's voice changed slightly--"my mother lives in her
+own house, with some of the younger ones. So much I have ascertained
+quite recently. She believes me dead, of course. Oh, it will be a good
+day, Adrian, when I can come back to her, independent, prosperous,
+bringing my beautiful bride with me!... But until I can resume my name
+in all freedom, this cannot be."
+
+"But why, my dear fellow, these further risks and adventures? Surely,
+even at your showing you have enough of this world's goods; why not
+come forward, now, at once, openly? I will introduce you, as soon as
+may be, in your real character, for the sake of your mother--of
+Madeleine herself."
+
+The sailor shook his head, tempted yet determined.
+
+"I am not free to do so. I have given my word; my honour is engaged,"
+he said. Then abruptly asked: "Have you ever heard of guinea
+smuggling?"
+
+"Guinea smuggling! No," said Sir Adrian, his amazement giving way to
+anxiety.
+
+"No? You surprise me. You who are, or were, I understand, a student of
+philosophical matters, freedom of exchange, and international
+intercourse and the rest of it--things we never shall have so long as
+governments want money, I am thinking.--However, this guinea smuggling
+is a comparatively new business. Now, _I_ don't know anything about
+the theory; but I know this much of the practice that, while our
+preventive service won't let guineas pass the Channel (as goods) this
+year, somebody on the other side is devilish anxious to have them at
+almost any cost. And the cost, you know, is heavy, for the risk of
+confiscation is great. Well, your banker or your rich man will not
+trust his bullion to your common free trader--he is not quite such a
+fool."
+
+"No," put in Sir Adrian, as the other paused on this mocking
+proposition. "In the old days, when I was busy in promoting the
+Savenaye expedition, I came across many of that gentry, and I cannot
+mind a case where they could have been trusted with such a freight.
+But perhaps," he added with a small smile, "the standard may be higher
+now."
+
+Captain Jack grinned appreciatively. "That is where the 'likes of me'
+comes in. I will confess this not to be my first attempt. It is known
+that I am one of the few whose word is warranty. What is more, as I
+have said, it is known that I have the luck. Thus, even if I could
+bring my own name into such a trade, I would not; it would be the
+height of folly to change now."
+
+For all his disapproval Sir Adrian could not repress a look of
+amusement. "I verily believe, Jack," he said, shaking his head, "that
+you are as superstitious yourself as the best of them!"
+
+"I ought to make a good thing out of it," said Jack, evasively. "And
+even with all that is lovely to keep me on shore, I would hardly give
+it up, if I could. As things stand I could not if I would. Do not
+condemn me, Adrian,--that would be fatal to my hopes--nay, I actually
+want your help."
+
+"I would you were out of it," reiterated Sir Adrian; "it takes so
+little to turn the current of a man's life when he seems to be making
+straight for happiness. As to the morals of it, I fail, I must admit,
+to perceive any wrong in smuggling, at least in the abstract, except
+that a certain kind of moral teaches that all is wrong that is against
+the law. And yet so many of our laws are so ferocious and inept, and
+as such the very cause of so much going wrong that might otherwise go
+well; so many of those who administer them are themselves so ferocious
+and inept, that the mere fact of a pursuit being unlawful is no real
+condemnation in my eyes. But, as you know, Jack, those who place
+themselves above some laws almost invariably renounce all. If you are
+hanged for stealing a horse, or breaking some fiscal law and hanged
+for killing a man, the tendency, under stress of circumstances is
+obvious. Aye, have we not a proverb about it: as well be hanged for a
+sheep as for a lamb?... There are gruesome stories about your free
+traders--and gruesome endings to them. I well remember, in my young
+days, the clanking gibbet on the sands near Preston and the three
+tarred and iron-riveted carcases hanging, each in its chains, with the
+perpetual guard of carrion crows.... Hanging in chains is still on the
+statute book, I believe. But I'll stop my croaking now. You are not
+one to be drawn into brutal ways; nor one, I fear, to be frightened
+into prudence. Nevertheless," laughing quietly, "I am curious to know
+in what way you expect help from me, in practice. Do you, seriously,
+want me to embark actually on a smuggling expedition?--I demur, my
+dear fellow."
+
+Obviously relieved of some anxiety, the other burst out laughing.
+"Never fear! I know your dislike to bilge water too well. I
+appreciate too well also your comfortable surroundings," he returned,
+seating himself once more complacently in his arm-chair, "much as I
+should love your company on board my pleasure ship--for, if you
+please, the _Peregrine_ is no smuggling lugger, but professes to be a
+yacht. Still, you can be of help for all that, and without lifting
+even a finger to promote this illicit trade. You may ignore it
+completely, and yet you will render me incalculable service, provided
+you do not debar me from paying you a few more visits in your
+solitude, and give me the range of your caves and cellars."
+
+"You are welcome enough," said the recluse. "I trust it may end as
+well as it promises." And, after a pause, "Madeleine does not know the
+nature of your present pursuit?"
+
+"Oddly enough, and happily (for our moments of interview are short, as
+you may imagine) she is not curious on the subject. I don't know what
+notions the old Lady Maria may have put into her head about me. I
+think she believes that I am engaged on some secret political intrigue
+and approves of such. At least I gathered as much from her sympathetic
+reticence; and, between ourselves, I am beginning to believe it
+myself."
+
+"How is that?" asked the listener, moved to fresh astonishment by this
+new departure.
+
+"Well, I may tell you, who not only can be as silent as the tomb, but
+really have a right to know, since you are tacitly of the conspiracy.
+This time the transaction is to be with some official of the French
+Court. They want the metal, and yet wish to have it secretly. What
+their motive may be is food for reflection if you like, but it is no
+business of mine. And, besides the fact that one journey will suffice
+for a sum which at the previous rate would have required half a score,
+all the trouble and uncertainty of landing are disposed of; at any
+rate, I am, when all is ready, to be met by a government vessel, get
+my _quid pro quo_ as will be settled, and there the matter is to end."
+
+"A curious expedition," mused Sir Adrian.
+
+"Yes," said the sailor, "my last will be the best. By the way, will
+you embark a few bags with me? I will take no commission."
+
+Sir Adrian could not help laughing.
+
+"No, thank you; I have no wish to launch any more of my patrimony on
+ventures--since it would be of no service to you. I had almost as lief
+you had made use of my old crow's nest without letting me into the ins
+and outs of your projects. But, be it as it may, it is yours, night
+and day. Your visits I shall take as being for me."
+
+"What a man you are, upon my soul, Sir Adrian!" cried Captain Jack,
+enthusiastically.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on, when the "shaking down" hour, in Captain Jack's phraseology,
+had sounded, and the two friends separated to rest, the young man
+refused the offer, dictated by hospitality, of his host's own bedroom.
+Sir Adrian did not press the point, and, leaving his guest at liberty
+to enjoy the couch arranged by René in a corner under the bookshelves,
+even as when Mademoiselle de Savenaye had been the guest of the peel,
+himself retired to that now hallowed apartment.
+
+"Odd fellow, that," soliloquised Captain Jack, as, slowly divesting
+himself, he paced about the long room and, in the midst of roseate
+reflections, examined his curious abode. "Withal, as good as ever
+stepped. It was a fine day's work our old _St. Nicholas_ did, about
+this time eight years ago. Rather unlike a crowded battery deck,
+this," looking from the solemn books to the glinting organ pipes, and
+conscious of the great silence. "As for me, I should go crazy by
+myself here. But it suits him. Queer fish!" again ruminated the young
+sailor. "He hates no one and yet dislikes almost everybody, except
+that funny little Frenchy and me. Whereas _I_ like every man I
+meet--unless I detest him!... My beautiful plumage!" this whilst
+carefully folding the superfine coat and thereon the endless silken
+stock. "Now there's a fellow who does not care a hang for any woman
+under the sun, and yet enters into another chap's love affairs as if
+he understood it all. I believe it will make him happy to win my cause
+with Madeleine. I wish one could do something for _his_ happiness. It
+is absurd, you know," as though apostrophising an objector, "a man
+can't be happy without a woman. And yet again, my good Jack, you never
+thought that before you met Madeleine. He has not met his Madeleine,
+that's what it means. Where ignorance is bliss.... Friend Adrian! Let
+us console ourselves and call you ignorantly happy, in your old crow's
+nest. You have not stocked it so badly either.--For all your ignorance
+in love, you have a pretty taste in liquor."
+
+So thinking, he poured himself a last glass of his host's wine, which
+he held for a moment in smiling cogitation, looking, with the mind's
+eye, through the thick walls of the keep, across the cold mist-covered
+sands of Scarthey and again through the warm and scented air of a
+certain room (imagination pictured) where Madeleine must at that hour
+lie in her slumber. After a moment of silent adoration he sent a
+rapturous kiss landwards and tossed his glass with a last toast:
+
+"Madeleine, my sweet! To your softly closed lids."
+
+And again Captain Jack fell to telling over the precious tale of that
+morning's interview, furtively secured, by that lover's luck he so
+dutifully blessed, under the cluster of Scotch firs near the grey and
+crumbling boundary walls of Pulwick Park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"LOVE GILDS THE SCENE AND WOMAN GUIDES THE PLOT"
+
+
+Tanty's wrath upon discovering Sir Adrian's departure was all the
+greater because she could extort no real explanation from Rupert, and
+because her attacks rebounded, as it were, from the polished surface
+he exposed to them on every side. Madeleine's indifference, and
+Molly's apparently reckless spirits, further discomposed her during
+supper; and upon the latter young lady's disappearance after the meal,
+it was as much as she could do to finish her nightly game of patience
+before mounting to seek her with the purpose of relieving her
+overcharged feelings, and procuring what enlightenment she might.
+
+The unwonted spectacle of the saucy damsel in tears made Miss
+O'Donoghue halt upon the threshold, the hot wind of anger upon which
+she seemed to be propelled into the room falling into sudden
+nothingness.
+
+There could be no mistake about it. Molly was weeping; so
+energetically indeed, with such a passion of tears and sobs, that the
+noise of Tanty's tumultuous entrance fell unheeded upon her ears.
+
+All her sympathies stirred within her, the old lady advanced to the
+girl with the intention of gathering her to her bosom. But as she drew
+near, the black and white of the open diary attracted her eye under
+the circle of lamplight, and being possessed of excellent long sight,
+she thought it no shame to utilise the same across her grand-niece's
+prostrate, heaving form, before making known her presence.
+
+_"And so I sit and cry."_
+
+Miss Molly was carrying out her programme with much precision, if
+indeed her attitude, prone along the table, could be described as
+sitting.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue's eyes and mouth grew round, as with the expression of
+an outraged cockatoo she read and re-read the tell-tale phrases. Here
+was a complication she had not calculated upon.
+
+"Dear, dear," she cried, clacking her tongue in disconsolate fashion,
+so soon as she could get her breath. "What is the meaning of this, my
+poor girl?"
+
+Molly leaped to her feet, and turning a blazing, disfigured
+countenance upon her relative, exclaimed with more energy than
+politeness: "Good gracious, aunt, what _do_ you want?"
+
+Then catching sight of the open diary, she looked suspiciously from it
+to her visitor, and closed it with a hasty hand. But Miss O'Donoghue's
+next words settled the doubt.
+
+"Well, to be sure, what a state you have put yourself into," she
+pursued in genuine distress. "What has happened then between you and
+that fellow, whom I declare I begin to believe as crazy as Rupert
+says, that you should be crying your eyes out over his going back to
+his island?--you that I thought could not shed a tear if you tried.
+Nothing left but to sit and cry, indeed."
+
+"So you have been reading my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly,
+stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my
+private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness,
+relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of
+rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this
+disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the
+world. I wish I were dead, I do."
+
+Again Tanty opened her arms, and this time she did draw the stormy
+creature to a bosom, as warm and motherly as if all the joys of
+womanhood had not been withheld from it.
+
+"Tell me all about it, my poor child." There was a distinct feeling of
+comfort in the grasp of the old arms, comfort in the very ring of the
+deep voice. Molly was not a secretive person by nature, and moreover
+she retained quite enough shrewdness, even in her unwonted break-down,
+to conjecture that with Tanty lay her sole hope of help. So rolling
+her dark head distractedly on the old maid's shoulder, the young maid
+narrated her tale of woe. Pressed by a pointed question here and
+there, Tanty soon collected a series of impressions of Molly's visit
+to Scarthey, that set her busy mind working upon a startlingly new
+line. It was her nature to jump at conclusions, and it was not strange
+that the girl's passionate display of grief should seem to be the
+unmistakable outcome of tenderer feelings than the wounded pride and
+disappointment which were in reality its sole motors.
+
+"I am convinced it is Rupert that is at the bottom of it," cried Molly
+at last, springing into uprightness again, and clenching her hands.
+"His one idea is to drive his brother permanently from his own
+home--and he _hates me_."
+
+Tanty sat rigid with thought.
+
+So Molly was in love with Sir Adrian Landale, and he--who knows--was
+in love with her too; or if not with her, with her likeness to her
+mother, and that was much the same thing when all was said and done.
+Could anything be more suitable, more fortunate? Could ever two birds
+be killed with one stone with more complete felicity than in this
+settling of the two people she most loved upon earth? Poor pretty
+Molly! The old lady's heart grew very tender over the girl who now
+stood half sullenly, half bashfully averting her swollen face; five
+days ago she had not known her handsome cousin, and now she was
+breaking her heart for him.
+
+It might be, indeed, as she said, that they had to thank Rupert for
+this--and off flew Tanty's mind upon another tangent. Rupert was very
+deep, there could be no doubt of that; he was anxious enough to keep
+Adrian away from them all; what would it be then when it came to a
+question of his marriage?
+
+Tanty, with the delightful optimism that seventy years' experience had
+failed to damp, here became confident of the approach of her younger
+nephew's complete discomfiture, and in the cheering contemplation of
+that event chuckled so unctuously that Molly looked at her amazed.
+
+"It is well for you, my dear," said the old lady, rising and wagging
+her head with an air of enigmatic resolution, "that you have got an
+aunt."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some two days later, René, sitting upon a ledge of the old Scarthey
+wall, in the spare sunshine which this still, winter's noon shone
+pearl-like through a universal mist, busy mending a net, to the tune
+of a melancholy, inward whistle, heard up above the licking of the
+waves all around him and the whimper of the seagulls overhead, the
+beat of steady oars approaching from land side.
+
+Starting to his feet, the little man, in vague expectation, ran to a
+point of vantage from which to scan the tideway; after a few seconds'
+investigation he turned tail, dashed into the ruins, up the steps, and
+burst open the door of the sitting-room, calling upon his master with
+a scared expression of astonishment.
+
+Captain Jack, poring over a map, his pipe sticking rakishly out of one
+side of his mouth, looked up amused at the Frenchman's evident
+excitement, while Adrian, who had been busy with the uppermost row of
+books upon his west wall, looked down from his ladder perch, with the
+pessimist's constitutional expectation of evil growing upon his face.
+
+"One comes in a boat," ejaculated René, "and I thought I ought to warn
+his honour, if his honour will give himself the trouble to look out."
+
+"It must be the devil to frighten Renny in this fashion," muttered
+Captain Jack as distinctly as the clench of his teeth upon the pipe
+would allow him. Sir Adrian paled a little, he began to descend his
+ladder, mechanically flicking the dust from his cuffs.
+
+"Your honour," said René, drawing to the window and looking out
+cautiously, "I have not yet seen her, but I believe it is old
+miss--the aunt of your honour and these ladies."
+
+Captain Jack's pipe fell from his dropping jaw and was broken into
+many fragments as he leaped to his feet with an elasticity of limb and
+a richness of expletive which of themselves would have betrayed his
+calling.
+
+Flinging his arm across one of Adrian's shoulders he peeped across the
+other out of the window, with an alarm half mocking, half genuine.
+
+"The devil it is, friend Renny," he cried, drawing back and running
+his hands with an exaggerated gesture of despair through his brown
+curls; "Adrian, all is lost unless you hide me."
+
+"My aunt here, and alone," exclaimed Adrian, retreating from the
+window perturbed enough himself, "I must go down to meet her. Pray God
+it is no ill news! Hurry, Renny, clear these glasses away."
+
+"In the name of all that's sacred, clear me away first!" interposed
+Captain Jack, this time with a real urgency; through the open lattice
+came the sound of the grating of the boat's keel upon the sand and a
+vigorous hail from a masculine throat--"Ahoy, Renny Potter, ahoy!"
+"Adrian, this is a matter of life and death to my hopes, hide me in
+your lowest dungeon for goodness' sake; I do not know my way about
+your ruins, and I am convinced the old lady will nose me out like a
+badger."
+
+There was no time for explanation; Sir Adrian made a sign to René, who
+highly enjoying the situation and grinning from ear to ear, was
+already volunteering to "well hide Mr. the Captain," and the pair
+disappeared with much celerity into the inner room, while Adrian,
+unable to afford himself further preparation, hurried down the great
+stairs to meet this unexpected guest.
+
+He emerged bareheaded into the curious mist which hung pall-like upon
+the outer world, and seemed to combine the opposite elements of glare
+and dulness, just as Tanty, aided by the stalwart arm of the boatman,
+who had rowed her across, succeeded in dragging her rheumatic limbs up
+the last bit of ascent to the door of the keep.
+
+She halted, disengaged herself, and puffing and blowing surveyed her
+nephew with a stony gaze.
+
+"My dear aunt," cried Adrian, "nothing has happened, I trust?"
+
+"Sufficient has already happened, nephew, I should _hope_," retorted
+the old lady with extreme dignity, "sufficient to make me desire to
+confer with you most seriously. I thank you, young man," turning to
+William Shearman who stood on one side, his eager gaze upon "the
+master," ready to pull his forelock so soon as he could catch his eye,
+"be here again in an hour, if you please."
+
+"But you will allow me to escort you myself," exclaimed Adrian, rising
+to the situation, "and I hope there need be no hurry so long as
+daylight lasts--Good-morning, Will, I am glad the new craft is a
+success--you need not wait. Tanty, take my arm, I beg, the steps are
+steep and rough."
+
+Gripping her nephew's arm with her bony old woman's hand, Miss
+O'Donoghue began a laborious ascent, pausing every five steps to
+breathe stertorously and reproachfully, and look round upon the
+sandstone walls with supreme disdain; but this was nothing to the air
+with which, when at last installed upon a high hard chair, in the
+sitting-room (having sternly refused the easy one Sir Adrian humbly
+proffered), she deliberately proceeded to survey the scene. In truth,
+the neatness that usually characterised Adrian's surroundings was
+conspicuously absent from them, just then.
+
+Two or three maps lay overlapping each other upon the table beside the
+tray with its flagon of amber ale, which had formed the captain's
+morning draught; and the soiled glass, the fragments of his pipe, and
+its half-burnt contents lay strewn about the prostrate chair which
+that lively individual had upset in his agitation. Adrian's ladder,
+the books he had been handling and had not replaced, the white ash of
+the dying fire, all contributed to the unwonted aspect of somewhat
+melancholy disorder; worse than all, the fumes of the strong tobacco
+which the sailor liked to smoke in his secluded moments hung rank,
+despite the open window, upon the absolute motionlessness of the
+atmosphere.
+
+Tanty snorted and sniffed, while Adrian, after picking up the chair,
+began to almost unconsciously refold the maps, his eyes fixed
+wonderingly upon his visitor's face.
+
+This latter delivered herself at length of some of the indignation
+that was choking her, in abrupt disjointed sentences, as if she were
+uncorking so many bottles.
+
+"Well I'm sure, nephew, I am not surprised at your _extraordinary_
+behaviour, and if this is the style you prefer to live in--style, did
+I say?--sty would be more appropriate. Of course it is only what I
+have been led to expect, but I must say I was ill prepared to be
+treated by you with actual disrespect. My sister's child and I your
+guest, not to speak of your aunt, and you your mother's son, and her
+host besides! It is a slap in the face, Adrian, a slap in the face
+which has been a very bitter pill to have to swallow, I assure you--I
+may say without exaggeration, in fact, that it has cut me to the
+quick."
+
+"But surely," cried the nephew, laughing with gentle indulgence at
+this complicated indictment, "surely you cannot suppose I would have
+been willingly guilty of the smallest disrespect to you. I am a most
+unfortunate man, most unfortunately situated, and if I have offended,
+it is, you must believe, unwittingly and unavoidably. But you got my
+letter--I made my motives clear to you."
+
+"Oh yes, I got your letter yesterday," responded Tanty, not at all
+softened, "and a more idiotic production from a man of your
+attainments, allow me to remark, I never read. Adrian, you are making
+a perfect fool of yourself, and _you cannot afford it_!"
+
+"I fear you will never really understand my position," murmured Adrian
+hopelessly.
+
+Tanty rattled her large green umbrella upon the floor with a violence
+that made her nephew start, then turned upon him a countenance
+inflamed with righteous anger.
+
+"It is only three days ago since I gave you fully my view of the
+situation," she remarked, "you were good enough at the time to admit
+that it was a remarkably well-balanced one. I should be glad if you
+will explain in what manner your position could have changed in the
+space of just three hours after, to lead you to rush back to your
+island, really as if you were a mole or a wild Indian, or some other
+strange animal that could not bear civilised society, without even so
+much as a good-bye to me, or to your cousins either? What is
+that?--you say you wrote--oh, ay--you wrote--to Molly as well as to
+me; rigmaroles, my dear nephew, mere absurd statements that have not a
+grain of truth in them, that do not hold water for an instant. You are
+not made for the world forsooth, nor the world for you! and if that is
+not flying in the face of your Creator, and wanting to know better
+than Providence!--And then you say, 'you cast a gloom by your mere
+presence.' Fiddle-de-dee! It was not much in the way of gloom that
+Molly brought back with her from her three days' visit to you--or if
+that is gloom--well, the more your presence casts of it the
+better--that is all I can say. Ah, but you should have seen her, poor
+child, after you went away in that heartless manner and you had
+removed yourself and your shadow, and your precious gloom--if you
+could have seen how unhappy she has been!"
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed the man with a paling face, "what are you
+saying?"
+
+"Only the truth, sir--Molly is breaking her heart because of your base
+desertion of her."
+
+"Good God," muttered Adrian again, rose up stiffly in a sort of
+horrified astonishment and then sat down again and passed his hand
+over his forehead like a man striving to awaken from a painful dream.
+
+"Oh, Adrian, don't be more of a fool than you can possibly help!"
+cried his relative, exasperated beyond all expression by his
+inarticulate distress. "You are so busy contemplating all sorts of
+absurdities miles away that I verily believe you cannot see an inch
+beyond your nose. My gracious! what is there to be so astonished at?
+How did you behave to the poor innocent from the very instant she
+crossed your threshold? Fact is, you have been a regular gay Lothario.
+Did you not"--cried Tanty, starting again upon her fine vein of
+metaphor--"did you not deliberately hold the cup of love to those
+young lips only to nip it in the bud? The girl is not a stock or a
+stone. You are a handsome man, Adrian, and the long and the short of
+it is, those who play with fire must reap as they have sown."
+
+Tanty, who had been holding forth with the rapidity of a loose
+windmill in a hurricane, here found herself forced to pause and take
+breath; which she did, fanning herself with much energy, a triumphant
+consciousness of the unimpeachability of her logic written upon her
+heated countenance. But Adrian still stared at her with the same
+incredulous dismay; looking indeed as little like a gay Lothario as it
+was possible, even for him.
+
+"Do you mean," he said at last, in slow broken sentences, as his mind
+wrestled with the strange tidings; "am I to understand that Molly,
+that bright beautiful creature, has been made unhappy through me? Oh,
+my dear Tanty," striving with a laugh, "the idea is too absurd, I am
+old enough to be her father, you know--what evidence can you have for
+a statement so distressing, so extraordinary."
+
+"I am not quite in my dotage yet," quoth Tanty, drily; "neither am I
+in the habit of making unfounded assertions, nephew. I have heard what
+the girl has said with her own lips, I have read what she has written
+in her diary; she has sobbed and cried over your cruelty in these very
+arms--I don't know what further evidence----"
+
+But Sir Adrian had started up again--"Molly crying, Molly crying for
+me--God help us all--Cécile's child, whom I would give my life to keep
+from trouble! Tanty, if this is true--it must be true since you say
+so, I hardly know myself what I am saying--then I am to blame, deeply
+to blame--and yet--I have not said one word to the child--did
+nothing...." here he paused and a deep flush overspread his face to
+the roots of his hair; "except indeed in the first moment of her
+arrival--when she came in upon me as I was lost in memories of the
+past--like the spirit of Cécile."
+
+"Humph," said Tanty, pointedly, "but then you see what you took for
+Cécile's spirit happened to be Molly in the flesh." She fixed her
+sharp eyes upon her nephew, who, struck into confusion by her words,
+seemed for the moment unable to answer. Then, as if satisfied with the
+impression produced, she folded her hands over the umbrella handle and
+observed in more placid tones than she had yet used:
+
+"And now we must see what is to be done."
+
+Adrian began to pace the room in greater perturbation.
+
+"What is to be done?" he repeated, "alas! what can be done? Tanty, you
+will believe me when I tell you that I should have cut off my right
+hand rather than brought this thing upon the child--but she is very
+young--the impression, thank heaven, cannot in the nature of things
+endure. She will meet some one worthy of her--with you, Tanty, kindest
+of hearts, I can safely trust her future. But that she should suffer
+now, and through me, that bright creature who flitted in upon my dark
+life, like some heaven-sent messenger--these are evil tidings. Tanty,
+you must take her away, you must distract her mind, you must tell her
+what a poor broken-down being I am, how little worthy of her sweet
+thoughts, and she will learn, soon learn, to forget me, to laugh at
+herself."
+
+Although addressing the old lady, he spoke like a man reasoning with
+himself, and the words dropped from his lips as if drawn from a very
+well of bitterness. Tanty listened to him in silence, but the tension
+of her whole frame betrayed that she was only gathering her forces for
+another explosion.
+
+When Adrian's voice ceased there was a moment's silence and then the
+storm burst; whisking herself out of her chair, the umbrella came
+into play once more. But though it was only to thump the table, it was
+evident Miss O'Donoghue would more willingly have laid it about the
+delinquent's shoulders.
+
+"Adrian, are you a man at all?" she ejaculated fiercely. Then with
+sudden deadly composure: "So _this_ is the reparation you propose to
+make for the mischief you have wrought?"
+
+"In God's name!" cried he, goaded at length into some sort of
+despairing anger himself, "what would you have me do?"
+
+The answer came with the promptitude of a return shot:
+
+"Do? why marry her, of course!"
+
+"_Marry her!_"
+
+There was a breathless pause. Tanty, leaning forward across the table,
+crimson, agitated, yet triumphant; Adrian's white face blasted with
+astonishment. "Marry her," he echoed at length once more, in a whisper
+this time. Then with a groan: "This is madness!"
+
+Miss O'Donoghue caught him up briskly. "Madness? My good fellow, not a
+bit of it; on the contrary, sanity, happiness, prosperity.--Adrian,
+don't stand staring at me like a stuck pig! Why, in the name of
+conscience, should not you marry? You are a young man still--pooh,
+pooh, what is forty!--you are a very fine-looking man, clever,
+romantic--hear me out, sir, please--_and you have made the child love
+you_. There you are again, as if you had a pain in your stomach; you
+would try the patience of Job! Why, I don't believe there is another
+man on earth that would not be wild with joy at the mere thought of
+having gained such a prize. A beautiful creature, with a heart of gold
+and a purse of gold to boot."
+
+"Oh, heavens, aunt!" interrupted the man, passionately, "leave that
+question out of the reckoning. The one thing, the only thing, to
+consider is _her_ happiness. You cannot make me believe it can be for
+her happiness that she should marry such as me."
+
+"And why shouldn't it be for her happiness?" answered the dauntless
+old lady. "Was not she happy enough with you here in this God-forsaken
+hole, with nothing but the tempest besides for company? Why should not
+she be happy, then, when you come back to your own good place? Would
+not you be _kind_ to her?--would not you cherish her if she were your
+wife?"
+
+"Would I not be kind to her?--would I not cherish her?--would I
+not----? My God!"
+
+"Why, Adrian," cried Tanty, charmed at this unexpected disclosure of
+feeling and the accent with which it was delivered, "I declare you are
+as much in love with the girl as she is with you. Why, now you shall
+just come back with me to Pulwick this moment, and she shall tell you
+herself if she can find happiness with you or not. Oh--I will hear no
+more--your own heart, your feelings as a gentleman, as a man of
+honour, all point, my dear nephew, in the same direction. And if you
+neglect this warning voice you will be blind indeed to the call of
+duty. Come now, come back to your home, where the sweetest wife ever a
+man had awaits you. And when I shall see the children spring up around
+you, Adrian, then God will have granted my last wish, and I shall die
+in peace.... There, there, I am an old fool, but when the heart is
+over full, then the tears fall. Come, Adrian, come, I'll say no more;
+but the sight of the poor child who loves you shall plead for her
+happiness and yours. And hark, a word in your ear: let Rupert bark and
+snarl as he will! And what sort of a devil is it your generosity has
+made of _him_? You have done a bad day's work there all these years,
+but, please God, there are better times dawning for us all.--What are
+you doing, Adrian? Oh! writing a few orders to your servant to explain
+your departure with me--quite right, quite right, I won't speak a word
+then to interrupt you. Dear me! I really feel quite in spirits. Once
+dear Molly and you settled, there will be a happy home for Madeleine:
+with you, we can look out a suitable husband for her. Well, well, I
+must not go too fast yet, I suppose: but I have not told you in what
+deep anxiety I have been on _her_ account by reason of a most
+deplorable affair--a foolish girl's fancy only, of course, with a most
+undesirable and objectionable creature called _Smith_.... Oh! you are
+ready, are you?--My dear Adrian, give me your arm then, and let us
+proceed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silence had reigned for but a few seconds in the great room of the
+keep when Captain Jack re-entered, bearing on his face an expression
+at once boyishly jubilant and mockingly astonished. He planted
+himself in front of the landward window, and gazed forth a while.
+
+"There goes my old Adrian, as dutifully escorting that walking
+sack of bones, that tar-barrel ornament--never mind, old lady,
+from this moment I shall love you for your brave deeds of this
+morning--escorting his worthy aunt as dutifully as though he were a
+penniless nephew.... Gently over the gunnel, madam! That's done! So
+you are going to take my gig? Right, Adrian. Dear me, how she holds
+forth! I fancy I hear her from here.--Give way, my lads! That's all
+right. Gad! Old Adrian's carried off on a regular journey to Cythera,
+under a proper escort!"
+
+With this odd reminiscence of early mythological reading, the sailor
+burst into a loud laugh and walked about slapping his leg.
+
+"Would ever any one have guessed anything approaching this?
+Star-gazing, book-grubbing Sir Adrian ... in love! Adrian the
+solitary, the pessimist, the I-don't-know-what superior man, in love!
+Neither more nor less! In love, like an every-day inhabitant of these
+realms, and with that black-eyed sister of mine that is to be! My
+word, it's too perfect! Adrian my brother-in-law--for if I gauge that
+fine creature properly--splendid old lady--she won't let him slide
+back this time. No, my dear Adrian, you are hooked for matrimony and a
+return to the living world. That black-eyed jade too, that Molly
+sister of my Madeleine, will wake up and lead you a life, by
+George!... Row on, my lads," once more looking at the diminishing
+black spot upon the grey waters. "Row on--you have never done a better
+day's work!"
+
+René, entering a few moments later, with an open note in his hand,
+found his master's friend still chuckling, and looked at him
+inquisitively.
+
+"His honour has returned to Pulwick," said he, in puzzled tones,
+handing the missive.
+
+"Ay, lad," answered the sailor, cheerily. "The fact is, my good Renny,
+that in that room of Sir Adrian's where you ensconced me for safety
+from that most wonderful specimen of her sex (I refer to your master's
+worthy aunt), it was impossible to avoid overhearing many of her
+remarks--magnificent voice for a storm at sea, eh? Never mind what it
+was all about, my good man; what I heard was good news. Ah!"
+directing his attention to the note; "his honour does not say when he
+will return, but will send back the gig immediately; and you, M.
+Potter, are to look after me for as long as I choose to stop here."
+
+René required no reflection to realise that anything in the shape of
+good news which took his master back to his estate must be good news
+indeed; and his broad face promptly mirrored, in the broadest of
+grins, the captain's own satisfaction.
+
+"For sure, we will try to take care of M. the captain, as well as if
+his honour himself was present. He told me you were to be master
+here."
+
+"Make it so. I should like some dinner as soon as possible, and one of
+my bro----of Sir Adrian's best bottles. It's a poor heart that never
+rejoices. Meanwhile, I want to inspect your ruins and your caves in
+detail, if you will pilot me, Renny. This is a handy sort of an old
+Robinson Crusoe place for hiding and storing, is it not?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A JUNIOR'S OPINION
+
+
+A rarely failing characteristic of very warm-hearted and strongly
+impulsive people is their inability of graduating their likes and
+dislikes; a state of mind which cannot fail to lead to frequent
+alterations of temper.
+
+On more than one occasion, since the domineering old lady had started
+upon her peregrinations, had her favour for the two brothers undergone
+reversal; but the ground Rupert gained by Adrian's offences was never
+of safe tenure. At the present hour, under the elation of her
+victorious sally upon the hermit's pessimistic entrenchments--the only
+thing in him of which she disapproved--he at once resumed the warm
+place she liked to keep for him in her heart. And as a consequence
+"Master Rupert," as she contemptuously called the "locum tenens
+Squire," who, in the genealogical order of things, should have been a
+person of small importance, fell promptly into his original state of
+disgrace.
+
+During the drive from the village (where she had ordered the carriage
+to await her return) to the gates of Pulwick, Miss O'Donoghue
+entertained her companion with an indignant account of his brother's
+ingratitude, of his hypocritical insinuating method of disparagement
+of Sir Adrian himself, winding up each indictment with a shrewd, "but
+he could not impose upon _me_," which, indeed, she firmly believed.
+
+Her object was, of course, to strengthen the baronet in his resolve to
+return to the headship of his family--little guessing what a strong
+incentive to seclusion these very tales of a state of things he
+suspected but too well would have proved, had it not been for the new
+unforeseen motive that the morning's revelation had brought.
+
+"Does Molly know of your visit to me?" he asked, as the carriage
+halted before the gate, and the enormous, red-headed Cumbrian
+gatekeeper with his rosy Moggie, proudly swung it open to stand on
+either side, the one bowing with jubilant greeting and the other
+curtseying with bashful smiles at the real master. "Does she expect my
+visit?" relapsing into gravity after returning the salutation in
+kindliness.
+
+"I have told no one of my purpose this day. Rupert walked off to the
+stables immediately after breakfast--going a-hunting he said he was,
+and offered to bear the girls to the meet. And then, feeling lonely
+without his company," added Tanty, with a wink, "I ordered the
+carriage and thought I would go and have a peep at the place where
+poor Molly was drowned, just for a little diversion. Whether the
+little rogue expects you or not, after your note of the other day, I
+am sure I could not take upon myself to say. She sits watching that
+crazy old tower of yours by day and your light by night. Well, well, I
+must not tell tales out of school, you may find out for yourself. But
+mind you, Adrian," she impressed on him, sagely, "it is not I who
+bring you back: you return of your own accord. The child would murder
+me, if she knew--with that proud heart of hers."
+
+"My dear Tanty, trust me. This incomprehensible discovery of yours,
+which I cannot yet believe in, really is, so far as my discretion is
+concerned, as if I had never heard of it. Heavens! I have been a
+blundering fool, but I could not insult her with a hint of it for the
+world. I have come to see Rupert to-day, as usual, of course--and, as
+you say ... I shall see for myself. You have opened my eyes."
+
+Miss O'Donoghue looked at her nephew with admiration. "_Voyez un
+peu_," she said, "_comme l'amour vous dégourdit_ even a doleful Sir
+Adrian! Faith, here we are. This has been a pleasant ride, but my old
+bones are so tired, and you and yours have set them jogging so much of
+late, that I think I'll never want to stir a foot again once I get
+back to Bunratty ... except indeed to come and be godmother to the
+heir."
+
+Having lent a dutiful arm up the stairs to his now beaming relative,
+Sir Adrian came down pensively and entered the library.
+
+There, booted and spurred, but quietly installed at a writing table,
+sat Mr. Landale, who rose in his nonchalant manner and with cold looks
+met his brother.
+
+There was no greeting between them, but simply thus:
+
+"I understood from Aunt Rose you were out hunting."
+
+"Such was my intention, but when I found out that she had gone to see
+you--don't look so astonished, Adrian--a man must know what is going
+on in his household--I suspected you would escort her back; so I
+desisted and waited for you. It is an unexpected pleasure to see you,
+for I thought we had sufficiently discussed all business, recently.
+But doubtless you will profit of the opportunity to go into a few
+matters which want your attention. Do you mean to remain?"
+
+Speaking these words in a detached manner, Mr. Landale kept a keenly
+observant look upon his brother's countenance. In a most unwonted way
+the tone and the look irritated Sir Adrian.
+
+"I came back, Rupert, because there were some things I wished to see
+for myself here," he answered frigidly. And going to the bell, rang it
+vigorously.
+
+On the servant's appearance, without reference to his brother, he
+himself, and very shortly, gave orders:
+
+"I shall dine here to-day. Have the tapestry-room made ready for me."
+
+Then turning to Rupert, whose face betrayed some of the astonishment
+aroused by this most unusual assumption of authority, and resuming as
+it were the thread of his speech, he went on:
+
+"No, Rupert, I have no desire to talk business with you. It is a pity
+you should have given up your day. Is it yet too late?"
+
+"Upon my word, Adrian," said Mr. Landale, clenching his hand nervously
+round his fine cambric handkerchief, "there must be something of
+importance in the wind to have altered your bearing towards me to this
+extent. I have no wish to interfere. I came back and gave up good
+company for the reason I have stated. I will now only point out that,
+with your sudden whims, you render my position excessively false in a
+house where, at your own wish, I am ostensibly established as master."
+
+And without waiting for another word, the younger brother, having
+shot the arrow which hitherto never failed to reach the bull's-eye of
+the situation, left the room with much dignity.
+
+Once more alone, Sir Adrian, standing motionless in the great room,
+darkened yet more in the winter light by the heavy festoons of
+curtains that hung over the numerous empty bookshelves, the souls of
+which had migrated to the peel to keep the master company, cogitated
+upon this first unpleasant step in his new departure, and wondered
+within himself why he had felt so extraordinarily moved by anger
+to-day at the cold inquisitiveness of his brother. No doubt the sense
+of being watched thus, held away at arm's-length as it were, was cause
+sufficient. And yet that was not it; ingratitude alone, even to
+enmity, in return for benefits forgot could not rouse this bitterness.
+But had it not been for Tanty's interference he would be now exiled
+from his home until the departure of Cécile's child, just as, but for
+chance, he would have been kept in actual ignorance of her arrival. It
+was his brother's doing that he had blindly withdrawn himself when his
+presence would have caused happiness to her. Yes, that was it. Rupert
+had a scheme. That was what dwelt in his eyes,--a scheme which would
+bring, indeed did bring, unhappiness to that dear guest.... No wonder,
+now, that the unconscious realisation of it awoke all the man's blood
+in him.
+
+"No, Rupert," Sir Adrian found himself saying aloud, "I let you reign
+at Pulwick so long as you crossed not one jot of such pleasure and
+happiness that might belong to Cécile's child. But here our wills
+clash; and now, since there cannot be two masters in a house as you
+say, _I_ am the master here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Sir Adrian's mind was seething in this unusual mood, Miss
+O'Donoghue, entering her nieces' room, found Molly perched, in riding
+dress, on the window-sill, looking forth upon the outer world with
+dissatisfied countenance.
+
+Mr. Landale had sent word at the last moment that, to his intense
+regret, he could not escort the ladies to the meet, some important
+business having retained him at Pulwick.
+
+So much did Miss Molly pettishly explain in answer to the
+affectionate inquiry concerning the cloud on her brow, slashing her
+whip the while and pouting, and generally out of harmony with the
+special radiance of the old lady's eye and the more than usual
+expansiveness of the embrace which was bestowed upon her.
+
+"Tut, tut, tut, now," observed the artful person in tones of deep
+commiseration. "Ah well, Rupert's a poor creature which ever side he
+turns up. Will you go now, my child, and fetch me the letters I left
+on the drawing-room table? Isn't it like me to spend half the morning
+writing them and leave them down there after all!"
+
+Molly rose unwillingly, threw her whip on the bed, her hat on the
+floor; and mistily concerned over Tanty's air of irrepressible and
+pleasurable excitement, walked out of the room, bestowing as she
+passed her long pier glass a moody glance at her own glowering beauty.
+
+"What's the use of _you_?" she muttered to herself, "Anybody can fetch
+and carry for old aunts and look out of windows on leafless trees!"
+
+The way to the drawing-room was through the library. As Molly,
+immersed in her reflections, passed along this room, she stopped with
+a violent start on perceiving the figure of Sir Adrian, a tall
+silhouette against the cold light of the window. As she came upon him,
+her face was fully illumined, and there was a glorious tale-telling in
+the widening of her eyes and the warm flush that mounted to her cheek
+that on the instant scattered in the man's mind all wondering doubts.
+A rush of tenderness filled him at one sweep, head and heart, to the
+core.
+
+"Molly!" he cried, panting; and then with halting voice as she
+advanced a pace and stood with mouth parted and brilliant expectant
+eyes: "You took away all light and warmth with you when you left my
+lonely dwelling. I tried to take up my life there, but----"
+
+"But you have come back--for me?" And drawn by his extended hands she
+advanced, her burning gaze fixed upon his.
+
+"I dared not think of seeing you again," he murmured, clasping her
+hands; "yet my return ... pleases you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Thus was crowned this strange wooing, was clenched a life's union,
+based upon either side on fascinating unrealities.
+
+She was drawn into his arms; and against his heart she lay, shaking
+with little shivers of delight, looking into the noble face bent so
+lovingly over hers, her mind floating between unconscious exultation
+and languorous joy.
+
+For a long while without a word he held her thus on his strong arm,
+gazing with a rending conflict of rapture and anguish on the beautiful
+image of his life's love, until his eyes were dimmed with rising
+tears. Then he slowly stooped over the up-turned face, and as she
+dropped her lids with a faint smile, kissed her lips.
+
+There came a warning rattle at the door handle, and Molly, disengaging
+herself softly from her betrothed's embrace, but still retaining his
+arm, turned to witness the entrance of Miss O'Donoghue and Mr.
+Landale.
+
+On the former's face, under a feigned expression of surprise, now
+expanded itself in effulgence the plenitude of that satisfaction which
+had been dawning there ever since her return from the island.
+
+Rupert held himself well in hand. He halted, it is true, for an
+instant at the first sight of Sir Adrian and Molly, and put his
+handkerchief furtively to his forehead to wipe the sudden cold sweat
+which broke out upon it. But the hesitation was so momentary as to
+pass unperceived; and if his countenance, as he advanced again, bore
+an expression of disapproval, it was at once dignified and restrained.
+
+"So you are there, Molly," exclaimed the old lady with inimitable
+airiness. "Just imagine, my dear, I had those letters in my pocket all
+the while, after all. You did not find them, did you?"
+
+But Adrian, still retaining the little hand on his arm, came forward
+slowly and broke through the incipient flow.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said he in a voice still veiled by emotion, "I know your
+kind heart will rejoice with me, although you may not be so surprised,
+as no doubt Rupert will be, at the news we have for you, Molly and I."
+
+"You are right, Adrian," interrupted Rupert gravely, "to any who know
+your life and _your past_ as I do, the news you seem to have for us
+must seem strange indeed. So strange that you will excuse me if I
+withhold congratulations. For, if I mistake not," he added, with a
+delicately shaded change of tone to sympathetic courtesy, and slightly
+turning his handsome face towards Molly, "I assume that my fair
+cousin de Savenaye has even but now promised to be my sister, Lady
+Landale."
+
+Sir Adrian who, softened by the emotion of this wonderful hour, had
+made a movement to grasp his brother's hand, but had checked himself
+with a passionate movement of anger, instantly restrained, as the
+overt impertinence of the first words fell on his ears, here looked
+with a shadowing anxiety at the girl's face.
+
+But Molly, who could never withhold the lash of her tongue when Rupert
+gave the slightest opening, immediately acknowledged her enemy's
+courtly bow with sauciness.
+
+"What! No congratulations from the model brother? Not even a word of
+thanks to Molly de Savenaye for bringing the truant to his home at
+last? But you malign yourself, my dear Rupert. I believe 'tis but
+excess of joy that ties your tongue."
+
+With gleaming smile Mr. Landale would have opposed this direct thrust
+by some parry of polished insult; but he met his elder's commanding
+glance, remembered his parting words on two previous occasions, and
+wisely abstained, contenting himself with another slight bow and a
+contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
+
+At the same time Miss O'Donoghue, with an odd mixture of farcically
+pretended astonishment and genuine triumph, fell on the girl's neck.
+
+"It is possible, soul of my heart, my sweet child--I can't believe
+it--though I vow I knew it all along! So I am to see my two favourites
+made one by holy matrimony!" punctuating her exclamation with kisses
+on the fair young face, and wildly seeking in space with her dried-up
+old fingers to meet Adrian's hand. "I, the one barren stock of the
+O'Donoghues, shall see my sister's children re-united. Ah, Adrian,
+what a beautiful coat this will make for you to hand to your children!
+O'Donoghue, Landale, Kermelégan, Savenaye--eighteen quarters with this
+heiress alone, Adrian child, for the descendants of Landale of
+Pulwick!" And Miss O'Donoghue, overcome by this culminating vision of
+happiness and perfection, fairly burst into tears.
+
+In the midst of this scene, Mr. Landale, after listening mockingly for
+a few instants, retired with ostentatious discretion.
+
+Later in the day, as Madeleine bent her pretty ears, dutifully yet
+with wandering attention, to Molly's gay prognostications concerning
+Pulwick under her sway; whilst the servants in the hall, pantry and
+kitchen discussed the great news which, by some incomprehensible
+agency, spread with torrent-like swiftness through the whole estate;
+while Miss O'Donoghue was feverishly busy with the correspondence
+which was to disseminate far and wide the world's knowledge of the
+happy betrothal, Sir Adrian met his brother walking meditatively along
+the winding path of the garden, flicking with the loop of his crop the
+border of evergreens as he went. From their room, Molly and Madeleine,
+ensconced in the deep window-seat, could see the meeting.
+
+"How I should like to hear," said Molly. "I know this supple wretch
+will be full of Adrian's folly in marrying me--first, because, from
+the Rupertian point of view, it is a disastrous thing that his elder
+should marry at all; and secondly, because Molly, mistress at Pulwick
+Priory, means a very queer position indeed for Mr. Rupert Landale. How
+I wish my spirit could fly into Adrian's head just for a moment!
+Adrian is too indulgent. It requires a Molly to deal with such
+impertinence."
+
+"Indeed you are unjust with our cousin," said Madeleine, gently. "Why
+this hatred? I cannot understand."
+
+"No, of course not, Madeleine. Rupert is charming--with you. I am not
+blind. But take care he does not find out _your_ secret, miss. Oh, I
+don't ask you any more about it. But if he ever does--_gare, ma
+chère_."
+
+But at the present juncture, Molly's estimate of Sir Adrian's mood was
+mistaken. His love of peace, which amounted to a well-known weakness
+where he alone was concerned, weighed not a feather in the balance
+when such an interest as that now engaged was at stake.
+
+As a matter of fact, Rupert Landale was to be taken by surprise again,
+that day, and again not pleasantly. On noticing his brother's
+approach, he stopped his angry flickings, and slowly moved to meet
+him. At first they walked side by side in silence. Presently Sir
+Adrian began:
+
+"Rupert," he said gravely, "after our first interview to-day, it was
+my intention to have begged your pardon for a certain roughness in my
+manner which I should have controlled and which you resented. I would
+have done so, had you allowed me, at that moment when I announced my
+forthcoming marriage and my heart was full of good-will to all,
+especially to you. Now, on the contrary, to re-establish at least that
+outward harmony without which life in common would be impossible, I
+expect from you some expression of regret for your behaviour."
+
+The first part of his brother's say was so well in accordance with his
+more habitual mood, that Mr. Landale had already sketched his equally
+habitual deprecating smile; but the conclusion changed the entire
+standpoint of their relations.
+
+"An expression of regret--from _me_?" cried he, exaggerating his
+astonishment almost to mockery.
+
+"From any one but my brother," said Adrian, with a slight but
+perceptible hardening in his tone, "I should say an apology for an
+impertinence."
+
+Mr. Landale, now genuinely taken aback, turned a little pale and
+halted abruptly.
+
+"Adrian, Adrian!" he retorted, quickly. "This is one of your mad
+moments. I do not understand."
+
+"No, brother, I am not mad, and never have been, dearly as you would
+wish me to be so in reality--since Death would have none of me. But
+though you know this yourself but too well, you have never understood
+me really. Now listen--once for all. Try and see our positions as they
+are: perhaps then matters will go more pleasantly in the future for
+you as well as for me."
+
+Mr. Landale looked keenly at the speaker's face for a second, and then
+without a word resumed his walk, while Sir Adrian by his side pursued
+with quiet emphasis:
+
+"When I returned, from the other world so to speak, at least from your
+point of view (one which I fully understood), I found that this very
+return was nothing short of a calamity for all that remained of my
+kin. I had it in my power to reduce that misfortune to a great extent.
+You loved the position--that worldly estimation, that fortune, all
+those circumstances which, with perfect moral right, you had hitherto
+enjoyed. They presented little attraction to me. Moreover, there were
+many reasons, which I am quite aware you know, that made this very
+house of mine a dismal dwelling for me. You see I have no wish to
+give too generous a colour to my motives, too self-denying a character
+to the benefits I conferred upon you. But, as far as you are
+concerned, they were benefits. For them I received no gratitude; but
+as I did not expect gratitude it matters little. I might, however,
+have expected at least that you should be neutral, not directly
+hostile to me----Pray let me finish" (in anticipation of a rising
+interruption from his companion), "I shall soon have done, and you
+will see that I am not merely recriminating. Hostile you have been,
+and are now. So long as the position you assumed towards me only bore
+on our own relations, I acquiesced: you had so much more to lose than
+I could gain by resenting your hidden antagonism. I held you, so to
+speak, in the hollow of my hand; I could afford to pass over it all.
+Moreover, I had chosen my own path, which was nothing if not peaceful.
+I say, you always were hostile to me; you have been so, more than ever
+since the arrival of Cécile de Savenaye's children. You were, however,
+grievously mistaken if you thought--I verily believe you did--that I
+did not realise the true motives that prompted you to keep me away
+from them.--I loved them as their mother's children; I love Molly with
+a sort of love I myself do not understand, but deep enough for all its
+strangeness. Yet I submitted to your reasoning, to your plausible
+representations of the disastrous effects of my presence. I went back
+to my solitude because it never entered my mind that it could be in my
+power to help their happiness; you indeed had actually persuaded me of
+the contrary, as you know, and I myself thought it better to break the
+unfortunate spell that was cast on me. Unfortunate I thought it, but
+it has proved far otherwise."
+
+They had reached the end of the alley, and as they turned back, facing
+each other for a moment, Sir Adrian noticed the evil smile playing
+upon his brothers lips.
+
+"It has proved otherwise," he repeated. "How I came to change my
+views, I daresay you have guessed, for you have, of late, kept a good
+watch on your mad brother, Rupert. At any rate you know what has come
+to pass. Now I desire you to understand this clearly--interference
+with me as matters stand means interference with Molly: and as such I
+must, and shall, resent it."
+
+"Well, Adrian, and what have I done _now_?" was Mr. Landale's quiet
+reply. He turned a gravely attentive, innocently injured countenance
+to the paling light.
+
+"When I said you did not understand me," returned Sir Adrian with
+undiminished firmness; "when I said you owed me some expression of
+regret, it was to warn you never again to assume the tone of
+insinuation and sarcasm to me, which you permitted yourself to-day in
+the presence of Molly. You could not restrain this long habit of
+censuring, of unwarrantable and impertinent criticism, of your elder,
+and when you referred to my past, Molly could not but be offended by
+the mockery of your tones. Moreover, you took upon yourself, if I have
+heard aright, to disapprove openly of our marriage. Upon what ground
+that would bear announcing I know not, but let this be enough: try and
+realise that our respective positions are totally changed by this
+unforeseen event, and that, as Molly is now to be mistress at Pulwick,
+I must of course revoke my tacit abdication. Nevertheless, if you
+think you can put up with the new state of things, there need be
+little alteration in your present mode of life, my dear Rupert; if you
+will only make a generous effort to alter your line of conduct."
+
+And here, Sir Adrian, succumbing for a moment to the fault, so common
+to kindly minds, of discounting the virtue of occasional firmness by a
+sudden return to geniality, offered his hand in token of peace.
+
+Mr. Landale took it; his grasp, however, was limp and cold.
+
+"I am quite ready to express regret," he said in a toneless voice,
+"since that would seem to be gratification to you, and moreover seems
+to be the tacit condition on which you will refrain from turning me
+out. I ought indeed to have abstained from referring, however vaguely,
+to past events, for the plain reason that anything I could say would
+already have come too late to prevent the grievous deed you have now
+pledged yourself to commit."
+
+"Rupert--!" exclaimed Sir Adrian stepping back a pace, too amazed, at
+the instant, for indignation.
+
+"Now, in your turn, hear me, Adrian," continued Mr. Landale with his
+blackest look. "I have listened to your summing up of our respective
+cases with perfect patience, notwithstanding a certain assumption of
+superiority which--allow me to insist on this--is somewhat ridiculous
+from you to me. You complain of my misunderstanding you. Briefly, this
+is absurd. As a matter of fact I understand you better than you do
+yourself. On the other hand it is you that do not understand me. I
+have no wish to paraphrase your little homily of two minutes ago, but
+the heads of my refutation are inevitably suggested by the points of
+your indictment. To use your own manner of speech, my dear Adrian, I
+have no wish to assume injured disinterestedness, when speaking of my
+doings with regard to you and your belongings and especially to this
+old place of yours, of our family. You have only to look and see for
+yourself...."
+
+Mr. Landale made a wide comprehensive gesture which seemed to embrace
+the whole of the noble estate, the admirably kept mansion with walls
+now flushed in the light of the sinking sun, the orderly maintenance
+of the vast grounds, the prosperousness of its dependencies--all in
+fact that the brothers could see with the eyes of the body from where
+they stood, and all that they could see with the eyes of the mind
+alone: "Go and verify whether I fulfilled my duty with respect to the
+trust which was yours, but which you have allowed to devolve upon my
+shoulders, and ask yourself whether you would have fulfilled it
+better--if as well. I claim no more than this recognition; for, as you
+pointed out, the position carried its advantages, if it entailed
+arduous responsibility too. It was my hope that heirs of my body would
+live to perpetuate this pride--this work of mine. It was not to be.
+Now that you step in again and that possibly your flesh will reap the
+benefits I have laboured to produce, ask yourself, Adrian, whether
+you, who shirked your own natural duties, would have buckled to the
+task, under _my_ circumstances--distrusted by your brother, disliked
+and secretly despised by all your dependants, who reserved all their
+love and admiration for the 'real master' (oh, I know the cant
+phrase), although he chose to abandon his position and yield himself
+to the stream of his own inertness, the real master who in the end can
+find no better description for these years of faithful service than
+'hostility' and 'ingratitude.'"
+
+Sir Adrian halted a pace, a little moved by the speciousness of the
+pleading. The incidental reference to that one grief of his brother's
+life was of a kind which could never fail to arouse generous sympathy
+in his heart. But Mr. Landale had not come to the critical point of
+his say, and he did not choose to allow the chapter of emotion to
+begin just yet.
+
+"But," he continued, pursuing his restless walk, "again to use your
+own phraseology, I am not merely recriminating. I, too, wish you to
+understand me. It would be useless to discuss now, what you elect to
+call my hostility in past days. I had to keep up the position demanded
+by our ancient name; to keep it up amid a society, against whose every
+tenet almost--every prejudice, you may call them--you chose to run
+counter. My antagonism to your mode of acting and thinking was
+precisely measured by your own against the world in which the
+Landales, as a family, hold a stake. Let that, therefore, be
+dismissed; and let us come at once to the special hostility you
+complain of in me, since the troublesome arrival of Aunt Rose and her
+wards. As the very thing which I was most anxious to prevent, if
+possible, has, after all, come to pass, the present argument may seem
+useless; but you have courted it yourself."
+
+"Most anxious to prevent--if possible...!" repeated Sir Adrian,
+slowly. "This, from a younger brother, is almost cynical, Rupert!"
+
+"Cynical!" retorted Mr. Landale, with a furious laugh. "Why, you have
+given sound to the very word I would, in anybody else's case, have
+applied to a behaviour such as yours. Is it possible, Adrian," said
+Rupert, turning to look his brother in the eyes with a look of
+profound malice, "that it has not occurred to you yet, that _cynical_
+will be the verdict the world will pass on the question of your
+marriage with that young girl?"
+
+Sir Adrian flushed darkly, and remained silent for a pace or two;
+then, with a puzzled look:
+
+"I fail to understand you," he said simply. "I am no longer young, of
+course; yet, in years, I am not preposterously old. As for the other
+points--name and fortune----"
+
+But Rupert interrupted him with a sharp exclamation, which betrayed
+the utmost nervous exasperation.
+
+"Pshaw! If I did not know you so well, I would say you were playing at
+candour. This--this unconventionality of yours would have led you
+into curious pitfalls, Adrian, had you been obliged to live in the
+world. My 'hostility' has saved you from some already, I know--more is
+the pity it could not save you from this--for it passes all bounds
+that you should meditate such an unnatural act, upon my soul, in the
+most natural manner in the world. One must be an Adrian Landale, and
+live on a tower for the best part of one's life, to reach such a pitch
+of--unconventionality, let us call it."
+
+"For God's sake," exclaimed Sir Adrian, suddenly losing patience,
+"what are you driving at, man? In what way can my marriage with a
+young lady, who, inconceivable as it may be, has found something to
+love in me; in what way, I say, can it be accounted cynical? I am not
+subtle enough to perceive it."
+
+"To any one but you," sneered the other, coming to his climax with a
+sort of cruel deliberation, "it would hardly require special
+subtleness to perceive that for the man of mature age to marry the
+_daughter_, after having, in the days of his youth, been the lover of
+the _mother_, is a proceeding, the very idea of which is somewhat
+revolting in the average individual.... There are many roués in St.
+James' who would shrink before it; yet you, the enlightened
+philosopher, the moralist----"
+
+But Sir Adrian, breathing quickly, laid his hand heavily on his
+brother's shoulder.
+
+"When you say the mother's lover, Rupert," he said, in a contained
+voice, which was as ominous of storm as the first mutters of thunder,
+"you mean that I loved her--you do not mean to insinuate that that
+noble woman, widowed but a few weeks, whose whole soul was filled with
+but one lofty idea, that of duty, was the mistress--the mistress of a
+boy, barely out of his teens?"
+
+Rupert shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I insinuate nothing, my dear Adrian; I think nothing. All this is
+ancient history which after all has long concerned only you. You know
+best what occurred in the old days, and of course a man of honour is
+bound to deny all tales affecting a lady's virtue! Even you, I fancy,
+would condescend so far. But nevertheless, reflect how this marriage
+will rake up the old story. It will be remembered how you, for the
+sake of remaining by Cécile de Savenaye's side, abandoned your home to
+fight in a cause that did not concern you; nay, more, turned your
+back for the time upon those advanced social theories which even at
+your present season of life you have not all shaken off. You travelled
+with her from one end of England to the other, in the closest
+intimacy, and finally departed over seas, her acknowledged escort. She
+on her side, under pretext of securing the best help on her political
+mission that England can afford her, selected a young man notoriously
+in love with her, at the very age when the passions are hottest, and
+wisdom the least consideration--as her influential agent, of course.
+Men are men, Adrian--especially young men--small blame to you, young
+that you were, if then ... but you cannot expect, in sober earnest,
+the world to believe that you went on such a wild pilgrimage for
+nothing! Women are women--especially young women, of the French
+court--who have never had the reputation of admiring bashfulness in
+stalwart young lovers...."
+
+Sir Adrian's hand, pressing upon his brother's shoulder, as if
+weighted by all his anger, here forced the speaker into silence.
+
+"Shame! Shame, Rupert!" he cried first, his eyes aflame with a
+generous passion; then fiercely: "Silence, fellow, or I will take you
+by that brazen throat of yours and strangle the venomous lie once for
+all." And then, with keen reproach, "That you, of my blood, of hers
+too, should be the one to cast such a stigma on her memory--that you
+should be unable even to understand the nature of our intercourse....
+Oh, shame, on you for your baseness, for your vulgar, low
+suspiciousness!... But, no, I waste my breath upon you, you do not
+believe this thing. You have outwitted yourself this time. Hear me
+now: If anything could have suggested to me this alliance with the
+child of one I loved so madly and so hopelessly, the thought that such
+dastardly slander could ever have been current would have done so. The
+world, having nothing to gain by the belief, will never credit that
+Sir Adrian Landale would marry the daughter of his paramour--however
+his own brother may deem to his advantage to seem to think so! The
+fact of Molly de Savenaye becoming Lady Landale would alone, had such
+ill rumours indeed been current in the past, dispel the ungenerous
+legend for ever."
+
+There were a few moments of silence while Sir Adrian battled, in the
+tumult of his indignation, for self-control again; while Rupert,
+realising that he had outwitted himself indeed, bestowed inward curses
+upon most of his relations and his own fate.
+
+The elder brother resumed at length, with a faint smile:
+
+"And so, you see, even if you had spoken out in time, it would have
+been of little avail." Then he added, bitterly. "I have received a
+wound from an unforeseen quarter. You have dealt it, to no purpose,
+Rupert, as you see ... though it may be some compensation to such a
+nature as yours to know that you have left in it a subtle venom."
+
+The sun had already sunk away, and its glow behind the waters had
+faded to the merest tinge. In the cold shadow of rising night the two
+men advanced silently homewards. Sir Adrian's soul, guided by the
+invidious words, had flown back to that dead year, the central point
+of his existence--It was true: men will be men--in that very house,
+yonder, he had betrayed his love to her; on board the ship that took
+them away and by the camp fire on the eve of fight, he had pleaded the
+cause of his passion, not ignobly indeed, with no thought of the
+baseness which Rupert assigned to him, yet with a selfish disregard of
+her position, of his own grave trust. And it was with a glow of pride,
+in the ever living object of his life's devotion--of gratitude
+almost--that he recalled the noble simplicity with which the woman,
+whom he had just heard classed among the every-day sinners of society,
+had, without one grandiloquent word, without even losing her womanly
+softness, kept her lover as well as herself in the path of her lofty
+ideal--till the end. And yet she did love him: at the last awful
+moment, sinking into the very jaws of death, the secret of her heart
+had escaped her. And now--now her beauty, and something of her own
+life and soul was left to him in her child, as the one fit object on
+which to devote that tenderness which time could not change.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a while, from the darkness by his side came the voice of his
+brother again, in altered, hardly recognisable accents.
+
+"Adrian, those last words of yours were severe--unjust. I do not
+deserve such interpretation of my motives. Is it my fault that you are
+not as other men? Am I to be blamed for judging you by the ordinary
+standard? But you have convinced me: you were as chivalrous as Cécile
+was pure, and if needs be, believe me, Adrian, I will maintain it so
+in the face of the world. Yes, I misunderstood you--and wounded you,
+as you say, but such was not my intention. Forgive me."
+
+They had come to the door. Sir Adrian paused. There was a rapid
+revulsion in his kindly mind at the extraordinary sound of humble
+words from his brother; and with a new emotion, he replied, taking the
+hand that with well-acted diffidence seemed to seek his grasp:
+
+"Perhaps we have both something to forgive each other. I fear you did
+not misjudge me so much as you misjudged her who left me that precious
+legacy. But believe that, believe it as you have just now said,
+Rupert, the mother of those children never stooped to human
+frailty--her course in her short and noble life was as bright and pure
+as the light of day."
+
+Without another word the two brothers shook hands and re-entered their
+home.
+
+Sir Adrian sought Miss O'Donoghue whom he now found in converse with
+Molly, and with a grave eagerness, that put the culminating touch to
+the old lady's triumph, urged the early celebration of his nuptials.
+
+Mr. Landale repaired to his own study where in solitude he could give
+loose rein to his fury of disappointment, and consider as carefully as
+he might in the circumstances how best to work the new situation to
+his own advantage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even on that day that had been filled with so many varied and poignant
+emotions for him; through the dream in which his whole being seemed to
+float, Sir Adrian found a moment to think of the humble followers whom
+he had left so abruptly on the island, and of the pleasure the
+auspicious news would bring to them.
+
+It was late at night, and just before parting with the guest who was
+so soon to be mistress under his roof, he paused on the stairs before
+a window that commanded a view of the bay. Molly drew closer and leant
+against his shoulder; and thus both gazed forth silently for some
+time at the clear distant light, the luminous eye calmly watching over
+the treacherous sands.
+
+That light of Scarthey--it was the image of the solitary placid life
+to which he had bidden adieu for ever; which even now, at this brief
+interval of half a day, seemed as far distant as the years of despair
+and vicissitude and disgust to which it had succeeded. A man can feel
+the suddenly revealed charm of things that have ceased to be, without
+regretting them.
+
+With the dear young head that he loved, with a love already as old as
+her very years, pressing his cheek; with that slender hand in his
+grasp, the same, for his love was all miracle, that he had held in the
+hot-pulsed days of old--he yet felt his mind wander back to his nest
+of dreams. He thought with gratitude of René, the single-minded,
+faithful familiar; of old Margery, the nurse who had tended Cécile's
+children, as well as her young master; thought of their joy when they
+should hear of the marvellous knitting together into the web of his
+fate, of all those far-off ties.
+
+In full harmony with such fleeting thoughts, came Molly's words at
+length breaking the silence.
+
+"Will you take me back to that strange old place of yours, Adrian,
+when we are married?"
+
+Sir Adrian kissed her forehead.
+
+"And would you not fear the rough wild place, child," he murmured.
+
+"Not for ever, I mean," laughed the girl, "for then my mission would
+not be fulfilled--which was to make of Adrian, Sir Adrian, indeed. But
+now and again, to recall those lovely days, when--when you were so
+distracted for the love of Murthering Moll and the fear lest she
+should see it. You will not dismantle those queer rooms that received
+so hospitably the limping, draggled-tailed guest--they must again
+shelter her when she comes as proud Lady Landale! How delicious it
+would be if the tempest would only rage again, and the sea-mew shriek,
+and the caverns roar and thunder, and I knew you were as happy as I am
+sure to be!"
+
+"All shall be kept up even as you left it," answered Sir Adrian moved
+by tender emotion; "to be made glorious again by the light of your
+youth and fairness. And Renny shall be cook again, and maid of all
+work. My poor Renny, what joy when he hears of his master's happiness,
+and all through the child of his beloved mistress! But he will have to
+spend a sobering time of solitude out there, till I can find a
+substitute for his duties."
+
+"You are very much attached to that funny little retainer, Adrian!"
+said Molly after a pause.
+
+"To no man alive do I owe so much. With no one have I had, through
+life, so much in common," came the grave reply.
+
+"Then," returned the girl, "you would thank me for telling you of the
+means of making the good man's exile less heavy, until you take him
+back with you."
+
+"No doubt." There was a tone of surprise and inquiry in his voice.
+
+"Why, it is simple enough. Have you never heard of his admiration for
+Moggie Mearson, our maid? Let them marry. They will make a good pair,
+though funny. What, you never knew it? Of course not, or you would not
+have had the heart to keep the patient lovers apart so long. Let them
+marry, my Lord of Pulwick: it will complete the romance of the
+persecuted Savenayes of Brittany and their helpful friends of the
+distant North."
+
+Musing, Sir Adrian fell into silence. The faithful, foolish heart that
+never even told its secret desire, for very fear of being helped to
+win it; by whom happiness and love were held to be too dearly bought
+at the price of separation from the lonely exile!
+
+"_Eh bien_, dreamer?" cried the girl gaily.
+
+"Thank you, Molly," said Sir Adrian, turning to her with shining eyes.
+"This is a pretty thought, a good thought. Renny will indeed doubly
+bless the day when Providence sent you to Pulwick."
+
+And so, the following morn, Mr. Renny Potter was summoned to hear the
+tidings, and informed of the benevolent prospects more privately
+concerning his own life; was bidden to thank the future Lady Landale
+for her service; was gently rebuked for his long reticence, and
+finally dismissed in company of the glowing Moggie with a promise that
+his nuptials should be celebrated at the same time as those of the
+lord of the land. The good fellow, however, required first of all an
+assurance that these very fine plans would not entail any
+interference with his duties to his master before he would allow
+himself to be pleased at his fortunes. Great and complex, then, was
+his joy; but it would have been hard to say, as Moggie confessed to
+her inquiring mistress that night, when he had returned to his post,
+whether the pride and delight in his master's own betrothal was not
+uppermost in his bubbling spirits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+TWO MONTHS LATER: THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
+
+    Neighbour, what doth thy husband when he cometh home from work?
+    He thinks of her he loved before he knew me
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+_February 18th._ Upon the 18th of January, 1815, did I commit that
+most irreparable of all follies; then by my own hand I killed fair
+Molly de Savenaye, who was so happy, so free, so much in love with
+life, and whom I loved so dearly, and in her stead called into
+existence Molly Landale, a poor-spirited miserable creature who has
+not given me one moment's amusement. How could I have been so stupid?
+
+Let me examine.
+
+It is only a month ago, only a month, 4 weeks, 31 days, millions of
+horrible dreary minutes, Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly! since you stood,
+that snowy day, in the great drawing-room (_my_ drawing-room now, I
+hate it), and vowed twice over, once before the Jesuit father from
+Stonyhurst, once before jolly, hunting heretical parson Cochrane to
+cleave to Adrian Landale till death bid you part! Brr--what ghastly
+words and with what a light heart I said them, tripped them out, _ma
+foi_, as gaily as "good-morning" or "good-night!" They were to be the
+_open sesame_ to joys untold, to lands flowing with milk and honey, to
+romance, adventure, splendour--and what have they brought me?
+
+It is a cold day, sleeting, snowing, blowing, all that is abominable.
+My lord and master has ridden off, despite it, to some distant farm
+where there has been a fire. The "Good Sir Adrian," as they call him
+now--he is _that_; but, oh dear me--there! I must yawn, and I'll say
+no more on this head, at present, for I want to think and work my
+wretched problem out in earnest, and not go to sleep.
+
+It is the first time I have taken heart to write since yonder day of
+doom, and God knows when I shall have heart again! Upon such an
+afternoon there is nothing better to do, since Sir Adrian would have
+none of my company--he is so precious of me that he fears I should
+melt like sugar in the wet--he never guessed that it was just because
+of the storm I wished the ride! Were we to live a hundred years
+together--which, God forfend--he would never understand me.
+
+Ah, lack-a-day, oh, misery me! (My lady, you are wandering; come back
+to business.)
+
+What, then, has marriage brought me? First of all a husband. That is
+to say, another person, a man who has the right to me--to whom I
+myself have given that right--to have me, to hold me, as it runs in
+the terrible service, the thunders of which were twice rolled out upon
+my head, and which have been ringing there ever since. And I, Molly,
+gave of my own free will, that best and most blessed of all gifts, my
+own free will, away. I am surrounded, as it were, by barriers; hemmed
+in, bound up, kept in leading strings. I mind me of the seagull on the
+island. 'Tis all in the most loving care in the world, of course, but
+oh! the oppression of it! I must hide my feelings as well as I can,
+for in my heart I would not grieve that good man, that _excellent_
+man, that pattern of kind gentleman--oh, oh, oh--it will out--that
+_dreary_ man, that dull man, that most melancholy of all men! Who
+sighs more than he smiles, and, I warrant, of the two, his sighs are
+the more cheerful; who looks at his beautiful wife as if he saw a
+ghost, and kisses her as if he kissed a corpse!
+
+There is a mate for Molly! the mate she chose for herself!
+
+So much for the husband. What else has marriage brought her?
+
+Briefly I will capitulate.
+
+A title--I am _my lady_. For three days it sounded prettily in my
+ears. But to the girl who refused a duchess' coronet, who was born
+comtesse--to be the baronet's lady--Tanty may say what she likes of
+the age of creation, and all the rest of it--that advantage cannot
+weigh heavy in the balance. Again then, I have a splendid
+house--which is my prison, and in which, like all prisoners, I have
+not the right to choose my company--else would Sophia and Rupert still
+be here? They are going, I am told occasionally; but my intimate
+conviction is, however often they may be going, _they will never go_.
+_Item four:_ I have money, and nothing to spend it on--but the poor.
+
+What next? What next?--alas, I look and I find nothing! This is all
+that marriage has brought me; and what has it not taken from me?
+
+My delight in existence, my independence, my hopes, my belief in the
+future, my belief in _love_. Faith, hope, and charity, in fact,
+destroyed at one fell sweep. And all, to gratify my curiosity as to a
+romantic mystery, my vanity as to my own powers of fascination! Well,
+I have solved the mystery, and behold it was nothing. I have eaten of
+the fruit of knowledge, and it is tasteless in my mouth.
+
+I have made my capture with my little bow and spear, and I am as
+embarrassed of my captive as he of me. We pull at the chain that binds
+us together; nay, such being the law of this world between men and
+women, the positions are reversed, my captive is now my master, and
+Molly is the slave.
+
+Tanty, I could curse thee for thy officiousness, from the tip of thy
+coal black wig to the sole of thy platter shoe--but that I am too good
+to curse thee at all!
+
+Poor book of my life that I was so eager to fill in, that was to have
+held a narrative all thrilling, and all varied, now will I set forth
+in thee, my failure, my hopelessness, and after that close thee for
+ever.
+
+Of what use indeed to chronicle, when there is nought to tell but
+flatness, chill monotony, on every side; when even the workings of my
+soul cannot interest me to follow, since they can now foreshadow
+nothing, lead to nothing but fruitless struggle or tame resignation!
+
+I discovered my mistake--not the whole of it, but enough to give me a
+dreadful foreboding of its hideousness, not two hours after the
+nuptial ceremony.
+
+Adrian had borne himself up to that with the romantic, mysterious
+dignity of presence that first caught my silly fancy; behind which I
+had pictured such fascinating depths of passion--of fire--Alas! When
+he looked at me it was with that air of wondering, almost timid,
+affection battling with I know not what flame of rapture, with which
+look I have become so fatally familiar since--without the flame of
+rapture, be it understood, which seems to have rapidly burnt away to a
+very ash of grey despondency and self-reproach. I could have sworn
+even as he gave me his arm to meet and receive the congratulations of
+our guests, that the glow upon his cheek, the poise of his head
+denoted the pride any man, were he not an idiot nor a brute, must feel
+in presenting his bride--such a bride!--to the world. Then we went in
+to the great dining hall where the wedding feast, a very splendid one,
+was spread. All the gentlemen looked with admiration at me; many with
+envy at Adrian. I knew that I was beautiful in my fine white satin
+with my veil thrown back, without the flattering whispers that reached
+me now and again; but these were sweet to hear nevertheless. I knew
+myself the centre of all eyes, and it elated me. So too did the
+tingling flavour of the one glass of sparkling wine I drank to my
+fortunes. Immediately upon this silent toast of Lady Landale to
+herself, Rupert rose and in choice words and silver-ringing voice
+proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom. There was a merry
+bustling pause while the glasses were filled; then rising to their
+feet as with one man, all the gentlemen stood with brimming goblets
+one instant extended, the next emptied to the last drop; and then the
+cheers rang out, swelling up the rafters, three times three, seeming
+to carry my soul along with them. I felt my heart expand and throb
+with an emotion I never knew in it before, which seemed to promise
+vast future capacities of pain and delight. I turned to my husband
+instinctively; looking for, expecting, I could not explain why, an
+answering fire in his eyes. This was the last moment of my illusions.
+From thence they began to shrivel away with a terrifying rapidity.
+
+Adrian sat with a face that looked old and lined and grey; with
+haggard unseeing eyes gazing forth into space as though fixing some
+invisible and spectre show. He seemed as if wrapt in a world of his
+own, to which none of us had entrance; least of all, I, his wife.
+
+The shouts around us died away, there were cries upon him for
+"Speech--speech," then playful queries--"How is this, Sir Adrian? So
+bashful, egad!" next nudges were exchanged, looks of wonder, and an
+old voice speaking broadly:
+
+_"Yes, by George,"_ it was saying, _"I remember it well, by George, in
+this very room, now twenty years ago, 'Here, gentlemen,' says old Sir
+Tummas, 'Here's to Madam de Savenaye,' and gad, ma'am, we all
+yelled,--she was a lovely creature--Eh--Eh?"_
+
+"Hush," said some one, and there was a running circle of frowns and
+the old voice ceased as abruptly as if its owner had been seized by
+the weasand. In the heavy embarrassed silence, I caught Tanty's red
+perturbed look and Rupert's smile.
+
+But Adrian sat on--like a ghost among the living, or a live man among
+the dead. And this was my gallant bridegroom! I seized him by the
+hand--"Are you ill, Adrian?"
+
+He started and looked round at me--Oh that look! It seemed to burn
+into my soul, I shall never forget the hopelessness, the dull sadness
+of it, and then--I don't know what he read in my answering glance--the
+mute agonised question, followed by a terror.
+
+"They want you to speak," I whispered, and shook the cold hand I held
+in a fury of impatience.
+
+His lips trembled: he stared at me blankly. "My God, my God, what have
+I done?" he muttered to himself, "Cécile's child--Cécile's child!"
+
+I could have burst out sobbing. But seeing Rupert's face bent down
+towards his plate, demure and solemn, yet stamped, for all his
+cleverness, with an almost devilish triumph, my pride rose and my
+courage. Every one else seemed to be looking towards us: I stood up.
+
+"Good friends," I said, "I see that my husband is so much touched by
+the welcome that you are giving his bride, the welcome that you are
+giving him after his long exile from his house, that he is quite
+unable to answer you as he would wish. But lest you should
+misunderstand this silence of his, I am bold enough to answer you in
+his name, and--since it is but a few moments ago that you have seen us
+made one, I think I have the right to do so.... We thank you."
+
+My heart was beating to suffocation--but I carried bravely on till I
+was drowned in a storm of acclamations to which the first cheers were
+as nothing.
+
+They drank my health again, and again I heard the old gentleman of the
+indiscreet voice--I have learned since he is stone deaf, and I daresay
+he flattered himself he spoke in a whisper--proclaim that I was _my
+mother all over again: begad--so had she spoken to them twenty years
+ago in this very room!_
+
+Here Tanty came to the rescue and carried me off.
+
+I dared not trust myself to look at Adrian as I left, but I knew that
+he followed me to the door, from which I presumed that he had
+recovered his presence of mind in some degree.
+
+Since that day we have been like two who walk along on opposite banks
+of a widening stream--ever more and more divided.
+
+I have told no one of my despair. It is curious, but, little wifely as
+I feel towards him, there is something in me that keeps me back from
+the disloyalty of discussing my husband with other people.
+
+And it is not even as it might have been--this is what maddens me. _We
+are always at cross purposes._ Some wilful spirit wakes in me, at the
+very sound of his voice (always gentle and restrained, and echoing of
+past sadness); under his mild, tender look; at the every fresh sign of
+his perpetual watchful anxiety--I give him wayward answers, frowning
+greetings, sighs, pouts; I feel at times a savage desire to wound, to
+anger him, and as far as I dare venture I have ventured, yet could not
+rouse in him one spark, even of proper indignation.
+
+The word of the riddle lay in that broken exclamation of his at our
+wedding feast.
+
+"Cécile's child!"
+
+His wife, then, is only Cécile's child to him. I have failed when I
+thought to have conquered--and with the consciousness of failure have
+lost my power, even to the desire of regaining it. My dead mother is
+my rival; her shade rises between me and my husband's love. Could he
+have loved me, I might perhaps have loved him--and now--now I,
+_Molly_, I, shall perhaps go down to my grave without having known
+_love_.
+
+I thought I had found it on that day when he took me in his arms in
+that odious library--my heart melted when he so tenderly kissed my
+lips. And now the very remembrance of that moment angers me.
+Tenderness! Am I only a weak, helpless child that I can arouse no
+more from the man to whom I have given myself! I thought the gates of
+life had been opened to me--behold, they led me to a warm comfortable
+prison! And this is Molly's end!
+
+There is a light in Madeleine's eyes, a ring in her voice, a smile
+upon her lip. She has bloomed into a beauty that I could hardly have
+imagined, and this is because of this unknown whom she _loves_. She
+breathes the fulness of the flower; and by-and-by, no doubt, she will
+taste the fulness of the fruit; she will be complete; she will be fed
+and I am to starve. What is coming to me? I do not know myself. I feel
+that I could grudge her these favours, that I _do_ grudge them to her.
+I am sick at heart.
+
+And she--even she has proved false to me. I know that she meets this
+man. Adrian too knows it, and more of him than he will tell me; and he
+approves. I am treated like a child. The situation is strange upon
+every side; Madeleine loving a plebeian--a sailor, not a king's
+officer--stooping to stolen interviews! Adrian the punctilious, in
+whose charge Tanty solemnly left her, pretending ignorance, virtually
+condoning my sister's behaviour! For though he has distinctly refused
+to enlighten me or help me to enlighten myself, he could not, upon my
+taxing him with it, deny that he was in possession of facts ignored by
+me.
+
+Then there is Rupert paying now open court to this sly damsel--for the
+sake of her beautiful eyes, or for the beautiful eyes of her casket?
+And last and strangest, the incongruous friendship struck up this week
+between her and that most irritating of melancholy fools, Sophia. The
+latter bursts with suppressed importance, she launches glances of
+understanding at my sister; sighs, smiles (when Rupert's eye is not on
+her), starts mysteriously. One would say that Madeleine had made a
+confidant of her--only that it would be too silly. What? Make a
+confidant of that funereal mute and deny _me_ the truth! If I had the
+spirit for it I would set myself to discovering this grand mystery;
+and then let them beware! They would have none of Molly as a friend:
+perhaps she will yet prove one too many upon the other side.
+
+If I have grown bitter to Madeleine, it is her own fault; I would have
+been as true as steel to her if she had but trusted me. Now and
+again, when a hard word and look escape me, she gives me a great
+surprised, reproachful glance, as of a petted child that has been
+hurt; but mostly she scarcely seems to notice the change in
+me--Moonlike in dreamy serenity she sails along, wrapt in her own
+thoughts, and troubles no more over Molly's breaking her heart than
+over Rupert's determined suit. To me when she remembers me, she gives
+the old caresses, the old loving words; to him smiles and pretty
+courtesy. Oh, she keeps her secret well! But I came upon her in the
+woods alone, last Friday, fresh, no doubt, from her lover's arms;
+tremulous, smiling, yet tearful, with face dyed rose. And when to my
+last effort to attain the right of sisterhood she would only stammer
+the tell-tale words: _she had promised!_ and press her hot cheeks
+against mine, I thrust her from me, indignant, and from my affections
+for ever. Yet I hold her in my power, I could write to Tanty, put
+Rupert on the track.... Nay, I have not fallen so low as to become
+Rupert's accomplice yet!
+
+And so the days go on. Between my husband's increasing melancholy, my
+own mad regrets, Rupert's watchfulness, Madeleine's absorption and
+Sophia's twaddle, my brain reels. I feel sometimes as if I could
+scream aloud, as we all sit round the table, and I know that _this_ is
+the life that I am doomed to, and that the days may go on, go on thus,
+till I am old. Poor Murthering Moll the second! Why even the convent,
+where at least I knew nothing, would have been better! No, it is not
+possible! Something is still to come to me. Like a bird, my heart
+rises within me. I have the right to my life, the right to my
+happiness, say what they may.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE DAWN OF AN EVENTFUL DAY
+
+
+Rupert's behaviour at home, since his brother's wedding, had been, as
+even Molly was bound to admit to herself, beyond reproach in
+tactfulness, quiet dignity, and seeming cheerfulness.
+
+He abdicated from his position of trust at once and without the
+smallest reservation; wooed Madeleine with so great a discretion that
+her dreamy eyes saw in him only a kind relative; and he treated his
+sister-in-law, for all her freaks of bearing to him, with a perfect
+gentleness and gentility.
+
+At times Sir Adrian would watch him with great eyes. What meant this
+change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he
+had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his
+plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their
+true light to him, and awakened some innate generosity of feeling; or
+yet if--this with misgiving--it was love for pretty Madeleine that was
+working the marvel. If so, how would this proud rebellious nature bear
+another failure?
+
+Rupert spoke with unaffected regret about leaving Pulwick, at the same
+time, in spite of Molly's curling lip, giving it to be understood that
+his removal was only a matter of time.
+
+For the ostensible purpose, indeed, of finding himself another home he
+made, in the beginning of March, the second month after his brother's
+marriage, several absences which lasted a couple of days or more, and
+from which he would return with an eager sparkle in his eye, almost a
+brightness on his olive cheek, to sit beside Madeleine's embroidery
+frame, pulling her silks and snipping with her scissors, and talking
+gaily, persistently, with such humour and colour as at last to draw
+that young lady's attention from far off musings to his words with
+smiles and laughter.
+
+Meanwhile, Molly would sit unoccupied, brooding, watching them, now
+fiercely, from under her black brows, now scornfully, now
+abstractedly; the while she nibbled at her delicate finger-nails, or
+ruthlessly dragged them along the velvet arms of her chair with the
+gesture of a charming, yet distracted, cat.
+
+Sir Adrian would first tramp the rooms with unwitting restlessness,
+halting, it might be, beside his wife to strive to engage her into
+speech with him; and, failing, would betake himself at length with a
+heavy sigh to solitude; or, yet, he would sit down to his organ--the
+new one in the great hall which had been put up since his marriage, at
+Molly's own gay suggestion, during their brief betrothal--and music
+would peal out upon them till Lady Landale's stormy heart could bear
+it no longer, and she would rise in her turn, fly to the shelter of
+her room and roll her head in the pillows to stifle the sound of sobs,
+crying from the depths of her soul against heaven's injustice; anon
+railing in a frenzy of impotent anger against the musician, who had
+such passion in him and gave it to his music alone.
+
+During Rupert's absences that curious intimacy which Molly had
+contemptuously noted between her sister and sister-in-law displayed
+itself in more conspicuous manner.
+
+Miss Landale's long sallow visage sported its airs of mystery and
+importance, its languishing leers undisguisedly, so long as her
+brother Rupert's place was empty; and though her visits to the
+rector's grave were now almost quotidian, she departed upon them with
+looks of wrapt importance, and, returning, sought Madeleine's chamber
+(when that maiden did not herself stroll out to meet her in the
+woods), her countenance invariably wreathed with suppressed, yet
+triumphant smiles, instead of the old self-assertive dejection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The 15th of March of that year was to be a memorable day in the lives
+of so many of those who then either dwelt in Pulwick, or had dealings
+on that wide estate.
+
+Miss Landale, who had passed the midnight hour in poring over the
+delightful wickedness of Lara, and, upon at length retiring to her
+pillow, had had a sentimental objection to shutting out the romantic
+light of the moon by curtain or shutter, was roused into wakefulness
+soon after dawn by a glorious white burst of early sunshine. As a
+rule, the excellent soul liked to lie abed till the last available
+moment; but that morning she was up with the sun. When dressed she
+drew a letter from a secret casket with manifold precautions as though
+she were surrounded with prying eyes, and, placing it in her reticule,
+hastened forth to seek the little lonely disused churchyard by the
+shore. She afterwards remarked that she could never forget in what
+agitation of spirits and with what strange presentiment of evil she
+was led to this activity at so unwonted an hour. The truth was,
+however, that Miss Landale tripped along through the damp wooded path
+as gaily as if she were going to visit her living lover instead of his
+granite tomb; and that in lieu of evil omens a hundred fantastically
+sentimental thoughts floated through her brain, as merrily and
+irresponsibly as the motes in the long shafts of brilliancy that
+cleaved, sword-like through the mists, upon her from out the east.
+Visions of Madeleine's face when she would learn before breakfast that
+Sophia had actually been to the churchyard already; visions of whom
+she might meet there; rehearsals of a romantic scene upon that
+hallowed spot, of her own blushes, her knowing looks, her playful
+remonstrances, with touching allusions to one who had loved and lost,
+herself, and who thus, &c. &c.
+
+Miss Landale tossed her long faded ringlets quite coquettishly, turned
+one slim bony hand with coy gesture before her approving eyes. Then
+she patted her reticule and hurried on with fresh zest, enjoying the
+tart whisper of the wind against her well bonneted face, the exquisite
+virginal beauty of the earth in the early spring of the day and of the
+year.
+
+As she stepped out of the shadow of the trees, her heart leaped and
+then almost stood still as she perceived in the churchyard lying below
+her, beside the great slab of granite which lay over the remains of
+her long-departed beloved one, the figure of a man, whose back was
+turned towards her, and whose erect outline was darkly silhouetted
+against the low, dazzling light.
+
+Then a simper of exceeding archness crept upon Miss Landale's lips;
+and with as genteel an amble as the somewhat precipitate nature of the
+small piece of ground that yet divided her from the graveyard would
+allow, she proceeded on her way.
+
+At the click of the lych-gate under her hand the man turned sharply
+round and looked at her without moving further. An open letter
+fluttered in his hand.
+
+His face was still against the light, and Miss Landale's eyes had wept
+so many tears by day and night that her sight was none of the best.
+She dropped a very elegant curtsey, simpered, drew nearer, and threw a
+fetching glance upwards. Then her shrill scream rang through the still
+morning air and frightened the birds in the ruined church.
+
+"You are early this morning, Sophia," said Mr. Landale.
+
+Sophia sank upon the tombstone. To say that she was green or yellow
+would ill describe the ghastliness of the tint that suffused her
+naturally bilious countenance; still speechless, she made a frantic
+plunge towards the great urn that adorned the head of the grave. Mr.
+Landale looked up from his reading again with a quiet smile.
+
+"I shall have done in one minute," he remarked, "It is a fine
+production, egad! full of noble protestations and really high-sounding
+words. And then, my dear Sophia, you can take charge of it, and I
+shall be quite ready for the other, which I presume you have as usual
+with you--ah, in your bag! Thanks."
+
+"Rupert?" ejaculated the unfortunate lady, first in agonised query,
+and next in agonised reproach, clasping her hands over the precious
+reticule--"Rupert!"
+
+Mr. Landale neatly folded the sheet he had been reading, moistened
+with his tongue a fresh wafer which he drew from his waistcoat pocket,
+and, deftly placing it upon the exact spot from which the original one
+had been removed, handed the letter to his sister with a little bow.
+But, as with a gesture of horror the latter refused to take it, he
+shrugged his shoulders and tossed it carelessly into the urn.
+
+"Now give me Madeleine's," he said, peremptorily.
+
+Rolling upwards eyes of appeal the unhappy Iris called upon heaven to
+witness that she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her
+solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fictitious flame of courage
+withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her
+brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight of his face
+bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between
+his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of insolent determination, she
+allowed him, unresisting, to take the bag from her side; protesting
+against the breach of faith only by her moans and the inept wringing
+of her hands.
+
+Mr. Landale opened the bag, tossed with cynical contempt upon the flat
+tombstone, sundry precious relics of the mouldering bones within, and
+discovered at length in an inner pocket a dainty flower-scented note.
+Then he flung down the bag and proceeded with the same deliberation to
+open the letter and peruse its delicate flowing handwriting.
+
+"Upon my word," he vowed, "I think this is the prettiest she has
+written yet! What a sweet soul it is! Listen, Sophia: 'You praise me
+for my trust in you--but, Jack, dear love, my trust is so much a part
+of my love that the one would not exist without the other. Therefore,
+do not give me any credit, for you know I could not help loving you.'
+Poor heart! poor confiding child! Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Landale as if to
+himself, carefully proceeding the while with his former manoeuvres
+to end by placing the violated missive, to all appearance intact,
+beside its fellow, "we have here a rank fellow, a foul traitor to deal
+with!"
+
+Then, wheeling round to his sister, and fixing her with piercing eyes:
+"Sophia," he exclaimed, in tones of sternest rebuke, "I am surprised
+at you. I am, indeed!"
+
+Miss Landale raised mesmerised, horror-stricken eyes upon him; his
+dark utterances had already filled her foolish soul with blind dread.
+He sat down beside her, and once more enclosed the thin arm in his
+light but warning grasp.
+
+"Sophia," he said solemnly, "you little guess the magnitude of the
+harm you have been doing; the frightful fate you have been preparing
+for an innocent and trusting girl; the depth of the villainy you are
+aiding and abetting. You have been acting, as I say, in ignorance,
+without realising the awful consequences of your folly and duplicity.
+But that you should have chosen _this_ sacred place for such illicit
+and reprehensible behaviour; that by the grave of this worthy man who
+loved you, by the stones chosen and paid for by my fraternal
+affection, you should plot and scheme to deceive your family, and
+help to lead a confiding and beautiful creature to ruin, I should
+never have expected from _you_, Sophia--Sophia!"
+
+Miss Landale collapsed into copious weeping.
+
+"I am sure, brother," she sobbed, "I never meant any harm. I am sure
+nobody loves the dear girl better than I do. I am sure I never wished
+to hide anything from you!--Only--they told me--they trusted me--they
+made me promise--Oh brother, what terrible things you have been
+saying! I cannot believe that so handsome a young gentleman can mean
+anything wrong--I only wish you could have seen him with her, he is so
+devoted--it is quite beautiful."
+
+"Alas--the tempter always makes himself beautiful in the eyes of the
+tempted! Sophia, we can yet save this unhappy child, but who knows how
+soon it may be too late!--You can still repair some of the wrong you
+have done, but you can only do so by the most absolute obedience to
+me.... Believe me, I know the truth about this vile adventurer, this
+Captain Jack Smith."
+
+"Good Heavens!" cried Sophia, "Rupert, do not tell me, lest I swoon
+away, that he is married already?"
+
+"The man, my dear, whose plots to compromise and entangle a lovely
+girl you have favoured, is a villain of the deepest dye--a pirate."
+
+"Oh!" shivered Sophia with fascinated misery--thrilling recollections
+of last night's reading shooting through her frame.
+
+"A smuggler, a criminal, an outlaw in point of fact," pursued Mr.
+Landale. "He merely seeks Madeleine for her money--has a wife in every
+port, no doubt--"
+
+Miss Landale did not swoon; but her brother's watchful eye was
+satisfied with the effect produced, and he went on in a well modulated
+tone of suppressed emotion:
+
+"And after breaking her heart, ruining her body and soul, dragging her
+to the foulest depths he would have cast her away like a dead
+weed--perhaps murdered her! Sophia, what would your feelings be then?"
+
+A hard red spot had risen to each of Miss Landale's cheek bones; her
+tears had dried up under the fevered glow.
+
+"We believed," she said trembling in every limb, "that he was working
+on a mission to the French court--"
+
+"Faugh--" cried Mr. Landale, contemptuously, "smuggling French brandy
+for our English drunkards and traitorous intelligence for our French
+enemies!"
+
+"Such a handsome young man, so gentlemanly, such an air!" maundered
+the miserable woman between her chattering teeth. "It was quite
+accidental that we met, Rupert, quite accidental, I assure you.
+Madeleine--poor dear girl--came down with me here, I wanted to show
+her the g-grave----" here Sophia gurgled convulsively, remembering her
+brother's cruel reproaches.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She came here with me, and as I was kneeling down, planting crocuses
+just here, Rupert, and she was standing _there_, a young man suddenly
+leaped over the wall, and fell at her feet. He had not seen
+_me_--Alas, it reminded me of my own happiness! And he was so
+well-dressed, so courteous--and seemed such a perfect gentleman--and
+he took off his hat so gracefully I am sure I never could have
+believed it of him. And they confided in me and I promised
+by--by--those sacred ashes to keep their secret. I remembered of
+course what Tanty had said in her letter, and quite understood he was
+the young gentleman in question--but they explained to me how she was
+under a wrong impression altogether. He said that the instant he laid
+eyes upon me, he saw I had a feeling heart, and he knew they could
+trust me. He spoke so nobly, Rupert, and said: What better place could
+they have for their meetings than one consecrated to such faithful
+love as this? It was so beautiful--and oh dear! I can't but think
+there is some mistake." And Miss Landale again wrung her hands.
+
+"But I have proof!" thundered her brother, "convincing proof, of what
+I have told you. At this very moment the man who would marry
+Madeleine, forsooth, runs the risk of imprisonment--nay, of the
+gallows! You may have thought it strange that I should have opened and
+read letters not addressed to me, but with misfortune hanging over a
+beloved object I did not pause to consider myself. My only thought was
+to save her."
+
+Here Mr. Landale looked very magnanimous, and thrust his fingers as he
+spoke through the upper buttons of his waistcoat with the gesture
+which traditionally accompanies such sentiments: these cheap effects
+proved generally irresistible with Sophia. But his personality had
+paled before the tremendous drama into which the poor romance-loving
+soul was so suddenly plunged, and in which in spite of all her woe she
+found an awful kind of fascination. Failing to read any depth of
+admiration in her roving eye, Rupert promptly abandoned
+grandiloquence, and resuming his usual voice and manner, he dropped
+his orders upon her heat of agitation like a cool relentless stream
+under which her last protest fizzed, sputtered, and went out.
+
+"I mean to unmask the gay lover at my own time and in my own way;
+never fear, I shall deal gently with _her_. You will now take this
+letter of his and put it in your bag, leaving hers in that curious
+post-office of yours."
+
+"Yes, Rupert."
+
+"And you will give his letter to her at once when you go in without
+one word of having met me."
+
+"Y ... yes, Rupert."
+
+"As you are too great a fool to be trusted if you once begin to talk,
+you will have a headache for the rest of the day and go to bed in a
+dark room."
+
+"Y ... yes, Rupert."
+
+"You will moreover swear to me, now, that you will not speak of our
+interview here till I give you leave; say I swear I will not."
+
+"I swear I will not."
+
+"So help me God!"
+
+"Oh, Rupert."
+
+"_So help me God_, you fool!"
+
+Sophia's lips murmured an inaudible something; but there was such
+complete submission in every line and curve of her figure, in the very
+droop of her ringlets and the helpless appeal of her gaze that Rupert
+was satisfied. He assisted her to arise from her tombstone, bundled
+the clerical love-tokens back into the bag, duly placed Captain Jack's
+letter in the inner pocket, and was about to present her with his arm
+to conduct her homewards, when he caught sight of a little ragged
+urchin peeping through the bars of the gate, and seemingly in the very
+act of making a mysterious signal in the direction of Miss Landale's
+unconscious figure.
+
+Rupert stared hard at the ruddy, impudent face, which instantly
+assumed an appearance of the most defiant unconcern, while its owner
+began to devote his energies to shying stones at an invisible rook
+upon the old church tower with great nicety of aim.
+
+"Sophia," said her brother in a low tone, "go to the gate: that boy
+wants to speak to you. Go and see what he wants and return to me."
+
+Miss Landale gasped, gazed at her brother as if she thought him mad,
+looked round at the little boy, coloured violently, then meeting
+Rupert's eye again staggered off without a word of protest.
+
+Rupert, shaken with silent laughter, humming a little song to himself,
+stooped to pick a couple of tender spring flowers from the border
+beside the grave, and after slipping them into a button-hole of his
+many caped overcoat, stood looking out over the stretch of land and
+sea, where Scarthey rose like a dream against the sparkle of the water
+and the exquisite blue of the sky.
+
+Presently rapid panting breaths and a shuffling rustle of petticoats
+behind him informed him of his sister's return.
+
+"So you are there, my dear," he said loudly. "One of your little
+fishing friends from the village, I suppose--a Shearman, unless I am
+mistaken. Yes, a Shearman; I thought so. Well, shall we return home
+now? They will be wondering what has become of us. Pray take my arm."
+Then beneath his breath, seeing that words were struggling to Sophia's
+lips, "Hold your tongue."
+
+The small ragged boy watched their departure with a derisive grin, and
+set off at a brisk canter down to the shore, jingling some silver coin
+in his pocket with relish as he went.
+
+When Rupert and Sophia had reached the wood the former paused.
+
+"Letter or message?"
+
+"Oh, Rupert, it was a letter; had I not better destroy it?"
+
+"Give it to me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A hasty scrawl, it seemed, folded anyhow. Only two or three lines, yet
+Rupert conned them for a curiously long time.
+
+"My darling," it ran, "meet me to-day in the ruins at noon. A
+misfortune has happened to me, but if you trust me, all will still be
+well.--Your Jack." Mr. Landale at length handed it back to Sophia.
+
+"You will give it to Madeleine with the other," he said briefly.
+"Mention the fact of the messenger having brought it." And then in a
+terrible bass he added, "And remember your oath!"
+
+She trembled; but as he walked onwards through the wood, his lips were
+smiling, and his eyes were alight with triumph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE DAY: MORNING
+
+
+The appointment of a regular light-keeper at Scarthey, intended to
+release René and old Margery from their exile, had been delayed so as
+to suit the arrangement which was to leave for a time the island
+domain of Sir Adrian at the disposal of Captain Jack. Meanwhile
+Moggie's presence greatly mitigated the severity of her husband's
+separation from his master.
+
+On his side the sailor was in radiant spirits. All worked as he could
+wish, and Sir Adrian's marriage, besides being a source of unselfish
+satisfaction, was, with regard to his own prospects, an unexpected
+help; for, his expedition concluded, he would now be able in the most
+natural manner to make his appearance at Pulwick, an honoured guest of
+the master, under the pride of his own name. And for the rest, hope
+unfolded warm-coloured visions indeed.
+
+During the weeks which had elapsed since Sir Adrian's departure,
+Captain Jack's visits to the island had been fitful and more or less
+secret--He always came and left at night. But as it was understood
+that the place was his to be used and enjoyed as he thought best,
+neither his sudden appearances with the usual heavy travelling-bag,
+nor his long absences excited any disturbance in the arcadian life led
+by René between his buxom young wife and the old mother--as the
+good-humoured husband now termed the scolding dame.
+
+A little sleeping closet had been prepared and allotted to the use of
+the peripatetic guest in one of the disused rooms when René's own
+accommodation under the light tower had been enlarged for the new
+requirements of his matrimonial status. And so Monsieur the Captain
+(in René's inveterate outlandish phraseology) found his liberty of
+action complete. Both the women's curiosity was allayed, and all
+tendency to prying into the young stranger's mysterious purposes amid
+their seclusion condemned beforehand, by René's statement: that
+Monsieur the Captain was a trusted friend of the master--one indeed
+(and here the informant thought fit to stretch a point, if but
+slightly) to whom the Lord of Pulwick was indebted, in bygone days,
+for life and freedom.
+
+Except when weather-bound, a state of things which at that time of
+year occurred not unfrequently, René journeyed daily as far as the
+Hall, ostensibly to report progress and take possible orders, but
+really to gratify himself with the knowledge that all was well with
+the master.
+
+About the breakfast hour, upon this 15th of March, as Sir Adrian was
+discussing with the bailiff sundry matters of importance to the
+estate, a tap came to the door, which he recognised at once as the
+Frenchman's own long accustomed mode of self-announcement.
+
+Since he had assumed the reins of government, the whilom recluse had
+discovered that the management of such a wide property was indeed no
+sinecure; and moreover--as his brother, who certainly understood such
+matters in a thoroughly practical manner, had warned him--that a
+person of his own philosophical, over-benevolent and abstracted turn
+of mind, was singularly ill-fitted for the task. But a strong sense of
+duty and a determination to act by it will carry a man a long way. He
+had little time for dreaming and this was perhaps a providential
+dispensation, for Sir Adrian's musings had now lost much of the grave
+placidity born of his long, peaceful residence in his Thelema of
+Scarthey. The task was long and arduous; on sundry occasions he was
+forced to consult his predecessor on the arcana of landed estate
+government, which he did with much simplicity, thereby giving Mr.
+Landale, not only inwardly mocking satisfaction, but several
+opportunities for the display of his self-effacing loyalty and
+superior capacities.
+
+The business of this day was of sufficiently grave moment to make
+interruption unwelcome--being nothing less than requests from a number
+of tenants to the "Good Sir Adrian," "the real master come to his own
+again"--for a substantial reduction of rent; a step towards which the
+master's heart inclined, but which his sober reason condemned as
+preposterous. But René's countenance, as he entered, betrayed news of
+such import that Sir Adrian instantly adjourned the matter on hand,
+and, when the bailiff had retired, anxiously turned to the new-comer,
+who stood in the doorway mopping his steaming brow.
+
+"Well, Renny," said he, "what is wrong? Nothing about your wife--?"
+
+"No, your honour," answered the man, "your honour is very good.
+Nothing wrong with our Moggie. But the captain.... I ran all the way
+from the Shearmans."
+
+"No accident there, I hope."
+
+"I fear there is, your honour. The captain--he has been attacked this
+morning."
+
+"Not wounded--!" exclaimed Sir Adrian. "Not dead, Renny?"
+
+"Oh no, your honour, well. But he has, I fear, killed one of the
+men ... the revenue men--"
+
+Then, seeing his master start aghast, he went on rapidly;
+
+"At least he is very bad--but what for did he come to make the spy
+upon our island? We have left him at the Shearmans--the mother
+Shearman will nurse him. But the captain, your honour"--the speaker
+lowered his voice to a whisper and advanced a step, looking
+round--"that is the worst of all, the captain has turned mad, I
+believe--Instead of going off with his ship and his crew, (they are
+safe out to sea, as they should be) he remains at Scarthey. Yes--in
+your honour's rooms. He is walking up and down and clutching his hair
+and talking to himself, like a possessed. And when I respectfully
+begged him to consider that it was of the last folly his having rested
+instead of saving himself, I might as well have tried to reason a
+mule. And so, knowing that your honour would never forgive me if
+misfortune arrived, I never drew breath till I reached here to tell
+you. If his honour would come himself he might be able to make Mr. his
+friend hear reason--Your honour will run no risk, for it is only
+natural that you should go to the peel after what has occurred--but if
+you cannot get Mr. the captain to depart this night, there will arrive
+to us misfortune--it is I who tell you so."
+
+"I will go back with you, at once," said Sir Adrian, rising much
+perturbed. "Wait here while I speak to Lady Landale."
+
+Molly was standing by the great log fire in the hall, yawning fit to
+dislocate her pretty jaws, and teasing the inert form of old Jim, as
+he basked before the flame, with the tip of her pretty foot. She
+allowed her eyes to rest vaguely upon her husband as he approached,
+but neither interrupted her idle occupation nor endeavoured to
+suppress the yawn that again distended her rosy lips.
+
+He looked at her for a moment in silence; then laying a hand upon her
+shoulder, said gently: "My child, I am called back to Scarthey and
+must leave instantly. You--you will be careful of yourself--amuse
+yourself during my absence--it may be for two or three days."
+
+Lady Landale raised her black brows with a fine air of interrogation,
+and then gazed down at the old dog till the lashes swept her cheek,
+while a mocking dimple just peeped from the corner of her mouth and
+was gone again. "Oh yes," she answered drily, "I shall take endless
+care of myself and amuse myself wildly. You need have no fear of
+that."
+
+Sir Adrian sighed, and his hand fell listless from her shoulder.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said, and stooped it seemed hesitatingly to lay
+his lips between the little dark tendrils of hair that danced upon her
+forehead. But with a sudden movement she twitched her face away.
+"Despite all the varied delights which bind me to Pulwick," she
+remarked carelessly, "the charms of Sophia and Rupert's company, and
+all the other _amusements_--I have a fancy to visit your old owl's
+nest again--so we need not waste sentiment upon a tender parting, need
+we?"
+
+Sir Adrian's cheek flushed, and with a sudden light in his eyes he
+glanced at her quickly; but his countenance faded into instant
+melancholy again, at sight of her curling lip and cold amused gaze.
+
+"Will you not have me?" she asked.
+
+"If you will come--you will be welcome--as welcome," his voice shook a
+little, "as my wife must always be wherever I am."
+
+"Ah--oh," yawned Lady Landale, "(excuse me pray--it's becoming quite
+an infirmity) so that is settled. I hope it will storm to-night, that
+the wind will blow and howl--and then I snuggle in the feather bed in
+that queer old room and try and fancy I am happy Molly de Savenaye
+again."
+
+Adrian's lip quivered; yet in a second or two he spoke lightly. "I do
+not want to hurry you, but I have to leave at once." Then struck by a
+sudden thought, by that longing to bring pleasure to others which was
+always working in him, "Why not let Madeleine come with you too?" he
+asked, "she could share your room, and--it would be a pleasure to her
+I think." He sighed as he thought of the trouble in store for the
+lovers.
+
+Lady Landale grew red to the roots of her hair and shot a look of
+withering scorn at her husband's unconscious face. "It would be
+charming," she said, sarcastically, "but after all I don't know that I
+care to go so much--oh, don't stare at me like that, for goodness'
+sake! A woman may change her mind, I suppose--at least, in a trifle
+here and there if she can't as regards the whole comfort of her
+life.--Well, well, perhaps I shall go--this afternoon--later--you can
+start now. I shall follow--I can always get a boat at the Shearmans.
+And I shall bring Madeleine, of course--it is most kind and thoughtful
+of you to suggest it. _Mon Dieu_, I have a husband in a thousand!"
+
+She swept him a splendid curtsey, kissed her hand at him, and then
+burst out laughing at the pale bewilderment of his face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Sir Adrian returned to the morning-room, he found René, half
+hidden behind the curtain folds, peering curiously out of the window
+which overlooked the avenue. On his master's entrance, the man turned
+his head, placed his finger on his lip, and beckoned him to approach.
+"If I may take the liberty," said he with subdued voice, "will his
+honour come and look out, without showing himself?"
+
+And he pointed to a group, consisting of Mr. Landale and two men in
+blue jackets and cockaded hats of semi-naval appearance, now slowly
+approaching the house. Mr. Landale was listening with bent head,
+slightly averted, to the smaller of his two companions--a stout
+square-looking fellow, who spoke with evident volubility, whilst the
+other followed defferentially one pace in rear. Presently the trio
+halted, a few yards from the entrance, and Mr. Landale, cutting
+designs upon the sand with the end of his stick in a meditative way,
+appeared to be giving directions at some length, on the conclusion of
+which the two men, touching their hats with much respect, departed
+together, while the magistrate pensively proceeded on his way to the
+house.
+
+"Those, your honour," said René, "were with him that was struck in the
+fight this morning. It was I rowed them over, together with the
+wounded. I left them at the Shearmans, and slipped away myself to
+carry the news. If I might take upon myself to advise, it would be
+better if your honour would come with me now, at once, for fear Mr.
+Landale should delay us by questioning me--Mr. Landale being a
+magistrate, as I heard these men say; and Moggie has assured me that
+he always arranges himself for knowing when I arrive from the
+island--ever since the day when the demoiselles had just come, and I
+found it out. Ever since then he has not liked me, Mr. Landale. Come
+away, your honour, before he finds out I have been here to-day."
+
+Following upon this advice, which he found to the point, Sir Adrian
+left his house by a back passage; and, through a side garden, found
+his way to the coast and to the fishing village.
+
+The wounded man who had not recovered consciousness, lay in the
+brother Shearman's hut, as René had said, surrounded by such uncouth
+attendance as the rude fisherfolk could dispense. After giving
+directions for the summoning of medical aid and the removal, if it
+should prove advisable, of the patient to the Hall, but without a
+single comment upon the unfortunate occurrence, Sir Adrian then took
+the road of the peel.
+
+During the transit, walking rapidly by his master's side, across the
+now bare causeway, René gave his account of events.
+
+The captain (he related) after three days' absence had re-appeared the
+night before the last, and requested him to warn the womankind not to
+be alarmed if they heard, as no doubt they would, strange noises on
+the beach at night. He was, said he, storing provisions and water for
+the forthcoming journey, and the water in the well was so excellent
+that he had determined to take in his store. Of course his honour
+understood well that René did not concern himself in these matters;
+but that was the explanation he conveyed to his wife, lest she should
+be alarmed and wonder. As for the old mother, she was too deaf to be
+awakened out of sleep by anything short of the trumpet of the last
+judgment.
+
+As announced, there had been during the night the noise of a party of
+men landing, of the hoisting and rolling of barrels--a great
+_remue-ménage_ altogether--and the next morning, that was yesterday,
+the captain had slept sound in his bunk till late.
+
+During several hours of the following day, he had some secret work to
+do in the caves of which René had shown the ins and outs, and whilst
+so engaged had requested that watch should be kept from the
+light-tower, and message sent by some arranged signal should any one
+approach the island. But no one had come near. Whilst at his post, the
+watcher had heard at different times the sound of hammering; and when
+the captain had come to relieve him, the good gentleman was much
+begrimed with dust and hot with work, but appeared in excellent
+humour. In the castle, he sang and whistled for joyfulness, and made
+jokes with Moggie, all in his kind way, saying that if he were not to
+be married himself soon, he would feel quite indignant and jealous at
+the happiness of such a rascal as her husband.
+
+Oh! he was happy--Monsieur the Captain--he had brought Moggie a
+beautiful shawl; and to René, he had given a splendid watch, telling
+him to keep count of the hours of his unmerited bliss. Alas, this
+morning all had been different indeed! The captain looked another man;
+his face was as white as linen. The very look of him would have told
+any one that a misfortune had occurred. René did not quite understand
+it himself, but this is what had taken place:
+
+The captain had left Scarthey on foot late in the evening, and when he
+returned (he was not long away) he bade René again not to mind what he
+heard during the night; and, in faith, once more there had been a real
+noise of the devil; men coming to and fro, a deal of rowing on the
+water, away and back again, in the early night and then once more
+before dawn.
+
+"But I was not unquiet," said René, "I knew they had come for the
+remainder of what Mr. Smith was pleased to call his provisions. From
+our room I could see by the light on the stairs that the lamp was
+burning well, and Moggie slept like a child, so sound, she never
+moved. Just before the rising sun, I had got up and put out the lamp,
+and was going to bed again, when there came thumps of the devil at the
+lower door. Well knowing that the captain had his own way of
+entering--for he had spent many days in finding out all sorts of droll
+passages in the ruins--I was quite seized; and as I hurried down, the
+thumps came again and great cries for the lighthouse-keeper. And, your
+honour, when I unbarred the door, there was a man in uniform whom I
+did not know, and he asked me, grumbling, if I knew of the pretty
+doings on the beach, whilst I slept like pig, he said--Of course I
+made the astonished as his honour may imagine: I knew nothing, had
+heard nothing, though my heart was beating like to burst not knowing
+what was coming. Then he ordered me to lend a hand and bring a ladder
+to carry away one of his men who had been murdered by the smugglers,
+he said. And there, on the sands, in front of the small cave was
+another man, in a blue coat too, watching over the body of one who was
+stretched out, quite tranquil, his face covered with blood and his
+eyes closed. They are gone, says the gross man. And I was glad, as
+your honour may well think, to see the chaloupe full of the captain's
+men rowing hard towards the vessel. She had just come out of the river
+mouth and was doubling round the banks. We carried the man on his
+ladder to the kitchen and we and the women did all we could, but he
+remained like a log. So after a time the two men (who said they had
+come along the dyke soon after midnight, on foot, as they thought it
+would be more secret, and had watched all night in the bent) wanted to
+eat and drink and rest. They had missed their game, the big man said;
+they had been sent to find out what sort of devil's tricks were being
+played on in the island unbeknown to Sir Adrian;--but it was the
+devil's luck altogether, for the smugglers had slipped away and would
+not be seen in this part of the world again. That is the way the fat
+man spoke. The other had nothing to say, but swallowed our bacon and
+our beer as if he did not care. And then, your honour, they told me I
+should have to lend them the yawl to go on land, and go myself to
+help, and take the body with us. And as he was speaking, I saw Moggie
+the wife, who had been backwards and forwards serving them, looking at
+me very straight but without blowing a word, as if she had fear. And
+all at once I felt there was something on foot. So I drew the men more
+beer and said I would see after the yawl. Outside the door the wife
+whispered: 'Upstairs, quick! Renny,' and she herself whisked back into
+the kitchen so that she should not cause suspicion to those
+others--Ah, your honour, that is a woman!"
+
+"Well, well," interrupted his master, anxiously.
+
+"Well, I went upstairs, four by four; and there, in your honour's
+room, without an attempt to conceal himself (when any moment it might
+have entered into those brigands' heads downstairs to search the
+place), there was Monsieur the Captain, raging up and down, like a
+wolf in cage, as I had the honour to describe before. No wonder Moggie
+was afraid for him. A woman is quick to feel danger ahead. He looked
+at me as if he did not know me, his face all unmade. 'You know what
+has happened;' he says. 'Am I not the most unfortunate...? All is
+lost.' 'With respect,' says I; 'nothing is lost so long as life is
+safe, but it is not a good thing Monsieur the Captain that you are
+here, like this, when you should be on your good ship as many miles
+away as she can make. Are you mad?' to him I say, and he to me, 'I
+think I am.' 'At least let me hide you,' I beg of him, 'I know of many
+beautiful places,' and so for the matter of that does he. But it was
+all lost trouble. At length he sits down at the table and begins to
+write, and his look brightens: 'You _can_ help me, my good friend,' he
+says; 'I have a hope left--who knows--who knows,'--and he writes a few
+lines like an enraged and folds them and kisses the billet. 'Find
+means,' says he, 'René, to get Johnny, the Shearman boy, to take this
+to the old churchyard and place it in the place he knows of; or,
+better still, should he chance upon Miss Landale to give it to her. He
+is a sharp rogue,' says he, 'and I can trust his wits; but should you
+not find him, dear René, you must do the commission for me yourself.
+Now go--go,' he cries, and pushes me to the stairs. And, as I dared
+remain no more, I had to leave him. Of course Monsieur the Captain has
+not been here all this time without telling me of his hopes, and it is
+clear that it is to bid farewell to Mademoiselle Madeleine that he is
+playing with his life. It is as ill reasoning with a lover as a
+lunatic: they are the same thing, _Ma foi_, but I trust to your honour
+to bring him to his senses if any one can. And so, to continue, I went
+down and I told the men in blue the boat was ready, we carried the
+body; I left them at the Shearmans, as your honour knows. I found
+Johnny and gave him the letter; he knew all about what to do, it
+seemed. And then I came straight to the Hall."
+
+"It is indeed a miserable business!" said Sir Adrian.
+
+René heaved a great sigh of sympathy, as he noticed the increasing
+concern on his master's face.
+
+"You heard them mention my brother's name?" inquired the latter, after
+following the train of his misgivings for a few moments. "You have
+reason to think that Mr. Landale knew of these men's errand; other
+reason, I mean, than having seen them with him just now?"
+
+René's quick mind leaped at the meaning of the question:
+
+"Yes, your honour. 'Mr. Landale will want to know of this,' says the
+fat one; 'though it is too late,' he says." And René added ruefully:
+"I have great fear. The captain is not at the end of his pains, if Mr.
+Landale is ranged against him!"
+
+Such was also Sir Adrian's thought. But he walked on for a time in
+silence; and, having reached Scarthey, rapidly made his way into the
+peel.
+
+Captain Jack was still pacing the room much as René had described when
+Sir Adrian entered upon him. The young man turned with a transient
+look of surprise to the new-comer, then waved away the proffered hand
+with a bitter smile.
+
+"You do not know," he said, "who it is you would shake hands with--an
+outlaw--a criminal. Ah, you have heard? Then Renny, I suppose, has
+told you."
+
+"Yes," groaned the other, holding his friend by both shoulders and
+gazing sorrowfully into the haggard face, "the man may die--oh, Jack,
+Jack, how could you be so rash?"
+
+"I can't say how it all happened," answered Captain Jack, falling to
+his walk to and fro again in the extremity of his distress, and ever
+and anon mopping his brow. "I felt such security in this place. All
+was loaded but the last barrel, when, all of a sudden, from God knows
+where, the man sprang on me and thrust his dark lantern in my face.
+'It is Smith,' I heard him say. I do believe now that he only wanted
+to identify me. No man in his senses could have dared to try and
+arrest me surrounded by my six men. But I had no time to think then,
+Adrian. I imagined the fellow was leading a general attack.... If that
+last barrel was seized the whole secret was out; and that meant ruin.
+Wholesale failure seemed to menace me suddenly in the midst of my
+success. I had a handspike in my hand with which I had been helping to
+roll the kegs. I struck with it, on the spur of the moment; the man
+went down on the spot, with a groan. As he fell I leaped back, ready
+for the next. I called out, 'Stretchers, lads; they want to take your
+captain?' My lads gathered round me at once. But there was silence;
+not another creature to be seen or heard. They set to work to get that
+last blessed bit of cargo, the cause of all the misery, on board with
+the rest; while I stood in the growing dawn, looking down at the
+motionless figure and at the blood trickling into the sand, trying to
+think, to settle what to do, and only conscious of one thing: the
+intense wish that I could change places with my victim. Can you
+wonder, Adrian, that my brain was reeling? You who know all, all this
+means to me, can you wonder that I could not leave this shore--even
+though my life depended on it--without seeing her again! Curwen, my
+mate, came up to me at last, and I woke up to some sort of reason at
+the idea that they, the crew and the ship, must be removed from the
+immediate danger. But the orders I gave must have seemed those of a
+madman: I told him to sail right away but to double back in time to
+have the schooner round again at twelve noon to-day, and then to send
+the gig's crew to pick me up on Pulwick sand. 'Life and death,' said I
+to him, and he, brave fellow, 'Ay, ay, sir,' as if it was the most
+simple thing in the world, and off with him without another word."
+
+"What imprudence, what imprudence!" murmured Sir Adrian.
+
+"Who knows? None will believe that I have not seized the opportunity
+of making my escape with the others. The height of imprudence may
+become the height of security. I have as yet no plan--but it will
+come. My luck shall not fail me now! who knows: nothing perhaps is
+damaged but an excise man's crown. Thank heaven, the wind cannot fail
+us to-day."
+
+"But, meanwhile," urged Sir Adrian, quite unconvinced, highly
+disturbed, "that treasure on board.... I know what has been your
+motive, Jack, but indeed it is all nothing short of insanity, positive
+insanity. Can you trust your men?"
+
+"I would trust them with my own secrets, willingly enough; but not
+with those of other people. So they do not know what I have in those
+barrels. Four thousand golden guineas in each...! No, the temptation
+would be too terrible for the poor lads. Not a soul knows that, beyond
+you and me. Curwen has charge of the cargo, such as it is. But I can
+answer for it none of them will dream of tampering with the casks.
+They are picked men, sober, trusty; who have fought side by side with
+me. I am their best friend. They are mine, body and soul, I believe.
+They do know there is some risk in the business, but they trust me.
+They are sure of treble pay, and besides, are not troubled with
+squeamishness. As for Curwen, he would go to hell for me, and never
+ask a question. No, Adrian, the scheme was perfect, but for this
+cursed blow of mine this morning. And now it is a terrible
+responsibility," continued the young man, again wiping his forehead;
+"every ounce of it weighs on my shoulders. But it is not that that
+distracts me. Oh, Adrian ... Madeleine!"
+
+The elder man felt his heart contract at the utter despairing of that
+cry.
+
+"When my handspike crashed on that damned interferer's skull," the
+sailor went on, "I felt as if the blow had opened an unfathomable
+chasm between her and me. Now I am felon--yes, in law, a felon! And
+yet I am the same man as yesterday. I shall have to fly to-night, and
+may never be able to return openly to England again. All my golden
+dreams of happiness, of honour, vanished at the sound of that cursed
+blow. But I must see her, Adrian, I _must_ see her before I go. I am
+going to meet her at noon, in the ruins of Pulwick."
+
+"Impossible!" ejaculated the other aghast. "Listen, Jack, unfortunate
+man! When I heard of the--the misfortune, and of your folly in
+remaining, I instantly planned a last meeting for you. As it fell
+out, my wife has a fancy to spend the night here: I have asked her to
+bring her sister with her. But this inconceivably desperate plan of
+leaving in your ship, in broad light of day, frustrates all I would
+have done for you. For God's sake let us contrive some way of warning
+the _Peregrine_ off till midnight; keep hidden, yourself; do not
+wilfully run your head into the noose!"
+
+But the young man had stopped short in his tramping, and stood looking
+at his friend, with a light of hope flaming in his eye.
+
+"You have done that, Adrian! You have thought of that!" he repeated,
+as if mechanically. A new whirlwind of schemes rushed through his
+mind. For a while he remained motionless, with his gaze fixed on Sir
+Adrian, putting order in his own thoughts with that genius of
+precision and swiftness which, in strong natures, rises to meet a
+crisis. Then advancing, and seizing him by both hands:
+
+"Adrian," he cried, in something more like his own voice, again, "I
+shall yet owe my happiness to you, to this thought, this sublime
+thought of your heart!"
+
+And, as Sir Adrian, astounded, unable to understand this extremity of
+hopefulness, following upon the previous depth of misery, stared back
+at him, speechless, the latter proceeded in still more surprising
+fashion.
+
+"Now, you listen to me, this time. I have been selfish in running the
+risk of having you mixed up in my dangerous affairs. But, God is my
+witness, I acted under the belief that all was absolutely secure. Now,
+however, you must do nothing more that might implicate you. Remember,
+do nothing to let people suspect that you have seen me to-day. Renny,
+too, must keep close counsel. You know nothing of my future movements.
+Remain here for a while, do not even look out of the window.... I fear
+we shall not meet for a long time. Meanwhile, God bless you--God bless
+you!"
+
+After another wrench of the hands he held in his, the sailor released
+them and fairly ran out of the room, without heeding his friend's
+bewildered expostulations. At the door of the keep he met René again.
+And after a brief but earnest colloquy, the man whose life was now
+forfeit to the community and upon whose head there would soon be a
+price, was quietly walking along the causeway, making for the shore,
+with the greatest apparent unconcern and deliberation.
+
+And whilst Sir Adrian, alone in his chamber, with his head resting
+upon his hand, anxiously pondered upon the possible issues of this
+nefarious day's doings, the sailor advanced, in broad daylight towards
+the land to keep his appointment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A solitary speck of life upon the great waste, with the consciousness
+of the precarious thread of chance upon which it hung! What wonder
+that, for all his daring, the traveller felt, as he deliberately
+regulated his pace to the most nonchalant gait, a frantic desire to
+run forward, or to lie down! How many approach glasses might now be
+laid, like so many guns, upon him from secret points of the coast
+until he came within range of recognition; what ambushes those clumps
+of gorse and juniper, those plantations of alders and young firs on
+the bluffs yonder, might conceal? The eye could reach far and wide
+upon the immense stretch of sand, along the desert coast; and his
+solitary figure, moving upon the yellow strand was a mark for miles
+around. Steadily, nevertheless did he advance; the very daring, the
+unpardonable foolhardiness of the deed his safety. And yet the strain
+was high. Were they watching the island? Among the eager crew, to each
+of whom the capture might mean a splendid prize and chance of
+promotion, was there one would have the genius of suddenly suspecting
+that this foolhardy wayfarer might be the man they wanted and not
+merely Sir Adrian returning on foot towards his home?... And then came
+the answer of hopeful youth and hardy courage----.
+
+No. The preventive are a lubberly lot--It will require something
+better than a water-guard to track and take Lucky Jack Smith!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But for all his assurance Lucky Jack Smith drew a long breath of
+relief when he felt the shadow of Pulwick woods closing around him at
+last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE DAY: NOON
+
+    There stood two men and they did point their fingers at that house.
+    And on his finger one had blood; the other's finger shook.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+Broken lengths of wall, a crumbling indication of the spring of once
+exquisite arches, windows gaping darkly like the eye sockets of a
+skull--this was all that was left of the old priory of Pulwick, whilom
+proud seat of clerical power and learning. But the image of decay was
+robbed of all melancholy by the luxuriance of climbing vegetation, by
+the living screen of noble firs and larches arranged in serried ranks
+upon the slopes immediately behind it, with here and there a rugged
+sentinel within the ruinous yards and rooms themselves; by wild bushes
+of juniper and gorse and brambles. And, with the bright noon sun
+pouring down upon the worn red sandstone, and gilding the delicate
+tassels of the larches' green needles; with the light of young love,
+spreading glamour upon every leaf and stone, in the eyes of the
+lovers, the scene, witness of so many sweet meetings, bore that day a
+beautiful and home-like aspect.
+
+Captain Jack was standing upon the grass-grown floor of what had been
+the departed monks' refectory, with ears eagerly bent to listen.
+
+Three ragged walls, a clump of fir trees, and a bank of brambles
+screened him from any chance passer-by, and he now and again peered
+through a crevice on to a path through the woods, cautiously, as if
+fearful to venture forth. His face was pale beneath its tan, and had
+none of its usual brightness; his attire for him was disordered; his
+whole appearance that of a man under the pressure of doubt and
+anxiety. Yet, when the sound of a light footfall struck among the
+thousand whispering noises of wind and leaf that went to make up the
+silence of the ruins, the glory of joy that lit up eye and lip left no
+room for any other impression.
+
+Madeleine stood in the old doorway: a vision of beautiful life amid
+emblems of decay and death.
+
+"I come alone to-day," she said, with her half-shy smile. And then,
+before she could utter a further word of explanation, she was gathered
+into her lover's strong arms with a passion he had never as yet shown
+in his chivalrous relations with her. But it was not because they met
+without the sympathetic rapture of Miss Landale's eye upon them; not
+because there was no other witnesses but the dangling ivy wreath, the
+stern old walls, the fine dome of spring sky faintly blue; not because
+of lover's audacious joy. This Madeleine, feeling the stormy throbbing
+of his heart against hers, knew with sure instinct. She pushed him
+gently from her as soon as she could, the blushes chased from her
+cheeks by pale misgivings, and looked at him with eyes full of
+troubled questioning.
+
+Then he spoke, from his full heart:
+
+"Madeleine, something has happened--a misfortune, as I wrote to you. I
+must now start upon my venture sooner than I thought--at once. I shall
+have to _fly_ in fact, to-day. There have been spies upon me, and my
+secret trust is in danger. How they have tracked me, how suspicion has
+been aroused, I cannot guess. But I have been tracked. A fellow came
+at dawn. I had to defend my secret--the secret not my own, the charge
+entrusted to me. The man was hurt. I cannot explain, dear love, there
+is no time; even now I run the risk of my life by being here, and life
+is so dear to me now, my Madeleine! Hush! No, do not be afraid! I am
+afraid of nothing, so long as you trust me. Will you trust me? I
+cannot leave you here behind; and now, with this cursed stroke of
+ill-luck, this suspicion upon me, it may be long before I can return
+to England. I cannot leave you behind, I cannot! Will you trust me,
+Madeleine, will you come with me? We shall be married in France, my
+darling. You should be as a queen in the guard of her most humble
+slave. I am half mad to think I must go. Ah, kiss me, love, and say
+yes! Listen! I must sail away and make believe that I have gone. My
+_Peregrine_ is a bird that none can overtake, but I shall come back
+to-night. Listen: If you will be on the island to-night--Sir Adrian is
+there already, and I hear your sister is coming--a freak of fancy--and
+he, God bless him, has told her to bring you too (it shows my luck has
+not deserted me yet). I shall be there, unknown to all except Renny. I
+cannot meet you nearer home, but you will be my own brave bride and
+keep your own counsel. You will not be frightened, will you, my
+beautiful love? All you have to do is to follow Renny's instructions.
+My ship will be back, waiting, an hour after dark, ready, when you set
+foot on it, to spread its wings with its treasures--treasures, indeed!
+And then we shall have the world before us--riches, love, such love!
+And once safe, I shall be free to prove to you that it is no common
+blood I would mate with that dear and pure stream that courses in your
+veins. You shall soon know all; will you trust me?"
+
+She hung upon his hot words, looking at him with loving, frightened
+eyes. Now he gathered her to his arms again, again his bursting heart
+throbbed its stormy passion to her ear. She was as one carried away by
+a torrent against which resistance is useless. He bent his head over
+her face; the scent of the bunch of violets in her breast rose
+deliciously to his nostrils. Alas! Hubert Cochrane was not to reach
+that kiss of acquiescence, that kiss from which it seemed that but so
+small a fraction of space and time divided him! Some one, who had
+stepped along in the shadow as silently as a cat coming upon a bird,
+clapped here a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Who are you, sir, and what do you want?" exclaimed Captain Jack,
+wrenching himself free, falling back a pace and measuring the
+new-comer from head to foot with furious glances, while, with burning
+blushes Madeleine faltered:
+
+"Rupert!"
+
+Nothing awakens anger in hot blood sooner than an unsanctioned touch.
+In certain moods the merest contact is as infuriating as a blow. Such
+an insult, added to the irreparable injury of interrupting their
+meeting at the most exquisite and crucial moment, drove Captain Jack
+beside himself with rage.
+
+But Madeleine's hand was still on his arm. She felt it suddenly harden
+and twitch with murderous anger. But, by an effort that made the
+veins of his temple swell like whipcord, he refrained from striking
+the double offender.
+
+Mr. Landale surveyed the pair for a moment in silence with his grave
+look; then coldly he answered the sailor's irate speech.
+
+"My name, fellow, is Rupert Landale. I am here to protect my cousin
+from an unprincipled and criminal adventurer."
+
+"You take a sharp tone sir," cried Captain Jack, the flush on his face
+deepening yet a shade, his nostrils ominously dilated, yet speaking
+without further loss of self-control. "You probably count upon the
+presence of this lady to prevent my resenting it; but as my time with
+her is short and I have still much to say, I shall be forced promptly
+to eject you from the ruins here, unless you will be good enough to
+immediately remove yourself. I shall hope for another meeting with you
+to discuss the question as to your right of interference; but
+to-day--I cannot spare the time."
+
+Rupert smiled without moving; then the sailor gently disengaging
+himself from Madeleine would have put her behind him but that she
+pressed forward and laid a hand upon an arm of each of the men.
+
+"Stay, Jack," she pleaded, "let me speak. There is some mistake here.
+Cousin Rupert, you cannot know that I am engaged to this gentleman and
+that he is a friend of your brother's as well as of other good friends
+of mine."
+
+"My poor child," answered Rupert, closing a cold hand gently over hers
+and speaking with a most delicate tenderness of accent, "you have been
+grossly imposed upon, and so have others. As for my poor brother
+Adrian, he is, if anything, easier to deceive than you, innocent
+convent-bred girl! I would have you to go home, my dear, and leave me
+to deal with this--gentleman. You have bitter truths to learn; would
+it not be better to wait and learn them quietly without further
+scandal?"
+
+This was too much for Captain Jack, who fairly ground his teeth.
+Rupert's honeyed tones, his grasp of Madeleine's hand were more
+unbearable even than the words. He advanced upon the elder man and
+seizing him by the collar whirled him away from the girl as easily as
+a straw puppet.
+
+The fine gentleman of sensitive nerves and unworked sinews had no
+chance against the iron strength of the man who had passed all the
+years of virility fighting against sea and storm. The two faced each
+other; Jack Smith, red and panting with honest rage, only the sense of
+his lady's proximity keeping him from carrying his high-handed
+measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly
+black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered
+from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst
+enemy could have attributed it to fear.
+
+An unequal match it would seem, yet unequal in a way that the young
+man, in the conscious glory of his strength could not have conceived.
+Madeleine neither screamed nor fainted; she had grown white, in
+natural apprehension, but her eyes fixed upon her lover's face shone
+with admiration. Mr. Landale turned slowly towards her.
+
+"Madeleine," he said, readjusting his stock and smoothing the folds of
+his collar with a steadfast striving after coolness, "you have been
+grossly deceived. The man you would trust with your life and honour is
+a mere smuggler. He has no doubt told you fine stories, but if he has
+given himself out for aught else he lied, take my word for it--he
+lied. He is a common smuggler, and the vessel he would carry you away
+in is packed with smuggled goods. To-day he has attacked and wounded
+an officer, who, in the discharge of his duty, endeavoured to find out
+the nature of his suspicious purpose. Your would-be lover's neck is in
+danger. A felon, he runs the risk of his life every moment he remains
+on land--but he would make a last effort to secure the heiress! Look
+at him," his voice raising in spite of himself to a shriller
+pitch--"he cannot deny it!"
+
+Madeleine gazed from one to the other. Her mind, never a very quick
+one at decision, was too bewildered to act with clearness; moreover
+with her education and ignorance of the world the indictment conveyed
+no special meaning to her.
+
+But there was an agony of suspense and beseeching in the glance that
+her lover cast upon her; and to that appeal she smiled proudly. Hers
+were no true love, she felt, were its confidence shaken by the
+slandering of anger. Then the thought of his danger, danger admitted
+by his own lips, flashed upon her with terror. She rushed to him,
+
+"Oh go, Jack, go!--As you love me, go!"
+
+Mr. Landale, who had already once or twice cast impatient looks of
+expectation through a window of the east wall, taken by surprise at
+this unforeseen result of his speech, suddenly climbed up upon a
+broken piece of stone-work, from which there was an abrupt descent
+towards the shore, and began to signal in eager gesticulation. There
+was a sound of heavy running footfalls without. Captain Jack raised
+his head, every nerve on the alert.
+
+"Go, go," again cried Madeleine, dreading she knew not what.--A fat
+panting red face looked over the wall; Mr. Landale turned for a second
+to throw at the lovers a glance of elation.
+
+But it seemed as if the sailor's spirits rose at the breath of danger.
+He rapidly looked round upon the ruins from which there were no other
+outlets than the window guarded by Mr. Landale, and the doorway in
+which the red-faced new-comer now stood, framed in red stone; then,
+like a cat he darted on to the ledge of the wall at the opposite end,
+where some invading boughs of larch dropped over the jagged crest,
+before the burly figure in the blue coat of the preventive service had
+recovered from the surprise of finding a lady in his way, or gathered
+his wits and his breath sufficiently to interfere.
+
+There the nimble climber stood a moment balancing himself lightly,
+though the ivied stones rocked beneath him.
+
+"I go, love," he cried in ringing voice, "but one word from you and I
+go----"
+
+"Oh, I trust you! I will trust you!" screamed the girl in despair,
+while her fascinated gaze clung to the erect figure silhouetted
+against the sky and the stout man looked up, open-mouthed. Mr. Landale
+snarled at him:
+
+"Shoot, fool--shoot!" And straining forward, himself drew a pistol
+from the man's belt, cocked it and thrust it into his grasp.
+
+Captain Jack kissed his hand to Madeleine with a joyful gesture, then
+waved his hat defiantly in Rupert's direction, and with a spring
+disappeared, just as the pistol cracked, drawing a shriek of terror
+from the girl, and its bullet flattened itself against the upper stone
+of the wall--considerably wide of the mark.
+
+"Come, this way----!" screamed Mr. Landale from his window sill, "you
+have another!"
+
+But the preventive shook his head, and thrust his smoking barrel back
+through his belt, with an air of philosophical resignation; and slowly
+approaching the window, through which the fugitive could now be seen
+steadily bowling down the seaward slope, observed in slow, fat tones:
+
+"Give you a hand, sir?"
+
+Rupert, thrusting his extended arm aside jumped down beside him as if
+he would have sprung at his throat.
+
+"Why are you so late?--why have you brought no one with you? I gave
+you notice enough. You fool! You have let him slip through your
+fingers, now, after all! Couldn't you even shoot straight? Such a mark
+as he made against the sky--Pah! well may the sailors say, lubberly as
+a land preventive----!"
+
+"Why, there you are, Mr. Landale!" answered the man with
+imperturbable, greasy good-humour. "The way you shoved that there
+pistol into my hand was enough to put off anybody. But you country
+magistrate gentlemen, as I have always said, you are the real sort to
+make one do illegal actions with your flurry and your hurry over
+everything. 'Shoot!' says you, and damme, sir, if I didn't shoot
+straight off before I knew if I were on my head or on my heels. It's a
+mercy I didn't hit the sweet young lady--it is indeed. And as for the
+young gentleman, though to be sure he did show a clean pair of heels
+at the sight of me, I had no proper time for i-dentification--no time
+for i-den-ti-fi-cation, Mr. Landale, sir. So I say, sir, it's a mercy
+I did not hit him either, now I can think of it. Ah, slow and sure,
+that's my motter! I takes my man on his boat, in the very middle of
+his laces and his brandy and his silk--I takes him, sir, in the very
+act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows
+fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why
+it's a good job too--but none of this promiscuous work for Augustus
+Hobson. Slow and sure, that's my motter."
+
+The speaker who had been rolling a quid of tobacco in his mouth during
+this exposition of policy, here spat emphatically upon the grass, and
+catching Madeleine's abstracted eye, begged pardon for the liberty
+with a gallant air.
+
+"Aye, so slow, man, that you are pretty sure to fail," muttered Mr.
+Landale.
+
+"I knows my business, sir, meaning no offence," retorted Mr. Hobson
+serenely. "When I has no orders I acts on regulation. I brought no one
+with me because I had no one to bring, having sent, as per regulation,
+my one remaining man to give notice to the water service, seeing that
+that there schooner has had the impudence to come back, and is at this
+very moment cruising quite happy-like just the other side of the bank;
+though if ever their cutter overhauls her--well, I'm a Dutchman! You
+might have done wiser, perhaps (if I may make so bold as to remark),
+to leave the management of this business to them as understands such
+things. As to being late, sir, you told me to be in the ruins at
+twelve noon, and I beg to insinuate that it's only just past the hour
+now."
+
+At this point the preventive man drew from his capacious breeches a
+brass time-piece, of congenial stoutness, the face of which he turned
+towards the magistrate.
+
+The latter, however, waved the proffered witness impatiently aside.
+Furtively watching his cousin, who, leaning against the door-post, her
+pale head thrown out in strong relief by the dark stones, stood as if
+absolutely detached from her surroundings, communing over troubled
+thoughts with her own soul, he said with deliberate distinctness:
+
+"But have I been misled, then, in understanding that you were with the
+unfortunate officer who was so ferociously assaulted this morning?
+that you and he did come upon this Captain Smith, red-handed as you
+call it, loading or unloading his vessel on Scarthey Island?"
+
+"Aye, sir," rolled out the other, unctuously, "there you are again,
+you see. Poor Nat Beavor, he was one of your hot-headed ones, and see
+what it has brought _him_ to--a crack in his skull, sir, so that it
+will be days before he'll know himself again, the doctor says, if ever
+he does in this world, which I don't think. Ah, I says to him, when
+we started in the dawn this morning agreeable to our arrangement with
+you: 'For peeping and prying on the quiet without any running risks
+and provoking others to break the law more than they're doing, I'm
+your man,' says I; 'but as for attacking desperate individles without
+proper warrant and authority, not to speak of being one to ten, I tell
+you fair, Nat Beavor, I'll have nothing to do with it.' But Nat, he
+went off his head, clean, at the sight of Captain Jack and his men a
+trundling the little kegs down the sands, as neat and tidy as could
+be; and so he cut out from behind the rocks, and I knew there was
+mischief ahead! Ah, poor fellow, if he would only have listened to me!
+I did my best for him, sir; started off to call up the other man, who
+was on the other side of the ruins, as soon as I saw his danger, but
+when I came back----"
+
+"The birds were flown, of course," interrupted Rupert with a sneer,
+"and you found the body of your comrade who had been dastardly
+wounded, and who, I hear, is dead now. So the villain has twice
+escaped you. Cousin Madeleine," hastily breaking off to advance to the
+girl, who now awakening from her reflective mood seemed about to leave
+the ruins, "Cousin Madeleine, are you going? Let me escort you back."
+
+She slowly turned her blue eyes, burning upon him from her white face.
+"Cousin Rupert, I do not want your company." Then she added in a
+whisper, yet with a passion for which Rupert would never have given
+her credit and which took him vastly by surprise, "I shall never
+forgive you."
+
+"My God, Madeleine," cried he, with genuine emotion, "have I deserved
+this? I have had no thought but to befriend you, I have opened your
+eyes to your own danger----"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir," she broke in, with the same repressed anger.
+"Cease vilifying the man I love. All your aspersions, your wordy
+accusations will not shake my faith in him. _Mon Dieu_," she cried,
+with an unsteady attempt at laughter, looking under her lashes and
+tilting her little white round chin at Mr. Hobson, who, now seated
+upon a large stone, and with an obtrusive quid of tobacco bulging in
+an imperfectly shorn cheek, was mopping his forehead with a doubtful
+handkerchief. "_That_ is the person, I suppose, whose testimony I am
+to believe against my Jack!"
+
+"Your Jack was prompt enough in running away from him, such as he is,"
+retorted her cousin bitterly. He could not have struck, for his
+purpose, upon a weaker joint in her poor woman's armour of pride and
+trust.
+
+She caught her breath sharply, as if indeed she had received a blow.
+"Well, say your say," she exclaimed, coming to a standstill and facing
+him; "I will hear all that you and your--your friend have to say,
+lest," with a magnificent toss of her head, "you fancy I am afraid, or
+that I believe one word of it all. I know that Jack--that Captain
+Smith, as he is called--is engaged upon a secret and important
+mission; but it is one, Rupert, which all English gentlemen should
+wish to help, not impede."
+
+"Do you know what the mission is--do you know to whom? And if, my fair
+cousin, it is such that all English gentlemen would help, why then
+this secrecy?"
+
+She bit her lip; but it trembled. "What is it you accuse him of?" she
+asked, with a stamp of her foot.
+
+"Listen to me," said Rupert gently, "it is the kinder thing that you
+should know the truth, and believe me, every word I say I can
+substantiate. This Captain Jack Smith, whatever his real name may be,
+was picked up when a mere boy by an old Liverpool merchant, starving
+in the streets of that town. This merchant, by name Cochrane, an
+absurd person who gave himself out to be a relative of Cochrane of
+Shaws, adopted the boy and started him upon a slaver, that is a ship
+which does trade in negro slaves, my dear--a pretty trade. He next
+entered a privateer's ship as lieutenant. You know what these
+are--ocean freebooters, tolerated by government for the sake of the
+harm they wreck upon the ships of whatever nation we may happen to be
+at war with--a sort of pirate ship--hardly a much more reputable
+business than the slaver's; but Captain Smith made himself a name in
+it. Now that the war is over, he has taken to a lower traffic
+still--that of smuggling."
+
+"But _what_ is smuggling?" cried the girl, tears brimming up at last
+into her pretty eyes, and all her heat of valiance suddenly gone.
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"What is smuggling? Bless your innocence! I beg your pardon, my
+dear--miss I should say--but if you'll allow _me_ I think I'm the man
+to explain that 'ere to you." The husky mellifluous tones of the
+preventive-service man, who had crept up unnoticed to listen to the
+conversation, here murmured insinuatingly in her ear.
+
+Rupert hesitated; then reading shrinking aversion upon Madeleine's
+face, shrewdly conjectured that the exposition of her lover's doings
+might come with more force from Mr. Hobson's lips than from his own,
+and allowed the latter to proceed unmolested.
+
+"Smuggling, my pretty," wheezed the genial representative of the
+custom laws, "again asking pardon, but it slipped out, smuggling is,
+so to say, a kind of stealing, a kind of cheating and that of a most
+rank and heinous kind. For, mind you, it ain't stealing from a common
+man, nor from the likes of you and me, nor from a nobleman either:
+it's cheating and stealing from his most gracious Majesty himself. For
+see you, how 'tis, his Majesty he says, 'Every keg of brandy,' says
+he, 'and every yard of lace and every pipe o' tobacco as is brought
+into this here country shall be paid for, so much on, to me, and
+that's called a tax, miss, and for that there are the custom houses
+and custom officers--which is me--to see his Majesty paid right and
+proper his lawful dues. But what does your smuggler do, miss--your
+rollicking, dare-devil chap of a smuggler? Why he lands his lace and
+his brandy and his 'baccy unbeknownst and sells 'em on the sly--and
+pockets the profit! D'ye see?--and so he cheats his Majesty, which is
+a very grievous breaking of the law; so much so that he might as well
+murder at once--Kind o' treason, you may say--and that's what makes
+'em such desperate chaps. They knows if they're caught at it, with
+arms about them, and two or three together--it's--clank."
+
+Mr. Hobson grasped his own bull neck with an unpleasantly significant
+gesture and winked knowingly at the girl, who turned white as death
+and remained gazing at him with a sort of horrified fascination which
+he presently noted with an indulgent smile.
+
+"Don't take on now, my lass--no offence, miss--but I can't bear to see
+a fine young 'oman like you upset-like--I'm a damned, hem, hem, a real
+soft hearted fellow. Your sweetheart's heels have saved his gullet
+this time--and though he did crack poor Nat upon the skull (as I can
+testify for I as good as saw him do it--which makes it a hanging
+matter twice over I won't deny), yet there's a good few such as him
+escapes the law and settles down arter, quite respectable-like. A bit
+o' smuggling now is a thing many a pretty fellow has taken to in his
+day, and has made a pretty penny out of too, and is none the worse
+looked to arter, as I said. Aye, and there's many a gentleman and a
+magistrate to boot as drinks his glass of smuggled brandy and smokes
+his smuggled baccy and finds them none the worse, oh dear no! Human
+nature it is and human nature is a queer thing. Even the ladies, miss,
+are well-known to be soft upon the smuggled lace: it's twice as cheap
+you see as t'other, and they can get double as handsome for the money.
+Begging your pardon--if I may make so bold--" stretching out a great,
+coarse, tobacco-stained finger and thumb to close them appreciatively
+upon the hanging lace of Madeleine's neck handkerchief, "may be your
+spark brought you that there, miss, now? He, he, he--as pretty a bit
+of French point it is as has ever been my fate to lay hands on--Never
+fear," as the girl drew back with a gesture of loathing from the
+contact. "I ain't agoing to seize it off you or take you up,
+he--he--he--eh, Mr. Landale? I'm a man o' my duty, I hope, but our
+orders don't run as far as that."
+
+"Rupert!" cried Madeleine, piteously turning a dark gaze of anguish at
+him--it seemed as if she were going to faint.
+
+He hastened up to her, shouldering the clumsy form of Mr. Augustus
+Hobson unceremoniously out of the way: the fellow had done his work
+for the time being, and this last piece of it so efficaciously indeed
+that his present employer felt, if not remorse, at least a certain
+pity stir within him at the stricken hopelessness of the girl's
+aspect. He passed his arm round her waist as she shivered and swayed.
+"Lean on me," he said, his fine eyes troubled with an unwonted
+softness and anxiety.
+
+"Rupert," she whispered, clutching at his sleeve, eagerly fixing him
+with a look eloquent of unconscious pleading, "all these things
+this--this man talks of are things which are brought into England--are
+they not? I know that--_he_ was bringing nothing into the country,
+but he was going to another country upon some important trust, the
+nature of which he had promised not to reveal. Therefore he cannot be
+cheating the King, if that is smuggling--Oh Rupert, is there not some
+grievous mistake?"
+
+"My poor child," said Rupert, holding her close and tenderly, and
+speaking with a gentle gravity in which there was this time less
+hypocrisy, "there is one thing which is smuggled out of England, and
+it is as dishonest and illegal work as the other, the most daring and
+dangerous smuggling of all in fact; one in which none but a desperate
+man would engage--that of gold."
+
+"Yes, gold," exclaimed the girl sharply, withdrawing herself from her
+cousin's arms, while a ray of intelligence and hope lit up her face.
+"Gold for the French King's service."
+
+Rupert betrayed no emotion; he drew from the inner pocket of his coat
+a crushed news-sheet.
+
+"Deceived there, as well as everywhere else, poor little cousin," he
+said. "And did the scoundrel say so? Nay, he is a damnable scoundrel
+who could betray your trustfulness to your own sweet face. Gold
+indeed--but not for the King--gold for the usurper, for the tyrant who
+was supplied already, no doubt, by the same or similar traitor hands
+with enough to enable him to escape from the island where he was so
+justly imprisoned. See here, Madeleine, Bonaparte is actually landed
+in France: it has all been managed with the most devilish ingenuity
+and takes the whole world by surprise. And your lover, doubtless, is
+engaged upon bringing him fresh supplies to enable him to begin again
+and rack humanity with hideous wars. Oh, he never told you of the
+Corsican's escape, yet this news is three days old. See you, my dear,
+this explains the whole mystery, the necessity for absolute secrecy;
+all England is friendly to the French monarch; no need to smuggle gold
+for his aid--but the other...! It is treason, the blackest treason on
+every side of it, treason to his King, to his country, to _your_ King,
+to you. And he would have cozened you with tales of his loyalty to the
+rightful cause!"
+
+"Give me the paper," said Madeleine. A tide of blood had swept into
+her face; she was no longer white and shaken, but erect and beautiful
+in strong indignation. Rupert examined her, as if a little doubtful
+how to take the sudden change; but he handed her the printed sheet in
+silence. She read with lips and nostrils expanded by her quick
+breathing; then crumpled up the sheet and cast it at his feet. And
+after a pause, with her princess air of dignity, "I thank you, cousin
+Rupert," she said; then, passing him with stately steps, moved towards
+the house.
+
+He pressed forward to keep up with her; and upon the other side,
+smiling, irrepressible, jocose, Mr. Hobson did the same.
+
+"You are not fit to go alone," urged the former, while the latter
+engagingly protruding an elbow, announced that he'd be proud to give
+her an arm as far as the Hall.
+
+She drew away from this well-meaning squire of dames with such
+shuddering distaste, and looked once more so white and worn and
+sickened after her sudden blaze of passion, that Mr. Landale, seeing
+that the only kindness was to let her have her will, arrested his
+companion roughly enough, and allowed her to proceed as she wished.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so, with bent head, Madeleine hurried forth. And the same glorious
+sun smiled down upon her in her anguish that had greeted her when she
+hastened an hour before glowing and light-hearted--if, indeed, a heart
+so full of love could be termed light--to meet her lover; the same
+brambles caught her dress, the same bird trilled his song. But
+Madeleine thought neither of ray nor leaf, nor yet of mating
+songsters: all the spring world, as she went, was to her strewn with
+the wreck of her broken hopes, and encompassed by the darkness of her
+lonely future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Landale and the preventive service man stood some time watching
+her retreating figure through the wood, and then walked slowly on for
+a while, in silent company.
+
+Presently the latter, who during the last part of the interview, had
+begun to feel a little ruffled by the magistrate's persistently
+overbearing manner, inquired with something of dudgeon in his voice:
+"Begging your pardon, sir, what was that I heard the young lady call
+out just now? 'Gold!' she cries. Is it guineas that nipping young man
+is a taking over seas, if I may make so bold? Now you see, sir, we
+haven't had no orders about no gold on this station--that sort of
+thing is mostly done down south. But what I wants to know is: Why, if
+you knew all about the fellow's little games, you sent us to spy on
+him? Ah, poor Nat would want a word or two with you on that score, I
+fancy! Now it's as plain as Salisbury...."
+
+"But I know nothing certain," impatiently interrupted Mr. Landale. "I
+know no more than you do yourself. Only not being a perfect idiot, I
+can put two and two together. What in the name of goodness can a man
+smuggle _out_ of England but gold? But I wanted the proofs. And your
+business, it was agreed with the Chief Officer, was to follow my
+instructions."
+
+"And so we did," grumbled Mr. Hobson; "and a pretty business it's
+turned out! Nat's to pocket his bludgeoning, I suppose, and I am to
+bear the blame and lose my share. A cargo of guineas, by God! I might
+have nosed it, down south, but here.... Blast it! But since you was so
+clever over it, sir, why in blazes--if I may speak so to a gentleman
+and a magistrate," pursued the man with a rueful explosion of disgust,
+"didn't you give _me_ the hint? Why, guineas is contraband of
+war--it's treason, sir--and guineas is a cargo that's _fought_ for,
+sir! I shouldn't have moved with two men in a boat patrol, d'ye think?
+I should have had the riding officers, and the water-guard, and a
+revenue cruiser in the offing, and all tight and regular. But you
+_would_ have all the credit, and where are you? and _where's_ my
+share? and where is Nat?--Bah!"
+
+"You are forgetting yourself, officer," said Mr. Landale, looking
+severely into the eyes of the disappointed preventive man, whose
+rising ebullition became on the instant reduced.
+
+"So I am, sir, so I am--and beg your pardon. But you must admit, it's
+almost enough to make ... but never mind, sir, the trick is done.
+Whatever it may be that that there schooner carries in her bottom, she
+is free now to take it, barring accident, wherever she pleases. I'll
+trouble you to look this way, sir."
+
+They had emerged from the wooded part of the park, and the rising
+ground on which they stood commanded a wide sea-view, west of the
+great bay.
+
+"There she is again, sir," said Mr. Hobson, waving his broad paw, like a
+showman displaying his goods, with a sort of enraged self-satisfaction.
+"There is the schooner, ready to hoist sail as soon as he comes
+alongside. And that there black point which you may see, if your eyes
+are good enough, is a six-oared galley with as ship-shaped a crew--if
+it's the same as I saw making off this morning--as ever pulled. Your
+Captain Smith, you may take your oath, is at the tiller, and making
+fun of us two to the lads. In five minutes he will be on board, and
+then the revenue cutter from the station may give chase if she
+likes!... And there she is, due to the time--about a mile astern.
+But bless you, that's all my eye, you may take your oath! They know
+well enough that in an open sea they can't run down a Salcombe
+schooner. But to earn their pay they will hang on till they lose
+her, and then sail home, all cosy.--I'm thinking," he added slily,
+with a side glance at the magistrate: "we won't hang him _this_ time."
+
+Mr. Landale made no answer; during the last few minutes his
+reflections had enabled him to take a new view of the situation. After
+all the future fate of Captain Jack was of little moment. He had been
+successfully exposed before Madeleine, whose love for the young man
+was, as had just been sufficiently proved, chiefly composed of those
+youthful illusions which dispelled once, never can return.
+
+Rupert fell gradually into a reverie in which he found curious
+satisfaction. His work had not been unsuccessful, whatever Mr.
+Hobson's opinion might be. But, as matters stood between Madeleine and
+her lover, the girl's eyes had been opened in time, and that without
+scandal.... And even the escape of Captain Jack was, upon reflection,
+the best thing that could have happened.
+
+And so it was with a return to his usual polite bearing, that he
+listened to the officer's relapse into expostulation.
+
+"Now if you had only given me the hint first of all," the man was
+grumblingly saying, "and then let me act--for who would have suspected
+a boat, yacht-rigged like that?--A friend of Sir Adrian's, too! If
+you'd only left it to me! Why that six-oared galley alone is agin the
+law unless you can prove good reason for it ... as for the vessel
+herself...."
+
+"Yes, my dear Mr. Hobson," interrupted Mr. Landale, smiling
+propitiously. "I have no doubt you would have secured him. I have made
+a mess of it. But now you understand, least said, soonest mended, both
+for me and (between ourselves, Mr. Hobson) for the young lady."
+
+The man, in surprise at this sudden alteration of manner, stopped
+short and gaped; and presently a broad smile, combined with a knowing
+wink, appeared on his face. He received the guineas that Mr. Landale
+dropped in his palm with an air of great candour, and, without further
+parley, acted on the kind advice to repair to the Priory and talk with
+one Mrs. Puckett the housekeeper, on the subject of corporeal
+refreshment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," said Molly, bursting in upon her sister, who sat by her
+writing-table, pen in hand, and did not even raise her head at the
+unceremonious entrance. "This is evidently the day for mysterious
+disappearances. First Rupert and Sophia; then my lord and master who
+is fetched hurriedly to his island (that isle of misfortune!) God
+knows for what--though _I_ mean to know presently; then you,
+Mademoiselle, and Rupert again. It is, faith, quite a comedy. But the
+result has been that I have had my meals alone, which is not so gay.
+Sophia is in bed, it turns out; Rupert out a-riding, on important
+business, of course! all he does is desperately important. And there
+you are--alone in your room, moping. God, child, how pale you are!
+What ails you then?"
+
+"Molly," cried Madeleine, ignoring Lady Landale's question and
+feverishly folding the written sheet which lay under her hand, "if you
+love me, if ever you loved me, will you have this letter conveyed by a
+safe messenger to Scarthey, and given to René--to none but René, at
+once? Oh, Molly, it will be a service to me, you little guess of what
+moment!"
+
+"_Voyez un peu!_" said Lady Landale coolly. "What trust in Molly, all
+at once! Aha, I thought it would come. If I love you? Hum, I'm not so
+sure about that. If ever I loved you?--a droll sort of plea, in truth,
+considering how you have requited my love!"
+
+Madeleine turned a dazed look upon her sister, who stood surveying
+her, glowing like a jewel of dazzling radiance, from her setting of
+black mantle and black plumed hat. "So you will not!" she answered
+hopelessly, and let her forehead fall upon her hand without further
+protest.
+
+"But I did not say I would not--as it happens I am going to the island
+myself. How you stare--oh you remember now do you? Who told you I
+wonder?--of course, such a couple as we are, Adrian and I, could not
+be divided from each other for over half a day, could we? By the way,
+I was to convey a gracious invitation to you too. Will you come with
+me?--No?--strange girl. So even give me the letter, I will take it
+to--no, not to René, 'tis addressed to Captain Smith, I see. Dear
+me--you don't mean to say, Madeleine, that you are corresponding with
+that person; that he is near us? What would Tanty say?"
+
+"Oh, Molly, cease your scoffs," implored poor Madeleine, wearily. "You
+are angry with me, well, now rejoice, for I am punished--well
+punished. Oh, I would tell you all but I cannot! my heart is too sick.
+See, you may read the letter, and then you will understand--but for
+pity's sake go--Do not fail to go; he will be there on the island at
+dark--he expects _me_--Oh, Molly! I cannot explain--indeed I cannot,
+and there is no time, it will soon be dusk; but there is terrible
+danger in his being there at all."
+
+Molly took the letter, turned it over with scornful fingers and then
+popped it in her pocket. "If he expects you," she asked, fixing cold,
+curious eyes on her sister's distress, "and he is in danger, why
+_don't_ you go?"
+
+A flush rose painfully to Madeleine's face, a sob to her throat.
+"Don't ask me," she murmured, turning away to hide her humiliation. "I
+have been deceived, he is not what I thought."
+
+Lady Landale gazed at the shrinking figure for a little while in
+silence. Then remarking contemptuously: "Well you are a poor
+creature," turned upon her heel to leave her. As she passed the little
+altar, she paused to whisk a bunch of violets out of a vase and dry
+the stems upon her sister's quilt.
+
+"Molly," cried Madeleine, in a frenzy, "give me back my letter, or
+go."
+
+"I go, I go," said Lady Landale with a mocking laugh. "How sweet your
+violets smell!--There, do not agitate yourself: I'm going to meet your
+lover, my dear. I vow I am curious to see the famous man, at last."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE NIGHT
+
+    So the blood burned within her,
+    And thus it cried to her:
+    And there, beside the maize field
+    The other one was waiting--
+      He, the mysterious one.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+The mantle of night had already fallen upon the land when Lady
+Landale, closely wrapped in her warmest furs, with face well ensconced
+under her close bonnet, and arms buried to the elbow in her muff,
+sallied from her room on the announcement that the carriage was
+waiting. As, with her leisurely daintiness, she tripped it down the
+stairs, she crossed Mr. Landale, and paused a moment, ready for the
+skirmish, as she noticed the cynical curiosity with which he examined
+her.
+
+"Whither, my fair sister," said he, ranging himself with his best
+courtesy against the bannisters, "so late in the day?"
+
+"To my lord and master's side, of course," said Molly.
+
+"Why--is not Adrian coming back to-night?"
+
+"Apparently not, since he has graciously permitted me to join him upon
+his rock. I trust you will not find it too unhappy in our absence:
+that would be the crowning misfortune of a day when everything seems
+to have gone wrong. Sophia invisible with her vapours; Madeleine with
+the megrim; and you in and out of the house as excited and secret as
+the cat when she has licked all the cream. I suppose I shall end by
+knowing what it is all about. Meanwhile I think I shall enjoy the
+tranquillity of the island--although I have actually to tear myself
+away from the prospect of a tête-à-tête evening with you."
+
+But as Rupert's serenity was not to be moved, her ladyship hereupon
+allowed herself to be escorted to the carriage without further parley.
+
+As she drove away through the dark night, first down the level,
+well-metalled avenue, then along the uneven country road, and finally
+through the sand of the beach in which hoofs and tyres sank
+noiselessly, inches deep, Molly gave herself up, with almost childish
+zest to the leaven of imagination.... Here, in this dark carriage, was
+reclining, not Lady Landale (whose fate deed had already been signed,
+sealed and delivered to bring her nothing but disappointment), but her
+happier sister, still confronted with the fascinating unknown,
+hurrying under cover of night, within sound of the sea, to that
+enthralling lure, a lover--a real lover, ardent, daring, _young_,
+ready to risk all, waiting to spread the wings of his boat, and carry
+her to the undiscovered country.
+
+Glowing were these fleeting images of the "might have been," angry the
+sudden relapses into the prose of reality.
+
+No, Madeleine, the coward, who thought she had loved her lover, was
+now in her room, weak and weeping, whilst he, no doubt, paced the deck
+in mad impatience (as a lover should), now tortured by the throes of
+anxiety, now hugging himself with the thought of his coming bliss ...
+that bliss that never was to be his. And in the carriage there was
+only Molly, the strong-hearted but the fettered by tie and vow, the
+slave for ever of a first girlish fancy but too successfully
+compassed; only Lady Landale rejoining her husband in his melancholy
+solitude; Lady Landale who never--never! awful word! would know the
+joys which yonder poor fool had had within her grasp and yet had not
+clutched at.
+
+Molly had read, as permitted, her sister's letter, and to some
+purpose; and scorn of the girl who from some paltry quibble could
+abandon in danger the man she professed to love, filled her soul to
+the exclusion of any sisterly or ever womanly pity.
+
+At the end of half an hour the carriage was stopped by the black
+shadow of a man, who seemed to spring up from the earth, and who,
+after a few rapid words interchanged with the coachman, extinguished
+both the lights, and then opened the door.
+
+Leaning on the offered elbow Molly jumped down upon the yielding
+sand.
+
+"René?" she asked; for the darkness even on the open beach was too
+thick to allow of recognition.
+
+"René, your ladyship--or Mademoiselle is it?" answered the man in his
+unmistakable accent. "I must ask; for, by the voice no one can tell,
+as your ladyship, or Mademoiselle knows--and the sky is black like a
+chimney."
+
+"Lady Landale, René," and as he paused, she added, "My sister would
+not come."
+
+"Ah, _mon Dieu_! She would not come," repeated the man in tones of
+dismay; and the black shadow was struck into a moment of stillness.
+Then with an audible sigh Mr. Potter roused himself, and saying with
+melancholy resignation, "The boat is there, I shall be of return in a
+minute, My Lady," took the traveller's bag on his shoulder and
+disappeared.
+
+The carriage began to crunch its way back in the darkness and Molly
+was left alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In front of her was a faint white line, where the rollers spread their
+foam with mournful restless fugue of long drawn roar and hissing sigh.
+
+In the distance, now and then glancing on the crest of the dancing
+billows, shone the steady light of Scarthey. The rising wind whistled
+in the prickly star-grass and sea-holly. Beyond these, not a sight,
+not a sound--the earth was all mystery.
+
+Molly looked at the light--marking the calm spot where her husband
+waited for her; its very calm, its familiar placidity, monotony,
+enraged her; she hearkened to the splashing, living waves, to the
+swift flying gusts of the storm wind, and her soul yearned to their
+life, and their mysteriousness.
+
+What she longed for, she herself could not tell. No words can
+encompass the desire of pent-up young vitality for the unknown, for
+the ideal, for the impossible. But one thing was overpoweringly real:
+that was the dread of leaving just then the wide, the open world whose
+darkness was filled to her with living scenes of freedom and space,
+and blood-stirring emotions; of re-entering the silent room under the
+light; of consorting with the shadowy personality, her husband; of
+feeling the web of his melancholy, his dreaminess, imprison as it were
+the wings of her imagination and the thoughtful kindness of his gaze,
+paralyse the course of her hot blood through her veins.
+
+And yet, thither she was going, must be going! Ah Madeleine, fool--you
+may well weep, yonder on your pillow, for the happiness that was yours
+and that you have dropped from your feeble hands!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a few minutes the black shadow re-appeared close to her.
+
+"If My Lady will lean on my shoulder, I shall lead her to the boat."
+And after a few steps, the voice out of the darkness proceeded in
+explanation: "I have not taken a lantern, I have put out those of the
+carriage, for I must tell My Lady, that since what arrived this
+morning, there may be _gabelous_--they call them the preventive
+here--in every corner, and the light might bring them, as it does the
+night papilions, and ... as I thought Mademoiselle was to accompany
+you--they might have frightened her. These people want to know so
+much!"
+
+"I know nothing of what has happened this morning, that you speak of
+as if the whole world must know," retorted Lady Landale coolly. "You
+are all hatching plots and sitting on secrets, but nobody confides in
+me. It seems then, that you expected Mademoiselle, my sister, here for
+some purpose and that you regret she did not come; may I ask for an
+explanation?"
+
+A few moments elapsed before the man replied, and then it was with
+embarrassment and diffidence: "For sure, I am sorry, My Lady ... there
+have been misfortunes on the island this morning--nothing though to
+concern her ladyship--and, as for Mademoiselle, mother Margery would
+have liked to see her, no doubt ... and Maggie the wife also--and--and
+no doubt also Mademoiselle would have liked to come.... What do I
+know?"
+
+"Oh, of course!" said Molly with her little note of mocking laughter.
+
+Then again they walked a while in silence. As René lifted his mistress
+in his arms to carry her over the licking hissing foam, she resumed:
+"It is well, René, you are discreet, but I am not such a fool as
+people seem to think. As for her, you were right in thinking that she
+might easily be frightened. She was afraid even to come out!"
+
+René shoved his boat off, and falling to his sculls, suddenly relapsed
+into the old vernacular: "_Ah Madame_," he sighed, "_c'est bien
+triste--un gentilhomme si beau--si brave!_"
+
+During the crossing no further words passed between them.
+
+"So brave--so handsome?" The echo of the words came back to the woman
+in every lap of the water on the sides of the boat, in every strain of
+the oars.
+
+The keel ground against the beach, and René leaped out to drag the
+boat free of the surf. As he did so, two blacker outlines segregated
+themselves from the darkness and a rough voice called out, subdued but
+distinct: "Savenaye, St. Malo!"
+
+"Savenaye, St. Malo!" repeated René, and helped Lady Landale to
+alight. Then one of the figures darted forward and whispered a rapid
+sentence in the Frenchman's ear. René uttered an exclamation, but his
+mistress intervened with scant patience:
+
+"My good René," said she, "take the bag into the peel, and come back
+for me. I have a message for these gentlemen."
+
+René hesitated. As he did so a rustle of anger shook the lady in her
+silks and furs. "Do you hear me?" she repeated, and he could guess how
+her little foot stamped the yielding sand.
+
+"_Oui, Madame_," said he, hesitating no longer. Immediately the other
+two drew near. Molly could just see that they stood in all deference,
+cap in hand.
+
+"Madam," began one of these in hurried words, "there is not a moment
+to be lost: the captain had to remain on board."
+
+"What!" interrupted Lady Landale with much asperity, "not come in
+person!" She had been straining her eyes to make out something of her
+interlocutor's form, unable to reconcile her mind's picture with the
+coarse voice that addressed her--And now all her high expectations
+fell from her in an angry rush. "Have I come all this way to be met by
+a messenger! Who are you?"
+
+"Madam," entreated the husky voice, "I am the mate of the _Peregrine_.
+The captain has directed me to beg and pray you not to be afraid, but
+to have good courage and confidence in us--the schooner is there; in
+five minutes you can be safe on board. You see, madam," continued the
+man with an earnestness that spoke well of his devotion, "the captain
+found he couldn't, he dared not leave the ship--he is the only one who
+knows the bearings of these waters here--any one of us might run her
+on the bank, and where would we be then, madam, and you, if we were
+found in daylight still in these parts?--'For God's sake, Curwen,'
+says he, 'implore the lady not to be afraid and tell her to trust, as
+she has promised,' so he says. And for God's sake, say I, madam, trust
+us. In five minutes you will be with him? Say the word, madam, am I to
+make the signal? There he is, eating his heart out. There are all the
+lads ready waiting for your foot on the ladder, to hoist sail. No time
+to lose, we are already behind. Shall I signal?"
+
+Molly's heart beat violently; under the sudden impulse, the
+fascination of the black chasm, of the peril, the adventure, the
+unfathomed, took possession of her, and whirled her on.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+On the very utterance of the word the man, who had not yet spoken,
+uncovered a lantern, held it aloft, as rapidly replaced it under his
+coat, and moved away.
+
+Almost immediately, against the black pall, behind the dim line of
+grey that marked the shore, suddenly sprang up three bright points in
+the form of a triangle.
+
+It was as if all the darkness around had been filled with life; as if
+the first fulfilment of those promises with which it had been drawing
+this woman's soul was now held out to her to lure her further still.
+
+"See, madam, how they watch!--By your leave."
+
+And with no further warning, Molly felt herself seized with
+uncompromising, but deferential, energy, by a pair of powerful arms;
+lifted like a child, and carried away at a bear-like trot. By the
+splashing she judged it was through the first line of breakers. Then
+she was handed into another irresistible grasp. The boat lurched as
+the mate jumped in. Then:
+
+"Now give way, lads," he said, "and let her have it. Those lights must
+not be burning longer than we can help. Tain't wholesome for any of
+us."
+
+And under the pulse of four willing pairs of arms the skiff, like a
+thing of life, clove the black waters and rose to the billows.
+
+"You see, madam," explained the mate, "we could not do without the
+lights, to show us where she lay, and give us a straight course. We
+are all right so long as we keep that top 'un in the middle--but he
+won't be sorry, I reckon, when he can drop them overboard. They can't
+be seen from the offing yet, but it's astounding how far a light will
+reach on a night like this. Cheerily, lads, let her have it!"
+
+But Molly heeded him not. She had abandoned herself to the thrilling
+delight of the excitement. The die was cast--not by her own hand, no
+one should be able to hold her responsible--she had been kidnapped.
+Come what might she must now see the adventure out.
+
+The lights grew larger; presently a black mass, surmounted by a kind
+of greyish cloud, loomed through the pitch of the night; and next it
+was evident that the beacon was hanging over the side of a ship,
+illuminating its jagged leaping water line.
+
+A voice, not too loud, yet, even through the distance, ringing clear
+in its earnestness sounded from above. "Boat ahoy! what boat is that?"
+
+And promptly the helmsman by Molly's side returned: "Savenaye, St.
+Malo."
+
+On the instant the lights went out. There was a creaking of block and
+cordage, and new ghostly clouds rose over the ship--sails loosened to
+the wind. As the skiff rowers came alongside, boat-hooks leaped into
+action and gripped the vessel; an arm, strong as steel, was held out
+for the passenger as she fearlessly put her foot on the ladder;
+another, a moment later, with masterful tenderness bent round her
+waist, and she was fairly lifted on board the _Peregrine_. But before
+her foot touched the deck, she felt upon her lips, laid like a burning
+seal, a passionate kiss; and her soul leaped up to it, as if called
+into sudden life from slumber, like the princess of fairy lore. She
+heard Madeleine's mysterious lover whisper in her ear: "At last! Oh,
+what I have suffered, thinking you would not come!"
+
+From the warm shelter of her loosened cloak the violets in her bosom
+sent forth a wave of sweetness.
+
+For a moment these two were in all creation alone to each other,
+while in a circle the _Peregrine's_ crew stood apart in respectful
+silence: a broad grin of sympathy upon the mouth of every mother's
+son.
+
+Released at last, Lady Landale took a trembling step on the deck. Into
+what strange world had she come this night?
+
+The schooner, like a mettled steed whose head is suddenly set free,
+was already in motion, and with gentle forward swaying leaps rising to
+the wave and gathering speed under her swelling sails.
+
+Captain Jack had seized Molly's hand, and the strong clasp trembled
+round the little fingers; he said no more to her; but, in tones
+vibrating with emotion which all the men, now silently seeking their
+posts in the darkness, could hear:
+
+"My lads," he cried, "the lady is safe with us after all. Who shall
+say that your skipper is not still Lucky Smith? Thank you, my good
+fellows! Now we have yet to bring her safe the other side.
+Meanwhile--no cheering, lads, you know why--there is a hundred guineas
+more among you the hour we make St. Malo. Stand to, every man. Up with
+those topsails!"
+
+Scarcely had the last words been spoken when, from the offing, on the
+wings of the wind, came a long-drawn hail, faint through the distance,
+but yet fatally distinct: "Ahoy, what schooner is that?"
+
+Molly, who had not withdrawn her hand, felt a shock pass over Captain
+Jack's frame. He turned abruptly, and she could see him lean and
+strain in the direction of the voice.
+
+The call, after an interval, was repeated. But the outlook was
+impenetrable, and it was weird indeed to feel that they were seen yet
+could not see.
+
+Molly, standing close by his side, knew in every fibre of her own body
+that this man, to whom she seemed in some inexplicable fashion already
+linked, was strongly moved. Nevertheless she could hardly guess the
+extremity of the passion that shook him. It was the frenzy of the
+rider who feels his horse about to fail him within a span of the
+winning post; of the leader whose men waver at the actual point of
+victory. But the weakness of dismay was only momentary. Calm and
+clearness of mind returned with the sense of emergency. He raised his
+night-glass, with a steady hand this time, and scanned the depth of
+blackness in front of him: out of it after a moment, there seemed to
+shape itself the dim outline of a sail, and he knew that he had waited
+too long and had fallen in again with the preventive cutter. Then
+glancing aloft, he understood how it was that the _Peregrine_ had been
+recognised.
+
+The overcast sky had partly cleared to windward during the last
+minutes; a few stars glinted where hitherto nothing but the most
+impenetrable pall had hung. In the east, the rays of a yet invisible
+moon, edging with faint silver the banks of clouds just above the
+horizon, had made for the schooner a tell-tale background indeed.
+
+On board no sound was heard now save the struggle of rope and canvas,
+the creaking of timber and the swift plashing rush of water against
+her rounded sides as she sped her course.
+
+"Madeleine," he said, forcibly controlling his voice, and bringing, as
+he spoke, his face close to Molly's to peer anxiously at its
+indistinct white oval, "we are not free yet; but in a short time, with
+God's help, we shall have left those intermeddling fools yonder who
+would bar our way, miles out of the running. But I cannot remain with
+you a moment longer; I must take the helm myself. Oh, forgive me for
+having brought you to this! And, should you hear firing, for Heaven's
+sake do not lose courage. See now, I will bring you to your cabin;
+there you will find warmth and shelter. And in a little while, a very
+little while, I will return to you to tell you all is well. Come, my
+dearest love."
+
+Gently he would have drawn her towards the little deck-cabin, guiding
+her steps, as yet untutored to the motion of the ship, when out of the
+black chasm, upon the weather bow of the _Peregrine_, leaped forth a
+yellow tongue of light fringed with red and encircled by a ruddy
+cloud; and three seconds later the boom of a gun broke with a dull,
+ominous clangour above the wrangling of sea and wind. Molly
+straightened herself. "What is that?" she asked.
+
+"The warning gun," he answered, hurriedly, "to say that they mean to
+see who we are and that if we do not stop the next will be shotted.
+Time presses, Madeleine, go in--fear nothing! We shall soon be on
+their other side, out of sight in darkness again."
+
+"I shall stop with you. Let no thought of me hinder you. I am not
+afraid. I want to see."
+
+At these words the lover was struck with a surprise that melted into a
+proud and new joy. He had loved Madeleine for her woman's grace and
+her woman's heart; now, he told himself, he must worship her also for
+her brave soul. But this was no time for useless words. It was not
+more unsafe for her on deck than in the cabin, and at the thought of
+her beside him during the coming struggle the strength of a god rose
+within him. "Come," he answered, briefly, and moved with her to the
+helm which a sailor silently surrendered to him whilst she steadied
+herself by holding to the binnacle--the only place on board at that
+time where (from sheer necessity) any light had been allowed to
+remain. It was faint enough, but the reflection from the
+compass-board, as he bent to examine it, was sufficient to make just
+visible, with a dim fantastic glow, the strong beauty of his face, and
+put a flash into each wide dilated eye.
+
+And thus did Molly, for the first time, see Captain Jack.
+
+She sank down at the foot of the binnacle, her hands clasped round her
+knees, as if hugging the new rapture as closely to her as she could.
+And looking up at the alert figure before her which she now began to
+discern more clearly under the lightening sky; at the face which she
+divined, although she could only see the watchful gleam of the eyes as
+now and again they sought her down in the shadow at his feet, she felt
+herself kindle in answer to the glow of his glorious life-energy. They
+were going, side by side, this young hero of romance and she, to fight
+their way through some unknown peril!
+
+"Madeleine, my sweet bride, my brave love, they are about to fire
+again, and this time you will hear the shot burring; but be not
+afraid, it will strike ahead of us."
+
+Another flash sprang out of the night, much nearer this time, and
+louder, for it belched forth a shot which ploughed its way in the
+water across the schooner's bow.
+
+"I am not afraid," said Molly again; and she laughed a little fierce,
+nervous laugh.
+
+"They are between us and the open sea. Thus far the luck is on their
+side. Had you come but half an hour sooner, Madeleine, we should be
+running as free as any king's ship. Now they think, no doubt, they
+will drive me on to the sand; but," he tossed back his head with a
+superb gesture; "there is no power from heaven or hell that can keep
+me out of my course to-night."
+
+By this time the preventive cutter was faintly discernible two cables
+length on the larboard bow. There came another hail--a loud, husky
+bellow from over the water, "Schooner ahoy! Heave to, or we'll sink
+you!"
+
+"Madeleine," said Captain Jack; "come closer to me, lie down, behind
+me, quick--The next shot will be in my rigging. Heave to?--with my
+treasures, my bride on board and a ten knot breeze...!" And he looked
+down at Molly, laughing in his contempt. Then he shouted some order
+which brought the _Peregrine_ some points more off the wind, and she
+bounded forward with renewed zest. "Sink us! Why don't you fire now,
+you lubbers?" He glanced back over his shoulder to see the beacon of
+Scarthey straight over the stern. "You have got us in line with the
+light, and that's your last chance. In another minute I shall be past
+you. Ah, I can see you now, my fine fellows!--Courage, Madeleine."
+
+To Molly, of course, his words conveyed no meaning, except that the
+critical moment had come, that the ship which carried her flying upon
+the water like a living thing, eager, yet obedient in all its motions
+to the guiding will of the man beside her, was rushing to the fray.
+The thought fired her soul, and she sprang up to look over the side.
+
+"What," she exclaimed, for the little cutter on close quarters looked
+insignificant indeed by the side of the noble vessel that so
+scornfully bore down on her. "Is that all!"
+
+"They have a gun, and we have none," answered Captain Jack. "Down,
+Madeleine! down behind, in the name of God!"
+
+"Why should I crouch if you stand up?"
+
+The man's heart swelled within him; but as he looked with proud
+admiration at the cloaked and hooded figure by his side, the cutter's
+gun fired for the third time. With roar and hiss the shot came over
+the bow of the schooner, as she dipped into the trough, and raking the
+deck, crashed through her side on the quarter. Molly gave a shriek and
+staggered.
+
+A fearful malediction burst from Captain Jack's lips: he left the
+tiller and sprang to her.
+
+One of the hands, believing his skipper to have been struck, ran to
+the helm, and again put the vessel on her proper course which a few
+moments later was to make her shoot past the revenue cutter.
+
+"Wounded, Madeleine! Wounded through my fault! By the living God, they
+shall pay for this!"
+
+"Oh," groaned Molly, "something has cut me in the arm and shoulder."
+Then rapidly gathering composure, "But it's not much, I can move it."
+
+At one glance the sailor saw from the position of the shot hole in the
+vessel's side that the wound could only have been made by a splinter.
+But the possibility of exposing his beloved to such another risk was
+not to be borne--a murderous rush of blood flew to his brain.
+
+The cutter, perceiving the tactics of the swifter schooner, was now
+tacking about with the intention of bringing the gun to bear upon her
+once more as she attempted to slip by. But Captain Jack in his
+new-fanned fury had made up his mind to a desperate cast of the die.
+
+"Starboard, hard a starboard," he called out in a voice that his men
+had known well in old fighting days and which was heard as far as the
+cutter itself. "They shall not fire that gun again!"
+
+With a brief, "Starboard it is, sir," the man who had taken the helm
+brought the ship round, and the silent, active crew in a trice were
+ready to go about. Majestically the schooner changed her course, and
+as the meaning of the manoeuvre became fearfully apparent, shouts
+and oaths arose in confusion from the cutter.
+
+"What are you going to do?" eagerly asked Molly, enthralled by the
+superb motion of the vessel under her foot as it swept round and
+increased speed upon the new tack.
+
+He held her in his arms. His hand had sought her wounded shoulder and
+pressed the lacerated spot in his effort to staunch the precious blood
+that rose warm through the cloth, torturing his cold fingers.
+
+"I am going to clear those men from our way to freedom and to love! I
+am going to sink that boat: they shall pay with their lives for this!
+Come to the other side, Madeleine, and watch how my stout _Peregrine_
+sweeps our course--and then I may see how these scoundrels have
+mangled you, my love. But, nay, this is no sight for you. Hold on
+close to me, sweet, and hide your eyes while they go."
+
+He steadied himself firmly with one hand on the rigging.
+
+Now musket shots flashed on board the cutter in quick succession, and
+sundry balls whizzed over the poop, intended for the helmsman by their
+side. Captain Jack gnashed his teeth, as the menacing drone of one of
+them came perilously close to the beloved head by his cheek.
+
+"Look out, every man. We'll run her down!" he called. His voice was
+like the blast of bugles. Cheers broke out from every part of the
+ship, drowning the yells of execration and the shouts of fear from
+below. And now, with irresistible sway, the rushing _Peregrine_ heavy
+and powerful was closing and bearing down upon her frailer enemy.
+
+There was a spell of suspense when all was silence, save the rush and
+turmoil of the waters, and the flapping of the cutter's sails,
+helpless for the moment in the teeth of the breeze. Like a charging
+steed the schooner seemed to leap at her foe. Then came the shock.
+There was a brief check in her career, she rose by the head; the
+rigging strained and sighed, the masts swayed groaning, but stood.
+Over the bows, in the darkness was heard a long-drawn crash, was seen
+a white wall of foaming water rising silently to break the next moment
+with a great roar.
+
+The cutter, struck obliquely amidships, was thrown straightway on her
+beam ends: the _Peregrine_, with every sail spread and swollen, held
+her as the preying bird with outstretched wings holds its quarry, and
+pressed her down until she began to fill and settle. It was with
+wide-open eyes, with eager, throbbing heart that Molly watched it all.
+
+"Lights, my lads," cried Captain Jack, with a shout of exultation,
+when the anxious instant had passed. "Take in every man you can save
+but handspike is the word for the first who shows fight! Curwen, do
+you get her clear again."
+
+All around upon the deck, sprang rumour and turmoil, came shouts and
+sounds of scuffling and the rushing of feet; from the blank waters
+came piteous calls for help. But paying little heed to aught but
+Molly, Captain Jack seized a lighted lantern from the hands of a
+passing sailor and drew her aside.
+
+Fevered with pain and fascinated by the horror of fight and death's
+doings, yet instinctively remembering to pull her hood over her face,
+she allowed herself to be taken into the little deck cabin.
+
+He placed the lantern upon the table:
+
+"Rest here," he said quickly, once more striving to see her beneath
+the jealous shade. "I must find out if anything is amiss on board the
+ship and attend to these drowning men--even before you, my darling!
+But I shall be back instantly. You are not faint?"
+
+The light shone full on his features which Molly eagerly scanned from
+her safe recess. When she met his eyes, full of the triumph of love
+and hope, her soul broke into fierce revolt--again she felt upon her
+lips that kiss of young passionate love that had been the first her
+life had ever known ... and might be the last, for the disclosure was
+approaching apace.
+
+She was glad of the respite.
+
+"Go," she said with as much firmness as she could muster. "Let me not
+stand between you and your duty. I am strong."
+
+Strong indeed--Captain Jack might have wondered whence had come to
+this gentle Madeleine this lioness-strength of soul and body, had he
+had time to wonder, time for aught but his love thoughts and his fury,
+as he dashed back again panting for the moment when he could have her
+to himself.
+
+"Any damage, Curwen?"
+
+"Bowsprit broken, and larboard bulwark stove in, otherwise everything
+has stood."
+
+"Casualties?"
+
+"No, sir. We have three of the cutter's men on board already. They
+swarmed over the bows. One had his cutlass out and had the devil's
+impudence to claim the schooner, but a boat-hook soon brought him to
+reason. There they be, sir," pointing to a darker group huddled round
+the mast. "I have lowered the gig to see if we can pick up the others,
+damn them!"
+
+"As soon as they are all on board bring them aft, I will speak to
+them."
+
+When, with a master's eye, he had rapidly inspected his vessel from
+the hold to the rigging, without finding aught to cause anxiety for
+its safety, Captain Jack returned to the poop, and there found the
+party of prisoners arranged under the strong guard of his own crew.
+Molly stood, wrapped up in her cloak, at the door of the cabin,
+watching.
+
+One of the revenue men came forward and attempted to speak--but the
+captain impatiently cut him short.
+
+"I have no time to waste in talk, my man," he said commandingly. "How
+many were you on board the cutter?"
+
+"Nine," answered the man sullenly.
+
+"How many have we got here?"
+
+"Six, sir," interposed Curwen. "Those three," pointing to three
+disconsolate and dripping figures, "were all we could pick up."
+
+"Hark ye, fellows," said the captain. "You barred my road, I had to
+clear you away. You tried to sink me, I had to sink you. You have lost
+three of your ship-mates, you have yourselves to blame for it; your
+shot has drawn blood from one for whom I would have cut down forty
+times your number. I will send you back to shore. Away with you! No, I
+will hear nothing. Let them have the gig, Curwen, and four oars."
+
+"And now God speed the _Peregrine_," cried Jack Smith, as the revenue
+men pushed off in the direction of the light and the wind was again
+swelling every sail of his gallant ship. "We are well out of our
+scrape. Shape her course for St. Malo, Curwen. If this wind holds we
+should be there by the nineteenth in the morning, at latest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE FIGHT FOR THE OPEN
+
+    As o'er the grass, beneath the larches there
+    We gaily stepped, the high noon overhead,
+    Then Love was born--was born so strong and fair.
+    Knowest thou! Love is dead.
+
+    _Gipsy Song._
+
+
+At last he was free. He had wrested his bride and the treasure trusted
+to his honour from the snares so unexpectedly laid on his path;
+whatever troubles might remain stored against him in the dim distance
+of time, he would not reck them now. The present and the immediate
+future were full of splendour and triumph.
+
+All those golden schemes worked out under yonder light of
+Scarthey--God bless it--now receding in the gloom behind his swift
+running ship, whether in the long watches of the night, or in the
+recent fevered resolves of imminent danger, they had come to pass
+after all! And she, the light of his life, was with him. She had
+trusted her happiness, her honour, herself, to his love. The thought
+illumined his brain with glory as he rushed back to the silent muffled
+figure that still stood awaiting his coming.
+
+"At last!" he said, panting in the excess of his joy; "At last,
+Madeleine ... I can hardly believe it! But selfish brute that I am,
+you must be crushed with fatigue. My brave darling, you would make me
+forget your tender woman's frame, and you are wounded!"
+
+Supporting her--for the ship, reaching the open sea, had begun to roll
+more wildly--he led her back into the little room now lighted by the
+fitful rays of a swinging lamp. With head averted, she suffered
+herself to be seated on a kind of sofa couch.
+
+When he had closed the door, he seized her hand, on which ran streaks
+of half-dried blood, and covered it with kisses.
+
+"Ah, Madeleine! here in the sanctuary I had prepared for you, where I
+thought you would be so safe, so guarded, tell me that you forgive me
+for having brought this injury to you. Wounded, torn, bleeding.... I
+who would give all my blood, my life, if life were not so precious to
+me now that you have come into it, to save you from the slightest
+pain! At least here you are secure, here you can rest, but--but there
+is no one to wait on you, Madeleine." He fell on his knees beside her.
+"Madeleine, my wife, you must let me tend you." Then, as she shivered
+slightly, but did not turn to him, he went on in tones of the most
+restrained tenderness mingled with humblest pleading:
+
+"Had it not been for your accident, I had not ventured even to cross
+the threshold of this room. But your wound must be dressed; darling,
+darling, allow me, forgive me; the risk is too great."
+
+Rising to his feet again he gently pulled at her cloak. Molly spoke
+not a word, but untied it at the neck and let it fall away from her
+fair young body; and keeping her hooded face still rigidly averted,
+she surrendered her wounded arm.
+
+He muttered words of distress at the sight of the broad blood stains;
+stepped hurriedly to a little cupboard where such surgical stores as
+might be required on board were hoarded, and having selected scissors,
+lint, and bandages, came back and again knelt down by her side to cut
+off, with eager, compassionate hands, the torn and maculated sleeve.
+
+The wound was but a surface laceration, and a man would not have given
+a thought to it in the circumstances. But to see this soft, white
+woman's skin, bruised black in parts, torn with a horrid red gap in
+others; to see the beauty of this round arm thus brutally marred, thus
+twitching with pain--it was monstrous, hideously unnatural in the
+lover's eyes!
+
+With tenderness, but unflinchingly, he laved the mangled skin with
+cool, fresh water; pulled out, with far greater torture to himself
+than to her, some remaining splinters embedded in the flesh; covered
+the wound with lint, and finished the operation by a bandage as neat
+as his neat sailor's touch, coupled with some knowledge of surgery,
+gained in the experiences of his privateering days, could accomplish
+it. He spoke little: only a word of encouragement, of admiration for
+her fortitude now and then; and she spoke not at all during the
+ministration. She had raised her other hand to her eyes, with a
+gesture natural to one bracing herself to endurance, and had kept it
+there until, his task completed, her silence, the manner in which she
+hid her face from him awoke in him all that was best and loftiest in
+his generous heart.
+
+As he rose to his feet and stood before her, he too dared not speak
+for fear of bruising what he deemed an exquisite maidenliness, before
+which his manhood was abashed at itself. For some moments there was no
+sound in the cabin save that of the swift rushing waters behind the
+wooden walls and of the labour and life of the ship under full sail;
+then he saw the tumultuous rising of her bosom, and thought she was
+weeping.
+
+"Madeleine," he cried with passionate anxiety, "speak! Let me see your
+face--are you faint? Lie upon this couch. Let me get you wine--oh that
+these days were passed and I could call you wife and never leave you!
+Madeleine, my love, speak!"
+
+Molly rose to her feet, and with a gesture of anger threw off her hood
+and turned round upon him. And there in the light of the lamp, he
+glared like one distraught at the raven locks, the burning eyes of a
+strange woman.
+
+She was very pale.
+
+"No," said Molly, defiantly, when twice or thrice his laboured breath
+had marked the passing of the horrible moment, "I am not Madeleine."
+Then she tried to smile; but unconsciously she was frightened, and the
+smile died unformed as she pursued at random:
+
+"You know me--perhaps by hearsay--as I know you, Captain Smith."
+
+But he, shivering under the coldness of his disappointment, answered
+in a kind of weary whisper:
+
+"Who are you--you who speak with her voice, who stand at her height
+and move and walk as she does? I have seen you surely--Ah, I know....
+Madam, what a cruel mockery! And she, where is she?"
+
+Still staring at her with widely dilated eyes, he seized his forehead
+between his hands. The gesture was one of utter despair. Before this
+weakness Molly promptly resumed the superiority of self-possession.
+
+"Yes," she said, and this time the smile came back to her face, "I am
+Lady Landale, and my sister Madeleine--I grieve to have to say so--has
+not had that courage for which you gave her credit to-night."
+
+Little was required at a moment like this to transmute such thoughts
+as seethed in the man's head to a burst of fury. Fury is action, and
+action a relief to the strained heart. There was a half-concealed,
+unintended mockery in her tones which brought a sudden fire of anger
+to his eyes. He raised both hands and shook them fiercely above his
+head:
+
+"But why--why in the name of heaven--has such a trick been played on
+me ... at such a time?"
+
+He paused, and trembling with the effort, restrained himself to a more
+decent bearing before the woman, the lady, the friend's wife. His arms
+fell by his side, and he repeated in lower tones, though the flame of
+his gaze could not be subdued:
+
+"Why this deception, this playing with the blindness of my love? Why
+this comedy, which has already had one act so tragic?--Yes, think of
+it, madam, think of the tragedy this is now in my life, since she is
+left behind and I never now, with these men's lives to account for,
+may go back and claim her who has given me her troth! Already I staked
+the fortune of my trust, on the bare chance that she would come. What
+though her heart failed her at the eleventh hour?--God forgive her for
+it!--surely she never sanctioned this masquerade?... Oh no! she would
+not stoop to such an act, and human life is not a thing to jest upon.
+She never played this trick, the thought is too odious. What have you
+done! Had I known, had I had word sooner--but half an hour
+sooner--those corpses now rolling under the wave with their sunken
+ship would still be live men and warm.... And I--I should not be the
+hopeless outlaw, the actual murderer that this night's work has made
+of me!"
+
+His voice by degrees rose once more to the utmost ring of bitterness
+and anger. Molly, who had restored her cloak to her shoulders and sat
+down, ensconced in it as closely as her swaddled arm would allow her,
+contemplated him with a curious mixture of delight and terror; delight
+in his vigour, his beauty, above everything in his mastery and
+strength; and delight again at the new thrill of the fear it imposed
+upon her daring soul. Then she flared into rage at the thought of the
+coward of her blood who had broken faith with such a man as this, and
+she melted all into sympathy with his anger--A right proper man most
+cruelly used and most justifiably wrathful!
+
+And she, being a woman whose face was at most times as a book on which
+to read the working of her soul, there was something in her look, as
+in silence she listened and gazed upon him, which struck him suddenly
+dumb. Such a look on a face so like, yet so unlike, that of his love
+was startling in the extreme--horrible.
+
+He stepped back, and made as if he would have rushed from the room.
+Then bethinking himself that he was a madman, he drew a chair near her
+in a contrary mood, sat down, and fixed his eyes upon her very
+steadily.
+
+She dropped her long lids, and demurely composed her features by some
+instinct that women have, rather than from any sense of the impression
+she had produced.
+
+A little while they sat thus again in silence. In the silence, the
+rolling of the ship and the manner in which, as she raced on her way,
+she seemed to breathe and strain, worked in with the mood of each; in
+his, with the storm and stress of his soul; in hers, as the very
+expression of her new freedom and reckless pleasure.
+
+Then he spoke; the strong emotion that had warmed her had now left his
+voice. It was cold and scornful.
+
+"Madam, I await your explanation. So far, I find myself only the
+victim of a trick as unworthy and cruel as it is purposeless."
+
+She had delayed carrying out her mission with the most definite
+perverseness. She could not but acknowledge the justice of his
+reproof, realise the sorry part she must play in his eyes, the
+inexcusable folly of the whole proceeding, and yet she was strung to a
+very lively indignation by the tone he had assumed, and suddenly saw
+herself in the light of a most disinterested and injured virtue.
+
+"Captain Smith," she exclaimed, flashing a hot glance at him, "you
+assume strangely the right to be angry with me! Be angry if you will
+with things as they are; rail against fate if you will, but be
+grateful to me.--I have risked much to serve you."
+
+The whole expression of his face changed abruptly to one of eager,
+almost entreating, inquiry.
+
+"Do me the favour," she continued, "to look into the pocket of my
+cloak--my arm hurts me if I move--you will find there a letter
+addressed to you. I was adjured to see that it should reach you in
+safety. I promised to place it in your own hands. This could hardly
+have been done sooner, as you know."
+
+The words all at once seemed to alter the whole situation. He sprang
+up and came to her quickly.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, make allowances for me, Lady Landale, I am quite
+distracted!" There had returned a tinge of hope into his voice. "Where
+is it?" he eagerly asked, seeking, as directed, for the pocket. "Ah!"
+and mechanically repeating, "Forgive me!" he drew out the letter at
+last and retreated, feverishly opening it under the light of the lamp.
+
+Molly had turned round to watch. Up to this she had felt no regret for
+his disillusion, only an irritable heat of temper that he should waste
+so much love upon so poor an object. But now all her heart went to him
+as she saw the sudden greyness that fell on his face from the reading
+of the very first line; there was no indignation, no blood-stirring
+emotion; it was as if a cold pall had fallen upon his generous spirit.
+The very room looked darker when the fire within the brave soul was
+thus all of a sudden extinguished.
+
+He read on slowly, with a kind of dull obstinacy, and when he came to
+the miserable end continued looking at the paper for the moment. Then
+his hand fell; slowly the letter fluttered to the floor, and he let
+his eyes rest unseeingly, wonderingly upon the messenger.
+
+After a little while words broke from him, toneless, the mere echo of
+dazed thoughts: "It is over, all over. She has lost her trust. She
+does not love me any more."
+
+He picked up the letter again, and sitting down placed it in front of
+him on the table. "'Tis a cruel letter, madam, that you have brought
+me," he said then, looking up at Molly with the most extraordinary
+pain in his eyes. "A cruel letter! Yet I am the same man now that I
+was this morning when she swore she would trust me to the end--and she
+could not trust me a few hours longer! Why did you not speak? One word
+from you as you stepped upon the ship would have saved my soul from
+the guilt of these men's death!" Then with a sharper uplifting of his
+voice, as a new aspect of his misfortune struck him: "And you--you,
+too! What have I to do with you, Adrian's wife? He does not know?"
+
+She did not reply, and he cried out, clapping his hands together:
+
+"It only wanted this. My God, it is I--I, his friend, who owes him so
+much, who am to cause him such fear, such misery! Do you know, madam,
+that it is impossible that I should restore you to him for days yet.
+And then when, and where, and how? God knows! Nothing must now come
+between me and my trust. I have already dishonourably endangered it.
+To attempt to return with you to-night, as perhaps you fancy I
+will--as, of course, I would instantly do had I alone myself and you
+to consider, would be little short of madness. It would mean utter
+ruin to many whom I have pledged myself to serve. And yet Adrian--my
+honour pulls me two ways--poor Adrian! What dumb devil possessed you
+that you did not speak before. Had you no thought for your woman's
+good name? Ill-fated venture, ill-fated venture, indeed! Would God
+that shot had met me in its way--had only my task been accomplished!"
+
+He buried his head in his hands.
+
+Lady Landale flushed and paled alternately, parted her lips to speak,
+and closed them once more. What could she say, and how excuse herself?
+She did not repent what she had done, though it had been sin all
+round; she had little reck of her woman's good name, as he called it;
+the death of the excise men weighed but lightly, if at all, upon her
+conscience; the thought of Adrian was only then a distasteful memory
+to be thrust away; nay--even this man's grief could not temper the
+wild joy that was in her soul to-night. Fevered with fatigue, with
+excitement, by her wound, her blood ran burning in her veins, and beat
+faster in every pulse.
+
+And as she felt the ship rise and fall, and knew that each motion was
+an onward leap that separated her further and ever further from dull
+home and dull husband, and isolated her ever more completely with her
+sister's lover, she exulted in her heart.
+
+Presently he lifted his head.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "I believe that you meant most kindly, and as
+you say, I should be grateful. Your service is ill-requited by my
+reproaches, and you have run risk indeed--merciful Heaven, had my old
+friend's wife been killed upon my ship through my doings! But you see
+I cannot command myself; you see how I am situated. You must forgive
+me. All that can be done to restore you to your home as soon as
+possible shall be done, and all, meanwhile, to mitigate the discomfort
+you must suffer here--And for your good intention to her and me, I
+thank you."
+
+He had risen, and now bowed with a dignity that sat on his sailor
+freedom in no wise awkwardly. She, too, with an effort, stood up as if
+to arrest his imminent departure. A tall woman, and he but of average
+height, their eyes were nearly on a level. For a second or two her
+dark gaze sought his with a strange hesitation, and then, as if the
+truth in him awoke all the truth in her, the natural daring of her
+spirit rose proudly to meet this kindred soul. She would let no
+falsehood, no craven feminine subterfuge intervene between them.
+
+"Do not thank me," she exclaimed, glowing with a brilliant scorn in
+which the greatness of her beauty, all worn as she was, struck him
+into surprise, yet evoked no spark of admiration. "What I did I did,
+to gratify myself. Oh, aye, if I were as other women I should smile
+and take your compliments, and pose as the martyr and as the
+self-sacrificing devoted sister. But I will not. It was nothing to me
+how Madeleine got in or out of her love scrapes. I would not have gone
+one step to help her break her promise to you, or even to save your
+life, but that it pleased me so to do. Madeleine has never chosen to
+make me her confidant. I would have let her manage her own affairs
+gaily, had I had better things to occupy my mind--but I had not,
+Captain Smith. Life at Pulwick is monotonous. I have roaming blood in
+my veins: the adventure tempted, amused me, fascinated me--and there
+you have the truth! Of course I could have given the letter to the men
+and sent them back to you with it--it was not because of my promise
+that I did not do it. Of course I could have spoken the instant I got
+on board, perhaps----" here a flood of colour dyed her face with a
+gorgeous conscious crimson, and a dimple faintly came and went at the
+corner of her mouth, "perhaps I would have spoken. But then, you must
+remember, you closed my lips!"
+
+"My God!" said Captain Jack, and looked at her with a sort of horror.
+
+But this she could not see for her eyes were downcast. "And now that I
+have come," she went on, and would have added, "I am glad I did," but
+that all of a sudden a new bashfulness came upon her, and she
+stammered instead, incoherently: "As for Adrian--René knew I had a
+message for you, and René will tell him--he is not stupid--you
+know--René, I mean."
+
+"I am glad," answered the man gravely, after a pause, "if you have
+reasonable grounds for believing that your husband knows you to be on
+my ship. He will then be the less anxious at your disappearance: for
+he knows too, madam, that his wife will be as honoured and as guarded
+in my charge as she would be in her mother's house."
+
+He bowed again in a stately way and then immediately left her.
+
+Molly sank back upon her couch, and she could not have said why, burst
+into tears. She felt cold now, and broken, and her stiffening wound
+pained her. But nevertheless, as she lay upon the little velvet
+pillow, and wept her rare tears were strangling sobs, the very ache of
+her wound had a strange savour that she would not have exchanged for
+any past content.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+René, having obeyed his mistress's orders, and left her alone with the
+sailors on the beach, withdrew within the shelter of the door, but
+remained waiting, near enough to be at hand in case he should be
+called.
+
+It was still pitch dark and the rollers growled under a rough wind; he
+could catch the sound of a man's voice, now and again, between the
+clamour of the sea and the wuthering of the air, but could not
+distinguish a word. Presently, however, this ceased, and there came to
+him the unmistakable regular beat of oars retreating. The interview
+was over, and breathing a sigh of relief at the thought that, at last,
+his master's friend would soon be setting on his way to safety, the
+servant emerged to seek her ladyship.
+
+A few minutes later he dashed into Sir Adrian's room with a livid
+face, and poured forth a confused tale:
+
+Milady had landed without Mademoiselle; had stopped to speak to two of
+the _Peregrine_, whilst he waited apart. The men had departed in their
+boat.
+
+"The _Peregrine_ men! But the ship has been out of sight these eight
+hours!" ejaculated Sir Adrian, bewildered. Then, catching fear from
+his servant's distraught countenance:
+
+"My wife," he exclaimed, bounding up; and added, "you left her,
+Renny?"
+
+The man struck his breast: he had searched and called.... My Lady was
+nowhere to be found. "As God is my witness," he repeated, "I was
+within call. My Lady ordered me to leave her. Your honour knows My
+Lady has to be obeyed."
+
+"Get lanterns!" said Sir Adrian, the anguish of a greater dread
+driving the blood to his heart. Even to one who knew the ground well,
+the isle of Scarthey, on a black, stormy night, with the tide high,
+was no safe wandering ground. For a moment, the two--comrades of so
+many miserable hours--faced each other with white and haggard faces.
+Then with the same deadly fear in their hearts, they hurried out into
+the soughing wind, down to the beach, baited on all sides by the
+swift-darting hissing surf. Running their lanterns close to the
+ground, they soon found, by the trampled marks upon the sand, where
+the conclave had been held. From thence a double row of heavy
+footprints led to the shelving bit of beach where it was the custom
+for boats to land from seawards.
+
+"See, your honour, see," cried René, in deepest agitation, "the print
+of this little shoe, here--and there, and here again, right down to
+the water's edge. Thank God--thank God! My Lady has had no accident.
+She has gone with the sailors to the boat. Ah! here the tide has
+come--we can see no farther."
+
+"But why should she have gone with them?" came, after a moment, Sir
+Adrian's voice out of the darkness. "Surely that is strange--and
+yet ... Yes, that is indeed her foot-print in the sand."
+
+"And if your honour will look to sea, he will perceive the ship's
+lights yonder, upon the water. That is the captain's ship.... Your
+honour, I must avow to you that I have concealed something from
+you--it was wrong, indeed, and now I am punished--but that poor
+Monsieur the Captain, I was so sorry for him, and he so enamoured. He
+had made a plan to lift off Mademoiselle Madeleine with him to-night,
+marry her in France; and that was why he came back again, at the risk
+of his life. He supplicated me not to tell you, for fear you would
+wish to prevent it, or think it your duty to. Mademoiselle had
+promised, it seemed, and he was mad with her joy, the poor gentleman!
+and as sure of her faith as if she had been a saint in Heaven. But My
+Lady came alone, your honour, as I said. The courage had failed to
+Mademoiselle, I suppose, at the last moment, and Madame bore a message
+to the captain. But the captain was not able to leave his ship, it
+seems; and, my faith," cried Mr. Potter; his spirits rising, as the
+first ghastly dread left him, "the mystery explains itself! It is
+quite simple, your honour will see. As the captain did not come to the
+island, according to his promise to Mademoiselle--he had good reasons,
+no doubt--Madame went herself to his ship with her message. She had
+the spirit for it--Ah! if Mademoiselle had had but a little of it
+to-night, we should not be where we are!"
+
+Sir Adrian caught at the suggestion out of the depths of his despair.
+"You are right, Renny, you must be right. Yet, on this rough sea, in
+this black night--what madness! The boat, instantly; and let us row
+for those lights as we never rowed before!"
+
+Even as the words were uttered the treble glimmer vanished. In vain
+they strained their eyes: save for the luminous streak cast by their
+own beacon lamp, the gloom was unbroken.
+
+"His honour will see, a boat will be landing instantly with My Lady
+safe and sound," said René at last. But his voice lacked confidence,
+and Sir Adrian groaned aloud.
+
+And so they stood alone in silence, forced into inaction, that most
+cruel addition to suspense, by the darkness and the waters which
+hemmed them in upon every side. The vision of twenty dangerous places
+where one impetuous footfall might have hurled his darling into the
+cruel beating waves painted themselves--a hideous phantasmagory--upon
+Sir Adrian's brain. Had the merciless waters of the earth that had
+murdered the mother, grasped at the child's life also? He raised his
+voice in a wild cry, it seemed as if the wind caught it from him and
+tore it into shreds.
+
+"Hark!" whispered René, and clasped his master's icy hand. Like an
+echo of Sir Adrian's cry, the far-off ring of a human voice had risen
+from the sea.
+
+Again it came.
+
+"_C'est de la mer, Monseigneur!_" panted the man; even as he spoke the
+darkness began to lift. Above their heads, unnoticed, the clouds had
+been rifted apart beneath the breath of the north wind; the horizon
+widened, a misty wing-like shape was suddenly visible against the
+receding gloom.
+
+The captain's ship! The _Peregrine_!
+
+As master and man peered outward as if awaiting unconsciously some
+imminent solution from the gliding spectre, it seemed as if the night
+suddenly opened on the left to shoot forth a burst of red fire. A few
+seconds later, the hollow boom of cannon shook the air around them.
+Sir Adrian's nails were driven into René's hands.
+
+The flaming messenger had carried to both minds an instant knowledge
+of the new danger.
+
+"Great Heavens!" muttered Adrian. "He will surrender; he must
+surrender! He could not be so base, so wicked, as to fight and
+endanger _her_!"
+
+But the servant's keener sight, trained by long stormy nights of
+watching, was following in its dwindling, mysterious course that misty
+vision in which he thought to recognize the _Peregrine_.
+
+"_Elle file, elle file joliment la goëlette!_ Mother of Heaven, there
+goes the gun again! I never thought my blood would turn to water only
+to hear the sound of one like this. But your honour must not be
+discouraged; he can surely trust the captain. Ah, the clouds--I can
+see no more."
+
+The wild blast gathering fresh droves of vapour from the huddled
+masses on the horizon was now, in truth, herding them fiercely across
+the spaces it had cleared a few moments before. Confused shouts,
+strange clamour seemed to ring out across the waves to the listeners:
+or it might have been only the triumphant howlings of the rising
+storm.
+
+"Will not your honour come in? The rain is falling."
+
+"No, Renny, no, give me my lantern again, friend, and let us examine
+anew."
+
+Both knew it to be of no avail, but physically and mentally to move
+about was, at least, better than to stand still. Step by step they
+scanned afresh the sand, the shingle, the rocks, the walls, to return
+once more to the trace of the slender feet, leading beside the great
+double track of heavy sea boots to the water's edge.
+
+Sir Adrian knelt down and gazed at the last little imprint that seemed
+to mock him with the same elusive daintiness as Molly herself, as if
+he could draw from it the answer to the riddle.
+
+René endeavouring to stand between his master and the driving blast
+laid down his lantern too, and strove by thumping his breast
+vigorously to infuse a little warmth into his numbed limbs and at the
+same time to relieve his overcharged feelings.
+
+As he paused at length, out of breath, the noise of a methodical thud
+and splash of oars arose, above the tumult of the elements, very near
+to them, upon their left.
+
+Sir Adrian sprang to his feet.
+
+"She returns, she returns," shouted René, capering, in the excess of
+the sudden joy, and waving his lantern; then he sent forth a vigorous
+hail which was instantly answered close by the shore.
+
+"Hold up your light, your honour--ah, your honour, did I not say
+it?--while I go to help Madame. Now then, you others down there,"
+running to the landing spot, "make for the light!"
+
+The keel ground upon the shingle.
+
+"My Lady first," shouted René.
+
+Some one leaped up in the boat and flung him a rope with a curse.
+
+"The lady, ay, ay, my lad, you'd better go and catch her yourself.
+There she goes," pointing enigmatically behind him with his thumb.
+
+Sir Adrian, unable to restrain his impatience, ran forward too, and
+threw the light of his lantern upon the dark figures now rising one by
+one and pressing forward. Five or six men, drenched from head to foot,
+swearing and grumbling; with faces pinched with cold, all lowering
+with the same expression of anger and resentment and shining whitely
+at him out of the confusion. He saw the emptying seats, the shipped
+oars, the name _Peregrine_ in black letters upon the white paint of
+the dingey; and she?... she was not there!
+
+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.
+
+René's strong hands came at last to drag him away, and then René'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 God may damn 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 ashore 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 asserted 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 spaces 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 encumbrance. Adrian's wife and Madeleine's sister,
+as such entitled 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 eyeballs, "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 classified as sheepish.
+
+"And what'll be to do now?"
+
+"By the God 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, nobody 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
+ejaculation 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 passionate 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 pass at last, as all time passes. 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, embarrassed.
+
+"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 God'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!
+
+She had seen but little of Captain Jack these last two days;
+interchanged but few and formal words with him, now and then, as they
+met morning and evening or came across each other during the day. She
+felt that he avoided her. But she had seen him, she had heard his
+voice, they had been close to each other upon the great seas, however
+divided, and this had been something to feed upon. Now what prospect
+before her hungry heart but--starvation?
+
+At least the last precious moments should not be lost to her. She rose
+and dressed in haste; a difficult operation in her maimed state.
+Before leaving her narrow quarters, she peered into the looking-glass
+with an eagerness she had never displayed in the days of her vain
+girlhood.
+
+"What a fright!" she said to the anxious face that looked back at her
+with yearning eyes and dark burning lips. And she thought of
+Madeleine's placid fairness as Cain might of Abel's modest altar.
+
+When she emerged upon deck, a strange and beautiful scene was spread
+to her gaze. A golden haze enveloped the water and the coast, but out
+of it, in brown jagged outline, against the blazing background of
+glowing sunlight rose the towers, the pointed roofs and spires of that
+old corsair's hive, St. Malo. The waters were bright green, frothed
+with oily foam around the ship. The masts cast strange long black
+shadows, and Molly saw one spring from her own feet as she moved into
+the morning glow. The _Peregrine_, she noticed, was cruising parallel
+with the coast, instead of making for the harbour, and just now all
+was very still on board. Two men, conspicuous against the yellow sky,
+stood apart, a little forward, with their backs turned to her.
+
+One of these was Captain Jack, gazing steadily at the town through a
+telescope; the other the mate. Both were silent. Silently herself and
+unnoticed Molly went up and stood beside them; observing her sister's
+lover as intently as he that unknown distant point, she presently saw
+the lean hand nearest her tremble ever so slightly as it held the
+glass; then he turned and handed it to his companion, saying briefly,
+"See what you make of it."
+
+The man lifted the glass, set it, looked, dropped his hand and faced
+his captain. Their eyes met, but neither spoke for a second or two.
+
+"It is so, then?" said the captain at last.
+
+"Aye, sir, no mistake about that. There's the tricolour up again--and
+be damned to it--as large as life, to be sure!"
+
+The healthy tan of the captain's face had not altered by one shade;
+his mouth was set in its usual firm line, but, by the intuition of her
+fiery soul, the woman beside him knew that he had received a blow.
+
+"A strange thing," went on Curwen in a grumbling guttural bass, "and
+it's only a year ago since they set up the old white napkin again. You
+did not look for this, sir?" He too had his intuitions.
+
+"No, Curwen, it is the last thing I looked for. And it spells failure
+to me--failure once more!"
+
+As he spoke he turned his head slightly and perceiving Molly standing
+close behind him glanced up sharply and frowned, then strove to smooth
+his brow into conventional serenity and greeted her civilly.
+
+Curwen, clenching his hard hands together round the telescope, retired
+a step and stood apart, still hanging on his captain's every gesture
+like a faithful dog.
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Molly, disregarding the morning salutation.
+
+"It means strange things to France," responded Captain Jack slowly,
+with a bitter smile; "and to me, Madam, it means that I have come on a
+wild goose chase----"
+
+He stretched out his hand for the glass once more as he
+spoke--although even by the naked eye the flag, minute as it was,
+could be seen to flash red in the breeze--and sought the far-off
+flutter again; and then closing the instrument with an angry snap,
+tossed it back.
+
+"But what does it mean?" reiterated Molly, a wild impatience, a wild
+hope trembling in her breast.
+
+"It means, Madam, that I have brought my pigs to the wrong market,"
+cried Captain Jack, still with the smile that sat so strangely upon
+his frank lips; "that the goods I have to deliver, I cannot deliver.
+For if there is any meaning in symbols, by the wave of that tricolour
+yonder the country has changed rulers again. My dealings were to be
+with the king's men, and as they are not here, at least, no longer in
+power--how could they be under that rag?--I must even trot the cargo
+home again. Not a word to the men, Curwen, but give the order to sheer
+off! We have lowered the blue, white and red too often, have not we?
+to risk a good English ship, unarmed, under the nozzles of those
+Republican or Imperial guns."
+
+The man grinned. The two could trust each other. Molly turned away and
+moved seawards, for she knew that the joy upon her face was not to be
+hidden. Captain Jack fell to pacing the deck with bent head, and long,
+slow steps.
+
+Absorbed in dovetailing the last secret arrangements of his venture,
+and more intent still, during his very few hours of idleness, on the
+engrossing thought of love, he had had no knowledge of the
+extraordinary challenge to fate cast by Bonaparte, of that challenge
+which was to end in the last and decisive clash of French and English
+hosts. He had not even heard of the Corsican's return to France with
+his handful of grenadiers, for newspapers were scarce at Scarthey. But
+even had he heard, like the rest of the world, he would no doubt have
+thought no more of it than as a mad freak born of the vanquished
+usurper's foolhardy restlessness.
+
+But the conclave of plenipotentiaries assembled at Vienna were not
+more thunderstruck when, on that very 19th of March, the semaphore
+brought them news of the legitimate King of France once more fled, and
+of his country once more abandoned to the hated usurper, than was
+Captain Jack as he watched the distant flagstaff in the sunrise, and
+saw, when the morning port gun had vomited forth its white cloud on
+the ramparts of St. Malo, the fatal stripes run up the slender line in
+lieu of the white standard.
+
+But Jack Smith's mind, like his body, was quick in action. The sun had
+travelled but a degree or two over the wide undulating land, the mists
+were yet rising, when suddenly he halted, and called the mate in those
+commanding tones that had, from the first time she had heard them,
+echoed in Molly's heart:
+
+"Bring her alongside one of those smacks yonder, the furthest out to
+sea."
+
+Thereupon followed Curwen's hoarse bellow, an ordered stampede upon
+the deck, and gracefully, with no more seeming effort than a swan upon
+a garden pond, the _Peregrine_ veered and glided towards the rough
+skiff with its single ochre sail and its couple of brown-faced
+fishermen, who had left their nets to watch her advance. Captain Jack
+leant over the side, his hands over his mouth, and hailed them in his
+British-French--correct enough, but stiff to his tongue, as Molly
+heard and smiled at, and loved him for, in woman's way, when she loves
+at all.
+
+"Ahoy, the friend! A golden piece for him who will come on board and
+tell the news of the town."
+
+A brief consultation between the fisher pair.
+
+"_Un écu d'or_," repeated Captain Jack. Then there was a flash of
+white teeth on the two weather-beaten faces.
+
+"_On y va, patron_," cried one of the fellows, cheerfully, and jumped
+into his dinghey, while his comrade still stared and grinned, and the
+stalwart lads of the _Peregrine_ grinned back at the queer foreign
+figure with the brown cap and the big gold earrings.
+
+Soon the fisherman's bare feet were thudding on the deck, and he stood
+before the English captain, cap in hand, his little, quick black eyes
+roaming in all directions, over the wonders of the beautiful white
+ship, with innocent curiosity. But before Captain Jack could get his
+tongue round another French phrase, Molly, detaching herself from her
+post of observation, came forward, smiling.
+
+"Let me speak to him," she said, "he will understand me better, and it
+will go quicker. What is it you want to know?"
+
+Captain Jack hesitated a moment, saw the advantage of the suggestion,
+and then accepted the offer with the queer embarrassment that always
+came over him in his relations with her.
+
+"You are very good," he said.
+
+"Oh, I like to talk the father and mother tongue," she said, gaily and
+sweetly. Her eyes danced; he had never seen her in this mood, and, as
+before, grudgingly had to admit her beauty.
+
+"And if you will allow it," she went on, "I am glad to be of use too."
+
+The fisherman, twirling his cap in his knotted fingers, stared at her
+open mouthed. _Une si belle dame!_ like a queen and speaking his
+tongue that it was a music to listen to. This was in truth a ship of
+marvels. _Ah, bon Dieu, oui, Madame_, there were news at St. Malo, but
+it depended upon one's feelings whether they were to be regarded as
+good or bad--_Dame_, every one has one's opinions--but for
+him--_pourvu qu'on lui fiche la paix_--what did it matter who sat on
+the throne--His Majesty the King--His Majesty the Emperor, or Citizen
+Bonaparte. Oh, a poor fisherman, what was it to him? He occupied
+himself with his little fishes, not with great folk. (Another
+white-teethed grin.) What had happened? _Parbleu_, it began by the
+military, those accursed military (this with a cautious look around,
+and gathering courage by seeing no signs of disapproval, proceeding
+with greater volubility). The poor town was full of them, infantry
+and artillery; regiments of young devils--and a band of old ones too.
+The veterans of _celui là_ (spitting on the deck contemptuously) they
+were the worst; that went without saying. A week ago there came a
+rumour that he had escaped--was in France--and then the ferment
+began--duels every day--rows in the cafés, fights in the ports. At
+night one would hear shouts in the streets--_Vive l'Empereur!_ and it
+spread, it spread. _Ma foi_--one regiment mutinied, then another--and
+then it was known that the Emperor had reached Paris. Oh, then it was
+warm! All those gentlemen, the officers who were for the King, were
+arrested. Then there was a grand parade on the _place d'armes_--Yes,
+he went there too, though he did not care much about soldiers. All the
+garrison was there. The colonel of the veterans came out with a flag
+in its case. _Portez armes!_ Good. They pull out the flag from the
+case: it's the old tricolour with the eagle on the top! _Presentez
+armes!_ And this time it was all over. Ah, one should have seen that,
+heard the houras, seen the bonfires! _Monsieur le Maire_ and the rest,
+appointed by the King, they were in a great fright, they had to give
+way--what does Madame say? Traitors? Oh, _bédame_ (scratching his
+head), it was no joke with the military just now--the whole place was
+under military law and, _saperlotte_, when the strong commands it is
+best for the weak to obey. As for him, he was only a poor fisherman.
+What did he know? he was not a politician: every one to his trade. So
+long as they let one have the peace--He thanked the gentleman, thanked
+him much; thanked the lady, desired to wish her the good-morning and
+_Monsieur_ too. Did they like no little fresh soles this morning? He
+had some leaping then below in his boat. No? well the good-morning
+then.
+
+They had heard enough. The fisherman paddled back to his skiff, and
+Molly stood watching from a little distance the motionless figure of
+the captain of the _Peregrine_ as with one hand clenching the
+hand-rail he gazed towards St. Malo with troubled eyes.
+
+After a few minutes Curwen advanced and touched him lightly on the
+arm.
+
+Captain Jack turned slowly to look at him: his face was a little pale
+and his jaw set. But the mate, who had served under him since the day
+he first stepped upon the old _St. Nicholas_, a gallant, fair-faced
+lad (and who knew "every turn of him," as he would have expressed it
+himself), saw that he had taken his decision; and he stepped back
+satisfied, ready to shape his course for the near harbour, or for the
+Pacific Ocean, or back to Scarthey itself at his master's bidding.
+
+"Call the men up," said the captain, "they have earned their bounty
+and they shall have it. Though their skipper is a poorer man than he
+thought to be, by this fool's work yonder, his good lads shall not
+suffer. Tush, man, that's the order--not a word. And after that,
+Curwen, let her make for the sea again, northwards."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE LIGHT AGAIN--THE LADY AND THE CARGO
+
+    Does not all the blood within me
+    Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
+    As the spring to meet the sunshine!
+
+    _Hiawatha._
+
+
+"Curwen," said Captain Jack, suddenly--the two stood together at the
+helm on the afternoon of the same day, and the _Peregrine_ was once
+more alone, a speck upon the waste of waters, "I have made up my mind
+to return to Scarthey."
+
+The mate wagged his bushy eyebrows and shifted his hand on the helm.
+"Ay, ay, sir," he said, after just an instant's pause.
+
+"I would not run you and the men into unnecessary danger, that you may
+be sure of; but the fact is, Curwen, I'm in a devil of a fix all
+round. There's no use hiding it from you. And, all things considered,
+to land the lady and the cargo at the lighthouse itself, gives me as
+fair a chance of getting out of it as any plan I can think of. The
+cargo's not all my own and it's a valuable one, I daresay you have
+guessed as much; and it's not the kind we want revenue men to pry
+into. I could not unload elsewhere that I know of, without creating
+suspicion. As to storing it elsewhere, it's out of the question.
+Scarthey's the place, though it's a damned risky one just now! But
+we've run many a risk together in our day, have we not?"
+
+"Ay, sir; who's afraid?"
+
+"Then there's the lady," lowering his voice; "she's Lady Landale, my
+friend's wife, the wife of the best friend ever man had. Ay, you
+remember him, I doubt not--the gentleman seaman of the _Porcupine_--I
+owe him more than I can ever repay, and he owes me something too.
+That sort of thing binds men together; and see what I have done to
+him--carried off his wife!"
+
+Curwen grunted, enigmatically, and disengaged a hand to scratch his
+chin.
+
+"I must have speech with him. I must, it is enough to drive me mad to
+think what he may be thinking of me. What I purpose is this: we'll
+disguise the ship as far as we can (we have the time), paint her a new
+streak and alter those topsails, change the set of the bowsprit and
+strike out her name."
+
+"That's unlucky," said the mate.
+
+"Unlucky, is it? Well, she's not been so lucky this run that we need
+fear to change the luck. Then, Curwen, we'll slip in at night at a
+high tide, watching for our opportunity and a dark sky; we'll unship
+the cargo, and then you shall take command of her and carry her off to
+the East Coast and wait there, till I am able to send you word or join
+you. It will only be a few hours danger for the men, after all."
+
+Still keeping his seaman eye upon the compass, Curwen cleared his
+throat with a gruesome noise. Then in tones which seemed to issue with
+difficulty from some immense depth:
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "that ain't a bargain."
+
+"How now?" cried his captain, sharply.
+
+"No, sir," rolling his head portentously; "that don't run to a
+bargain, that don't. The lads of the _Peregrine_ 'll stick to their
+skipper through thick and thin. I'll warrant them, every man Jack of
+them; and if there was one who grumbled, I'd have my knife in him
+before another caught the temper from him--I would, or my name's not
+Curwen. If ye bid us steer to hell we'll do it for you, sir, and
+welcome. But for to go and leave you there--no, sir, it can't be
+done."
+
+Captain Jack gave a little laugh that was as tender as a woman's tear.
+Curwen rolled his head again and mumbled to himself:
+
+"It can't be done."
+
+Then Jack Smith clapped his hand on the sailor's shoulder.
+
+"But it's got to be done!" he cried. "It is the only thing you can do
+to help me, Curwen. To have our _Peregrine_ out in the daylight on
+that coast would be stark madness--no disguise could avail her, and
+you can't change your ugly old phiz, can you? As for me, I must have a
+few days on shore, danger or no danger. Ah, Curwen," with a sudden,
+passionate outbreak, "there are times when a man's life is the least
+of his thoughts!"
+
+"Couldn't I stop with you, sir?"
+
+"I would not trust the ship to another, and you would double the risk
+for me."
+
+"I could double a blow for you too," cried the fellow, hoarsely. "But
+if it's got to be--it must be. I'll do it, sir."
+
+"I count on it," said the captain, briefly.
+
+As the ring of his retreating steps died away upon his ear the mate
+shook his head in melancholy fashion:
+
+"Women," he said, "is very well, I've nought to say against them in
+their way. And the sea's very well--as I ought to know. But women and
+the sea, it don't agree. They's jealous one of the other and a man
+gets torn between."
+
+As Molly sat in her cabin, watching the darkening sky outside with
+dreaming eyes, she started on seeing Captain Jack approach, and
+instead of passing her with cold salute, halt and look in.
+
+"I would speak a word with you," he said.
+
+"On deck, then," said Molly. She felt somehow as if under the broad
+heaven they were nearer each other than in that narrow room. The sea
+was rough, the wind had risen and still blew from the north, it was
+cold; but her blood ran too fast these days to heed it.
+
+She drew one of the capes of her cloak over her head and staggering a
+little, for the schooner, sailing close to the wind, pitched and
+rolled to some purpose, she made for her usual station at the
+bulwarks.
+
+"Well?" she asked.
+
+He briefly told her his purpose of returning to Scarthey direct.
+
+Her eye dilated; she grew pale.
+
+"Is that not dangerous?"
+
+He made a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"But they must be watching for you on that coast. You have sunk the
+boat--killed those men. To return there--My God, what folly!"
+
+"I must land my goods, Madam. You forget that I have more contraband
+on board than, smuggler as I am, even I bargained for."
+
+"If it is for me?--I would rather fling myself into the waves this
+instant than that you should expose yourself to danger."
+
+"Then I should fling myself after you, and that would be more
+dangerous still."
+
+He smiled a little mockingly upon her as he spoke; but the words
+called a transient fire into her face.
+
+"You would risk your life to save me?" she cried.
+
+"To save Adrian's wife, Madam."
+
+"_Bah!_"
+
+He would have gone then, but she held him with her free hand. She was
+again white to the lips. But her eyes--how they burned!
+
+He would have given all his worth to avoid what he felt was coming. A
+woman, at such a juncture may forbid speech, or deny her ear: a man,
+unless he would seem the first of Josephs or the last of coxcombs,
+dare not even hint at his unwelcome suspicions.
+
+"I will not have you go into this danger, I will not!" stammered Molly
+incoherently. The dusk was spreading, and her eyes seemed to grow
+larger and larger in the uncertain light.
+
+"Lady Landale, you misunderstand. It is true that to see you safely
+restored to your husband's roof is an added reason for my return to
+Scarthey--but were you not on board, I should go all the same. I will
+tell you why, it is a secret, but you shall know it. I have treasures
+on board, vast treasures confided to me, and I must store them in
+safety till I can give them back to their rightful owners. This I can
+only do at Scarthey--for to cruise about with such a cargo
+indefinitely is as impossible as to land it elsewhere. And more than
+this, had I not that second reason, I have yet a third that urges me
+to Scarthey still."
+
+"For Madeleine?" she whispered, and her teeth gleamed between her
+lips.
+
+He remained silent and tried gently to disengage himself from her
+slender fingers, but the feeling of their frailness, the knowledge of
+her wound, made her feeble grasp as an iron vice to his manliness.
+
+She came closer to him.
+
+"Do you not remember then--what she has said to you? what she wrote to
+you in cold blood--the coward--in the very moment when you were
+staking your life for love of her? I remember, if you do not--'You
+have deceived me,' she wrote, and her hand never trembled, for the
+words ran as neatly and primly as ever they did in her convent copy
+books. 'You are not what you represented yourself to be--You have
+taken advantage of the inexperience of an ignorant girl, I have been
+deluded and deceived. I never wish to see you, to hear of you again.'"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Lady Landale----" cried the man fiercely.
+
+Molly laughed--one of those laughs that have the ring of madness in
+them.
+
+"Do I not remember? Ah, that is not all! She knows you now for what
+you are, knows what your 'mission' is--but you must not believe she
+writes in anger. No, she----"
+
+Captain Jack's patience could bear no further strain.
+
+"Be silent," he commanded fiercely, and wrenched his arm away to face
+her with menacing eyes.
+
+"Ah, does it rouse so much anger in you even to hear repeated what she
+did not hesitate to write, did not hesitate to allow me to read? And
+yet you love her? If you had seen her, if you knew her as I do! I tell
+you she means it; when she wrote that she was not angry; it was the
+truth--she did it in cold blood. She loved you, you think, and yet she
+believed you a liar; she loved you, and she thinks you a traitor to
+all she holds dear. She believes that of _you_, and you ... you love
+her still!"
+
+"Lady Landale!"
+
+"Listen--she could never love you, as you should be loved. She was not
+born your kin. Between you and her there is nothing--nothing but your
+own fancy. Do not risk your life again for her--your life!"
+
+She stopped, drew her breath with a long gasp, the spray from a
+turbulent wave came dashing across the bows into her face, and as once
+the blood of Cécile de Savenaye had been roused by the call of the
+wild waters to leave safety and children and seek her doom, so now the
+blood she had transmitted to her child, leaped to the same impulse
+and bore her onwards with irresistible force.
+
+"When," she pursued, "in the darkness you took me in your arms and
+kissed me; what did the touch of my lips bring to you? My lips, not
+Madeleine's.... Were you not happy then? Oh, you were, do not deny it,
+I felt, I knew our souls met! My soul and yours, not yours and
+Madeleine's. And I knew then that we were made for each other. The sea
+and the wide free life upon it: it draws me as it draws you; it was
+that drew me to you before I had ever seen you. Listen, listen. Do not
+go to Scarthey--you have your beautiful ship, your faithful
+crew--there are rich and wonderful worlds, warm seas that beckon. You
+can have life, money, adventure--and love, love if you will. Take it,
+take me with you! What should I care if you were an adventurer, a
+smuggler, a traitor? What does anything matter if we are only
+together? Let us go, we have but one life, let us go!"
+
+Bereft of the power of movement he stood before her, and the sweat
+that had gathered upon his brow ran down his face. But, as the meaning
+of her proposition was borne in upon him, a shudder of fury shook him
+from head to foot. No man should have offered dishonour to Jack Smith
+and not have been struck the next instant at his feet. But a woman--a
+woman, and Adrian's wife!
+
+"Lady Landale," he said, after a silence during which the beating of
+her heart turned her sick and cold, and all her fever heat fell from
+her, leaving nothing but the knowledge of her shame, her misery, her
+hopeless love. "Lady Landale, let me bring you back to your cabin--it
+is late."
+
+She went with him as one half-conscious. At the door she paused. The
+light from within fell upon his face, deeply troubled and white, but
+upon the lips and brows, what scorn! He was a god among men.... How
+she loved him, and he scorned her! Poor Murthering Moll!
+
+She looked up.
+
+"Have you no word for me?" she cried passionately.
+
+"Only this, Lady Landale: I will forget."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back towards the distant northern light the schooner clove her
+valiant way in spite of adverse winds and high seas.
+
+The return journey was slower than the outward, and since the second
+day of it the lady kept much to her cabin, while the captain would
+pace the deck till far into the night, with unwonted uneasiness. To
+him the white wings of his _Peregrine_ were bearing him all too slowly
+for endurance, while to the stormy woman's heart that beat through the
+night watches in passionate echo to his restless tread, every instant
+that passed but brought nearer the prospect of a future so intolerable
+that she could not bring herself to face it.
+
+A gloom seemed to have come over the tight little craft, and to have
+spread even to the crew, who missed the ring of their captain's jolly
+laugh and the sound of his song.
+
+When, within a day's sail of the goal, the planned disguise was
+finally carried out upon the schooner's fair sides and rigging, her
+beautiful stretch of sail curtailed, and her name (final disgrace),
+superseded by the unmeaning title of _The Pretty Jane_, open murmurs
+broke out which it required all Curwen's severity--and if the old
+martinet did not execute the summary justice he had threatened he was
+quite equal to the occasion nevertheless--and all Jack's personal
+influence to quell.
+
+The dawn of the next day crept gloomily upon a world of rain; with
+long faces the men paddled about the deck, doing their duty in
+silence; Curwen's old countenance, set into grimmer lines than ever,
+looked as if it had just been detached from the prow of some vessel
+after hard experience of stress and storm. The spirits of the captain
+alone seemed to rise in proportion as they drew nearer land.
+
+"The moon sets at half-past eleven," he said to Curwen, "but we need
+not fear her to-night. By half-past twelve I reckon on your having
+those twenty-five damned casks safe in the cave you took them from; it
+is a matter of three journeys. And then the nose of the _Pretty Jane_
+must be pointed for the Orkneys. All's going well."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night had fallen. "The gaudy bubbling and remorseful day" had "crept
+into the bosom of the sea." From the cross-trees the look-out man had
+already been able to distinguish through the glass the faint distant
+glimmer of Scarthey beacon, when Captain Jack knocked for admittance
+at Lady Landale's cabin for the last time, as he thought, with a sigh
+of relief.
+
+"In the course of an hour, Madam," he said in a grave tone, "I hope to
+restore you to land. As for me, I shall have again to hide in the
+peel, though I hope it will not be for long. My fate--and by my fate I
+mean not only my safety, but my honour, which, as you know, is now
+bound up in the safety of the treasures--will be in your hands. For I
+must wait at Scarthey till I can see Adrian again, and upon your
+return to Pulwick I must beg you to be the bearer of a message to ask
+him to come and see me."
+
+She replied in a voice that trembled a little:
+
+"I will not fail you."
+
+But her great eyes, dark circled, fixed upon him with a meek,
+sorrowful look, spoke dumbly the troublous tale of her mind. In her
+subdued mood the likeness to Madeleine was more obtrusive than it had
+ever yet been. He contemplated her with melancholy, and drew a heavy
+sigh.
+
+Molly groaned in the depths of her soul, though her lips tight set
+betrayed no sound. Oh, miserable chaos of the human world, that such
+pent up love should be wasted--wasted; that they, too, young and
+strong and beautiful, alone together, so near, with such glorious
+happiness within their reach, should yet be so perversely far asunder!
+
+There was a long silence. They looked into each other's eyes; but he
+was unseeing; his mind was far away, dwelling upon the memory of that
+last meeting with his love under the fir trees of Pulwick only ten
+days ago, but now as irrevocably far as things seem that may never
+again be. At length, she made a movement which brought him back to
+present reality--a movement of her wounded arm as if of pain. And he
+came back to Lady Landale, worn with the fatigue of these long days in
+the cramped discomfort of a schooner cabin, thinned by pain and
+fevered thinkings, shorn of all that daintiness of appearance which
+can only be maintained in the midst of luxury, and yet, by the light
+of the flickering lamp, more triumphantly beautiful than ever.
+
+His thoughts leaped to his friend with a pang of remorse.
+
+"You are suffering--you are ill," he said. "Thus do I bring you back
+to him who last saw you so full of strength.... But you will recover
+at Pulwick."
+
+"Suffering, ill! Ah, my God!" As if suffocating, she pressed her hand
+upon her heart, and bowed her head till it rested on the table. And
+then he heard her murmur in a weary voice:
+
+"Recover at Pulwick! My God, my God! The air at Pulwick will stifle
+me, I think."
+
+He waited a moment in silence and saw that she was weeping. Then he
+went out and closed the door behind him with gentle hand.
+
+Nearly all the lights of the ship were now extinguished, and in a
+gloom as great as that in which they had started upon their
+unsuccessful venture, the _Peregrine_ and her crew returned to the
+little island which had already been so fateful to them.
+
+Captain Jack had taken the helm himself, and Curwen stood upon his
+right hand waiting patiently for his commands. For an hour or so they
+hung off the shore. The rain fell close and fine around them; it was
+as if sea and sky were merging by slow imperceptible degrees into one.
+The beacon light looming, halo encircled, through the mist, seemed,
+like a monster eye, to watch with unmoved contempt the restlessness of
+these pigmies in the grand solitude of the night.
+
+Who shall say with what conflict of soul Molly, in her narrow
+seclusion, saw the light of Scarthey grow out of the dimness till its
+rays fell across the darkened cabin and glimmered on her wedding ring?
+
+At last the captain drew his watch, and by the faint rays upon the
+binnacle saw the hour had come.
+
+"Boat loaded, Curwen?" he asked in a low voice.
+
+"This hour, sir."
+
+"Ready to cast?"
+
+"Right, sir."
+
+"Now, Curwen."
+
+Low, from man to man, the order ran through the ship, and the anchor
+was dropped, almost within a musket shot of the peel. It was high
+tide, but no hand but Captain Jack's would have dared risk the vessel
+so close. She swung round, ready to slip at a moment's notice.
+
+He left the helm; and in the wet darkness cannoned against the burly
+figure of his mate.
+
+"You, Curwen? Remember we have not a moment to lose. Remain here--as
+soon as the men are back from the last run, sheer off."
+
+He grasped the horny hand.
+
+Curwen made an inarticulate noise in his big throat, but the grip of
+his fingers upon his master's was of eloquence sufficient.
+
+"Let some one call the lady."
+
+A couple of men ran forward with dark lanterns. The rest gathered
+round.
+
+"Now, my lads, brisk and silent is the word."
+
+The cabin door opened, and Molly came forth, the darkness hid the
+pallor of her face, but it could not hide the faltering of her steps.
+Captain Jack sprang forward and gave her his arm, and she leant upon
+it without speaking, heavily. For one moment she stopped as if she
+could not tear her feet from the beloved planks, but Curwen caught her
+by the other arm; and then she was on the swinging ladder. And so she
+left the _Peregrine_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gig was almost filled with barrels; there was only room for the
+four oarsmen selected, besides the captain and herself. The boat
+shoved off. She looked back and saw, as once before, the great wall of
+the ship's side rise sheer above the sea, saw the triangle of light
+again slide down to lie a span above the water-line. With what a
+leaping heart she had set forth, that black night, away from the
+hateful lighthouse beam to that glimmer of promise and mystery! And
+now! She felt herself grow sick at the thought of that home-coming; at
+the vision of the close warm rooms, of her husband's melancholy eyes.
+Yet, as she sat, the sleeve of the captain's rough sailor coat touched
+her shoulder, and she remembered she was still with him. It was not
+all death yet.
+
+In less than three minutes they touched ground. He jumped into the
+water, and stretched out his arms for Molly. She rose giddily, and his
+embrace folded her round. The waves rolled in with surge and thud and
+dashed their spray upon them; and still the rain fell and beat upon
+her head, from which she had impatiently pushed her hood. But her
+spirit had no heed for things of the body this night.
+
+Oh, if the sea would open sudden deeps before them! if even the
+quicksand would seize them in its murderous jaws, what ecstasy the
+hideous lingering death might hold for her, so that only she lay,
+thus, in his arms to the end!
+
+It was over now; his arms had clasped her for the last time. She stood
+alone upon the dry sand, and her heart was in hell.
+
+He was speaking; asking her pardon for not going at once with her to
+see her into the keep, but he dared not leave the beach till his cargo
+was landed, and he must show the men the way to the caves. Would she
+forgive him, would she go with him?
+
+Forgive him! Go with him! She almost laughed aloud. A few poor moments
+more beside him; they would be as the drops of water to the burning
+tongue of Dives.
+
+Yes, she would go with him.
+
+One by one the precious caskets were carried between a couple of men,
+who stumbled in the darkness, close on their captain's heels. And the
+lady walked beside him and stood beside him without a word, in the
+falling rain. The boat went backwards and forwards twice; before the
+hour had run out, the luckless cargo was all once more landed, and the
+captain heard with infinite relief the last oar-strokes dwindling away
+in the distance, and saw the lights suddenly disappear.
+
+"You have been very patient," he said to Molly then, with a gentle
+note in his voice.
+
+But she did not answer. Are the souls of the damned patient?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My Lady and Mr. the Captain! My God--my God! so wet--so tired!
+Enter--enter in the name of heaven. It is good, in verity, to have My
+Lady back, but, Mr. the Captain, is it well for _him_ to be here? And
+Madam is ill? She goes pale and red by turns. Madam has the fever for
+sure! And her arm is hurt, and she is as wet as the first time she
+came here. Ah, Lord God, what are we coming to? Fire we must have. I
+shall send the wife."
+
+"Ay, do so, man," cried Captain Jack, looking with concern at Lady
+Landale, who in truth seemed scarcely able to stand, and whose
+fluctuating colour and cracked fevered lips gave painful corroboration
+to René's surmise, "your mistress must be instantly attended to."
+
+But Molly arrested the servant as he would have hurried past upon his
+errand.
+
+"Your master?" she said in a dry whisper, "is he at Pulwick?"
+
+"His honour! My faith, I must be but half-awake yet. Imbecile that I
+am, his honour--where is he? Is he not with you? No, indeed, he is not
+at Pulwick, My Lady; he has gone to St. Malo to seek you. Nothing
+would serve him but that he must go. And so he did not reach in time
+to meet you? Ah, the poor master--what anxiety for him!"
+
+Captain Jack glanced in dismay at his friend's wife, met her suddenly
+illumined gaze and turned abruptly on his heel, with a grinding noise.
+
+"See to your mistress," he said harshly, "I hear your women folk are
+roused overhead; hurry them, and when Lady Landale no longer requires
+you, I must speak with you on an urgent business of my own. You will
+find me in my old room."
+
+"Go with the captain at once, René, since he wants you," interposed
+Molly quickly, "here comes Moggie. She will take care of me. Leave me,
+leave me. I feel strong again. Good-night, Captain Smith, I shall see
+you to-morrow?"
+
+There was a wistful query in her voice and look.
+
+Captain Smith bowed distantly and coldly, and hastened from the room,
+accompanied by René, while open-mouthed and blinking, rosy, blowsy,
+and amazed, Mrs. Potter made her entry on the scene and stared at her
+mistress with the roundest of blue eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My good Renny," said the captain, "I have no time to lose. I have a
+hard hour's work to do, before I can even think of talking. I want
+your help. Your light will burn all safe for the time, will it not?
+Hark ye, man, you have been so faithful a fellow to my one friend that
+I am going to trust to you matters which concern my own honour and my
+own life. Ask no question, but do what I tell you, if you would help
+one who has helped your master long ago; one whom your master would
+wish you to help."
+
+Thus adjured, René repressed his growing astonishment at the
+incomprehensible development of events. And having, under direction,
+provided the sailor with a lantern, and himself with a wide tarpaulin
+and sundry carpenter's tools, he followed his leader readily enough
+through the ruinous passages, half choked up with sand, which led from
+the interior of the ruins to one of the sea caves.
+
+Before reaching the open-mouthed rocky chamber, the captain obscured
+the light, and René promptly barked his shins against a barrel.
+
+"_Sacrebleu_," he cried, feeling with quick hands the nature of the
+obstruction, "more kegs?"
+
+"The same, my friend! Now hang that tarpaulin against the mouth of the
+cave and be sure it is close; then we may again have some light upon
+the matter. What we must do will not bear interference, and moving
+glimmers on a dark night have told tales before this."
+
+As soon as the beach entrance was made secure, the captain uncovered
+his lantern; and as the double row of kegs stood revealed, his eyes
+rapidly scanned their number. Yes, they were all there: five and
+twenty.
+
+"Now, to work, man! We have to crack every one of these nuts, and take
+the kernels out."
+
+Even as he spoke, he turned the nearest cask on end, with a blow of
+chisel and mallet stove in the head and began dragging out quantities
+of loose tow. In the centre of the barrel, secured in position on to a
+stout middle batten, was a bag of sailcloth closely bound with cord.
+This he lifted with an effort, for it was over a hundred-weight, and
+flung upon the sand in a corner.
+
+"That's the kernel you see," he said to René, who had watched the
+operation with keen interest. "And when we have shelled them all I
+will show you where to put them in safety. Now carry on--the quicker
+the better. The sooner we have it all upstairs, the freer I shall
+breathe."
+
+Without another word, entering into the spirit of haste which seemed
+to fill his companion, and nobly controlling his seething curiosity,
+René set to work on his side, with his usual dexterousness.
+
+Half an hour of speechless destructive labour completed the first part
+of the task. Then the two men carried the weighty bags into the room
+which had been Captain Jack's in the keep. And when they had travelled
+to and fro a dozen times with each heavy load, and the whole treasure
+was at length accumulated upstairs, René, with fresh surprise and
+admiration, saw the captain lift the hearthstone and disclose a recess
+in the heavy masonry--presumably a flue, in the living days of
+Scarthey peel--which, although much blocked with stony rubbish, had
+been evidently improved by the last lodger during his period of
+solitary residence into a convenient and very secure hiding-place.
+
+Here was the precious pyramid now heaped up; the stone was returned to
+its place, and the two stood in front of each other mopping their
+faces.
+
+"Thank goodness, it is done," said Jack Smith. "And thank you too,
+Renny. To-morrow, break up these casks and add the staves to your
+firewood stack; then nobody but you, in this part of the world, need
+be any the wiser about our night's work.--A smart piece of running,
+eh?--Phew, I am tired! Bring me some food, and some brandy, like a
+good fellow. Then you can back to your pillow and flatter yourself
+that you have helped Jack Smith out of a famous quandary."
+
+René grinned and rushed to execute the order. He had less desire for
+his pillow than for the gratification of his hyper-excited curiosity.
+
+But although pressed to quaff one cup of good fellowship and yet
+another, he was not destined to get his information, that night, from
+the captain, who had much ado to strangle his yawns sufficiently to
+swallow a mouthful or two of food.
+
+"No one must know, Renny," was all he said, at last, between two
+gapes, kicking the hearthstone significantly, and stretching his arms,
+"not even the wife." Then he flung himself all dressed upon his bed.
+
+"And my faith," said René, when he sought his wife a moment later, "he
+was fast asleep before I had closed the door."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE END OF THE THREAD
+
+
+Madeleine had appeared greatly distressed at the thought that, through
+her, her sister was now in so doubtful and precarious a situation. It
+was part of her punishment, she told herself for her sins of deceit
+and unmaidenliness in encouraging and meeting a clandestine lover.
+
+She had gone through some very bitter hours since her tryst at the
+ruins. The process of cutting off a malignant growth that has become
+part of oneself is none the less painful because the conviction is
+clear that it is for one's health to do so, and the will is firm not
+to falter. Not the less is the flesh mangled, do nerves throb, and
+veins bleed. But Madeleine was determined that nobody should even
+guess her sufferings.
+
+Rupert had counted upon Sophia's old habit of obedience to him, and
+upon her superstitious terrors not to betray to the young girl the
+part he had played in the unmasking of her lover; but he had an
+unexpected, and even more powerful ally in Madeleine's own pride. When
+Miss Sophia had tremblingly endeavoured to falter out a few words of
+sympathy and sorrow, upon the distressing subject, Madeleine quickly
+interrupted her.
+
+"Never speak even his name again, Sophia; all that is finished for
+me."
+
+There was such a cold finality in her voice, that the poor confidant's
+expansiveness withered up within her beyond even the hope of
+blossoming again.
+
+When Rupert heard of Captain Jack's latest doings, and especially of
+his sister-in-law's disappearance, he thought that the fates were
+propitious indeed. In his wildest schemes he could not have planned
+anything that would have suited his game more perfectly.
+
+Though he thought it incumbent upon him to pull a face of desperate
+length whenever the subject was touched, in his innermost soul he had
+hardly ever enjoyed so delightful a joke as this dénouement to his
+brother's marriage and to his cousin's engagement. And, strange to
+say, though he would most gravely protest against any interpretation
+of his kinswoman's disappearance save the one which must most redound
+to her credit, the story, started by the gossips in the village upon
+the return of the revenue men, that Lady Landale had bolted with the
+handsome smuggler, grew and spread apace all over the county, more
+especially from such houses as Rupert was wont to visit.
+
+That all his hints and innuendoes should fail, apparently, to make
+Madeleine put upon the case the interpretation he would have liked,
+was at once a matter of secret sneering and of admiration to his
+curiously complicated mind.
+
+The days went by, to all appearance placidly enough, for the trio at
+Pulwick. Madeleine shunned none of the usages of life in common,
+worked and talked with Sophia of a morning, rode or walked out with
+Rupert of an afternoon; and passed the evening at her embroidery frame
+meeting his efforts to entertain her as amiably as before.
+
+Rupert thought he knew enough of the human heart, and more especially
+the feminine, to draw satisfactory conclusions from this behaviour.
+For a girl to bear no malice to the man who had taken it upon himself
+to demonstrate to her the unworthiness of her lover, argued, to his
+mind, that her affections could not have been very deeply engaged in
+that quarter. It was clear that she felt gratitude for a timely
+rescue. Nay, might he not go further, and lay the flattering unction
+to his soul that she would not be unwilling to transfer these same
+blighted feelings to a more suitable recipient?
+
+A slight incident which took place a few nights later, tended still
+more to increase the kindness of Madeleine's manner to him upon the
+next day; but this was for a reason that he little suspected.
+
+It had been an anniversary with Sophia--none less indeed than that of
+the lamented Rector's demise. When her young cousin had retired to her
+room, the desire to pursue her thither with a packet of old letters,
+and other treasures exhumed from the depths of her cupboards, had
+proved too strong for a soul burning for congenial sympathy; and
+Sophia had spent a couple of very delightful hours pouring forth
+reminiscences and lamentations into the bosom of one who, as she said,
+she knew could understand her.
+
+Madeleine a little wearied, stifling a sigh or a yawn as the minutes
+ticked by, was too gentle, too kind-hearted to repel the faithful, if
+loquacious mourner; so she had sat and listened, which was all that
+Sophia required.
+
+Upon the stroke of twelve, Miss Landale rose at length, collected her
+relics, and mopping her swollen eyes, embraced her cousin, and bade
+her good-night with much effusion, while with cordial alacrity the
+latter conducted her to the door.
+
+But here Sophia paused. Holding the flat silver candlestick with one
+hand, with the other clasping to her bosom her bundle of superannuated
+love letters, she glanced out into the long black chasm of corridor
+with a shudder, and vowed she had not the courage to traverse it alone
+at such an hour. She cast as she spoke such a meaning glance at
+Madeleine's great bed, that, trembling lest her next words should be a
+proposal to share it for the night, the young girl hurriedly
+volunteered to re-conduct her to her own apartment.
+
+Half way down the passage they had to pass the door of the picture
+gallery, which was ajar, disclosing light within. At the sight of
+Rupert standing with his back to them, looking fixedly at the picture
+upon the opposite wall, Sophia promptly thought better of the scream
+she was preparing, and seized her cousin by the arm.
+
+"Come away, come away," she whispered, "he will be much displeased if
+he sees us."
+
+Madeleine allowed herself to be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's
+previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an
+explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the
+haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as
+exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the
+unreasonableness of her sister's dislike to Rupert.
+
+He was gazing at his dead wife's picture. He could not bear, Sophia
+said, for any one to find him there; could not bear the smallest
+allusion to his grief, but at night, as she had herself discovered
+quite by accident, he would often spend long spells as they had just
+seen him.
+
+There was something in Madeleine's own nature, a susceptible proud
+reserve which made this trait in her cousin's character thoroughly
+congenial; moreover, what woman is not drawn with pity towards the man
+who can so mourn a woman.
+
+She met him therefore, the next day, with a softness, almost a
+tenderness, of look and smile which roused his highest hopes. And when
+he proposed, after breakfast, that they should profit by the mild
+weather to stroll in the garden while Sophia was busy in the house,
+she willingly consented.
+
+Up the gravel paths, between the gooseberry bushes, to the violet beds
+they went. It was one of those balmy days that come sometimes in early
+spring and encourage all sorts of false hopes in the hearts of men and
+vegetables. "A growing day," the farmers call them; indeed, at such
+times you may almost hear the swelling and the bursting of the buds,
+the rising of the sap, the throbbing and pushing of the young green
+life all around.
+
+Madeleine grew hot with the weight of her fur tippet, the pale face
+under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a
+moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he
+sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was
+thus a maiden looked who waited to be won; and though all of true love
+that he could ever give to woman lay buried with his little bride, he
+felt his pulses quicken with a certain æsthetic pleasure in the
+situation. Presently he rose, and, after arranging his bunch of purple
+sweetness into dainty form, offered it silently to his companion.
+
+She took it, smiling, and carried it mechanically to her face.
+
+Oh, the scent of the violets! Upon the most delicate yet mighty
+pinions she was carried back, despite all her proud resolves to that
+golden hour, only five days ago, when she lay upon her lover's broad
+breast, and heard the beating of his heart beneath her ear.
+
+Again she felt his arm around her, so strong, yet so gentle; saw his
+handsome face bent towards her, closer--ever closer--felt again the
+tide of joy that coursed through her veins in the expectation of his
+kiss.
+
+No, no, she must not--she would not yield to this degrading folly. If
+it were not yet dead, then she must kill it.
+
+She had first grown pale, but the next moment a deep crimson flooded
+her face. She turned her head away, and Rupert saw her tremble as she
+dropped the hand that held the flowers close clenched by her side. He
+formed his own opinion of what was passing within her, and it made
+even his cold blood course hotly in his veins.
+
+"Madeleine," he said, with low rapid utterance; "I am not mistaken, I
+trust, in thinking you look on me as a good friend?"
+
+"Indeed, yes;" answered the girl, with an effort, turning her
+tremulous face towards him; "a good friend indeed."
+
+Had he not been so five days ago? Aye, most truly, and she would have
+it so, in spite of the hungry voice within her which had awaked and
+cried out against the knowledge that had brought such misery.
+
+He saw her set her little teeth and toss her head, and knew she was
+thinking of the adventurer who had dared aspire to her. And he gained
+warmer courage still.
+
+"Nothing more than a friend, sweet?"
+
+"A kind cousin; almost a brother."
+
+"No, no; not a brother, Madeleine. Nay, hear me," taking her hands and
+looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but
+something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or
+less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a
+brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no
+one to whom my coming or my going, my living or my dying makes one
+pulse beat of difference--except poor Sophia. Let us join our
+loneliness and make of it a beautiful and happy home. Madeleine, I
+have learned to love you deeply!"
+
+His eyes glowed between their narrowing eyelids, his voice rang
+changes upon chords of most exquisite tenderness; his whole manner was
+charged with a courtly reverence mingled with the subtlest hint of
+passion. Rupert as a lover had not a flaw in him.
+
+Yet fear, suspicion, disgust chased each other in Madeleine's mind in
+quick succession. What did he mean? How could it be that he loved her?
+Oh! if _this_ had been his purpose, what motive was prompting him
+when he divided her from her deceiving lover? Was no one true then?
+Was this the inconsolable widower whose grief she had been so
+sympathetically considering all the morning; for whose disinterested
+anxiety and solicitude on her behalf her sore heart had forced itself
+to render gratitude? Oh! how terrible it all was ... what a hateful
+world!
+
+"Well, Madeleine?" he pressed forward and slid his arm around her.
+
+All her powers of thought and action restored by the deed, she
+disengaged herself with a movement of unconscious repulsion.
+
+"Cousin Rupert, I am sure you mean kindly by me, but it is quite
+impossible--I shall never marry."
+
+He drew back, as nonplussed as if she had struck him in the face.
+
+"Pshaw, my dear Madeleine."
+
+"Please, Cousin Rupert, no more."
+
+"My dear girl, I have been precipitate."
+
+"Nothing can make any difference. That I could never marry you, so
+much you must believe; that I shall never marry at all you are free to
+believe or not, as you please. I am sorry you should have spoken."
+
+"Still hankering after that beggarly scoundrel?" muttered Rupert, a
+sneer uncovering his teeth betrayed hideously the ungenerous soul
+within. He was too deeply mortified, too shaken by this utter
+shattering of his last ambitions to be able to grasp his usual
+self-control.
+
+Madeleine gave him one proud glance, turned abruptly away, and walked
+into the house.
+
+She went steadily up to her room, and, once there, without hesitation
+proceeded to unlock a drawer in her writing-table and draw from it a
+little ribbon-tied parcel of letters--Jack's letters.
+
+Her heart had failed her, womanlike, before the little sacrifice when
+she had unshrinkingly accomplished the larger one. Now, however, with
+determined hand, she threw the letters into the reddest cavern of her
+wood-fire and with hard dry eyes watched them burn. When the last
+scrap had writhed and fluttered and flamed into grey ash, she turned
+to her altar, and, extending her arm, called out aloud:
+
+"I have done with it all for ever----"
+
+And the next instant flinging herself upon her bed, she drew her brown
+ringlets before her face, and under this veil wept for her broken
+youth and her broken heart, and the hard cold life before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a kind of love a man can give to woman but once in his
+lifetime: the love of the man in the first flush of manhood for the
+woman he has chosen to be his mate, untransferable and never to be
+forgotten: love of passion so exquisite, of devotion so pure, born of
+the youth of the heart and belonging to an existence and personality
+lost for ever. A man may wed again, and (some say) love again, but
+between the boards of the coffin of his first wife--if he has loved
+her--lie secrets of tenderness, and sweetness, and delight, which,
+like the spring flowers, may not visit the later year.
+
+But, notwithstanding this, a second wooing may have a charm and an
+interest of its own, even the wooing which is to precede a marriage of
+convenience.
+
+So Rupert found. The thought of an alliance with Madeleine de Savenaye
+was not only engrossing from the sense of its own intrinsic
+advantages, but had become the actual foundation-stone of all his new
+schemes of ambition.
+
+Nay, more: such admiration and desire as he could still feel for
+woman, he had gradually come to centre upon his fair and graceful
+cousin, who added to her personal attractions the other indispensable
+attributes, blood, breeding and fortune. Mr. Landale was as
+essentially refined and fastidious in his judgment as he was
+unmeasured in his ambition.
+
+His error of precipitancy had been pardonable enough; and mere
+self-reproach for an ill-considered manoeuvre would not have
+sufficed to plunge him into such a depth of bitter and angry
+despondency as that in which he now found himself. But the rebuff had
+been too uncompromising to leave him a single hope. He was too shrewd
+not to see that here was no pretty feminine nay, precursor of the
+yielding yea, not to realise that Madeleine had meant what she said
+and would abide by it. And, under the sting of the moment betrayed
+into a degradingly ill-mannered outburst, he had shown that he
+measured the full bearings of the position.
+
+So, the wind still sat in that quarter!
+
+Failing the mysterious smuggler, it was to be nobody with the Savenaye
+heiress--and least of all Rupert Landale.
+
+And this, though the scoundrel had been thoroughly shown up; though he
+had started upon his illegal venture and was gone, never to return if
+he valued his neck, after murdering four officers of the crown and
+sinking a king's vessel; though he had carried away with him (ah!
+there was consolation in that excellent jest which had so far
+developed into Sir Adrian's wild goose chase to France and might still
+hold some delicate dénouement), had carried with him no less a person
+than Lady Landale herself (the fellow had good taste, and either of
+the sisters was a dainty morsel), he still left the baneful trail of
+his influence behind him upon the girl he had deluded and beguiled!
+
+Rupert Landale, who, for motives of his own had pleased himself by
+hunting down Madeleine's lover, had felt, in the keenness of his
+blood-hound work, something of the blood-hound instinct of destruction
+and ferocity spring up within him before he had even set eyes on his
+quarry. And the day they had stood face to face this instinctive
+hatred had been intensified by some singular natural antagonism. Added
+to this there was now personal injury and the prey was out of reach.
+Impotence for revenge burned into the soul of him like a corrosive
+poison. Oh, let him but come within his grip again and he should not
+escape so easily.
+
+Sits the wind still in that quarter?
+
+The burthen droned in his head, angry conclusion to each long spell of
+inconclusive thought, as he still paced the garden, till the noon hour
+began to wane. And it was in this mood, that, at length, returning to
+his study, he crossed in one of the back passages a young woman
+enveloped in a brilliant scarlet and black shawl, who started in
+evident dismay on being confronted with him.
+
+Rupert knew by sight and name every wench of kitchen and laundry, as
+well as every one of the buxom lasses or dames whom business brought
+periodically to the great hall. That this person was neither of the
+household nor one of the usual back-door visitors, he would have seen
+at a glance, even had not her own embarrassment drawn his closer
+attention. He looked keenly and recognised the gatekeeper's daughter
+Moggie.
+
+Having married Sir Adrian's servant and withdrawn to take up her abode
+in the camp of the enemy, so to speak, she was not one whom Mr.
+Landale would have regarded with favour in any case; but now,
+concentrating his thoughts from their aimless whirl of dissatisfaction
+upon the present encounter, he was struck by the woman's manner.
+
+Yes, she was most undoubtedly frightened. He examined her with a
+malevolent eye which still discountenanced her. And, though he made no
+inquiry, she forthwith stammered out: "I--I came, sir, to see if there
+be news of her Ladyship ... or of Sir Adrian, sir--Renny can't leave
+the island, you know, and he be downright anxious."
+
+"Well, my good woman, calm yourself. Nothing wrong; nothing to hide in
+this very laudable anxiety of you and your good man! No, we have no
+news yet--that is quickly told, Mrs. Potter."
+
+He kept her for a moment quailing and scared under his cruel gaze,
+then went on his way, working upon the new problems she had brought
+him to solve. No matter was too small for Rupert's mind, he knew how
+inextricably the most minute and apparently insignificant may be
+connected with the most important events of life.
+
+The woman was singularly anxious to explain, reflected he, pausing at
+his chamber door, singularly ready with her explanation--too ready.
+She must have lied. No doubt she lied. Liar was written upon every
+line of the terrified face of her. What was that infernal little
+French husband of hers hatching now? He had been in the Smith plot, of
+course. Ah, curse that smuggling fellow: he cropped up still on every
+side! Pray the fates he would crop up once too often for his own
+safety yet; who knew!
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Potter, the innocent news-gatherer, must not be allowed
+to roam unwatched at her own sweet will about the place. Hark! what
+clumping, creaking, steps! These could only be produced by René's
+fairy-footed spouse: the house servants had been too well drilled by
+his irritable ear to venture in such shoe leather within its range.
+He closed his door, and gently walked back along the corridor.
+
+As he passed Molly's apartment, he could hear the creaking of a
+wardrobe door; and, a startling surmise springing into his brain, he
+quietly slipped into an opposite room and waited, leaving the door
+slightly ajar.
+
+As he expected, a few minutes later, Moggie re-appeared loaded with a
+bulky parcel, glancing anxiously right and left. She tiptoed by him;
+but, after a few steps, suddenly turning her head once more, met his
+eyes grimly fixed upon her through the narrow aperture. With a faint
+squeal she paddled off as though a fiend were at her heels.
+
+"Something more than anxiety for news there, Mrs. Potter," said Mr.
+Landale, apostrophising the retreating figure with a malignant, inward
+laugh! Then, when the last echo of her stout boots had faded away, he
+entered his sister-in-law's room, looked around and meditatively began
+to open various presses and drawers. "You visited this one at any
+rate, my girl," thought he, as he recognised the special sound of the
+hinges. "And, for a lady's maid, you have left it in singular
+disorder. As for this," pulling open a linen drawer half-emptied, and
+showing dainty feminine apparel, beribboned and belaced, in the most
+utter disorder--"why, fie on you, Mrs. Potter! Is this the way to
+treat these pretty things?"
+
+He had seen enough. He paused a moment in the middle of the room with
+his nails to his lips, smiling to himself.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Potter, I fancy you might have given us a little news,
+yourself! Most unkind of my Lady Landale to prefer to keep us in this
+unnatural anxiety--most unkind indeed! She must have singularly good
+reasons for so doing.... Captain Smith, my friend, Mr. Cochrane, or
+whatever may be your name, we have an account to settle. And there is
+that fool of an Adrian scurrying over the seas in search of his
+runaway wife! By George! my hand is not played out yet!"
+
+Slowly he repaired to his study. There he sat down and wrote, without
+any further reflection, an urgent letter to the chief officer of the
+newly established Preventive Service Station. Then he rang the bell.
+
+"One of the grooms will ride at once to Lancaster with this," he said
+to the servant, looking at the missive in his hand. But instead of
+delivering it he paused: a new idea had occurred. How many of these
+servants might not be leagued in favour of that interloper, bribed, or
+knowing him, perhaps, to have been a friend of Sir Adrian, or yet
+again out of sheer spite to himself? No; he would leave no loop-hole
+for treachery now.
+
+"Send the groom to me as soon as he is ready," he continued, and when
+the footman had withdrawn, enclosed the letter, with its tale-telling
+superscription, in another directed to a local firm of attorneys, with
+a covering note instructing them to see that the communication, on His
+Majesty's Service, should reach the proper hands without delay.
+
+When the messenger had set forth, Mr. Landale, on his side, had his
+horse saddled and sallied out in the direction of Scarthey sands.
+
+As from the top of the bluff he took a survey of the great bay, a
+couple of figures crossing the strand in the distance arrested his
+attention; he reined in his horse behind a clump of bushes and
+watched.
+
+"So ho! Mrs. Potter, your careful husband could not leave the island?"
+muttered he, as he marked the unmistakable squat figure of the one, a
+man carrying a burden upon his shoulder, whilst, enveloping the woman
+who walked briskly by his side, flared the brilliant-hued shawl of
+Moggie. "That lie alone would have been sufficient to arouse
+suspicion. Hallo, what is the damned _crapaud_ up to?"
+
+The question was suggested by the man's movements, as, after returning
+the parcel to his consort at the beginning of the now bare causeway,
+he turned tail, while she trudged forward alone.
+
+"The Shearman's house! I thought as much. Out he comes again, and not
+by himself. I have made acquaintance with those small bare legs
+before. I should have been astonished indeed if none of the Shearman
+fellows had been mixed up with the affair. I shall be even yet with
+those creditable friends of yours, brother Adrian. So, it's you again,
+Johnny, my lad; the pretty Mercury.... Can it be possible that Captain
+Smith is at his old games once more?"
+
+Mr. Landale's eyes shone with a curious eager light; he laughed a
+little mirthless laugh, which was neither pleasant to hear nor to
+give. "Dear me," he said aloud, as he watched the pair tramp together
+towards Scarthey, "for plotters in the dark, you are particularly easy
+to detect, my good friends!"
+
+Then he checked himself, realising what a mere chance it had been,
+after all--a fortuitous meeting in the passage--that had first aroused
+his suspicions, and placed between his fingers the end of the thread
+he now thought it so simple to follow up. But he did hold the thread,
+and depended no longer upon chance or guess-work, but on his own
+relentless purpose to lay the plotters by the heels, whatever their
+plot might be.
+
+In the course of an hour and a half, Johnny Shearman, whistling,
+light-hearted, and alone, was nearing his native house once more, when
+the sight of a horseman, rapidly advancing across the sands, brought
+him to a standstill, to stare with a boy's curiosity. Presently,
+however, recognising Mr. Landale--a person for whom he had more dread
+than admiration--he was starting off homeward again at a brisk canter,
+when a stern hail from the rider arrested him.
+
+"Johnny!" The boy debated a moment, measured the distance between the
+cottage and himself, and shrewdly recognised the advisability of
+obeying. "Johnny, my boy, I want you at the Hall; take hold of my
+stirrup, and come along with me."
+
+The boy, with every symptom of reluctance, demurred, pleading a
+promise to return to his mother. Then he suddenly perceived a look in
+the gentleman's eye, which gave him a frantic, unreasoned desire to
+bolt at once, and at any cost. But the horseman anticipated the
+thought; bending in the saddle, he reached out his arm and seized the
+urchin by the collar.
+
+"Why, you little devil, what is the matter with you?" he asked,
+grinning ominously into the chubby, terrified face. "It strikes me it
+is time you and I should come to a little understanding. Any more
+letters from the smuggler to-day, eh? Ah, would you, you young idiot!"
+and Mr. Landale's fingers gave a sudden twist to the collar, which
+strangled the rising yell. "Listen, Johnny," tightening his grasp
+gradually until the brown face grew scarlet, then purple, and the
+goggling eyes seemed to start out of their sockets; "that is what it
+feels like to be hanged. They squeeze your neck so; and they leave you
+dangling at the end of a rope till you are dead, dead, dead, and the
+crows come and eat you. Do you want to be hanged?"
+
+For some moments more he kept the writhing lad under the torture; then
+loosening his grip, without however relinquishing his hold, allowed
+him to taste once more the living air.
+
+"Do you want to be hanged, Johnny Shearman?" he asked again gravely.
+The lad burst into gasping sobs, and looked up at his captor with an
+agony of fear in his bloodshot eyes. "No," continued Mr. Landale, "I
+am sure you don't, eh?" with a renewed ominous contraction of the
+hand. "It's a fearful thing, is hanging. And yet many a lad, hardly
+older than you, has been hanged for less than you are doing.
+Magistrates can get people hanged, and I am a magistrate, you know.
+_Stop that noise!_"
+
+"Now," continued the gentleman, "there are one or two little things I
+want to know myself, Johnny, and it's just possible I might let you
+off for this time if by chance you were able to tell them to me. So,
+for your sake, I hope you may be."
+
+He could see that the boy's mind was now completely turned with
+fright.
+
+"If you were to try to run away again I should know you had secrets to
+keep from me, and then, Johnny Shearman, it would go hard with you
+indeed! Now come along beside me, up to the Hall."
+
+Quite certain of his prey, he released him, and, setting his horse to
+a trot, smiled to note the desperate clutch of the lad upon his
+stirrup leather, as, with the perspiration dripping from his face, and
+panting breath, he struggled to keep up the pace alongside.
+
+Marched with tremendous ceremony into the magistrate's study and
+directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale
+installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of
+judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a
+pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and
+physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was
+comparatively little that he had to say, and no doubt he wished most
+fervently he had greater revelations to make, and could thus
+propitiate the arbiter of the appalling fate he firmly believed might
+lie in store for him. Meagre as his narrative was, however, it quite
+sufficed for Mr. Landale.
+
+"I think, Johnny," he said more pleasantly, well knowing the
+inducement that a sudden relaxation from fear offers to a witness's
+garrulity, "I think I may say you will not hang this time--that is,"
+with a sudden hardening of his voice, and making a great show of
+checking the answers with pen and ink in his most magisterial manner,
+"that is if you have really told me _all_ you know and it be all
+_true_. Now let us see, and take care. You saw no one at the peel
+to-day but Renny Potter, Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Crackenshaw?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But you heard other voices in the next room--a man's voice--whilst
+you were waiting?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then Renny Potter came back and gave you a message for your brothers.
+This message they made you repeat, over and over again. How did it
+go?" And as Mr. Landale frowningly looked at his paper, the boy
+tremblingly repeated:
+
+"I mun tell brothers Will an' Rob, that one or t'other mun watchen the
+light o' nights, to-night, to-morrow night, an' ontil woord coom
+again. If light go out they mun setten forth in they ketch thot
+moment, fettled op for a two-three days' sailing. If wind is contrairy
+like, they mun take sweeps. This for the master's service--for Sir
+Adrian's service!"--amending the phrase with a sharp reading of the
+blackness of Mr. Landale's swift upward look.
+
+"Yes," murmured the latter after a pause. "And you were to tell no one
+else. You were to keep it above all from getting to my ears. Very
+good, Johnny. If you have spoken the truth, you are safe."
+
+There was a special cell, off the official study, with high windows,
+bolts and bars, and a wooden bench, for the temporary housing of such
+desperate criminals as might be brought to the judgment of Rupert
+Landale, Esquire, J.P. There he now disposed of the young offender who
+snivelled piteously once more; and having locked the door and
+pocketed the key, returned to his capacious arm-chair, where, as the
+twilight waned over the land, he fell to co-ordinating his scheme and
+gloating upon this unexpected turn of Fortune's wheel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that hour Madeleine, alone in her chamber, knelt before her little
+altar, wrestling with the rebellion of her soul and besieging the
+heavens with a cry for peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Adrian having failed to hear aught of the _Peregrine_ at St. Malo,
+filled with harassing doubt about its fate but clutching still at
+hope--as men will, even such pessimists as he--stood on the deck of
+his homeward bound ship, straining his eyes in the dusk for the coast
+line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the peel, the beacon had just been lighted by René, in whose
+company, up in his secluded turret, sat Captain Jack, smoking a pipe,
+but so unusually silent as to have reduced even the loquacious
+Frenchman to silence too. Below them Lady Landale, torn between the
+dread of a final separation from the loadstar of her existence and the
+gnawing anxiety roused in her bosom by Moggie's account of Mr.
+Landale's watchfulness, was pacing the long book-lined room with the
+restlessness of a caged panther.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the road from Lancaster to Pulwick a posse of riding officers and a
+carriage full of hastily gathered preventive men were trotting on
+their way to the Priory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE LIGHT GOES OUT
+
+
+The light of Scarthey had not been shining for quite an hour over the
+wilderness, when Lady Landale, suddenly breaking the chain of her
+restless tramp, ran to the door and called for Moggie.
+
+There was so shrill a tone of anguish in the summons that the young
+woman rushed into the room in trembling expectancy: yet it was to find
+her mistress alone and the place undisturbed.
+
+"Moggie," said Lady Landale, panting and pressing her hands upon her
+side as if in the endeavour to control the beating of her heart,
+"something is going to happen; I know it, I feel it! Tell Captain
+Smith that I must speak to him, here, at once."
+
+Infected by the terror upon her mistress's face, Madame Lapôtre flew
+upon her errand; a moment later, Captain Jack entered the room and
+stood before Lady Landale with a look of impatient inquiry.
+
+"Oh, it is wicked, it is mad!" cried she passionately; "it is tempting
+God to remain here!"
+
+"Of whom are you speaking?" he asked, with an involuntary glance of
+contempt at the distracted figure. "If it is of yourself, I entirely
+concur. How often these last days, and how earnestly have I not begged
+of you to return to Pulwick? Was not the situation you placed me in
+with regard to Adrian already odious enough that it needed this added
+folly? Oh, I know--I know what you would say: spare it me. My safety?
+You fear for me? Ah, Lady Landale, that you could have but left me in
+peace!"
+
+He had waxed hot with anger from his first would-be calmness, as he
+spoke. This dismal life of close but inharmonious proximity, started
+upon the seas and continued under his absent friend's own roof had
+tried his impetuous temper to the utmost. Upon the morrow of their
+return he had, indeed, exercised all his powers of persuasion to
+induce Lady Landale to proceed to the Priory; but, impelled by her
+frantic dread of the separation, and entrenching herself behind the
+argument that her mysterious re-appearance would awaken suspicion
+where people would otherwise believe the _Peregrine_ still in foreign
+parts, she had declared her irrevocable determination not to quit the
+island until she knew him to be safe. And he had remained, actuated by
+the dual desire, first to exonerate himself personally in her
+husband's eyes from any possible suspicion of complicity in Molly's
+flight--the bare thought of which had become a horrible torment to
+him--then to encompass through that good friend's means an interview
+and full explanation with Madeleine, which not only the most ordinary
+precaution for his life, but likewise every instinct of pride forbade
+him now to seek himself.
+
+Thus began a state of affairs which, as the days succeeded each other
+without news of Sir Adrian, became every moment more intolerable to
+his loyalty. The inaction, the solitary hours of reflection; the
+maddening feeling of unavailing proximity to his heart's dearest, of
+impotency against the involving meshes of the present false and
+hateful position; all this had brought into the young man's soul a
+fever of anger, which, as fevers will, consumed him the more fiercely
+because of his vigour and strength.
+
+It was with undisguised hatred and with scorn immeasurable that he now
+surveyed the woman who had degraded him in his own eyes. At another
+time Molly might have yielded before his resentment, but at this hour
+her whole being was encompassed by a single thought.
+
+"It is for you--for you!" she repeated with ashen lips; "you must go
+before it is too late."
+
+"And is it not too late?" stormed he. "Too late, indeed, do I see my
+treachery to Adrian, my more than brother! Upon my ship I could not
+avoid your company, but here--Oh, I should have thought of him and not
+of myself, and done as my honour bade me! You are right; since you
+would not go, I should have done so. It was weak; it was mad; worse,
+worse--dishonourable!"
+
+But she had no ears for his reproaches, no power to feel the wounds
+he dealt her woman's heart with such relentless hand.
+
+"Then you will go," she cried. "Tell René, the signal."
+
+He started and looked at her with a different expression.
+
+"Have you heard anything; has anything happened?" he asked, recovering
+self-restraint at the thought of danger.
+
+"Not yet," she replied, "not yet, but it is coming."
+
+Her look and voice were so charged with tragic force that for the
+moment he was impressed, and, brave man though he was, felt a little
+cold thrill run down his spine. She continued, in accents of the most
+piercing misery:
+
+"And it will have been through me--it will have been through me! Oh,
+in mercy let me make the signal! Say you will go to-night."
+
+"I will go."
+
+There followed a little pause of breathless silence between them. Then
+as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory
+knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed
+with lugubrious reverberation through the old stone passages around
+them.
+
+At first, terror-stricken, her tongue clave to her palate, her feet
+were rooted to the ground; then with a scream she flung herself upon
+him and would have dragged him towards the door.
+
+"They have come--hide--hide!"
+
+He threw up his head to listen, while he strove to disengage himself.
+The blood had leaped to his cheek, and fire to his eye. "And if it be
+Adrian?" he cried.
+
+Another knock thundered through the still air.
+
+"It is but one man," cried René from his tower down the stairs. "You
+may open, Moggie."
+
+"No--no," screamed Molly beside herself, and tighter clasped her arms
+round Captain Jack's neck.
+
+"Adrian, it is Adrian!" said he. "Hush, Madam, let me go! Would you
+make the breach between me and my friend irreparable?"
+
+Both his hands were on her wrists in the vain endeavour to disengage
+himself from her frenzied grip; the door was flung open and Rupert
+Landale stood in the opening, and looked in upon them.
+
+"Damnation!" muttered Jack between his teeth and flung her from him,
+stamping his foot.
+
+Rupert gazed from one to the other; from the woman, who, haggard and
+dishevelled, now turned like a fury upon him, to the sailor's fierce
+erect figure. Then he closed the door with an air of grave
+deliberation.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded Molly--"you have come here for no good
+purpose. What do you want?"
+
+As she spoke she strove to place herself between the two men.
+
+"I came, my dear sister-in-law," said Rupert in his coldest, most
+incisive voice, "to learn why, since you have come back from your
+little trip, you choose to remain in the ruins rather than return to
+your own house and family. The reason is clear to see now. My poor
+brother!"
+
+The revulsion of disappointment had added to the wrath which the very
+sight of Rupert Landale aroused in Jack Smith's blood; this
+insinuation was the culminating injury. He took a step forward.
+
+"Have a care, sir," he exclaimed, "how you outrage in my presence the
+wife of my best friend! Have a care--I am not in such a hurry to leave
+you as when last we met!"
+
+Mr. Landale raised his eyebrows, and again sent a look from Molly back
+to the sailor, the insolence of which lashed beyond all control the
+devils in the sailor's soul.
+
+"We have an account to settle, it seems to me, Mr. Landale," said he,
+taking another step forward and slightly stooping his head to look the
+other in the eye. Crimson fury was in his own. "I doubt much whether
+it was quite wise of you, assuming that you expected to find me here,
+to have come without that pistolling retinue with which you provided
+yourself last time."
+
+Rupert smiled and crossed his arms. Cowardice was no part of his
+character. He had come in advance of his blood-hounds, in part to
+assure himself of the correctness of his surmises, but also to feast
+upon the discomfiture of this man and this woman whom he hated. To
+have found them together, and thus, had been an unforeseen and
+delicious addition to his dish of vengeance, and he would linger over
+it while he could.
+
+"Well, Captain Smith, and about this account? Lady Landale, I beg of
+you, be silent. You have brought sufficient disgrace upon our name as
+it is. Nay, sir," raising his voice, "it is useless to shake your head
+at me in this furious style; nothing can alter facts. _I saw._ Who has
+an account to demand then--you, whose life is already forfeit for an
+accumulation of crimes; you, screened by a conspiracy of bribed
+servants and ... your best friend's wife, as you dare call your
+paramour; or I, in my brother's absence the natural guardian of his
+family, of his honour? But I am too late. One sister I saved from the
+ignominy you would have brought upon her. The other I could not save."
+
+With a roar Jack Smith would have sprung at the speaker; but, once
+more, his friend's wife rushed between.
+
+"Let him speak," she cried, "what matter what he says? But
+you--remember your promise. I will make the signal."
+
+The signal! The mask of Rupert's face, sternly and sadly rebuking, was
+not proof against the exquisite aptness of this proposal. His men
+outside were waiting for the signal, surrounding the island from land
+and seaward, (for the prey was not to be allowed to escape them
+again); but how to make it without creating suspicion had not yet
+suggested itself to his fertile brain. Now, while he held her lover in
+play, Molly would herself deliver him to justice. Excellent,
+excellent! Truly life held some delightful jokes for the man of
+humour!
+
+The light of triumph came and went upon his countenance like a flash,
+but when the life hangs upon the decision of a moment the wits become
+abnormally sharp. Jack Smith saw it, halted upon his second headlong
+onslaught, and turned round.--Too late: Molly was gone. He brought his
+gaze back upon his enemy and saw he had been trapped.
+
+Their gleams met like duelling blades, divining each other's purpose
+with the rapidity of thrust answering thrust. Both made a leap for the
+door. But Rupert was nearest; he first had his hand on the key and
+turned it, and, with newly-born genius of fight, suddenly begotten of
+his hatred, quickly stooped, eluded the advancing grasp, was free for
+one second, and sent the key crashing through the window into the
+darkness of the night.
+
+Baffled by the astounding swiftness of the act, the sailor, wheeling
+round, had already raised his fist to crush his feebler foe, when, in
+the midst of his fury, a glimmer of the all-importance of every second
+of time stayed his hand. He threw himself upon the heavy ladder that
+rested against Sir Adrian's rows of books, and, clasping it by the
+middle, swung it above his head. The battering blow would, no doubt,
+have burst panel, lock, and hinges the next instant, but again Rupert
+forestalled him, and charged him before the door could be reached.
+
+Overbalanced by the weight he held aloft, Captain Jack was hurled down
+headlong beneath the ladder, and lay for a moment stunned by the
+violence of the fall.
+
+When the clouds cleared away it was to let him see Rupert's face
+bending over him, his pale lips wreathed into a smile of malignant
+exultation.
+
+"Caught!" said Mr. Landale, slowly, pausing over each word as though
+to prolong the savour of it in his mouth, "caught this time! And it is
+your mistress's hand that puts the noose round your neck. That is what
+I call poetical justice."
+
+The prostrate man, collecting his scattered wits and his vast
+strength, made a violent effort to spring to his feet. But Rupert's
+whole weight was upon him, his long thin fingers were gripping him by
+each shoulder, his face grinned at him, close, detested, infuriating.
+The grasp that held him seemed to belong to no flesh and blood, it was
+as the grasp of skeleton hands, the grinning face became like a
+death's head.
+
+"I shall come to your hanging, Captain Jack Smith, or rather, Mr.
+Hubert Cochrane of the Shaws."
+
+These were the last words of Rupert Landale. A red whirl passed
+through the sailor's brain, his hands fell like lashes round the
+other's neck and drew it down. _If Hubert Cochrane dies so does Rupert
+Landale: that throat shall never give sound to that name again._
+
+Over and over they roll like savage beasts, but yet in deathly
+silence. For the pressure of the fingers on his gullet, fingers that
+seem to gain fresh strength every moment and pierce into his very
+flesh, will not allow even a sigh to pass Rupert's lips, and Jack can
+spare no atom of his energy from the fury of fight: not one to spare
+even for the hearing of the frantic knocks at the door, the calls,
+the hammering at the lock, the desperate efforts without to prise it
+open.
+
+_But if Rupert Landale must die so shall Hubert Cochrane, and by the
+hangman's hand, treble doomed by this._ The same thought fills both
+these men's heads; the devil of murder has possession of both their
+souls. But, true to himself to the last, it is with Rupert a
+calculating devil. The officers must soon be here: he will hold the
+scoundrel yet with the grasp of death, and his enemy shall be found
+red-handed--red-handed!
+
+His hatred, his determination of vengeance, the very agony of the
+unequal struggle for life gave him a power that is almost a match for
+the young athlete in his frenzy.
+
+The dying efforts of his victim tax Jack's strength more than the
+living fight; but his hands are still locked in their fatal clutch
+when at last, with one fearful and spasmodic jerk, Rupert Landale
+falls motionless. Then exhaustion enwraps the conqueror also, like a
+mantle. He, too, lies motionless with his cheek on the floor, face to
+face with the corpse, dimly conscious of the voluptuousness of
+victory. But the dead grasp still holds him by the wrists, and it
+grows cold now, and rigid upon them. It is as if they were fettered
+with iron.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady Landale's dread of her once despised kinsman, now that she knew
+what a powerful weapon he held in his hands, this night, was almost
+fantastic.
+
+As she darted from the room, she fell against René, who, with a white
+face and bent ear, stood at the door, eavesdropping, ready to rush to
+the help of Sir Adrian's friend upon the first hint of necessity. But
+he had heard more than he bargained for.
+
+The scared, well-nigh agonised look of inquiry with which he turned to
+his mistress was lost upon her. In her whirlwind exit, she seized upon
+him and dragged him with her to the ladder that led to the tower.
+
+"Quick, René, the signal!"
+
+And with the birdlike swiftness of a dream flight she was up the steps
+before him.
+
+Panting in her wake, ran the sturdy fellow, his brain seething in a
+chaos of conflicting thought. Mr. the Captain must be helped, must be
+saved: this one thing was clear at any rate. His honour would wish it
+so--no matter what had happened. Yes, he would obey My Lady and make
+the signal. But, what if Mr. Landale were right? Not indeed in his
+accusation of Mr. the Captain, René knew, René had seen enough to
+trust him: he was no false friend; but as regarded My Lady? Alas! My
+Lady had indeed been strange in her manner these days; and even
+Moggie, as he minded him now, even Moggie had noticed, had hinted, and
+he had not understood.
+
+The man's fingers fumbled over the catch of the great lantern, he
+shook as if he had the palsy. Goodness divine, if his master were to
+come home to this!
+
+Impatiently Lady Landale pushed him upon one side. What ailed the
+fellow, when every second was crucial, life or death bringing?
+Medusa-like for one second her face hung, white-illumined, set into
+terrible fixity, above the great flame, the next instant all was
+blackness to their dazzled eyes. The light of Scarthey was out!
+
+She groped for René; her hot fingers burnt upon his cold rough hand
+for a second.
+
+"I will go down to the sands," she said, whispering as if she feared,
+even here, the keenness of Rupert's ear, "and you--hurry to him, stop
+with him, defend him, your master's friend!"
+
+She flitted from him like a shadow, the ladder creaked faintly beneath
+her light footfall, and then louder beneath his weighty tread.
+
+His master's friend!
+
+Ay, he would stand by him, for his master's sake and for his own sake
+too--the good gentleman!--And they would get him safe out of the way
+before his honour's return.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out upon the beach ran Molly.
+
+It was a mild still night; through veils of light mist the moon shone
+with a tranquil bride-like grace upon the heaving palpitating waters
+and the mystery of the silent land.
+
+A very night for lovers, it seemed; for sweet meetings and sweeter
+partings; a night that mocked with its great passionless calm at the
+wild anguish of this woman's impatience. Yet a night upon which sound
+travelled far. She bent her ear--was there nothing to hear yet,
+nothing but the lap of the restless waters? Were those men false?
+
+She rushed to and fro, from one point to another along the sands in a
+delirium of impotent desire.
+
+Oh, hurry, hurry, hurry!
+
+And as she turned again, there, upon the waters out in the offing,
+glimmered a light, curtseying with the swell of the waves; the sails
+of a ship caught the moonbeams. She could see the vessel plainly and
+that it was bearing full for the island. Alas! This might scarcely be
+the little Shearman boat manned by two fishermen only; even she,
+unversed in sea knowledge could tell that. It was as large as the
+_Peregrine_ itself--certainly as large as the cutter.
+
+The _cutter_!
+
+She caught her breath, and clapped her hands to her lips to choke down
+the wild scream of fear that rose to them.
+
+At the same instant, a dull thud of oars, a subdued murmur of a deep
+voice rose from the other side of the island.
+
+They were coming, coming from the landward, these rescuers of her
+beloved. And yonder, with swelling canvas, came the hell ship from out
+the open sea, sent by Rupert's infernal malice and cleverness, to make
+their help of no avail; to seize him, in the very act of flight.
+
+She ran in the direction of the sound, and with all her strength
+called upon the new-comers to speed.
+
+"Here--here, for God's sake! Hasten or it will be too late!"
+
+Her voice seemed to her, in the midst of the endless space, weak as a
+child's; but it was heard.
+
+"Coming!" answered a gruff shout from afar. And the oar beat came
+closer, and fell with swifter rhythm. Stumbling, catching in her
+skirts, careless of pool or stone beneath her little slippered feet,
+Lady Landale came flying round the ruins: a couple of boats crashed in
+upon the shingle, and the whole night seemed suddenly to become alive
+with dark figures--men in uniform, with gleams upon them of brass
+badges and shining belts, and in their hands the gleam of arms.
+
+For the moment she could not move. It was as if her knees were giving
+way, and she must fall.
+
+None of them saw her in the shadow; but as they passed, she heard them
+talking to each other about the signal, the signal which they had been
+told to look for, which had been brought to them ... the signal _she_
+had made. Then with a wave of rage, the power of life returned to her.
+This was Rupert's work! But all was not lost yet. The other boat was
+coming, the other boat must be the rescue after all; the Shearman's
+boat, or--who knows?--if there was mercy in Heaven, the _Peregrine_,
+whose crew might have heard of their captain's risk.
+
+Back she raced to the seaward beach, hurling--unknowing that she spoke
+at all--invectives upon her husband's brother.
+
+"Serpent, blood-hound, devil, devil, you shall not have him!"
+
+As she reached the landing-place, breathless, a boat was landing in
+very truth. Even as she came up a tall figure jumped out upon the
+sand, and crunched towards her with great strides.
+
+She made a leap forward, halted, and cried out shrilly:
+
+"Adrian!"
+
+"Molly--wife! Thank God!" His arms were stretched out to her, but he
+saw her waver and shudder from him, and wring her hands. "My God, what
+has happened? The light out, too! What is it?"
+
+She fastened on him with a sudden fierceness, the spring of a wild
+cat.
+
+"Come," she said, drawing him towards the peel, "if you would save
+him, lose not a second."
+
+He hesitated a moment, still; she tugged at him like one demented,
+panting her abjurations at him, though her voice was failing her.
+Then, without a word, he fell to running with her towards the keep,
+supporting her as they went.
+
+The great door had swung back on its hinges, and the men were
+pressing, in a dark body, into the dim-lit recesses, when Sir Adrian
+and his wife reached the entrance.
+
+The sight of the uniforms only confirmed the homecomer in his own
+forebodings anent the first act of the drama that was being enacted
+upon his peaceful island. He needed no further pushing from the
+frantic woman at his side. Lost in bringing her back, perhaps, his
+only friend! Lost by his loyalty and his true friendship!
+
+They dashed up the stone stairs just as the locked door of the
+living-room burst with a crash, under the efforts of many stalwart
+shoulders; they saw the men crush forwards, and fall back, and herd on
+again, with a hoarse murmur that leaped from mouth to mouth.
+
+And René came running out from the throng with the face of one that
+has seen Death. And he caught his mistress by the arm, and held her by
+main force against the wall. He showed no surprise at the sight of his
+master--there are moments in life that are beyond surprise--but cried
+wildly:
+
+"She must not see!"
+
+She fought like a tigress against the faithful arms, but still they
+held her, and Sir Adrian went in alone.
+
+A couple of men were dragging Captain Jack to his feet, forcing his
+hands from the dead man's throat; it seemed as if they had grown as
+rigid and paralysed in their clasp like the corpse hands that had now,
+likewise, to be wrenched from their clutch of him.
+
+He glanced around, as though dazed, then down at the disfigured purple
+face of his dead enemy, smiled and held out his hands stiffly for the
+gyves that were snapped upon them.
+
+And then one of the fellows, with some instinctive feeling of decency,
+flung a coat over the slain man, and Captain Jack threw up his head
+and met Adrian's horror-stricken, sorrowful eyes.
+
+At the unexpected sight he grew scarlet; he waved his fettered hands
+at him as they hustled him forth.
+
+"I have killed your brother, Adrian," he called out in a loud voice,
+"but I brought back your wife!"
+
+Some of the men were speaking to Sir Adrian, but drew back
+respectfully before the spectacle of his wordless agony.
+
+But, as Molly, with a shriek, would have flung herself after the
+prisoner, her husband awoke to action, and, pushing René aside, caught
+her round the waist with an unyielding grip: his eyes sought her face.
+And, as the light fell on it, he understood. Aye, she had been brought
+back to him. But how?
+
+And René, watching his master's countenance, suddenly burst out
+blubbering, like a child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+HUSBAND AND WIFE
+
+    Tout comprendre--
+      c'est tout pardonner.
+
+
+Staring straight before her with haggard, unseeing eyes, her hands
+clasped till the delicate bones protruded, her young face lined into
+sudden agedness, grey with unnatural pallor, framed by the black
+masses of her dishevelled hair, it was thus Sir Adrian found his wife,
+when at length he was free to seek her.
+
+He and René had laid the dead man upon the bed that had been occupied
+by his murderer, and composed as decently as might be the hideous
+corpse of him who had been the handsomest of his race. René had given
+his master the tale of all he knew himself, and Sir Adrian had ordered
+the boat to be prepared, determined to convey Lady Landale at once
+from the scene of so much horror. His own return to Pulwick, moreover,
+to break the news to Sophia, to attend to the removal of the body and
+the preparation for the funeral was of immediate necessity.
+
+As he approached his wife she raised her eyes.
+
+"What do you want with me?" she asked, with a stony look that arrested
+him, as he would gently have taken her hand.
+
+"I would bring you home."
+
+"Home!" the pale lips writhed in withering derision.
+
+"Yes, home, Molly," he spoke as one might to a much-loved and
+unreasonable sick child--with infinite tenderness and compassion--"your
+own warm home, with your sister. You would like to go to Madeleine,
+would not you?"
+
+She unclasped her hands and threw them out before her with a savage
+gesture of repulsion.
+
+"To Madeleine?" she echoed, with an angry cry; and then wheeling
+round upon him fiercely: "Do you want to kill me?" she said, between
+her set teeth.
+
+Sir Adrian's weary brow contracted. He paused and looked at her with
+profoundest sorrow.
+
+Then she asked, hoarsely:
+
+"Where have they taken him to?"
+
+"To Lancaster, I believe."
+
+"Will they hang him?"
+
+"I pray God not."
+
+"There is no use of praying to God, God is merciless. What will they
+do to him?"
+
+"He will be tried, Molly, in due course, and then, according to the
+sentence of the judges.... My poor child, control yourself, he shall
+be defended by the best lawyers that money can get. All a man can do
+for another I shall do for him."
+
+She shot the sombre fire of her glance at him.
+
+"You know that I love him," she said, with a terrible composure.
+
+A sudden whiteness spread round Sir Adrian's lips.
+
+"Poor child!" he said again beneath his breath.
+
+"Yes, I love him. I always wanted to see him. I was sick and tired of
+life at Pulwick, and that was why I went on board his ship. I went
+deliberately because I could not bear the dulness of it all. He
+mistook me for Madeleine in the dark--he kissed me. Afterwards I told
+him that I loved him. I begged him to take me away with him, for ever.
+I love him still, I would go with him still--it is as well that you
+should know. Nothing can alter it now. But he did not want me. He
+loves Madeleine."
+
+The words fell from her lips with a steady, cruel, deliberateness. She
+kept her eyes upon him as she spoke, unpityingly, uncaring what
+anguish she inflicted; nay, it seemed from some strange perversity,
+glad to make him suffer.
+
+But hard upon a man as it must be to hear such a confession from his
+wife's lips, doubly hard to such a one as Adrian, whose heart bled for
+her pain as well as for his own, he held himself without departing for
+a second from his wonted quiet dignity. Only in his earnest gaze upon
+her there was perhaps, if possible, an added tenderness.
+
+But she, to see him so unmoved, was moved herself to a sudden scorn.
+
+What manner of man was this, that not love, nor jealousy, nor anger
+had power to stir?
+
+"And now what will you do with me?" she asked him again, with superb
+contempt on eye and lip. "For a guilty wife I am to you, as far as the
+will could make me, and I have no claim upon you any more."
+
+"No claim upon me!" he repeated, with a wonder of grief in his voice.
+"Ah, Molly, hush child! You are my wife. The child of the woman I
+loved--the woman I love for her own sake. You can no more put yourself
+out of my life now than you can out of my heart; had you been as
+guilty in deed as you may have been in purpose my words would be the
+same. Your husband's home is your home, my only wish to cherish and
+shelter you. You cannot escape my care, poor child, and some day you
+may be glad of it. My protection, my countenance you will always have.
+God! who am I that I should judge you? Is there any sin of human
+frailty that a human being dare condemn? Guilty? What is your guilt
+compared to mine for bringing you to this, allying my melancholy age
+with your bright youth?"
+
+He fell into the chair opposite to her and covered his face with his
+hands. As, for a minute's space, his self-control wavered, she watched
+him, wearily. Her heat of temper had fallen from her very quickly; she
+broke into a moan.
+
+"Oh, what does it matter? What does anything matter now? I love him
+and I have ruined him--had it not been for me he would be safe!"
+
+After a little silence Sir Adrian rose. "I must leave you now, I must
+go to Pulwick," he said. His heart was yearning to her, he would have
+gathered her to his arms as a father his erring child, but he
+refrained from even touching her. "And you--what would you do? It
+shall be as you like."
+
+"I would go to Lancaster," she said.
+
+"The carriage shall be sent for you in the morning and Renny and his
+wife shall go with you. I will see to it. After Rupert's funeral--my
+God, what a night this has been!--I will join you, and together we
+shall work to save his life."
+
+He paused, hesitated, and was about to turn away when suddenly she
+caught his hand and kissed it.
+
+He knew she would as readily have kissed René's hand for a like
+promise; that her gratitude was a pitiable thing for him, her husband,
+to bear; and yet, all the way, on his sad and solitary journey to
+Pulwick, the touch of her lips went with him, bringing a strange
+sweetness to his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a vast deal of wonder in the county generally, and among the
+old friends of his father's house in particular, when it became known
+that Sir Adrian Landale had engaged a noted counsel to defend his
+brother's murderer and was doing all he could to avert his probable
+doom. In lowered tones were whispered strange tales of Lady Landale's
+escapade. People wagged wise and virtuous heads and breathed
+scandalous hints of her power upon her infatuated husband; and then
+they would tap their foreheads significantly. Indeed it needed all the
+master of Pulwick's wide-spread reputation for mental unsoundness to
+enable him to carry through such proceedings without rousing more
+violent feelings. As it was, it is to be doubted whether his
+interference had any other effect than that of helping to inflame the
+public mind against the prisoner.
+
+The jury's verdict was a foregone conclusion; and though the learned
+lawyer duly prepared a very fine speech and pocketed some monstrous
+fees with a great deal of complaisance, he was honest enough not to
+hold out the smallest hope of being able to save his client.
+
+The conviction was too clear, the "crimes" the prisoner had committed
+were of "too horrible and bloody a character, threatening the very
+foundations of society," to admit of a merciful view of the case.
+
+As the trial drew near, Sir Adrian's despondency increased; each day
+seemed to bring a heavier furrow to his brow, an added weight to his
+lagging steps. He avoided as much as possible all meetings with his
+wife, who, on the contrary, recovered stronger courage with the flight
+of time, but whose feverish interest in his exertions was now
+transferred to some secret plans that she was for ever discussing with
+René. The prisoner himself showed great calmness.
+
+"They will sentence me of course," he said quietly to Adrian, "but
+whether they will hang me is another question. I don't think that my
+hour has come yet or that the cord is twisted which will hang Jack
+Smith."
+
+In other moods, he would ridicule Sir Adrian's labours in his cause
+with the most gentle note of affectionate mockery. But, from the
+desire doubtless to save one so disinterested and unworldly from any
+accusation of complicity, he was silent upon the schemes on which he
+pinned his hopes of escape.
+
+The first meeting of the friends after the scene at Scarthey had been,
+of course, painful to both.
+
+When he entered the cell, Adrian had stretched out his hand in
+silence, but Captain Jack held his own pressed to his side.
+
+"It is like you to come," he said gloomily, "but you cannot shake the
+hand that stifled your brother's life out of him. And I should do it
+again, Adrian! Mark you, I am not repentant!"
+
+"Give me your hand, Jack," said Adrian steadfastly. "I am not of those
+who shift responsibility from the dead to the living. You were
+grievously treated. Oh, give me your hand, friend, can I think of
+anything now but your peril and your truth to me?"
+
+For an instant still the younger man hesitated and inquiringly raised
+his eyes laden with anxious trouble, to the elder man's face.
+
+"My wife has told me all," said Sir Adrian, turning his head to hide
+his twitching lip.
+
+And then Jack Smith's hand leaped out to meet his friend's upon an
+impulse of warm sympathy, and the two faced each other, looking the
+words they could not utter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year eighteen hundred and fifteen which delivered England at last
+from the strain of outlandish conflict saw a revival of official
+activity concerning matters of more homely interest. The powers that
+were awoke to the necessity, among other things, of putting a stop by
+the most stringent means to the constant and extensive leakage in the
+national revenue proceeding from the organisation of free traders or
+smugglers.
+
+After twenty years of almost complete supineness on the part of the
+authorities, the first efforts made towards a systematic "Preventive"
+coast service, composed of customs, excise and naval officials in
+proportion varied according to the localities, remained singularly
+futile. And to the notorious inability of these latter to cope with
+the experience and the devilish daring of the old established free
+traders, was due no doubt to the ferocity of the inquisitional laws
+presently levelled against smuggling and smugglers--laws which
+ruthlessly trenched upon almost every element of the British subjects'
+vaunted personal freedom, and which added, for the time, several new
+"hanging cases" to the sixty odd already in existence.
+
+That part of the indictment against Captain Jack Smith and the other
+criminals still at large, which dealt with their offences against the
+smuggling act, would in later times have broken down infallibly from
+want of proper evidence: not a tittle of information was forthcoming
+which could support examination. But a judge of assizes and a jury in
+1815, were not to be baulked of the necessary victim by mere
+circumstantiality when certain offences against society and against
+His Majesty had to be avenged; and the dispensers of justice were less
+concerned with strict evidence than with the desirability of making
+examples. Strong presumption was all that was required to them to hang
+their man; and indeed the hanging of Captain Jack upon the other and
+more serious counts than that of unlawful occupation, was, as has been
+said, a foregone conclusion. The triple charge of murder being but too
+fully corroborated.
+
+Every specious argument that could be mooted was of course put forward
+by counsel for the defence, to show that the death of the preventive
+men and of Mr. Landale on Scarthey Island and the sinking of the
+revenue cutter must be looked upon, on the one hand, as simple
+manslaughter in self-defence, and as the result of accidental
+collision, on the other. But, as every one anticipated, the charge of
+the judge and the finding of the jury demanded strenuously the extreme
+penalty of the law. Besides this the judge deemed it advisable to
+introduce into the sentence one of those already obsolete penalties of
+posthumous degradation, devised in coarser ages for the purpose of
+making an awful impression upon the living.
+
+"Prisoner at the bar," said his lordship at the conclusion of the last
+day's proceedings, "the sentence of the law which I am about to pass
+upon you and which the court awards is that you now be taken to the
+place whence you came, and from thence, on the day appointed, to the
+place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck until you be dead,
+dead, dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!"
+
+Captain Jack, standing bolt upright, with his eyes fixed upon the
+speaker, calm as he ever had been when awaiting the enemy's broadside,
+hearkened without stirring a muscle. But when the judge, after
+pronouncing the last words with a lingering fulness and
+impressiveness, continued through the heavy silence: "And that, at a
+subsequent time, your body, bound in irons, shall be suspended upon a
+gibbet erected as near as possible to the scenes of your successive
+crimes, and shall there remain as a lasting warning to wrong-doers of
+the inevitable ultimate end of such an evil life as yours," a wave of
+crimson flew to the prisoner's forehead, upon which every vein swelled
+ominously.
+
+He shot a glance of fury at the large flabby countenance of the
+righteous arbiter of his doom, whilst his hands closed themselves with
+an involuntary gesture of menace. Then the tide of anger ebbed; a
+contemptuous smile parted his lips. And, bowing with an air of light
+mockery to the court, he turned, erect and easy, to follow his turnkey
+out of the hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+IN LANCASTER CASTLE
+
+
+All that his friendship for the condemned man, all that his love and
+pity for his almost distracted wife, could suggest, Sir Adrian Landale
+had done in London to try and avert Captain Jack's doom. But it was in
+vain. There also old stories of his peculiar tenets and of his
+well-known disaffection to the established order of things, had been
+raked up against him. Unfavourable comparisons had been drawn between
+him and Rupert; surprise and disapproval had been expressed at the
+unnatural brother, who was displaying such energy to obtain mercy for
+his brother's murderer. Finally an influential personage, whom Sir
+Adrian had contrived to interest in the case, in memory of an old
+friendship with his father, informed the baronet that his persistence
+was viewed with extreme disfavour in the most exalted quarter, and
+that His Royal Highness himself had pronounced that Captain Jack was a
+damned rascal and richly deserved his fate.
+
+From the beginning, indeed, the suppliant had been without hope.
+Though he was resolved to leave no stone unturned, no possibility
+untried in the effort to save his friend, well-nigh the saddest part
+of the whole business to him was the realisation that the prisoner had
+not only broken those custom laws (of which Sir Adrian himself
+disapproved as arbitrary) but also, as he had been warned, those other
+laws upon which depend all social order and security; broken them so
+grievously that, whatever excuses the philosopher might find in heat
+of blood and stress of circumstances, given laws at all, the sentence
+could not be pronounced otherwise than just.
+
+And so, with an aching heart and a wider horror than ever of the cruel
+world of men, and of the injustices to which legal justice leads, Sir
+Adrian left London to hurry back to Lancaster with all the speed that
+post-horses could muster. The time was now drawing short. As the
+traveller rattled along the stony streets of the old Palatine town,
+and saw the dawn breaking, exquisite, primrose tinted, faintly
+beautiful as some dream vision over the distant hills, his soul was
+gripped with an iron clutch. In three more days the gallant heart,
+breaking in the confinement of the prison yonder, would have throbbed
+its last! And he longed, with a desire futile but none the less
+intense, that, according to that doctrine of Vicarious Atonement
+preached to humanity by the greatest of all examples, he could lay
+down his own weary and disappointed life for his friend.
+
+Having breakfasted at the hotel, less for the necessity of food than
+for the sake of passing the time till the morning should have worn to
+sufficient maturity, he sought on foot the quiet lodgings where he had
+installed his wife under René's guard before starting on his futile
+quest. Early as the hour still was--seven had but just rung merrily
+from some chiming church clock--the faithful fellow was already astir
+and prompt to answer his master's summons.
+
+One look at the latter's countenance was sufficient to confirm the
+servant's own worst forebodings.
+
+"Ah, your honour, and is it indeed so. _Ces gredins!_ and will they
+hang so good a gentleman?"
+
+"Hush, Renny, not so loud," cried the other with an anxious look at
+the folding-doors, that divided the little sitting-room from the inner
+apartment.
+
+"Oh, his honour need have no fear. My Lady is gone, gone to Pulwick.
+His honour need not disquiet himself; he can well imagine that I would
+not allow her to go alone--when I had been given a trust so precious.
+No, no, the old lady, Miss O'Donoghue, your honour's aunt and her
+ladyship's, she has heard of all these terrible doings, and came to
+Lancaster to be with My Lady. _Ma foi_, I know not if she be just the
+person one would have chosen, for she has scolded a great deal, and is
+as agitated--as agitated as a young rabbit. But, after all, she loves
+the poor young lady with all her heart, and I think she has roused her
+a little. His honour knows," said the man, flushing to the roots of
+his hair, whilst he shifted nervously from one foot to another, "that
+My Lady has been much upset about the poor captain. After his honour
+went, she would sit, staring out of the window there, just where the
+street turns up to the castle, and neither ate nor slept, nor talked
+to speak of. Of course, as I told the old Demoiselle, I knew it was
+because My Lady had taken it to heart about the signal that she
+made--thinking to save him--and which only brought the gabelous on
+him, that his honour's infernal brother (God forgive me, and have
+mercy on his soul) had set to watch. And My Lady liked to see me
+coming and going, for she sent me every day to the prison; she did not
+once go herself."
+
+Sir Adrian drew a long breath. With the most delicate intuition of his
+master's thoughts, René avoided even a glance at him while he
+continued in as natural a tone as he could assume:
+
+"But the day after the old miss came, she, My Lady, told me to find
+out if he would see her. He said no; but that the only kindness any
+one could do him now would be to bring him Mademoiselle Madeleine, and
+let him speak to her once more. And My Lady, when she heard this, she
+started off that day with the old one to fetch Mademoiselle herself at
+Pulwick. And she left me behind, your honour, for I had a little plan
+there."
+
+René faltered and a crestfallen look crept upon his face.
+
+Sir Adrian remembered how before his departure for London his servant
+had cheerily assured him that Mr. the Captain would be safe out of the
+country long before he returned, "faith of him, René, who had already
+been in two prisons, and knew their ways, and how to contrive an
+escape, as his honour well knew." A sad smile parted his lips.
+
+"And so you failed, Renny," he said.
+
+"Ah, your honour, those satanic English turnkeys! With a Frenchman,
+the job had been done; but it is a bad thing to be in prison in
+England. His honour can vouch I have some brains. I had made plans--a
+hundred plans, but there was ever something that did not work. The
+captain, he too, was eager, as your honour can imagine. My faith, we
+thought and we thought, and we schemed and contrived, and in the end,
+there was only one thing to complete our plot--to bribe the jailer.
+Would your honour believe--it was only that one little difficulty. My
+Lady had given me a hundred guineas, I had enough money, your honour
+sees. But the man--I had smoked with him, drunk with him, ay, and made
+him drunk too, and I thought all was going well, but when I hinted to
+him what we wanted--Ah! he was a brute--I tell you I had hard work to
+escape the prison myself, and only for my leaving him with some of the
+money, I should now be pinched there too. I hardly dare show my face
+in the place any more. And my poor Lady builds on the hope, and Mr.
+the Captain--I had to tell him, he took it like an angel. Ah, the poor
+gentleman! He looked at me so brave and kind! 'I am as grateful, my
+poor friend, as if you had done it,' said he, 'and perhaps it is all
+for the best.' All for the best--ah, your honour!"
+
+René fairly broke down here, and wept on his sleeve. But Sir Adrian's
+eyes, circled and worn with watching and thought, shone dry with a far
+deeper grief, as, a few moments later, he passed along the street
+towards the walls of the castle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was in those days little difficulty in obtaining admission to a
+condemned prisoner; and, in the rear of the red-headed, good-tempered
+looking jailer--the same, he surmised, whose sternness in duty had
+baffled the Breton's simple wiles--he stepped out of the sweet morning
+sunshine into the long stone passages. The first tainted breath of the
+prison brought a chill to his blood and oppression to his lungs, and
+the gloom of the place enveloped him like a pall.
+
+With a rattle of keys a door dismally creaking on its hinges was swung
+back at last, and the visitor was ushered into the narrow cell, dark
+for all its whitewashed walls, where Captain Jack was spending his
+last hours upon earth. The hinges groaned again, the door slammed, and
+the key once more grated in the lock. Sir Adrian was alone with his
+friend.
+
+For a moment there was silence; the contraction of the elder man's
+heart had brought a giddiness to his brain, a dimness of his eyes,
+through which he was ill able to distinguish anything.
+
+But then there was a clank of fetters--ah, what a sound to connect
+with lucky Jack Smith, the gayest, freest, and most buoyant of men!
+And a voice cried:
+
+"Adrian!"
+
+It had a joyful ring, well-nigh the old hearty tones. It struck Adrian
+to the soul.
+
+He could have borne, he thought, to find his friend a broken man,
+changed out of all recognition, crushed by his misfortunes; but to
+find him the same, a little pale, indeed, and thinner, with a steady
+earnestness in the sea-blue eyes instead of the old dancing-light, but
+still gallant and undaunted, still radiating vigorous life and breezy
+energy by his very presence, this was a cruelty of fate which seemed
+unendurable.
+
+"I declare," the prisoner had continued, "I declare I thought you were
+only the incorruptible jailer taking his morning survey. They are
+desperately careful of me, Adrian, and watch me with maternal
+solicitude lest I should strangle myself with my chains, these pretty
+bracelets which I have had to wear ever since poor Renny was found
+out, or swallow my pillow--dash me! it's small enough--and spoil the
+pretty show for Saturday! Why, why, Adrian, old friend?"
+
+There was a sudden change of tone to the warmest concern, for Sir
+Adrian had staggered and would have fallen had not Jack, as nimbly as
+his fetters would allow him, sprung to support him and conduct him to
+the bed.
+
+A shaft of light struck through the tiny barred window on to the elder
+man's face, and showed it against the surrounding darkness deathly
+white and wet with anguish.
+
+"I have done all I could, Hubert," he murmured, in an extinguished
+voice, "but to no avail."
+
+"Ay, man, I guessed as much. But never fret for me, Adrian: I have
+looked death too often in the face to play the poltroon, now. I don't
+say it's the end I should have chosen for myself; but it is
+inevitable, and there is nothing, as you know, my friend, that a man
+cannot face if he knows it must be faced."
+
+The grasp of his strong warm hands, all manacled as they were, upon
+the other's nerveless clammy fingers, sent, more than the words,
+something of the speaker's own courage to his friend's wrung heart.
+And yet that very courage was an added torment.
+
+That from a community, so full of evil, feeble, harmful wretches, this
+noble soul, no matter how it had sinned, should be banished at the
+bidding of justice--what mockery of right was this? The world was out
+of joint indeed. He groaned aloud.
+
+"Nay, I'll have none of it," cried Jack. "Our last talk, Adrian, must
+not be spoiled by futile regrets. Yes, our last talk it is to be,
+for"--the prisoner's face became transfigured with a tenderness so
+exquisite that Adrian stared at its beauty, amazed--"I have begged
+her, Madeleine, to come and see me once more. I think she can be here
+to-day, at latest to-morrow. And after that I would not see any of
+those I love again, that I may fit myself to meet my God."
+
+He spoke with the utmost simplicity. Adrian bowed his head silently.
+Then averting his eyes, he said: "My wife has gone to Pulwick to fetch
+her."
+
+Captain Jack crimsoned. "That is kind," he answered, in a low voice;
+and, after a pause, pursued: "I hope you do not think it wrong of me
+to wish to see her. But you may trust me. I shall distress her as
+little as is possible in the circumstances. It is not, as you can
+fancy"--his face flushed again as he spoke--"to indulge in a pathetic
+parting scene, or beg from her sweet lips one last kiss--that would be
+too grossly selfish, and however this poor body of mine, so soon to be
+carrion, may yearn to hold her once more closely, these lips, so soon
+to touch death, shall touch hers no more. I have risen so far above
+this earthliness, that in so many hours I am to shake off for ever,
+that I can trust myself to meet her soul to soul. She must believe me
+now, and I would tell her, Adrian, that my deceit was not
+premeditated, and that the man she once honoured with her love is not
+the base wretch she deems. I think it may comfort her. If she does
+mourn for me at all--she has so proud a spirit, my princess, as I used
+to call her--it may comfort her to know that I was not all unworthy of
+the love she once gave me, of the tears she may yet give to its memory
+and mine."
+
+Sir Adrian pressed his hand, but again could not speak, and Captain
+Jack went on:
+
+"You will give her a happy home, will you not, till she has one of her
+own? You and your old dragon of an aunt, whose bark is so much worse
+than her bite, will watch and guard her. Ah, poor old lady! she is one
+of those that will not weep for Jack Smith, eh, Adrian? Well, well, I
+have had a happy life, barring one or two hard raps of fate, and when
+only I have seen Madeleine once more, I'll feel all taut for the port,
+though the passage there be a rough one."
+
+Sir Adrian turned his gaze with astonishment upon him. The sailor read
+his thoughts:
+
+"Don't think," he said, while a sudden shadow crossed his face, "don't
+think that I don't realise my position, that I have not had to fight
+my battle. In the beginning I had hopes; never in the success of
+your mission, but, absurd as it was, in Renny's scheme. The good
+fellow's own hopefulness was infectious, I believe. And when that
+fell through--well then, man, I just had to make up my mind to what
+was to be. It was a battle, as I told you. I have been in danger
+of death many a time upon the brave old _St. Nicholas_, and my
+_Cormorant_--death from the salt sea, from musket ball and cannon
+shot, fearful deaths of mangling and hacking. But death on the
+gallows, the shameful death of the criminal; to be hung; to be
+executed--Pah! Ay! it was a battle--two nights and one day I fought
+it. And I tell you, 'tis a hard thing to bring the living flesh and
+the leaping blood to submit to such as that. At first I thought
+indeed, it could not be borne, and I must reckon upon your or Renny's
+friendship for a secret speed. I should have had the pluck to starve
+myself if need be, only I am so damned strong and healthy, I feared it
+could not have been managed in the time. At any rate, I could have
+dashed my brains out against the wall--but I see it otherwise now. The
+prison chaplain, a good man, Adrian, has made me realise that it would
+be cowardly, that I should accept my sentence as atonement, as
+deserved--I _have_ deserved to die."
+
+It had been Sir Adrian's own thought; but he broke out now in
+inarticulate protest. It seemed too gross, too monstrous.
+
+"Yes, Adrian, I have. You warned me, good friend, in your peaceful
+room--ah, how long ago it seems now! that night, when all that could
+make life beautiful lay to my hand for the taking. Oh, man, why did I
+not heed you! You warned me: he who breaks one law will end by
+breaking many. You were right. See the harm I wreaked--those poor
+fellows, who were but doing their duty bravely, whose lives I
+sacrificed without remorse! Your brother, too, whose soul, with the
+most deliberate vindictiveness, I sent before its Maker, without an
+instant's preparation! A guilty soul it was; for he hounded me down,
+one would almost think for the sport of it.... God! when I think that,
+but for him, for his wanton interference--but there, the devils are
+loose again! I must not think on him. Do I not deserve my fate, if the
+Bible law be right? 'He who sheds blood, his blood shall be shed.'
+Never was sentence more just. I have sinned, I have repented; I am now
+ready to atone. I believe the sacrifice will be accepted."
+
+He laid his hand, for a minute, upon the Bible on the table, with a
+significant gesture.
+
+But Sir Adrian, the philosopher, though he could find no words to
+impeach the logic of his friend's reasoning, and was all astir with
+admiration for a resignation as perfect as either Christian or Stoic
+could desire, found his soul rising in tumultuous rebellion against
+the hideous decree. The longing that had beset him in the dawn, now
+seized upon him with a new passion, and the cry escaped his lips
+almost unwittingly:
+
+"Oh, if I could die for you!"
+
+"No, no," said Jack, with his sweet smile, "your life is too valuable,
+too precious to the world. Adrian, believe me, you can still do much
+good with it. And I know you will be happy yet."
+
+It was the only allusion he had made to his friend's more personal
+sorrows. Before the latter had time to reply, he hastened to proceed:
+
+"And now to business. All the gold entrusted to me lies at Scarthey
+and, faith, I believe it lies as weightily on my mind as if it was all
+stored there instead! Renny knows the secret hiding-place. Will you
+engage to restore it to its owners, in all privacy? This is a terribly
+arduous undertaking, Adrian, and it is asking much of your friendship;
+but if I know you, not too much. And it will enable my poor bones to
+lie at rest, or rather," with a rueful laugh, "hang at rest on their
+gibbet; for you know I am to be set up as a warning to other fools,
+like a rat on a barn door. I have, by the kindness of the chaplain,
+been able to write out a full schedule of the different sums, and to
+whom they are due. He has taken charge of the closed packet directed
+to you, and will give it to you intact, I feel sure. He is a man of
+honour, and I trust him to respect the confidence I have placed in
+him.... Egad! the poor old boys will be right glad to get their coin
+back in safety. A couple of them have been up here already, to
+interview me, in fear and trembling. They were hard set to credit me
+when I assured them that they would be no losers in the end, after
+all--barring the waiting. You see, I counted upon you."
+
+"I shall never rest until it is done," said Sir Adrian, simply. And
+Captain Jack as simply answered: "Thank you. Among the treasure there
+is also £10,000 of my own; the rest of my laboriously acquired fortune
+is forfeit to the Crown, as you know--much good may it do it! But this
+little hoard I give to you. You do not want it, of course, and
+therefore it is only to be yours that you may administrate it in
+accordance to my wishes. Another charge--but I make no apology. I wish
+you to divide it in three equal shares: two to be employed as you see
+best, for the widows and families of those poor fellows of the
+preventive service, victims of my venture; the third, as well as my
+beautiful _Peregrine_, I leave to the mate and men who served me so
+faithfully. They have fled with her, and must avoid England for some
+time. But Renny will contrive to hear of them; they are bound to
+return in secret for tidings, and I should like to feel that the
+misery I have left behind me may be mitigated.... And now, dear
+Adrian, that is all. The man outside grows impatient. I hear him
+shuffling his keys. Hark! there he knocks; the fellow has a certain
+rude feeling for me. An honest fellow. Dear Adrian, good-bye."
+
+"My God! this is hard--is there nothing else--nothing--can indeed all
+my friendship be of no further help?--Hubert!"
+
+"Hush, hush," cried Jack Smith hastily, "Adrian, you alone of all
+living beings now know me by that name. Never let it cross your lips
+again. I could not die in peace were it not for the thought that I
+bring no discredit upon it. My mother believes me dead--God in His
+mercy has spared me the crowning misery of bringing shame to her white
+hairs--shame to the old race. Hubert Cochrane died ten years ago.
+Jack Smith alone it is that dies by the hangman's hand. One other,"
+his voice softened and the hard look of pain left his face, "one other
+shall hear the secret besides you--but I know she will never speak of
+it, even to you--and such is my wish."
+
+It was the pride of race at its last and highest expression.
+
+There was the sound, without, of the key in the lock.
+
+"One last word--if you love me, nay, as you love me--do not be there
+on Saturday! This parting with you--the good-bye to her--that is my
+death. Afterwards what happens to this flesh," he struck at himself
+with his chained hands, "matters no more than what will happen to the
+soulless corpse. I know you would come to help me with the feeling of
+your love, your presence--but do not--do not--and now good-bye!"
+
+Adrian seized his friend by the hands with a despairing grip, the door
+rolled back with its dismal screech.
+
+The prisoner smiled at him with tender eyes. This man whom, all
+unwillingly he had robbed of his wife's heart, was broken with grief
+that he could not save the life that had brought him misery. Here was
+a friend to be proud of, even at the gate of death!
+
+"God be with you, dear Adrian! God bless you and your household, and
+your children, and your children's children! Hear my last words: _From
+my death will be born your happiness, and if its growth be slow, yet
+it will wax strong and sure as the years go by_."
+
+The words broke from him with prophetic solemnity; their hands fell
+apart, and Adrian, led by the jailer, stumbled forth blindly. Jack
+Smith stood erect, still smiling, watching them: were Adrian to turn
+he should find no weakness, no faltering for the final remembrance.
+
+But Adrian did not turn. And the door closed, closed upon hope and
+happiness and life, shut in shame and death. Out yonder, with Adrian,
+was the fresh bright world, the sea, the sunshine, the dear ones; here
+the prison smells, the gloom, the constraint, the inflicted dreadful
+death. All his hard-won calm fled from him; all his youth, his immense
+vitality woke up and cried out in him again. He raised his hands and
+pulled fiercely at his collar as if already the rope were round his
+neck strangling him. His blood hammered in his brain. God--God--it
+was impossible--it could not be--it was a dream!
+
+Beyond, from far distant in the street came the cry of a little child:
+
+"Da-da--daddy."
+
+The prisoner threw up his arms and then fell upon his face upon the
+bed, torn by sobs.
+
+Yes, Adrian would have children; but Hubert Cochrane, who, from the
+beautiful young brood that was to have sprung from his loins would
+have grafted on the old stock a fresh and noble tree, he was to pass
+barren out of life and leave no trace behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE ONE HE LOVED AND THE ONE WHO LOVED HIM
+
+
+On the evening of the previous day Lady Landale and her Aunt had
+arrived at Pulwick. The drive had been a dismal one to poor Miss
+O'Donoghue. Neither her angry expostulations, nor her tender
+remonstrances, nor her attempts at consolation could succeed in
+drawing a connected sentence from Molly, who, with a fever spot of red
+upon each cheek only roused herself from the depth of thought in which
+she seemed plunged to urge the coachman to greater speed. Miss
+O'Donoghue tried the whole gamut of her art in vain, and was obliged
+at last to desist from sheer weariness and in much anxiety.
+
+Madeleine and Sophia were seated by the fireside in the library when
+the unexpected travellers came in upon them. Sophia, in the blackest
+of black weeds, started guiltily up from the volume of "The Corsair,"
+in which she had been plunged, while Madeleine, without manifesting
+any surprise, rose placidly, laid aside her needlework--a coarse
+flannel frock, evidently destined for charity--and bestowed upon her
+sister and aunt an affectionate though unexpansive embrace.
+
+She had grown somewhat thinner and more thoughtful-looking since Molly
+and she had last met, on that fatal 15th of March, but otherwise was
+unchanged in her serene beauty. Molly clutched her wrist with a
+burning hand, and, paying not the slightest attention to the other
+two, nor condescending to any preamble, began at once, in hurried
+words to explain her mission.
+
+"He has asked for you, Madeleine," she cried, her eyes flaming with
+unnatural brilliance as they sought her sister's mild gaze. "He has
+asked for you, I will take you back with me, to-morrow, not later than
+to-morrow. Don't you understand?" shaking her impatiently as she held
+her, "he is in prison, condemned to death, he has asked for you, he
+wants to see you. On Saturday--on Saturday----" Something clicked in
+her throat, and she raised her hand to it with an uneasy gesture, one
+that those who surrounded her had grown curiously familiar with of
+late.
+
+Madeleine drew away from her at this address, the whole fair calm of
+her countenance troubled like a placid pool by the casting of a stone.
+Clasping her hands and looking down: "I saw that the unfortunate man
+was condemned," she said. "I have prayed for him daily, I trust he
+repents. I am truly sorry for him. From my heart I forgive him the
+deception he practised upon me. But----" a slight shudder shook her,
+"I could not see him again--surely you could not wish it of me."
+
+She spoke with such extreme gentleness that for a minute the woman
+before her, in the seething turmoil of her soul, failed to grasp the
+meaning of her words.
+
+"You could not go!" she repeated in a bewildered way, "I could not
+wish it of you--!" then with a sort of shriek which drew Tanty and
+Miss Sophia hurriedly towards her, "Don't you understand--on
+Saturday--if it all fails, they will hang him?"
+
+"A-ah!" exclaimed Madeleine with a movement as if to ward off the
+sound--the cry, the gesture expressive, not of grief, but of shrinking
+repugnance. But after a second, controlling herself:
+
+"And what should that be now, sister, to you or to me?" she said
+haughtily.
+
+Lady Landale clapped her hands together.
+
+"And this is the woman he loves!" she cried with a shrill laugh. And
+she staggered, and sank back upon a chair in an attitude of utter
+prostration.
+
+"Molly, Molly," exclaimed her sister reprovingly, while she glanced in
+much distress at Miss O'Donoghue, "you are not yourself; you do not
+know what you are saying."
+
+"Remember," interposed Sophia in tragic tones, "that you are speaking
+of the murderer of my beloved brother." Then she dissolved in tears,
+and was obliged to hide her countenance in the folds of a vast
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Killing vermin is not murder!" cried Molly fiercely, awakening from
+her torpor.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue, who in the most unwonted silence had been watching
+the scene with her shrewd eyes, here seized the horrified Sophia by
+the elbow and trundled her, with a great deal of energy and
+determination, to the door.
+
+"Get out of this, you foolish creature," she said in a stern whisper,
+"and don't attempt to show your nose here again till I give it leave
+to walk in!" Then returning to the sisters, and looking from Molly's
+haggard, distracted face to Madeleine's pale one: "If you take my
+advice, my dear," she said, a little drily, to the latter, "you will
+not make so many bones about going to see that poor lad in the prison,
+and you'll stop wrangling with your sister, for she is just not able
+to bear it. We shall start to-morrow, Molly," turning to Lady Landale,
+and speaking in the tone of one addressing a sick child, "and
+Madeleine will be quite ready as early as you wish."
+
+"My dear aunt," said Madeleine, growing white to the lips, "I am very
+sorry if Molly is ill, but you are quite mistaken if you think I can
+yield to her wishes in this matter. I could not go; I could not; it is
+impossible!"
+
+"Hear her," cried the other, starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you
+made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"--her
+voice broke into a wail--"you who ought to be so proud to know he
+loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him,
+refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing
+the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never loved
+him. You don't even understand what it is to love.... But what could
+one expect from you, who abandoned him in the moment of danger. You
+are afraid; afraid of the painful scene, the discomfort, the sight of
+the prison, of his beautiful face worn and changed--afraid of the
+discredit. Oh! I know you, I know you. But mind you, Madeleine de
+Savenaye, he wishes to see you, and I swore you would go to him, and
+you shall go, if I have to drag you with these hands of mine."
+
+Her grip was so fierce, her eyes so savage, the words so strange, that
+Madeleine screamed faintly, "She is mad!" and was amazed that Miss
+O'Donoghue did not rush to the rescue!
+
+But Miss O'Donoghue, peering at her from the depths of her arm-chair,
+merely said snappishly: "Ah, child, can't you say you will go, and
+have done! Oughtn't you to be ashamed to be so hard-hearted?" and
+mopped her perspiring and agitated countenance with her kerchief. Then
+upon the girl's bewildered mind dawned a glimmer of the truth; and,
+blushing to the roots of her hair, she looked at her sister with a
+growing horror.
+
+"Oh, Molly, Molly!" she said again, with a sort of groan.
+
+"Will you go?" cried Molly from between her set teeth.
+
+Again the girl shuddered.
+
+"Less than ever--now," she murmured. And as Molly threw her from her,
+almost with violence, she covered her face with her hands and fell,
+weeping bitter tears, upon the couch behind her.
+
+Lady Landale, with great steps, stormed up and down the room, her eyes
+fixed on space, her lips moving; now and again a word escaped her
+then, sometimes hurled at her sister, sometimes only in desperate
+communing with herself.
+
+"Base, cowardly, mean! Oh, my God, cruel--cruel! To go back without
+her."
+
+After a little, with a sudden change of mood, she halted and stood a
+while, as if in deep reflection, holding her hand to her head, then
+crossing the room hurriedly, she knelt down, and flung her arms round
+the weeping figure.
+
+"_Ma petite Madeleine_," she said in a voice of the most piteous
+pleading, "thou and I, we were always good friends; thou canst not
+have the heart to be so cruel to me now. See, my darling, he must die,
+they say--oh, Madeleine, Madeleine! And he asked for you. The one
+thing, he told René, the only thing we could do for him on earth was
+to let him see you once more. My little sister, you cannot refuse: he
+loves you. What has he done to offend you? Your pride cannot forgive
+him for being what he is, I suppose; yet such as he is you should be
+proud of him. He is too noble, too straightforward to have
+intentionally deceived you. If he did wrong, it was for love of you.
+Madeleine, Madeleine!"
+
+Her tones trailed away into a moan.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue sobbed loudly from her corner. Madeleine, who had
+looked at her sister at first with repulsion, seemed moved; she
+placed her hands upon her shoulders, and gazed sadly into the flushed
+face.
+
+"My poor Molly," she said hesitatingly, "this is dreadful! But I
+too--I too was led into deceit, into folly." She blushed painfully. "I
+would not blame you; it was not your fault that you were carried away
+in his ship. You went only for my sake: I cannot forget that. Yet that
+he should have this unhappy power over you too, you with your good
+husband, you a married woman, oh, my poor sister, it is terrible! He
+is a wicked man; I pray that he may yet repent."
+
+"Heavens," interrupted Molly, her passion up in arms again, loosening
+as she spoke her clasp upon her sister, and rising to her feet to look
+down on her with withering scorn, "have I not made myself clear? Are
+you deaf, stupid, as well as heartless? It is you--you--_you_ he
+loves, _you_ he wants. What am I to him?" with a curious sob, half of
+laughter, half of anguish. "Your pious fears are quite unfounded as
+far as he is concerned--the wicked man, as you call him! Oh, he spurns
+my love with as much horror as even you could wish!"
+
+"Molly!"
+
+"Ay--Molly, and Molly--how shocked you are! Yes, I love him, I don't
+care who hears it. I love him--Adrian knows--he is not as virtuous as
+you, evidently, for Adrian pities me. He is doing all he can, though
+they say it is in vain, to get a reprieve for him--though I _do_ love
+him! While you--you are too good, too immaculate even to soil your
+dainty foot upon the floor of his prison, that floor that I could kiss
+because his shoe has trod it. But it is impossible! no human being
+could be so hard, least of all you, whom I have seen turn sick at the
+sight of a dead worm--Madeleine----!"
+
+Crouching down in the former imploring manner, while her breast heaved
+with dry tearless sobs: "It cannot hurt you, you who loved him." And
+then with the old pitiful cry, "it is the only thing he wants, and he
+loves you."
+
+Madeleine disengaged herself from the clinging hands with a gesture
+almost of disgust.
+
+"Listen to me," she said, after a pause, "try and compose yourself and
+understand. All this month I have had time to think, to realise, to
+pray. I have seen what the world is worth, that it is full of horror,
+of sin, of trouble, of dreadful dissensions--that its sorrow far
+outweighs its happiness. I _have_ suffered," her pretty lips quivered
+an instant, but she hardened herself and went on, "but it is better
+so--it was God's will, it was to show me where to find real comfort,
+the true peace. I have quite made up my mind. I was only waiting to
+see you again and tell you--next week I am going back to the convent
+for ever. Oh, why did we leave it, Molly, why did we leave it!" She
+broke down, and the tears gushed from her eyes.
+
+Lady Landale had listened in silence.
+
+"Well--is that all?" she said impatiently, when her sister ceased
+speaking, while in the background Tanty groaned out a protest, and
+bewailed that she was alive to see the day. "What does it matter what
+you do afterwards--you can go to the convent--go where you will then;
+but what has that to say to your visit to _him_ now?"
+
+"I have done with all human love," said Madeleine solemnly, crossing
+her hands on her breast, and looking upward with inspired eyes. "I did
+love this man once," she answered, hardening herself to speak firmly,
+though again her lips quivered--"he himself killed that love by his
+own doing. I trusted him; he betrayed that trust; he would have
+betrayed me, but that I have forgiven, it is past and done with. But
+to go and see him now, to stir up in my heart, not the old love, it
+could not be, but agitation, sorrow--to disturb this quietness of
+soul, this calm which God has given me at last after so much prayer
+and struggle--no, no--it would not be right, it cannot be! Moreover,
+if I would, I could not, indeed I could not. The very thought of it
+all, the disgrace, that place of sin and shame, of him in chains,
+condemned--a criminal--a murderer!..."
+
+A nervous shudder shook her from head to foot, she seemed in truth to
+sicken and grow faint, like one forced to face some hideous nauseating
+spectacle. "As for him," she went on in low, feeble tones, "it will be
+the best too. God knows I forgive him, that I am sorry for him, that I
+regret his terrible fate. But I feel it would be worse for him to see
+me--if he must die, it would be wrong to distract him from his last
+preparations. And it would only be a useless pain to him, for I could
+not pretend--he would see that I despise him. I thought I loved a
+noble gentleman, not one who was even then playing with crime and
+cheating."
+
+The faint passionless voice had hardly ceased before, with a loud cry,
+Molly sprang at her sister as if she would have strangled her.
+
+"Oh, unnatural wretch," she exclaimed, "you are not fit to live!"
+
+Tanty rushed forward and dragged the infuriated woman away.
+
+Madeleine rose up stiffly--swayed a moment as she stood--and then fell
+unconscious to the ground.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next day in the dawn Lady Landale came into her sister's bedroom. Her
+circled eyes, her drawn face bespeaking a sleepless night.
+
+Madeleine was lying, beautiful and white, like a broken lily, in the
+dim light of the lamp; Sophia, an unlovely spectacle in curl papers,
+wizened and red-eyed from her night's watch, looked up warningly from
+the arm-chair beside her. But Molly went unhesitatingly to the window,
+pulled the curtains, unbarred the shutters, and then walked over to
+the bed.
+
+As she approached, Madeleine opened her blue eyes and gazed at her
+beseechingly.
+
+"There is yet time," said Molly in a hollow voice. "Get up and come
+with me."
+
+The wan face upon the pillow grew whiter still, the old horror grew in
+the uplifted eyes, the wan lips murmured, "I cannot."
+
+There was an immense strength of resistance in the girl's very
+feebleness.
+
+Molly turned away abruptly, then back again once more.
+
+"At least you will send him a message?"
+
+Madeleine drew a deep breath, closed her eyes a moment and seemed to
+whisper a prayer; then aloud she said, while, like a shadow so faint
+was it, a flush rose to her cheeks:
+
+"Tell him that I forgive him, that I forgive him freely--that I shall
+always pray for him." The flush grew deeper. "Tell him too that I
+shall never be any man's bride, now."
+
+She closed her eyes again and the colour slowly ebbed away. Molly
+stood, her black brows drawn, gazing down upon her in silence.--Did
+she love him after all? Who can fathom the mystery of another's heart?
+
+"I will tell him," she answered at last. "Good-bye, Madeleine--I shall
+never see you or speak to you again as long as I live."
+
+She left the room with a slow, heavy step.
+
+Madeleine shivered, and with both hands clasped the silver crucifix
+that hung around her neck; two great tears escaped from her black
+lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Miss Sophia moaned. She, poor soul,
+had had tragedy enough, at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the jailer brought in the mid-day meal after Adrian's departure,
+he found the prisoner seated very quietly at his table, his open Bible
+before him, but his eyes fixed dreamily upon the space of dim
+whitewashed wall, and his mind evidently far away.
+
+Upon his guardian's entrance he roused himself, however, and begged
+him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the
+bed and to assist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to
+be spick and span.
+
+"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.
+
+When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the
+surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.
+
+The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to
+deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street
+noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled,
+all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day
+struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor
+delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess
+his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell
+after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she
+did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of
+this.
+
+The afternoon had waned--golden without, full of grey shadows in the
+prison room--when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy
+tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing passage.
+
+There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and
+the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and
+closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before,
+the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.
+
+His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was
+impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with
+outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall
+by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.
+
+The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's
+brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out
+of the black frame.
+
+An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.
+
+"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern
+demand, "_Madeleine!_"
+
+"I went for her, I went for her myself--I did all I could--she would
+not come."
+
+_She would not come!_
+
+It is a sort of unwritten law that the supremely afflicted have the
+right, where possible, to the gratification of the least of their
+wishes. That Madeleine could refuse to come to him in his last
+extremity, had never once crossed her lover's brain. He stood
+bewildered.
+
+"She is not ill?"
+
+"Ill!" Lady Landale's red lips curved in scorn, "No--not ill--but a
+coward!" She spat the word fiercely as if at the offender's face.
+
+There fell a minute's silence, broken only by a few labouring
+deep-drawn breaths from the prisoner's oppressed lungs. Then he stood
+as if turned to stone, not a muscle moving, his eyes fixed, his jaw
+set.
+
+Molly trembled before this composure, beneath which she divined a
+suffering so intense that her own frail barriers of self-restraint
+were well-nigh broken down by a torrent of passionate pity.
+
+But she braced herself with the feeling of the moment's urgency. She
+had no time to lose.
+
+"Hear me," she cried in low hurried tones, laying a hand upon his
+folded arm and then drawing it away again as if frightened by the
+rigid tension she felt there. "Waste no more thought on one so
+unworthy--all is not lost--I bring you hope, life. Oh, for God's
+sake, wake up and listen to me--I can save you still. Captain Smith,
+Jack--_Jack!_"
+
+Her voice rose as high as she dare lift it, but no statue could be
+more unhearing.
+
+The woman cast a desperate look around her; hearkened fearfully, all
+was silent within the prison; then with tremulous haste she cast off
+her immense cloak, pulled her bonnet from her head, divested herself
+of her long full skirt and stood, a strange vision, lithe,
+unconscious, unashamed, her slender woman's figure clad in complete
+man's raiment, with the exception of the coat. Her dark head cropped
+and curly, her face, with its fever-bloom, rising flower-like above
+the folds of her white shirt.
+
+With anxious haste she compared herself with the prisoner.
+
+"René told me well," she said; "with your coat upon me none would tell
+the difference in this dark room. I am nearly as tall as you too.
+Thanks be to God that he made me so. _Jack_," calling in his ear,
+"don't you see? Don't you understand? It is all quite easy. You have
+only to put on these clothes of mine, this cloak, the bonnet comes
+quite over the face; stoop a little as you go out and hold this
+handkerchief to your face as if in tears. The carriage waits outside
+and René. The rest is planned. I shall sit on the bed with your coat
+on. It is a chance--a certainty. When I found René had failed, I swore
+that I would save you yet. Ever since I came from Pulwick this morning
+he and I have worked together upon this last plan. There is not a
+flaw; it must succeed. Oh, God, he does not hear me! Jack--Jack!"
+
+She shook him with a sort of fury, then, falling at his feet, clasped
+his knees.
+
+"For God's sake--for God's sake!"
+
+He sighed, and again came the murmur:
+
+"She would not come----" He lifted his hand to his forehead and looked
+round, then down at her, as if from a great height.
+
+She saw that he was aroused at last, sprang to her feet, and poured
+out the details of the scheme again.
+
+"I run no risk, you see. They would not dare to punish me, a
+woman--Lady Landale--even if they could. Be quick, the precious
+moments are going by. I gave the man some gold to leave us as long as
+he could, but any moment he may be upon us."
+
+"Poor woman," said Jack, and his voice seemed as far off as his gaze;
+"see these chains."
+
+She staggered back an instant, but the next, crying:
+
+"The file--the file--that was why René gave it to me." She seized the
+skirt as it lay at her feet, and, striving with agonised endeavours to
+control the trembling of her hands, drew forth from its pocket a file
+and would have taken his wrist. But he held his hands above his head,
+out of her reach, while a strange smile, almost of triumph, parted his
+lips.
+
+"The bitterness of death is past," he said.
+
+She tore at him in a frenzy, but, repulsed by his immobility, fell
+again broken at his feet.
+
+In a torrent of words she besought him, for Adrian's sake, for the
+sake of the beautiful world, of his youth, of the sweetness of
+life--in her madness, at last, for her own sake! She had ruined him,
+but she would atone, she would make him happy yet. If he died it was
+death to her....
+
+When at length her voice sank away from sheer exhaustion, he helped
+her to rise, and seated her on the chair; then told her quietly that
+he was quite determined.
+
+"Go home," said he, "and leave me in peace. I thank you for what you
+would have done, thank you for trying to bring Madeleine," he paused a
+moment. How purely he had loved her--and twice, twice she had failed
+him. "Yet, I do not blame her," he went on as if to himself; "I did
+not deserve to see her, and it has made all the rest easy. Remember,"
+again addressing the woman whom hopelessness seemed for a moment to
+have benumbed, "that if you would yet do me a kindness, be kind to
+her. If you would atone--atone to Adrian."
+
+"To Adrian?" echoed Molly, stung to the quick, with a pale smile of
+exceeding bitterness. And with a rush of pride, strength returned to
+her.
+
+"I leave you resolved to die then?" she asked him, fiercely.
+
+"You leave me glad to die," he replied, unhesitatingly.
+
+She spoke no more, but got up to replace her garments. He assisted her
+in silence, but as his awkward bound hands touched her she shuddered
+away from him.
+
+As she gathered the cloak round her shoulders again, there was a noise
+of heavy feet at the door.
+
+The jailer thrust in his rusty head and looked furtively from the
+prisoner to his visitor as they stood silently apart from each other;
+then, making a sign to some one whose dark figure was shadowed behind
+him without, entered with a hesitating sidelong step, and, drawing
+Captain Jack on one side, whispered in his ear.
+
+"The blacksmith's yonder. He's come to measure you, captain, for them
+there irons you know of--best get the lady quietly away, for he wunnut
+wait no longer."
+
+The prisoner smiled sternly.
+
+"I am ready," he said, aloud.
+
+"I'll keep him outside a minute or two," added the man, wiping his
+brow, evidently much relieved by his charge's calmness. "I kep' him
+back as long as I could--but happen it's allus best to hurry the
+parting after all."
+
+He moved away upon tiptoe, in instinctive tribute to the lady's
+sorrow, and drew the door to.
+
+Molly threw back her veil which she had lowered upon his entrance, her
+face was livid.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, articulating with difficulty.
+
+"Nothing--a fellow to see to my irons."
+
+He moved his hands as he spoke, and she understood him, as he had
+hoped, to refer only to his manacles.
+
+She drew a gasping breath. How they watched him! Yet all was not lost
+after all.
+
+"I will leave the file," she said, in a quick whisper; "you will
+reflect; there is yet to-morrow," and rushed to hide it in his bed.
+But he caught her by the arm, his patience worn out at length.
+
+"Useless," he answered, harshly. "I shall not use it. Moreover, it
+would be found, and I am sure it is not your wish to bring unnecessary
+hardship upon my last moments. I should lose the only thing that is
+left to me, the comfort of being alone. And to-morrow I shall see no
+one."
+
+The door groaned apart:
+
+"Very sorry, mum," came the husky voice in the opening, "Time's up."
+
+She turned a look of agony upon Captain Jack's determined figure. Was
+this to be the end? Was she to leave him so, without even one kind
+word?
+
+Alas, poor soul! All her hopes had fallen to this--a parting word.
+
+He was unpitying; his arms were folded; he made no sign.
+
+She took a step away and swayed; the turnkey came forward
+compassionately to lead her out. But the next instant she wheeled
+round and stood alone and erect, braced up by the extremity of her
+anguish.
+
+"I _have_ a message," she cried, as if the words were forced from her.
+"I could not make her come, but I made her send you a message. She
+told me to say that she forgave you, freely; that she would always
+pray for you. She bade me tell you too that she would never be any
+man's bride now."
+
+It had been like the rending of body and soul to tell him this. As she
+saw the condemned man's face quiver and flush at last out of its
+impassiveness, she thought hell itself could hold no more hideous
+torment.
+
+He extended his arms:
+
+"Now welcome death!" he exclaimed.
+
+And she turned and fled down the passage as though driven upon this
+last cry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"E-h, he be a strange one!" said the jailer afterwards to his mate.
+"If ye'd heard that poor lady sob as she went by! I've seen many a one
+in the same case, but I was sore for her, I was that. And he--as
+cool--joking with Robert over the hanging irons the next minute. 'New
+sort of tailor I've got,' says he. 'Make them smart,' he says, 'since
+I'm to wear them in so exalted a position.' So exalted a position,
+that's what he says. 'And they've got to last me some long time, you
+know,' says he."
+
+"He'll be something worth looking at on Saturday. I could almost wish
+he could ha' got off, only that it's a fine sight to see a real
+gentleman go through it. Ah, it's they desperate villains has the
+proper pluck!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+LAUNCHED ON THE GREAT WAVE
+
+
+Sir Adrian made, at first personally, then through Miss O'Donoghue,
+two attempts to induce his wife to return to Pulwick, or at any rate
+to leave Lancaster on the next day. But the contempt, then the fury,
+which she opposed to their reasoning rendered it worse than useless.
+
+The very sight of her husband, indeed, seemed to exasperate the
+unfortunate woman to such a degree that, in spite of his anxiety
+concerning her, he resolved to spare her even to the consciousness of
+his presence, and absented himself altogether from the house.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue, unable to cope with a state of affairs at once so
+distressing and so unbecoming, finally retired to her own apartment
+with a book of piety and some gruel, and abandoned all further
+endeavour to guide her unruly relations. So that Molly found herself
+left to her own resources, in the guardianship of René, the only
+company her misery could tolerate.
+
+Three times she went to the castle, to be met each time with the
+announcement that, by the express wish of the prisoner, no visitors
+were to be admitted to him again. Then in restless wandering about the
+streets--once entering the little chapel where the silent tabernacle
+seemed, with its closed door, to offer no relenting to the stormy cry
+of her soul, and sent her forth uncomforted in the very midst of
+René's humble bead-telling, to pace the flags anew--so the terrible
+day wore to a close for her; and so that night came, precursor of the
+most terrible day of all.
+
+The exhaustion of Lady Landale's body produced at last a fortunate
+torpor of mind. Flung upon her bed she fell into a heavy sleep, and
+Tanty who announced her intention of watching her, when René's
+guardianship had of necessity to cease, had the satisfaction of
+informing Adrian, as he crept into the house, like one who had no
+business there, of this consoling fact before retiring herself to the
+capacious arm-chair in which she heroically purposed to spend the
+night.
+
+The sun was bright in the heavens, there was a clatter and bustle in
+the street, when Molly woke with a great start out of this sleep of
+exhaustion. Her heart beating with heavy strokes, she sat up in bed
+and gazed upon her surroundings with startled eyes. What was this
+strange feeling of oppression, of terror? Why was she in this sordid
+little room? Why was her hair cut short? Ah, my God! memory returned
+upon her all too swiftly. It was for to-day--_to-day_; and she was
+perhaps too late. She might never see him again!
+
+The throbbing of her heart was suffocating, sickening, as she slipped
+out of bed. For a moment she hardly dared consult the little watch
+that lay ticking upon her dressing table. It was only a few minutes
+past seven; there was yet time.
+
+The energy of her desire conquered the weakness of her overwrought
+nerves.
+
+Noiselessly, so as to avoid awakening the slumbering watcher in the
+arm-chair, but steadily, she clothed herself, wrapt the dark mantle
+round her; and then, pausing for a moment to gaze with a fierce
+disdain at the unconscious face of Miss O'Donoghue, which, with snores
+emerging energetically and regularly from the great hooked nose,
+presented a weird and witchlike vision in the frame of a nightcap,
+fearfully and wonderfully befrilled, crept from the room and down the
+stairs.
+
+At René's door she paused and knocked.
+
+He opened on the instant. From his worn face she guessed that he had
+been up all night. He put his finger to his lips as he saw her, and
+glanced meaningly towards the bed.
+
+The words she would have spoken expired in a quick-drawn breath. Her
+husband, with face of deathlike pallor and silvered hair abroad upon
+the pillow, lay upon the poor couch, still in his yesterday attire,
+but covered carefully with a cloak. His breast rose and fell
+peacefully with his regular breath.
+
+The scorn with which she had looked at Miss O'Donoghue now shot forth
+a thousand times intensified from Molly's circled eyes upon the
+prostrate figure.
+
+"Asleep!" she cried.
+
+And then with that incongruity with which things trivial and
+irrelevant come upon us, even in the supremest moments of life, the
+thought struck her sharply how old a man he was. Her lip curved.
+
+"Yes, My Lady--asleep," answered René steadily--it seemed as if the
+faithful peasant had read her to her soul. "Thank God, asleep. It is
+enough to have to lose one good gentleman from the world this day. If
+his honour were not sleeping at last, I should not answer for him--I
+who speak to you. I took upon myself to put some of the medicine, that
+he has had to take now and again, when his sorrows come upon him and
+he cannot rest, into his soup last night. It has had a good effect.
+His honour will sleep three or four hours still, and that, My Lady,
+must be. His honour has suffered enough these last days, God knows!"
+
+The wife turned away with an impatient gesture.
+
+"Look, Madame, at his white hairs. All white now--they that were of a
+brown so beautiful, all but a few locks, only a few months past! Well
+may he look old. When was ever any one made to suffer as he has been,
+in only forty years of life? Ah, My Lady, we were at least tranquil
+upon our island!"
+
+There was a volume of reproach in the quiet simplicity of the words,
+though Lady Landale was too bent on her own purpose to heed them. But
+she felt that they lodged in her mind, that she would find them there
+later; but not now--not now.
+
+"It is to be for nine o'clock, you know," she said, with desperate
+calmness. "I must see him again. I must see him well. Alone I shall
+not be able to get a good place in the crowd. Oh, I would see all!"
+she added, with a terrible laugh.
+
+René cast a glance at his master's placid face.
+
+"I am ready to come with My Lady," he said then, and took his hat.
+
+A turbulent, tender April day it was. Gusts of west wind, balmy and
+sweet with all the sweet budding life of the fields beyond, came
+eddying up the dusty streets and blowing merrily into the faces of the
+holiday crowd that already pressed in a steady stream towards the
+castle courtyard to see the hanging. In those days there were hangings
+so many after assizes that an execution could hardly be said to
+possess the interest of novelty. But there were circumstances enough
+attending the forthcoming show to give it quite a piquancy of its own
+in the eyes of the worthy Lancastrian burghers, who hurried with wives
+and children to the place of doom, anxious to secure sitting or
+standing room with a good view of the gallows-tree.
+
+It was not every day, indeed, that a _gentleman_ was hanged. So
+handsome a man, too, as the rumours went, and so dare-devil a fellow;
+friend of the noble family of Landale, and a murderer of its most
+respected member. Could justice ever have served up a spicier dish
+whereon to regale the multitude?
+
+First the courtyard, then, the walls, the roofs of the adjoining
+houses, swarmed with an eager crowd. Every space of ground and slate
+and tile, every ledge and window, was occupied. As thick as bees they
+hung--men, women, and children; a sea of white faces pressed together,
+each still, yet all as instinct with tremulous movement as a field of
+corn in the wind; while the hoarse, indescribable murmur that seizes
+one with so strange and fearsome an impression, the voice of the
+multitude, rose and fell with a mighty pulsation, broken here and
+there by the shriller cry of a child.
+
+Overhead the sky, a delicious spring blue sky, flecked with tiny white
+clouds, looked down like a great smile upon the crowd that laughed and
+joked beneath.
+
+No pity in heaven or on earth.
+
+But as the felon came out into the air, which, warm and fickle, puffed
+against his cheek, he cast one steady glance around upon the black
+human hive and then looked up into the white flecked ether, without
+the quiver of a nerve.
+
+He drew the spring breath into his lungs with a grateful expansion of
+his deep chest. How fresh it was! And the sky, how fair and blue!
+
+As the eagerly expected group emerged from the prison door and was
+greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart
+there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her
+knees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws,
+ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her attention upon the
+condemned man.
+
+The creature was well known for miles around as a constant attendant
+at such spectacles, and had become in the course of time a privileged
+spectator. No one would have dreamt of disputing the first place to
+old Judy. Since the day when, still a young woman, she had seen her
+two sons, mere lads, hanged, the one for sheep-stealing, the other for
+harbouring the booty, she had, by a strange freak of nature, taken a
+taste for the spectacle of justice at work, and what had been the
+cause of her greatest sorrow became the only solace of her life. Judy
+and her pipe had become as familiar a figure at the periodical
+entertainment as the executioner himself--more so, indeed, for she had
+seen many generations of these latter, and could compare their styles
+with the judgment of a connoisseur.
+
+But as Captain Jack advanced, the pallor of his clean shorn, handsome
+face illumined not so much by the morning sun without it seemed as by
+the shining of the bright spirit within; as gallantly clad as he had
+ever been, even in the old Bath days when he had been courting fair
+Madeleine de Savenaye; his head proudly uplifted, his tread firm,
+strong of soul, strong of body--some chord was struck in the perverted
+old heart that had so long revelled in unholy and gruesome pleasure.
+She drew the pipe from her lips, and broke out into screeching
+lamentations.
+
+"Oh, me boy, me boy, me beautiful boy! Is it hang him they will, and
+he so beautiful and brave? The murthering villains, my curse on
+them--a mother's curse--God's curse on them--the black murtherers!"
+
+She scrambled to her feet, and shook her fist wildly in the face of
+one of the sheriff's men.
+
+A woman in the crowd, standing rigid and motionless, enveloped in
+mourning robes, here suddenly caught up the words with a muttering
+lip.
+
+"Murderers, who said murderers? Don't they know who murdered him?
+Murdering Moll, Murdering Moll!"
+
+"For heaven's love, Madam," cried a man beside her, who seemed in such
+anxiety concerning her as to pay little heed to the solemn procession
+which was now attracting universal attention, "let me take you away!"
+
+But she looked at him with a distraught, unseeing eye, and pulled at
+the collar of her dress as if she were choking.
+
+Old Judy's sudden expression of opinion created a small disturbance.
+The procession had to halt; a couple of officials good-naturedly
+elbowed her on one side.
+
+But she thrust a withered hand expanded in protest over their
+shoulders, as the prisoner came forward again.
+
+"God bless ye, honey, God bless ye: it's a wicked world."
+
+He turned towards her; for the last time the old sweet smile sprang to
+lip and eye.
+
+"Thank you, mother," he said, and raised his hand to his bare head
+with courteous gesture.
+
+The crowd howled and swayed. He passed on.
+
+And now the end! There is the cart; the officers draw back to make way
+for the man who is to help him with his final toilet. The chaplain,
+too, falls away after wringing his hand again and again. Good man, he
+weeps and cannot speak the sacred words he would. Why weep? We must
+all die! How blue the sky is: he will look once more before drawing
+down the cap upon his eyes. His hands are free, for he is to die as
+like a gentleman as may be. Just the old blue that used to smile down
+at him upon his merry _Peregrine_, and up at him from the dancing
+waves. He had always thought he would have liked to die upon the sea,
+in the cool fresh water ... a clean, brave death.
+
+It is hard to die in a crowd. Even the very beasts would creep into
+cave or bush to die decently--unwatched.
+
+A last puff of sweeping wind in his face; then darkness, blind,
+suffocating....
+
+Ah, God is good! Here is the old ship giving and rising under his feet
+like the living creature he always thought her, and here is dazzling
+brilliant sunshine all around, so bright he scarce can see the free
+white-crested waves that are dashing down upon him; but he is upon the
+sea indeed, upon the sea alone, and the waves are coming. Hark how
+they roar, see how they gather! The brave _Peregrine_ she dips and
+springs, she will weather the breakers with him at the helm no matter
+how they rear. On, on they come, mountain high, overwhelming, bitter
+drenching.
+
+A great wave in very truth, it gathers and breaks and onward rolls,
+and carries the soul of Hubert Cochrane with it.
+
+The woman in the black cloak falls as if she had been struck, and as
+those around her draw apart to let her companion and another man lift
+her and carry her away, they note with horror that her face is dark
+and swollen, as if the cord that had just done its evil work yonder
+had been tightened also round her slender throat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE GIBBET ON THE SANDS
+
+    Woman! take up thy life once more
+    Where thou hast left it;
+    Nothing is changed for thee, thou art the same,
+    Thou who didst think that all things
+    Would be wholly changed for thee.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+Pulwick again. The whirlwind of disaster that upon that fatal
+fifteenth of March had burst upon the house of Landale has passed and
+swept away. But it has left deep trace of its passage.
+
+The restless head, the busy hand, the scheming brain of Rupert Landale
+lie now mouldering under the sod of the little churchyard where first
+they started the mischief that was to have such far reaching effects.
+Low, too, lies the proud head of the mistress of Pulwick, so stricken,
+indeed, so fever-tortured, that those who love her best scarce dare
+hope more for her than rest at last under the same earth that presses
+thus lightly above her enemy's eternal sleep.
+
+There is a great stillness in the house. People go to and fro with
+muffled steps, the master with bent white head; Miss O'Donoghue,
+indefatigable sick nurse; Madeleine, who may not venture as far as the
+threshold of her sister's room, and awaits in prayer and tears the
+hour of that final bereavement which will free her to take wing
+towards the cloister for which her soul longs; Sophia, crushed finally
+by the sorrows she has played at all her days. Seemingly there is
+peace once more upon them all, but it is the peace of exhaustion
+rather than that of repose. And yet--could they but know it, as the
+sands run down in the hour-glass of time there are golden grains
+gathering still to drop into the lives of each.
+
+But meanwhile none may read the future, and Molly fights for her life
+in the darkened room, the gloom of which, to the souls of the dwellers
+at Pulwick, seems to spread even to the sunny skies without.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Lady Landale was brought back to her home from Lancaster, it was
+held by every one who saw her that Death had laid his cold finger on
+her forehead, and that her surrender to his call could only be a
+matter of hours.
+
+The physician in attendance could point out no reasonable ground for
+hope. Such a case had never come within his experience or knowledge,
+and he was with difficulty induced to believe that it was not the
+result of actual violence.
+
+"In every particular," said he, "the patient's symptoms are those of
+coma resulting from prolonged strangulation or asphyxia. These
+spectacles are very dangerous to highly sensitive organisations. Lady
+Landale no doubt felt for the miserable wretch in the benevolence of
+her heart. Imagination aiding her, she realised suddenly the horror of
+his death throes, and this vivid realisation was followed by the
+actual simulacrum of the torture. We have seen hysterical subjects
+simulate in the same manner diverse diseases of which they themselves
+are organically free, such as epilepsy, or the like. But Lady
+Landale's condition is otherwise serious. She is alive; more I cannot
+say."
+
+According to his lights, he had bled the patient, as he would have
+bled, by rote, to recall to life one actually cut down from the beam.
+But, although the young blood did flow, bearing testimony to the fact
+that the heart still beat in that deathlike frame, the vitality left
+seemed so faint as to defy the power of human ministration.
+
+The flame of life barely flickered; but the powers of youth were of
+greater strength in the unconscious body than could have been
+suspected, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, they asserted
+themselves.
+
+With the return of animation, however, came a new danger: fever,
+burning, devastating, more terrible even than the almost mortal
+syncope; that fever of the brain which wastes like the rack, before
+which science stands helpless, and the watcher sinks into despair at
+his impotence to screen a beloved sufferer from the horrible,
+ever-recurring phantoms of delirium.
+
+Had not Sir Adrian intuitively known well-nigh every act of the drama
+which had already been so fatal to his house, Molly's frenzied
+utterances would have told him all. Every secret incident of that
+storm of passion which had desolated her life was laid bare to his
+sorrowing heart:--her aspirations for an ideal, centred suddenly upon
+one man; her love rapture cruelly baulked at every step; the consuming
+of that love fire, resisting all frustration of hope, all efforts of
+conscience, of honour; how her whole being became merged into that of
+the man she loved and whom she had ruined, her life in his life, her
+very breath in his breath. And then the lamentable, inevitable end:
+the fearful confrontation with his death. Again and again, in never
+ceasing repetition, was that fair, most dear body, that harrowed soul,
+dragged step by step through every iota of the past torture, always to
+fall at last into the same stillness of exhaustion--appalling image of
+final death that wrung Adrian with untold agonies of despair.
+
+For many days this condition of things lasted unaltered. In the
+physician's own words it was impossible that life could much longer
+resist such fierce onslaughts. But one evening a change came over the
+spirit of the sufferer's vision.
+
+There had been a somewhat longer interval between the paroxysms; Sir
+Adrian seated as usual by the bed, waiting now with a sinking heart
+for the wonted return of the frenzy, clamouring in his soul to heaven
+for pity on one whom seemingly no human aid could succour, dared yet
+draw no shadow of hope from the more prolonged stillness of the
+patient. Presently indeed, she grew restless, tossed her arms,
+muttered with parched lips. Then she suddenly sat up and listened as
+if to some deeply annoying and disquieting sound, fell back again
+under his gentle hands, rolling her little black head wearily from
+side to side, only however to start again, and again listen. Thus it
+went on for a while until the haunted, weary eyes grew suddenly
+distraught with terror and loathing. Straining them into space as if
+seeking something she ought to see but could not, she began to speak
+in a quick yet distinct whisper:
+
+"How it creaks, creaks--creaks! Will no one stop that creaking! What
+is it that creaks so? Will no one stop that creaking!" And again she
+placed her cheek on the pillow, covering her ear with her little,
+wasted hand, and for a while remained motionless, moaning like a
+child. But it was only to spring up again, this time with a cry which
+brought the physician from the adjacent sleeping room in alarm to her
+bedside.
+
+"Ah, God," she shrieked, her eyes distended and staring as if into the
+far distance through walls and outlying darkness. "I see it! They have
+done it, they have done it! It is hanging on the sands--how it creaks
+and sways in the wind! It will creak for ever, for ever.... Now it
+spins round, it looks this way--the black face! It looks at _me_!" She
+gave another piercing cry, then her frame grew rigid. With mouth open
+and fixed eyeballs she seemed lost in the frightful fascination of the
+image before her brain.
+
+As, distracted by the sight of her torments, Adrian hung over her,
+racking his mind in the endeavour to soothe her, her words struck a
+chill into his very soul. He cast a terrified glance at the doctor who
+was ominously feeling her pulse.
+
+"There is a change," he faltered.
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I have told you before," he retorted irritably, "that you should
+attach no more importance to the substance of these delirious
+wanderings than you would to the ravings of madness. It is the fact of
+the delirium itself which must alarm us. She is less and less able to
+bear it."
+
+The patient moaned and shuddered, resisting the gentle force that
+would have pressed her down on her pillow.
+
+"Oh the creaking, the creaking! Will no one stop that creaking! Must I
+hear it go on creak, creak, creak for ever, and see it sway and
+sway.... Will no one ever stop it!"
+
+Sir Adrian took a sudden resolution. "I will," he said, low and clear
+into her ear. She sank down on the instant and looked at him, back
+from her far distance, almost as if she understood him and the pitiful
+cry for the help he would have given his heart's blood to procure for
+her, was silent for the moment upon her lips.
+
+"I will prepare an opiate," said the physician in a whisper.
+
+"And I," said Sir Adrian to him, with a strange expression upon his
+pale face, "am going to stop that creaking."
+
+The man of medicine gazed after him with a look of intense
+astonishment which rapidly changed to one of professional interest.
+
+"It is evident that I shall soon have another mentally deranged
+patient to see to," he remarked to himself as he rose to seek the
+drugs he meant to administer.
+
+Downstairs, Sir Adrian immediately called for René, and being informed
+that he had left for the island early in the afternoon and had
+announced his return before night, cast a cloak over his shoulders and
+hurried forth in the hope of meeting him upon his homeward way. His
+pulses were beating well-nigh as wildly as those of the fever stricken
+woman upstairs in the house. He dared not pause to reflect on his
+purpose, or seek to disentangle the confusion of his thoughts, for
+fear of being confronted with the hopelessness of their folly. But the
+exquisite serenity of the night sky, where swam the moon, "a silver
+splendour;" the freshness of the sweeping breeze that dashed, keen
+from the east, over the sea against his face; all the glorious
+distance, the unconsciousness and detachment of nature from the fume
+and misery of life, brought him unwittingly to a calmer mood.
+
+He had reached the extreme confine of the pine wood, when, across the
+sands that stretched unbroken to the lips of the sea, a figure
+advanced towards him.
+
+"Renny!" called Sir Adrian.
+
+"Your honour!" cried the man, breaking into a run to meet him. O God!
+how ghostly white looked the master's face in the moon-flood!
+
+"My Lady----?"
+
+"Not worse; yet not better--and that means worse now. But there is a
+change. Renny," sinking his voice and clasping the man's sturdy arm
+with clammy hand, "is it true they have placed him on the sands
+to-day?"
+
+The man stared.
+
+"How did your honour know? Yes--they have done so. It is true: the
+swine! not more than an hour, in verity. How could it have come so
+soon to your honour's ears? This morning, indeed, they came from the
+town in a cart, and planted the great gibbet on Scarthey Point, at low
+water. And to-night they brought the body, all bound in irons, and
+from a boat, for it was high tide, they riveted it on the chain. And
+it is to remain for ever, your honour--so they say."
+
+"Strange," murmured Sir Adrian to himself, gazing seaward with
+awestruck eyes. "And did you," he asked, "hear its creaking, Renny, as
+it swayed in the wind?"
+
+Again René cast a quick glance of alarm at his master. The master had
+a singular manner with him to-night! Then edging closer to him he
+whispered in his ear:
+
+"They say it is to hang for ever. There is a warning to those who
+would interfere with this justice of theirs. But, your honour, there
+came one to the island to-day, I do not know if your honour knows him,
+the captain's second on that vessel of misfortune. And I believe, your
+honour, the dawn will never see that poor, black body hanging over
+yonder like a scarecrow, to spoil our view. This man, this brave
+mariner, Curwen is his name, he is mad furious with us all! He has
+just but come from hearing of his captain's fate, and he is ready to
+kill us, that we let him be murdered without breaking some heads for
+him. Faith, if it could have done any good, it is not I that would
+have balanced about it! But, as I told him, there was no use running
+one's own head into a loop of rope when that would please nobody but
+Mr. the Judge. But he is not to be reasoned with. He is like a wild
+animal. When I left him," said René, dropping his voice still lower,
+"he was knocking a coffin together out of the old sea wood on
+Scarthey. He said his captain would rest better in those boards that
+were seasoned with salt water. And when I went away, your honour, and
+left him hammering there--faith, I thought that the coffin was like to
+be seasoned by another kind of salt water too."
+
+His face twitched and the ready tears sprang to his own eyes which,
+unashamed, he now wiped with his sleeve after his custom. But Sir
+Adrian's mind was still drifting in distant ghastly companionship.
+
+"How the wind blows!" he said, and shuddered a little. "How the poor
+body must sway in the wind, and the chains creak."
+
+"If it can make any difference to the poor captain he will lie in
+peace to-night, please God," said René.
+
+"Ay," said Sir Adrian, "and you and I, friend, will go too, and help
+this good fellow in his task. I hope, I believe, that I should have
+done this thing of my own thought, had I had time to think at all. But
+now, more hangs upon those creaking chains than you can dream of. This
+is a strange world--and it is full of ghosts to-night. But we must
+hurry, Renny."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bound even to the tips of her burning little fingers by the spell of
+the opiate, Lady Landale lay in the shadowed room as one dead, yet in
+her sick brain fearfully awake, keenly alive.
+
+At first it was as if she too was manacled in chains till she could
+not move a muscle, could not breathe or cry because of the ring round
+her breast; and she was hanging with the black figure, swaying, while
+the rusty iron links went creak, creak, creak, with every swing to and
+fro. Then suddenly she seemed to stand, as it were, out of herself and
+to be seeing with the naked soul alone. And what she saw was the great
+stretch of beach and sea, white, white, white, in the moonlight and
+spreading, it seemed, for leagues and leagues, spreading till all the
+world was only beach and sea.
+
+But close to her in the whitest moonlight rose the great gibbet, gaunt
+and black, cutting the pale sky in two and athwart; and hanging from
+it was the black figure that swayed and swung. And though the winds
+muttered and the waves growled, she could not hear them with the ears
+of the soul, for that the whole of this great world of sea and sand
+was filled with the creaking of the chains.
+
+But now, across the bleak and pallid spaces came three black figures.
+And, as she looked and watched and they drew nearer, the dreadful
+burthen of the gibbet swung round as if to greet them, and she too,
+felt in her soul that she knew them all three, though not by names, as
+creatures of earth know each other, but by the kinship of the soul.
+This man with hair as white as the white beach, hair that seemed to
+shine silver as he came; and him yonder who followed him as a dog his
+master; and yonder again the third, in the seaman's dress, with hard
+face hewn into such rugged lines of grief and fury--she knew them all.
+And next they reached the gibbet: and one swarmed up the black post,
+and hammered and filed and prised, and then, oh merciful God! the
+creaking stopped at last!
+
+Now she could hear the wash of the waves, the rush of the wholesome
+wind!
+
+A mist came across her vision; faintly she saw the stiffened
+disfigured corpse which yet she felt had once been something she had
+loved with passion, laid reverently upon a stretcher, its irons
+loosened and cast away, and then covered with a great cloak. Then the
+sea, the beach, the white moon faded and waved and receded. Molly's
+soul went back to her body again, while blessed tears fell one by one
+from her hot eyes. She breathed; her limbs relaxed; round the tired
+brain came, with a soft hush like that of gentle wings, dark oblivion.
+
+Bending over her, for he was aware that for good or evil the crisis
+was at hand, the physician saw moisture bead upon the suddenly
+smoothed brow, heard a deep sigh escape the parted lips. And then with
+a movement like a weary child's she drew her arms close and fell
+asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having laid his friend to his secret rest, deep in the rock of
+Scarthey, where the free waves that his soul had revelled in would
+beat till the world's end, Sir Adrian returned to Pulwick in the early
+morning, spent with the long and heavy night's toil--for it had taxed
+the strength of even three men to hollow out a grave in such a soil.
+On the threshold he was greeted by the physician.
+
+"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messengers of
+glad tidings!" From afar, by the man's demeanour, he knew that the
+tidings were glad. And most blessed they were indeed to his ears, but
+to them alone not strange. Throughout every detail of his errand his
+mind had dwelt rather with the living than the dead. What he had done,
+he had done for her; and now, the task achieved, it seemed but natural
+that the object for which it had been undertaken should have been
+achieved likewise.
+
+But, left once more with her, seeing her once more wrapt in placid
+sleep, whom he had thought he would never behold at rest again save in
+the last sleep of all, the revulsion was overpowering. He sat down by
+her side, and through his tears gazed long at the lovely head, now in
+its pallor and emaciation so sadly like that of his dead love in the
+sorrowful days of youth; and he thanked heaven that he was still of
+the earth to shield her with his devotion, to cherish her who was now
+so helpless and bereft.
+
+And with such tears and such thoughts came a forgetfulness of that
+anguish which in him, as well as in her, had for so long been part of
+actual existence.
+
+When Tanty entered on tiptoe some hours later, she saw her niece
+motionless upon her pillow, sleeping as easily and reposefully as a
+child. And close to her head, Sir Adrian, reclining in the arm-chair,
+asleep likewise. His arm was stretched limply over the bed and, on its
+sleeve still stained with the red mud of the grave in Scarthey, rested
+Lady Landale's little, thin, ivory-white fingers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus ended Molly's brief but terrible madness.
+
+"Then you have hope, real hope?" asked Sir Adrian, of the physician as
+they met again that day in the gallery.
+
+"Every hope," replied the man of science with the proud consciousness
+of having, by his wisdom, pulled his patient out of the very jaws of
+death. "Recovery is now but a question of a time; of a long time, of
+course, for this crisis has left her weaker than the new-born babe.
+Repose, complete repose, sleep: that is almost everything. And she
+will sleep. Happily, as usual in such cases, Lady Landale seems to
+have lost all memory. But I must impress upon you, Sir Adrian, that
+the longer we can keep her in this state, the better. If you have
+reason to believe that even the sight of _you_ might recall
+distressing impressions, you must let me request of you to keep away
+from the sick room till your wife's strength be sufficiently restored
+to be able to face emotions."
+
+This was said with a certain significance which called the colour to
+Sir Adrian's cheek. He acquiesced, however, without hesitation; and,
+banished from the place where his treasure lay, fell to haunting the
+passages for the rest of the day and to waylaying the privileged
+attendants with a humble resignation which would have been sorrowful
+but for the savour of his recent relief from anguish.
+
+But the next morning, Lady Landale, though too weak of body to lift a
+finger, too weak of mind to connect a single coherent phrase,
+nevertheless took the matter into her own hands, and proved that it is
+as easy to err upon the side of prudence as upon its reverse.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue, emerging silently from the room after her night's
+vigil, came upon her nephew at his post, and, struck to her kind heart
+by his wistful countenance, bade him with many winks and nods enter
+and have a look at his wife.
+
+"Don't make a sound," she whispered to him, "and then she won't hear
+you. But, faith she's sleeping so well, it's my belief if you danced a
+jig she would not stir a limb. Go in, child, go in. It's beautiful to
+see her!"
+
+And Adrian, pressed by his own longing, was unable to resist the
+offer. Noiselessly he stepped across the forbidden threshold and stood
+for a long time contemplating the sleeper in the dim light. As he was
+about to creep out at length, she suddenly opened her eyes and fixed
+them wonderingly upon him. Fearful of having done the cruel deed
+against which he had been warned, he felt his heart contract and would
+have rushed away, in an agony of self-accusation, when there occurred
+what seemed to him a miracle.
+
+A faint smile came upon the pale lips, and narrowed ever so little the
+large sunken eyes. Yes; by all that was beautiful, it was a
+smile--transient and piteous, but a smile. And for him!
+
+As he bent forward, almost incapable of believing, the lips relaxed
+again and the lids drooped, but she shifted her hands upon the bed,
+uneasily, as if seeking something. He knelt, trembling, by her side,
+and as with diffident fingers he clasped the wandering hands he felt
+them faintly cling to his. And his heart melted all in joy. The man of
+science had reasoned astray; there need be no separation between the
+husband who would so dearly console, and the wife who needed help so
+sorely.
+
+For a long while he remained thus kneeling and holding her hands. It
+seemed as though some of the life strength he longed to be able to
+pour from himself to her, actually passed into her frame: as though
+there were indeed a healing virtue in his all encompassing tenderness;
+for, after a while, a faint colour came to the sunken cheeks. And
+presently, still holding his hand, she fell once more into that
+slumber which was now her healing.
+
+After this it was found that the patient actually became fretful and
+fevered again when her husband was too long absent from her side; and
+thus it came to pass that he began to supersede all other watchers in
+her room. Tanty in highest good humour, declared that her services
+were no longer necessary, and volunteered to conduct Madeleine to the
+Jersey convent, whither (her decision being irrevocable) it was
+generally felt that it would be well for the latter to proceed before
+her sister's memory with returning strength should have returned
+likewise.
+
+This memory, without which the being he loved would remain afflicted
+and incomplete, yet upon the working of which so much that was still
+uncertain must hinge--Sir Adrian at once yearned for, and dreaded it.
+
+Many a time as he met the sweet and joyful greeting in those eyes
+where he had grown accustomed to find nought but either mockery or
+disdain, did he recall his friend's prophetic words: "Out of my death
+will grow your happiness." Was there happiness indeed yet in store in
+the future? Alas, happiness for them dwelt in oblivion; and, some day,
+"remembrance would wake with all her busy train, and swell at _her_
+breast," and then----
+
+Meanwhile, however, the present had a sweetness of its own. There was
+now free scope for the passion of devotedness which almost made up the
+sum of this man's character--a character which, to the Molly of
+wayward days, to the hot-pulsed, eager, impatient "Murthering Moll,"
+had been utterly incomprehensible and uncongenial. And to the Molly
+crushed in the direst battle of life, whom one more harshness of fate,
+even the slightest, would have straightaway hurled back into the grave
+that had barely been baulked of its prey, it gave the very food and
+breath of her new existence.
+
+Week after week passed in this guise, during which her natural
+healthiness slowly but surely re-established itself; weeks that were
+happy to him, in later life, to look back upon, though now full of an
+anxiousness which waxed stronger as recovery drew nearer.
+
+There was little talking between them, and that kept by him studiously
+on subjects of purely ephemeral, childish interest. Her mind, by the
+happy dispensation of nature which facilitates healing by all means
+when once healing has begun, was blank to any impressions save the
+luxury of rest, of passive enjoyment, indifferent to ought but the
+passing present. She took pleasure in flowers, in the gambols of pet
+animals, in long listless spells of cloud-gazing when the heavens were
+bright, in the presence of her husband in whom she only saw a being
+whose eyes were always beautiful with the light of kindness, whose
+touch invariably soothed her when fatigue or irritation marred the
+even course of her feelings.
+
+She had ever a smile for him, which entered his soul like the radiance
+of sunshine through a stormy sky.
+
+Thus the days went by. Like a child she ate and slept and
+chattered--irresponsible chatter that was music to his ear. She
+laughed and teased him too, as a child would; till sad, as it was, he
+hugged the incomplete happiness to his heart with a dire foreboding
+that it might be all he was to know in life.
+
+But one evening, in sudden freak, she bade him open the shutters, pull
+the curtains, and raise the window that she might, from her pillow,
+look forth upon the night, and smell the sweet night air.
+
+She had been unusually well that day, and on her face now filling out
+once more into its old soft oval, bloomed again a look of warm life
+and youth. Unsuspecting, unthinking Sir Adrian obeyed. It was a dim,
+close night, and the blush-roses nodded palely into the room from the
+outer darkness as he raised the sash. There was no moon, no stars
+shone in the mist hung sky; there was no light to be seen anywhere
+except one faint glimmer in the distance--the light upon Scarthey
+Island.
+
+"Is that a star?" said Molly, after a moment's dreamy silence.
+
+Sir Adrian started. A vision of all that might hang upon his answer
+flashed through his brain. With a trembling hand he pulled the
+curtain. It was too late.
+
+Molly sat up in bed, with a contracted brow and hands outstretched as
+one who would seize a tantalising escaping memory.
+
+"I used to watch it then, at night, from this window," she whispered.
+"What was it? The light of Scarthey?" Then suddenly, with a scream;
+"The light of Scarthey!"
+
+Adrian sprang to her side but she turned from him, shrank from him,
+with a look of dread which seared him to the soul.
+
+"Do not come near me, do not touch me," she cried.
+
+And then he left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss O'Donoghue was gone upon her journey with Madeleine. There was
+none in whom he might confide, with whom seek counsel. But presently,
+listening outside the door in an agony of suspense, he heard a storm
+of sobs. In time these gradually subsided; and later he learnt from
+Moggie, whom he had hurriedly ordered to her mistress's side, that his
+wife was quiet and seemed inclined to rest.
+
+On the next day, she expressed no desire to see him and he dared not
+go to her unsought. He gathered a great dewy bunch of roses and had
+them brought to her upon her breakfast tray instead of bringing them
+himself as had been his wont.
+
+She had taken the roses, Moggie told him, and laid them to her cheek.
+"The master sent them, said I," continued the sturdy little matron,
+who was far from possessing the instinctive tact of her spouse; "an'
+she get agate o'crying quiet like and let the flowers fall out of her
+hands on the bed--Eh, what ever's coom to her, sin yesterday? Wannut
+you go in, sir?"
+
+"Not unless she sends for me," said Sir Adrian hastily. "And remember,
+Moggie, do not speak my name to her. She must not be worried or
+distressed. But if she sends for me, come at once. You will find me in
+the library."
+
+And in the library he sat the long, long day, waiting for the summons
+that did not come. She never sent for him.
+
+She had wept a good deal during the day, the faithful reporter told
+him in the evening, but always "quiet like;" had spoken little, and
+though of unwonted gentleness of manner had persistently declined to
+be carried to the garden as usual, or even to leave her room. Now she
+had gone back to bed, and was sleeping peacefully.
+
+An hour later Sir Adrian left his home for Scarthey once again. It is
+to be doubted whether, through all the vicissitudes of his existence
+he ever carried into the sheltering ruins a heart more full of cruel
+pain.
+
+When Tanty returned to Pulwick from her travels again, it was to find
+in Miss Landale the only member of the family waiting to greet her.
+The old lady's displeasure on learning the reason of this defection,
+was at first too intense to find relief in words. But presently the
+strings of her tongue were loosened under the influence of the usual
+feminine restorative; and, failing a better listener, she began to
+dilate upon the situation with her wonted garrulity.
+
+"Yes, my good Sophia, I will thank you for another cup of tea. What
+should we do without tea in this weary world? I declare it's the only
+pleasure left to me now--for, of all the ungrateful things in life,
+working for your posterity is the most ungrateful. Posterity is born
+to trample on one.... And now, sit down and tell me exactly how
+matters stand. My niece is greatly better, I hear. The doctor
+considers her quite convalescent? At least this is very satisfactory.
+Very satisfactory indeed! Just now she is resting. Quite so. I should
+not dream of disturbing her; more especially as the sight of me would
+probably revive painful memories, and we must not risk her having a
+bad night--of course not. Ah, my dear, memory, like one's teeth, is a
+very doubtful blessing. Far more trouble than pleasure when you have
+it, and yet a dreadful nuisance when you have not--But what's this I
+hear about Adrian? Gone back to that detestable island of his again! I
+left him and Molly smiling into each other's eyes, clasping each
+other's hands like two turtle-doves. Why, she could not as much as
+swallow a mouthful of soup, unless he was beside her to feed her--And
+now I am told he has not been near her for four days. What is the
+meaning of this? Oh, don't talk to me, Sophia! It's more than flesh
+and blood can bear. Here am I, having been backward and forward over
+nine hundred miles, looking after you all, at my age, till I don't
+know which it is, Lancashire or Somerset I'm in, or whether I'm on my
+head or my heels, though I'm sure I can count every bone of my body by
+the aching of them;--and I did think I was coming back to a little
+peace and comfort at length. That island of his, Sophia, will be the
+death of me! I wish it was at the bottom of the sea: that is the only
+thing that will bring your brother to his senses, I believe. Now he
+might as well be in his grave at once, like Rupert, for all the good
+he is; though, for that matter it's more harm than good poor Rupert
+ever did while he was alive----"
+
+"Excuse me, Aunt Rose," here exclaimed Sophia, heroically, her
+corkscrew ringlets trembling with agitation, "but I must beg you to
+refrain from such remarks--I cannot hear my dear brother...."
+
+But Miss O'Donoghue waved the interruption peremptorily away.
+
+"Now it's no use your going on, Sophia. _We_ don't think a man flies
+straight to heaven just because he's dead. And nothing will ever make
+me approve of Rupert's conduct in all this dreadful business. Of
+course one must not speak evil of those who can't defend themselves,
+but for all that he is dead and buried, Rupert might argue with me
+from now till doomsday, and he never would convince me that it is the
+part of a gentleman to act like a Bow Street runner. I _hope_, my
+dear, he has found more mercy than he gave. I _hope_ so. But only for
+him my poor dear grand-niece Molly would never have gone off on that
+mad journey, and my poor grand-niece Madeleine would not be buried
+alive on that other island at the back of God's speed. Ah, yes, my
+dear, it has been a very sad time! I declare I felt all the while as
+if I were conducting a corpse to be buried; and now I feel as if I had
+come back from the dear girl's funeral. We had a dreadful passage, and
+she was _so_ sick that I'm afraid even if she wanted to come out of
+that place again she'd never have the courage to face the crossing.
+She was a wreck--a perfect wreck, when she reached the convent. Many a
+time I thought she would only land to find herself dead. _I_ wanted
+her to come to the hotel with me, where I should have popped her into
+bed with a hot bottle; but nothing would serve her but that she must
+go to the convent at once. 'I shall not be able to rest till I am
+there,' she said. 'And it's precious little rest you will get there,'
+said I, 'if it's rest you want?--What with the hard beds, and all the
+prayers you have to say, and the popping out of bed, as soon as you
+are asleep, to sing in the middle of the night, and those blessed
+little bells going every three minutes and a half. There is no rest in
+a convent, my dear.' But I might as well have talked to the wall.
+
+"When I went to see her the next day, true enough, she declared that
+she was more content already, and that her soul had found what it
+yearned for--peace. She was quite calm, and sent you all messages to
+say how she would pray for you and for the repose of the souls of
+those you loved--Rupert, your rector and all--that they may reach
+eternal bliss."
+
+"God forbid!" exclaimed the pious Protestant, in horrified tones.
+
+"God forbid?--You're a regular heathen, Sophia. Oh, I know what you
+mean quite well. But would it not have been better for you to have
+been praying for that poor fellow who never lived to marry you, all
+these years, than to have been wasting your time weeping over spilt
+milk? Tell me _that_, miss. Please to remember, too, that you could
+not have come to be the heretic you are, if your great grandfather had
+not been the time-server he was. Any how, you need not distress
+yourself. I don't think Madeleine's prayers will do any one any harm,
+even Rupert; though, honestly, I don't think they are likely to be of
+much good in _that_ quarter. However, there, there, we won't discuss
+the subject any more. Poor darling; so I left her. I declare I never
+liked her so much as when I said good-bye, for I felt I'd never see
+her again. And the Reverend Mother--oh! she is a very good, holy
+woman--a Jerningham, and thus, you know, a connection of mine. She was
+an heiress but chose the cloister. And I saw the buckles sable on a
+memorial window in the chapel erected to another sister--also a
+nun--they are a terribly pious family. I knew them at once, for they
+are charges I also am entitled to bear, as you know, or, rather, don't
+know, I presume; for you have all the haziest notion of what sort of
+blood it is that runs in your veins. Well, as I said, she is a holy
+woman! She tried to console me in her pious way. Oh, it was very
+beautiful, of course:--bride of heaven and the rest of it. But I had
+rather seen her the bride of a nice young man. Many is the time I have
+wished I had not been so hasty about that poor young Smith. I don't
+believe he _was_ purely Smith after all. He must have had some good
+blood in his veins! Oh, of course, of course, he was dreadfully
+wicked, I know; but he was a fine fellow, and all these complications
+would have been avoided. But, after all, it was Rupert's fault if
+everything ended in tragedy ... there, there, we won't speak another
+word about your brother; we must leave him to the Lord--and," added
+Miss O'Donoghue, piously under her breath, "if it's not the devil, He
+is playing with him, it's a poor kind of justice up there!--Alas, my
+poor Sophia, such is life. One only sees things in their true light
+when they're gone into the darkness of the past. And now we must make
+the best of the present, which, I regret to find, seems disposed to be
+peculiarly uncomfortable. But I have done what I could, and now I owe
+it myself to wash my hands of you and look after my own soul.--I'll
+take no more journeys, at any rate, except to lay my bones at
+Bunratty; if I live to reach it alive."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE LIGHT REKINDLED
+
+    Look not upon the sky at eventide,
+    For that makes sorrowful the heart of man;
+    Look rather here into my heart,
+    And joyful shalt thou always be.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+It was on the fifth day after Sir Adrian's return to his island home.
+Outwardly the place was the same. A man had been engaged to attend to
+the lighthouse duties, but he and his wife lived apart in their own
+corner of the building and never intruded into the master's apartments
+or into the turret-room which had been Captain Jack's.
+
+From the moment that Sir Adrian, attended by René, had re-entered the
+old rooms, the peel had resumed its wonted aspect. But the peace, the
+serenity which belonged to it for so many years, had fled--fled, it
+seemed to Sir Adrian, for ever. Still there was solitude and, in so
+far, repose. It was something to have such a haven of refuge for his
+bruised spirit.
+
+The whole morning of this day had been spent in counting out and
+securing, in separate lots, duly docketted and distinguished, a
+portion of that unwieldy accumulation of wealth, the charge of which
+he had accepted, against the time when it should be called for and
+claimed by its depositors.
+
+The task was by no means simple, and required all his attention; but
+there is a blessing even in mere mechanical labour, that soothes the
+torment of the mind. In the particular occupation upon which he had
+been engaged there was, moreover, a hidden touching element. It was
+work for the helpless dead, work for that erring man but noble soul
+who had been his loyal friend. As Sir Adrian tied up each bag of gold
+and labelled it with the name of some unknown creditor who had trusted
+Jack, dimly the thought occurred that it would stand material proof,
+call for recognition that this Captain Smith, who had died the death
+of a felon, had been a true man even in his own chosen lawless path.
+
+On the table, amid the papers and books, a heap of gold pieces yet
+untold, remainder of his allotted day's task, awaited still his
+ministering hand. But he was tired. It was the dreamy hour of the day
+when the shadows grow long, the shafts of light level; and Sir Adrian
+sat at his open window, gazing at the distant view of Pulwick, while
+his thoughts wandered into the future, immediate and distant. With the
+self-detachment of his nature these thoughts all bore upon the future
+of the woman whom he pictured to himself lying behind those sunlit
+windows yonder, framed by the verdure of leafy June, gathering slowly
+back her broken strength for the long life stretching before her.
+
+Unlike the musings which in the lonely days of old had ever drifted
+irresistibly towards the past and gathered round the image of the
+dead, all the power of his mind was now fixed upon what was to come,
+upon the child, still dearer than the mother, who had all her life to
+live. What would she do? What could _he_ do for her, now that she
+required his helping hand no more? Life was full of sorrow past and
+present; and in the future there lurked no promise of better things.
+The mind of man is always fain, even in its darkest hour, to take
+flight into some distant realm of hope. To those whom life has utterly
+betrayed there is always the hope of approaching death--but this,
+even, reason denied to him. He was so strong; illness had never taken
+hold of him; he came from such long-lived stock! He might almost
+outlive her, might for ever stand as the one ineluctable check upon
+her peace of mind. And his melancholy reflections came circling back
+to their first starting-point--that barren rock of misery in a vast
+sea of despondency--there was nothing to be done.
+
+The barriers raised between them, on his side partly by the poisonous
+words of his brother, partly by the phantom of that old love of which
+the new had at first been but an eluding reflex, and on hers, by the
+chilly disillusion which had fallen so soon upon her ardent nature;
+these sank into insignificance, contrasted to the whirl of baulked
+passion which had passed over her life, to leave it utterly blasted,
+to turn her indifference to hate.
+
+Yes, that was the burden of his thoughts: she hated and dreaded him.
+His love, his forbearance, his chivalrousness had been in vain. All he
+had now to live upon was the memory of those few days when, under the
+spell of oblivion the beloved child had smiled on him in the
+unconscious love born of her helplessness and his care. But even this
+most precious remembrance of the present was now, like that of the
+past, to be obscured by its abrupt and terrible end.
+
+Death had given birth to the first and last avowal of love in her who
+had perished between his arms under the swirling waters of the
+Vilaine--but it was Life itself, returning life and health of mind,
+which had changed looks of trust and affection into the chilly stare
+of dread in the eyes of her whom with all the strength of his hoarded
+manhood he now loved alone. The past for all its sorrows had held
+sweetness: the present, the future, nothing but torment. And now, even
+the past, with its love and its sorrow was gone from him, merged in
+the greater love and sorrow of the present. How long could he bear
+it?--Useless clamour of the soul! He must bear it. Life must be
+accepted.
+
+Sir Adrian rose and, standing, paused a moment to let his sight,
+wandering beyond the immense sands, seek repose for a moment in the
+blue haze marking the horizon of the hills. The day was pure,
+exquisite in its waning beauty; the breeze as light and soft as a
+caress. In the great stillness of the bay the sisters sea and land
+talked in gentle intermittent murmurs. Now and then the cries of
+circling sea-fowl brought a note of uncanny joy into the harmony that
+seemed like silence in its unity.
+
+A beautiful harmonious world! But to him the very sense of the outer
+peace gave a fresh emphasis to the discordance of his own life. He
+brought his gaze from afar and slowly turned to resume his work. But
+even as he turned a black speck upon the nearer arm of sea challenged
+his fleeting attention. He stood and watched--and, as he watched, a
+sensation, the most poignant and yet eerie he had ever known clutched
+him by the heart.
+
+A boat was approaching: a small row-boat in which the oars were plyed
+by a woman. By the multi-coloured, glaring shawl (poor Jack's
+appreciated gift) he knew her, but without attaching name or
+personality to his recognition; for all his being was drawn to the
+something that lay huddled, black and motionless, in the stern. He
+felt to the innermost fibre of him that this something was a woman
+too--this woman Molly. But the conviction seized him with a force that
+was beyond surprise. And all the vital heat in him fled to his heart,
+leaving him deadly cold.
+
+As her face grew out of the distance towards him, a minute white patch
+amid the dark cloud of silk and lace that enwrapt it, it seemed as
+though he had known for centuries that she was thus to come to him.
+And the glow of his heart spread to his brain.
+
+When the boat was about to land, he began, like one walking in his
+sleep, to move away; and, slowly descending the stairs of the keep, he
+advanced towards the margin of the sea. He walked slowly, for the body
+was heavy whilst the soul trembled within its earthly bounds.
+
+Molly had alighted and was toiling, with her new born and yet but
+feeble strength upon the yielding sand, supported between René and
+Moggie. She halted as she saw him approach, and, when he came close,
+looked up into his face. Her frail figure wavered and bent, and she
+would have fallen on her knees before him, but that he opened his arms
+wide and caught her to him.
+
+An exclamation rose to Moggie's lips, to die unformed under an
+imperious glance from René who, with shining eyes and set mouth, had
+stood apart to watch the momentous issue.
+
+Adrian felt his wife nestle to him as he held her. And then the tide
+of his long-bound love overflowed. And gathering her up in his arms as
+if she were a child, he turned to carry the broken woman with him into
+the shelter, the silence of the ruins.
+
+At the foot of the outer wall, just out of reach of high water, yet
+within reach of its salt spray, a little mound of red stony soil rose
+very slightly above the green turf; at its head, a small stone cross,
+roughly hewn, was let into the masonry itself. The grave of Hubert
+Cochrane was not obtrusive: in a few months it would have merged again
+into the greensward, and its humble memorial symbol would be covered
+with moss and lichen like the matrix of stone which encompassed it.
+
+Involuntarily as he passed it, the man, with his all too light burden,
+halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too:
+he shook with a brief agony of jealousy--jealousy of the dead! The
+next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him
+again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by
+those loyal lips--now clay beneath that clay--were coming true, that,
+out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise a new and stately
+mansion.
+
+Grasping her closer he hurried into the sanctuary of the old room,
+where he had first seen her bright young beauty.
+
+At the door he gently suffered her to stand, still supporting her with
+one arm about her waist. As they entered, she cast a rapid glance
+around: her eyes, bedewed with rising tears, fell upon the heap of
+gold glinting under the rays of the sinking sun, and she understood
+the nature of the task her coming had interrupted. Her tears gushed
+forth; catching his hand between hers, and looking up at him with a
+strange, wonderful humility, she pressed it to her lips.
+
+What need for words between them, then?
+
+He stood a little while motionless in front of her, entranced yet
+still almost incredulous, as one suddenly freed from long intolerable
+pain, when there rose once more, for the last time, before his mind's
+eye the ideal image that had been the companion of twenty years of his
+existence. It was vivid almost as life. He saw Cécile de Savenaye bend
+over her child with grave and tender look, then turn and smile upon
+him with the old exquisite sweetness that he had adored so madly in
+that far off past. And then, it was as if she had merged into Molly.
+Behold, she was gone! there was no Cécile, only Molly the woman he
+loved. Molly, whom now he seized to his heart, who smiled at him
+through her tears as he bent to kiss her lips.
+
+Twilight was waning and the light of Scarthey beamed peacefully over
+the yellow sands; and the waves receded dragging away sand and shingle
+from the foot of the hidden grave.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY***
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Light of Scarthey, by Egerton Castle</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Light of Scarthey</p>
+<p>Author: Egerton Castle</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 12, 2008  [eBook #26045]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Karen Dalrymple,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>
+<span class="medium"><i>The</i></span><br />
+
+LIGHT<br />
+
+<span class="medium"><i>of</i></span><br />
+
+SCARTHEY</h1>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<h2>A Romance</h2>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<h2><i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Egerton Castle</span></h2>
+
+<h3>Author of<br />
+"The Pride of Jennico," "Young
+April," etc.</h3>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Take whichsoever way thou wilt&mdash;the ways are all alike;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But do thou only come&mdash;I bade my threshold wait thy coming.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">From out my window one can see the graves, and on my life<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The graves keep watch."</span><span class="i12"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<div class="center">
+<i>New York</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</span><br />
+<i>MCM</i>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="section" />
+<div class="center">
+Copyright, 1899,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Frederick A. Stokes Company.</span><br />
+<i>All rights reserved.</i><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<br /><br />
+FOURTH EDITION.
+</div>
+<hr class="section" />
+
+<div class="center">
+I Dedicate<br />
+<span class="medium">THIS BOOK TO THE<br />
+MEMORY OF</span><br />
+<span class="large">FREDERICK ANDREWS LARKING</span><br />
+<span class="medium">OF THE ROCKS, EAST MALLING, KENT<br />
+THAT, SO LONG AS ANYTHING OF MINE SHALL ENDURE,<br />
+THERE MAY ENDURE ALSO<br />
+A RECORD OF OUR FRIENDSHIP AND OF<br />
+MY SORROW</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="section" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PREFACE_TO_THE_AMERICAN_EDITION" id="PREFACE_TO_THE_AMERICAN_EDITION"></a>PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.</h2>
+
+<hr class="quarter" />
+
+<p><i>Among the works of every writer of Fiction there are generally one or
+two that owe their being to some</i> haunting <i>thought, long communed
+with&mdash;a thought which has at last found a living shape in some story
+of deed and passion.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I say one or two advisedly: for the span of man's active life is
+short and such haunting fancies are, of their essence, solitary. As a
+matter of fact, indeed, the majority of a novelist's creations belong
+to another class, must of necessity (if he be a prolific creator) find
+their conception in more sudden impulses. The great family of the
+"children of his brain" must be born of inspirations ever new, and in
+alluring freshness go forth into the world surrounded by the
+atmosphere of their author's present mood, decked in the colours of
+his latest imaginings, strengthened by his latest passional
+impressions and philosophical conclusions.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>In the latter category the lack of long intimate acquaintance between
+the author and the friends or foes he depicts, is amply compensated
+for by the enthusiasm appertaining to new discoveries, as each
+character reveals itself, often in quite unforeseen manner, and the
+consequences of each event shape themselves inevitably and sometimes
+indeed almost against his will.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Although dissimilar in their genesis, both kinds of stories can, in
+the telling, be equally life-like and equally alluring to the reader.
+But what of the writer? Among his literary family is there not one
+</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><i>
+nearer his heart than all the rest&mdash;his</i> dream-child? <i>It may be the
+stoutest of the breed or it may be the weakling; it may be the
+first-born, it often is the Benjamin. Fathers in the flesh know this
+secret tenderness. Many a child and many a book is brooded over with a
+special love even before its birth.&mdash;Loved thus, for no grace or merit
+of its own, this book is my dream-child.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p><i>Here, by the way, I should like to say my word in honour of
+</i>Fiction<i>&mdash;"fiction" contradistinguished from what is popularly termed
+"serious" writing.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>If, in a story, the characters and the events are truly convincing;
+if the former are appealingly human and the latter are so carefully
+devised and described as never to evoke the idea of improbability,
+then it can make no difference in the</i> intellectual pleasure <i>of the
+reader whether what he is made to realise so vividly is a record of
+fact or of mere fancy. Facts we read of are of necessity past: what is
+past, what is beyond the immediate ken of our senses, can only be
+realised in imagination; and the picture we are able to make of it for
+ourselves depends altogether on the sympathetic skill of the recorder.
+Is not Diana Vernon, born and bred in Scott's imagination, to the full
+as living now before us as Rob Roy Macgregor whose existence was so
+undeniably tangible to the men of his days? Do we not see, in our
+mind's eye, and know as clearly the lovable "girt John Ridd" of</i> Lorna
+Doone <i>the romance as his contemporaries, Mr. Samuel Pepys of the hard
+and uncompromising</i> Diary <i>or King James of</i> English Annals?</p>
+
+<p><i>Pictures, alike of the plainest facts or of the veriest imaginings,
+are but pictures: it matters very little therefore whether the man or
+the woman we read of but never can see in the flesh has really lived
+or not, if what we do read raises an emotion in our hearts. To the
+novelist, every character, each
+</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span><i>
+in his own degree, is almost as
+living as a personal acquaintance; every event is as clear as a
+personal experience. And if this be true of the story written</i> &agrave; la
+gr&acirc;ce de la plume, <i>where both events and characters unfold themselves
+like the buds of some unknown plant, how much more strongly is it the
+case of the story that has so long been mused over that one day it had
+to be told! Then the marking events of the actors' lives, their
+adventures, whether of sorrow or of joy, their sayings and doings,
+noble or bright or mistaken, recorded in the book, are but a tithe of
+the adventures, sayings and doings with which the writer seems to be
+familiar. He might write or talk about them, in praise or
+vindictiveness as he loves or dreads them, for many a longer day&mdash;but
+he has one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect
+the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things
+therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will
+unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless
+consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on
+which, in a continuous life-drama, is based one particular episode.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Of such a kind is the story of Adrian Landale.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The haunting thought round which the tale of the sorely
+tempest-tossed dreamer is gathered is one which, I think, must at one
+time or other have occurred to many a man as he neared the maturity of
+middle-life:&mdash;What form of turmoil would come into his heart if, when
+still in the strength of his age but after long years of hopeless
+separation, he were again brought face to face with the woman who had
+been the one passion of his life, the first and only love of his
+youth? And what if she were still then exactly as he had last seen
+her&mdash;she, untouched by years even as she had so long lived in his
+thoughts: he, with his soul scarred and seamed by many encounters
+bravely sustained in the Battle of Life?</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>The problem thus propounded is not solvable, even in fiction, unless
+it be by "fantastic" treatment. But perhaps the more so on this
+account did it haunt me. And out of the travail of my mind around it,
+out of the changing shadows of restless speculation, gradually
+emerged, clear and alive, the being of Adrian Landale and his two
+loves.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Here then was a man, whose mind, moulded by nature for grace and
+contemplation, was cast by fate amid all the turmoils of</i> Romance <i>and
+action. Here was one of those whose warm heart and idealising
+enthusiasm must wreathe the beauty of love into all the beauties of
+the world; whose ideals are spent on one adored object; who, having
+lost it, seems to have lost the very sense of love; to whom love never
+could return, save by some miracle. But fortune, that had been so
+cruelly hard on him, one day in her blind way brings back to his door
+the miraculous restitution&mdash;and there leaves him to struggle along the
+new path of his fate! It is there also that I take up the thread of
+the speculation, and watch through its vicissitudes the working of the
+problem raised by such a strange circumstance.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The surroundings in a story of this kind are, of the nature of
+things, all those of</i> Romance. <i>And by</i> Romance, <i>I would point out,
+is not necessarily meant in tale-telling, a chain of events fraught
+with greater improbability than those of so-called real life. (Indeed
+where is now the writer who will for a moment admit, even tacitly,
+that his records are not of reality?) It simply betokens, a
+specialisation of the wider genus</i> Novel; <i>a narrative of strong
+action and moving incident, in addition to the necessary analysis of
+character; a story in which the uncertain violence of the outside
+world turns the course of the actors' lives from the more obvious
+channels. It connotes also, as a rule, more poignant
+emotions&mdash;emotions born of strife or peril, even of horror; it tells
+</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span><i>
+of the shock of arms in life, rather than of the mere diplomacy of
+life.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Above all</i> Romance <i>depends upon picturesque and varied setting; upon
+the scenery of the drama, so to speak. On the other hand it is not
+essentially (though this has sometimes been advanced) a narrative of
+mere adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of
+character and manners we find in the true "novel." Rather be it said
+that it is one in which the hidden soul is made patent under the
+touchstone of blood-stirring incidents, of hairbreadth risks, of
+recklessness or fierceness. There are soaring passions, secrets of the
+innermost heart, that can only be set free in desperate
+situations&mdash;and those situations are not found in the tenor in
+every-day, well-ordered life: they belong to Romance.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Spirit-fathers have this advantage that they can bring forth their
+dream-children in what age and place they list: it is no times of
+now-a-days, no ordinary scenery, that would have suited such
+adventures as befell Adrian Landale, or Captain Jack, or "Murthering
+Moll the Second."</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Romantic enough is the scene, which, in a manner, framed the display
+of a most human drama; and fraught it is, even to this day, in the
+eyes of any but the least imaginative, with potentialities for strange
+happenings.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>
+It is that great bight of Morecambe; that vast of brown
+and white shallows, deserted, silent, mysterious, and treacherous with
+its dreaded shifting sands; fringed in the inland distance by the
+Cumbrian hills, blue and misty; bordered outwards
+</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span><i>
+by the Irish sea,
+cold and grey. And in a corner of that waste, the islet, small and
+green and secure, with its ancient Peel, ruinous even as the noble
+abbey of which it was once the dependant stronghold; with its still
+sturdy keep, and the beacon, whose light-keeper was once a Dreamer of
+Beautiful Things.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And romantic the times, if by that word is implied a freer scope than
+can be found in modern years for elemental passions, for fighting and
+loving in despite of every-day conventions; for enterprise, risks,
+temptations unknown in the atmosphere of humdrum peace and order. They
+are the early days of the century, days when easy and rapid means of
+communication had not yet destroyed all the glamour of distance, when
+a county like Lancashire was as a far-off country, with a spirit, a
+language, customs and ideas unknown to the Metropolis; days when, if
+there were no lifeboat crews, there could still be found rather
+experienced "wreckers," and when the keeping of a beacon, to light a
+dangerous piece of sea, was still within the province of a
+public-spirited landlord. They are the days when the spread of
+education had not even yet begun (for weal or for woe) its levelling
+work; days of cruel monopolies and inane prohibitions, and ferocious
+penal laws, inept in the working, baleful in the result; days of
+keel-hauling and flogging; when the "free-trader" still swung, tarred
+and in chains, on conspicuous points of the coast&mdash;even as the
+highwayman rattled at the cross-road&mdash;for the encouragement of the
+brotherhood; when it was naturally considered more logical (since hang
+you must for almost any misdeed) to hang for a sheep than a lamb, and
+human life on the whole was held rather cheap in consequence. They are
+the days when in Liverpool the privateers were daily fitting out or
+bringing in the "prizes," and when, in Lord Street Offices, distant
+cargoes of "living ebony" were put to auction by steady,
+</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span><i>
+intensely
+respectable, Church-going merchants. But especially they are the days
+of war and the fortunes of war; days of pressgangs, to kidnap
+unwilling rulers of the waves; of hulks and prisons filled to
+overflowing, even in a mere commercial port like Liverpool, with
+French prisoners of war.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A long course of relentless hostilities, lasting the span of a
+full-grown generation, had cultivated the predatory instinct of all
+men with the temperament of action, and seemed to justify it.
+Venturesome, hot-spirited youths, with their way to make in the world
+(who in a former age might have been reduced to "the road") took up
+privateering on a systematic scale. In such an atmosphere there could
+not fail to return a belief in the good old</i> border rule, <i>"the simple
+plan: that they should take who have the power, and they should keep
+who can." And it must be remembered that an island country's border is
+the enemy's coast! On that ethical understanding many privateer owners
+built up large fortunes, still enjoyed by descendants who in these
+days would look upon high-sea looting of non-combatants with definite
+horror.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The years of the great French war, however, fostered a species of
+nautical enterprise more venturesome even than privateering, raiding,
+blockade-running and all the ordinary forms of smuggling that are
+usual when two coast lines are at enmity. I mean that smuggling of
+gold specie and bullion which incidentally was destined to affect the
+course of Sir Adrian's life so powerfully.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p><i>As Captain Jack's last venture may, at this distance of time, appear
+a little improbable, it is well to state here some little-known facts
+concerning the now rather incomprehensible pursuit of gold
+smuggling&mdash;a romantic subject if ever there was one.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span>
+<i>The existence at one time of this form of "free-trade" is all but
+forgotten. Indeed very little was ever heard of it in the world,
+except among parties directly interested, even at the time when it
+played an important part in the machinery of governments. Its rise
+during the years of Napoleonic tyranny on the continent of Europe, and
+its continuance during the factitious calm of the First Restoration in
+France, were due to circumstances that never existed before and are
+little likely to occur again.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The accumulation of a fund of</i> gold <i>coin, reserved against sudden
+contingency, was one of Bonaparte's imperial ideas. In a modified and
+more modern form, this notion of a "war-chest," untouched and
+unproductive in peace-time, is still adhered to by the Germans: they
+have kept to heart many of their former conqueror's lessons, lessons
+forgotten by the French themselves&mdash;and the enormous treasure of gold
+bags guarded at Spandau is a matter of common knowledge. Napoleon,
+however, in his triumphant days never, and for obvious reasons, lacked
+money. It was less an actual treasure that he required and valued so
+highly for political and military purposes, than an ever ready reserve
+of wealth easily portable, of paramount value at all times;
+"concentrated," so to speak. And nothing could come nearer to that
+description than rolls of English guineas. Indeed the vast numbers of
+these coins which fitfully appeared in circulation throughout Europe
+justified the many weird legends concerning the power of "British
+Gold"</i>&mdash;l'or Anglais!</p>
+
+<p><i>There is every reason to believe that, in days when the national
+currency consisted chiefly of lumbering silver</i> &eacute;cus, <i>the Bourbon
+government also appreciated to the full the value of a</i> private <i>gold
+reserve. At any rate it was at the time of the first Restoration that
+the golden guinea of England found in France its highest premium.</i></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Without going into the vexed and dreary question of single or double
+standard, it will suffice to say that during the early years of the
+century now about to close, gold coin was leaving England at a rate
+which not only appeared phenomenal but was held to be injurious to the
+community.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>As a matter of fact most of it was finding its way to France, whilst
+Great Britain was flooded with silver. It was then made illegal to
+export gold coin or bullion. The prohibition was stringently, indeed
+at one time, ruthlessly, enforced. In this manner the new and highly
+profitable traffic in English guineas entered the province of the
+"free-trader"; the difference introduced in his practice being merely
+one of degree. Whereas, in the case of prohibited imports, the chief
+task lay in running the illicit goods and distributing them, in the
+case of guinea-smuggling its arduousness was further increased by the
+danger of collecting the gold inland and clearing from home harbours.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Very little, as I said, has ever been heard of this singular trade,
+and for obvious reasons. In the first place it obtained only for a
+comparatively small number of years, the latter part of the Great War:
+the last of it belonging to the period of the</i> Hundred Days. <i>And in
+the second it was, at all times, of necessity confined to a very small
+number of free-trading skippers. Of adventurous men, in stirring days,
+there were of course a multitude. But few, naturally, were the men to
+whose honour the custody of so much ready wealth could safely be
+intrusted. "That is where," as Captain Jack says sometimes in this
+book, "the 'likes of me' come in."</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The exchange was enormously profitable. As much as thirty-two
+shillings in silver value could, at one time, be obtained on the other
+side of the water for an English guinea. But the shipper and broker,
+in an illegal venture where contract could not be enforced, had to be
+a man whose simple word was warranty&mdash;and indeed, in the case of large
+</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span><i>
+consignments, this blind trust had to be extended to almost every man
+of his crew. What a romance could be written upon this theme alone!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>In the story of Adrian Landale, however, it plays but a subsidiary
+part. Brave, joyous-hearted Captain Jack and his bold venture for a
+fortune appear only in the drama to turn its previous course to
+unforeseen channels; just as in most of our lives, the sudden
+intrusion of a new strong personality&mdash;transient though it may be, a
+tempest or a meteor&mdash;changes their seemingly inevitable trend to
+altogether new issues.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p><i>It was urged by my English publishers that, in</i> "The Light of
+Scarthey," <i>I relate two distinct love-stories and two distinct phases
+of one man's life; and that it were wiser (by which word I presume was
+meant more profitable) to distribute the tale between two books, one
+to be a sequel to the other. Happily I would not be persuaded to cut a
+fully composed canvas in two for the sake of the frames. "It is the
+fate of sequels," as Stevenson said in his dedication of </i>Catriona<i>,
+"to disappoint those who have waited for them." Besides, life is
+essentially continuous.&mdash;It may not be inept to state a truism of this
+kind in a world of novels where the climax of life, if not indeed its
+very conclusion, is held to be reached on the day of marriage! There
+is often, of course, more than one true passion of love in a man's
+life; and even if the second does not really kill the memory of the
+first, their course (should they be worth the telling) may well be
+told separately. But if, in the story of a man's love for two women,
+the past and the present are so closely interwoven as were the reality
+and the "might-have-been" in the mind of Adrian Landale, any
+separation of the two phases, youth and maturity, would surely have
+stultified the whole scheme of the story.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span><i>
+I have also been taken to task by some critics for having, the tale
+once opened at a given time and place, harked back to other days and
+other scenes: an inartistic and confusing method, I was told. I am
+still of contrary opinion. There are certain stories which</i> belong,
+<i>by their very essence, to certain places. All ancient buildings have,
+if we only knew them, their human dramas: this is the very soul of the
+hidden but irresistible attraction they retain for us even when
+deserted and dismantled as now the Peel of Scarthey. For the sake of
+harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere,
+it was imperative that in this drama&mdash;wherever the intermediate scenes
+might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea,
+or in Lancaster Castle&mdash;the Prologue should be witnessed on the green
+islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing
+Scene of rest and tenderness.</i></p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;"><i>E. C.,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>49, Sloane Gardens,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 24em;"><i>London, S. W.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>October 1899.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a>
+<i>Those who like to associate fiction with definite places
+may be interested to know that the prototype of Scarthey is the</i> Piel
+of Foudrey, <i>on the North Lancashire coast, near the edge of Morecambe
+Bay, and that Pulwick was suggested by Furness Abbey.
+Barrow-in-Furness was then but a straggling village. A floating light,
+facing the mouth of the Wyre, now fulfils the duties devolving on the
+beacon of Scarthey at the time of this story.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="section" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="#PART_I">PART I</a>
+
+<span class="medium"><br />SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="small">
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20%;">CHAP.</span>  <span class="linenum">PAGE</span>
+</div>
+
+<ol class="toc">
+<li>The Peel of Scarthey               <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span></li>
+<li>The Light-Keeper                   <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_6'>6</a></span></li>
+<li>Day Dreams: A Philosopher's Fate   <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_16'>16</a></span></li>
+<li>Day Dreams: A Fair Emissary        <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_32'>32</a></span></li>
+<li>The Awakening                      <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_43'>43</a></span></li>
+<li>The Wheel of Time                  <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_53'>53</a></span></li>
+<li>Forebodings of Gladness            <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></span></li>
+<li>The Path of Wasted Years           <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_70'>70</a></span></li>
+<li>A Genealogical Epistle              <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_85'>85</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="#PART_II">PART II</a><br />
+
+<span class="medium">"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"</span>
+</div>
+
+<ol class="toc">
+<li value="10">The Threshold of Womanhood     <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_97'>97</a></span></li>
+<li>A Masterful Old Maid                      <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_113'>113</a></span></li>
+<li>A Record and a Presentment                <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_122'>122</a></span></li>
+<li>The Distant Light                         <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_136'>136</a></span></li>
+<li>The Tower of Liverpool: Master and Man    <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_144'>144</a></span></li>
+<li>Under the Light                           <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_156'>156</a></span></li>
+<li>The Recluse and the Squire                <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_174'>174</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span></p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="#PART_III">PART III</a><br />
+
+<span class="medium">"CAPTAIN JACK," THE GOLD SMUGGLER</span>
+</div>
+
+<ol class="toc">
+<li value="17">Gold Smuggler and the Philosopher      <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_191'>191</a></span></li>
+<li>"Love Gilds the Scene and Woman Guides the Plot"  <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_211'>211</a></span></li>
+<li>A Junior's Opinion                                <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_224'>224</a></span></li>
+<li>The Quick and the Dead                            <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_244'>244</a></span></li>
+<li>The Dawn of an Eventful Day                       <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_252'>252</a></span></li>
+<li>The Day: Morning                                  <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_262'>262</a></span></li>
+<li>The Day: Noon                                     <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_276'>276</a></span></li>
+<li>The Night                                         <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></span></li>
+<li>The Fight for the Open                            <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_309'>309</a></span></li>
+<li>The Three Colours                                 <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_323'>323</a></span></li>
+<li>Under the Light Again: The Lady and the Cargo     <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_335'>335</a></span></li>
+<li>The End of the Thread                             <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_349'>349</a></span></li>
+<li>The Light Goes Out                                <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_364'>364</a></span></li>
+<li>Husband and Wife                                  <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_375'>375</a></span></li>
+<li>In Lancaster Castle                               <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_382'>382</a></span></li>
+<li>The One He Loved and the One Who Loved Him        <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_393'>393</a></span></li>
+<li>Launched on the Great Wave                        <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_406'>406</a></span></li>
+<li>The Gibbet on the Sands                           <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_413'>413</a></span></li>
+<li>The Light Rekindled                               <span class="linenum"><a href='#Page_430'>430</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+
+
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2>
+
+<h3>SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>We all were sea-swallowed, though some cast again;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>And by that destiny to perform an act,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>Whereof what's past is Prologue.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i16 smcap">The Tempest<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="section" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PEEL OF SCARTHEY</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">He makes a solitude and calls it peace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i25 smcap">Byron.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Alone in the south and seaward corner of the great bight on the
+Lancastrian coast&mdash;mournfully alone some say, gloriously alone to my
+thinking&mdash;rises in singular unexpected fashion the islet of Scarthey;
+a green oasis secure on its white rocky seat amidst the breezy
+wilderness of sands and waters.</p>
+
+<p>There is, in truth, more sand than water at most times round Scarthey.
+For miles northward the wet strand stretches its silent expanse, tawny
+at first, then merging into silver grey as in the dim distance it
+meets the shallow advance of briny ripple. Wet sand, brown and dull,
+with here and there a brighter trail as of some undecided river
+seeking an aimless way, spreads westward, deep inland, until stopped
+in a jagged line by bluffs that spring up abruptly in successions of
+white rocky steps and green terraces.</p>
+
+<p>Turn you seaward, at low tide there lies sand again and shingle
+(albeit but a narrow beach, for here a depth of water sinks rapidly)
+laved with relentless obstinacy by long, furling, growling rollers
+that are grey at their sluggish base and emerald-lighted at their
+curvetting crest. Sand yet again to the south, towards the nearer
+coast line, for a mile or perhaps less, dotted, along an irregular
+path, with grey rocks that look as though the advance guard of a giant
+army had attempted to ford its insecure footing, had sunk into its
+treacherous shifting pits, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> left their blanching skull-tops half
+emerging to record the disaster.</p>
+
+<p>On the land side of the bight, far away beyond the grandly desolate,
+silent, yellow tract, a misty blue fringe on the horizon heralds the
+presence of the North Country; whilst beyond the nearer beach a
+sprinkling of greenly ensconced homesteads cluster round some peaceful
+and paternal looking church tower. Near the salty shore a fishing
+village scatters its greystone cabins along the first terrace of the
+bluffs.</p>
+
+<p>Outwards, ever changing in colour and temper roll and fret the grey
+waters of the Irish Sea, turbulent at times, but generally lenient
+enough to the brown-sailed ketches that break the regular sweep of the
+western horizon as they toil at the perpetual harvest of the deep.</p>
+
+<p>Thus stands Scarthey. Although appearing as an island on the charts,
+at low tides it becomes accessible dry-foot from the land by a narrow
+causeway along the line of the white shallow reefs, which connect the
+main pile to the rocky steps and terraces of the coast. But woe betide
+man or beast that diverges many feet from the one secure path! The
+sands of the great bay have already but too well earned their sinister
+reputation.</p>
+
+<p>During the greater part of the day, however, Scarthey justifies its
+name&mdash;Skard- or Scarth-ey, the Knoll Island in the language of the old
+Scandinavian masters of the land.</p>
+
+<p>In fair weather, or in foul, whether rising out of sunny sands when
+the ebbing waters have retired, or assailed on all sides by ramping
+breakers, Scarthey in its isolation, with its well-preserved ruins and
+its turret, from which for the last hundred years a light has been
+burning to warn the seafarer, has a comfortable look of security and
+privacy.</p>
+
+<p>The low thick wall which in warlike times encompassed the bailey (now
+surrounding and sheltering a wide paddock and neat kitchen gardens)
+almost disappears under a growth of stunted, but sturdy trees; dwarf
+alders and squat firs that shake their white-backed leaves, and swing
+their needle clusters, merrily if the breeze is mild, obstinately if
+the gale is rousing and seem to proclaim: "Here are we, well and
+secure. Ruffle and toss, and lash, O winds, the faithless waters, <i>we</i>
+shall ever cling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> to this hospitable footing, the only kindly soil
+amid this dreariness; here you once wafted our seed; here shall we
+live and perpetuate our life."</p>
+
+<p>On the sea front of the bailey walls rise, sheer from the steep rock,
+the main body and the keep of the Peel. They are ruinous and shorn of
+their whilom great height, humbled more by the wilful destruction of
+man than by the decay of time.</p>
+
+<p>But although from a distance the castle on the green island seems
+utterly dismantled, it is not, even now, all ruin. And, at the time
+when Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick, eighth baronet, adopted it as his
+residence, it was far from being such.</p>
+
+<p>True, the greater portion of that medi&aelig;val building, half monastic,
+half military, exposed even then to the searching winds many bare and
+roofless chambers; broken vaults filled with driven sands; more than
+one spiral stair with hanging steps leading into space. But the
+massive square keep had been substantially restored. Although roofless
+its upper platform was as firm as when it was first built; and in a
+corner, solidly ensconced, rose the more modern turret that sheltered
+the honest warning light.</p>
+
+<p>The wide chambers of the two remaining floors, which in old warlike
+days were maintained bare and free, and lighted only by narrow
+watching loopholes on all sides, had been, for purposes of peaceful
+tenanncy, divided into sundry small apartments. New windows had been
+pierced into the enormous thickness of stone and cement; the bare
+coldness of walls was also hidden under more home-like panellings.
+Close-fitting casements and solid doors insured peace within; the wind
+in stormy hours might moan or rage outside this rocky pile, might hiss
+and shriek and tear its wings among the jagged ruins, bellow and
+thunder in and out of opened vaults, but it might not rattle a window
+of the modern castellan's quarters or shake a latch of his chamber
+door.</p>
+
+<p>There, for reasons understood then only by himself, had Sir Adrian
+elected, about the "year seven" of this century and in the prime of
+his age, to transplant his lares and penates.</p>
+
+<p>The while, this Adrian Landale's ancestral home stood, in its placid
+and double pride of ancient and settled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> wealth, only some few miles
+away as the bee flies, in the midst of its noble park, slightly
+retired from the coast-line; and from its upper casements could be
+descried by day the little green patch of Scarthey and the jagged
+outline of its ruins on the yellow or glimmering face of the great
+bay, and by night the light of its turret. And there he was still
+living, in some kind of happiness, in the "year fourteen," when, out
+of the eternal store of events, began to shape themselves the latter
+episodes of a life in which storm and peace followed each other as
+abruptly as in the very atmosphere that he then breathed.</p>
+
+<p>For some eight years he had nested on that rock with no other
+companions but a dog, a very ancient housekeeper who cooked and washed
+for "t' young mester" as she obstinately persisted in calling the man
+whom she had once nursed upon her knee, and a singular sturdy foreign
+man (Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre in the language of his own land, but known as Renny
+Potter to the land of his adoption); which latter was more than
+suspected of having escaped from the Liverpool Tower, at that time the
+lawful place of custody of French war prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>His own voluntary captivity, however, had nothing really dismal for
+Adrian Landale. And the inhabited portions of Scarthey ruins had
+certainly nothing prison-like about them, nothing even that recalled
+the wilful contrition of a hermitage.</p>
+
+<p>On the second floor of the tower (the first being allotted to the use,
+official and private, of the small household), clear of the
+surrounding walls and dismantled battlements, the rooms were laid out
+much as they might have been up at Pulwick Priory itself, yonder
+within the verdant grounds on the distant rise. His sleeping quarters
+plainly, though by no means ascetically furnished, opened into a large
+chamber, where the philosophic light-keeper spent the best part of his
+days. Here were broad and deep windows, one to the south with a wide
+view of the bay and the nearer coast, the other to the west where the
+open sea displayed her changeable moods. On three sides of this room,
+the high walls, from the white stone floor to the time-blackened beams
+that bore the ceiling, almost disappeared under the irregular rows of
+many thousand of volumes. Two wooden arm-chairs, bespeaking little
+aversion to an occasional guest, flanked the hearth.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+<p>The hearth is the chief refuge of the lone thinker; this was a cosy
+recess, deep cut in the medi&aelig;val stone and mortar; within which, on
+chilly days, a generous heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shot
+forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing
+cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched
+to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls
+and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants
+as the briny air would favour.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the room rose in systematical clusters the pipes of
+a small organ, built against the walls where it bevelled off a corner.
+And in the middle of the otherwise bare apartment stood a broad and
+heavy table, giving support to a miscellaneous array of books, open or
+closed, sundry philosophical instruments, and papers in orderly
+disorder; some still in their virginal freshness, most, however,
+bearing marks of notemaking in various stages.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in short, was the study and general keeping-room of the master
+of Scarthey, and here, for the greater part, daily sat Sir Adrian
+Landale, placidly reading, writing, or thinking at his table; or at
+his organ, lost in soaring melody; or yet, by the fireside, in his
+wooden arm-chair musing over the events of that strange world of
+thought he had made his own; whilst the aging black retriever with
+muzzle stretched between his paws slept his light, lazy sleep, ever
+and anon opening an eye of inquiry upon his master when the latter
+spoke aloud his thoughts (as solitary men are wont to do), and then
+with a deep, comfortable sigh, resuming dog-life dreams.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LIGHT-KEEPER</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">He who sits by the fire doth dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Doth dream that his heart is warm.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But when he awakes his heart is afraid for the bitter cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i25"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The year 1814 was eventful in the annals of the political world.
+Little, however, of the world's din reached the little northern
+island; and what there came of it was not willingly hearkened to.
+There was too much of wars past and present, too many rumours of wars
+future about it, for the ear of the recluse.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the autumn of that red-letter year which brought a short
+respite of peace to war-ridden Europe&mdash;a fine, but rather tumultuous
+day round Scarthey&mdash;the light-keeper, having completed the morning's
+menial task in the light-turret (during a temporary absence of his
+factotum) sat, according to custom, at his long table, reading.</p>
+
+<p>With head resting on his right hand whilst the left held a page ready
+to turn, he solaced himself, pending the appearance of the mid-day
+meal, with a few hundred lines of a favourite work&mdash;the didactic
+poems, I believe, of a certain Doctor Erasmus Darwin, on the analogies
+of the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>There was quite as little of the ascetic in Adrian Landale's physical
+man as of the hermitage in his chosen abode.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of the hair, which he wore long and free, and of
+which the fair brown had begun to fade to silver-grey, the master of
+Scarthey was still the living presentment of the portrait which, even
+at that moment, presided among the assembly of canvas Landales in the
+gallery of Pulwick Priory. Eight years had passed over the model since
+the likeness had been fixed. But in their present repose, the features
+clear cut and pronounced, the kindly thoughtful eyes looked, if
+anything, younger than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> their counterfeit; indeed, almost
+incongruously young under the flow of fading hair.</p>
+
+<p>Clean shaven, with hands of refinement, still fastidious, his long
+years of solitude notwithstanding, as to general neatness of attire,
+he might at any moment of the day have walked up the great stair of
+honour at Pulwick without by his appearance eliciting other remarks
+than that his clothes, in cut and colour, belonged to fashions now
+some years lapsed.</p>
+
+<p>The high clock on the mantelshelf hummed and gurgled, and with much
+deliberation struck one. Only an instant later, lagging footsteps
+ascended the wooden, echoing stairs without, and the door was pushed
+open by the attendant, an old dame. She was very dingy as to garb,
+very wrinkled and feeble as to face, yet with a conscious achievement
+of respectability, both in appearance and manner, befitting her post
+as housekeeper to the "young master." The young master, be it stated
+at once, was at that time fast approaching the end of his second score
+years.</p>
+
+<p>"Margery," said Adrian, rising to take the heavy tray from the
+knotted, trembling hands; "you know that I will not allow you to carry
+those heavy things upstairs yourself." He raised his voice to
+sing-song pitch near the withered old ear. "I have already told you
+that when Renny is not at home, I can take my food in your kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>Margery paused, after her wont, to wait till the sounds had filtered
+as far as her intellect, then proceeded to give a few angry
+headshakes.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! Eh! It would become Sir Adrian Landale o' Pulwick&mdash;Barrownite&mdash;to
+have 's meat i' the kitchen&mdash;it would that. Nay, nay, Mester Adrian,
+I'm none so old but I can do my day's work yet. Ah! an' it 'ud be well
+if that gomerl, Renny Potter, 'ud do his'n. See here, now, Mester
+Adrian, nowt but a pint of wine left; and it the last," pointing her
+withered finger, erratically as the palsy shook it, at a cut-glass
+decanter where a modicum of port wine sparkled richly under the
+facets. "And he not back yet, whatever mischief's agate wi' him,
+though he kens yo like your meat at one." And then circumstances
+obliged her to add: "He is landing now, but it's ower late i' the
+day."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+<p>"So&mdash;there, Margery," sang the "Squire," giving his old nurse
+affectionate little taps on the back. "Never fash yourself; tides
+cannot always fit in with dinner-hours, you know. And as for poor
+Renny, I believe after all you are as fond of him, at the bottom of
+your heart, as I am. Now what good fare have you got for me to-day?"
+bending from his great height to inspect the refection, "Ah&mdash;hum,
+excellent."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman, after another pause for comprehension, retired battling
+with dignity against the obvious pleasure caused by her master's
+affectionate familiarity, and the latter sat down at a small table in
+front of the south window.</p>
+
+<p>Through this deep, port-hole-like aperture he could, whilst disposing
+of his simple meal, watch the arrival of the yawl which did ferrying
+duty between Scarthey and the mainland. The sturdy little craft,
+heavily laden with packages, was being hauled up to its usual place of
+safety high on the shingle bank, under cover of a remnant of walling
+which in the days of the castle's strength had been a secure
+landing-place for the garrison's boats, but which now was almost
+filled by the cast-up sands and stone of the beach.</p>
+
+<p>This was done under the superintendence of Ren&eacute;, man of all work, and
+with the mechanical intermediary of rollers and capstan, by a small
+white horse shackled to a lever, and patiently grinding his steady
+rounds on the sand.</p>
+
+<p>His preliminary task achieved, the man, after a few friendly smacks,
+set the beast free to trot back to his loose pasture: proceeding
+himself to unship his cargo.</p>
+
+<p>Through the narrow frame of his window, the master, with eyes of
+approval, could see the servant dexterously load himself with a
+well-balanced pile of parcels, disappearing to return after intervals
+empty-handed, within the field of view, and select another burden, now
+heavier now more bulky.</p>
+
+<p>In due course Ren&eacute; came up and reported himself in person, and as he
+stopped on the threshold the dark doorway framed a not unstriking
+presentment; a young-looking man for his years (he was a trifle junior
+to his master), short and sturdy in build, on whose very broad
+shoulders sat a phenomenally fair head&mdash;the hair short, crisp, and
+curly, in colour like faded tow&mdash;and who, in smilingly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> respectful
+silence, gazed into the room out of small, light-blue eyes, brimful of
+alertness and intelligence, waiting to be addressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Renny," said Adrian Landale, returning the glance with one of
+comfortable friendliness, "you will have to make your peace with
+Margery; she considers that you neglect me shamefully. Why, you are
+actually twenty minutes late after three days' journeying, and perils
+by land and sea!"</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman answered the pleasantry by a broader smile and a scrape.</p>
+
+<p>"And, your honour," he said, "if what is now arriving on us had come
+half an hour sooner, I should have rested planted there" (with a jerk
+of the flaxen head towards the mainland), "turning my thumbs, till
+to-morrow, at the least. We shall have a grain, number one, soon."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke English fluently, though with the guttural accent of
+Brittany, and an unconquerable tendency to translate his own jargon
+almost word for word.</p>
+
+<p>In their daily intercourse master and man had come for many years past
+to eschew French almost entirely; Ren&eacute; had let it be understood that
+he considered his proficiency in the vernacular quite undeniable, and
+with characteristic readiness Sir Adrian had fallen in with the little
+vanity. In former days the dependant's form of address had been
+<i>Monseigneur</i> (considering, and shrewdly so, an English landowner to
+stand in that relation to a simple individual like himself); in later
+days "Monseigneur" having demurred at the appellation, "My lord," in
+his own tongue, the devoted servant had discovered "Your honour" as a
+happy substitute, and adhered to this discovery with satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we are going to have a squall, say you," interpreted the master,
+rising to inspect the weather-glass, which in truth had fallen deep
+with much suddenness. "More than a squall, I think; this looks like a
+hurricane coming. But since you are safe home, all's well; we are
+secure and sound here, and the fishing fleet are drawing in, I see,"
+peering through the seaward window. "And now," continued Adrian,
+laying down his napkin, and brushing away a few crumbs from the folds
+of a faultless silk stock, "what have you for me there&mdash;and what
+news?"</p>
+
+<p>"News, your honour! Oh, for that I have news this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> time," said Mr.
+Renny Potter, with an emphatic nod, "but if your honour will permit, I
+shall say them last. I have brought the clothes and the linen, the
+wine, the brandy, and the books. Brandy and wine, your honour, I
+heard, out of the last prize brought into Liverpool, and a Nantes ship
+it was, too"&mdash;this in a pathetically philosophical tone. Then after a
+pause: "Also provisions and bulbs for the devil's pot, as Margery will
+call it. But there is no saying, your honour eats more when I have
+brought him back onions, eschalot, and <i>ail</i>; now do I lie, your
+honour? May I?" added the speaker, and forthwith took his answer from
+his master's smile; "may I respectfully see what the old one has
+kitchened for you when I was not there?"</p>
+
+<p>And Adrian Landale with some amusement watched the Frenchman rise from
+the package he was then uncording to examine the platters on the table
+and loudly sniff his disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, ah, boiled escallops again. Perfectly&mdash;boiled cabbage seasoned
+with salt. Not a taste in the whole affair. Prison food&mdash;oh, yes, old
+woman! Why, we nourished ourselves better in the Tower, when we could
+have meat at all. Ah, your honour," sighed the man returning to his
+talk; "you others, English, are big and strong, but you waste great
+things in small enjoyment!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oho, Renny," said the light-keeper squire, as he leant against the
+fireplace leisurely filling a long clay pipe, "this is one of your
+epigrams; I must make a note of it anon; but let me see now what you
+really have in those parcels of books&mdash;for books they are, are they
+not? so carefully and neatly packed."</p>
+
+<p>"Books," assented the man, undoing the final fold of paper. "Mr. Young
+in the High Street of Liverpool had the packets ready. He says you
+must have them all; and all printed this year. What so many people can
+want to say, I for my count cannot comprehend. Three more parcels on
+the stairs, your honour. Mr. Young says you must have them. But it
+took two porters to carry them to the Preston diligence."</p>
+
+<p>Not without eagerness did the recluse of Scarthey bend over and finger
+the unequal rows of volumes arrayed on the table, and with a smile of
+expectation examine the labels.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+<p>"The Corsair" and "Lara" he read aloud, lifting a small tome more
+daintily printed than the rest. "Lord Byron. What's this? Jane Austen,
+a novel. 'Roderick, last of the Goths.' Dear, dear," his smile fading
+into blankness; "tiresome man, I never gave him orders for any such
+things."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, battling with his second parcel, shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"The librarian," he explained, "said that all the world read these
+books, and your honour must have them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," continued the hermit, "what else? 'Jeremy Bentham,' a
+new work; Ricardo, another book on economy; Southey the Laureate,
+'Life of Nelson.' Really, Mr. Young might have known that naval deeds
+have no joy for me, hardly more than for you, Renny," smiling grimly
+on his servant. "'Edinburgh Review,' a London magazine for the last
+six months; 'Rees's Cyclop&aelig;dia,' vols. 24-27; Wordsworth, 'The
+Recluse.' Ah, old Willie Wordsworth! Now I am anxious to see what he
+has to say on such a topic."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Willie Wordsworth," mused Sir Adrian, sitting down to turn over
+the pages of the 'Excursion,' "how widely have our lives drifted apart
+since those college days of ours, when we both believed in the coming
+millennium and the noble future of mankind&mdash;noble mankind!"</p>
+
+<p>He read a few lines and became absorbed, whilst Ren&eacute; noiselessly
+busied himself in and out of the chamber. Presently he got up, book in
+hand, slowly walked to the north window, and passively gazed at the
+misty distance where rose the blue outline of the lake hills.</p>
+
+<p>"So my old friend, almost forgotten," he murmured, "that is where you
+indite such worthy lines. It were enough to tempt me out into men's
+world again to think that there would be many readers and lovers
+abroad of these words of yours. So, that is what five and twenty years
+have done for you&mdash;what would you say to what they have done for
+me...?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a long retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian was deeply immersed in thought when he became aware that
+his servant had come to a standstill, as if waiting for a return of
+attention. And in answer to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> the mute appeal he turned his head once
+more in Ren&eacute;'s direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Your honour, everything is in its place," began the latter, with a
+fitting sense of his own method. "I have now to report that I saw your
+man of business in Lancaster, and he has attended to the matter of the
+brothers Shearman's boat that was lost. I saw the young men themselves
+this morning. They are as grateful to Sir Adrian as people in this
+country can express." This last with a certain superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian received the announcement of the working of one of his
+usual bounties with a quiet smile of gratification.</p>
+
+<p>"They also told me to say that they would bring the firewood and the
+turf to-morrow. But they won't be able to do that because we shall
+have dirty weather. Then they told me that when your honour wants fish
+they begged your honour to run up a white flag over the lantern&mdash;they
+thought that a beautiful idea&mdash;and they would bring some as soon as
+possible. I took on myself to assure them that I could catch what fish
+your honour requires; and the prawns, too ... but that is what they
+asked me to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, and so you can," said the master, amused by the show of
+sub-acute jealousy. "What else?"</p>
+
+<p>"The books of the man of business and the banker are on the table. I
+have also brought gazettes from Liverpool." Here the fellow's
+countenance brimmed with the sense of his news' importance. "I know
+your honour cares little for them. But this time I think you will read
+them. Peace, your honour, it is the peace! It is all explained in
+these journals&mdash;the 'Liverpool Mercury.'"</p>
+
+<p>Renny lifted the folded sheets from the table and handed them with
+contained glee. "There has been peace these six months, and we never
+knew it. I read about it the whole way back from the town. The Emperor
+is shut up on an island&mdash;but not so willingly as your Honour, ah,
+no!&mdash;and there is an end of citizen Bonaparte. Peace, France and
+England no longer fighting, it is hard to believe&mdash;and our old kings
+are coming back, and everything to be again as in the old days."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian took the papers, not without eagerness, and glanced over
+the narrative of events, already months old,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> with all the surprise of
+one who, having wilfully shut himself out from the affairs of the
+world, ignored the series of disasters that had brought about the
+tyrant's downfall.</p>
+
+<p>"As you say, my friend, it is almost incredible," he said, at length.
+Then thoughtfully: "And now you will be wanting to return home?" said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, who had been scanning his master's face with high expectation,
+felt his heart leap as he thought he perceived a hidden tone of regret
+in the question.</p>
+
+<p>He drew himself up to his short height, and with a very decided voice
+made answer straightway:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go away from your honour the day when your honour dismisses
+me. If your honour decides to live on this rock till my hour, or his,
+strikes&mdash;on this rock with him I remain. I am not conceited, I hope,
+but what, pray, will become of your honour here without me?"</p>
+
+<p>There was force in this last remark, simply as it was pronounced.
+Through the mist of interlacing thoughts suggested by the word Peace!
+(the end of the Revolution, that distant event which, nevertheless,
+had had such sweeping influence over the course of his whole life), it
+brought a faint smile to Sir Adrian's lips.</p>
+
+<p>He took two steps forward and laid his hand familiarly on the man's
+broad shoulder, and, in a musing way, he said at intervals:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, indeed, good Renny, what would become of me?&mdash;what would
+have become of me?&mdash;how long ago it seems!&mdash;without you? And yet it
+might have been as well if two skeletons, closely locked in embrace,
+blanched by the grinding of the waters and the greed of the crabs, now
+reposed somewhere deep in the sands of that Vilaine estuary.... This
+score of years, she has had rest from the nightmare that men have made
+of life on God's beautiful earth. I have been through more of it, my
+good Renny."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;'s brain was never equal to coping with his master's periodic fits
+of pessimism, though he well knew their first and ever-present cause.
+In a troubled way he looked about the room, so peaceful, so retired
+and studious; and Sir Adrian understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, you are right; I have cut off the old life," he made answer
+to the unspoken expostulation, "and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> that I can live in my own small
+world without foregoing all my duties, I owe to you, my good friend;
+but startling news like this brings back the past very livingly, dead
+though it be&mdash;dead."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; hesitated; he was pondering over the advisability of disburdening
+himself of yet another strange item of information he had in reserve;
+but, as his master, rousing himself with an effort as if to dismiss
+some haunting thought, turned round again to the table, he decided
+that the moment was not propitious.</p>
+
+<p>"So you have seen to all these things," said Sir Adrian wearily.
+"Good; I will look over them."</p>
+
+<p>He touched the neat pile of books and papers, listlessly, as he spoke,
+yet, instead of sitting down, remained as he was, with eyes that had
+grown wondering, staring out across the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Look," he said presently, in a low voice, and Ren&eacute; noticed a rare
+flush of colour rise to the thin cheeks. "Look&mdash;is not this day just
+like&mdash;one we both remember well...? Listen, the wind is coming up as
+it did then. And look at yonder sky!"</p>
+
+<p>And taking the man by the arm, he advanced slowly with him towards the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>In the west the heavens on the horizon had grown threateningly dark;
+but under the awe-inspiring slate-coloured canopy of clouds there
+opened a broad archway filled with primrose light&mdash;the luminous arch,
+well known to seafarers, through which charge the furious southwestern
+squalls. The rushing of the storm was already visible in the distance
+over the grey waters, which having been swayed for days by a steady
+Aquilon were now lashed in flank by the sudden change of wind.</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked out for a while in silence at the spectacle of the
+coming storm. In the servant's mind ran various trivial thoughts
+bearing on the present&mdash;what a lucky matter it was that he should have
+returned in time; only just in time it was; from the angry look of the
+outer world the island would now, for many a day be besieged by seas
+impassable to such small craft as alone could reach the reef. Had he
+tarried but to the next tide (and how sorely he had been tempted to
+remain an hour more in the gatekeeper's lodge within sight and hearing
+of buxom Moggie, Margery's grand-daughter),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> had he missed the tide,
+for days, maybe for weeks, would the master have had to watch and
+tend, alone, the beacon fire. But here he was, and all was well; and
+he had still the marvellous news to tell. Should he tell them now? No,
+the master was in one of his trances&mdash;lost far away in the past no
+doubt, that past that terminated on such a day as this. And Sir
+Adrian, with eyes fixed on the widening arch of yellow light, was
+looking inwards on the far-away distance of time.</p>
+
+<p>Men, who have been snatched back to life from death in the deep,
+recall how, before seeming to yield the ghost, the picture of their
+whole existence passed in vivid light before the eye of their mind.
+Swift beyond the power of understanding are such revelations; in one
+flash the events of a good or an evil life leap before the seeing
+soul&mdash;moment of anguish intolerable or of sublime peace!</p>
+
+<p>On such a boisterous day as this, some nineteen years before, by the
+sandy mouth of the river Vilaine, on the confines of Brittany and
+Vend&eacute;e had Adrian Landale been drowned; under such a sky, and under
+the buffets of such an angry wind had he been recalled to life, and in
+the interval, he had seen the same pictures which now, coursing back
+many years in a few seconds, passed before his inward vision.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>DAY DREAMS: A PHILOSOPHER'S FATE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">Le beau temps de ma jeunesse ... quand j'&eacute;tais si malheureux.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The borderland between adolescence and manhood, in the life of men of
+refined aspirations and enthusiastic mettle, is oftener than not an
+unconsciously miserable period&mdash;one which more mature years recall as
+hollow, deceiving, bitterly unprofitable.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is always that about the memories of those far-off young
+days, their lofty dreams long since scattered, their virgin delights
+long since lost in the drudgery of earthly experience, which ever and
+anon seizes the heart unawares and fills it with that infinite
+weakness: that mourning for the dead and gone past, which yet is not
+regret.</p>
+
+<p>In the high days of the Revolutionary movement across the water,
+Adrian Landale was a dreamy student living in one of those venerable
+Colleges on the Cam, the very atmosphere of which would seem
+sufficient to glorify the merits of past ages and past institutions.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst such peaceful surroundings this eldest scion of an ancient,
+north-country race&mdash;which had produced many a hardy fighter, though
+never yet a thinker nor even a scholar&mdash;amid a society as prejudiced
+and narrow-minded as all privileged communities are bound to become,
+had nevertheless drifted resistlessly towards that unfathomable sea
+whither a love for the abstract beautiful, a yearning for
+super-earthly harmony and justice, must inevitably waft a young
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>As the academical years glided over him, he accumulated much classical
+lore, withal read much latter-day philosophy and developed a fine
+youthful, theoretical love for the new humanitarianism. He dipped
+&aelig;sthetically into science, wherein he found a dim kind of help
+towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> a more recondite appreciation of the beauties of nature. His
+was not a mind to delight in profound knowledge, but rather in
+"intellectual cream."</p>
+
+<p>He solaced himself with essays that would have been voted brilliant
+had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and
+Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitted to be highly
+polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the
+understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was
+conceded an interpreter of no mean order.</p>
+
+<p>In fact the worship of his soul might have been said to be the
+Beautiful in the abstract&mdash;the Beautiful in all its manifestations
+which include Justice, Harmony, Truth, and Kindliness&mdash;the one
+indispensable element of his physical happiness, the Beautiful in the
+concrete.</p>
+
+<p>This is saying that Adrian Landale, for all his array of definite
+accomplishments, which might have been a never-failing source of
+interest in an easy existence, was fitted in a singularly unfortunate
+manner for the life into which one sudden turn of fortune's wheel
+unexpectedly launched him.</p>
+
+<p>During the short halcyon days of his opening independence, however, he
+was able to make himself the centre of such a world as he would have
+loved to live in. He was not, of course, generally popular, either at
+college or at home; nor yet in town, except among that small set in
+whose midst he inevitably found his way wherever he went; his
+inferiors in social status perhaps, these chosen friends of his; but
+their lofty enthusiasms were both appreciative of and congenial to his
+own. Most of them, indeed, came in after-life to add their names to
+England's roll of intellectual fame, partly because they had that in
+them which Adrian loathed as unlovely&mdash;the instinct and will of
+strife, partly; it must be added, because they remained free in their
+circumstances to follow the lead of their nature. Which freedom was
+not allotted to him.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>On one magnificent frosty afternoon, early in the year 1794, the
+London coach deposited Adrian Landale in front of the best hostelry in
+Lancaster, after more than a year's separation from his family.</p>
+
+<p>This separation was not due to estrangement, but rather to the
+instigation of his own sire, Sir Thomas&mdash;a gentleman of the "fine old
+school"&mdash;who, exasperated by the,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> to him, incomprehensible and
+insupportable turn of mind developed by his heir (whom he loved well
+enough, notwithstanding, in his own way), had hoped, in good
+utilitarian fashion, that a prolonged period of contact with the
+world, lubricated by a plentiful supply of money, might shake his "big
+sawney of a son" out of his sickly-sentimental views; that it would
+show him that <i>gentlemen's</i> society&mdash;and, "by gad, ladies' too"&mdash;was
+not a thing to be shunned for the sake of "wild-haired poets, dirty
+firebrands, and such cattle."</p>
+
+<p>The downright old baronet was even prepared, in an unformed sort of
+way, to see his successor that was to be return to the paternal hearth
+the richer for a few gentlemanly vices, provided he left his nonsense
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>As the great lumbering vehicle, upon the box seat of which sat the
+young traveller, lost in dreamy speculation according to his wont,
+drew clattering to a halt, he failed at first to notice the central
+figure in the midst of the usual expectant crowd of inn guests and inn
+retainers, called forward by the triumphant trumpeting which heralds
+the approach of the mail. There, however, stood the Squire of Pulwick,
+"Sir Tummus" himself, in portly and jovial importance.</p>
+
+<p>The father's eyes, bright and piercing under his bushy white brows,
+had already detected his boy from a distance; and they twinkled as he
+took note, with all the pride of an author in his work, of the
+symmetry of limb and shoulders set forth by the youth's faultless
+attire&mdash;and the dress of men in the old years of the century was
+indeed calculated to display a figure to advantage&mdash;of the lightness
+and grace of his frame as he dismounted from his perch; in short of
+the increased manliness of his looks and bearing.</p>
+
+<p>But a transient frown soon came to overshade Sir Thomas's ruddy
+content as he descried the deep flush (an old weakness) which mantled
+the young cheeks under the spur of unexpected recognition.</p>
+
+<p>And when, later, the pair emerged from the inn after an hour's
+conversation over a bottle of burnt sherry&mdash;conversation which, upon
+the father's side, had borne, in truth, much the character of
+cross-examination&mdash;to mount the phaeton with which a pair of
+high-mettled bays were impatiently waiting the return homewards, there
+was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> very definite look of mutual dissatisfaction to be read upon
+their countenances.</p>
+
+<p>Whiling away the time in fitful constrained talk, parcelled out by
+long silences, they drove again through the gorgeous, frost-speckled
+scenery of rocky lands until the sheen of the great bay suddenly
+peered between two distant scars, proclaiming the approach to the
+Pulwick estate. The father then broke a long spell of muteness, and
+thus to his son, in his ringing country tones, as if pursuing aloud
+the tenor of his thoughts:</p>
+
+<p>"Hark'ee, Master Adrian," said he, "that you are now a man of parts,
+as they say, I can quite see. You seem to have read a powerful lot of
+things that do not come our way up here. But let us understand each
+other. I cannot make head or tail of these far-fetched new-fangle
+notions you, somehow or other, have fallen in love with&mdash;your James
+Fox, your Wilberforce, your Adam Smith, they may be very fine fellows,
+but to my humble thinking they're but a pack of traitors to king and
+country, when all is said and done. All this does not suit an English
+gentleman. You think differently; or perhaps you do not care whether
+it does or not. I admit I can't hold forth as you do; nor string a lot
+of fine words together. I am only an old nincompoop compared to a
+clever young spark like you. But I request you to keep off these
+topics in the company I like to see round my table. They don't like
+Jacobins, you know, no more do I!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor do I," said Adrian fervently.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor do you? Don't you, sir, don't you? Why, then what the devil have
+you been driving at?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid, sir, you do not understand my views."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, never mind; I don't like 'em, that's short, and if you bring
+them out before your cousin, little Madame Savenaye, you will come off
+second best, my lad, great man as you are, and so I warn you!"</p>
+
+<p>In tones as unconcerned as he could render them the young man sought
+to turn the intercourse to less personal topics, by inquiring further
+anent this unknown cousin whose very name was strange to him.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas, easily placable if easily roused, started willingly enough
+on a congenial topic. And thus Adrian conceived his first impression
+of that romantic being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> whose deeds have remained legendary in the
+French west country, and who was destined to exercise so strong an
+influence upon his own life.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?" quoth the old gentleman, with evident zest. "Ay. All
+this is news to you, of course. Well: she <i>was</i> C&eacute;cile de Kermel&eacute;gan.
+You know your mother's sister Mary Donoghue (murthering Moll, they
+called her on account of her killing eyes) married a M. de Kermel&eacute;gan,
+a gentleman of Brittany. Madame de Savenaye is her daughter (first
+cousin of yours), that means that she has good old English blood in
+her veins and Irish to boot. She speaks English as well as you or I,
+her mother's teaching of course, but she is French all the same; and,
+by gad, of the sort which would reconcile even an Englishman with the
+breed!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm; his son examined him with
+grave wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"The very sight of her, my boy, is enough to make a man's heart warm.
+Wait till you see her and she begins to talk of what the red-caps are
+doing over there&mdash;those friends of yours, who are putting in practice
+all your fine theories! And, bookworm as you are, I'll warrant she'll
+warm your sluggish blood for you. Ha! she's a rare little lady. She
+married last year the Count of Savenaye."</p>
+
+<p>Adrian assumed a look of polite interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Emigr&eacute;, I presume?" he said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Emigr&eacute;? No, sir. He is even now fighting the republican rapscallions,
+d&mdash;n them, and thrashing them, too, yonder in his country. She stuck
+by his side; ay, like a good plucked one she did, until it became
+palpable that, if there was to be a son and heir to the name, she had
+better go and attend to its coming somewhere else, in peace. Ho, ho,
+ho! Well, England was the safest place, of course, and, for her, the
+natural one. She came and offered herself to us on the plea of
+relationship. I was rather taken aback at first, I own; but, gad, boy,
+when I saw the woman, after hearing what she had had to go through to
+reach us at all, I sang another song. Well, she is a fine
+creature&mdash;finer than ever now that the progeny has been satisfactorily
+hatched; a brace of girls instead of the son and heir, after all! Two
+of them; no less. Ho, ho, ho! And she was furious, the pretty dear!
+However, you'll soon see for yourself. You will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> see a woman, sir, who
+has loaded and fired cannon with her own hands, when the last man to
+serve it had been shot. Ay, and more than that, my lad&mdash;she's brained
+a hulking sans-culotte that was about to pin her servant to the floor.
+The lad has told me so himself, and I daresay he can tell you more if
+you care to practise your French with master Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre, that's the
+fellow! A woman who sticks to her lord and master in mud and
+powder-smoke until there is precious little time to spare, when she
+makes straight for a strange land, in a fishing-smack, with no other
+protector than a peasant; and now, with an imp of a black-eyed infant
+to her breast (Sally Mearson's got the other; you remember Sally, your
+own nurse's daughter?), looks like a chit of seventeen. That's what
+you'll see, sir. And when she sails downstairs for dinner, dressed up,
+powdered and high-heeled, she might be a princess, a queen who has
+never felt a crumpled roseleaf in her life. Gad! I'm getting poetical,
+I declare."</p>
+
+<p>In this strain did the Squire, guiding his horses with strong,
+dexterous hand, expatiate to his son; the crisp air rushing past them,
+making their faces glow with the tingling blood until, burning the
+ground, they dashed up the avenue that leads to the white mansion of
+Pulwick, and halted amidst a cloud of steam before its Palladian
+portico.</p>
+
+<p>What happened to Adrian the moment after happens, as a rule, only once
+in a man's lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>Through the opening portals the guest, whose condensed biography the
+Squire had been imparting to his son (all unconsciously eliciting
+thereby more repulsion than admiration in the breast of that
+fastidious young misogynist), appeared herself to welcome the return
+of her host.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian, as he retired a pace to let his father ascend the steps, first
+caught a glimpse of a miraculously small and arched foot, clad in pink
+silk, and, looking suddenly up, met fully the flash of great dark
+eyes, set in a small white face, more brilliant in their immense
+blackness than even the glinting icicles pendant over the lintel that
+now shot back the sun's sinking glory.</p>
+
+<p>The spell was of the kind that the reason of man can never sanction,
+and yet that have been ever and will be while man is. This youth,
+virgin of heart, dreamy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> head who had drifted to his twentieth
+year, all unscathed by passion or desire, because he had never met
+aught in flesh and blood answering to his unconscious ideal, was
+struck to the depth of his soul by the presence of one, as unlike this
+same ideal as any living creature could be; struck with fantastic
+suddenness, and in that all-encompassing manner which seizes the
+innermost fibres of the being.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pang of pain, but a revelation of glory.</p>
+
+<p>He stood for some moments, with paling cheeks and hotly-beating heart,
+gazing back into the wondrous eyes. She, yielding her cheek carelessly
+to the Squire's hearty kiss, examined the new-comer curiously the
+while:</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;how now, tut, tut, what's this?" thundered the father, who,
+following the direction of her eyes, wheeled round suddenly to
+discover his son's strange bearing, "Have you lost all the manners as
+well as the notions of a gentleman, these last two years? Speak to
+Madame de Savenaye, sir!&mdash;C&eacute;cile, this is my son; pray forgive him, my
+dear; the fellow's shyness before ladies is inconceivable. It makes a
+perfect fool of him, as you see."</p>
+
+<p>But Madame de Savenaye's finer wits had already perceived something
+different from the ordinary display of English shyness in the young
+man, whose eyes remained fixed on her face with an intentness that
+savoured in no way, of awkwardness. She now broke the spell with a
+broader smile and a word of greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"You are surprised," said she in tripping words, tinged with a
+distinct foreign intonation, "to see a strange face here, Mr.
+Adrian&mdash;or, shall I say cousin? for that is the style I should adopt
+in my Brittany. Yes, you see in me a poor foreign cousin, fleeing for
+protection to your noble country. How do you do, my cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>She extended a slender, white hand, one rosy nail of which, bending
+low, Adrian gravely kissed.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, comment donc!</i>" exclaimed the lady, "my dear uncle did you
+chide your son just now? Why, but these are Versailles manners&mdash;so
+gallant, so courtly!"</p>
+
+<p>And she gave the boy's fingers, as they lingered under hers, first a
+discreet little pressure, and then a swift flip aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! how cold you are!" she exclaimed; and then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> laughing, added
+sweetly: "Cold hands, warm heart, of course."</p>
+
+<p>And with rapping heels she turned into the great hall and into the
+drawing-room whither the two men&mdash;the father all chuckles, and the son
+still struck with wonder&mdash;followed her.</p>
+
+<p>She was standing by the hearth holding each foot alternately to the
+great logs flaming on the tiles, ever and anon looking over her
+shoulder at Adrian, who had advanced closer, without
+self-consciousness, but still in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, cousin," she remarked gaily, "there is room for you here, big as
+you are, to warm yourself. You must be cold. I know already all about
+your family, and I must know all about you, too! I am very curious, I
+find them all such good, kind, handsome people here, and I am told to
+expect in you something quite different from any of them. Now, where
+does the difference come in? You are as tall as your father, but in
+face&mdash;no, I believe it is your pretty sisters you are like in face."</p>
+
+<p>Here the Squire interrupted with his loud laugh, and, clapping his
+hand on his stalwart son's head:</p>
+
+<p>"You have just hit it, C&eacute;cile, it's here the difference lies. Adrian,
+I really believe, is a little mistake of Dame Nature; his brain was
+meant for a girl and was tacked on to that big body by accident, ho,
+ho, ho! He is quite lady-like in his accomplishments&mdash;loves music, and
+plays, by gad, better than our organist. Writes poetry, too. I found
+some devilish queer things on his writing-table once, which were not
+<i>all</i> Latin verses, though he would fain I thought so. And as for
+deportment, Madame C&eacute;cile, why there is more propriety, in that
+hobbedehoy, at least, more blushing in him, than in all the
+bread-and-butter misses in the county!"</p>
+
+<p>Adrian said nothing; but, when not turned towards the ground, his gaze
+still sought the Countess, who now returned the look with a ripening
+smile open to any interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," she remarked, glancing then at the elder for an instant with
+some archness, "surely you English gentlemen, who have so much
+propriety, would not rather ... there was young Mr. Bradbury, we heard
+talked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> of yesterday, whom every farmer with a red-cheeked lass of his
+own&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" hastily interrupted the baronet, with a blush himself, while
+Adrian's cheek in spite of the recent indictment preserved its smooth
+pallor&mdash;in truth, the boy, lost in his first love-dream, had not
+understood the allusion. "No, I don't want a Landale to be a
+blackguard, you know, but&mdash;" And the father, unable to split this
+ethical hair, to logical satisfaction, stopped and entered another
+channel of grumbling vituperation, whilst the Countess, very much
+amused by her private thoughts, gave a little rippling laugh, and
+resumed her indulgent contemplation of the accused.</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity, now, school-boy Rupert is not the eldest; there would be
+a country gentleman for you! Whereas, this successor that is to be of
+mine is a man of books and a philosopher. Forsooth, a first-class
+bookworm; by gad, I believe the first of our race! And he might make a
+name for himself, I've been told, among that lot, though the pack o'
+nonsense he treats us to at times cannot, I'm thinking, really go down
+even among those college fuzzle-heads. But I am confounded if that
+chap will ever be of any use as a landlord whenever he steps into my
+shoes. He hates a gun, and takes more pleasure&mdash;what was it he said
+last time he was here?&mdash;oh, yes, more pleasure in watching a bird dart
+in the blue than bringing it down, be it never so neat a shot. Ho, ho!
+did ye ever hear such a thing? And though he can sit a horse&mdash;I will
+say that for him (I should like to see a Landale that could not!)&mdash;I
+have seen this big boy of mine positively sicken, ay! and scandalise
+the hunt by riding away from the death. Moreover, I believe that, when
+I am gone, he will always let off any poaching scoundrel on the plea
+that the vermin only take for their necessity what we preserve for
+sport."</p>
+
+<p>The little foreign lady, smiling no longer, eyed her big cousin with
+wondering looks.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange, indeed," she remarked, "that a man should fail to appreciate
+the boon of man's existence, the strength and freedom to dominate, to
+be up and doing, to <i>live</i> in fact. How I should long to be a man
+myself, if I ever allowed myself to long for anything; but I am a
+woman, as you see," she added, rising to the full height of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+exquisite figure, "and must submit to woman's lot&mdash;and that is just
+now to the point, for I must leave you to go and see to the wants of
+that <i>mioche</i> of mine which I hear whining upstairs. But I do not
+believe my uncle's account of you is a complete picture after all,
+cousin Adrian. I shall get it out of you anon, catechise you in my own
+way, and, if needs be, convert you to a proper sense of the glorious
+privileges of your sex."</p>
+
+<p>And she ran out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my lad," said Sir Thomas, that evening, when the ladies had
+left the two men to their decanter, "I thought my Frenchwoman would
+wake you up, but, by George, I hardly expected she would knock you all
+of a heap so quick. Hey! you're winged, Adrian, winged, or this is not
+port."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say, sir," answered Adrian, musing.</p>
+
+<p>The old man caught up the unsatisfactory reply in an exasperated
+burlesque of mimicry: "I cannot say, sir&mdash;you cannot say? Pooh, pooh,
+there is no shame in being in love with her. We all are more or less;
+pass the bottle. As for you, since you clapped eyes on her you have
+been like a man in the moon, not a word to throw to a dog, no eyes, no
+ears but for your own thoughts, so long as madam is not there. Enter
+madam, you're alive again, by George, and pretty lively, too! Gad, I
+never thought I'd ever see <i>you</i> do the lady's man, all in your own
+queer way, of course; but, hang it all, she seems to like it, the
+little minx! Ay, and if she has plenty of smiles for the old man she's
+ready to give her earnest to you&mdash;I saw her, I saw her. But don't you
+forget she's married, sir, very much married, too. She don't forget it
+either, I can tell you, though you may think she does. Now, what sort
+of game is she making of you? What were you talking about in the
+picture gallery for an hour before dinner, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"To say the truth," answered the son, simply, "it was about myself
+almost the whole time."</p>
+
+<p>"And she flattered you finely, I'll be bound, of course," said his
+elder, with a knowing look. "Oh, these women, these women!"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, sir, she thinks even less of me than you do. That
+woman has the soul of a savage; we have not one thought in common."</p>
+
+<p>The father burst into a loud laugh. "A pretty savage to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> look at,
+anyhow; a well-polished one in the bargain, ho, ho, ho! Well, well, I
+must make up my mind, I suppose, that my eldest son is a lunatic in
+love with a savage."</p>
+
+<p>Adrian remained silent for a while, toying with his glass, his young
+brow contracted under a painful frown. At length, checking a sigh, he
+answered with deliberation:</p>
+
+<p>"Since it is so palpable to others, I suppose it must be love, as you
+say. I had thought hitherto that love of which people talk so much was
+a feeling of sweetness. What I feel in this lady's presence is much
+more kin to anguish; for all that, as you have noticed, I appear to
+live only when she is nigh."</p>
+
+<p>The father looked at his son and gaped. The latter went on, after
+another pause:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is so, and may as well own it to myself and to you,
+though nothing can come of it, good or bad. She is married, and she is
+your guest; and even if any thought concerning me could enter her
+heart, the merest show of love on my part would be an insult to her
+and treason to you. But trust me, I shall now be on my guard, since my
+behaviour has already appeared strange."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut," said the Baronet, turning to his wine in some dudgeon, his
+rubicund face clouding as he looked with disfavour at this strange
+heir of his, who could not even fall in love like the rest of his
+race. "What are you talking about? Come, get out of that and see what
+the little lady's about, and let me hear no more of this. She'll not
+compromise herself with a zany like you, anyhow, that I'll warrant."</p>
+
+<p>But Adrian with all the earnestness of his nature and his very young
+fears was strenuously resolved to watch himself narrowly in his
+intercourse with his too fascinating relative; little recking how
+infinitesimal is the power of a man's free-will upon the conduct of
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning found the little Countess in the highest spirits.
+Particularly good news had arrived from her land with the early
+courier. True, the news were more than ten days old, but she had that
+insuperable buoyancy of hopefulness which attends active and healthy
+natures.</p>
+
+<p>The Breton peasants (she explained to the company round the breakfast
+table), headed by their lords (among whom was her own <i>Seigneur et
+Ma&icirc;tre</i>) had again crushed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> the swarms of ragged brigands that called
+themselves soldiers. From all accounts there was no hope for the
+latter, their atrocities had been such that the whole land, from
+Normandy to Guyenne, was now in arms against them.</p>
+
+<p>And in Paris, the hot pit whence had issued the storm of foulness that
+blasted the fair kingdom of France after laying low the hallowed heads
+of a good king and a beautiful queen, in Paris, leaders and led were
+now chopping each other's heads off, <i>&agrave; qui mieux mieux</i>. "Those
+thinkers, those lofty patriots, <i>hein, beau cousin</i>, for whom, it
+seems, you have an admiration," commented the lady, interrupting her
+account to sip her cup of cream and chocolate, with a little finger
+daintily cocked, and shoot a mocking shaft at the young philosopher
+from the depth of her black eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Like demented wolves they are destroying each other&mdash;Pray the God of
+Justice," quoted she from her husband's letter, "that it may only
+last; in a few months, then, there will be none of them left, and the
+people, relieved from this rule of blood, will all clamour for the
+true order of things, and the poor country may again know peace and
+happiness. Meanwhile, all has yet to be won, by much devotion and
+self-sacrifice in the cause of God and King; and afterwards will come
+the reward!...</p>
+
+<p>"And the revenge," added Madame de Savenaye, with a little, fierce
+laugh, folding the sanguine budget of news. "Oh! they must leave us a
+few for revenge! How we shall make the hounds smart when the King
+returns to his own! And then for pleasures and for life again. And we
+may yet meet at the mansion of Savenaye, in Paris," she went on gaily,
+"my good uncle and fair cousins, for the King cannot fail to recall
+his faithful supporter. And there will be feasts and balls. And there,
+maybe, we shall be able to repay in part some of your kindness and
+hospitality. And you, cousin Adrian, you will have to take me through
+pavanne and gavotte and minuet; and I shall be proud of my northern
+cavalier. What! not know how one dances the gavotte? <i>Fi donc!</i> what
+ignorance! I shall have to teach you. Your hand, monsieur," slipping
+the missive from the seat of war into her fair bosom. "La! not that
+way; with a <i>grace</i>, if you please," making a profound curtsey. "Ah,
+still that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> cold hand; your great English heart must be a very
+furnace. Come, point your right foot&mdash;so. And look round at your
+partner with&mdash;what shall I say&mdash;<i>admiration s&eacute;rieuse</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>That she saw admiration, serious enough in all conscience in Adrian's
+eyes, there was little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark
+every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty,
+the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable
+foot&mdash;pointed <i>so</i>&mdash;and treading the ground with the softness of a
+kitten at play; the maddening curve of her waist, which a sacque,
+depending from an exquisite nape, partly concealed, only to enhance
+its lithe suppleness; the divinely young throat and bust; and above
+all the dazzling black rays from eyes alternately mocking, fierce or
+caressing.</p>
+
+<p>Well might his hand be cold with all his young untried blood, biting
+at his heart, singing in his head. Why did God place such creatures on
+His earth to take all savour from aught else under the sun?</p>
+
+<p>"Fair cousin, fair cousin, though I said serious admiration, I did not
+mean you to look as if you were taking me to a funeral. You are
+supposed to be enjoying yourself, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>The youth struggled with a ghastly smile; and the father laughed
+outright. But Madame de Savenaye checked herself into gravity once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! <i>Nous n'en sommes pas encore l&agrave;</i>," she said, and relinquished
+her adorer's hand. "We have still to fight for it.... Oh! that I were
+free to be up and doing!"</p>
+
+<p>The impatient exclamation was wrung out of her, apparently, by the
+appearance of two nurses, each bearing an infant in long, white robes
+for the mother's inspection; a preliminary to the daily outing.</p>
+
+<p>The elder of these matrons was Adrian's own old nurse who, much
+occupied with her new duties of attendant to Madame de Savenaye and
+one of her babies, now beheld her foster-son again for the first time
+since his return.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;but you've grown a gradely mon, Mester Adrian!" she cried, in her
+long-drawn Lancastrian, dandling her bundle energetically from side to
+side in the excess of her admiration, and added with a laugh of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+tender delight: "Eh, but you're my own lad still, as how 'tis!" when,
+blushing, the young man crossed the room and stooped to kiss her,
+glancing shyly the while at the white bundle in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and how are the little ones?" quoth Madame de Savenaye,
+swinging her dainty person up to the group and halting by beaming
+Sally&mdash;the second nurse, who proudly held forth her charge&mdash;merely to
+lay a finger lightly on the infant's little cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my good Sally, your child does you credit!&mdash;Now Margery, when you
+have done embracing that fine young man, perhaps you will give me my
+child, <i>hein</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Both the nurses blushed; Margery at the soft impeachment as she
+delivered over the minute burden; her daughter in honest indignation
+at the insulting want of interest shown for her foster-babe.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I was not made to play with puppets like you, mademoiselle," said
+the comtesse, addressing herself to the unconscious little being as
+she took it in her arms, but belying her words by the grace and
+instinctive maternal expertness with which she handled and soothed the
+infant. "Yes, you can go, Sarah&mdash;<i>au revoir</i>, Mademoiselle Madeleine.
+Fie the little wretch, what faces she pulls! And you, Margery, you
+need not wait either; I shall keep this creature for a while. Poor
+little one!" sang the mother, walking up and down, and patting the
+small back with her jewelled hand as she held the wee thing against
+her shoulder, "indeed I shall have soon to leave you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What's this&mdash;what's this?" exclaimed the master of the house with
+sudden sharpness. He had been surveying the scene from the hearthrug,
+chuckling in benevolent amusement at little Madam's ways.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was her intention to return to her place by the side of her
+lord, she explained, halting in her walk to face him gravely; she had
+come to that resolution. No doubt her uncle would take the children
+under his care until better times&mdash;those good times that were so fast
+approaching. Buxom Sally could manage them both&mdash;and to spare, too!</p>
+
+<p>Adrian felt his heart contract at the unexpected announcement; a look
+of dismay overspread Sir Thomas's face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;what? what nonsense, child!" cried he again in rueful tones.
+"<i>You</i>, return to that place now ... what good do you think you could
+do&mdash;eh?" But here recollecting himself, he hesitated and started upon
+a more plausible line of expostulation. "Pooh, pooh! You can't leave
+the little ones, your husband does not ask you to come back and leave
+them, does he? In any case," with assumed authority, "I shall not let
+you go."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Would <i>you</i> allow your friends to continue fighting alone for all you
+love, because you happened to be in safe and pleasant circumstances
+yourself?" she asked. Then she added ingenuously: "I have heard you
+say of one that was strong of will and staunch to his purpose, that he
+was a regular Briton. I thought that flattering: I am a Briton, of
+Brittany, you know, myself, uncle: would you have <i>me</i> be a worthless
+Briton? As to what a woman can do there&mdash;ah, you have no idea what it
+means for all these poor peasants of ours to see their lords remain
+among them, sharing their hardship in defence of their cause.
+Concerning the children," kissing the one she held and gazing into its
+face with wistful look, "they can better afford to do without me than
+my husband and our men. A strong woman to tend them till we come back,
+is all that is wanted, since a good relative is willing to give them
+shelter. Ren&eacute; cannot be long in returning now, with the last news.
+Indeed, M. de Savenaye says that he will only keep him a few days
+longer, and, according to the tidings he brings must I fix the date
+for my departure."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas, with an inarticulate growl, relapsed into silence; and she
+resumed her walk with bent head, lost in thought, up and down the
+great room, out of the pale winter sunshine into the shadow, and back
+again, to the tune of "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre," which she hummed
+beneath her breath, while the baby's foolish little head, in its white
+cap from which protruded one tiny straight wisp of brown hair, with
+its beady, unseeing black eyes and its round mouth dribbling
+peacefully, bobbed over her shoulder as she went.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian stood in silence too, following her with his eyes, while the
+picture, so sweet to see, so strange to one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> who knew all that was
+brewing in the young mother's head and heart, stamped itself upon his
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>At the door, at length, she halted a moment, and looked at them both.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my friends," she said, and her eyes shot flame; "I must go
+soon." The baby bobbed its head against her cheek as if in
+affirmative; then the great door closed upon the pair.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>DAY DREAMS: A FAIR EMISSARY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Many guests had been convened to the hospitable board of Pulwick upon
+the evening which followed Adrian's return home; and as, besides the
+fact that the fame of the French lady had spread enthusiasm in most of
+the male breasts of the district and anxious curiosity in gentler
+bosoms, there was a natural neighbourly desire to criticise the young
+heir of the house after his year's absence, the county had responded
+in a body to the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>It was a goodly company therefore that was assembled in the great
+withdrawing rooms, when the Countess herself came tripping down the
+shallow oaken stairs, and found Adrian waiting for her in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced up as she descended towards him to cover her with an ardent
+look and feast his eyes despairingly on her beauty; and she halted a
+moment to return his gaze with a light but meaning air of chiding.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin!" she said, "you have very singular manners for one supposed
+to be so shy with ladies. Do you know that if my husband were here to
+notice them you might be taken to task?"</p>
+
+<p>Adrian ran up the steps to meet her. The man in him was growing apace
+with the growth of a man's passion, and by the boldness of his answer
+belying all his recent wise resolutions, he now astonished himself
+even more than her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going back to him," he said, with halting voice. "All is
+well&mdash;for him; perhaps for you. For us, who remain behind there is
+nothing left but the bitterness of regret&mdash;and envy."</p>
+
+<p>Then in silence they descended together.</p>
+
+<p>As they were crossing the hall there entered suddenly to them,
+stumbling as he went, Ren&eacute;, the young Breton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> retainer, whom the lord
+of Savenaye had appointed as squire to his lady upon her travels, and
+who, since her establishment at Pulwick, had been sent to carry news
+and money back to Brittany.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the boy&mdash;for such he was, though in intelligence and
+blind devotion beyond his years&mdash;passed into the light, than on his
+haggard countenance was read news of disastrous import. Recent tears
+had blurred his sunburnt cheek, and the hand that tore the hat from
+his head at the unexpected sight of his mistress, partly in
+instinctive humility, partly, it seemed, to conceal some papers he
+held against his breast, twitched with nervous anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"Ren&eacute;!" cried the Countess, eagerly, in French. "What hast thou
+brought? Sweet Jesu! Bad news&mdash;bad news? Give!"</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the courier looked around like a hunted animal seeking
+a retreat, and then up at her in dumb pleading; but she stamped her
+foot and held him to the spot by the imperiousness of her eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Give, I tell thee," she repeated; and, striking the hat away,
+snatched the papers from his hand. "Dost thou think I cannot bear ill
+news&mdash;My husband?"</p>
+
+<p>She drew nearer to a candelabra, and the little white hands
+impatiently broke the seals and shook the sheets asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas, attracted by his favourite's raised tones and uneasy at
+her non-appearance, opened the drawing-room door and came forward
+anxiously, whilst his assembled guests, among whom a sense that
+something of importance was passing had rapidly spread, now gathered
+curiously about the open doorway.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess read on, unnoticing, with compressed lips and knitted
+brows&mdash;those brows that looked so black on the fair skin, under the
+powdered hair.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband! ah, I knew it, my Andr&eacute; ... the common fate of the
+loyal!" A sigh lifted the fair young bosom, but she showed no other
+sign of weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed those who watched this unexpected scene were struck by the
+contrast between the bearing of this young, almost girlish creature,
+who, holding the written sheets with firm hands to the light, read
+their terrible contents with dry eyes, and that of the man who had
+sunk, kneeling,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> at her feet, all undone, to have had the bringing of
+the news.</p>
+
+<p>The silence was profound, save for the crackling of the pages as she
+turned them over, and an occasional long-drawn sob from the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to the end the young widow&mdash;for such she was
+now&mdash;remained some moments absorbed in thought, absently refolding the
+letter into its original neatness. Then her eyes fell on Ren&eacute;'s
+prostrate figure and she stooped to lay a kind hand for an instant on
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Bear up, my good Ren&eacute;," she said. At her voice and touch he dragged
+his limbs together and stood humbly before her.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be brave," she went on; "your master's task is done&mdash;ours,
+yours and mine, is not."</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his bloodshot eyes to her with the gaze of a faithful dog in
+distress, scraped an uncouth bow and abruptly turned away, brushing
+the tears from his cheek with his sleeve, and hurrying, to relieve his
+choking grief in solitude. She stood a while, again absorbed in her
+own reflection, and of those who would have rushed to speak gentle
+words to her, and uphold her with tender hands, had she wept or
+swooned, there was none who dared approach this grief that gave no
+sign.</p>
+
+<p>In a short time, however, she seemed to recollect herself and awaken
+to the consciousness of the many watching eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good uncle," she said, going up to the old man and kissing his cheek,
+after sweeping the assembled company with dark, thoughtful gaze. "Here
+are news that I should have expected sooner&mdash;but that I would not
+entertain the thought. It has come upon us at last, the fate of the
+others ... Andr&eacute; has paid his debt to the king, like many hundreds of
+true people before&mdash;though none better. He has now his reward. I glory
+in his noble death," she said with a gleam of exaltation in her eyes,
+then added after a pause, between clenched teeth, almost in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"And my sister too&mdash;she too is with him&mdash;but I will tell you of it
+later; they are at rest now."</p>
+
+<p>Jovial Sir Thomas, greatly discomposed and fairly at a loss how to
+deal with the stricken woman, who was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> so unlike any womankind he had
+ever yet come across, patted her hand in silence, placed it within his
+arm and quietly led her into the drawing-room, rolling, as he did so,
+uneasy eyes upon his guests. But she followed the current of her
+thoughts as her little feet kept pace beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"That is bad&mdash;but worse&mdash;the worst of all, the cause of God and king
+is again crushed; everything to begin afresh. But, for the present,
+we"&mdash;here she looked round the room, and her eyes rested an instant
+upon a group of young men, who were surveying her from a corner with
+mingled admiration and awe&mdash;"we, that is Ren&eacute; and I, have work to do
+in this country before we return. For you will keep us a little
+longer?" she added with an attempt at a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Will I keep you a little longer?" exclaimed the squire hotly, "will I
+ever let you go, now!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head at him, with something of her natural archness.
+Then, turning to make a grave curtsey to the circle of ladies around
+her:</p>
+
+<p>"I and my misfortune," she said, "have kept your company and your
+dinner waiting, I hardly know how long. No doubt, in their kindness
+they will forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>And accepting again her uncle's arm which, delighted at the solution
+of the present difficulty, and nodding to Adrian to start the other
+guests, he hastened to offer her, she preceded the rest into the
+dining-hall with her usual alert bearing.</p>
+
+<p>The behaviour of the Countess of Savenaye, had affected the various
+spectators in various ways. The male sex, to a man, extolled her
+fortitude; the ladies, however, condemned such unfeminine strength of
+mind, while the more charitable prophesied that she would pay dearly
+for this unnatural repression. And the whispered remark of one of the
+prettier and younger damsels, that the loss of a husband did not seem
+to crush her, at any rate, met, on the whole, with covert approval.</p>
+
+<p>As for Adrian, who shall describe the tumult of his soul&mdash;the regret,
+the hungering over her in her sorrow, the wild unbidden hopes and his
+shame of them? Careful of what his burning eyes might reveal, he
+hardly dared raise them from the ground; and yet to keep them long
+from her face was an utter impossibility. The whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> comments of
+the young men behind him, their admiration, and astonishment drove him
+to desperation. And the high-nosed dowager, whom it was his privilege
+to escort to his father's table, arose from it convinced that Sir
+Thomas's heir had lost in his travels the few poor wits he ever
+possessed.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner that evening was without doubt the most dismal meal the
+neighbourhood had ever sat down to at the hospitable board of Pulwick,
+past funeral refections not excepted. The host, quite taken up with
+his little foreign relative, had words only for her; and these,
+indeed, consisted merely in fruitless attempts to induce her to
+partake largely of every course&mdash;removes, relieves, side-dishes,
+joints, as their separate turn came round. Long spells of silence fell
+upon him meantime, which he emphasised by lugubriously clearing his
+throat. Except for the pretty courtesy with which she would answer
+him, she remained lost in her own thoughts&mdash;ever and anon consulting
+the letter which lay beside her to fall again, it seemed, into a
+deeper muse; but never a tear glinted between her black lashes.</p>
+
+<p>More than once Adrian from his distant end of the table, met her eyes,
+fixed on him for a moment, and the look, so full of mysterious
+meanings made his heart beat in anguish, expecting he knew not what.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rest of the assembly, part deference to a calamity so
+stoutly borne, part amazement at such strange ways, part discomfort at
+their positions as feasters in the midst of mourning, had reduced
+conversation to the merest pretence. The ladies were glad enough when
+the time came for them to withdraw; nor did most of the men view with
+reluctance a moment which would send the decanters gliding freely over
+the mahogany, and relieve them from this unwonted restraint.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Savenaye had, however, other interests in store for these
+latter.</p>
+
+<p>She rose with the rest of the ladies, but halted at the door, and
+laying her hand upon her uncle's arm, said an earnest word in his ear,
+in obedience to which he bundled out his daughters, as they hung back
+politely, closed the door upon the last skirt, and reconducted the
+Countess to the head of the table, scratching his chin in some
+perplexity, but ready to humour her slightest whim.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She stood at her former place and looked for a moment in silence from
+one to another of the faces turned with different expressions of
+astonishment and anticipation towards her&mdash;ruddy faces most of them,
+young, or old, handsome or homely, the honest English stamp upon each;
+and distinct from them all, Adrian's pallid, thoughtful features and
+his ardent eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Upon him her gaze rested the longest. Then with a little wave of her
+hand she prayed them to be seated, and waited to begin her say until
+the wine had passed round.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," then quoth she, "with my good uncle's permission I shall
+read you the letter which I have this night received, so that English
+gentlemen may learn how those who are faithful to their God and their
+King are being dealt with in my country. This letter is from Monsieur
+de Puisaye, one of the most active partisans of the Royal cause, a
+connection of the ancient house of Savenaye. And he begins by telling
+me of the unexpected reverses sustained by our men so close upon their
+successes at Chateau-Gonthier, successes that had raised our loyal
+hopes so high. 'The most crushing defeat,' he writes, 'has taken place
+near the town of Savenaye itself, on your own estate, and your
+historic house is now, alas! in ruins.... During the last obstinate
+fight your husband had been wounded, but after performing prodigies of
+valour&mdash;such as, it was hoped or trusted, the king should in time hear
+of&mdash;he escaped from the hands of his enemies. For many weeks with a
+few hundred followers he held the fields in the Marais, but he was at
+last hemmed in and captured by one of the monster Thureau's <i>Colonnes
+Infernales</i>, those hellish legions with an account of whose deeds,' so
+says this gallant gentleman our friend, 'I will not defile my pen, but
+whose boasts are like those of Attila the Hun, and who in their malice
+have invented obscene tortures worthy of Iroquois savages for all who
+fall into their clutches, be they men, women, or children.... But, by
+Heaven's mercy, dear Madame,' says M. de Puisaye to me, 'your noble
+husband was too weak to afford sport to those demons, and so he has
+escaped torment. He was hanged with all speed indeed, for fear he
+might die first of his toils and his wounds, and so defeat them at the
+last.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A rustling murmur of horror and indignation went round the table; but
+the little woman faced the audience proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"He died," she said, "as beseems a brave man. But this is not all. I
+had a sister, she was very fair&mdash;like me some people said, in
+looks&mdash;she used to be the merry one at home in the days of peace," she
+gave a little smile, far more piteous than tears would be&mdash;"She chose
+to remain among her people when they were fighting, to help the
+wounded, the sick." Here Madame de Savenaye paused a moment and put
+down the letter from which she had been reading; for the first time
+since she had begun to speak she grew pale; knitting her black brows
+and with downcast eyes she went on: "Monsieur de Puisaye says he asks
+my pardon humbly on his knees for writing such tidings to me, bereaved
+as I am of all I hold dear, but 'it is meet,' he says, 'that the
+civilised world should know the deeds these followers of <i>liberty</i> and
+<i>enlightenment</i> have wrought upon gallant men and highborn ladies,'
+and I hold that he says well."</p>
+
+<p>She flashed once more her black gaze round upon the men, who with
+heads all turned towards her and forgetting their wine, hung upon her
+words. "It is right that I should know, and you too! It is meet that
+such deeds should be made known to the world: my sister was taken by
+these men, but less fortunate than my husband she had life enough left
+for torture&mdash;she too is dead now; M. de Puisaye adds: Thank God! And
+that is all that I can say too&mdash;Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a dead silence in the room as she ceased speaking, broken at
+last, here and there, along the table by exclamations and groans and a
+deep execration from Sir Thomas, which was echoed deep-mouthed by his
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian himself, the pacific, the philosopher, with both arms,
+stretched out on the table, clenched his hands, and set his teeth and
+gazed into space with murderous looks.</p>
+
+<p>Then the clear young voice went on again:</p>
+
+<p>"You, who have honoured mothers and wives of your own, and have young
+sweethearts, or sisters or daughters&mdash;you English gentlemen who love
+to see justice, how long will you allow such things to be done while
+you have arms to strike? We are not beaten yet; there are French
+hearts still left that will be up and doing so long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> as they have a
+drop of blood to shed. Our gallant Bretons and Vend&eacute;ens are uniting
+once more, our &eacute;migr&eacute;s are collecting, but we want aid, brave English
+friends, we want arms, money, soldiers. My task lies to my hand; the
+sacred legacy of my dead I have accepted; is there any of you here who
+will help the widow to maintain the fight?"</p>
+
+<p>She had risen to her feet; the blood glowed on her cheek as she
+concluded her appeal; a thousand stars danced in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Old men and young they leapt up, with a roar; pressing round her,
+pouring forth acclamations, asseverations and oaths&mdash;Would they help
+her? By God&mdash;they would die for her&mdash;Never had the old rafters of
+Pulwick rung to such enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>And when with proud smiles and crimsoned face she withdraws at last
+from so much ardour, the door has scarcely fallen behind her before
+Sir Thomas proposes her health in a bellow, that trembles upon tears:</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, this lady's courage is such as might put most men's
+strength to shame. Here is, gentlemen, to Madame de Savenaye!"</p>
+
+<p>And she, halting on the stairs for a moment, to still her high-beating
+heart, before she lay her babe against it, hears the toast honoured
+with three times three.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>When the Lancastrian ladies had succeeded at length in collecting and
+carrying off such among the hiccupping husbands, and maudlin sons, who
+were able to move, Sir Thomas re-entering the hall, after speeding the
+last departing chariot, and prudently leaning upon his tall son&mdash;for
+though he had a seasoned head the night's potations had been deep and
+fiery&mdash;was startled well-nigh into soberness, at the sight of his
+niece waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cis, my love, we thought you had been in bed this long while!
+why&mdash;where have you been then since you ran away from the dining-room?
+By George!" chuckling, "the fellows were mad to get another glimpse of
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>His bloodshot eye hung over her fondly. There was not a trace of
+fatigue upon that delicate, pretty face.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to think&mdash;I have much to think on now. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> have had to read
+and ponder upon my instructions here,"&mdash;tapping her teeth with the
+letter, she still carried, "Good uncle, I would speak with you&mdash;yes,
+even now," quick to notice Adrian's slight frown of disapproval (poor
+fellow, he was sober enough at any rate!), "there is no time like the
+present. I have my work to do, and I shall not rest to-night, till I
+have planned it in my head."</p>
+
+<p>Surely the brilliancy of those eyes was feverish; the little hands she
+laid upon them to draw them into the dim-lit library were hot as fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, my pretty," quoth the good uncle, stifling a portentous
+yawn, and striving to look wondrous wise, "Adrian, she wants to
+consult me, sir, hic!"</p>
+
+<p>He fell into an arm-chair as he spoke, and she sank on her knees
+beside him, the firelight playing upon her eager face, while Adrian,
+in the shadow, watched.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think," she asked of the old man, eagerly, "that these
+gentlemen, who spoke so kindly to me a few hours ago, will be as much
+in earnest in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why d&mdash;n them! if they go back on their word, I'll call them out!"
+thundered Sir Thomas, in a great rage all of a sudden. She surveyed
+him inquiringly, and shot a swift keen glance from the placid, bulky
+figure in the chair, to Adrian pale and erect, behind it, then rose to
+her feet and stood a few paces off, as it were pondering.</p>
+
+<p>"What is now required of me&mdash;I have been thinking it well over," she
+said at last, "can hardly be achieved by a woman alone. And yet, with
+proper help and support, I think I could do more than any man by
+himself. There is that in a woman's entreaties which will win, when a
+man may fail. But I must have a knight at my side; a protector, at the
+same time as a faithful servant. These are not the times to stand on
+conventional scruples. Do you think, among these gentlemen, any could
+be found with sufficient enthusiasm, for the Royal cause, here
+represented by me, to attend, and support me through all the fatigues,
+the endless errands, the interviews&mdash;ay, also the rebuffs, the
+ridicule at times, perhaps the danger of the conjuration, which must
+be set on foot in this country&mdash;to do all that, without hope of other
+reward than the consciousness of helping a good cause, and&mdash;and the
+gratitude of one, who may have nothing else to give?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped with a little nervous laugh: "No, it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> absurd! no man,
+on reflection would enter into such a service unless it were for his
+own country."</p>
+
+<p>As the last words fell from her lips, she suddenly turned to Adrian
+and met his earnest gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Or for his kindred," said the young man, coming up to her with grave
+simplicity, "if his kindred required it."</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of satisfaction passed across her face. The father, who had
+caught her meaning&mdash;sharp enough, as some men can be in their
+cups&mdash;nodded his head with great vigour.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, why should you think first of strangers," he grumbled, "when you
+have your own blood, to stand by you&mdash;blood is thicker than water,
+ain't it? Am I too old, or is he too young, to wait on you&mdash;hey,
+madam?"</p>
+
+<p>She extended her hand, allowing it to linger in Adrian's grasp, whilst
+she laid the other tenderly on the old man's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"My good uncle! my kind cousin! Have I the choice already between two
+such cavaliers? I am fortunate indeed in my misfortune. In other
+circumstances to decide would be difficult between two men, each so
+good; but," she added, after a moment's hesitation, and looking at
+Adrian in a manner that made the young man's heart beat thickly, "in
+this case it is obvious I must have some one whom I need not fear to
+direct."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," muttered the baronet, "I'd go with you, my darling, to the
+world's end; but there's that young philosopher of mine breaking his
+heart for you. And when all's said and done, it's the young fellow
+that'll be the most use to you, I reckon. Ay, you've chosen already,
+I'll be bound. The gouty old man had best stop at home. Ho, ho, ho!
+You've the luck, Adrian; more luck than you deserve."</p>
+
+<p>"It is I who have more luck than I deserve," answered Madame de
+Savenaye, smiling upon her young knight as, taking heart of grace, he
+stooped to seal the treaty upon her hand. "To say the truth, I had
+hoped for this, yet hardly dared to allow myself to count upon it. And
+really, uncle, you give your own son to my cause?&mdash;and you, cousin,
+you are willing to work for me? I am indeed strengthened at the outset
+of my undertaking. I shall pray that you may never have cause to
+regret your chivalrous goodness."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She dropped Adrian's hand with a faint pressure, and moved sighing
+towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wonder that I have no tears, cousin?" she said, a little
+wistfully; "they must gather in my heart till I have time to sit down
+and shed them."</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that a letter penned by this unknown M. de Puisaye from
+some hidden fastness in the Bocage of Brittany came to divert the
+course of Adrian Landale's existence into a channel where neither he,
+nor any of those who knew him, would ever have dreamed to see it
+drift.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE AWAKENING</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i20 smcap">Longfellow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<p>Sir Adrian Landale, in his sea-girt fastness, still absorbed in dreams
+of bygone days, loosed his grasp of faithful Ren&eacute;'s shoulder and fell
+to pacing the chamber with sombre mien; while Ren&eacute;, to whom these fits
+of abstraction in his master were not unfamiliar, but yet to his
+superstitious peasant soul, eerie and awe-inspiring visitations,
+slipped unnoticed from his presence.</p>
+
+<p>The light-keeper sate down by his lonely hearth and buried his gaze in
+the glowing wood-embers, over which, with each fitful thundering rush
+of wind round the chimney, fluttered little eddies of silvery ash.</p>
+
+<p>So, that long strife was over, which had wrought such havoc to the
+world, had shaped so dismally the course of his own life! The monster
+of selfish ambition, the tyrannic, insatiable conqueror whose very
+existence had so long made peaceable pursuits unprofitable to mankind,
+the final outcome of that Revolution that, at the starting point, had
+boded so nobly for human welfare&mdash;he was at last laid low, and all the
+misery of the protracted struggle now belonged to the annals of the
+past.</p>
+
+<p>It was all over&mdash;but the waste! The waste of life and happiness, far
+and wide away among innocent and uninterested beings, the waste
+remained.</p>
+
+<p>And, looking back on it, the most bitter portion of his own wrecked
+life was the short time he had yet thought happy; three months, spent
+as knight-errant.</p>
+
+<p>How far they seemed, far as irrevocable youth, those days when, in the
+wake of that love-compelling emissary, he moved from intrigue to
+intrigue among the &eacute;migr&eacute;s in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> London, and their English sympathisers,
+to bustling yet secret activity in seafaring parts!</p>
+
+<p>The mechanical instrument directed by the ingenious mind of C&eacute;cile de
+Savenaye; the discreet minister who, for all his young years, secured
+the help of some important political sympathiser one day, scoured the
+country for arms and clothing, powder and <i>assignats</i> another; who
+treated with smuggling captains and chartered vessels that were to run
+the gauntlet on the Norman and Breton coast, and supply the means of
+war to struggling and undaunted loyalists. All this relentless work,
+little suited, on the whole, to an Englishman, and in a cause the
+rights of which he himself had, up to then, refused to admit, was then
+repaid a hundredfold by a look of gratitude, of pleasure even, a few
+sweet moments of his lady's company, before being sent hence again
+upon some fresh enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, how he loved her! He, the youth on the threshold of manhood, who
+had never known passion before, how he loved this young widowed mother
+who used him as a man to deal for her with men, yet so loftily treated
+him as a boy when she dealt with him herself. And if he loved her in
+the earlier period of his thraldom, when scarce would he see her one
+hour in the twenty-four, to what all-encompassing fervour did the
+bootless passion rise when, the day of departure having dawned and
+sunk, he found himself on board the privateer, sailing away with her
+towards unknown warlike ventures, her knight to protect her, her
+servant to obey!</p>
+
+<p>On all these things mused the recluse of Scarthey, sinking deeper and
+deeper into the past: the spell of haunting recollection closing on
+him as he sat by his hearthside, whilst the increasing fury of the
+gale toiled and troubled outside fighting the impassable walls of his
+tower.</p>
+
+<p>Could it have been possible that she&mdash;the only woman that had ever
+existed for him, the love for whom had so distorted his mind from its
+natural sympathies, had killed in him the spring of youth and the
+savour of life&mdash;never really learnt to love him in return till the
+last?</p>
+
+<p>And yet there was a woman's soul in that delicious woman's body&mdash;it
+showed itself at least once, though until that supreme moment of union
+and parting, it seemed as if a man's mind alone governed it, becoming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+sterner, more unbendable, as hardships and difficulties multiplied.</p>
+
+<p>In the melancholy phantasm passing before his mind's eye, of a period
+of unprecedented bloodshed and savagery, when on the one side Chouans,
+Vend&eacute;ens, and such guerillas of which Madame de Savenaye was the
+moving spirit, and on the other the <i>colonnes infernales</i> of the
+revolutionary leaders, vied with each other in ferocity and cunning,
+she stood ever foremost, ever the central point of thought, with a
+vividness that almost a score of years had failed to dim.</p>
+
+<p>When the mood was upon him, he could unfold the roll of that story
+buried now in the lonely graves of the many, or in the fickle memories
+of the few, but upon his soul printed in letters of fire and blood&mdash;to
+endure for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Round this goddess of his young and only love clustered the sole
+impressions of the outer world that had ever stirred his heart: the
+grandeur of the ocean, of the storm, the glory of sunrise over a
+dishevelled sea, the ineffable melancholy of twilight rising from an
+unknown strand; then the solemn coldness of moonlight watches, the
+scent of the burnt land under the fierce sun, when all nature was
+hushed save the dreamy buzz of insect-life: the green coolness of
+underwood or forest, the unutterable harmony of the sighing breeze,
+and the song of wild birds during the long patient ambushes of
+partisan war; the taste of bread in hunger, of the stream in the fever
+of thirst, of approaching sleep in exhaustion&mdash;and, mixed with these,
+the acrid emotions of fight and carnage, anguish of suspense, savage
+exultation of victory&mdash;all the doings of a life which he, bred to
+intellectual pleasures and high moral ideas, would have deemed a
+nightmare, but which, lived as it was in the atmosphere of his longing
+and devotion, yet held for him a strange and pungent joy: a cup of
+cruel memories, yet one to be lingered over luxuriously till the
+savour of each cherished drop of bitterness be gathered to the
+uttermost.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the brightness of the embers, between the fitful flames of
+crumbling wood, spreads before his eyes the dreary strand near
+Quiberon, immense in the gathering darkness of a boisterous evening.
+Well hidden under the stone table of a Druidical men-hir glows a small
+camp-fire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> sedulously kept alive by Ren&eacute; for the service of The Lady.
+She, wrapped up in a coarse peasant-cloak, pensively gazes into the
+cheerless smoke and holds her worn and muddy boots to the smouldering
+wood in the vain hope of warmth.</p>
+
+<p>And Adrian stands silently behind her, brooding on many things&mdash;on the
+vicissitudes of that desultory war which has left them not a roof
+whereunder they can lay their heads, during which the little English
+contingent has melted from them one by one; on the critical action of
+the morrow when the republican columns, now hastening to oppose the
+landing of the great royalist expedition to Quiberon (that supreme
+effort upon which all their hopes centre) must be surprised and cut
+off at whatever cost; on the mighty doings to follow, which are to
+complete the result of the recent sea fight off Ushant and crown their
+devoted toil with victory at last....</p>
+
+<p>And through his thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous
+disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on
+the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming slipper and dainty
+silken stocking.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then an owl-cry, repeated from point to point, tells of
+unremitting guard, but for which, in the vast silence, none could
+suspect that a thousand men and more are lying stretched upon the
+plain all around them, fireless, well-nigh without food, yet patiently
+waiting for the morrow when their chiefs shall lead them to death; nor
+that, in a closer circle, within call, are some fifty <i>gars</i>, remnant
+of the indomitable "Savenaye band," and tacitly sworn bodyguard to The
+Lady who came back from ease and safety over seas to share their
+peril.</p>
+
+<p>No sound besides, but the wind as it whistles and moans over the
+heath&mdash;and the two are together in the mist which comes closing in
+upon them as if to shroud them from all the rest, for even Ren&eacute; has
+crept away, to sleep perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>She turns at last towards him, her small face in the dying light of
+this sullen evening, how wan and weather-beaten!</p>
+
+<p>"Pensive, as usual, cousin?" she says in English, and extends her
+hand, browned and scratched, that was once so exquisite, and she
+smiles, the smile of a dauntless soul from a weary body.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Poor little hands, poor little feet, so cold, so battered, so
+ill-used! He, who would have warmed them in his bosom, given his heart
+for them to tread upon, breaks down now, for the first time; and
+falling on his knees covers the cold fingers with kisses, and then
+lays his lips against those pitiful torn boots.</p>
+
+<p>But she spurns him from her&mdash;even from her feet:</p>
+
+<p>"Shame on you!" she says angrily; and adds, more gently, yet with some
+contempt: "<i>Enfant, va!</i>&mdash;is this the time for such follies?"</p>
+
+<p>And, suddenly recalled to honour and grim actuality, he realises with
+dismay his breach of trust&mdash;he, who in their earlier days in London
+had called out that sprightly little &eacute;migr&eacute; merely for the vulgar
+flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that
+the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de
+Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own
+across the face&mdash;ay, and shot him in the shoulder, all in the secret
+early dawn of the day they left England&mdash;for daring to remark within
+his hearing: "By George, the handsome Frenchwoman and her cousin may
+be a little less than kin, but they are a little more than kind."</p>
+
+<p>But yet, as the rage of love contending in his heart with
+self-reproach, he rises to his feet in shame, she gives him her hand
+once more, and in a different voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Courage, cousin," says she, "perhaps some day we may both have our
+reward. But will not my knight continue to fight for my bidding, even
+without hope of such?"</p>
+
+<p>Pondering on this enigmatic sentence he leaves her to her rest.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>When next he finds himself by her side the anticipated action has
+begun; and it is to be the last day that those beautiful burning eyes
+shall see the glory of the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>The Chouans are fighting like demons, extended in long skirmishing
+lines, picking out the cluster of gunners, making right deadly use of
+their English powder; imperceptibly but unflinchingly closing their
+scattered groups until the signal comes and with ringing cries:
+"<i>Notre Dame d'Auray!</i>" and "<i>Vive le roi!</i>" they charge, undismayed
+by odds, the serried ranks of the Republicans.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She, from the top of the druidical stone, watches the progress of the
+day. Her red, parted mouth twitches as she follows the efforts of the
+men. Behind her, the <i>gars</i> of Savenaye, grasping with angry clutch,
+some a new musket, others an ancient straightened scythe, gaze
+fiercely on the scene from under their broad felts. Now and then a
+flight of republican bullets hum about their ears, and they look
+anxiously to Their Lady, but that fearless head never bends.</p>
+
+<p>Then the moment arrives, and with a fervent, "God be with you, brave
+people," she hurls, by a stirring gesture, the last reserve on to the
+fight.</p>
+
+<p>And now he finds himself in the midst of the furious medley, striking
+mechanically, his soul away behind on that stone, with her. Presently,
+as the frenzy waxes wilder, he is conscious that victory is not with
+them, but that they are pressed back and encompassed, and that for
+each blue coat cast down amidst the yells and oaths, two more seem to
+come out of the rain and smoke; whilst the bare feet and wooden shoes
+and the long hair of his peasants are seen in ever-lessening ranks.
+And, in time, they find themselves thrown back to the men-hir; she is
+there, still calm but ghastly white, a pistol in each hand. Around
+her, through the wet smoke, rise and fall with sickening thuds the
+clubbed muskets of three or four men, and then one by one these sink
+to the ground too. With a wailing groan like a man in a nightmare, he
+sees the inevitable end and rushes to place his body before hers. A
+bullet shatters his sword-blade; now none are left around them but the
+begrimed and sinister faces of their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>As they stand prisoners, and unheeding the hideous clamour, he, with
+despair thinking of her inevitable fate at the hands of such victors,
+and scarcely daring to look at her, suddenly sees <i>that</i> in her eyes
+which fills his soul to overflowing.</p>
+
+<p>"All is lost," she whispers, "and I shall never repay you for all you
+have done, cousin!"</p>
+
+<p>The words are uttered falteringly, almost plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>"We are not long now for this world, friend," she adds more firmly.
+"Give me your forgiveness."</p>
+
+<p>How often has Adrian heard this dead voice during the strange
+vicissitudes of these long, long years! And, hearing it whisper in the
+vivid world of his brain, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> often has he not passionately longed
+that he also had been able to yield his poor spark of life on the last
+day of her existence.</p>
+
+<p>For the usual fate of Chouan prisoners swiftly overtakes the surviving
+leaders of the Savenaye "band of brigands," as that doughty knot of
+loyalists was termed by their arch-enemy, Thureau.</p>
+
+<p>A long journey towards the nearest town, in an open cart, under the
+pitiless rain, amidst a crowd of evil-smelling, blaspheming, wounded
+republicans, who, when a more cruel jolt than usual awakens their
+wounds, curse the woman in words that should have drawn avenging bolts
+from heaven. She sits silent, lofty, tearless; but her eyes, when they
+are not lost in the grey distance, ever wistfully seek his face.</p>
+
+<p>The day is drawing to a close; they reach their goal, a miserable,
+grey, draggled town at the mouth of the Vilaine, and are roughly
+brought before the arbiter of their lives&mdash;Thureau himself, the
+monstrous excrescence of the times, who, like Marat and Carrier, sees
+nothing in the new freedom but a free opening for the lowest instincts
+of ferocity.</p>
+
+<p>And before this monstrous beast, bedizened in his general's frippery,
+in a reeking tavern-room, stand the noble lady of Savenaye and the
+young heir of Pulwick.</p>
+
+<p>The ruffian's voice rings with laughter as he gazes on the silent
+youthful pair.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha, what have we here; a couple of drowned rats? or have we trapped
+you at last, the ci-devant Savenaye and her <i>godam</i> from England? I
+ought really to send you as a present to the Convention, but I am too
+soft-hearted, you see, my pigeons; and so, to save time and make sure,
+we will marry you to-day."</p>
+
+<p>One of the officers whispers some words in his ear, which Thureau,
+suddenly growing purple with rage, denies with a foul oath and an
+emphatic thump of his huge fist on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoche has forbidden it, has he? Hoche does not command here. Hoche
+has not had to hunt down the brigands these last two years. Dead the
+beast, dead the venom, I say. And here is the order," scribbling
+hurriedly on a page torn from a pocket-book. "It shall not be said
+that I have had the bitch of Savenaye in my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> hands and trusted her on
+the road again. Hoche has forbidden it! Call the cantineer and hop:
+the marriage and quick&mdash;the soup waits."</p>
+
+<p>Unable to understand the hidden meaning of the order, Adrian looks at
+his lady askance, to find that, with eyes closed upon the sight of the
+grinning faces, she is whispering prayers and fervently crossing
+herself. When she turns to him again her face is almost serene.</p>
+
+<p>"They are going to drown us together; that is their republican
+marriage of aristocrats," she says in soft English. "I had feared
+worse. Thank heaven there is no time now for worse. We shall be firm
+to the last, shall we not, cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>There is a pathetic smile on her worn weather-stained face, as the
+cantineer and a corporal enter with ropes and proceed to pinion the
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>But, as they are marched away once more under the slanting rain, are
+forced into a worn-out boat and lashed face to face, her fortitude
+melts apace.</p>
+
+<p>"There, my turtle-doves," sneers the truculent corporal, "another
+kindness of the general. The Nantes way is back to back, but he
+thought it would amuse you to see each other's grimaces."</p>
+
+<p>On the strand resounds the muffled roll of wet drums, announcing the
+execution of national justice; with one blow of an axe the craft is
+scuttled; a push from a gaff sends it spinning on the swift swollen
+waters into the estuary. Adrian's lips are on her forehead, but she
+lifts her face; her eyes now are haggard.</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian," she sobs, "you have forgiven me? I have your death on my
+soul! Oh, Adrian, ... I could have loved you!"</p>
+
+<p>Helpless and palsied by the merciless ropes, she tries passionately to
+reach her little mouth to his. A stream of fire rushes through his
+brain&mdash;maddening frenzy of regret, furious clinging to escaping
+life!&mdash;Their lips have met, but the sinking craft is full, and, with a
+sudden lurch, falls beneath the eddies.... A last roll of the drums,
+and the pinioned bodies of these lovers of a few seconds are silently
+swirling under the waters of the Vilaine.</p>
+
+<p>And now the end of this poor life has come&mdash;with heart-breaking sorrow
+of mind and struggle of body, overpowering horror at the writhings of
+torture in the limbs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> lashed against his&mdash;and vainly he strives to
+force his last breath into her hard-clenched mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the end of Adrian Landale, aged twenty&mdash;the end that should
+have been&mdash;The pity that it was not permitted!</p>
+
+<p>After the pangs of unwelcome death, the misery of unwelcome return to
+life. Oh, Ren&eacute;, Ren&eacute;, too faithful follower; thou and the other true
+men who, heedless of danger, hanging on the flanks of the victorious
+enemy, never ceased to watch your lady from afar. You would have saved
+her, could courage and faithfulness and cunning have availed! But,
+since she was dead, Ren&eacute;, would thou hadst left us to drift on to the
+endless sea! How often have I cursed thee, good friend, who staked thy
+life in the angry bore to snatch two spent bodies from its merciless
+tossing. It was not to be endured, said you, that the remains of the
+Lady of Savenaye should drift away unheeded, to be devoured by the
+beasts of the sea! They now repose in sacred ground, and I live on!
+Oh, hadst thou but reached us a minute later!&mdash;ah, God, or a minute
+earlier!</p>
+
+<p>Rarely had Sir Adrian's haunting visions of the past assumed such
+lurid reality. Rising in torment from the hearth to pace unceasingly
+the length and breadth of the restful, studious room, so closely
+secure from the outer turmoil of heaven and earth, he is once more
+back in the unknown sea-cave, in front of the angry breakers. Slowly,
+agonisingly, he is recalled to life through wheeling spaces of pain
+and confusion, only that his bruised and smarting eyes may see the
+actual proof of his own desolateness&mdash;a small, stark figure wrapped in
+coarse sailcloth, which now two or three ragged, long-haired men are
+silently lifting between them.</p>
+
+<p>He wonders, at first, vaguely, why the tears course down those wild,
+dark faces; and then, as vainly he struggles to speak, and is gently
+held down by some unknown hand, the little white bundle is gone, and
+he knows that <i>there</i> was the pitiful relict of his love&mdash;that he will
+never see her again!</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Sir Adrian halted in front of his seaward window, staring at the
+driven rain, which bounded and plashed and spread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> in minute torrents
+down the glass, obscuring the already darkening vision of furious sea
+and sky.</p>
+
+<p>The dog, that for some moments had shown an anxious restlessness in
+singular concert with his master's, now rose at last to sniff beneath
+the door. No sound penetrated the roar of the blast; but the old
+retriever's uneasiness, his sharp, warning bark at length recalled Sir
+Adrian's wandering thoughts to the present. And, walking up to the
+door, he opened it.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, God! Had the sea given up its dead?</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian staggered back, fell on his knees and clapped his hands
+together with an agonised cry:</p>
+
+<p>"C&eacute;cile...!"</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WHEEL OF TIME</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">And to his eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">There was but one beloved face on earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And that was shining on him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i25 smcap">Byron.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Upon the threshold she stood, looking in upon him with dark, luminous
+eyes; round the small wet face tangles of raven hair fell limp and
+streaming; dark raiments clung to her form, diapered with sand and
+sea-foam, sodden with the moisture that dripped from them to the
+floor; under the hem of her skirt one foot peered forth, shoeless in
+its mud-stained stocking.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian stared up at her, his brain whirling with a frenzy of joy,
+gripped in its soaring ecstasy by terror of the incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>On the wings of the storm and the wind had she come to him, his
+love&mdash;across the awful barriers that divide life and death? Had his
+longings and the clamour of his desolate soul reached her, after all
+these years, in the far-beyond, and was her sweet ghost here to bid
+him cease from them and let her lie at rest? Or, yet, had she come to
+call him from the weary world that their souls might meet and be one
+at last?... Then let her but lay her lips against his, as once in the
+bitterness of death, that his sorely-tried heart may break with the
+exquisite pang and he, too, may die upon their kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Swift such thoughts were tossing in the turmoil of his mind when the
+vision smiled ... a young, rosy, living smile; and then reason,
+memory, the wonder of her coming, the haunting of her grave went from
+him; possessed by one single rapturous certainty he started up and
+gathered the wet form into his strong arms&mdash;yet gently as if he feared
+to crush the vision into void&mdash;and showered kisses on the wet face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not death&mdash;but life! A beating heart beneath his; a lithe young form
+under his hand, warm lips to his kisses, ... Merciful Heaven! Were,
+then, these twenty years all an evil, fevered dream, and was he awake
+at length?</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face from him after a moment and put her hand against
+his breast to push him from her; and as she did so the wonder in the
+lovely, familiar eyes turned to merriment, and the lips parted into
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of the girlish laughter broke the spell. Sir Adrian stepped
+back, and passed his hand across his forehead with a dazed look.</p>
+
+<p>And still she laughed on.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, cousin Landale," she said, at length between the peals; "I came
+to throw myself upon your kindness for shelter from the storm, but&mdash;I
+had not anticipated such a reception."</p>
+
+<p>The voice, clear and sweet, with just a tinge of outlandish
+intonation, struck Adrian to the heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not heard," he faltered, "that voice for twenty years...!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, coming up to her, he took her hands; and, drawing her towards
+the firelight, scanned her features with eager, hungering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not think me mad, child," he said at last; "tell me who you
+are&mdash;what has brought you here? Ah, God, at such a moment! Who is it,"
+he pursued, as if to himself, whilst still she smiled mockingly and
+answered not; "who is it, then, since C&eacute;cile de Savenaye is dead&mdash;and
+I am not dreaming&mdash;nor in fever? No vision either&mdash;this is flesh and
+blood."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," mocked the girl with another burst of merriment; "flesh
+and blood, please, and very living! Why, cousin Landale, you that knew
+C&eacute;cile de Savenaye so well have you forgotten two babes that were born
+at your own house of Pulwick? I believe, 'tis true, I have somewhat
+altered since you saw me last."</p>
+
+<p>And again the old room echoed to the unwonted sound of a girl's
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Now was the hallucination clearing; but the reality evoked a new and
+almost as poignant tenderness. C&eacute;cile&mdash;phantom of a life-time's love,
+reborn in the flesh, young as on the last day of her earthly
+existence, coming back into his life again, even the same as she had
+left it! A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> second wonder, almost as sweet as the first! He clung to
+it as one clings to the presence of a dream, and, joy unspeakable, the
+dream did not melt away, but remained, smiling, beautiful, unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>"C&eacute;cile's daughter ..." he murmured: "C&eacute;cile's self again; but she was
+not so tall, I think," and drew trembling, reverent hands from her
+head to her straight young shoulders. And then he started, crying in a
+changed voice:</p>
+
+<p>"How wet and cold you are! Come closer to the fire&mdash;sit you into this
+chair, here, in the warmth."</p>
+
+<p>He piled up the hearth with faggots till the flames roared again. She
+dropped into the proffered chair with a little shiver; now that he
+recalled her to it, she was wet and cold too.</p>
+
+<p>He surveyed her with gathering concern.</p>
+
+<p>"My child," he began, and hesitated, continuing, after a short pause
+of musing&mdash;for the thought struck him as strange&mdash;"I may call you so,
+I suppose; I that am nearly old enough to be your father; my mind was
+so unhinged by your sudden appearance, by the wonderful resemblance,
+that I have neglected all my duties as host. You will suffer from
+this&mdash;what shall we do to comfort you? Here, Jem, good dog! Call
+Ren&eacute;!"</p>
+
+<p>The old retriever who, concluding that the visitor was welcome, had
+returned to his doze, here gathered his stiff limbs together, hobbled
+out through the doorway to give two or three yelping barks at some
+point on the stairs, and then crawl back to his cosy corner by the
+hearth.</p>
+
+<p>The girl laughed again. It was all odd, new, exciting. Adrian looked
+down at her. C&eacute;cile, too, had had a merry heart, even through peril
+and misfortune.</p>
+
+<p>And now there were hasty steps upon the stairs, creaking above the
+outer tumult of sea and wind; and, in accordance with the
+long-established custom of summoning him, Ren&eacute; appeared upon the
+threshold, holding a pair of candles.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the figure sitting by the fire he halted, as if rooted
+to the ground, and threw up his hands, each still clutching its
+candle.</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle...!" he ejaculated. "Mademoiselle here!" Then, rapidly
+recovering his quick wits, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> deposited his burden of light upon the
+table, advanced towards the lady, made an uncouth but profound bow,
+and turned to his master.</p>
+
+<p>"And this, your honour," he remarked, oracularly, and in his usual
+manner of literal adaptation, "was also part of the news I had for
+your honour from my last journey; but, my faith, I did not know how to
+take myself to it, as your honour was so much occupied with old times
+this evening. But I had seen Mademoiselle at the castle, as
+Mademoiselle can tell you herself. And if your honour," he added, with
+a look of astonishment, "will have the goodness to say how it is
+possible that Mademoiselle managed to arrive here on our isle, in this
+weather of all the devils&mdash;reverence speaking, and I humbly beg the
+pardon of Mademoiselle for using such words&mdash;when it was with pain I
+could land myself, and that before the storm&mdash;I should be grateful to
+your honour. For I avow I cannot comprehend it at all. Ah, your
+honour!" continued Ren&eacute;, with an altered tone, "'tis a strange thing,
+this!"</p>
+
+<p>The looks of master and man crossed suddenly, and in the frank blue
+eyes of the Breton peasant, Sir Adrian read a reflex of his own
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, more in answer to the look than to the exclamation,
+"yes, it is a strange thing, friend."</p>
+
+<p>"And his Honour cannot read the riddle any more than you yourself,
+Ren&eacute;," quoth Mademoiselle de Savenaye, composedly from her corner;
+"and, as for me, I can give no explanations until I am a little
+warmer."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, truly," exclaimed Sir Adrian, striking his forehead, "we are a
+very pair of dolts! Hurry, Renny, hurry, call up Margery, and bid her
+bring some hot drink&mdash;tea, broth, or what she has&mdash;and blankets. Stay!
+first fetch my furred cloak; quick, Ren&eacute;, every moment is precious!"</p>
+
+<p>With all the agitation of a rarely excited man Sir Adrian threw more
+wood on the fire, hunted for a cushion to place beneath her feet, and
+then, seizing the cloak from Ren&eacute;'s hands, he helped her to rise, and
+wrapped its ample folds round her as carefully as if she were too
+precious almost to be touched.</p>
+
+<p>Thus enveloped she sank back in the great arm-chair with a cosy,
+deliberate, kitten-like movement, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> stretched out her feet to the
+blaze, laying the little shoeless one upon Jem's grey muzzle.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian knelt beside her, and began gently to chafe it with both hands.
+And, as he knelt, silence fell between them, and the storm howled out
+yonder; he heard her give a little sigh&mdash;that sigh which would escape
+from C&eacute;cile's weariness in moments of rest, which had once been so
+familiar and so pathetic a sound in his ear. And once more the power
+of the past came over him; again he was upon the heath near Quiberon,
+and C&eacute;cile was sitting by him and seeking warmth by the secret fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my darling," he murmured, "your poor little feet were so cold;
+and yet you would not let me gather them to my breast." And, stooping
+slowly, he kissed the pretty foot in its torn, stained stocking with a
+passion he had not yet shown.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked on with an odd little smile. It was a novel
+experience, to inspire&mdash;even vicariously&mdash;such feelings as these; and
+there was something not unpleasant in the sense of the power which had
+brought this strange handsome man prostrate before her&mdash;a maidenly
+tremor, too, in the sensation of those burning lips upon her feet.</p>
+
+<p>He raised his eyes suddenly, with the old expectation of a rebuff; and
+then, at the sight of the youthful, curious face above him, betook
+himself to sighing too; and, laying the little foot back tenderly upon
+the cushion, he rose.</p>
+
+<p>From between the huge fur collar which all but covered her head, the
+black eyes followed him as alertly as a bird's; intercepting the soft
+melancholy of his gaze, she smiled at him, mischievous, confident, and
+uncommunicative, and snuggled deeper into the fur.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning against the high mantel-board, he remained silent, brooding
+over her; the clock ticked off solemnly the fleeting moments of the
+wonderful hour; and ever and anon the dog drew a long breath of
+comfort and stretched out his gaunt limbs more luxuriously to the
+heat. After a while Sir Adrian spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"He who has hospitality to dispense," said he, smiling down at her
+mutinous grace, "should never ask whence or how the guest came to his
+hearth ... and yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She made a slight movement of laziness, but volunteered nothing; and
+he continued, his look becoming more wistful as he spoke:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your having reached this rock, during such weather, is startling
+enough; it is God's providence that there should live those in these
+ruins who are able to give you succour. But that you should come in to
+me at the moment you did&mdash;" He halted before the bold inquisitive
+brightness of her eyes. "Some day perhaps you will let me explain," he
+went on, embarrassed. "Indeed I must have seemed the most absolute
+madman, to you. But he who thinks he sees one returned from death in
+angry waters, may be pardoned some display of emotion."</p>
+
+<p>The girl sat up briskly and shook herself as if in protest against the
+sadness of his smile and look.</p>
+
+<p>"I rise indeed from a watery grave," she said lightly, "or at least
+from what should have been my grave, had I had my deserts for my
+foolishness; as it has turned out I do not regret it now; though I
+did, about midway."</p>
+
+<p>The red lips parted and the little teeth gleamed. "I have found such
+kindness and welcome." She caressed the dog who, lazily, tried to lick
+her hand. "It is all such an adventure; so much more amusing than
+Pulwick; so much more interesting than ever I fancied it might be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pulwick; you come from Pulwick?" said Sir Adrian musing; "true, Ren&eacute;
+has said it but just now. Yet, it is of a piece with the strangeness
+of it all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mademoiselle de Savenaye, once more collecting her cloak,
+which her hurried movement had thrown off her shoulder. "Madelon and I
+are now at Pulwick&mdash;I am Molly, cousin, please to remember&mdash;or rather
+I am here, very warm now, and comfortable, and she is somewhere along
+the shore&mdash;perhaps&mdash;she and John, as wet as drowned rats. Well, well,
+I had best tell you the tale from the beginning, or else we never
+shall be out of the labyrinth.&mdash;We started from Pulwick, for a ride by
+the shore, Madelon and I. When we were on the strand it came on to
+rain. There was smoke out of your chimney. I proposed a canter as far
+as the ruins, for shelter. I knew very well Madelon would not follow;
+but I threw poor Lucifer&mdash;you know Lucifer, Mr. Landale has reserved
+him for me; of course you know Lucifer, I believe he belongs to you!
+Well, I threw him along the causeway. John, he's the groom you know,
+and Madelon, shrieked after me. But it was beautiful&mdash;this magnificent
+tearing gallop in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> rain&mdash;I was not going to stop.&mdash;But when we
+were half way, Lucifer and I, I saw suddenly that the foam seemed to
+cover the sand in front of me. Then I pulled up quick and turned round
+to look behind me. There was already a frightful wind, and the sand
+and the rain blinded me almost, but there was no mistake&mdash;the sea was
+running between the shore and me. Oh! my God! but I was frightened
+then; I beat poor Lucifer until my whip broke, and he started away
+with a will. But when his feet began to splash the water he too became
+frightened and stopped. I did not know what to do; I pulled out my
+broach to spur him with the pin, but, at the first prick I gave him,
+he reared, and swerved and I fell right on my face in the froth. I got
+up and began to run through the water; then I came to some stones and
+I knew I was saved, though the water was up to my knees and rushing by
+like a torrent. When I had clambered up the beach I thought again of
+poor Lucifer. I looked about and saw him a little way off. He was
+shaking and tossing his dear black head, and neighing, though I really
+did not hear him, for the wind was in my ears; his body was stock
+still, I could not see his legs.... And gradually he sank lower, and
+lower, and lower, and at last the water passed over his head. Oh! it
+was horrible, horrible!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl shuddered and her bright face clouded. After a moment she
+resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"It was only then I thought of the moving sands they spoke of the
+other day at Pulwick&mdash;and that was why Madelon and that poltroon groom
+would not follow me! Yet perhaps they were wise, after all, for the
+thought of being buried alive made me turn weak all of a sudden. My
+knees shook and I had to sit down, although I knew I had passed
+through the danger. But I was so sorry for poor Lucifer! I thought if
+I had come down and led him, poor fellow, he might have come with me.
+Death is so awful, so hideous; he was so full of life and carried me
+so bravely, only a few minutes before! Is it not a shame that there
+should be such a thing as death?" she cried, rebelliously, and looked
+up at the man above her, whose face had grown white at the thought of
+the danger she had barely escaped.</p>
+
+<p>"I waited," she resumed at length, "till I thought he must be quite
+dead, there below, and came up to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> ruins, and looked for an
+entrance. I knocked at some doors and called, but the wind was so
+loud, no one heard. And then, at last, there was one door I could
+open, so I entered and came up the stairs and startled you, as you
+know. And that is how I came here and how Lucifer is drowned."</p>
+
+<p>As she finished her tale at last, she looked up at her companion. But
+Sir Adrian, who had followed her with ever-deepening earnestness of
+mien, remained silent; noticing which she added quickly and with a
+certain tinge of defiance:</p>
+
+<p>"And now, no doubt, you are not quite so pleased as you seemed at
+first with the apparition which has caused you the loss of one of your
+best horses!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why child," cried Sir Adrian, "so that you be safe you might have
+left all Pulwick at the bottom of the sands for me!" And Ren&eacute; who
+entered the room at that moment, heading the advance of Dame Margery
+with the posset, here caught the extraordinary sound of a laugh on his
+master's lips, and stepped back to chuckle to himself and rub his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Who would have believed that!" he muttered, "and I who was afraid to
+tell his honour! Oh, yes, there are better times coming. Now in with
+you, Mother Margery, see for yourself who is there."</p>
+
+<p>Holding in both hands a fragrant, steaming bowl, the old crone made
+her slow entrance upon the scene, peering with dim eyes, and dropping
+tremulous curtseys every two or three steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Renny towd me as you wanted summat hot for a lady," she began
+cautiously; and then having approached near for recognition at last,
+burst forth into a long-drawn cry!</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, you never says! Eh, dear o' me," and was fain to relinquish the
+bowl to her fellow-servant who narrowly watching, dived forward just
+in time to catch it from her, that she might clasp her aged hands
+together once and again with ever-renewed gestures of astonishment.
+"An' it were truth then, an' I that towd Renny to give over his
+nonsense&mdash;I didn't believe it, I welly couldn't. Eh, Mester Adrian,
+but she's like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit an' image
+she is&mdash;e-eh, she is!"</p>
+
+<p>Molly de Savenaye laughed aloud, stretched out her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> hand for the bowl,
+and began with dainty caution to sip its scalding contents.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my dear Margery," said the master, "we little thought what a
+guest the sea would cast up at our doors to-night! and now we must do
+our best for her; when she's finished your comforting mixture I shall
+give her into your charge. You ought to put her to bed&mdash;it will not be
+the first time."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! it will not, and a troublesome child she was," replied Margery,
+after the usual pause for the assimilation of his remark, turning to
+the speaker from her palsied yet critical survey of her whilom
+nursling.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll see to her, never fear, I'll fettle up a room for her at
+once&mdash;blankets is airing already, an' sheets, an' Renny he's seen to
+the fire, so that as soon as Miss, here, is ready, I am."</p>
+
+<p>Upon which, dropping a last curtsey with an assumed dignity which
+would have befitted a mistress of the robes, she took her departure,
+leaving Adrian smiling with amusement at her specious manner of
+announcing that his own bedroom&mdash;the only one available for the
+purpose in the ruins&mdash;was being duly converted into a lady's bower.</p>
+
+<p>"It grieves me to think," mused he after a pause, while Ren&eacute; still
+bursting with ungratified curiosity, hung about the further end of the
+room, "of the terrible anxiety they must be in about you at Pulwick,
+and of our absolute inability to convey to them the good news of your
+safety."</p>
+
+<p>The girl gave a little laugh, with her lips over the cup, and shrugged
+her shoulders but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, yes," quoth Ren&eacute; cheerfully from his corner. "Notre Dame
+d'Auray has watched over Mademoiselle to-day. She would not permit the
+daughter to die like the mother. And now we have got her ladyship we
+shall keep her too. This, if your honour remembers his sailor's
+knowledge, looks like a three-days' gale."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, I fancy," said Sir Adrian, going over to him and
+looking out of the window. "Mademoiselle de Savenaye will have to take
+up her abode in our lighthouse for a longer time than she bargained. I
+do not remember hearing the breakers thunder in our cave so loud for
+many years. I trust," continued the light-keeper, coming down to his
+fair guest again, "that you may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> able to endure such rough
+hospitality as ours must needs be!"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been much more pleasant and I feel far more welcome already
+than at Pulwick," remarked Mademoiselle, between two deliberate sips,
+and in no way discomposed, it seemed, at the prospect held out to her.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" cried Sir Adrian with a start, while the unwonted flush mounted
+to his forehead, "you, not welcome at Pulwick! Have they not welcomed
+a child of C&eacute;cile de Savenaye at Pulwick?... Thank God, then, for the
+accident that has sent you to me!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at him with an inquisitive smile in her eyes; there
+was something on her lips which she restrained. Surrendering her cup,
+she remarked demurely:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was a lucky accident, was it not, that there was some one to
+offer shelter to the outcast from the sea? It is like a tale of old.
+It is delightful. Delightful, too, not to be drowned, safe and sound
+... and welcome in this curious old place."</p>
+
+<p>She had risen and, as the cloak fell from her steaming garments, again
+she shivered.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are right," she said, "I must go to bed, and get these damp
+garments off. And so, my Lord of Scarthey, I will retire to my
+apartments; my Lady in Waiting I see yonder is ready for me."</p>
+
+<p>With a quaint mixture of playfulness and gravity, she extended her
+hand, and Adrian stooped and kissed it&mdash;as he had kissed fair C&eacute;cile
+de Savenaye's rosy finger-tip upon the porch of Pulwick, twenty years
+before.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>FOREBODINGS OF GLADNESS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Molly de Savenaye in her improvised bedroom, wet as she was, could
+hardly betake herself to disrobing, so amused was she in surveying the
+fresh and romantic oddity of her surroundings, with their mixture of
+barbarous rudeness and almost womanish refinement.</p>
+
+<p>Old Margery's fumbling hands were not nimble either, and it was long
+since she had acted as attendant upon one of her own sex. And so the
+matter progressed but slowly; but the speed of Margery's tongue was
+apparently not affected by its length of service. It wagged
+ceaselessly; the girl between her own moods of curious speculation
+vouchsafing an amused, half-contemptuous ear.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, however, as the nurse's reminiscences wandered from the
+less interesting topic of her own vicissitudes, the children she had
+reared or buried, and the marvellous ailments she had endured, to an
+account of those days when she had served the French Madam and her
+babes, Molly, slowly peeling a clinging sleeve from her arm, turned a
+more eager and attentive face to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," quoth Margery, appraising her with blear eyes, "it's a queer
+thing how ye favour your mother, miss. She had just they beautiful
+shoulders and arms, as firm an' as white; but you're taller, I think,
+and may be so, to speak, a stouter make altogether. Eh, dear, you were
+always a fine child and the poor lady set a deal of store on you, she
+did. She took you with her and left your sister with my Sally, when
+she was trapesing up to London and back with Mester Adrian, ay, and me
+with ye. And many the day that I wished myself safe at Pulwick! And I
+mind the day she took leave of you, I do that, well."</p>
+
+<p>Here Dame Margery paused and shook her head solemnly, then pursued in
+another key:</p>
+
+<p>"See now, miss, dear, just step out of they wet things, will ye now,
+and let me put this hot sheet round ye?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I want to hear about myself," said Molly, gratefully wrapping the
+hot linen round her young beauty, and beginning to rub her black locks
+energetically. "Where was it my mother parted from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I'll tell you, miss. When Madam&mdash;we allus used to call her
+Madam, ye know&mdash;was goin' her ways to the ship as was to take her to
+France, I took you after her mysel' down to the shore that she might
+have the very last of ye. Eh, I mind it as if it were yesterday.
+Mester Adrian was to go with her&mdash;Sir Adrian, I should say, but he was
+but Mester Adrian then&mdash;an' a two three more o' th' gentry as was all
+fur havin' a share o' th' fightin'. Sir Thomas himsel' was theer&mdash;I
+like as if I could see him now, poor owd gentleman, talkin' an'
+laughin' very hard an' jov'al, an' wipin' 's e'en when he thought
+nobody noticed. Eh, dear, yes! I could ha' cried mysel' to see th'
+bonny young lady goin' off fro' her bairns. An' to think she niver
+came back to them no more. Well, well! An' Mester Adrian too&mdash;such a
+fine well-set-up young gentleman as he were&mdash;and <i>he</i> niver comed back
+for ten year an' when he did, he was that warsened&mdash;" she stopped,
+shook her head and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but how about me, nurse," observed Molly, "what about <i>me</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss, please it was this way. Madam was wantin' a last look at her
+bairn&mdash;eh, she did, poor thing! You was allus her favoryite, ye know,
+miss&mdash;our Sally was wet-nurse to Miss Maddyline, but Madam had you
+hersel'. Well, miss, I'd brought you well lapped up i' my shawl an'
+William Shearman&mdash;that was Thomas Shearman's son, feyther to William
+an' Tom as lives over yonder at Pulwick village&mdash;well, William was
+standin' in 's great sea-boots ready to carry her through th' surf
+into the boat; an' Mester Adrian&mdash;Sir Adrian, I mean&mdash;stood it might
+be here, miss, an' there was Renny, an' yon were th' t'other gentry.
+Well, Madam stopped an' took you out o' my arms, an' hugged you to her
+breast&mdash;an' then she geet agate o' kissin' you&mdash;your head an' your
+little 'ands. An' you was jumpin' an' crowin' in her arms&mdash;the wind
+had blown your cap off, an' your little downy black hair was standing
+back. (Just let me get at your hair now, miss, please&mdash;Eh! it's cruel
+full of sand, my word, it is.)"</p>
+
+<p>"It's 'ard, when all's said an' done, to part wi' th' babe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> ye've
+suckled, an' Madam, though there was niver nought nesh about 'er same
+as there is about most women, an' specially ladies&mdash;she 'ad th'
+mother's 'eart, she 'ad, miss, an when th' time coom for her to leave
+th' little un, I could see, as it were, welly burstin'. There we stood
+wi' th' wind blowin' our clothes an' our 'air, an' the waves roarin',
+an' one bigger nor th' t'others ran up till th' foam reached Madam's
+little feet, but she niver took no notice. Then all of a sudden she
+gets th' notion that she'd like to take you with 'er, an' she turns
+an' tells Mester Adrian so. 'She shall come with me,' she says, quite
+sharp an' determined, an' makes a sign to William Shearman to carry
+'em both over. 'No, no,' says Mester Adrian, 'quite impossible,' says
+he, as wise as if he'd been an owd man i' stead o' nobbut a lad, ye
+might say. 'It would be madness both for you an' th' child. Now,' he
+says, very quiet an' gentle, 'if I might advise, I should say stay
+here with the child.' Eh, I couldn't tell ye all he said, an' then Sir
+Tummas coom bustlin' up, 'Do, now, my dear; think of it,' he says,
+pattin' her o' th' hand. 'Stay with us,' he says, 'ye'll be welcome as
+th' flowers in May!' An' there was Renny wi' 's 'at off, an' th' tears
+pourin' down his face, beggin' an' prayin' Madam to stop&mdash;at least, I
+reckoned that was what he were sayin' for it was all in 's own
+outlandish gibberish. The poor lady! she'd look from one to th'
+t'other an' a body a' must think she'd give in&mdash;an' then she'd
+unbethink hersel' again. An' Sir Thomas, he'd say, 'Do now, my dear,'
+an' then when she'd look at him that pitiful, he'd out wi' 's red
+'andkercher an' frown over at Mester Adrian, an', says he, 'I wonder
+ye can ax her!' Well, all of a sudden off went th' big gun in th'
+ship&mdash;that was to let 'em know, miss, do ye see&mdash;an' up went Madam's
+head, an' then th' wind fetched th' salt spray to her face, an' a kind
+o' change came over her. She looked at the child, then across at the
+ship&mdash;an' then she fair tossed ye back to me. Big William catched her
+up in his arms just same as another bairn, an' carried her to the
+boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Molly, gazing into the burning logs with brilliant eyes,
+but speaking low, as if to herself, so that her attendant's deaf ears
+failed to catch the meaning of the words. "Ah, that was life indeed!
+Happy mother to have seen such life&mdash;though she did die young."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"As ye say, miss," answered Margery, making a guess at the most likely
+comment from a daughter's lips, "it was cruel hard&mdash;it was that.
+'Come, make haste!' cries the other young gentlemen: my word, they
+were in a hurry lest Madam happen to change her mind. I could welly
+have laughed to see their faces when Mester Adrian were trying to
+persuade her to stop at Pulwick, and let the men go alone. 'T wern't
+for that they reckoned to go all that road to France, ye may think,
+miss. Well, miss, in a few minutes they was all out i' the boat wi'
+th' waves tossin' 'em&mdash;an' I stood watchin' with you i' my arms,
+cryin' and kickin' out wi' your little legs, an' hittin' of me wi'
+your little 'ands, same as if ye knowed summat o' what was agate, poor
+lamb, an' was angry wi' me for keepin' ye. Then in a little while the
+big, white sails o' th' ship went swellin' out an' soon it was gone.
+An' that was th' last we saw o' Madam. A two-three year arter you an'
+Miss Maddyline was fetched away, to France, as I've been towd. I doubt
+you didn't so much as think there was such a place as Pulwick, though
+many a one there minds how they dandled and played wi' you when you
+was a wee bairn, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am very glad to be back in England, anyhow," said Molly,
+nimbly slipping into bed. "Oh, Margery, what delicious warm sheets,
+and how good it is to be in bed alive, dry, and warm, after all!"</p>
+
+<p>A new atmosphere pervaded Scarthey that night. The peaceful monotony
+of years, since the master of Pulwick had migrated to his "ruins," was
+broken at last, and happily. A warm colour seemed to have crept upon
+the hitherto dun and dull surroundings and brightened all the
+prospects.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate Ren&eacute;, over his busy work in the lantern, whistled and
+hummed snatches of song with unwonted blithesomeness, and, after
+lighting the steady watch-light and securing all his paraphernalia
+with extra care, dallied some time longer than usual on the outer
+platform, striving to snatch through the driven wraith a glance of the
+distant lights of Pulwick. For there, in the long distance, ensconced
+among the woods, stood a certain gate-lodge of greystone, much covered
+with ivy, which sheltered, among other inmates, the gatekeeper's
+blue-eyed, ripe and ruddy daughter&mdash;Dame Margery's pet grandchild.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The idea of ever leaving the master&mdash;even for the sake of the
+happiness to be found over yonder&mdash;was not one to be entertained by
+Ren&eacute;. But what if dreams of a return to the life of the world should
+arise after to-day in the recluse's mind? Ah, the master's eyes had
+been filled with light!... and had he not actually laughed?</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; peered again through the wind, but nothing could be seen of the
+world abroad, save grey, tumbling waters foaming at the foot of the
+islet; fretful waters coalescing all around with the driven, misty
+air. A desolate view enough, had there been room for melancholy
+thoughts in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Blithely did he descend the steep wooden stairs from the roaring,
+weather-beaten platform, to the more secure inhabited keep; and,
+humming a satisfied tune, he entered upon Margery in her flaming
+kitchen, to find the old lady intent on sorting out a heap of feminine
+garments and spreading them before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; took up a little shoe, sand-soiled and limp, and reverentially
+rubbed it on his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mother," he said, cheerfully, "it is a long while since you had
+to do with such pretty things. My faith, these are droll doings,
+ah&mdash;and good, too! You will see, Mother Margery, there will be good
+out of all this."</p>
+
+<p>But Margery invariably saw fit, on principle, to doubt all the
+opinions of her rival.</p>
+
+<p>Eh, she didn't hold so much wi' wenches hersel', an' Mester Adrian,
+she reckoned, hadn't come to live here all by himsel' to have visitors
+breaking in on him that gate!</p>
+
+<p>"There be visitors <i>and</i> visitors, mother&mdash;I tell you, I who speak to
+you, that his honour is happy."</p>
+
+<p>Margery, with a mysterious air, smoothed out a long silk stocking and
+gave an additional impetus to the tremor Nature had already bestowed
+upon her aged head.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it wasn't for her to say. She hoped and prayed there was nowt
+bad a coomin' on the family again; but sich likenesses as that of Miss
+to her mother was not lucky, to her minding; it was not. Nowt good had
+come to Mester Adrian from the French Madam. Ah, Mester Adrian had
+been happy like with her too, and she had taken him away from his
+home, an' his people, an' sent him back wi'out 's soul in the end.</p>
+
+<p>"And now her daughter has come to give it him back,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> retorted Ren&eacute;,
+as he fell to, with a zest, on the savoury mess he had concocted for
+his own supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, well, I hope nowt bad's i' the road," said Margery with senile
+iteration. "They do say no good ever comes o' saving bodies from
+drowning; not that one 'ud wish the poor Miss to have gone into the
+sands&mdash;an' she the babby I weaned too!"</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; interrupted her with a hearty laugh. "Yes, every one knows it
+carries misfortune to save people from the drowning, but there, you
+see, her ladyship, she saved herself&mdash;so that ought to bring good
+fortune. Good-night, Mother Margery, take good care of the lady....
+Ah, how I wish I had the care of her!" he added simply, and, seizing
+his lantern, proceeded to ascend once more to his post aloft.</p>
+
+<p>He paused once on his way, in the loud sighing stairs, struck with a
+fresh aspect of the day's singular events&mdash;a quaint thought, born of
+his native religious faith: The Lady, the dear Mistress had just
+reached Heaven, no doubt, and had straightway sent them the young one
+to console and comfort them. Eh bien! they had had their time of
+Purgatory too, and now they might be happy.</p>
+
+<p>Pleasant therefore were Ren&eacute;'s musings, up in the light watcher's
+bunk, underneath the lantern, as, smoking a pipe of rest, he listened
+complacently to the hissing storm around him.</p>
+
+<p>And in the master's sleeping chamber beneath him, now so curiously
+turned into a feminine sanctum, pleasant thoughts too, if less formed,
+and less concerned with the future, lulled its dainty occupant to
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>Luxuriously stretched between the warm lavender-scented sheets,
+watching from her pillow the leaping fire on the hearth, Miss Molly
+wondered lazily at her own luck; at the many possible results of the
+day's escapade; wondered amusedly whether any poignant sorrow&mdash;except,
+indeed poor Madeleine's tears&mdash;for her supposed demise, really
+darkened the supper party at Pulwick this evening; wondered agreeably
+how the Lord of the Ruined Castle would meet her on the morrow, after
+his singular reception of her this day; how long she would remain in
+these romantic surroundings and whether she would like them as well at
+the end of the visitation.</p>
+
+<p>And as the blast howled with increasing rage, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> cold night drew
+closer on, and the great guns in the sea-cave boomed more angrily with
+the risen tide, she dimly began to dwell upon the thought of poor
+Lucifer being sucked deeper into his cold rapacious grave, whilst she
+was held in the warm embrace of a man whose eyes were masterful and
+yet gentle, whose arm was strong, whose kisses were tender.</p>
+
+<p>And in the delight of the contrast, Mademoiselle de Savenaye fell into
+the profound slumber of the young and vigorous.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PATH OF WASTED YEARS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">And I only think of the woman that weeps;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But I forget, always forget, the smiling child.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>That night, even when sheer fatigue had subdued the currents of blood
+and thought that surged in his head, Sir Adrian was too restless to
+avail himself of the emergency couch providently prepared by Ren&eacute; in a
+corner. But, ceasing his fretful pacing to and fro, he sat down in the
+arm-chair by the hearth where she had sat&mdash;the waif of the
+sea&mdash;wrapped round him the cloak that had enfolded the young body,
+hugging himself in the salt moisture the fur still retained, to spend
+the long hours in half-waking, firelight dreams.</p>
+
+<p>And every burst of tempest rage, every lash of rain at the window,
+every thud of hurricane breaking itself on impassable ramparts, and
+shriek of baffled winds searching the roofless halls around, found a
+strangely glad echo in his brain&mdash;made a sort of burden to his
+thoughts:</p>
+
+<p>Heap up the waters round this happy island, most welcome winds&mdash;heap
+them up high and boiling, and retain her long captive in these lonely
+ruins!</p>
+
+<p>And ever the image in his mind's eye was, as before, C&eacute;cile&mdash;C&eacute;cile
+who had come back to him, for all sober reason knew it was but the
+child.</p>
+
+<p>The child&mdash;&mdash;! Why had he never thought of the children these weary
+years? They, all that remained of C&eacute;cile, were living and might have
+been sought. Strange that he had not remembered him of the children!</p>
+
+<p>Twenty years since he had last set eyes upon the little living
+creature in her mother's arms. And the picture that the memory evoked
+was, after all, C&eacute;cile again, only C&eacute;cile&mdash;not the queer little
+black-eyed puppet, even then associated with sea-foam and salty
+breeze. Twenty years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> during which she was growing and waxing in
+beauty, and unawares, maturing towards this wonderful meeting&mdash;and he
+had never given a thought to her existence.</p>
+
+<p>In what sheltered ways had this fair duplicate of his love been
+growing from a child to womanhood during that space of life, so long
+to look back upon&mdash;or so short and transient, according to the mood of
+the thinker?</p>
+
+<p>And, lazily, in his happier and tender present mood he tried to
+measure once again the cycles of past discontent, this time in terms
+of the girl's own lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>It is bitter in misery to recall past misery&mdash;almost as bitter, for
+all Dante's cry, as to dwell on past happiness. But, be the past
+really dead, and a new and better life begun, the scanning back of a
+sombre existence done with for ever, may bring with it a kind of
+secret complacency.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, mused Sir Adrian, for one who ever cherished ideal aspirations,
+for the student, the "man of books" (as his father had been
+banteringly wont to term him), worshipper of the muses, intellectual
+Epicurean, and would-be optimist philosopher, it must be admitted he
+had strangely dealt, and been dealt with, since he first beheld that
+face, now returned to light his solitude! Ah, God bless the child!
+Pulwick at least nursed it warmly, whilst unhappy Adrian, ragged and
+degraded into a mere fighting beast, roamed through the Marais with
+Chouan bands, hunted down by the merciless revolutionists, like
+vermin; falling, as months of that existence passed over him, from his
+high estate to the level of vermin indeed; outlawed, predatory,
+cunning, slinking, filthy&mdash;trapped at last, the fit end of vermin!</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely better the long months of confinement in the hulks of
+Rochelle. How often he had regretted it, then, not to have been one of
+the chosen few who, the day after capture, stood in front of six
+levelled muskets, and were sped to rest in some unknown charnel!
+Then!&mdash;not now. No, it was worth having lived to this hour, to know of
+that fair face, in living sleep upon his pillow, under the safeguard
+of his roof.</p>
+
+<p>Good it was, that he had escaped at last, though with the blood of one
+of his jailors red upon his hands; the blood of a perhaps innocent
+man, upon his soul. It was the only time he had taken a life other
+than in fair fight, and the thought of it had been wont to fill him
+with a sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> of nausea; but to-night, he found he could face it, not
+only without remorse, but without regret. He was glad he had listened
+to Ren&eacute;'s insidious whispers&mdash;Ren&eacute;, who could not endure the captivity
+to which his master might, in time, have fallen a passive, hopeless
+slave, and yet who would have faced a thousand years of it rather than
+escape alone&mdash;the faithful heart!</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was good, and he was glad of it, or time would not have come
+when she (stay, how old was the child then?&mdash;almost three years, and
+still sheltered and cherished by the house of Landale)&mdash;when she would
+return, and gladden his eyes with a living sight of C&eacute;cile, while Ren&eacute;
+watched in his tower above; ay, and old Margery herself lay once more
+near the child she had nursed.</p>
+
+<p>Marvellous turn of the wheel of fate!</p>
+
+<p>But, who had come for the children, and where had they been taken? To
+their motherland, perhaps; even it might have been before he himself
+had left it; or yet to Ireland, where still dwelt kinsfolk of their
+blood? Probably it was at the breaking up of the family, caused by the
+death of Sir Thomas, that these poor little birds had been removed
+from the nest, that had held them so safe and close.</p>
+
+<p>That was in '97, in the yellow autumn of which year Adrian Landale,
+then French fisherman, parted from his brother Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre upon the
+sea off Belle Isle; parted one grizzly dawn after embracing, as
+brothers should. Oh, the stealthy cold of that blank, cheerless
+daybreak, how it crept into the marrow of his bones, and chilled the
+little energy and spirits he had left! For a whole year they had
+fruitlessly sought some English vessel, to convey this English
+gentleman back to his native land. He could remember how, at the
+moment of separation, from the one friend who had loved both him and
+her, his heart sank within him&mdash;remember how he clambered from aboard
+the poor little smack, up the forbidding sides of the English brig;
+how Ren&eacute;'s broken words had bidden God bless him, and restore him
+safely home (home!); remember how swiftly the crafts had moved apart,
+the mist, the greyness and desolateness; the lapping of the waters,
+the hoarse cries of the seamen, all so full of heart-piercing
+associations to him, and the last vision of Ren&eacute;'s simple face, with
+tears pouring down it, and his open mouth spasmodically trying to give
+out a hearty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> cheer, despite the sobs that came heaving up to it. How
+little the simple fellow dreamed of what bitterness the future was yet
+holding for his brother and master, to end in these reunions at last!</p>
+
+<p>The vessel which had taken Adrian Landale on board, in answer to the
+frantic signals of the fishing-smack, that had sailed from Belle Isle
+obviously to meet her, proved to be a privateer, bound for the West
+Indies, but cruising somewhat out of her way, in the hope of outgoing
+prizes from Nantes.</p>
+
+<p>The captain, who had been led to expect something of importance from
+the smack's behaviour, in high dudgeon at finding that so much bustle
+and waste of time was only to burden him with a mere castaway seeking
+a passage home&mdash;one who, albeit a countryman, was too ragged and
+disreputable in looks to be trusted in his assurances of
+reward&mdash;granted him indeed the hospitality of his ship, but on the
+condition of his becoming a hand in the company during the forthcoming
+expedition.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rough measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrian
+accepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jump
+overboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removed
+from his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruise
+lasting over a year, during which the only changes rung in the gamut
+of its purpose were the swooping down, as a vulture might, upon
+unprotected ships; flying with superior speed from obviously stronger
+crafts; engaging, with hawk-like bravery, everything afloat that
+displayed inimical colours, if it offered an equal chance of fight.</p>
+
+<p>And this for more than a year, until the privateer, much battered, but
+safe, despite her vicissitudes made Halifax for refitting. Here, at
+the first suitable port she had touched, Adrian claimed and obtained
+his release from obligations which made his life almost unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Then ensued a period of the most absolute penury; unpopular with most
+of his messmates for his melancholy taciturnity, despised by the more
+brutal as one who had as little stomach for a carouse as for a bloody
+fight, he left the ship without receiving, or even thinking of his
+share of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such mean
+mechanical employment as came in his way, till an opportunity was
+offered of engaging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> himself as seaman, again from sheer necessity, on
+a homeward-bound merchantman&mdash;an opportunity which he seized, if not
+eagerly, for there was no eagerness left in him, yet under the
+pressure of purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Next the long, slowly plodding, toilsome, seemingly eternal course
+across the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>But even a convoy, restricted to the speed of its slowest member, if
+it escape capture or natural destruction, must meet the opposite shore
+at length, and the last year of the century had lapsed in the even
+race of time when, after many dreary weeks, on the first of January
+1801, the long low lines of sandhills on the Lancastrian coast loomed
+in sight. The escort drew away, swiftly southwards, as if in joyful
+relief from the tedious task, leaving the convoy to enter the Mersey,
+safe and sound.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Adrian, the rough-looking and taciturn sailor, set foot,
+for a short while, on his native land, after six years of an exile
+which had made of him at five and twenty a prematurely aged and
+hopelessly disillusioned man.</p>
+
+<p>And Sir Adrian, as he mused, wrapped in the honoured fur cloak, with
+eyes half closed, by his sympathetic fire, recalled how little of joy
+this return had had for him. It was the goal he had striven to reach,
+and he had reached it, that was all; nay, he recalled how, when at
+hand, he had almost dreaded the actual arrival home, dreaded, with the
+infinite heart-sickness of sorrow, the emotions of the family welcome
+to one restored from such perils by flood and field&mdash;if not indeed
+already mourned for and forgotten&mdash;little wotting how far that return
+to Pulwick, that seemed near and certain, was still away in the dim
+future of life.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, but for the fit of hypochondriacal humour which had fallen black
+upon him that day of deliverance and made him yearn, with an intensity
+increasing every moment, to separate himself from his repugnant
+associates and haste the moment of solitude and silence, he might have
+been rescued, then and for ever, from the quagmire in which perverse
+circumstances had enslaved him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look'ee here, matey," said one of his fellow-workers to him, in a
+transient fit of good-fellowship which the prospect of approaching
+sprees had engendered in him even towards one whom all on board had
+felt vaguely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> to be of a different order, and disliked accordingly,
+"you don't seem to like a jolly merchantman&mdash;but, maybe, you wouldn't
+take more kindly to a man-o'-war. Do you see that there ship?&mdash;a
+frigate she is; and, whenever there's a King's ship in the Mersey that
+means that it's more wholesome for the likes of us to lie low. You
+take a hint, matey, and don't be about Liverpool to-night, or until
+she's gone. Now, I know a crib that's pretty safe, Birkenhead way;
+Mother Redcap's, we call it&mdash;no one's ever been nabbed at Mother
+Redcap's, and if you'll come along o' me&mdash;why then if you won't, go
+your way and be damned to you for a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>This was the parting of Adrian Landale from his fellow-workers. The
+idea of spending even one night more in that atmosphere of rum and
+filth, in the intimate hearing of blasphemous and obscene language,
+was too repulsive to be entertained, and he had turned away from the
+offer with a gesture of horror.</p>
+
+<p>With half a dozen others, in whose souls the attractions of the town
+at night proved stronger than the fear of the press party, he
+disembarked on the Lancashire side, and separating from his
+companions, for ever, as he thought, ascended the miserable lanes
+leading from the river to the upper town.</p>
+
+<p>His purpose was to sleep in one of the more decent hotels, to call the
+next day for help at the banking-house with which the Landales had
+dealt for ages past, and thence to take coach for Pulwick. But he had
+planned without taking reck of his circumstances. No hotel of repute
+would entertain this weather-beaten common sailor in the meanest of
+work-stained clothes. After failing at various places even to obtain a
+hearing, being threatened with forcible ejectment, derisively referred
+to suitable cribs in Love Lane or Tower Street, he gave up the
+attempt; and, in his usual dejection of spirit, intensified by
+unavowed and unreasonable anger, wandered through the dark streets,
+brooding. Thus aimlessly wandering, the remembrance of his young
+Utopian imaginings came back to him to mock him. Dreams of universal
+brotherhood, of equality, of harmony. He had already seen the apostles
+of equality and brotherhood at work&mdash;on the banks of the Vilaine. And
+realising how he himself, now reduced to the lowest level in the
+social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> scale, hunted with insult from every haunt above that level,
+yet loathed and abhorred the very thought of associating again with
+his recent brothers in degradation, he laughed a laugh of bitter
+self-contempt.</p>
+
+<p>But the night was piercing cold; and, in time, the question arose
+whether the stench and closeness of a riverside eating-house would not
+be more endurable than the cutting wind, the sleet, and the sharper
+pangs of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>His roaming had brought him once more to that quarter of the town
+"best suited to the likes of him," according to the innkeeper's
+opinion, and he found himself actually seeking a house of
+entertainment in the slimy, ill-lighted narrow street, when, from out
+the dimness, running towards him, with bare feet paddling in the
+sludge, came a slatternly girl, with unkempt wisps of red hair hanging
+over her face under the tartan shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"Run, run, Jack," she cried, hoarsely, as she passed by breathless,
+"t' gang's comin' up...."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden loathly fear seized Adrian by the heart. He too, took to his
+heels by the side of the slut with all the swiftness his tired frame
+could muster.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to warn my Jo," she gasped, as, jostling each other, they
+darted through a maze of nameless alleys.</p>
+
+<p>And then as, spent with running, they emerged at last into a broader
+street, it was to find themselves in the very midst of another party
+of man-of-war's men, whose brass belt-buckles glinted under the
+flickering light of the oil-lamp swinging across the way.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian stopped dead short and looked at the girl in mute reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"May God strike me dead," she screamed, clapping her hands together,
+"if I knew the bloody thieves were there! Oh, my bonny lad, I meant to
+save ye!" And as her words rang in the air two sailors had Adrian by
+the collar and a facetious bluejacket seized her round the waist with
+hideous bantering.</p>
+
+<p>A very young officer, wrapped up in a cloak, stood a few paces apart
+calmly looking on. To him Adrian called out in fierce, yet anguished,
+expostulation:</p>
+
+<p>"I am a free and independent subject, sir, an English gentleman. I
+demand that you order your men to release me. For heaven's sake," he
+added, pleadingly, "give me but a moment's private hearing!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A loud guffaw rang through the group. In truth, if appearances make
+the gentleman, Adrian was then but a sorry specimen.</p>
+
+<p>The officer smiled&mdash;the insufferable smile of a conceited boy raised
+to authority.</p>
+
+<p>"I can have no possible doubt of your gentility, sir," he said, with
+mocking politeness, and measuring, under the glimmering light, first
+the prisoner, from head to foot, and then the girl who, scratching and
+blaspheming, vainly tried to make her escape; "but, sir, as a
+free-born English gentleman, it will be your duty to help his Majesty
+to fight his French enemies. Take the English gentleman along, my
+lads!"</p>
+
+<p>A roar of approbation at the officer's facetiousness ran through the
+party.</p>
+
+<p>"An' his mother's milk not dry upon his lips," cried the girl, with a
+crow of derisive fury, planting as she spoke a sounding smack on a
+broad tanned face bent towards her. The little officer grew pink.
+"Come, my men, do your duty," he thundered, in his deepest bass.</p>
+
+<p>A rage such as he never had felt in his life suddenly filled Adrian's
+whole being. He was a bigger man than any of the party, and the rough
+life that fate had imposed on him, had fostered a strength of limb
+beyond the common. A thrust of his knee prostrated one of his captors,
+a blow in the eye from his elbow staggered the other; the next instant
+he had snatched away the cutlass which a third was drawing, and with
+it he cleared, for a moment, a space around him.</p>
+
+<p>But as he would have bounded into freedom, a felling blow descended on
+his head from behind, a sheet of flame spread before his eyes, and
+behind this blaze disappeared the last that Adrian Landale was to see
+of England for another spell of years.</p>
+
+<p>When he came back to his senses he was once more on board ship&mdash;a
+slave, legally kidnapped; degraded by full and proper warrant from his
+legitimate status for no crime that could even be invented against
+him; a slave to be retained for work or war at his master's pleasure,
+liable like a slave to be flogged to death for daring to assert his
+light of independence.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>The memory of that night's doing and of the odious bond<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>age to which
+it was a prelude, rarely failed to stir the gall of resentment in Sir
+Adrian; men of peaceable instincts are perhaps the most prone to the
+feeling of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>But, to-night, a change had come over the spirit of his dreams; he
+could think of that past simply as the past&mdash;the period of time which
+would have had to be spent until the advent of the wonder-working
+present: these decrees of Fate had had a purpose. Had the past, by one
+jot, been different, the events of this admirable day might never have
+been.</p>
+
+<p>The glowing edifice on the hearth collapsed with a darting of sudden
+flame and a rolling of red cinders. Sir Adrian rose to rebuild his
+fire for the night; and, being once roused, was tempted by the
+ruddiness of the wine, glinting under the quiet rays of the lamp, to
+advance to the table and partake of his forgotten supper.</p>
+
+<p>The calm atmosphere, the warmth and quiet of the room, in which he
+broke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by the
+hearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiry
+concerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; the
+serene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angry
+voices of elements without, answered to the peace&mdash;the strange
+peace&mdash;that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of such
+uncongenial memories as now rose up before him in vivid concatenation.</p>
+
+<p>She was then five years old. Where was she, when he began that
+seemingly endless cruise with the frigate <i>Porcupine</i>? He tried to
+fancy a C&eacute;cile five years old&mdash;a chubby, curly-headed mite, nursing
+dolls and teasing kittens, whilst he was bullied and browbeaten by
+coarse petty officers, shunned and hated by his messmates, and flogged
+at length by a tyrannizing captain for obduracy&mdash;but he could only see
+a C&eacute;cile in the spring of womanhood, nestling in the arm-chair yonder
+by the fire and looking up at him from the folds of a fur cloak.</p>
+
+<p>She was seven years old when he was flogged. Ah, God! those had been
+days! And yet, in the lofty soul of him he had counted it no disgrace;
+and he had been flogged again, ay, and a third time for that obstinate
+head that would not bend, that obstinate tongue that would persist in
+demanding restitution of liberty. The life on board the privateer had
+been a matter of bargain;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> he had bartered also labour and obedience
+with the merchantman for the passage home, but the king had no right
+to compel the service of a free man!</p>
+
+<p>She was but twelve years old when he was finally released from
+thraldom&mdash;it had only lasted four years after all; yet what a cycle
+for one of his temper! Four years with scarce a moment of
+solitude&mdash;for no shore-leave was ever allowed to one who openly
+repudiated any service contract: four years of a life, where the sole
+prospect of change was in these engagements, orgies of carnage, so
+eagerly anticipated by officers and men alike, including himself,
+though for a reason little suspected by his companions. But even the
+historic sea-fights of the <i>Porcupine</i>, so far as they affected Adrian
+Landale, formed in themselves a chain of monotony. It was ever the
+same hurling of shot from ship to ship, the same fierce exchange of
+cutlass-throws and pike-pushes between men who had never seen each
+other before; the same yelling and execrations, sights, sounds, and
+smells ever the same in horror; the same cheers when the enemy's
+colours were lowered, followed by the same transient depression; the
+cleansing of decks from stains of powder and mire of human blood, the
+casting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work,
+broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste
+blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all
+the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him
+again. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, the
+next occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate of
+Adrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber or
+falling tackles should put an end to his dreary life, welcome as such
+an end would have been to him then.</p>
+
+<p>Then ... but not now. Remembering now his unaccountable escape from
+the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose
+eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a
+desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind
+the trite old adage:</p>
+
+<p>
+"Man proposeth..."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>God had disposed otherwise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was not destined that Adrian Landale should be shot on the high
+seas any more than he should be drowned in the rolling mud of the
+Vilaine&mdash;he was reserved for this day as a set-off to all the
+bitterness that had been meted out to him; he was to see the image of
+his dead love rise from the sea once more. And, meanwhile, his very
+despair and sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not be
+said, if history should take count of the fact, that while the Lord of
+Pulwick had served four years before the mast, he had ever disgraced
+his name by cowardice....</p>
+
+<p>Whether such reasonings were in accordance even with the most
+optimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might have
+doubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with the
+grateful relaxation that a happy break brings in the midst of
+long-drawn melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>Everything had been working towards this end&mdash;that he should be the
+light-keeper of Scarthey on the day when out of the raging waters
+C&eacute;cile would rise and knock and ask for succour at his chamber.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;cile! pshaw!&mdash;raving again.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the child! Where was she on the day of the last engagement of
+that pugnacious <i>Porcupine</i>, in the year 1805, when England was freed
+from her long incubus of invasion? She was then twelve.</p>
+
+<p>It had seemed if nothing short of a wholesale disaster could terminate
+that incongruous existence of his.</p>
+
+<p>The last action of the frigate was a fruitless struggle against
+fearful odds. After a prolonged fight with an enemy as dauntless as
+herself, with two-thirds of her ship's company laid low, and commanded
+at length by the youngest lieutenant, she was tackled as the sun went
+low over the scene of a drawn battle, by a fresh sail errant; and, had
+it not been for a timely dismasting on board the new-comer, would have
+been captured or finally sunk then and there. But that fate was only
+held in reserve for her. Bleeding and disabled, she had drawn away
+under cover of night from her two hard-hit adversaries, to encounter a
+squall that further dismantled her, and, in such forlorn conditions,
+was met and finally conquered by the French privateer <i>Espoir de
+Brest</i>, that pounced upon her in her agony as the vulture upon his
+prey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the remainder of the once formidable crew, now seized and
+battened down under French hatches, was of course Adrian Landale&mdash;he
+bore a charmed life. And for a short while the only change probable in
+his prospects was a return to French prisons, until such time as it
+pleased Heaven to restore peace between the two nations.</p>
+
+<p>But the fortune of war, especially at sea, is fickle and fitful.</p>
+
+<p>The daring brig, lettre de marque, <i>L'Espoir de Brest</i>, soon after her
+unwonted haul of English prisoners, was overtaken herself by one of
+her own species, the <i>St. Nicholas</i> of Liverpool, from whose swiftness
+nothing over the sea, that had not wings, could hope to escape if she
+chose to give the chase.</p>
+
+<p>Again did Adrian, from the darkness among his fellow-captives, hear
+the familiar roar and crash of cannon fight, the hustling and the thud
+of leaping feet, the screams and oaths of battle, and, finally, the
+triumphant shouts of English throats, and he knew that the Frenchman
+was boarded. A last ringing British cheer told of the Frenchman's
+surrender, and when he and his comrades were once more free to breathe
+a draught of living air, after the deathly atmosphere under hatches,
+Adrian learned that the victor was not a man-of-war, but a free-lance,
+and conceived again a faint hope that deliverance might be at hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon after this action, last of the fights that Adrian the
+peace-lover had to pass through, and as the two swift vessels, now
+sailing in consort, and under the same colours cleaved the waters,
+bound for the Mersey, that a singular little drama took place on board
+the <i>Espoir de Brest</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Among the younger officers of the English privateer, who were left in
+charge of the prize, was a lad upon whom Adrian's jaded eyes rested
+with a feeling of mournful sympathy, so handsome was he, and so young;
+so full of hope and spirits and joy of life, of all, in fact, of which
+he himself had been left coldly bare. Moreover, the ring of the merry
+voice, the glint of the clear eye awakened in his memory some fitful
+chord, the key of which he vainly sought to trace.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as the trim young lieutenant stood looking across the waters,
+with his brave eager gaze that seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> to have absorbed some of the
+blue-green shimmer of the element he loved, all unnoting the haggard
+sailor at his elbow, a sudden flourish of the spy-glass which he, with
+an eager movement, swung up to bear on some distant speck, sent his
+watch and seals flying out of his fob upon the deck at Adrian's feet.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian picked them up, and as he waited to restore them to their
+owner, who tarried some time intent on his distant peering, he had
+time to notice the coat and crest engraved upon one of the massive
+trinkets hanging from their black ribbons.</p>
+
+<p>When at last the officer lowered his telescope, Adrian came forward
+and saluted him with a slight bow, all unconsciously as unlike the
+average Jack Tar's scrape to his superior as can be well imagined:</p>
+
+<p>"Am I not," he asked, "addressing in you, sir, one of the Cochranes of
+the Shaws?"</p>
+
+<p>The question and the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough
+to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian
+surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very
+school-boy found at fault. Speaking with much sharpness:</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Smith, my man," cried he, seizing his belongings, "and
+you&mdash;just carry on with that coiling!"</p>
+
+<p>"And my name, sir, is Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory. I would like
+a moment's talk with you, if you will spare me the time. The Cochranes
+of the Shaws have been friends of our family for generations."</p>
+
+<p>A guffaw burst from a group of Adrian's mates working hard by, at this
+recurrence of what had become with them a standing joke; but the
+officer, who had turned on his heels, veered round immediately, and
+stood eyeing the speaker in profound astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Great God, is it possible! Did you say you were a Landale of Pulwick?
+How the devil came you here then, and thus?"</p>
+
+<p>"Press-gang," was Adrian's laconic answer.</p>
+
+<p>The lad gave a prolonged whistle, and was lost for a moment in
+cogitation.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are really Mr. Landale," he began, adding hastily, as if to
+cover an implied admission&mdash;"of course I have heard the name: it is
+well known in Lancashire&mdash;you had better see the skipper. It must have
+been some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> damnable mistake that has caused a man of your standing to
+be pressed."</p>
+
+<p>The speaker ended with almost a deferential air and the smile that had
+already warmed Adrian's heart. At the door of the Captain's quarters
+he said, with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye:</p>
+
+<p>"A curious error it was you made, I assure you my name is Smith&mdash;Jack
+Smith, of Liverpool."</p>
+
+<p>"An excusable error," quoth Adrian, smiling back, "for one of your
+seals bear unmistakably the arms of Cochrane of the Shaws, doubtless
+some heirloom, some inter-marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, hang it!" retorted Mr. Jack Smith of Liverpool, his boyish
+face flushing again, and as he spoke he disengaged the trinket from
+its neighbours, and jerked it pettishly overboard, "I know nothing of
+your Shaws or your Cochranes."</p>
+
+<p>And then he rapped loudly at the cabin-door, as if anxious to avoid
+further discussion or comment on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The result of the interview which followed&mdash;interview during which
+Adrian in a few words overcame the skipper's scepticism, and was
+bidden with all the curiosity men feel at sea for any novelty, to
+relate, over a bottle of wine, the chain of his adventures&mdash;was his
+passing from the forecastle to the officers' quarters, as an honoured
+guest on board the <i>St. Nicholas</i>, during the rest of her cruise.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking back now upon the last few weeks of his sea-going life, Sir
+Adrian realised with something of wonder that he had always dwelt on
+them without dislike. They were gilded in his memory by the rays of
+his new friendship.</p>
+
+<p>And yet that this young Jack Smith (to keep for him the nondescript
+name he had for unknown reasons chosen to assume) should be the first
+man to awaken in the misanthropic Adrian the charm of human
+intercourse, was singular indeed; one who followed from choice the
+odious trade of legally chartered corsair, who was ever ready to
+barter the chance of life and limb against what fortune might bring in
+his path, to sacrifice human life to secure his own end of enrichment.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the springs of friendship are to be no more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>discerned than
+those of love; there was none of high or low degree, with the
+exception of Ren&eacute;, whose appearance at any time was so welcome to the
+recluse upon his rock, as that of the privateersman.</p>
+
+<p>And so, turning to his friend in to-night's softened mood, Sir Adrian
+thought gratefully that to him it was that he owed deliverance from
+the slavery of the King's service, that it was Jack Smith who had made
+it possible for Adrian Landale to live to this great day and await its
+coming in peace.</p>
+
+<p>The old clock struck two; and Jem shivered on the rug as the
+light-keeper rose at length from the table and sank in his arm-chair
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>Visions of the past had been ever his companions; now for the first
+time came visions of the future to commingle with them. As if caught
+up in the tide of his visitor's bright young life, it seemed as though
+he were passing at length out of the valley of the shadow of death.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, coming with noiseless bare feet, in the angry yellow dawn of the
+second day of the storm, to keep an eye on his master's comfort, found
+him sleeping in his chair with a new look of rest upon his face and a
+smile upon his lips.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>A GENEALOGICAL EPISTLE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">... and braided thereupon<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">All the devices blazoned on the shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">A border fantasy of branch and flower.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Idylls of the King.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Pulwick Priory, the ancestral home of the Cumbrian Landales, a
+dignified if not overpoweringly lordly mansion, rises almost on the
+ridge of the green slope which connects the high land with the sandy
+strand of Morecambe; overlooking to the west the great brown breezy
+bight, whilst on all other sides it is sheltered by its wooded park.</p>
+
+<p>When the air is clear, from the east window of Scarthey keep, the tall
+garden front of greystone is visible, in the extreme distance, against
+the darker screen of foliage; whitely glinting if the sun is high;
+golden or rosy at the end of day.</p>
+
+<p>As its name implies, Pulwick Priory stands on the site of an extinct
+religious house; its oldest walls, in fact, were built from the spoils
+of once sacred masonry. It is a house of solid if not regular
+proportions, full of unexpected quaintness; showing a medley of
+distinct styles, in and out; it has a wide portico in the best
+approved neo-classic taste, leading to romantic oaken stairs; here
+wide cheerful rooms and airy corridors, there sombre vaulted basements
+and mysterious unforeseen nooks.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, however, it is a harmonious pile of buildings, though
+gathering its character from many different centuries, for it has been
+mellowed by time, under a hard climate. And it was, in the days of the
+pride of the Landales, a most meet dwelling-place for that ancient
+race, insomuch as the history of so many of their ancestors was
+written successively upon stone and mortar,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> brick and tile, as well
+as upon carved oak, canvas-decked walls, and emblazoned windows.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Exactly one week before the disaster, which was supposed to have
+befallen Mademoiselle Molly de Savenaye on Scarthey sands, the acting
+Lord of Pulwick, if one may so term Mr. Rupert Landale, had received a
+letter, the first reading of which caused him a vivid annoyance,
+followed by profound reflection.</p>
+
+<p>A slightly-built, dark-visaged man, this younger brother of Sir
+Adrian, and vicarious master of his house and lands; like to the
+recluse in his exquisite neatness of attire, somewhat like also in the
+mould of his features, which were, however, more notably handsome than
+Sir Adrian's; but most unlike him, in an emphasised artificiality of
+manner, in a restless and wary eye, and in the curious twist of a thin
+lip which seemed to give hidden sarcastic meaning even to the most
+ordinary remark.</p>
+
+<p>As now he sat by his desk, his straight brows drawn over his
+amber-coloured eyes, perusing the closely written sheets of this
+troublesome missive, there entered to him the long plaintive figure of
+his maiden sister, who had held house for him, under his own minute
+directions, ever since the death in premature child-birth of his young
+year-wed wife.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale, the eldest of the family, had had a disappointment in
+her youth, as a result of which she now played the ungrateful <i>r&ocirc;le</i>
+of old maid of the family. She suffered from chronic toothache, as
+well as from repressed romantic aspirations, and was the <i>&acirc;me damn&eacute;e</i>
+of Rupert. One of the most melancholy of human beings, she was tersely
+characterised by the village folk as a "<i>wummicky</i> poor thing."</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of Mr. Landale's weighted brow she propped up her own
+long sallow face, upon its aching side, with a trembling hand, and,
+full of agonised prescience, ventured to ask if anything had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," said her brother, with a sort of snarl&mdash;He possessed an
+extremely irritable temper under his cool sarcastic exterior, a temper
+which his peculiar anomalous circumstances, whilst they combined to
+excite it, forced him to conceal rigidly from most, and it was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+relief to him to let it out occasionally upon Sophia's meek, ringleted
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia collapsed with hasty obedience into a chair, and then Mr.
+Landale handed to her the thin fluttering sheets, voluminously crossed
+and re-crossed with fine Italian handwriting:</p>
+
+<p>"From Tanty," ejaculated Miss Sophia, "Oh my dear Rupert!"</p>
+
+<p>"Read it," said Rupert peremptorily. "Read it aloud."</p>
+
+<p>And throwing himself back upon his chair, he shaded his mouth with one
+flexible thin hand, and prepared himself to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Camden Place, Bath</span>, October 29th," read the maiden lady in those
+plaintive tones, which seemed to send out all speech upon the breath
+of a sigh. "<span class="smcap">My Dear Rupert</span>,&mdash;You will doubtless be astonished, but
+your invariably affectionate Behaviour towards myself inclines me to
+believe that you will also be <i>pleased</i> to hear, from these few lines,
+that very shortly after their receipt&mdash;if indeed not before&mdash;you may
+expect to see me arrive at Pulwick Priory."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale put down the letter, and gazed at her brother through
+vacant mists of astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I thought Tanty said she would not put foot in Pulwick again
+till Adrian returned home."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert measured the innocent elderly countenance with a dark look. He
+had sundry excellent reasons, other than mere family affection, for
+remaining on good terms with his rich Irish aunt, but he had likewise
+reasons, these less obvious, for wishing to pay his devoirs to her
+anywhere but under the roof of which he was nominal master.</p>
+
+<p>"She has found it convenient to change her mind," he said, with his
+twisting lip. "Constancy in your sex, my dear, is merely a matter of
+convenience&mdash;or opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Rupert!" moaned Sophia, clasping the locket which contained her
+dead lover's hair with a gesture with which all who knew her were very
+familiar. Mr. Landale never could resist a thrust at the faithful
+foolish bosom always ready to bleed under his stabs, yet never
+resenting them. Inexplicable vagary of the feminine heart!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> Miss
+Sophia worshipped before the shrine of her younger brother, to the
+absolute exclusion of any sentiment for the elder, whose generosity
+and kindness to her were yet as great as was Rupert's tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said the latter, alternately smiling at his nails and biting
+them, "Tanty O'Donoghue observes that I shall be surprised to hear
+that she will arrive very shortly after this letter, if not before it.
+Poor old Tanty, there can be no mistake about her nationality. Have
+the kindness to read straight on, Sophia. I don't want to hear any
+more of your interesting comments. And don't stop till you have
+finished, no matter how amazed you are."</p>
+
+<p>Again he composed himself to listen, while his sister plunged at the
+letter, and, after several false starts, found her place and
+proceeded:</p>
+
+<p>"Since, owing to his most <i>unfortunate</i> peculiarity of Temperament and
+consequent strange choice of abode, I cannot apply to my nephew
+Adrian, <i>&agrave; qui de droit</i> (as Head of the House) I must needs address
+myself to you, my dear Rupert, to request hospitality for myself and
+the two young Ladies now under my Charge."</p>
+
+<p>The letter wavered in Miss Sophia's hand and an exclamation hung upon
+her lip, but a sudden movement of Rupert's exquisite crossed legs
+recalled her to her task.</p>
+
+<p>"These young ladies are <i>Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye</i>, and the
+daughters of Madame la Comtesse de Savenaye, who was my sister Mary's
+child. She and I, and Alice your mother, were sister co-heiresses as
+you know, and therefore these young ladies are <i>my</i> grand-nieces and
+your <i>own</i> cousins once removed. Of C&eacute;cile de Savenaye, her <i>strange</i>
+adventures and ultimate <i>sad</i> Fate in which your own brother was
+implicated, you cannot but have heard, but you may probably have
+forgotten even to the <i>very existence</i> of these charming young women,
+who were nevertheless born at Pulwick, and whom you must at some time
+or other have beheld as infants during your <i>excellent</i> and <i>lamented</i>
+father's lifetime. They are, as you are doubtless also unaware&mdash;for I
+have remarked a <i>growing</i> Tendency in the younger generations to
+neglect the study of Genealogy, even as it affects their own
+Families&mdash;as well born on the father's side as upon the maternal. M.
+de Savenaye bore <i>argent &agrave; la fasce-canton d'hermine</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> with an
+<i>augmentation of the fleurs de lis d'or</i>, <i>cleft in twain</i> for his
+ancestor's <i>memorable</i> deed at the siege of Dinan."</p>
+
+<p>"There is Tante O'Donoghue fully displayed, <i>haut volante</i> as she
+might say herself," here interrupted Mr. Landale with a laugh. "Always
+the same, evidently. The first thing I remember about her is her
+lecturing me on genealogy and heraldry, when I wanted to go fishing,
+till, school-boy rampant as I was, I heartily wished her impaled and
+debruised on her own Donoghue herse proper. For God's sake, Sophia, do
+not expect me to explain! Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"He was entitled to eighteen quarters, and related to such as Coucy
+and Armagnac and Tavannes," proceeded Miss Sophia, controlling her
+bewilderment as best she might, "also to Gwynne of Llanadoc in this
+kingdom&mdash;Honours to which Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye, being sole
+heiresses both of Kermel&eacute;gan and Savenaye, not to speak of their own
+mother's share of O'Donoghue, which now-a-days is of greater
+substance&mdash;are personally entitled.</p>
+
+<p>"If I am the <i>sole</i> Relative they have left in these Realms, Adrian
+and you are the next. I have had the charge of my two young Kinswomen
+during the last six months, that is since they left the Couvent des
+Dames Anglaises in Jersey.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I think it is time that your Branch of the Family should incur
+the share of the <i>responsibility</i> your relationship to them entails.</p>
+
+<p>"If Adrian were <i>as</i> and <i>where</i> he should be, I feel sure he would
+embrace this opportunity of doing his duty as the Head of the House
+without the smallest hesitation, and I have no doubt that he would
+offer the <i>hospitality</i> of Pulwick Priory and his <i>Protection</i> to
+these amiable young persons for as long as they <i>remain unmarried</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"From you, my dear Nephew, who have undertaken under these melancholy
+family circumstances to fill your Brother's place, I do not, however,
+<i>expect</i> so much; all I ask is that you and my niece Sophia be kind
+enough to <i>shelter</i> and <i>entertain</i> your cousins for the space of two
+months, while I remain at Bath for the benefit of my Health.</p>
+
+<p>"At my age (for it is of no use, nephew, for us to deny our years when
+any Peerage guide must reveal them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> pretty closely to the curious),
+and I am this month passing sixty-nine, at my <i>age</i> the charge of two
+high-spirited young Females, in whom conventional education has failed
+to subdue Aspirations for worldly happiness whilst it has left them
+somewhat inexperienced in the Conventions of Society, I find a <i>little
+trying</i>. It does not harmonise with the retired, peaceful existence to
+which I am accustomed (and at my time of life, I think, entitled), in
+which it is my humble endeavour to wean myself from this earth which
+is so full of Emptiness and to prepare myself for that other and
+<i>better</i> Home into which we must all resign ourselves to enter. And
+happy, indeed, my dear Rupert, such of us as will be found worthy; for
+come to it we all must, and the longer we live, the sooner we may
+expect to do so.</p>
+
+<p>"The necessity of producing them in Society, is, however, rendered a
+matter of greater responsibility by the fact of the <i>handsome</i>
+Fortunes which these young creatures possess already, not to speak of
+their expectations."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert, who had been listening to his aunt's letter, through the
+intermediary of Miss Sophia's depressing sing-song, with an abstracted
+air, here lifted up his head, and commanded the reader to repeat this
+last passage. She did so, and paused, awaiting his further pleasure,
+while he threw his handsome head back upon his chair, and closed his
+eyes as if lost in calculations.</p>
+
+<p>At length he waved his hand, and Miss Sophia proceeded after the usual
+floundering:</p>
+
+<p>"A neighbour of mine at Bunratty, Mrs. Hambledon of Brianstown, a
+<i>lively</i> widow (herself one of the Macnamaras of the Reeks, and thus a
+distant connection of the Ballinasloe branch of O'Donoghues), and whom
+I had reason to believe I could trust&mdash;but I will not anticipate&mdash;took
+a prodigious fancy to Miss Molly and proposed, towards the beginning
+of the Autumn, carrying her away to Dublin. At the same time the wet
+summer, producing in me an acute recurrence of that Affection from
+which, as you know, I suffer, and about which you <i>never fail</i> to make
+such kind Enquiries at Christmas and Easter, compelled me to call in
+Mr. O'Mally, the apothecary, who has been my very <i>obliging</i> medical
+adviser for so many years, and who strenuously advocated an immediate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+course of waters at Bath. In short, my dear Nephew, thus the matter
+was settled, your cousin Molly departed <i>radiant</i> with <i>good</i> spirits,
+and <i>good</i> looks for a spell of gayety in Dublin, while your cousin
+Madeleine, prepared (with <i>equal</i> content) to accompany her old aunt
+to Bath. It being arranged with Mrs. Hambledon that she should herself
+conduct Molly to us later on.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been here about three weeks. Though persuaded by good Mr.
+O'Mally that the waters would benefit my old bones, I was actuated, I
+must confess, by another motive in seeking this Fashionable Resort. In
+such a place as this, thronged as it is by all the Rank and Family of
+England, one can at least know <i>who is who</i>, and I was not without
+hopes that my nieces, with their faces, their name, and their
+fortunes, would have the opportunity of contracting suitable
+Alliances, and thus relieve me of a charge for which I am, I fear,
+little fitted.</p>
+
+<p>"But, alas! my dear Rupert, I was most woefully mistaken. Bath is
+<i>distinctly not</i> the place for two beautiful and unsophisticated
+Heiresses, and I am certainly neither possessed of the Spirits, nor of
+the Health to guard them from fortune-hunters and <i>needy nameless</i>
+Adventurers. While it is my desire to impress upon you, and my niece
+Sophia, that the conduct of these young ladies has been <i>quite</i> beyond
+reproach, I will not conceal from you that the attentions of a certain
+person, of the name of <i>Smith</i>, known here, and a favorite in the
+circles of frivolity and fashion as <i>Captain Jack</i>, have already made
+Madeleine <i>conspicuous</i>, and although the dear girl conducts herself
+with the utmost propriety, there is an air of <i>Romance</i> and <i>mystery</i>
+about the Young Man, not to speak of his unmistakable good looks,
+which have determined me to remove her from his vicinity before her
+Affections be <i>irreparably</i> engaged. As for Molly, who is a thorough
+O'Donoghue and the image of her grandmother, that celebrated
+Murthering Moll (herself the toast of Bath in our young days), whose
+elopement with the Marquis de Kermel&eacute;gan, after he had killed an
+English rival in a duel, was once a nine-days' wonder in this very
+town, and of whom you must have heard, Mrs. Hambledon restored her to
+my care only three days ago, and she has already twenty Beaux to her
+String, though favouring <i>nobody</i>, I am bound to say, but her own
+amusement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> Yesterday she departed under Mrs. Hambledon's chaperonage,
+in the Company of a dozen of the highest in rank here, on an
+expedition to Clifton; the while my demure Madeleine spends the day at
+the house of her dear friend Lady Maria Harewood, whither, I only
+learnt upon her return at ten o'clock under his escort, <i>Captain
+Jack</i>&mdash;in my days that sort of <i>captain</i> would have been strongly
+suspected, of having a shade too much of the <i>Heath</i> or the <i>London
+Road</i> about him&mdash;had likewise been convened. It was long after
+midnight when, with a great <i>tow-row</i>, a coach full of very merry
+company (amongst whom the widow Hambledon struck me as over-merry,
+perhaps) landed my other Miss <i>sur le perron</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"This has decided me. We shall decamp <i>sans tambou ni trompette</i>.
+To-morrow, without allowing discussion from the girls (in which I
+should probably be worsted), we pack ourselves into my travelling
+coach, and find our Way to you. But, until we are fairly on the Road,
+I shall not even let these ladies know <i>whither</i> we are bound.</p>
+
+<p>"With your kind permission, then, I shall remain a few days at
+Pulwick, to recruit from the <i>fatigues</i> of such a long Journey, before
+leaving your fair cousins in your charge, and in that of the gentle
+Sophia (whom I trust to entertain them with something besides her
+usual melancholy), till the time comes for me to bring them back with
+me to Bunratty.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless, therefore, you should hear to the contrary, you will know
+that on Tuesday your three <i>unprotected</i> female relatives will be
+hoping to see your travelling carriage arrive to fetch them at the
+Crown in Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your Affectionate Aunt,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<span class="smcap">Rose O'Donoghue</span>."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>As Miss Landale sighed forth the concluding words, she dropped the
+little folio on her lap, and looked at her brother with a world of
+apprehension in her faded eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rupert, what shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do," said Mr. Landale, quickly turning on her, out of his absorption,
+"you will kindly see that suitable rooms are prepared for your aunt
+and cousins, and you will endeavour, if you please, to show these
+ladies a cheerful countenance, as your aunt requests."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The oak and the chintz rooms, I suppose," Sophia timidly suggested.
+"Tanty used to say she liked the aspect, and I daresay the young
+ladies will find it pleasant to look out on the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," returned Rupert, absently. He had risen from his seat, and
+fallen to pacing the room. Presently a short laugh broke from him.
+"Tolerably cool, I must say," he remarked, "tolerably cool. It seems
+to be a tradition with that Savenaye family, when in difficulties, to
+go to Pulwick."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale looked up with relief. Perhaps Rupert would think better
+of it, and make up his mind to elude receiving the unwelcome visitors
+after all. But his next speech dashed her budding hopes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, as in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to
+lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest&mdash;I wish they had
+been addled, I do indeed&mdash;we may expect to have the whole place turned
+topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, <i>faith</i> (as Tanty
+says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent
+school&mdash;and of these, one a hoyden, and the other lovesick! Faugh!
+Sophia you will have to keep your eyes open when the old lady is gone.
+I'll have no unseemly pranks in this house."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rupert," with a moan of maidenly horror, and conscious
+incompetence.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop that," cried the brother, with a contained intensity of
+exasperation, at which the poor lady jumped and trembled as if she had
+been struck. "All your whining won't improve matters. Now listen to
+me," sitting down beside her, and speaking slowly and impressively,
+"you are to make our relatives feel welcome, do you understand?
+Everything is to be of the best. Get out the embroidered sheets, and
+see that there are flowers in the rooms. Tell the cook to keep back
+that haunch of venison, the girls won't like it, but the old lady
+knows a good thing when she gets it&mdash;let there be lots of sweet things
+for the young ones too. I shall be giving some silver out this
+afternoon. I leave it to you to see that it is properly cleaned. What
+are you mumbling about to yourself? Write it down if you can't
+remember, and now go, go&mdash;I am busy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2>
+
+<h3>"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8"><i>Then did the blood awaken in the veins</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i8"><i>Of the young maiden wandering in the fields.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><span class="smcap">Luteplayer's Song.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+<hr class="section" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE THRESHOLD OF WOMANHOOD</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Onward floweth the water, onward through meadows broad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">"How happy," the meadows say, "art thou to be rippling onward."<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">"And my heart is beating, beating beneath my girdle here;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">"O Heart," the girdle saith, "how happy art thou that thou beatest."<br /></span>
+<span class="i25"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dublin</span>, <i>October 15th, 1814</i>.&mdash;This day do I, Molly de Savenaye, begin
+my diary.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine writes to me from Bath that she has purchased a very fine
+book, in which she intends to set forth each evening all that has
+happened her since the morning; she advises me to do so too. She says
+that since <i>real life</i> has begun for us; life, of which every
+succeeding day is not, as in the convent, the repetition of the
+previous day, but brings some new discovery, pleasure, or pain, we
+ought to write down and preserve their remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>It will be so interesting for us to read when a new life once more
+begins for us, and we are <i>married</i>. Besides it is the <i>fashion</i>, and
+all the young ladies she knows do it. And she has, she says, already
+plenty to write down. Now I <i>should</i> like to know what about.</p>
+
+<p>When ought one to start such a record? Surely not on a day like this.</p>
+
+<p>"Why <i>demme</i>" (as Mrs. Hambledon's nephew says), "<i>what the deyvil</i>
+have I got to say?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Item:</i> I went out shopping this morning with Mrs. Hambledon, and,
+bearing Madeleine's advice in mind, purchased at Kelly's, in Sackville
+Street, an album book, bound in green morocco, with clasp and lock,
+which Mr. Kelly protests is quite secure.</p>
+
+<p><i>Item:</i> We met Captain Segrave of the Royal Dragoons (who was so
+attentive to me at Lady Rigtoun's rout, two days ago). He looked very
+well on his charger, but how conceited! When he saw me, he rolled his
+eyes and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> grew quite red; and then he stuck his spurs into his horse,
+that we might admire how he could sit it; which he did, indeed, to
+perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hambledon looked vastly knowing, and I laughed. If ever I try to
+fancy myself married to such a man I cannot help laughing.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is not diary.&mdash;<i>Item:</i> We returned home because it
+began to rain, and to pass the time, here am I at my book.</p>
+
+<p>But is <i>this</i> the sort of thing that will be of interest to read
+hereafter? I have begun too late; I should have written in those days
+when I saw the dull walls of our convent prison for the last time. It
+seems so far back now (though, by the calendar it is hardly six
+months), that I cannot quite recall how it felt to live in prison. And
+yet it was not unhappy, and there was no horror in the thought we both
+had sometimes then, that we should pass and end our lives in the cage.
+It did not strike us as hard. It seemed, indeed, in the nature of
+things. But the bare thought of returning to that existence now, to
+resume the placid daily task, to fold up again like a plant that has
+once expanded to sun and breeze, to have never a change of scene, of
+impression, to look forward to nothing but <i>submission</i>, sleep, and
+<i>death</i>; oh, it makes me turn cold all over!</p>
+
+<p>And yet there are women who, of their own will, give up the <i>freedom
+of the world</i> to enter a convent <i>after</i> they have tasted life! Oh, I
+would rather be the poorest, the ugliest peasant hag, toiling for
+daily bread, than one of these cold cloistered souls, so that the free
+air of heaven, be it with the winds or the rain, might beat upon me,
+so that I might live and love <i>as I like</i>, do right <i>as I like</i>; ay,
+and do wrong <i>if</i> I liked, with the free will which is my <i>own</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We were told that the outer world, with all its sorrows and trials,
+and dangers&mdash;how I remember the Reverend Mother's words and face, and
+how they impressed me then, and how I should laugh at them,
+<i>now!</i>&mdash;that the world was but a valley of tears. We were warned that
+all that awaited us, if we left the fold, was <i>misery</i>; that the joys
+of this world were <i>bitter</i> to the taste, its pleasures <i>hollow</i>, and
+its griefs <i>lasting</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We believed it. And yet, when the choice was actually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> ours to make,
+we chose all we had been taught to dread and despise. Why? I wonder.
+For the same reason as Eve ate the apple, I suppose. I would, if I had
+been Eve. I almost wish I could go back now, for a day, to the cool
+white rooms, to see the nuns flitting about like black and white
+ghosts, with only a jingle of beads to warn one of their coming, see
+the blue sky through the great bare windows, and the shadows of the
+trees lengthening on the cold flagged floors, hear the bells going
+ding-dong, ding-dong, and the murmur of the sea in the distance, and
+the drone of the school, and the drone of the chapel, to go back, and
+feel once more the dull sort of content, the calmness, the rest!</p>
+
+<p>But no, no! I should be trembling all the while lest the blessed doors
+leading back to that <i>horrible</i> world should never open to me again.</p>
+
+<p>The sorrows and trials of the world! I suppose the Reverend Mother
+really meant it; and if I had gone on living there till my face was
+wrinkled like hers, poor woman, I might have thought so too, in the
+end, and talked the same nonsense.</p>
+
+<p>Was it really I that endured such a life for seventeen years? O God! I
+wonder that the sight of the swallows coming and going, the sound of
+the free waves, did not drive me mad. Twist as I will my memory, I
+cannot recall <i>that</i> Molly of six months ago, whose hours and days
+passed and dropped all alike, all lifeless, just like the slow tac,
+tac, tac of our great horloge in the Refectory, and were to go on as
+slow and as alike, for ever and ever, till she was old, dried,
+wrinkled, and then died. The real Molly de Savenaye's life began on
+the April morning when that dear old turbaned fairy godmother of ours
+carried us, poor little Cinderellas, away in her coach. Well do I
+remember my birthday.</p>
+
+<p>I have read since in one of those musty books of Bunratty, that
+<i>moths</i> and <i>butterflies</i> come to life by shaking themselves out, one
+fine day, from a dull-looking, shapeless, ugly thing they call a
+<i>grub</i>, in which they have been buried for a long time. They unfold
+their wings and fly out in the sunshine, and flit from flower to
+flower, and they look beautiful and happy&mdash;the world, the wicked
+world, is open to them.</p>
+
+<p>There were pictures in the book; the ugly grub below,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> dreary and
+brown, and the lovely <i>butterfly</i> in all its colours above. I showed
+them to Madeleine, and said: "Look, Madeleine, as we were, and as we
+are."</p>
+
+<p>And she said: "Yes, those brown gowns they made us wear were ugly; but
+I should not like to put on anything so bright as red and yellow.
+Would you?"</p>
+
+<p>That is the worst of Madeleine; she never realises in the least what I
+mean. And she <i>does</i> love her clothes; that is the difference between
+her and me, she loves fine things because they are fine and dainty and
+all that&mdash;I like them because they make <i>me</i> fine.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, how she did weep when she left the convent. Madeleine would
+have made a good nun after all; she does so hate anything ugly or
+coarse. She grows quite white if she hears people fighting; if there
+is a "row" or a "shindy," as they say here. Whereas Tanty and I think
+it all the fun in the world, and would enjoy joining in the fray
+ourselves, I believe, if we dared. I know <i>I</i> should; it sets my blood
+tingling. But Madeleine is a real princess, a sort of Ermine; and yet
+she enjoys her new life, too, the beauty of it, the refinement, being
+waited upon and delicately fed and clothed. But although she has
+ceased to weep for the convent, if it had not been for me she would be
+there still. The only thing, I believe, that could make me weep now
+would be to find one fine morning that this had only been a dream, and
+that I was once more <i>the grub</i>! To find that I could not open my
+window and look into the wide, wide world over to the long, green
+hills in the distance, and know that I could wander or gallop up to
+them, as I did at Bunratty, and see for myself <i>what lies
+beyond</i>&mdash;surely that was a taste of heaven that day when Tanty Rose
+first allowed me to mount her old pony, and I flew over the turf with
+the wind whistling in my ears&mdash;to find that I could not go out when I
+pleased and hear new voices and see new faces, and men and women who
+<i>live each their own life</i>, and not the <i>same</i> life as mine.</p>
+
+<p>When I think of what I am now, and what I might have remained, I
+breathe deep and feel like singing; I stretch my arms out and feel
+like flying.</p>
+
+<p>Our aunt told us she thought Bunratty would be dull for us, and so it
+was in comparison with this place. Perhaps <i>this</i> is dull in
+comparison with what <i>may</i> come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> For good Tanty, as she likes us to
+call her, is intent on doing great things for us.</p>
+
+<p>"Je vous marierai," she tells us in her funny old French, "Je vous
+marierai bien, mes filles, si vous &ecirc;tes sages," and she winks both
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marriage!</i> <i>That</i>, it is quite evident, is the goal of every properly
+constituted young female; and every respectable person who has the
+care of said young female is consequently bent upon her reaching that
+goal.</p>
+
+<p>So marriage is <i>another</i> good thing to look forward to. And <i>love</i>,
+that love all the verses, all the books one reads are so full of;
+<i>that</i> will come to us.</p>
+
+<p>They say that <i>love is life</i>. Well, all I want is to live. But with a
+grey past such as we have had, the present is good enough to ponder
+upon. We now can lie abed if we have sweet dreams and pursue them
+waking, and be lazy, yet not be troubled with the self-indulgence as
+with an enormity; or we can rise and breathe the sunshine at our own
+time. We can be frivolous, and yet meet with smiles in response, dress
+our hair and persons, and be pleased with ourselves, and with being
+admired or envied, yet not be told horrid things about death and
+corruption and skeletons. And, above all&mdash;oh, above <i>all</i>, we can
+think of the future as different from the past, as <i>changing</i>, be it
+even for the worse; as unknown and fascinating, not as a repetition,
+until death, of the same dreary round.</p>
+
+<p>In Mrs. Hambledon's parlour here are huge glasses at either end;
+whenever you look into them you see a never-ending chain of rooms with
+yourself standing in the middle, vanishing in the distance, every one
+the same, with the same person in the middle, only a little smaller, a
+little more insignificant, a little darker, till it all becomes
+<i>nothing</i>. It always reminds me of life's prospects in the convent.</p>
+
+<p>I dislike that room. When I told Mrs. Hambledon the reason why, she
+laughed, and promised me that, with my looks and disposition, my life
+would be eventful enough. I have every mind that it shall.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p><i>October 18th.</i>&mdash;Yesterday, I woke up in an amazing state of
+happiness, though for no particular reason that I can think of. It
+could not be simply because we were to go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> out for a visit to the
+country and see new people and places, for I have already learned to
+find that most new people are cut out on the same pattern as those one
+already knows. It must have been rather because I awoke under the
+impression of one of my lovely dreams&mdash;such dreams as I have only had
+since I left my <i>grub</i> state; dreams of space, air, long, long views
+of beautiful scenery, always changing, always wider, such as swallows
+flying between sky and earth might see, under an exquisite and
+brilliant light, till for very joy I wake up, my cheeks covered with
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>This time, I was sitting on the prow of some vessel with lofty white
+sails, and it was cutting through the water, blue as the sky, with
+wreaths of snow-like foam, towards some unknown shores, ever faster
+and faster, and I was singing to some one next to me on the prow&mdash;some
+one I did not know, but who felt with me&mdash;singing a song so perfect,
+so sweet (though it had no human words) that I thought <i>it explained
+all</i>: the blue of the heaven, the freshness of the breeze, the
+fragrance of the earth, and why we were so eagerly pressing onwards. I
+thought the melody was such that when once heard it could never be
+forgotten. When I woke it still rang in my ears, but now I can no more
+recall it. How is it we never know such delight in waking hours? Is
+that some of the joy we are to feel in Heaven, the music we are to
+hear? And yet it can be heard in this life if one only knew where to
+go and listen. And this life is beautiful which lies in front of us,
+though they would speak of it as a sorrowful span not to be reckoned.
+It is good to be young and think of the life still to come. Every
+moment is precious for its enjoyment, and yet sometimes I find that
+one only knows of a pleasure when it is just gone. One ought to try
+and be more awake at each hour to the happiness it may bring. I shall
+try, and you, my diary, shall help me.</p>
+
+<p>This is really <i>no</i> diary-keeping. It is not a bit like those one
+reads in books. It ought to tell of other people and the events of
+each day. But other people are really very uninteresting; as for
+events, well, so far, they are uninteresting too; it is only what they
+cause to spring up in our hearts that is worth thinking upon; and that
+is so difficult to put in words that mostly I spend my time merely
+pondering and not writing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Last night Mrs. Hambledon took me to the <i>play</i>. It was for the first
+time in my life, and I was full of curiosity. It was a long drama,
+pretty enough and sometimes very exciting. But I could see that though
+the actress was very handsome and mostly so unhappy as to draw tears
+from the spectators, there were people, especially some gentlemen, who
+were more interested in looking at the box where I sat with Mrs.
+Hambledon. Indeed, I could not pretend, when I found myself before my
+glass that night, that I was not amazingly prettier than that Mrs.
+Colebrook, about whose beauty the whole town goes mad.</p>
+
+<p>When I recalled the hero's ravings about his Matilda's eyes and
+cheeks, and her foot and her sylph-like waist, and her raven hair, I
+wondered what <i>that</i> young man would say of me if he were my lover and
+I his persecuted mistress. The Matilda was a pleasing person enough;
+but if I take her point by point, it would be absurd to speak of her
+charms in the same breath with mine. Oh, my dear Molly, how beautiful
+I thought you last night! How happy I should be, were I a dashing
+young lover and eyes like <i>yours</i> smiled on me. I never before thought
+myself prettier than Madeleine, but now I do.</p>
+
+<p>Lovers, love, mistress, bride; they talked of nothing else in the
+play. And it was all ecstasy in their words, and nothing but <i>misery</i>
+in fact (just as the Reverend Mother would have had it).</p>
+
+<p>The young man who played the hero was a very fine fellow; and yet when
+I conceive <i>him</i> making love to me as he did last night to Mrs.
+Colebrook, the notion seems really <i>too</i> ludicrous!</p>
+
+<p>What sort of man then is it I would allow to love me? I do not mind
+the thought of lovers sighing and burning for me (as some do now
+indeed, or pretend to) I like to feel that I can crush them with a
+frown and revive them with a smile; I like to see them fighting for my
+favour. But to give a man the right to love me, the right to my
+smiles, the <i>right to me</i>! Indeed, I have yet seen <i>none</i> who could
+make me bear the thought.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I think that I could love, and I know that the man that I am
+to love must be living somewhere till fate brings him to me. He does
+not think of me. He does not know of me. And neither of us, I suppose,
+will taste life as life is till the day when we meet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Camden Place, Bath</span>, <i>November 1st</i>.&mdash;Bath at last, which, must please
+poor Mrs. Hambledon exceedingly, for she certainly did <i>not</i> enjoy the
+transit. I cannot conceive how people can allow themselves to be so
+utterly distraught by illness. I feel I can never have any respect for
+her again; she moaned and lamented in such cowardly fashion, was so
+peevish all the time on board the vessel, and looked so very begrimed
+and untidy and <i>plain</i> when she was carried out on Bristol quay. The
+captain called it <i>dirty</i> weather, but I thought it <i>lovely</i>, and I
+don't think I ever enjoyed myself more&mdash;except when Captain Segrave's
+Black Douglas ran away with me in Ph&oelig;nix Park.</p>
+
+<p>It was beautiful to see our brave boat plough the sea and quiver with
+anger, as if it were a living thing, when it was checked by some great
+green wave, then gather itself again under the wind and dash on to the
+fight, until it conquered. And when we came into the river and the sun
+shone once more it glided on swiftly, though looking just a little
+tired for a while until its decks and sails were dry and clean again,
+and I thought it was just like a bird that has shaken and plumed
+itself. I was sorry to leave it. The captain and the mate and the
+sailors, who had wrapped me up in their great, stiff tarpaulin coats
+and placed me in a safe corner where I could sit out and look, were
+also sorry that I should go.</p>
+
+<p>But it was good to be with Madeleine again and Tanty Donoghue, who
+always has such a kind smile on her old wrinkled face when she looks
+at me.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine was astonished when I told her I had loved the storm at sea
+and when I mimicked poor Mrs. Hambledon. She says she also thought she
+was dying, so ill was she on her crossing, and that she was quite a
+week before she got over the impression.</p>
+
+<p>It seems odd to think that we are sisters, and twin sisters too; in so
+many things she is different from me. She has changed in manner since
+I left her. She seems so absorbed in some great thought that all her
+words and smiles have little meaning in them. I told her I had tried
+to keep my diary, but had not done much work, and when I asked to see
+hers (for a model) Madeleine blushed, and said I should see it this
+day year.</p>
+
+<p><i>Madeleine is in love</i>; that is the only way I can account<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> for that
+blush. I fear she is a sly puss, but there is such a bustle around us,
+and so much to do and see, I have no time to make her confess. So I
+said I would keep mine from her for that period also.</p>
+
+<p>It seems a long span to look ahead. What a number of things will
+happen before this day year!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bath</span>, <i>November 3rd</i>.&mdash;Bath is delightful! I have only been here two
+days, and already I am what Tanty, in her old-fashioned way, calls
+<i>the belle</i>. Already there are a dozen sparks who declare that my eyes
+have <i>shot death</i> to them. This afternoon comes my Lord of Manningham,
+nicknamed <i>King of Bath</i>, to "drink a dish of tea," as he has it, with
+his "dear old friend Miss O'Donoghue."</p>
+
+<p>Tanty has been here three weeks, and he has only just discovered her
+existence, and remembered their tender friendship. Of course, I know
+very well what has really brought him. He is Lord Dereham's
+grandfather on the mother's side, and Lord Dereham, who is the son of
+the Duke of Wells, is "the catch," as Mrs. Hambledon vows, of the
+fashionable world this year. And Lord Dereham has seen me twice, and
+<i>is in love with me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But as Lord Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and
+swears more than he converses&mdash;which would be very shocking if it were
+not for his lisp, which makes it very funny&mdash;needless to say, my diary
+dear, your Molly is not in love with him&mdash;He has no chance.</p>
+
+<p>And so Lord Manningham comes to tea, and Tanty orders me to remain and
+see her "old friend" instead of going to ride with the widow
+Hambledon. The widow Hambledon and I are everywhere together, and she
+knows all the most entertaining people in Bath, whereas Madeleine,
+whom I have hardly seen at all except at night, when I am so dead
+tired that I go to sleep as soon as my head touches the pillow (I vow
+Tanty's manner of speech is catching), Miss Madeleine keeps to her own
+select circle, and turns up her haughty little nose at <i>my</i> friends.</p>
+
+<p>So now Madeleine is punished, for Tanty and I have had the honour of
+receiving the <i>King of Bath</i>, and I have been vouchsafed the stamp of
+his august approval.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Miss O'Donoghue," he cried, as I curtsied, "do my senses
+deceive me, or do I not once more behold <i>Murthering Moll</i>?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I thought you could not fail to notice the likeness; my niece is,
+indeed, a complete O'Donoghue," says Tanty, amazingly pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"Likeness, ma'am," cried the old wretch, bowing again, and scattering
+his snuff all over the place, while I sweep him another splendid
+curtsey, "likeness, ma'am, why this is no feeble copy, no humble
+imitation, 'tis <i>Murdering Moll herself</i>, and glad I am to see her
+again." And then he catches me under the chin, and peers into my face
+with his dim, wicked old eyes. "And so you are Murdering Moll's
+daughter," says he, chuckling to himself. "Ay, she and I were very
+good friends, my pretty child, very good friends, and that not so long
+ago, either. Ay, <i>Mater pulchra, filia pulchrior</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"But I happen to be her grand-daughter, please my lord," said I, and
+then I ran to fetch him a chair (for I was dreadfully afraid he was
+going to kiss me). But though no one has ever accused me of speaking
+too modestly to be heard, my lord had a sudden fit of deafness, and I
+saw Tanty give me a little frown, while the old thing&mdash;he must be much
+older than Tanty even&mdash;tottered into a chair, and went on mumbling.</p>
+
+<p>"I was only a boy in those days, my dear, only a boy, as your good
+aunt will tell you. I can remember how the bells rang the three
+beautiful Irish sisters into Bath, and I and the other dandies stood
+to watch them drive by. The bells rang in the <i>belles</i> in those days,
+my dear, he, he, he! only we used to call them 'toasts' then, and your
+mother was the most beautiful of 'the three Graces'&mdash;we christened
+them 'the three Graces'&mdash;and by gad she led us all a pretty dance!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my lord," says Tanty, and I could see her old eyes gleam though
+her tone was so pious, "I fear we were three wild Irish girls indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Manningham was too busy ogling me to attend to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother was just such another as you, and she had just such a
+pair of dimples," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean my grandmother," shouted I in his ear, just for fun, though
+Tanty looked as if she were on pins and needles. But he only pinched
+my cheek again and went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Before she had been here a fortnight all the bucks in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> town were
+at her feet. And so was I, so was I. Only, by gad, I was too young,
+you know, as Miss O'Donoghue here will tell you. But she liked me; she
+used to call me her 'little manny.' I declare I might have married
+her, only there were family reasons, and I was such a lad, you know.
+And then Jack Waterpark, some of us thought she would have had <i>him</i>
+in the end&mdash;being an Irishman, and a rich man, and a marquis to
+boot&mdash;he gave her the name of <i>Murthering Moll</i>, because of her
+killing eyes, young lady&mdash;he! he! he!&mdash;and there was Ned Cuffe ready
+to hang himself for her, and Jim Denham, and old Beau Vernon, ay, and
+a score of others. And then one night at the Assembly Rooms, after the
+dancing was over and we gay fellows were all together, up gets
+Waterpark, he was a little tipsy, my dear, and by gad I can hear him
+speak now, with that brogue of his. 'Boys,' he says, 'it's no use your
+trying for her any more, for by God <i>I've won her</i>.' And out of his
+breast-pocket he pulls a little knot of blue ribbon. Your mother, my
+dear, had worn a very fine gown that evening, with little knots of
+blue ribbon all over the bodice of it. The words were not out of his
+mouth when Ned Cuffe starts to his feet as white as a sheet: 'It's a
+damned lie,' he cries, and out of his pocket <i>he</i> pulls another little
+knot. 'She gave it to me with her own hands,' he cried and glares
+round at us all. And then Vernon bursts out laughing and flourishes a
+third little bow in our eyes, and I had one too, I need not tell you,
+and so had all the rest, all save a French fellow&mdash;I forget his
+name&mdash;and it was he she had danced with the most of all. Ah, Miss
+O'Donoghue, how the little jade's eyes sparkle! I warrant you have
+never told her the story for fear she would want to copy her mother in
+other ways besides looks&mdash;Hey? Well, my pretty, give me your little
+hand, and then I shall go on&mdash;pretty little hand, um&mdash;um&mdash;um!" and
+then he kissed my hand, the horrid, snuffy thing! but I allowed it,
+for I did so want to hear how it all ended.</p>
+
+<p>"And then, and then," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"And then, my dear, this French fellow, your papa he must have
+been&mdash;so I suppose I must not abuse him, and he was a very fine young
+man after all, and a man of honour as well&mdash;he stood and cursed us
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"'You English fools,' he said, 'you braggards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>&mdash;cowards.' And he
+seized a glass of wine from the table and with a sweep he dashed it at
+us and ended by flinging the empty glass in Lord Waterpark's face. It
+was the neatest thing you ever saw, for we all got a drop except
+Waterpark, and he got the glass. 'I challenge you all,' said the
+Frenchman, 'I'll fight you one by one, and I shall have her into the
+bargain.' And so he did, my dear, he fought us all, one after the
+other; there were five of us; he was a devil with the sword, but Ned
+Cuffe ran him through for all that&mdash;and he was a month getting over
+it, but as soon as he could crawl again he vowed himself ready for
+Waterpark, and weak as he was he ran poor Waterpark through the lungs.
+Some said Jack spitted himself on his sword&mdash;but dead he was anyhow,
+and monsieur your father&mdash;what was his name? Kerme-something&mdash;was off
+with your mother before the rest of us were well out of bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Fie, fie, my lord," said Tanty, "you should not recall old stories in
+this manner!"</p>
+
+<p>"Gad, ma'am, I warrant this young lady is quite ready to provide you
+with a few new ones," chuckled my lord; and as there was no more to be
+extracted from him but foolish old jokes and dreadful smiles, I
+contrived to free my "pretty little hand," and sit down demurely by
+Tanty's side like the modest retiring young female I should be.</p>
+
+<p>But my blood was dancing in my veins&mdash;the blood of Murthering
+Moll&mdash;doddering old idiot as he is, Lord Manningham is right for once,
+I mean to take quite as much out of life as she did. That indeed is
+worth being young and beautiful for! We know nothing of our family,
+save that both father and mother were killed in Vend&eacute;e. Tanty never
+will tell us anything about them (except their coats of arms), and I
+am afraid even to start the subject, for she always branches off upon
+heraldry and then we are in for hours of it. But after Lord Manningham
+was gone I asked her when and how my grandmother died.</p>
+
+<p>"She died when your mother was born, my dear," said Tanty, "she was
+not as old as you are now, and your grandfather never smiled again, or
+so they said."</p>
+
+<p>That sobered me a little. Yet she lived her life so well, while she
+did live, that I who have wasted twenty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>precious years can find in my
+heart rather to envy than to pity my beautiful grandmother.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p><i>November 5th.</i>&mdash;It is <i>three o'clock in the morning</i>, but I do not
+feel at all inclined to go to bed. Madeleine is sleeping, poor pretty
+pale Madeleine! with the tears hardly dry upon her cheeks and I can
+hear her sighing in her sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I was right, she is in love, and the gentleman she loves is not
+approved of by Tanty and the upshot of it all is we are to leave dear
+Bath, delightful Bath, to-morrow&mdash;to-day rather&mdash;for some unknown
+penitential region which our stern relative as yet declines to name. I
+am longing to hear more about it; but Tanty, who, though she talks so
+much, can keep her own counsel better than any woman I know, will not
+give me any further information beyond the facts that the delinquent
+who has dared to aspire to my sister is a person of <i>the name of
+Smith</i>, and that it would not do at all.</p>
+
+<p>I have not the heart to wake Madeleine to make her tell me more,
+though I really ought to pinch her well for being so
+secretive&mdash;besides, my head is so full of my own day that I want to
+get it all written down, and I shall never have done so unless I begin
+at the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, then, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon Lord Dereham's coach
+and four came clattering up to our door to call for me. Mrs. Hambledon
+was already installed and Lady Soames and a dozen other of the
+<i>fashionables</i> of Bath. My little Lord Marquis had kept the box seat
+for me, at which the other ladies, even my dear friend and chaperon,
+looked rather green. The weather was glorious, and off we went with a
+flourish of trumpets and whips, and I knew I should enjoy myself
+monstrously.</p>
+
+<p>And so I did. But it was the drive back that was the <i>best</i> of all. We
+never started till near nine o'clock, and Lord Dereham insisted on my
+sitting beside him again&mdash;at which all the ladies looked daggers <i>at
+me</i> and all the gentlemen daggers <i>at him</i>. And then we sang songs and
+tore along uphill and down dale, under the beautiful moonlight,
+through the still air, till all at once we found we had lost our way.
+We had to drive on till we came to an inn and we could make inquiries.
+There the gentlemen opened another hamper of wine, and when we set
+off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> again I promise you they were all pretty <i>lively</i> (and most of
+the ladies too, for the matter of that). As for me, who never drank
+anything but milk or water till six months ago, I have not learnt to
+like wine yet, so, though I sipped out of the glass to keep the fun
+going, I contrived to dispose of the contents, quietly over the side
+of the coach, when no one was looking.</p>
+
+<p>It was a drive to remember. We came to a big hill, and as we were
+going down it at a smart pace the coach began to sway, then the ladies
+began to screech, and even the men looked so scared that I laughed
+outright. Lord Dereham was perfectly tipsy and he did not know the
+road a bit, but he drove in beautiful style and was extraordinarily
+amusing; as soon as the coach took to swaying, instead of slackening
+speed as they all begged him, he <i>lashed</i> the horses into a tearing
+gallop, looking over his shoulder at the rest and cursing them with
+the greatest energy, grinning with rage, and looking more like a
+little white rat than <i>ever</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the whip," said I, "and I shall whip the team while you
+drive."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cuth me</i>," cried he, "if you are not worth the whole coach-load a
+dozen times over."</p>
+
+<p>On we went; the coach rocked, the horses galloped, and I knew at any
+moment the whole thing might upset, and I flourished my whip and
+lashed at the steaming flanks and I never felt what it was to really
+enjoy myself before.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, although we were tearing along so fast, the coach steadied
+itself and went as straight as an arrow; and this, it seems, it would
+never have done had not Lord Dereham kept up the pace.</p>
+
+<p>And all the rest of the drive his lordship wanted to kiss me. I was
+not a bit frightened, though he was drunk, but every time he grew too
+forward I just flicked at the horses with the whip, and I think he saw
+that I would have cracked him across the face quite as readily if he
+dared to presume.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt a dozen times during the day I could have secured a coronet
+for myself, not to speak of future 'strawberry leaves,' as my aunt
+says, if I had cared to; but who could think of loving a man like
+<i>that</i>? He can manage four horses, and he has shot two men in a duel,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+and he can drink three bottles of wine at a sitting, and when one
+tries to find something more to say for him, lo! that is all!</p>
+
+<p>When we at length arrived at Camden Place, for I vowed they must leave
+me home the first, there was the rarest sport. My lord's grooms must
+set to blow the horns, for they were as drunk as their master, while
+one of the gentlemen played upon the knocker till the whole crescent
+was aroused.</p>
+
+<p>Then the doors opened suddenly, <i>and Tanty appears</i> on the threshold,
+holding a candle. Her turban was quite crooked, with the birds of
+Paradise over one eye, and I never saw her old nose look so hooked.
+All the gentlemen set up a shout, and Sir Thomas Wrexham began to crow
+like a cock for no reason on earth that I can think of. The servants
+were holding up lanterns, but the moon was nigh as bright as day.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty just looked round upon them one after another, and in spite of
+her crooked turban I think they all grew frightened. Then she caught
+hold of me, and just whisked me behind her. Next she spied out Mrs.
+Hambledon, who had been asleep inside the coach, and now tumbled
+forth, yawning and gaping.</p>
+
+<p>"And so, madam," cries Tanty to her, not very loud, but in a voice
+that made even me tremble; "so, madam, this is how you fulfil the
+confidence I placed in you. A pretty chaperon you are to have the
+charge of a young lady; though, indeed, considering your years, madam,
+I might have been justified in trusting you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hambledon, cut short in the middle of a loud yawn by this attack,
+was a sight to see.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoighty-toighty, ma'am!" she cried, indignantly, as soon as she could
+get her voice; "here's a fine to-do. It is my fault, of course, that
+Lord Dereham should mistake the road. And my fault too, no doubt, that
+your miss should make an exhibition of herself riding on the box with
+the gentlemen at this hour of night, when I implored her to come
+inside with me, were it only for the sake of common female propriety."</p>
+
+<p>"Common female indeed!" echoed Tanty, with a snort; "the poor child
+knew better."</p>
+
+<p>"Cuth the old cats! they'll have each other'th eyeth out," here cried
+my lord marquis, interposing his little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> tipsy person between them. He
+had scrambled down the box after me, and was listening with an air of
+profound wisdom that made me feel fit to die laughing. "Don't you mind
+her, old lady," he went on, addressing Tanty; "Mith Molly ith quite
+able to take care of herself&mdash;damme if she'th not."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Donoghue turned upon him majestically.</p>
+
+<p>"And then that is more than can be said for you, my poor young man,"
+she exclaimed; and I vow he looked as sobered as if she had flung a
+bucket of cold water over him. Upon this she retired and shut the
+door, and marched me upstairs before her without a word.</p>
+
+<p>Before my room door she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Dempsey has already packed your sister's trunks," she said, in a
+very dry way; "and she will begin to pack yours early&mdash;I was going to
+say to-morrow&mdash;but you keep such hours, my dear&mdash;it will be <i>to-day</i>."</p>
+
+<p>I stared at her as if she had gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>"You and your sister," she went on, "have got beyond me. I have taken
+my resolution and given my orders, and there is not the least use
+making a scene."</p>
+
+<p>And then it came out about Madeleine. At first I thought I would go
+into a great passion and refuse to obey, but after a minute or two I
+saw it was, as she said, no use. Tanty was as cool as a cucumber. Then
+I thought perhaps I might mollify her if I could cry, but I couldn't
+pump up a tear; I never can; and at last when I went into my room and
+saw poor Madeleine, who has cried herself to sleep, evidently, I
+understood that there was nothing for us but to do as we were told.</p>
+
+<p>And now I can hear Tanty fussing about her room still&mdash;she has been
+writing, too&mdash;cra, cra, cra&mdash;this last hour. I wonder who to? After
+all there is some fun in being taken off mysteriously we don't know
+where. I should like to go and kiss her, but she thinks I am abed.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>A MASTERFUL OLD MAID</h3>
+
+
+<p>No contrary advice having reached Pulwick since Miss O'Donoghue's
+<i>letter of invoice</i>, as Mr. Landale facetiously described it, he drove
+over to Lancaster on the day appointed to meet the party.</p>
+
+<p>And thus it came to pass that through the irresistible management of
+Miss O'Donoghue, who put into the promotion of her scheme all the
+energy belonging to her branch of the family, together with the long
+habit of authority of the <i>Tante &agrave; h&eacute;ritage</i>, the daughters of C&eacute;cile
+de Savenaye returned to that first home of theirs, of which they had
+forgotten even the name.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale had not set eyes on his valuable relative for many years,
+but her greeting, at the first renewal of intercourse which took place
+in the principal parlour of the Lancaster Inn, was as easily detached
+in manner as though they had just met again after a trifling absence
+and she was bringing her charges to his house in accordance with a
+mutual agreement.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Rupert," cried she, "I am glad to see you again. I need not
+ask you how you are, you look so extremely sleek and prosperous.
+Adrian's wide acres are succulent, hey? I should have known you
+anywhere; though to be sure, you are hardly large enough for the
+breed, you have the true Landale stamp on you, the unmistakable
+Landale style of feature. <i>Semper eadem.</i> In that sense, at least, one
+can apply your ancient and once worthy motto to you; and you know,
+nephew, since you have conveniently changed your faith, both to God
+and king, this sentiment strikes one as a sarcasm amidst the
+achievements of Landale, you backsliders! Ah, we O'Donoghues have
+better maintained our device, <i>sans changier</i>."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+<p>Rupert, to whom the well-known volubility of his aunt was most
+particularly disagreeable, but who had nevertheless saluted the
+stalwart old lady's cheek with much affection, here bent his supple
+back with a sort of mocking gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>"You maintain your <i>device</i>, permit me to say, my dear aunt, as
+ostentatiously in your person as we renegade Landales ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, pooh! I am too old a bird to be caught by such chaff, nephew;
+it is pearls before.... I mean it is too late in the day, my dear.
+Keep it for the young things. And indeed I see the sheep's eyes you
+have been casting in their direction. Come nearer, young ladies, and
+make your cousin's acquaintance," beckoning to her nieces, who,
+arrayed in warm travelling pelisses and beaver bonnets of fashionable
+appearance, stood in the background near the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"They are very like, are they not?" she continued. "Twins always are;
+as like as two peas. And yet these are as different as day and night
+when you come to know them. Madeleine is the eldest; that is she in
+the beaver fur; Molly prefers bear. Without their bonnets you will
+distinguish them by their complexion. Molly has raven hair (she is the
+truest O'Donoghue), whilst Madeleine is fair, <i>blonde</i>, like her
+Breton father."</p>
+
+<p>The sisters greeted their new-found guardian, each in her own way.
+And, in spite of the disguising bonnets and their surprising
+similarity of voice, height, and build, the difference was more marked
+than that of beaver and bear.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine acknowledged her kinsman's greeting with a dainty curtsey
+and little half-shy smile, marked by that air of distinction and
+breeding which was her peculiar characteristic. Molly, however, who
+thought she had reasonable cause for feeling generally exasperated,
+and who did not see in Mr. Rupert Landale, despite his good looks and
+his good manner, a very promising substitute for her Bath admirers
+(nor in the prospect of Pulwick a profitable exchange for Bath), came
+forward with her bolder grace to flounce him a saucy "reverence,"
+measuring him the while with a certain air of mockery which his
+thin-skinned susceptibility was quick to seize.</p>
+
+<p>He looked back at her down the long tunnel of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> bonnet, appraising
+the bloom and beauty within with cold and curious gaze, and then he
+turned to Madeleine and made to her his courteous speech of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>This was sufficient for Miss Molly, who, for six months already
+accustomed to compel admiration at first sight from all specimens of
+the male sex that came across her path, instantly vowed a deadly
+hatred to her cousin, and followed the party into the Landale family
+coach&mdash;Rupert preceding, with a lady on each arm&mdash;in a temper as black
+as her own locks.</p>
+
+<p>It fell to her lot to sit beside the objectionable relative on the
+back seat, while, by the right of her minute's seniority, Madeleine
+sat beside Tanty in the front. The projecting wings of her headgear
+effectively prevented her from watching his demeanour, unless, indeed,
+she had turned to him, which was, of course, out of the question; but
+certain fugitive conscious blushes upon the young face in front of
+her, certain castings down of long lashes and timid upward glances,
+made Molly shrewdly conjecture that Mr. Landale, through all the
+apparent devotion with which he listened to Tanty's continuous flow of
+observations, was able to bestow a certain amount of attention upon
+her pretty neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty herself conducted the conversation with her usual high hand,
+feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance;
+and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to
+plant her points where she chose.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the long drive wore to its end. The sun was golden upon Pulwick
+when the carriage at length drew up before the portico. Miss Sophia
+received them in the hall, in a state of painful flutter and timidity.
+She had a constitutional terror of her aunt's sharp eyes, and, though
+she examined her young cousins wistfully, Madeleine's unconscious air
+of dignity repelled her as much as Molly's deliberate pertness.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert conducted his aunt upstairs, and down the long echoing corridor
+towards her apartment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, my old quarters," quoth Tanty, disengaging herself briskly from
+her escort to enter the room and look round approvingly, "and very
+comfortable they are. And my two nieces are next door, I see, as gay
+as chintz can make them. Thank you, nephew, I shall keep you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> no
+longer. We shall dine shortly, I feel sure. Well, well, I do not
+pretend I am not quite ready to do justice to your excellent
+fare&mdash;beyond doubt, it will be excellent! Go to your room, girls, your
+baggage is coming up, you see; I shall send Dempsey to assist you
+presently. No, not you, Sophia, I was speaking to the young ones. I
+should like to have a little chat with you, my dear, if you have no
+objection."</p>
+
+<p>One door closed upon Rupert as he smiled and bowed himself out, the
+other upon Molly hustling her sister before her.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty in the highest good humour, having accomplished her desire, and
+successfully "established a lodgment" (to use a military term not
+inappropriate to such a martial spirit) for her troublesome nieces in
+the stronghold of Pulwick, once more surveyed her surroundings: the
+dim old walls, the great four-post bed, consecrated, of course, by
+tradition to the memory of some royal slumberer, the damask hangings,
+and the uncomfortable chairs, with the utmost favour, ending up with a
+humorous examination of the elongated figure hesitating on the
+hearthrug.</p>
+
+<p>"Be seated, Sophia. I am glad to stretch my old limbs after that
+terrible drive. So here we are together again. What are you sighing
+for? Upon my soul, you are the same as ever, I see, the same tombstone
+on your chest, and blowing yourself out with sighs, just as you used.
+That will never give you a figure, my poor girl; it is no wonder you
+are but skin and bones. Ah, can't you let the poor fellow rest in his
+grave Sophia? it is flying in the face of Providence, I call it, to go
+on perpetually stirring up his ashes like that. I hope you mean to try
+and be a little more cheerful with those poor girls. But, there, I
+believe you are never so happy as when you are miserable. And it's a
+poor creature you would be at any time," added the old lady to
+herself, after a second thoughtful investigation of Miss Landale's
+countenance, which had assumed an expression of mulishness in addition
+to an increase of dolefulness during this homily.</p>
+
+<p>Here, to Miss Landale's great relief, the dying sunset, wavering into
+crimson and purple, from its first glory of liquid gold, attracted her
+aunt's attention, and Miss O'Donoghue went over to the window.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Beneath her spread the quaint garden, with its clipped box edges, and
+beyond the now leafless belt of trees, upon the glimmer of the bay,
+the outline of Scarthey, a dark silhouette rose fantastically against
+the vivid sky. Even as she gazed, there leapt upon its fairy turret a
+minute point of white.</p>
+
+<p>The jovial old countenance changed and darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"And Adrian is still at his fool's game over there, I suppose," she
+said irately turning upon Sophia. "When have you seen him last? How
+often does he come here? I gather Master Rupert is nothing if not the
+master. Why don't you answer me, Sophia?"</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>The dinner was as well cooked and served a meal as any under Rupert's
+rule, which is saying a good deal, and if the young ladies failed to
+appreciate the "floating island," the "golden nests," and "silver
+web," so thoughtfully provided for them, Tanty did ample justice to
+the venison.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed the cloud which had been visible upon her countenance at the
+beginning of dinner, and which according to that downright habit of
+mind, which rendered her so terrible or so delightful a companion, she
+made no attempt to conceal, began to lift towards the first remove,
+and altogether vanished over her final glass of port.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner she peremptorily ordered her grand-nieces into the
+retirement of their bedchambers, unblushingly alleging their exhausted
+condition in front of the perfect bloom of their beautiful young
+vigour.</p>
+
+<p>She then, over a cup of tea, luxuriously stretching her thin frame in
+the best arm-chair the drawing-room could afford, gave Rupert a brief
+code of directions as to the special attentions and care she desired
+to be bestowed upon her wards, during their residence at Pulwick,
+descanting generously upon their various perfections, gliding
+dexterously over her reasons for wishing to be rid of them herself,
+and concluding with the hint&mdash;either pregnant or barren of meaning as
+he chose to take it&mdash;that if he made their stay pleasant to them, she
+would not forget the service.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as Mr. Landale began, with apparent guilelessness, to put a few
+little telling questions to her anent the episodes which had made Bath
+undesirable as a residence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> for these young paragons, the old lady
+suddenly became overwhelmed with fatigue and sleepiness, and professed
+herself ready to be conducted to her bower immediately.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Meanwhile, despite the <i>moue de circonstance</i> which Molly thought it
+incumbent on her to assume, neither she nor Madeleine regretted their
+compulsory withdrawal from the social circle downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine had her own thoughts to follow up, and that these were both
+engrossing and pleasant was easily evident; and Molly, bursting with a
+sense of injury arising from many causes, desired a special
+explanation with her sister, which the presence in and out upon them
+of Tanty's woman had prevented her from indulging in before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"So here we are at last," cried she, indignantly, after she had walked
+round and severely inspected her quarters, pausing to "pull a lip" of
+extreme disfavour at the handsome portrait of Mr. Landale that hung
+between the windows, "we are, Madeleine, at last, kidnapped,
+imprisoned, successfully disposed of, in fact."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, here we are at last," echoed Madeleine, abstractedly, warming
+her slender ankles by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you made out yet what particular kind of new frenzy it was that
+seized ch&egrave;re Tante?" asked Miss Molly, with great emphasis, as she sat
+down at her toilet-table. "You are the cause of it all, my dear, and
+so you ought to know. It is all very well for Tanty to pretend that I
+have brought it on myself by not coming home till three o'clock (as if
+that was <i>my</i> fault). She cannot blink the fact that her Dempsey
+creature had orders to pack my boxes before bedtime. Your Smith must
+be a desperately dangerous individual. Well," she continued, looking
+round over her shoulder, "why don't you say something, you
+lackadaisical thing?"</p>
+
+<p>But Madeleine answered nought and continued gazing, while only the
+little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had
+heard the petulant speech.</p>
+
+<p>The smile put the finishing touch to Molly's righteous anger.
+Brandishing a hairbrush threateningly, she marched over to her sister
+and looked down upon the slender figure, in its clinging white dress,
+with blazing eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look here," she cried, "there must be an end of this. I can put up
+with your slyness no longer. How <i>dare</i> you have secrets from me,
+miss?&mdash;your own twin sister! You and I, who used never to have a
+thought we did not share. How dare you have a lover, and not tell me
+all about him? What was the meaning of your weeping like a fountain
+all the way from Bath to Shrewsbury, and then, without rhyme or reason
+apparently, smiling to yourself all the way from there to Lancaster.
+You have had a letter, don't attempt to deny it, it is of no use....
+Oh, it is base of you, it is indeed! And to think that it is all
+through you that I am forced into this exile, through your <i>airs
+pench&eacute;s</i>, and your sighing and dreaming, and your mysterous
+<i>Smith</i>.... To think that to-night, this very night, is the ball of
+the season, and we are going to bed! Oh, and to-morrow and to-morrow,
+and to-morrow, with nothing but a knave and a fool to keep us
+company&mdash;for I don't think much of your female cousin, Madeleine, and,
+as for your male cousin, I perfectly detest him&mdash;and all the tabbies
+of the country-side for diversion, with perhaps a country buck on high
+days and holidays for a relish! Pah!"</p>
+
+<p>Molly had almost talked her ill-humour away. Her energetic nature
+could throw off most unpleasant emotions easily enough so long as it
+might have an outlet for them; she now laid down the threatening
+brush, and, kneeling beside her, flung both her arms round Madeleine's
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma petite Madeleine," she coaxed, in the mother tongue, "tell thy
+little sister thy secrets."</p>
+
+<p>A faint flush crept to Madeleine's usually creamy cheeks, a light into
+her eyes. She turned impulsively to the face near hers, then, as if
+bethinking herself, pursed her lips together and shook her head
+slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember, ma ch&egrave;rie," she said, at last, "that French tale
+Mrs. Hambledon lent us in which it is said <i>'Qui fuit l'amour, l'amour
+suit.'</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" asked Molly, eagerly, her lips parted as if to drink in the
+expected confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," replied the other, "well, perhaps things may not be so bad
+after all. Perhaps," rising from her seat, and looking at her sister
+with a little gentle malice, while she, too, began to disrobe her
+fairer beauty for the night,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> "some of your many lovers may come after
+you from Bath! Oh, Molly!" with a little scream, for Molly, with eyes
+flashing once more, had sprung up from her knees to inflict a vicious
+pinch upon the equivocator's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss, you shall be pinched till you confess." Then flouting her
+with a sudden change of mood, "I am sure I don't want to know your
+wonderful secret,"&mdash;seizing her comb and passing it crackling through
+her hair with quite unnecessary energy&mdash;"Mademoiselle la Cachoti&egrave;re.
+Anyhow, it cannot be very interesting.... <i>Mrs. Smith!</i> Fancy caring
+for a man called Smith! If you smile again like that, Madeleine, I
+shall beat you."</p>
+
+<p>The two sisters looked at each other for a second as if hesitating on
+the brink of anger, and then both laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, I shall pay you out yet," quoth Molly, tugging at her
+black mane. "So our lovers are to come after us, is <i>that</i> it? Do you
+know, Madeleine," she went on, calming down, "I almost regret now that
+I would not listen to young Lord Dereham, simpleton though he be. He
+looked such a dreadful little fright that I only laughed at him.... I
+should have laughed at him all my life. But it would perhaps have been
+better than this dependence on Tanty, with her sudden whims and
+scampers and whisking of us away into the wilderness. Then I should
+have had my own way always. Now it's too late. Tanty told me yesterday
+that she sees he is a dissolute young man, and that his dukedom is
+only a Charles II. creation, and 'We know what that means,' she added,
+and shook her head. I am sure I had not a notion, but I shook my head
+too, and said, 'Of course, that made it impossible.' I was really
+afraid she would want me to marry him. She was dreadfully pleased and
+said I was a true O'Donoghue. Oh, dear! I don't know <i>anything</i> about
+love. I can't imagine being in love; but one thing is certain, I could
+never, never, never allow a horrid little rat like Lord Dereham to
+make love to me, to kiss me, nor, indeed, any man&mdash;oh, horror! How you
+are blushing, my dear! Come here into the light. It would be good for
+your soul, indeed it would, to confess!"</p>
+
+<p>But Madeleine, burying her hot cheeks in her sister's neck and
+clasping her with gentle caresses, was not to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> drawn from her
+reticence. Molly pushed her off at last, and gave a hard little
+good-night kiss like a bird-peck.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; but you might as well have confessed, for I shall find out
+in the long run. And who knows, perhaps you may be sorry one day that
+you did not tell me of your own accord."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>A RECORD AND A PRESENTMENT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The gallery of family portraits at Pulwick is one of the most
+remarkable features of that ancient house.</p>
+
+<p>It was a custom firmly established at the Priory&mdash;ever since the first
+heralds' visitation in Lancashire, when some mooted point of claims to
+certain quarterings had been cleared in an unexpected way by the
+testimony of a well-authenticated ancestral portrait&mdash;for each
+successive representative to add to the collection. One of the first
+cares of every Landale, therefore, on succeeding to the title was to
+be painted, with his proper armorial and otherwise distinguishing
+honours jealously delineated, and thus hung in the place of honour
+over the high mantelshelf of the gallery&mdash;displacing on the occasion
+his own immediate and revered predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>The chain was consequently unbroken from the Elizabethan descendants
+of the first acquirers of ecclesiastical property at Pulwick, down to
+the present Light-keeper of Scarthey.</p>
+
+<p>But whilst the late Sir Thomas appeared in all the majesty of
+deputy-lieutenant, colonel of Militia, magistrate, and sundry other
+honourable offices, in his due place on the right of the present
+baronet, the latter figured in a character so strange and so
+incongruous that it seemed as if one day the dignified array of
+Landales&mdash;old, young, middle-aged, but fine gentlemen, all of
+them&mdash;must turn their backs upon their degenerate kinsman.</p>
+
+<p>Over the chimney-piece, in the huge carved-oak frame (now already two
+centuries old), a common sailor, in the striped loose trousers, the
+blue jacket with red piping of a man-of-war's man, with pigtail and
+coarse open shirt&mdash;stood boldly forth as the representative of the
+present owner of Pulwick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Proud of their long line of progenitors, it was a not unusual thing
+for the Landales to entertain their guests at breakfast in a certain
+sunny bow-window in the portrait gallery rather than in the breakfast
+parlour proper, which in winter, unmistakably harboured more damp than
+was pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>It was, therefore, with no surprise that Miss Landale received an
+early order from her brother to have a fire lighted in the apartment
+sacred to the family honours, and the matutinal repast served there in
+due course.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Mr. Landale was actuated by a regard for the rheumatism of his
+worthy relative, or merely a natural family pride, or by some other
+and less simple motive, he saw no necessity for informing his docile
+housewife on the matter.</p>
+
+<p>As Sophia was accustomed to no such condescension on his part even in
+circumstances more extraordinary, she merely bundled out of bed
+unquestioningly in the darkness and cold of the morning to see his
+orders executed in the proper manner; which, indeed, to her credit was
+so successfully accomplished that Tanty and her charges, when they
+made their entry upon the scene, could not fail to be impressed with
+the comfortable aspect of the majestic old room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale examined his two young uninvited guests with new keenness
+in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a
+lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than
+accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual
+necessity of her delicate nature, there was more than resignation in
+the blushing radiance of her look and smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Portraits of their mother," said Rupert, bringing his critical survey
+to a close, and stepping forward with a nice action of the legs to
+present his arm to his aunt. "Portraits of their mother both of
+them&mdash;I trust to that miniature which used to grace our collection in
+the drawing-room rather than to the treacherous memory of a school-boy
+for the impression&mdash;but portraits by different masters and in
+different moods."</p>
+
+<p>There was something patronising in the tone from so young a man, which
+Molly resented on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we should be as like as two peas, only that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> are as different
+as day and night, as Tanty says," she retorted, tossing her white chin
+at her host, while Miss O'Donoghue laughed aloud at her favourite's
+sauciness.</p>
+
+<p>"And after all," said Rupert, as he bestowed his venerable relative on
+her chair, with an ineffable air of politeness, contradicted, though
+only for an instant, by the look which he shot at Molly from the light
+hazel eyes, "Tanty is not so far wrong&mdash;the only difference between
+night and day is the difference between the <i>brunette</i> and the
+<i>blonde</i>," with a little bow to each of the sisters, "an Irish bull,
+if one comes to analyse it, is but the expression of the too rapid
+working of quick wits."</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, nephew," said Tanty, sitting down in high good humour to the
+innumerable good things in which her Epicurean old soul delighted,
+"that is about as true a thing as ever you said. Our Irish tongues are
+apt to get behind a thing before it is there, and they call that
+making a bull."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert's sense of humour was as keen as most of his other faculties,
+and at the unconscious humour of this sally his laugh rang out
+frankly, while Molly and Madeleine giggled in their plates, and Miss
+O'Donoghue chuckled quietly to herself in the intervals of eating and
+drinking, content to have been witty, without troubling to discover
+how.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia alone remained unmoved by mirth; indeed, as she raised her
+drooping head, amazed at the clamour, an unwary tear trickled down her
+long nose into her tea. She was given to revelling in anniversaries of
+dead and gone joys or sorrows; the one as melancholy to her to look
+back upon as the other; and upon this November day, now very many
+years ago, had the ardent, consumptive rector first hinted at his
+love.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said Miss O'Donoghue, who, having disposed of the most
+serious part of the breakfast, pushed away her plate with one hand
+while she stirred her second cup of well-creamed tea lazily with the
+other, "Now, Rupert, will you tell me the arrangements you propose to
+make to enable me to see your good brother?"</p>
+
+<p>Rupert had anticipated being attacked upon this subject, and had fully
+prepared himself to defend the peculiar position it was his interest
+to maintain. To encourage a meeting between his brother and the old
+lady (to whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> the present position of affairs was a grievous offence)
+did not, certainly, enter into his plan of action; but Tanty had put
+the question in an unexpected and slightly awkward shape, and for a
+second or two he hesitated before replying.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear," said he then, gliding into the subject with his usual easy
+fluency, "that you will be disappointed if you have been reckoning
+upon an interview with Adrian, my dear aunt. The hermit will not be
+drawn from his shell on any pretext."</p>
+
+<p>"What," cried Tanty, while her withered cheek flushed, "do you mean to
+tell me that my nephew, Sir Adrian Landale, will decline to come a few
+hundred yards to see his old aunt&mdash;his mother's own sister&mdash;who has
+come three hundred miles, at seventy years of age, to see him in his
+own house&mdash;<i>in his own house</i>?" repeated the irate old lady, rattling
+the spoon with much emphasis against her cup. "If you <i>mean</i> this,
+Rupert, it is an insult to me which I shall never forget&mdash;<i>never</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She rose from her seat as she concluded, shaking with the tremulous
+anger of age.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Tanty," cried Rupert, throwing into his voice all the
+generous warmth he was capable of simulating, "do not hold me
+responsible for Adrian in this matter. His strange vagaries are not of
+my suggesting, heaven knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, loftily, "if you will kindly
+send the letter I am about to write to your brother, by a safe
+messenger, immediately, I shall believe that it is <i>your</i> wish to
+treat me with proper respect, whatever may be Adrian's subsequent
+behaviour."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale's countenance assumed an expression of very genuine
+distress; this was just the one proof of dutiful attachment that he
+was loth to bestow upon his cherished aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"I see how it is," he exclaimed earnestly, coming up to the old lady,
+and laying his hand gently upon her arm, "you entirely misunderstand
+the situation. I am not a free agent in this matter. I cannot do what
+you ask; I am bound by pledge. Adrian is, undoubtedly, more
+than&mdash;peculiar on certain points, and, really, I dare not, if I would,
+thwart him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried Tanty, shooting off the ejaculation as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> from a pop-gun.
+Then, shaking herself free of Rupert's touch, she sat down abruptly in
+her chair again, and began fanning herself with her handkerchief. Not
+even in her interchange of amenities with Mrs. Hambledon, had Molly
+seen her display so much indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to believe he is mad, I suppose?" she snapped, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! No, no, no!" responded the other, in his airy way. "I did
+not mean to go so far as that; but&mdash;well, there are very painful
+matters, and hitherto I have avoided all discussion upon them, even
+with Sophia. My affection for Adrian&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted Tanty. "You meant something, I suppose;
+either the man's mad, or he is not. And I, for one, don't believe a
+word of it. The worst sign about him, that I can see, is the blind
+confidence the poor fellow seems to put in you."</p>
+
+<p>Here Molly, who had been listening to the discussion "with all her
+ears"&mdash;anything connected with the mysterious personality of the
+absent head of the house was beginning to have a special fascination
+for her&mdash;gave an irrepressible little note of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert looked up at her quickly, and their eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue, Miss," cried Miss O'Donoghue, sharply; aware that
+she had gone too far in her last remark, and glad to relieve her
+oppression in another direction, "how dare you laugh? Sophia, this is
+a terrible thing your brother wants me to believe&mdash;may I ask what
+<i>your</i> opinion is? Though I'll not deny I don't think that will be
+worth much."</p>
+
+<p>Sophia glanced helplessly at Rupert, but he was far too carefully
+possessed of himself to affect to perceive her embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you
+need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose&mdash;you
+are not absolutely a drivelling idiot&mdash;<i>all</i> the Landales are not
+ripening for lunatic asylums&mdash;collect your wits, Sophia, I know you
+have not got any, but you have <i>enough</i> to be able to give a plain
+answer to a plain question, I suppose. Do you think your brother mad,
+child?"</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid," murmured Sophia, at the very extremity of those wits of
+which Miss O'Donoghue had so poor an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> opinion. "Oh, no, dear aunt, not
+<i>mad</i>, of course, not in the least <i>mad</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Then, gathering from a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not
+upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew
+forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if
+irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity
+had really fallen upon us&mdash;and of course there <i>are</i> symptoms, no
+doubt there are symptoms...."</p>
+
+<p>"What are his symptoms&mdash;has he tried to murder any of you, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear aunt! No, indeed, dear Adrian is gentleness itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he bite? Does he gibber? Oh, away with you, Sophia! I am sure I
+cannot wonder at the poor fellow wanting to live on a rock, between
+you and Rupert. I am sure the periwinkles and the gulls must be
+pleasant company compared to you. That alone would show, I should
+think, that he knows right well what he is about. Mad indeed! There
+never was any madness among the O'Donoghues except your poor uncle
+Michael, who got a box on the ear from a windmill&mdash;and <i>he</i> wasn't an
+O'Donoghue at all! You will be kind enough, nephew, to have delivered
+to Sir Adrian, no later than to-day, the letter which I shall this
+moment indite to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said Rupert, "if you will only favour me with your
+attention for a few minutes first, aunt, and allow me to narrate to
+you the circumstances of my brother's return here, and of his
+subsequent self-exile, you will see fit to change your opinion, both
+as regards him and myself."</p>
+
+<p>A self-controlled nature will in the long run, rightly or wrongly,
+always assume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness
+of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty
+rapidly down from her pinnacle of passion.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, she said, she was not only ready, but anxious to hear all
+that Rupert could have to say for himself; and, smoothing down her
+black satin apron with a shaking hand, the old lady prepared to listen
+with as much judicial dignity as her flustered state allowed her to
+assume. Rupert drew his chair opposite to hers and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> leant his elbow on
+the table, and fixed his bright, hard eyes upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember, of course," he began after a moment's pause, "how at
+the time of my poor father's death, Adrian was reported to have lost
+his life in the Vend&eacute;e war&mdash;though without authoritative
+confirmation&mdash;at the same time as the fair and unhappy Countesse de
+Savenaye, to whose fortune he had so chivalrously devoted himself."</p>
+
+<p>Tanty bowed her head in solemn assent; but Molly, watching with the
+most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of
+mockery she thought to catch upon the speaker's curling lip.</p>
+
+<p>"It was," continued he, "the constant strain, the long months of
+watching in vain for tidings, that told upon my father, rather than
+the actual grief of loss. When he died, the responsibilities of the
+headship of the house devolved naturally upon me, the only male
+representative left, seemingly, to undertake them. The months went by;
+to the most sanguine the belief in Adrian's death became inevitable.
+Our hopes died slowly, but they died at last; we mourned for him,"
+here Rupert cast down his eyes till the thick black lashes which were
+one of his beauties swept his cheek; his tone was perfect in its
+simple gravity. "At length, urged thereto by all the family, if I
+remember rightly by yourself as well, dear aunt, I assumed the title
+as well as the position which seemed mine by right. I was very young
+at the time, but I do not think that either then, or during the ten
+years that followed, I unworthily filled my brother's place."</p>
+
+<p>There was a proud ring of sincerity in the last words, and the old
+lady knew that they were true; that during the years of his absolute
+power as well as of his present more restricted mastership, Rupert's
+management of the estate was unimpeachable.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, my dear Rupert," she said in softer tones than she had
+hitherto used to him, "no one would dream of suggesting such a
+thing&mdash;pray go on."</p>
+
+<p>"And so," pursued the nephew, with a short laugh, relapsing into that
+light tone of banter which was his most natural mode of expression;
+"when, one fine day, a hired coach clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's
+avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>announced
+himself, in melancholy tones that would have befitted the ghost no
+doubt many took him for, as the rightful Sir Adrian, erroneously
+supposed defunct, I confess that it required a little persuasion to
+make me recognise my long-lost brother&mdash;and yet there could be no
+doubt of it. The missing heir had come to his own again; the dead had
+come back to life. Well, we killed the fatted calf, and all the rest
+of it&mdash;but I need not inflict upon you the narrative of our
+rejoicing."</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, no," said Tanty, drily, "I can see it with half an eye."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, too, I believe, the series of extraordinary adventures, or
+misadventures, which had kept him roaming on the high seas while we at
+home set up tablets to his memory and 'wore our blacks' as people here
+call it, and cultivated a chastened resignation. There was a good deal
+of correspondence going on at the time between Pulwick and Bunratty,
+if I remember aright, and you heard all about Adrian's divers attempts
+to land in England, about his fight with the King's men, his crack on
+the head and final impressment. At least you heard as much as we could
+gather ourselves. Adrian is not what one would call a garrulous person
+at the best of times. It was really with the greatest difficulty that
+we managed to extract enough out of him to piece together a coherent
+tale."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," quoth Tanty, with impatience, "you are glib enough for
+two anyhow, my dear! All this does not tell me how Adrian came to live
+on a lighthouse, and why you put him down as a lunatic."</p>
+
+<p>"Not as a lunatic," corrected Rupert, gently, "merely as slightly
+eccentric on certain points. Though, indeed, if you had seen him
+during those first months after his return, I think even you with your
+optimistic spirit would have feared, as we did, that he was falling
+into melancholia. Thank heaven he is better now. But, dear me, what we
+went through! I declare I expected every morning to be informed that
+Sir Adrian's corpse had been found hanging from his bedpost or
+discovered in a jelly at the bottom of the bluffs. And, indeed, when
+at length he disappeared for three days, after he had been last
+observed mooning along the coast, there was a terrible panic lest he
+should have sought a congenial and soothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> end in the embraces of
+the quicksands.... It turned out, however, that he had merely strolled
+over to Scarthey&mdash;where, as you know, my father established a beacon
+and installed a keeper to warn boats off our shoals&mdash;and, finding the
+place to his liking, had remained there, regardless of our feelings."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut!" said Tanty; but whether in reproof of Rupert's flippant
+language or of her elder nephew's erratic behaviour, it would have
+been difficult to determine.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," went on Rupert, smoothly, "I had resolved, after a decent
+period, to remove my lares and penates from a house where I was no
+longer master and to establish myself, with my small patrimony (I
+believe I ought to call it <i>matrimony</i>, as we younger children benefit
+by our O'Donoghue mother) in an independent establishment. But when I
+first broached the subject, Adrian was so vastly distressed, expressed
+himself so well satisfied with my management of the estate and begged
+me so earnestly to consider Pulwick as my home, vowing that he himself
+would never marry, and that all he looked forward to in life was to
+see me wedded and with future heirs to the name springing around me,
+that it would have been actual unkindness to resist. Moreover, as you
+can imagine, Adrian is not exactly a man of business, and his
+spasmodic interferences in the control of the property being already
+then of a very injudicious nature, I confess that, having nursed it
+myself for eleven years with some success, I dreaded to think what it
+would become under his auspices. And so I agreed to remain. But the
+position increased in difficulty. Adrian's moroseness seemed to grow
+upon him; he showed an exaggerated horror of company; either flying
+from visitors as from the pest, and shutting himself up in his own
+apartments, or (on the few disastrous occasions when my persuasions
+induced him to show himself to some old family friends) entertaining
+them with such unusual sentiments concerning social laws, the
+magistracy, the government, his Majesty the King himself, that the
+most extraordinary reports about him soon spread over the whole
+county. This was about the time&mdash;as you may remember&mdash;of my own
+marriage."</p>
+
+<p>Here an alteration crept into Mr. Landale's voice, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> Molly looked
+at him curiously, while Miss Sophia gave vent to an audible sniff.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure," said Tanty, hastily. Comfortably egotistic old ladies
+have an instinctive dislike to painful topics. And that Rupert's
+sorrow for his young wife had been, if self-centred and reserved, of
+an intense and prolonged nature was known to all the family.</p>
+
+<p>The widower himself had no intention of dilating upon it. His wife's
+name he never mentioned, and no one could guess, heavily as the blow
+was known to have fallen upon him, the seething bitterness that her
+loss had left in his soul, nor imagine how different a man he might
+have been if that one strong affection of his life had been spared to
+soften it.</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian fled from the wedding festivities, as you may remember, for
+you were our honoured guest at the time, and greatly displeased at his
+absence," he resumed, after a few seconds of darkling reflection.
+"None of us knew where he had flown to, for he did not evidently
+consider his owl's nest sufficiently remote; but we had his fraternal
+blessing to sustain us. And after that he continued to make periodical
+disappearances to his retreat, stopping away each time longer and
+longer. One fine day he sent workmen to the island with directions to
+repair certain rooms in the keep, and he began to transfer thereto
+furniture, his books and his organ. A dilapidated little French
+prisoner next appeared on the scene (whom my brother had extracted
+from the Tower of Liverpool, which was then crammed with such gentry),
+and finally we were informed that, with this worthy companion, Sir
+Adrian Landale was determined to take up his abode altogether at
+Scarthey, undertaking the duties of the recently defunct light-keeper.
+So off he went, and there he is still. He has extracted from us a
+solemn promise that his privacy is to be absolutely respected, and
+that no communications, or, above all, visits are to be made to him.
+Occasionally, when we least expect it, he descends upon us from his
+tower, upsets all my accounts, makes the most absurd concessions to
+the tenants, rides round the estate with his eyes on the ground and
+disappears again. <i>Et voil&agrave;</i>, my dear aunt, how we stand."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, "I am much obliged to you, I am
+sure, for putting me <i>au courant</i> of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> the family affairs. It is all
+very sad&mdash;very sad and very deplorable; but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Landale was quite aware that Tanty was not yet convinced to
+the desired extent. He therefore here interrupted her to play his last
+card&mdash;that ace he had up his sleeve, in careful preparation for this
+trial of skill with his keen-witted relative, and to the suitable
+production of which he had been all along leading.</p>
+
+<p>Rising from his chair with slow, deliberate movement, he proceeded, as
+if following his own train of thought, without noticing that Miss
+O'Donoghue was intent on speech herself:</p>
+
+<p>"You have not seen him, I believe, since he was quite a lad. You would
+have some difficulty in recognising him, though he bears, like the
+rest of us, what you call the unmistakable Landale stamp. His portrait
+is here, by the way&mdash;duly installed in its correct position. That,"
+with a laugh, "was one of his freaks. It was his duty to keep up the
+family traditions, he said&mdash;and there you will approve of him, no
+doubt; but hardly, perhaps, of the manner in which he has had that
+laudable intention carried out. My own portrait was, of course,
+deposed (like the original)," added Mr. Landale, with something of a
+sneer; "and now hangs meekly in some bedroom or other&mdash;in that, if I
+mistake not, at present hallowed by my fair cousins' presence. Well,
+it is good for the soul of man to be humbled, as we are taught to
+believe from our earliest years!"</p>
+
+<p>Tanty was fumbling for her eye-glasses. She was glad to hear that
+Adrian had remembered some of his obligations (she observed,
+sententiously, as she hauled herself stiffly out of her chair to
+approach the chimney-piece); it was certainly a sign that he was more
+mindful of his duties as head of the house than one would expect from
+a person hardly responsible, such as Rupert had represented him to be,
+and ...</p>
+
+<p>Here, the glasses being adjusted and focussed upon the portrait, Miss
+O'Donoghue halted abruptly with a dropping jaw.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a curious inscription underneath the escutcheon," said Mr.
+Landale composedly, "which latter, by the way, you may notice is the
+only one in the line which has no room for an impaled coat (Adrian's
+way of indicating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> not only that he is single, but means to remain
+such); Adrian composed it himself and indeed attached a marked
+importance to it. Let me read it for you, dear Tanty, the picture
+hangs a little high and those curveting letters are hard to decipher.
+It runs thus:</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Adrian William Hugh Landale, Lord of Pulwick and Scarthey in the
+County Palatine of Lancaster, eighth Baronet, born March 12th, 1775.
+Succeeded to the title and estate on the 10th February 1799, whilst
+abroad. Iniquitously pressed into the King's service on the day of his
+return home, January 2nd, 1801. Twice flogged for alleged
+insubordination, and only released at last by the help of a friend
+after five years of slavery. Died</i> [Here a space for the date.] It is
+a record with a vengeance, is it not? Notice my brother's
+determination to die unmarried and to retire, once for all, from all
+or any of the possible honours connected with his position!"</p>
+
+<p>They had all clustered in front of the picture; even Madeleine roused
+from her sweet day-dreams to some show of curiosity; Miss Landale's
+bosom, heaving with such sighs as to make the tombstone rise and fall
+like a ship upon a stormy sea; Molly with an eagerness she did not
+attempt to hide; and Miss O'Donoghue still speechless with horror and
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale had gauged his aunt's temperament correctly enough. To one
+whose ruling passion was pride of family, this mockery of a
+consecrated family custom, this heirloom destined to carry down a
+record of degradation into future generations, was an insult to the
+name only to be explained to her first indignation by deliberate
+malice&mdash;or insanity.</p>
+
+<p>And from the breezy background of blue sky and sea, contrasting as
+strangely with the dark solemnity of the other portraits as did the
+figure itself in its incongruous sailor dress, the face of the eighth
+baronet looked down in melancholy gravity upon the group gathered in
+judgment upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Disgraceful! Positively disgraceful!" at length cried the last
+representative of the O'Donoghues of Bunratty, in scandalised tones.
+"My dear Rupert, you should have a curtain put up, that this
+exhibition of folly&mdash;of madness, I hardly know what to call it&mdash;be not
+exposed to every casual visitor. Dear me, dear me, that I should live
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> see any of my kin deliberately throw discredit on his family, if
+indeed the poor fellow is responsible! Rupert, my good soul, can you
+ascribe any reason for this terrible state of affairs ... that blow on
+the head?"</p>
+
+<p>"In part perhaps," said Mr. Landale. "And yet there have been other
+causes at work. If I could have a private word in your ear," glancing
+meaningly over his shoulder at the two young girls who were both
+listening, though with very different expressions of interest and
+favour, "I could give you my opinion more fully."</p>
+
+<p>"Go away now, my dear creatures," hereupon said Miss O'Donoghue,
+promptly addressing her nieces. "It is a fine morning, and you will
+lose your roses if you don't get the air. I don't care if it has begun
+to rain, miss! Go and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock then.
+Young people <i>must</i> have exercise. Well, my dear Rupert, well!"&mdash;when
+Molly, with a pettish "battledore and shuttlecock indeed!" had taken
+her sister by the arm and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear aunt, the fact is, I believe my unhappy brother has
+never recovered from&mdash;from his passion for C&eacute;cile de Savenaye, that
+early love affair, so suddenly and tragically terminated&mdash;well, it
+seems to have turned his brain!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, pooh! why that was twenty years ago. Don't tell me it is in a
+man to be so constant."</p>
+
+<p>"In no <i>sane</i> man perhaps; but then, you know, Tanty, that is just the
+point.... Remember the circumstances. He loved her madly; he followed
+her, lived near her for months and she was drowned before his eyes, I
+believe. I never heard, of course, any details of that strange period
+of his life, but we can imagine." This was a difficult, vague, subject
+to deal with, and Mr. Landale wisely passed on. "Moreover, his
+behaviour when in this house on his return at first has left me no
+doubt. I watched him closely. He was for ever haunting those rooms
+which she had inhabited. When he found her miniature in the
+drawing-room he went first as white as death, then he took it in his
+hand and stood gazing at it (I am not exaggerating) for a whole hour
+without moving; and, finally, he carried it off, and I know he used to
+talk to it in his room. And now, even if I had not given my poor
+brother my word of honour never to disturb his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> chosen solitude, I
+should have felt it a heavy responsibility to promote a meeting which
+would inevitably bring back past memories in a troublous manner upon
+him. In fact, were he to come across the children of his dead
+love&mdash;above all Molly, who must be startlingly like her mother&mdash;what
+might the result be? I hardly like to contemplate it. The human brain
+is a very delicately balanced organ, my dear aunt, and once it gets
+ever so slightly out of order one cannot be too careful to avoid
+risk."</p>
+
+<p>He finished his say with an expressive gesture of the hand. Miss
+O'Donoghue remained for a moment plunged in reflection, during which
+the cloud upon her countenance gradually lifted.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a strange thing," she said at last, "but constancy seems to run
+in the family. There is no denying that. Here is Sophia, a ridiculous
+spectacle&mdash;and you yourself, my dear Rupert.... And now poor Adrian,
+too, and his case of mere calf-love, as one would have thought."</p>
+
+<p>"A calf may grow into a fine bull, you know," returned Mr. Landale,
+who had winced at his aunt's allusion to himself and now spoke in the
+most unemotional tone he could assume, "especially if it is well
+fostered in its youth."</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose," said Miss O'Donoghue, with a faint smile, "you think
+I ought to know all about bulls." She again put up her glasses to
+survey the portrait with critical deliberation; after which,
+recommending him once more strenuously to have a curtain erected, she
+observed, that it would break her heart to look at it one moment
+longer and requested to be conducted from the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale could not draw any positive conclusion from his aunt's
+manner of receiving his confidence, nor determine whether she had
+altogether grasped the whole meaning of what he had intended
+delicately to convey to her concerning his brother's past as well as
+present position; but he had said as much as prudence counselled.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DISTANT LIGHT</h3>
+
+
+<p>In spite of their first petulant or dolorous anticipation, and of the
+contrast between the even tenor of country life and the constant
+stream of amusement which young people of fashion can find in a place
+like Bath, the two girls discovered that time glided pleasantly enough
+over them at Pulwick.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of the gloomy northern stronghold their novel-fed imagination
+had pictured (the more dismally as their sudden removal from town
+gaieties savoured distantly of punishment at the hand of their irate
+aunt), they found themselves delivered over into a bright,
+admirably-ordered house, replete with things of beauty, comfortable to
+the extremity of luxury; and allowed in this place of safety to enjoy
+almost unrestricted liberty.</p>
+
+<p>The latter privilege was especially precious, as the sisters at that
+time had engrossing thoughts of their own they wished to pursue, and
+found more interest in solitary roamings through the wide estate than
+in the company of the hosts.</p>
+
+<p>On the fifth day Miss O'Donoghue took her departure. Her own
+travelling coach had rumbled down the avenue, bearing her and her
+woman away, in its polished yellow embrace, her flat trunk strapped
+behind, and the good-natured old face nodding out of the window, till
+Molly and Madeleine, standing (a little disconsolate) upon the porch
+to watch her departure, could distinguish even the hooked nose no
+longer. Mr. Landale, upon his mettled grey, a gallant figure, as Molly
+herself was forced to admit, in his boots and buckskins, had cantered
+in the dust alongside, intent upon escorting his aged relative to the
+second stage of her journey.</p>
+
+<p>That night, almost for the first time since their arrival, there was
+no company at dinner, and the young guests<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> understood that the
+household would now fall back into its ordinary routine.</p>
+
+<p>But without the small flutter of seeing strangers, or Tanty's lively
+conversation, the social intercourse soon waned into exceeding
+dulness, and at an early hour Miss Molly rose and withdrew to her
+room, pretexting a headache, for which Mr. Landale, with his usual
+high courtesy, affected deep concern.</p>
+
+<p>As she was slowly ascending the great oaken staircase, she crossed
+Moggie, the gatekeeper's daughter, who in her character of
+foster-sister to one of the guests had been specially allotted to them
+as attendant, during the remainder of their visit to Pulwick.</p>
+
+<p>Molly thought that the girl eyed her hesitatingly, as if she wished to
+speak:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Moggie?" she asked, stopping on her way.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please, miss," said the buxom lass, blushing and dropping a
+curtsey, "Renny Potter, please, miss, is up at our lodge to-night, he
+don't care to come to the 'ouse so much, miss. But when he heard about
+you, miss, you could have knocked him down with a feather he was so
+surprised and that excited, miss, we have never seen him so. And he's
+so set on being allowed to see ye both!"</p>
+
+<p>Molly as yet failed to connect any memories of interest with the
+possessor of the patronymic mentioned, but the next phrase mentioned
+aroused her attention.</p>
+
+<p>"He is Sir Adrian's servant, now, miss, and goes back yonder to the
+island, that is where the master lives, to-morrow morning. But he
+would be so happy to see the young ladies before he goes, if the
+liberty were forgiven, he says. He was servant to the Madam your
+mother, miss.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Moggie," answered Miss Molly, smiling, "if that is all that is
+required to make Renny Potter happy, it is very easily done. Tell
+Renny Potter: to-morrow morning." And she proceeded on her way
+pondering, while the successful emissary pattered down to the lodge in
+high glee to gather her reward in her sweetheart's company.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>When later on Madeleine joined her sister, she found her standing by
+the deep recessed window, the curtains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> of which were drawn back,
+resting her head on her hand against the wainscot, and gazing abroad
+into the night.</p>
+
+<p>She approached, and passing her hand round Molly's waist looked out
+also.</p>
+
+<p>"Again at your window?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a beautiful night, and the view very lovely," said Molly. And
+indeed the moon was riding high in a deep blue starry heaven, and
+shimmered on the strip of distant sea visible from the windows.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but yesterday the night was not fine, and nothing was to be seen
+but blackness; and it was the same the day before, and yet you stared
+out of this window, as you have every night since our coming. It is
+strange to see <i>you</i> so. What is it, why don't you tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine," said Molly, suddenly, after a lengthy pause, "I am simply
+<i>haunted</i> by that light over yonder, the Light of Scarthey. There is a
+mystery about those ruins, on which I keep meditating all day long. I
+want to know more. It draws me. I would give anything to be able, now,
+to set sail and land there all unknown to any one, and see what manner
+of life is led where that light is burning."</p>
+
+<p>But Madeleine merely gave a pout of little interest. "What do you
+think you would find? A half-witted middle-aged man, mooning among a
+litter of books, with an old woman, and a little Frenchman to look
+after him. Why, Mr. Landale himself takes no trouble to conceal that
+his poor brother is an almost hopeless lunatic."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Landale&mdash;" Molly began, with much contempt; but she interrupted
+herself, and went on simply, "Mr. Landale is a very fine gentleman,
+with very superior manners. He speaks like a printed book&mdash;but for all
+that I <i>would</i> like to know."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine laughed. "The demon of curiosity has a hold of you, Molly;
+remember the fable they made us repeat: <i>De loin c'est quelque chose,
+et de pr&egrave;s ce n'est rien.</i> Now you shall go straight into your bed,
+and not take cold."</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Madeleine, after authoritatively closing the curtains, kissed
+her sister, and was about to commence immediate disrobing, when she
+caught sight of the shagreen-covered book, lying open on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"So your headache was your diary&mdash;how I should like to have a peep."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I daresay!" said Molly, sarcastically, and then sat down and, pen in
+hand, began to re-read her night's entry, now and then casting a
+tantalising glance over her shoulder at her sister. The lines, in the
+flowing convent hand, ran thus:</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt O'Donoghue left us this morning, and so here we are, planted in
+Pulwick; and she has achieved her plan, fully. But what is odd is that
+neither Madeleine nor I seem to mind it, now. What has come over
+Madeleine is her secret, and she keeps it close; but that <i>I</i> should
+like being here is strange indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, every day something happens to make me feel connected with
+Pulwick&mdash;something more, I mean, than the mere fact that we were born
+here. So many of the older people greet me, at first, as if they knew
+me&mdash;they all say I am so like 'the Madam;' they don't see the same
+likeness in Madeleine for all her <i>grand air</i>. There was Mrs. Mearson,
+the gatekeeper, was struck in amazement. And the old housekeeper,
+whenever she has an opportunity tries to entertain me about the
+beautiful foreign lady and the grand times they had at Pulwick when
+she was here, and 'Sir Tummas' was still alive.</p>
+
+<p>"But, though we are made to feel that we are more than ordinary
+guests, it is not on account of Mr. Landale, but <i>on account of Sir
+Adrian</i>&mdash;the Master, as they call him, whom we never see, and whom his
+brother would make out to be mad. Why is he so anxious that Sir Adrian
+should not know that Aunt Rose has brought us here? He seemed willing
+enough to please her, and yet nothing that she could say of her wish
+could induce him even to send a messenger over to the rock. And now we
+may be here all these two months and never even have caught a sight of
+the <i>Master</i>. I wonder if he is still like that portrait&mdash;whether he
+bears that face still as he now sits, all alone, brooding as his
+brother says, up in those ruined chambers, while the light burns calm
+and bright in the tower! What can this man of his have to say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Molly dotted her last forgotten "i," blotted it, closed and carefully
+locked the book. Then, rising, she danced over to her sister, and
+forced her into a pirouette.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," she cried gaily, "our dear old Tanty is pulling on her
+nightcap and weeping over her posset in the stuffy room at Lancaster
+regretting <i>me</i>; and I should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> be detesting her with all my energies
+for leaving me behind her, were it not that, just at present, I
+actually find Pulwick more interesting than Bath."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine lifted her heavy-lidded eyes a little wonderingly to her
+sister's face, as she paused in her gyration.</p>
+
+<p>"What fly stings thee now?" she inquired in French.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not tell me about <i>your</i> wounds, my dear, those wounds which
+little Dan Cupid has made upon your tender heart, with his naughty
+little arrow, and which give you such sweet pain, apparently, that you
+revel in the throes all day long. And yet, I am a good child; you
+shall guess. If you guess aright, I shall tell you. So now begin."</p>
+
+<p>They stood before the fire, and the leaping tongues of light played
+upon their white garments, Madeleine's nightgear scarcely more
+treacherously tell-tale of her slender woman's loveliness than the
+evening robe that clung so closely to the vigorous grace of Molly's
+lithe young figure.</p>
+
+<p>The elder, whose face bore a blush distinct from the reflected glow of
+the embers, fell to guessing, as commanded, a little wildly:</p>
+
+<p>"You begin to find the <i>beau cousin</i> Rupert a little more interesting
+than you anticipated."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah," cried Molly, with a stamp of her sandalled foot, "it is not
+possible to guess worse! He is more insufferable to me, hour by hour."</p>
+
+<p>"I think him kind and pleasant," returned Madeleine simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, because he makes sweet eyes at you, I suppose&mdash;yet no&mdash;I express
+myself badly&mdash;he could not make anything sweet out of those hard, hard
+eyes of his, but he is very&mdash;what they call here in England&mdash;attentive
+to you. And he looks at you and ponders you over when you little think
+it&mdash;you poor innocent&mdash;lost in your dream of ... <i>Smith</i>! There, I
+will not tease you. Guess again."</p>
+
+<p>"You are pleased to remain here because you are a true
+weather-cock&mdash;because you like one thing one day another the
+next&mdash;because the country peace and quiet is soothing to you after the
+folly and noise of the great world of Bath and Dublin, and reminds you
+refreshingly, as it does me, of our happy convent days." The glimmer
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> a dainty malice lurked in the apparent candour of Madeleine's
+grave blue eyes, and from thence spread into her pretty smile at the
+sight of Molly's disdainful lip, "Well then, I give it up. You have
+some mischief on foot, of that at least I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>"No mischief&mdash;a work of righteousness rather. Sister Madeleine, you
+heard all that that gallant gentleman you think so highly of&mdash;your
+cousin Rupert, my dear" (it was a little way of Molly's to throw the
+responsibility of anything she did not like, even to an obnoxious
+relationship, upon another person's shoulders), "narrated of his
+brother Sir Adrian, and how he persuaded Tanty that he was, as you
+said just now, a hopeless madman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But yes&mdash;he does mad things," said the elder twin, a little
+wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Madeleine, it is a vile lie. I am convinced of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my darling&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Madeleine, there is something behind it all. I attacked
+that creature, that rag, you cannot call her a woman, that female
+cousin of yours, Sophia, and I pressed her hard too, but she could not
+give me a single instance about Sir Adrian that is really the least
+like insanity; and last night, when the young fool who escorted me to
+dinner, Coventry his name was, told me that every one says Sir Adrian
+is shut up on the island and that his French servant is really his
+keeper, and that it was a shame Rupert was not the eldest brother, I
+quite saw the sort of story Master Rupert likes to spread&mdash;don't
+interrupt, please! When you were wool-gathering over the fire last
+night (in the lively and companionable way, permit me to remark in
+parenthesis, that you have adopted of late), and you thought I was
+with Tanty, I had marched off with my flat candlestick to the picture
+gallery to have a good look at the so-called lunatic. I dragged over a
+chair and lit the candles in the candelabra each side of the
+chimney-piece, and then standing on my perch still, I held up my own
+torch and I saw the sailor really well. I think he has a beautiful
+face and that he is no more mad than I am. But he looks so sad, so
+sad! I longed to make those closed lips part and tell me their secret.
+And, as I was looking and dreaming, my dear, just as you might, I
+heard a little noise, and there was Rupert, only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> a few yards off,
+surveying me with such an angry gaze&mdash;Ugh!" (with a shiver) "I hate
+such ways. He came in upon me with soft steps like some animal. Look
+at his portrait there, Madeleine!&mdash;Stay! I shall hold up the light as
+I did last night to Sir Adrian&mdash;see, it flickers and glimmers and
+makes him seem as if he were alive&mdash;oh, I wish he were not hanging in
+front of our beds, staring out at us with those eyes! You think them
+very fine, I daresay, that is because his lashes are as thick and dark
+as a woman's&mdash;but the look in them, my dear&mdash;do you know what it
+reminds me of? Of the beautiful, cruel greyhound we saw at the
+coursing at that place near Bunratty (you remember, just before they
+started the hare), when he stood for a moment motionless, looking out
+across the plain. I can never forget the expression of those
+yellow-circled eyes. And, when I see Rupert look at you as if he were
+fixing something in the far distance, it gives me just the feeling of
+horror and sickness I had then. (You remember how dreadful it was?)
+Rupert makes me think of a greyhound, altogether he is so lithe and so
+clean-cut, and so full of eagerness, a sort of trembling eagerness
+underneath his seeming quiet, and I think he could be cruel."</p>
+
+<p>Molly paused with an unusually grave and reflective look; Madeleine
+yawned a little, not at all impressed.</p>
+
+<p>"How you exaggerate!" she said. "Well what happened when he came in
+and caught you? The poor man! I suppose, he thought you were setting
+the house on fire."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I turned as red as a poppy and began blowing out all my
+illumination, feeling dreadfully guilty, and then he helped me off my
+chair with such an air of politeness that I could have struck him with
+pleasure, but I soon gathered my wits again. And, vexed with myself
+for being a ninny, I just dropped him a little curtsey and said, 'I've
+been examining my mad cousin.' 'Well, and what do you think of him?'
+he asked me, smiling (his abominable smile!). But I can keep my
+thoughts to myself as well as other people. 'I think he is very
+handsome,' I answered, and then I wagged my head and added, 'Poor
+fellow,' just as if I thought he was really mad. 'Poor fellow!' said
+cousin Rupert, still with his smile. Whereupon we interchanged
+good-nights, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> ceremoniously reconducted me to my door. What was
+he spying after me for, like that? My dear, your cousin has a bad
+conscience.&mdash;But I can spy too&mdash;I have been questioning the servants
+to-day, and some of the people on the estate."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Molly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, don't be so shocked. It was diplomatically, of course, but I am
+determined to find out the truth. Well, so far from looking upon Sir
+Adrian as a lunatic, they all adore him, it seems to me. He comes here
+periodically&mdash;once every three months or so&mdash;and it is like the King's
+Justices, you know&mdash;St. Louis of France&mdash;he redresses all wrongs, and
+listens to grievances and gives alms and counsel, and every one can
+come with his story, down to the poorest wretch on the estate, and
+they certainly gave me to understand that they would fare pretty
+hardly under Mr. Landale if it were not for that mild beneficent
+restraining influence in his tower yonder. It is very romantic, do you
+know (you like romance, Madeleine). I wonder if Sir Adrian will come
+over while we are here. Oh, I hope, I hope he will. I shall never rest
+till I have seen him."</p>
+
+<p>"Silly child," said Madeleine, "and so that is the reason you are glad
+to remain here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Even so, my dear," answered the other, skipped into the big four-post
+bed, carefully ascertained and selected the softest pillow, and then,
+smiling sweetly at her sister from under a frame of dark curls, let
+her white lids drop over the lustre of her eyes and so intimated she
+desired to sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TOWER OF LIVERPOOL: MASTER AND MAN</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">A prison is a house of care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">A place where none can thrive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">A Touchstone True to try a friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">A Grave for man alive.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Sometimes a place of right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Sometimes a place of wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And honest men among.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Old Inscription.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was soon after sunrise&mdash;at that time of year an hour not
+exorbitantly early&mdash;when Molly awoke from a tangle of fantastic dreams
+in which the haunting figure of her waking thoughts, the hermit of
+Scarthey, appeared to her in varied shapes; as an awe-inspiring,
+saintly ascetic with long, white hair; as a young, beautiful,
+imprisoned prince; even as a ragged imbecile staring vacantly at a
+lantern, somewhere in a dismal sea-cave.</p>
+
+<p>The last vision was uppermost in her mind when she opened her eyes;
+and the girl, under the impression of so disgusting a disillusion,
+remained for a while pondering and yawning, before making up her mind
+to exchange warmth and featherbed for her appointment without.</p>
+
+<p>But the shafts of light growing through the chinks in the shutters
+ever brighter and more full of dancing motes, decided her.</p>
+
+<p>"A beautiful morning, Madeleine," she said, leaning over and pulling
+one of the long fair strands upon her neighbour's pillow with sisterly
+authority. "Get up, lazy-bones, and come and have a walk with me
+before breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>The sleeping sister awoke, smiled with her usual exquisite serenity of
+temper, and politely refused. Molly insisted, threatened, coaxed, but
+to no avail. Madeleine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> was luxuriously comfortable, and was not to be
+disturbed either mentally or bodily; and Molly, aware of the resisting
+power of will hidden under that soft exterior, at length petulantly
+desisted; and wrapped up in furs, with hands plunged deep into the
+recesses of a gigantic muff, soon sallied forth herself alone into the
+park.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way down the avenue she met blue-eyed Moggie with round face
+shining out of the sharp, exhilarating atmosphere like a small sun.
+The damsel was overcome with blushes and rapture at her young
+mistress's unexpected promptitude in carrying out her promise, and ran
+back to warn her sweetheart of that lady's approach.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>As Molly drew near the keeper's lodge&mdash;a sort of Doric temple,
+quaintly standing in the middle of a hedge-enclosed garden, and
+half-buried under thickly-clustering, interlacing creepers&mdash;from the
+side of the enormous nest of evergreen foliage there emerged, in a
+state of high excitement strenuously subdued, a short, square-built
+man (none other than Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre), whilst between the boughs of the
+garden-hedge peeped forth the bashful, ruddy face of the lady of his
+fancy, eager to watch the interview.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; ran forward, then stopped a few paces away, hat in hand, scraping
+and bowing in the throes of an overwhelming emotion that strove hard
+with humility.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!" he ejaculated between spells of
+amazed staring, and seemed unable to bring forth another word.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you have known my mother, Ren&eacute;," said Miss Molly (in her
+native tongue) with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of the voice and of the French words, Ren&eacute;'s face grew
+pale under its bronze, and the tears he had so strongly combated,
+glistened in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had not heard last night," he said at length, "that these ladies
+had come back&mdash;it was Moggie Mearson who told me, who was foster
+sister to you, or was it Mademoiselle your sister? and proud she is of
+it&mdash;if I had not known that the young ladies were here again, when I
+saw Mademoiselle I would have thought that my lady herself had
+returned to us (may the good God have her soul!). Ah, to think that I
+should ever see her again in the light of the sun!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He stopped, suffocated with the sob that his respect would not allow
+him to utter.</p>
+
+<p>But Molly, who had had other objects in view when she rose from her
+couch this cold, windy morning, than to present an objective to a
+serving-man's emotion, now thought the situation had lasted long
+enough for her enjoyment and determined to put an end to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh bien, Ren&eacute;," she said gaily, "or should I call you Monsieur
+Potter? which, by the way, is a droll name for a Frenchman, I am very
+glad to see that you are pleased to see me. If you would care to have
+some talk with me you may attend me if you like. But I freeze standing
+here," stamping her feet one after the other on the hard ground. "I
+must absolutely walk; and you may put on your hat again, please; for
+it is very cold for you too," she added, snuggling into her muff and
+under her fur tippet.</p>
+
+<p>The man obeyed after another of his quaint salutes, and as Molly
+started forward, followed her respectfully, a pace in rear.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay you will not be sorry to have a little talk with a
+compatriot in your own tongue, all English as you may have grown,"
+said the young lady presently; "and as Moggie has told me that you
+were in my mother's service, there is a whole volume of things which,
+I believe, you alone can relate to me. You shall tell me all that, one
+day. But what seems to me the most curious, first of all, is your
+presence here. We ourselves are only at Pulwick by chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle," said Ren&eacute; in an earnest voice, "if you knew the whole
+story, you would soon understand that, since it was not to be, that I
+should remain the humble servitor of Monseigneur le Comte de Savenaye,
+Mademoiselle's father, or of Madame, who followed him to heaven,
+notwithstanding all our efforts to preserve her, it is but natural
+that I should attach myself (since he would allow it) to my present
+master."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Landale?" asked Molly, affecting ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mademoiselle," cried the Frenchman, hotly. "My master is Sir
+Adrian. Had Mr. Landale remained the lord of this place, I should have
+been left to die in my prison&mdash;or at least have remained there until
+this spring, for it seems there is peace again, and the Tower of
+Liverpool is empty now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voyons, voyons, conte moi cela</i>, Ren&eacute;," said Molly, turning her
+face, beautifully glowing from the caress of the keen air, eagerly to
+her companion. And he, nothing loth to let loose a naturally garrulous
+tongue in such company, and on such a theme, started off upon a long
+story illustrated by rapid gesticulation.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," cried he, and plunged into explanation with more
+energy than coherence, "it was like this:</p>
+
+<p>"I had been already two years in that prison; we were some hundreds of
+prisoners, and it was a cruel place. A cruel place, Mademoiselle,
+almost as bad as that where we were shut up, my master and I together,
+years before, at La Rochelle&mdash;and that I will tell you, if you wish,
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"I had been taken by the marine conscription, when their Republic
+became the French Empire. And a sailor I was then (just, as I heard
+later, as Sir Adrian also was at the time; but that I did not know,
+you understand), for they took all those that lived on the coast. Now
+I had only served with the ship six months, when she was taken by the
+English, and, as I say, we were sent to the prison in Liverpool, where
+we found so many others, who had been already there for years. When I
+heard it was Liverpool, I knew it was a place near Pulwick, and I at
+once thought of Mr. Landale, not him, of course, they <i>now</i> call Mr.
+Landale, but him who had followed my mistress, Madame your mother, to
+help to fight the Republicans in the old time. And I thought I was
+saved: I knew he would get me out if it was possible to get any one
+out. For, you see, I thought his honour was home again, after we had
+been beaten, and there was no more to be done for my lady. We had
+contrived to find an English ship to take him home, and he had gone
+back, as I thought, Mademoiselle. Well, a prisoner becomes cunning,
+and besides, I had been in prison before; I managed to make up a
+letter, and as I knew already some English, I ended by persuading a
+man to carry it to Pulwick for me. It was a long way, and I had no
+money, but I made bold to assure him that Mr. Landale&mdash;oh, no! not
+<i>this</i> one," Ren&eacute; interrupted himself again with a gesture eloquent of
+resentful scorn, "but my master; I assured the man that he would
+receive recompence from him. You see, Mademoiselle, I knew his heart
+was so good, that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> would not allow your mother's servant to rot in
+the tower.... But days afterwards the man came back. Oh, he was angry!
+terribly angry with me, and said he should pay me out&mdash;And so he did,
+but it is useless to tell you how. He had been to Pulwick, he said,
+and had seen Mr. Landale. Mr. Landale never knew anything of any
+French prisoner, and refused to give any money to the messenger. Ah,
+Mademoiselle, it was very sad! I had not signed my letter for fear of
+its getting into wrong hands, but I spoke of many things which I knew
+he could not have forgotten, and now I thought that he would not
+trouble his mind about such a wretch as Ren&eacute;&mdash;triple brute that I was
+to conceive such thoughts, I should have deserved to remain there for
+ever!... I did remain, Mademoiselle, more than three years; many and
+many died. As for me, I am hard, but I thought I should never never
+walk free again; nor would I, Mademoiselle, these seven years, but for
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"He came, then?" said the girl with sympathetic enthusiasm. She was
+listening with attention, carried away by the speaker's earnestness,
+and knew instinctively to whom the "him," and the "he" referred.</p>
+
+<p>"He came," said Ren&eacute; with much emphasis. "Of course he came&mdash;the
+moment he knew." And after a moment of half-smiling meditation he
+pursued:</p>
+
+<p>"It was one May-day, and there was some sun; and there was a smell of
+spring in the air which we felt even in that dirty place. Ah, how I
+remember me of it all! I was sitting against the wall in the courtyard
+with two others who were Bretons, like you and me, Mademoiselle,
+shifting with the sun now and then, for you must know a prisoner loves
+the sun above all; and there, we only had it a few hours in the day,
+even when it did shine. I was carving some stick-heads, and
+bread-plates in wood&mdash;the only thing I could do to put a little more
+than bread, into our own platters," with a grin, "and whistling,
+whistling, for if you can't be gay, it is best to play at it.... Well,
+that day into our courtyard there was shown a tall man&mdash;and I knew him
+at once, though he was different enough in his fine coat, and hat and
+boots, from the time when I had last seen him, when he was like me, in
+rags and with a woollen cap on his head, and no stockings under his
+shoes&mdash;I knew him at once! And when I saw him I stood still, with my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+mouth round, but not whistling more. My blood went phizz, phizz, all
+over my body, and suddenly something said in my head: 'Ren&eacute;, he has
+come to look for you.' He was searching for some one, for he went
+round with the guardian looking into each man's face, and giving money
+to all who begged&mdash;and seeing that, they all got up, and surrounded
+him, and he gave them each a piece. But I could not get up; it was as
+if some one had cut out my knees and my elbows. And that was how he
+saw me the sooner. He noticed I remained there, looking at him like a
+dog, saying nothing. When he saw me, he stood a moment quite quiet;
+and without pretending anything he came to me and looked down
+smiling.&mdash;'But if I am not mistaken I know this man,' he said to the
+guardian, pretending to be astonished. 'Why, this is Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre?
+Who would have thought of seeing you here, Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre?' says he.
+And then he smiled again, as much as to say, 'You see I have come at
+last, Ren&eacute;.' And once more, as if to explain: 'I have only lately come
+back to England,' in a gentle way, all full of meaning.... I don't
+know what took me, but I cried like an infant, in my cap. And the
+guardian and some of the others laughed, but when I looked up again,
+his eyes shone also. He looked so good, so kind, Mademoiselle, that it
+was as if I understood in words all he meant, but thought better not
+to say at the time. Then he spoke to the guardian, who shook his head
+doubtfully. And after saying, 'Have good courage, Ren&eacute; L'Ap&ocirc;tre,' and
+giving me the rest of his money, he went away&mdash;but I knew I was not
+forgotten, and I was so happy that the black, black walls were no more
+black. And I sang, not for pretence this time, ah no! and I spent all
+my money in buying a dinner for those at our end of the prison, and we
+even had wine! You may be sure we drank to his happiness."</p>
+
+<p>Here the man, carried away by his feelings, seized his hat and waved
+it in the air. Then, ashamed of his ebullition, halted and glanced
+diffidently at the young lady. But Molly only smiled in encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and then?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mademoiselle," he resumed, "it was long before I saw him again;
+but I kept good courage, as I was told. One day, at last, the guardian
+came to fetch me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> and took me to the governor's cabinet; and my master
+was there&mdash;I was told that my release had been obtained, though not
+without trouble, and that Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory, had
+gone warranty for me that I should not use my liberty to the prejudice
+of His Majesty, the King of England, and that I was to be grateful to
+Sir Adrian. I almost laughed at him, Mademoiselle. Oh! he took care to
+advise me to be grateful!" And here Ren&eacute; paused ironically, but there
+was a quiver on his lips. "Ah, he little knew, Monsieur the Governor,
+that when my master had taken me to an inn, and the door was closed
+over the private room, he who had looked so grand and careless before
+the governor, took me by both hands and then, in his fine clothes,
+embraced me&mdash;me the dirty prisoner&mdash;just as he did when he left me in
+the old days, and was as poor and ragged as I was! And let me weep
+there on his breast, for I had to weep or my heart would have broken.
+But I wander, Mademoiselle, you only wanted to know how I came to be
+in his service still. That is how it was; as I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Molly was moved by this artless account of fidelity and gratitude, and
+as she walked on in attentive silence, Ren&eacute; went on:</p>
+
+<p>"It was then his honour made me know how, only by accident, and months
+after his own return, he chanced to hear of the letter that some one
+had sent to Mr. Landale from the Tower of Liverpool, and that Mr.
+Landale had said he knew nothing of any French prisoner and had
+thought it great impudence indeed. And how he&mdash;my master&mdash;had suddenly
+thought (though my letter had been destroyed) that it might be from
+me, the servant of my lady your mother, and his old companion in arms
+(for his honour will always call me so). He could not sleep, he told
+me, till he had found out. He started for Liverpool that very night.
+And, having discovered that it was me, Mademoiselle, he never rested
+till he had obtained my liberty."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Walking slowly in the winter sunshine, the one talking volubly, the
+other intently listening, the odd pair had reached a rising knoll in
+the park where, under the shelter of a cluster of firs, stood a row of
+carved stone seats that had once been sedillas in the dismantled
+Priory Church.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From this secluded spot could be obtained the most superb view of the
+whole country-side. At the end of the green, gently-sloping stretch of
+pasture-land, which extended, broken only by irregular clusters of
+trees, down to the low cliffs forming the boundary of the strand, lay
+the wide expanse of brown sand, with its streamlets and salt pools
+scintillating under the morning sun.</p>
+
+<p>Further in the western horizon, a crescent of deep blue sea, sharply
+defined under a lighter blue sky and fringed landwards with a
+straggling border of foam, advanced slowly to the daily conquest of
+the golden bay. In the midst of that frame the eye was irresistibly
+drawn, as to the chief object in the picture, to the distant rock of
+Scarthey&mdash;a green patch, with the jagged red outline of the ruins
+clear cut against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Since this point of view in the park had been made known to her, on
+the first day when she was piloted through the grounds, Molly had more
+than once found her way to the sedillas, yielding to the fascination
+of the mysterious island, and in order to indulge in the fancies
+suggested by its ever-changing aspect.</p>
+
+<p>At the fall of day the red glow of the sinking sun would glint through
+the dismantled windows; and against the flaming sky the ruins would
+stand out black and grim, suggesting nought but abandonment and
+desolation until suddenly, as the gloom gathered upon the bay, the
+light of the lamp springing to the beacon tower, would reverse the
+impression and bring to mind a picture of faithful and patient
+watching.</p>
+
+<p>When the sun was still in the ascendant, the island would be green and
+fresh to the gaze, evoking no dismal impression; and as the rays
+glanced back from the two or three glazed windows, and from the roofed
+beacon-tower, the little estate wore a look of solid security and
+privacy in spite of its crumbling walls, which was almost as
+tantalising to her romantic curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>It was with ulterior motives, therefore, that she had again wended her
+way to the knoll this sunny, breezy morning. She now sat down and let
+her eyes wander over the wide panorama, whilst Ren&eacute; stood at a humble
+distance, looking with eyes of delight from her to the distant abode
+of his master.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you live with Sir Adrian, in that little isle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> yonder," said
+she, at length. "How came it that you never sought to go back to your
+country?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was the war then, Mademoiselle, and it was difficult to
+return."</p>
+
+<p>"But there has been peace these six months," insisted Molly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mademoiselle, though I only learned it yesterday. But then, bah!
+What is that? His honour needs me. I have stopped with him seven
+years, and my faith, I shall stop with him for ever."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Does any one know," asked Molly, at length, with a vague air of
+addressing the trees, mindful, as she spoke, of the manner in which
+Mr. Landale had practically dismissed her and her sister at a certain
+point of his version of his brother's history, "<i>why</i> Sir Adrian has
+shut himself up in that place instead of living at the Hall all this
+time?"</p>
+
+<p>A certain dignity seemed to come over the servant's squat figure. He
+hesitated for a moment, and then said very simply, his honest eyes
+fixed upon the girl's face: "I am only his humble servant,
+Mademoiselle, and it is enough for me that it is his pleasure to live
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>"You are indeed faithful," said Molly, with a little generous flush of
+shame at this peasant's delicacy compared to her own curiosity. And,
+after another pause, she added, pensively: "But tell me, does Sir
+Adrian never leave his solitude? I confess I should like to meet one
+who had known my mother, who could talk of her to me."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; looked at the young girl with a wistful countenance, as though
+the question had embarked him on a new train of thought. But he
+answered evasively: "His honour comes rarely to Pulwick&mdash;rarely."</p>
+
+<p>Molly, with a little movement of pique, rose abruptly from her seat.
+But quickly changing her mood again she turned round as she was about
+to depart, and smiling: "Thank you, Ren&eacute;," she said, and held out her
+dainty hand, which he, blushing, engulfed in his great paw, "I am
+going in, I am dreadfully hungry. We shall be here two months or more,
+and I shall want to see you again ... if you come back to Pulwick."</p>
+
+<p>She walked quickly away towards the house. Ren&eacute;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> followed the
+retreating figure with a meditative look, so long as he could keep her
+in sight, then turned his gaze to the island and there stood lost in a
+deep muse, regardless of the fact that his sweetheart, Moggie, was
+awaiting a parting interview at the lodge, and that the tide that
+would wait for no man was swelling under his boat upon the beach.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>A sudden resolution was formed in Molly's mind as the immediate result
+of this conversation, and she framed her behaviour that morning solely
+with a view to its furtherance.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was over when, glowing from her morning walk, she entered
+the dining-room; but, regardless of Mr. Landale's pointedly elaborate
+courtesy in insisting upon a fresh repast being brought to her, his
+sarcastically overacted solicitude, intended to point out what a deal
+of avoidable trouble she gave to the household, Molly remained
+perfectly gracious, and ate the good things, plaintively set before
+her by Miss Landale, with the most perfect appetite and good humour.</p>
+
+<p>She expatiated in terms of enthusiasm on the beauty of the estate and
+the delight of her morning exploration, and concluded this
+condescending account of her doings (in which the meeting with Ren&eacute;
+did not figure) with a request that Mr. Landale should put horses at
+the disposal of herself and her sister for a riding excursion that
+very afternoon. And with determined energy she carried the point,
+declaring, despite his prognostications of coming bad weather, that
+the sunshine would last the day.</p>
+
+<p>In this wise was brought about the eventful ride which cost the life
+of Lucifer, and introduced such heart-stirring phantasmagories into
+the even tenor of Sir Adrian Landale's seclusion.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>That evening the news rapidly spread throughout Pulwick that the cruel
+sands of the bay had secured yet another victim.</p>
+
+<p>In an almost fainting condition, speechless with horror, and hardly
+able yet to realise to the full her own anguish,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> Madeleine was
+conducted by the terrified groom, through the howling wind and
+drenching rain, back to the Priory.</p>
+
+<p>And there, between the fearful outcries of Miss Landale, and the deep
+frowning gravity of her brother, the man stammered out his tale.&mdash;How
+the young lady when the rain first began, had insisted,
+notwithstanding his remonstrances, upon taking the causeway to the
+island, and how it was actually by force that he prevented the other
+lady from following so soon as she understood the danger into which
+her sister was running.</p>
+
+<p>There was no use, he had thought (explained the man, half
+apologetically), for two more to throw away their lives, just for no
+good, that way. And so they had sat on their horses and watched in
+terror, as well as they could through the torrents of rain. They had
+seen in the distance Lucifer break from the young lady's control, and
+swerve from the advancing sea. And then had come the great gust that
+blew the rain and the sand in their faces and set their horses
+dancing; and, when they could see again, all traces of horse and rider
+had disappeared, and there lay nothing before them but the advancing
+tide, though the island and its tower were still just visible through
+the storm.</p>
+
+<p>No amount of cross-examination could elicit any further information.
+The girl's impulse seemed to have been quite sudden, and she had only
+laughed back at the groom over her shoulder upon his earnest shout of
+warning, though she had probably expected them to follow her. And as
+there could be no doubt about the calamity which had ensued, and no
+possible rescue even of the body, he had returned home at once to
+bring the disastrous news.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine had been carried completely unconscious to her bed, but
+presently Miss Sophia was summoned to her side as the girl showed
+signs of returning animation, and Rupert was left alone.</p>
+
+<p>He fell to pacing the room, lost in a labyrinth of complicated and
+far-reaching reflections.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond doubt he was shocked and distressed by the sudden and horrible
+disaster; and yet as an undercurrent to these first natural thoughts,
+there ran presently a distinct notion that he would have felt the
+grievousness of it more keenly had Madeleine perished in that cruel
+manner and her sister survived to bring the tale home.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The antagonism which his cousin, in all the insolence of her young
+beauty and vigorous self-esteem, had shown for him had been mutual. He
+had instinctively felt that she was an enemy, and more than that&mdash;a
+danger to him. This danger was now removed from his path, and by no
+intervention or even desire of his own.</p>
+
+<p>The calamity which had struck the remaining sister into such
+prostration would make her rich indeed; by anticipation one of the
+great heiresses in England.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorrow," thought Mr. Landale, and his lip curled disdainfully, "a
+girl's sorrow, at least, is a passing thing. Wealth is an everlasting
+benefit."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine was a desirable woman upon all counts, even pecuniary
+considerations apart, or would be to one who had a heart to give&mdash;and
+even if the heart was dead...?</p>
+
+<p>Altogether the sum of his meditations was assuming a not unpleasing
+aspect; and the undercurrent in time assumed almost the nature of
+self-congratulation. Even the ordeal which was yet to come when he
+would have to face Miss O'Donoghue and render an account of his short
+trust, could not weigh the balance down on the wrong side.</p>
+
+<p>And yet a terrible ordeal it would be; women are so unreasonable, and
+Aunt Rose so much more so even than the average woman. Still it had to
+be done; the sooner the better; if possible while the storm lasted and
+while roaring waters kept all ill news upon land and the interloping
+heir on his island.</p>
+
+<p>And thus that very evening, whilst Madeleine sobbed on her pillow and
+Molly was snugly enjoying the warm hospitality of Scarthey, a mounted
+messenger departed from the Priory to overtake Miss O'Donoghue on the
+road to Bath and acquaint her with the terrible fatality that had
+befallen her darling and favourite.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>UNDER THE LIGHT</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">December 16th</span>.&mdash;Again I separate your green boards, my diary. No one
+has opened you; for your key, now a little rusty, still hangs upon my
+watch&mdash;my poor watch whose heart has ceased to beat, who, unlike its
+mistress, has <i>not</i> survived the ordeal by sand and water! What is
+better, no one has attempted to force your secrets from you; which,
+since it appears that it had been agreed that Molly de Savenaye was
+dead and buried in Scarthey sands, speaks well for all concerned. But
+she is not dead. She is very much alive; and very happy to be so.</p>
+
+<p>This will indeed be an adventure worth reading, in the days to come;
+and it must be recounted&mdash;though were I to live to a hundred years I
+do not think I could ever forget it. Tanty Rose (she has not yet
+stopped scolding everybody for the fright she has had) is in the next
+room with Madeleine, who, poor dear, has been made quite ill by this
+prank of mine; but since after the distress caused by her Molly's
+death she has had the joy of finding her Molly alive again, things are
+balanced, I take it; and all being well that ends well, the whole
+affair is pleasant to remember. It has been actually as interesting as
+I expected&mdash;now that I think it over&mdash;even more.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the many pictures that I fancied, not one was at all like the
+reality&mdash;and this reality I could not have rested till I had found. It
+was Ren&eacute;'s account decided me. I laid my plans very neatly to pay the
+recluse a little visit, and plead necessity for the intrusion. My
+machinations would have been perfect if they had not caused Madeleine
+and poor old Tanty unnecessary grief.</p>
+
+<p>But now that I know the truth, I cannot distinctly remember what it
+was that I <i>did</i> expect to find on that island.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If it had not been that I had already gone through more excitement
+than I bargained for to reach that mysterious rock, how exciting I
+should have found it to wander up to unknown ruins, to knock at the
+closed doors of an enchanted castle, ascend unknown stairs and engage
+in devious unknown passages&mdash;all the while on the tiptoe of
+expectation!</p>
+
+<p>But when I dragged myself giddy and faint from the boiling breakers
+and scrambled upon the desolate island under the rain that beat me
+like the lashes of a whip, pushing against a wind that bellowed and
+rushed as though determined to thrust me back to the waters I had
+cheated of their prey, my only thoughts were for succour and shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Such warm shelter, such loving welcome, it was of course impossible
+that I could for a moment have anticipated!</p>
+
+<p>Conceive, my dear diary, the feelings of a poor, semi-drowned
+wanderer, shivering with cold, with feet torn by cruel stones, who
+suddenly emerges from howl and turmoil into a warm, quiet room to be
+received as a long and eagerly expected guest, whose advent brings
+happiness, whose presence is a highly prized favour; in fact not as
+one who has to explain her intrusion, but as one who in the situation
+holds the upper hand herself.</p>
+
+<p>And <i>this</i> was my welcome from him whose absence from Pulwick was more
+haunting than any presence I can think of!</p>
+
+<p>Of course I knew him at once. Even had I not expected to see him&mdash;had
+I not come to seek him in fact&mdash;I should have known him at once from
+the portrait whose melancholy, wide-open eyes had followed me about
+the gallery. But I had not dreamed to see him so little altered. Now,
+apart from the dress, if he is in any way changed from the picture, it
+is in a look of greater youth and less sombreness. The portrait is
+handsome, but the original is better.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been so, I imagine I might have felt vastly different when
+I was seized and enfolded and&mdash;kissed! As it was I cannot remember
+that, even at the moment of this extraordinary proceeding, I was
+otherwise than pleased, nor that the dark hints of Mr. Landale
+concerning Sir Adrian's madness returned to disturb my mind in the
+least.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I found myself enveloped in great strong arms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> out of which I
+could not have extricated myself by the most frantic efforts&mdash;although
+the folding was soft and tender&mdash;and I loved that impression. Why? I
+cannot say.</p>
+
+<p>His words of love were not addressed to me; from his exclamation I
+knew that the real and present Molly was not the true object of his
+sudden ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I am glad that this is the first man who has been able to kiss
+Molly de Savenaye. It is quite incomprehensible; I ought to be
+indignant.</p>
+
+<p>Now the whole secret of my reception is plain to see, and it is
+pathetic; Sir Adrian Landale was in love with my mother; when she was
+an unprotected widow he followed her to our own country; if she had
+not died soon after, he would have married her.</p>
+
+<p>What a true knight must this Sir Adrian be, to keep so fresh for
+twenty years the remembrance of his boyish love that when I came in
+upon him to look at him with <i>her</i> eyes, it was to find him pondering
+upon her, and to fill his soul with the rapturous thought that his
+love had come back to him. Though I was aware that all this fervour
+was not addressed to me, there was something very gratifying in being
+so like one who could inspire such long-lived passion.&mdash;Yes, it was
+unexpectedly pleasant and comforting to be so received. And the tender
+care, the thoughtful solicitude next bestowed on the limp and
+dishevelled waif of the sea by my <i>beau t&eacute;n&eacute;breux</i> were unmistakably
+meant for Molly and no one else, whatever his first imaginings may
+have been, and they were quite as interesting to receive.</p>
+
+<p>The half-hour I spent, cosily ensconced by his hands, and waited upon
+by his queer household, was perhaps the best I have ever known. He
+stood by the fireplace, looking down from his great height, with a
+wondering smile upon me. I declare that the loving kindness of his
+eyes, which he has wide, grey, and beautiful, warmed me as much as the
+pyramid of logs he had set burning on the hearth!</p>
+
+<p>I took a good reckoning of the man, from under the gigantic collar, in
+which, I felt, my head rested like a little egg at the bottom of a
+warm nest. "And so," I thought, "here is the Light-keeper of Scarthey
+Island!" And I was obliged to confess that he was a more
+romantic-looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> person than even in my wildest dreams I had pictured
+to myself&mdash;that in fact I had found out for the first time <i>the man</i>
+really approved of.</p>
+
+<p>And I congratulated myself on my own cleverness&mdash;for it was evident
+that, just as I had suspected from Ren&eacute;'s reticent manner, even by him
+our existence at Pulwick had not been mentioned to "the master."</p>
+
+<p>And as Mr. Landale was quite determined to avail himself of his
+brother's <i>sauvagerie</i> not to let him know anything about us, on his
+side, but for me we might have remained at and departed from Pulwick
+unknown to the head of the house! And what a pity that would have
+been!</p>
+
+<p>Now, <i>why</i> did not Mr. Landale wish his brother to know? Did he think
+(as indeed has happened) that the Light-keeper would take too kindly
+to the Savenaye children? Or to one of them? If so, he will be <i>bien
+attrapp&eacute;</i>, for there is no doubt that my sudden and dramatic arrival
+upon his especial domain has made an impression on him that no meeting
+prepared and discussed beforehand could have produced.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian Landale may have been in love with our beautiful mamma in his
+boyish days, but now, Sir Adrian, the <i>man</i> is in love with the
+beautiful Molly!</p>
+
+<p>That is positive.</p>
+
+<p>I was a long time before I could go to sleep in the tower; it was too
+perfect to be in bed in such a place, safe and happy in the midst of
+the rage I could hear outside; to have seen the unknown, to have found
+him such as he is&mdash;to be under <i>the Light</i>!</p>
+
+<p>What would have happened if my cousin had really been mad (and Ren&eacute;
+his keeper, as that stupid country-side wit suggested in my ear the
+other night at dinner)? It would have been still more of an adventure
+of course, but not one which even "Murthering Moll the Second" can
+regret. Or if he had been a dirty, untidy hermit, as Madeleine
+thought? That would have spoilt all.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the owl's nest, as Mr. Landale (spiteful creature!) called it
+to Tanty, there lives not owl any more than lunatic. A polished
+gentleman, with white, exquisite hands, who, when he is discovered by
+the most unexpected of visitors, is shaven as smooth as Rupert
+himself; has the most unexceptionable of snowy linen and
+old-fashioned, it is true, but most well-fitting clothes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As for the entertainment for the said casual visitor, not even Pulwick
+with all its resources (where housekeeping, between the fussy brother
+and the docile sister is a complicated science) could have produced
+more real comfort.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, when I woke late (it was broad daylight), feeling as
+if I had been beaten and passed through a mangle, for there was not an
+inch of my poor body that was not sore, I had not turned round and so
+given sign of life, before I heard a whisper outside my door; then
+comes a sturdy knock and in walks old Margery, still dignified as a
+queen's housekeeper, bearing a bowl of warm frothy milk.</p>
+
+<p>And this being gratefully drunk by me, she gravely inquires, in her
+queer provincial accent, how I am this morn; and then goes to report
+to some anxious inquirer (whom?&mdash;I can easily guess) that with the
+exception of my cut foot I am very well.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she returns and lights a blazing fire. Then in come my dress
+and linen and my one shoe, all cleaned, dried and mended, only my poor
+habit is so torn and so stiff that I have to put up with Margery's
+best striped skirt in lieu of it, till she has time to mend and wash
+it. As it is she must have been at work all night upon these repairs
+for me.</p>
+
+<p>Again she goes out&mdash;for another consultation, I suppose&mdash;and comes
+back to find me half clad, hopping about the room; this time she has
+got nice white linen bandages and with them ties up my little foot,
+partly for the cuts, partly for want of a sandal, till it is twice the
+size of its companion. But I can walk on it.</p>
+
+<p>Then my strange handmaid&mdash;who by the way is a droll, grumbling old
+soul, and orders me about as if she were still my nurse&mdash;dresses me
+and combs my hair, which will not yet awhile be rid of all its sand.
+And so, in due course, Molly emerges from her bower, as well tended
+almost as she might have been at Bath, except that Margery's striped
+skirt is a deal too short for her and she displays a little more of
+one very nice ankle and one gouty foot than fashion warrants.</p>
+
+<p>And in this manner the guest goes to meet her host in the great room.</p>
+
+<p>He was walking up and down as if impatiently expecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> me, and when I
+hobbled in, he came forward with a smile on his face which, once more,
+I thought beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised!" he said, taking both my hands and kissing one of
+them, with his fine air of gallantry which was all the more delightful
+on account of his evident earnestness, "you seem none the worse for
+this terrible adventure. I dreaded this morning to hear that you were
+in a fever. You know," he added so seriously that I had to smile, "you
+might easily have had a fever from this yesterday's work; and what
+should we have done without doctor and medicines!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have a good surgeon, at least," said I laughing and pointing at
+my swaddled extremity. He laughed too at the <i>enmitouflage</i>. "I tried
+to explain how it was to be done," he said, "but I think I could have
+managed it more neatly myself."</p>
+
+<p>Then he helped me to the arm-chair, and Ren&eacute; came in, and, after a
+profound bow (which did not preclude much staring and smiling at me
+afterwards), laid, on a dazzling tablecloth, a most tempting
+breakfast, explaining the while, in his odd English, "The bread is
+stale, for we bake only twice a month. But there are some cakes hot
+from the fire, some eggs, new laid last evening, some fresh milk, some
+tea. It was a happy thing I arrived yesterday for there was no more
+tea. The butter wants, but Mistress Margery will have some made
+to-morrow, so that the demoiselle will not leave without having tasted
+our Scarthey butter."</p>
+
+<p>All the while Sir Adrian looked on with a sort of dreamy smile&mdash;a
+happy smile!</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Ren&eacute;!" he said, when the man had left the room, "one would think
+that you have brought to him almost as much joy as to me."</p>
+
+<p>I wondered what Mr. Landale would have said had he through some magic
+glass been able to see this little feast. I never enjoyed a meal more.
+As for my host, he hardly touched anything, but, I could see, was all
+absorbed in the delight of looking at me; and this he showed quite
+openly in the most child-like manner.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of the many fine gentlemen it has been my fate to meet in my
+six months' apprenticeship to the "great world," not cousin Rupert
+himself with all his elaborate politeness (and Rupert has de <i>grandes
+mani&egrave;res</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> as Tanty says), could have played the host with a more
+exquisite courtesy, and more true hospitality. So I thought, at least.
+Now and again, it is true, while his eyes were fixed on me, I would
+see how the soul behind them was away, far in the past, and then at a
+word, even at a movement, back it would come to me, with the tenderest
+softening I have ever seen upon a human face.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>It was only at the end of breakfast that he suddenly adverted to the
+previous day.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said, hesitatingly, but keeping a frank gaze on mine,
+"you must have thought me demented when&mdash;when you first entered,
+yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>Now, I had anticipated this apology as inevitable, and I was prepared
+to put him at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;&mdash;? Not at all," I said quite gravely; and, seeing the puzzled
+expression that came upon his face, I hastened to add in lower tones:
+"I know I am very like my mother, and it was her name you called out
+upon seeing me." And then I stopped, as if that had explained
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me with a wondering air, and fell again into a muse.
+After a while he said, with his great simplicity which seems somehow
+in him the last touch of the most perfect breeding: "Yes, such an
+apparition was enough to unhinge any one's mind for the moment. You
+never knew her, child, and therefore never mourned her death. But
+we&mdash;that is, Ren&eacute; and I, who tried so hard to save her&mdash;though it is
+so long ago, we have not forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>It was then I asked him to tell me about the mother I had never known.
+At first it was as if he could not; he fell into a great silence,
+through which I could feel the working of his old sorrow. So then I
+said to him quickly, for I feared he thought me an indiscreet
+trespasser upon sacred ground, that he must remember my right to know
+more than the vague accounts I had been given of my mother's history.</p>
+
+<p>"No one will tell me of her," I said. "It is hard, for I am her own
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"It is wrong," he said very gently; "you ought to know, for you are
+indeed, most verily, her own daughter."</p>
+
+<p>And then by fragments he tried to tell me a little of her beauty, her
+loving heart, her faithfulness and bravery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> At first it was with
+great tripping sighs as if the words hurt him, but by and by it came
+easier, and with his eyes fixed wistfully on me he took me, as it
+were, by his side through all their marvellous adventures.</p>
+
+<p>And thus I heard the stirring story of the "Savenaye band," and I felt
+prouder of my race than I had ever been before. Hitherto, being a
+Savenaye only meant the pride our aunt tried to instil into us of
+being undeniably <i>bienn&eacute;es</i> and connected with numbers of great
+families. But the tale of the deeds mine had done for the King's
+cause, and especially the achievements of my own mother in starting
+such an expedition after my father's death, and following its fortunes
+to the bitter end, made my blood tingle with a new emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Little wonder that Sir Adrian should have devoted his life to her
+service. How madly enthralled I should have been, being a man, and
+free and strong, by the presence of a woman such as my mother. I, too,
+would have prostrated myself to worship her image returning to
+life&mdash;and I am that living, living portrait!</p>
+
+<p>When he came to the story of her death, he hesitated and finally
+stopped. It must have been horrible. I could see it in his eyes, and I
+dared not press him.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I suppose I am the only one in the world, besides Ren&eacute;, who knows
+this man as he is. And I am proud of it.</p>
+
+<p>And it is for this constancy, which no vulgar soul of them can
+understand, that Rupert and his class have dubbed the gallant
+gentleman a madman. It fills me with scorn of them. I do not yet know
+what love is, therefore of course I cannot fathom its grief; but this
+much I know&mdash;that if I loved and yet could not reach as high as ever
+love may reach both in joy and sorrow, I should despise myself. I,
+too, would draw the utmost from life that life can give.</p>
+
+<p>He never even hinted at his love for my mother; speaking of himself
+throughout as Ren&eacute; might, as of her humble devoted servant merely. And
+then the question began to gnaw at me. "Did she love him?" and
+somehow, I felt as if I could not rest till I knew; and I had it on my
+lips twenty times to cry out to him: "I know you loved her: oh! tell
+me, did she love you?" And yet I dared no more have done so, and
+overstepped the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> barrier of his gentle, reticent dignity, than I could
+have thrust the lighthouse tower down; and I could not think, either,
+whether I should be glad to hear that she had loved him, or that she
+had not. Not even here, alone with myself, can I answer that question.</p>
+
+<p>But though I respect him because he is as I have found him, and
+understand how rare a personality it takes to achieve such refinement
+of faithfulness, it seems to me, that to teach this constant lover to
+forget the past in the present, would be something worth living
+for&mdash;something worthy of <i>me</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Molly!&mdash;What is the meaning of this? You have never before put that
+thought in words, even to yourself! But let me be frank, or else what
+is the use of this diary?</p>
+
+<p>Looking back to those delightful three days, did not the <i>thought</i>
+come to me, if not the words? Well, well, it is better, sometimes, I
+believe, to let oneself drift, than to try and guide the boat; and I
+must hurry back to Scarthey or I shall never have told my story....</p>
+
+<p>How swiftly time had flown by us! I sitting in the arm-chair, with the
+old dog's muzzle on my lap, and Sir Adrian standing by his great
+chimney; the clock struck twelve, in the midst of the long silence,
+and I had thought that barely an hour had passed.</p>
+
+<p>I got up, and, seeing me limp in my attempt to walk, Sir Adrian gave
+me his arm; and so we went round the great room <i>bras dessus</i>, <i>bras
+dessous</i>, and it already seemed quite natural to feel like an intimate
+friend in that queer dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>We paused a long time in silence by the window, the tempest wind was
+still raging, but the sky was clear, and all round us was a wonderful
+sight; the sea, as far as eyes could reach, white with foam, lashed
+and tossing in frenzy round the rock on which we stood so safely, and
+rising in long jets of spray, which now and then dashed as far as our
+window; and when I looked down nearer, I could see the little stunted
+trees, bending backwards and forwards under the blast, and an odd idea
+came to my mind:&mdash;they looked to me when they caught my sight, as
+though they were bowing deep, hurriedly and frantically greeting me
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced up at my silent companion, the true knight, and found his
+wide grey eyes fixed upon me with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> same expression that was
+already familiar to me, which I had especially noted as he told me his
+long tale of olden times.</p>
+
+<p>This time I felt the look go to my heart. <i>And then the thought first
+came to my mind, all unformed, but still sweet.</i></p>
+
+<p>I don't know exactly why, but in answer to his sad look, I smiled at
+him, without a word, upon which he suddenly grew pale. After a while
+he gave a sigh, and, as he drew my arm again through his, I fancy his
+hand trembled a little.</p>
+
+<p>When he had taken me back to my chair, he walked to and fro in
+silence, looking at me ever and anon.</p>
+
+<p>A long time we passed thus, without speaking; but it seemed as if our
+thoughts were intermixing in harmony in the midst of our silence. And
+then the spell was broken by Ren&eacute;, who never came in without making me
+his great scrape, trying hard not to beam too obtrusively in the
+delight that evidently overtakes him whenever he sets eyes on me.</p>
+
+<p>It was after a prolonged talk between him and the master, I fancy,
+concerning the means of attending fitly upon my noble and delicate
+person, that Sir Adrian, brought back, evidently, to the consideration
+of present affairs, began to be exercised about the best means of
+whiling away my time. When he hinted at the difficulty, I very soon
+disposed of it.</p>
+
+<p>I told him I had never been so happy in my life before&mdash;that the hours
+went all too quickly&mdash;I told him there was so much he and Ren&eacute; had yet
+to tell me of their wonderful adventures, that I thought I should have
+to carry them back to Pulwick with me. At the mention of Pulwick his
+brow darkened, and Ren&eacute; turned away to cough into his hand, and I saw
+that I had gone too fast. (N.B.&mdash;Pulwick is evidently a sore subject;
+I am sure I am not surprised. I can conceive how Rupert and Sophia
+would drive a man of Sir Adrian's sensitiveness nearly to desperation.
+Yet I <i>have</i> brought Sir Adrian back to Pulwick, in spite of all. Is
+not that a feather in my cap?)</p>
+
+<p>But to return; I next made Ren&eacute; laugh aloud and Sir Adrian give his
+indulgent smile&mdash;such as a father might give to his child&mdash;by adding
+that when I was bored I would soon let them know. "I always do," I
+said, "for I consider that a duty to myself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"God knows," said this strange man then, half smiling, "I would we
+could keep you here for ever."</p>
+
+<p>It was almost a declaration, but his eyes were far off&mdash;it was not
+addressed to me.</p>
+
+<p>I soon found that the recollection of all the extraordinary incidents
+Sir Adrian had lived through, is one neither of pride nor pleasure to
+him, but, all the same, never has anything in books seemed to me so
+stirring, as the tale of relentless fate, of ever-recurring battles
+and struggles and misfortunes told by the man who, still in the
+strength of life, has now chosen to forego everything that might for
+the remainder of his days have compensated him.</p>
+
+<p>Willing as he was to humour me, however, and disproportionately
+anxious to amuse me, it was little more than the dry bones of his
+history, I was able to obtain from him.</p>
+
+<p>With Ren&eacute;'s help, however, and my own lively imagination I have been
+able to piece together a very wonderful skeleton, from these same dry
+bones, and, moreover, endow it with flesh and blood and life.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; was very willing to descant upon his master's exploits, as far as
+he knew them: "Whew, Mademoiselle should have seen him fight!" he
+would say, "a lion, Mademoiselle, a real lion!"</p>
+
+<p>And then I would contrast the reposeful, somewhat immobile
+countenance, the dreaming eye, the almost womanly softness of his
+smile, with the picture, and find the contrast piquant in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p>Concerning his present home Sir Adrian was more willing to speak&mdash;I
+had told him how the light on the little island had fascinated me from
+the distance, and all the surmises I had made about it.</p>
+
+<p>"And so, it was in order to see what sort of dungeon they kept the
+madman in," he said, laughing quietly, "that you pushed the
+reconnaissance, which nearly sent you into the jaws of death!"</p>
+
+<p>I was so struck, at first, by his speaking of himself as the reputed
+"madman" that I could not answer. To think of him as serenely
+contemptuous of the world's imputation&mdash;and an imputation so galling
+as this one of being irresponsible for his actions&mdash;and deliberately
+continuing his even way without taking the trouble to refute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> it, has
+given me an insight into his nature, that fills me with admiration,
+and yet, at the same time, with a sort of longing to see him
+reinstated in his proper place, and casting out those slandering
+interlopers.</p>
+
+<p>But, as he was waiting to be answered, I had to collect my thoughts
+and admit, not without a little bashfulness, that my first account of
+my exploit had contained a slight prevarication.</p>
+
+<p>In all he has to say about his little Scarthey domain, about the
+existence he has made for himself there, I cannot help noticing with
+what affection he speaks of Ren&eacute;. Ren&eacute;, according to Sir Adrian, is
+everything and everywhere; a perfect familiar genius; he is counsellor
+as well as valet, plays his master's game of chess as well as shaves
+him, can tune his organ, and manage his boat, and cast his nets, for
+he is fisherman as well as gardener; he is the steward of this
+wonderful little estate, and its stock of one pony, one cow, and
+twelve hens; he tends the light, and can cook a dinner a great deal
+better than his great rival, old Margery.</p>
+
+<p>Of this last accomplishment we had good proof in the shape of various
+dainties that appeared at our dinner. For when I exclaimed in
+astonishment, the master said, well pleased, and pointing to the
+attentive major-domo: "This is Ren&eacute;'s way of spoiling me. But now he
+has surpassed himself to celebrate so unique an occasion."</p>
+
+<p>And Ren&eacute;'s face was all one grin of rapture. I observe that on
+occasions his eyes wander quite tenderly from me to his master.</p>
+
+<p>Shall I ever enjoy dinners again like those in that old ruined tower!
+Or hours like those during which I listened to tales of peril and
+adventure, or to the music that pealed forth from the distant corner,
+when Sir Adrian sat down to his organ and made it speak the wordless
+language of the soul: that language that made me at times shiver with
+a mad yearning for life, more life; at times soothed my heart with a
+caress of infinite softness.</p>
+
+<p>How is it that our organ-songs at the convent <i>never</i> moved me in this
+fashion?</p>
+
+<p>Ah! those will be days to remember; all the more for being certain
+that they will not be forgotten by him. Yes, those days have brought
+some light into his melancholy life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even Ren&eacute; knows that. "Oh, my lady," said he to me as he was leaving
+the island yesterday. "You have come like the good fairy, you have
+brought back the joy of life to his honour: I have not heard him
+really laugh&mdash;before this year passed I did not believe he knew any
+more how to laugh&mdash;what you can call laugh!"</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true. I had made some droll remark about Tanty and Cousin
+Sophia, and when he laughed he looked like a young man.</p>
+
+<p>He was quick enough in grasping at a pretext for keeping me yet
+another day. Yesterday the wind having suddenly abated in the night,
+there was quite a bevy of little fishing-boats sailing merrily away.
+And the causeway at low water was quite visible. As we looked out I
+know the same idea came to both our minds, though there was no word
+between us. At last it was I who spoke. "The crossing is quite safe,"
+said I. And I added, as he answered nothing, "I almost wish now it was
+not. How quick the time has gone by, here!"</p>
+
+<p>His countenance when I looked up was darker. He kept his eyes fixed in
+the distance. At last he said in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose it is high time you should go back."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I don't wish it," I said quite frankly&mdash;he is not the sort
+of man with whom one would ever think of <i>minauderie</i>, "but Madeleine
+will be miserable about me."</p>
+
+<p>"And so you would really care to stop here," said he, with a smile of
+wonder on his face, "if it were not for that reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally I would," said I. "I feel already as cosy as a tame cat
+here. And if it were not for Madeleine, poor little Madeleine, who
+must be breaking her heart!&mdash;But then how can I go back?&mdash;I have no
+wraps and only one shoe?"</p>
+
+<p>His face had cleared again. He was walking up and down in his usual
+way, whilst I hopped back, with more limping than was at all
+necessary, to my favourite arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>"True, true," he said, as if speaking to himself, "you cannot walk,
+with one shoe and a bandaged foot. And your clothes are too thin for
+the roundabout sea journey in this cold wind. This is what we shall
+do, child," he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> went on, coming up to me with a sage expression that
+struggled with his evident eager desire. "Ren&eacute; shall go off, as soon
+as the tide permits, carrying the good news of your safety to your
+sister, and bring back some warm things for you to wear to-morrow
+morning, and I shall write to Rupert to send a carriage, to wait for
+you on the strand."</p>
+
+<p>And so, pleased like two children who have found a means of securing a
+further holiday, we wrote both our letters. I wonder whether it
+occurred to Sir Adrian, as it did to me, that, if we had been so very
+anxious that I should be restored to the care of Pulwick with the
+briefest delay, I might have gone with Ren&eacute; that same day, wrapped up
+in a certain cloak which had done good warming service already; and
+that, as Ren&eacute; had constructed with his cunning hands a sufficient if
+not very pretty sandal for my damaged foot out of some old piece of
+felt, I might have walked from the beach to the fishing village; and
+that there, no doubt, a cart or a donkey might have conveyed me home
+in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it did <i>not</i> occur to him; and certainly I had no desire to
+suggest it on my side.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, soon after mid-day, Master Ren&eacute; departed alone. And Sir Adrian
+and I, both very glad of our reprieve, watched, leaning side by side
+upon the window-sill, the brave little craft glide away on the still
+ruffled waters, until, when it had grown very small in the distance,
+we saw the sail lowered and knew Ren&eacute; had reached mainland.</p>
+
+<p>And that was perhaps the best day of the three. Ren&eacute; having been
+unexpectedly despatched, we had to help to do everything ourselves
+with old Margery, who is rather feeble. The sky was clear and
+beautiful; and, followed gravely by Jem the dog, we went round the
+little outer domain. I fed the hens, and Sir Adrian carried the pail
+when Margery had milked the cow; we paid a visit in his wide paddock
+to the pony, who trotted up to his master whinnying with pleasure. We
+looked at the waters rushing past like a mill race on the further side
+of the island, as the tide was rising, and he explained to me that it
+was this rush which makes the neighbourhood of Scarthey so dangerous
+to unwary crafts; we went down into the sea-caves which penetrate deep
+under the ruins.&mdash;They say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> that in olden days there was a passage
+under the rocky causeway that led as far as the old Priory, but all
+traces of it have been effaced.</p>
+
+<p>Then, later on, Sir Adrian showed me in detail his library.</p>
+
+<p>"I was made to be a man of books," he said, when I wondered at the
+number he had accumulated around him&mdash;there must be thousands, "a man
+of study, not of action. And you know how fate has treated me. These
+have been my one consolation of late years."</p>
+
+<p>And it marvelled me to think that one who had achieved so many manly
+deeds, should love musty old tiresome things so much. He really turned
+them over quite reverentially. I myself do not think much of books as
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>When I made that little confession he smiled rather sadly, and said
+that one like me never would lack the suitable companions of youth and
+happiness; but that a creature of his unfortunate disposition could
+find, in these long rows of folded leaves, the society of the best and
+the loftiest minds, not of our age, but of all ages, and, what was
+more, could find them ready for intercourse and at their best humour,
+just in those hours when he himself was fit and disposed for such
+intercourse&mdash;and this without dread of inflicting his own misery and
+dulness upon them.</p>
+
+<p>But I could not agree with his appreciation. I felt my nose curl with
+disdain at the breath of dust and must and age these old tomes gave
+forth, and I said again it was, to my mind, but a poor and tame sort
+of fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>He was perched on his ladder and had some odd volume in his hand, from
+which he was about to give an example in point; on hearing, however,
+this uncongenial sentiment he pushed back the book and came down
+quickly enough to talk to me. And this was the last of our excursions
+among the bookshelves.</p>
+
+<p>Of this I was glad, for I confess it was there I liked Sir Adrian the
+least.</p>
+
+<p>When the end of the short day drew near it was time to go and attend
+to the beacon. We ascended the ladder-like wooden stairs leading to
+the platform. Then I had the <i>reverse</i> of that view that for so many
+days had engrossed my interest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Pulwick from Scarthey!...</i> What a long time it seemed then since I
+had left those rooms the windows of which now sent us back the rays of
+the setting sun! and I had no desire to return, though return I must
+on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, of course, had left everything in his usual trim order, so all
+we had to do was to see to the lamp. It pleased my fantasy to light
+the beacon of Scarthey myself, and I struck the steel and kindled the
+brimstone and set fire to the huge, ill-smelling wicks until they gave
+a flame as big as my hand; and "there is the light of Scarthey at
+close quarters," I thought. And the Light-keeper was bending over me
+with his kindly look, humouring me like a child.</p>
+
+<p>As we sat there silently for a while in the twilight, there came from
+the little room adjoining the turret an odd sound of flapping and
+uncanny, melancholy cries. Sir Adrian rose, and we remembered the
+seagull by which he had played the part of good Samaritan.</p>
+
+<p>It had happened on the second day, as the storm was at its height.
+There had come a great crash at the window, and we saw something white
+that struggled on the sill outside; Sir Adrian opened the casement
+(when we had a little tornado of our own inside, and all his papers
+began dancing a sarabande in the room), and we gathered in the poor
+creature that was hurt and battered and more than half stunned,
+opening alternately its yellow bill and its red eyes in the most
+absurd manner.</p>
+
+<p>With a solicitude that it amused me to watch, Sir Adrian had tended
+the helpless, goose-like thing and then handed it to Ren&eacute;'s further
+care.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, it seemed, had thought of trying to tame the wild bird, and had
+constructed a huge sort of cage with laths and barrel-hoops, and
+installed it there with various nasty, sea-fishy, weedy things, such
+as seagulls consider dainty. But the prisoner, now its vigour had
+returned, yearned for nothing but the free air, and ever and anon
+almost broke its wings in sudden frenzy to escape.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder at Ren&eacute;," said Sir Adrian, contemplating the animal with his
+grave look of commiseration; "Ren&eacute;, who, like myself, has been a
+prisoner! He will be disappointed, but we shall make one of God's
+creatures happy this day. There is not overmuch happiness in this
+world."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And, regardless of the vicious pecks aimed at his hands, he with
+firmness folded the great strong wings and legs and carried the gull
+outside on the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>There the bird sat a moment, astonished, turning its head round at its
+benefactor before taking wing; and then it rose flying away in great
+swoops&mdash;flap, flap&mdash;across the waves till we could see it no longer.
+Ugly and awkward as the creature looked in its cage, it was beautiful
+in its joyful, steady flight, and I was glad to see it go. I must have
+been a bird myself in another existence, for I have often that longing
+to fly upon me, and it makes my heart swell with a great impatience
+that I cannot.</p>
+
+<p>But I could not help remarking to Sir Adrian that the bird's last look
+round had been full of anger rather than gratitude, and his answer, as
+he watched it sweep heavily away, was too gloomy to please me:</p>
+
+<p>"Gratitude," said he, "is as rare as unselfishness. If it were not so
+this world would be different indeed. As it is, we have no more right
+to expect the one than the other. And, when all is said and done, if
+doing a so-called kind action gives us pleasure, it is only a special
+form of self-indulgence."</p>
+
+<p>There is something wrong about a reasoning of this kind, but I could
+not exactly point out where.</p>
+
+<p>We both stood gazing out from our platform upon the darkening waters.
+Then across our vision there crept, round the promontory, a beautiful
+ship with all sails set, looking like some gigantic white bird;
+sailing, sailing, so swiftly yet so surely by, through the dim light;
+and I cried out in admiration: for there is something in the sight of
+a ship silently gliding that always sets my heart beating. But Sir
+Adrian's face grew stern, and he said: "A ship is a whitened
+sepulchre."</p>
+
+<p>But for all that he looked at it long and pensively.</p>
+
+<p>Now it had struck me before this that Sir Adrian, with all his
+kindness of heart, takes but a dismal view of human nature and human
+destiny; that to him what spoils the face of this world is that strife
+of life&mdash;which to me is as the breath of my nostrils, the absence of
+which made my convent days so grey and hateful to look back upon.</p>
+
+<p>I did not like to feel out of harmony with him, and so almost angrily
+I reproached him.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have every one live like a limpet on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> rock?" cried I.
+"Great heavens! I would rather be dead than not be up and doing."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me gravely, pityingly.</p>
+
+<p>"May <i>you</i> never see what I have seen," said he. "May you never learn
+what men have made of the world. God keep your fair life from such
+ways as mine has been made to follow."</p>
+
+<p>The words filled me, I don't know why, with sudden misgiving. Is this
+life, I am so eager for, but horror and misery after all? Would it be
+better to leave the book unopened? They said so at the convent. But
+what can they know of life at a convent?</p>
+
+<p>He bent his kind face towards mine in the thickening gloom, as though
+to read my thoughts, and his lips moved, but he did not speak aloud.
+Then, above the song of the waves as they gathered, rolled in, and
+fell upon the shingle all around, there came the beat of oars.</p>
+
+<p>"Hark," said Sir Adrian, "our good Ren&eacute;!"</p>
+
+<p>His tone was cheerful again, and, as he hurried me away down the
+stairs, I knew he was glad to divert me from the melancholy into which
+he had allowed himself to drift.</p>
+
+<p>And then "good Ren&eacute;" came, bringing breezy life and cheerfulness with
+him, and a bundle and a letter for me.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Madeleine! It seems she has been quite ill with weeping for
+Molly; and, indeed, her dear scrawl was so illegible that I could
+hardly read it. Ren&eacute; says she was nearly as much upset by the joy as
+by the grief. Mr. Landale was not at home; he had ridden to meet Tanty
+at Liverpool, for the dear old lady has been summoned back in hot
+haste with the news of my decease!</p>
+
+<p>He for one, I thought to myself, will survive the shock of relief at
+learning that Molly has risen from the dead!</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Ting, ting, ting.... There goes my little clock, fussily counting the
+hour to tell me that I have written so long a time that I ought to be
+tired. And so I am, though I have not told you half of all I meant to
+tell!</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p>
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RECLUSE AND THE SQUIRE</h3>
+
+
+<p>I thought I should never get away from supper and be alone! Rupert's
+air of cool triumph&mdash;it was triumph, however he may have wished to
+hide it&mdash;and Tanty's flow of indignation, recrimination, speculation,
+and amazement were enough to drive me mad. But I held out. I pretended
+I did not mind. My cheeks were blazing, and I talked <i>&agrave; tort et &agrave;
+travers</i>. I should have <i>died</i> rather than that Rupert should have
+guessed at the tempest in my heart. Now I am alone at last, thank God!
+and it will be a relief to confide to my faithful diary the feelings
+that have been choking me these last two hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Pride must have a fall." Thus Rupert at supper, with reference, it is
+true, to some trivial incident, but looking at me hard and full, and
+pointing the words with his meaning smile. The fairies who attended at
+my birth endowed me with one power, which, however doubtful a blessing
+it may prove in the long run, has nevertheless been an unspeakable
+comfort to me hitherto. This is the reverse of what I heard a French
+gentleman term <i>l'esprit de l'escalier</i>. Thanks to this fairy
+godmother of mine, the instant some one annoys or angers me there
+rises on the tip of my tongue the most galling rejoinder that can
+possibly be made in the circumstances. And I need not add: <i>I make
+it</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To-night, when Rupert flung his scoff at me, I was ready for him.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust the old adage has not been brought home to you, <i>Sir</i>
+Rupert," said I, and then pretending confusion. "I beg your pardon," I
+added, "I have been so accustomed to address the head of the house
+these last days that the word escaped me unawares." The shot told
+<i>well</i>, and I was glad&mdash;glad of the murderous rage in Rupert's eyes,
+for I knew I had hit him on the raw. Even Tanty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> looked perturbed, but
+Rupert let me alone for the rest of supper.</p>
+
+<p>He is right nevertheless, that is what stung me. I am humbled, <i>and I
+cannot bear it</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian has left.</p>
+
+<p>I was so triumphant to bring him back to Pulwick this morning, to have
+circumvented Rupert's plans, and (let me speak the truth,) so happy to
+have him with me that I did not attempt to conceal my exultation. And
+now he has gone, gone without a word to me; only this miserable letter
+of determined farewell. I will copy it&mdash;for in my first anger I have
+so crumpled the paper that it is scarcely readable.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, I must go back to my island. The world is not for me, nor
+am I for the world, nor would I cast the shadow of my gloomy life
+further upon your bright one. Let me tell you, however, that you have
+left me the better for your coming; that it will be a good thought to
+me in my loneliness to know of your mother's daughters so close to me.
+When you look across at the beacon of Scarthey, child, through the
+darkness, think that though I may not see you again I shall ever
+follow and keep guard upon your life and upon your sister's, and that,
+even when you are far from Pulwick, the light will burn and the heart
+of Adrian Landale watch so long as it may beat."</p>
+
+<p>I have shed more tears&mdash;hot tears of anger&mdash;since I received this than
+I have wept in all my life before. Madeleine came in to me just now,
+too full of the happiness of having me back, poor darling, to be able
+to bear me out of sight again; but I have driven her from me with such
+cross words that she too is in tears. I must be alone and I must
+collect myself and my thoughts, for I want to state exactly all that
+has happened and then perhaps I shall be able to see my way more
+clearly.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>This morning then, early after breakfast, I started across the waters
+between Ren&eacute; and Sir Adrian, regretting to leave the dear hospitable
+island, yet with my heart dancing within me, as gaily as did our
+little boat upon the chopping waves, to be carrying the hermit back
+with me. I had been deadly afraid lest he should at the last moment
+have sent me alone with the servant; but when he put on his big cloak,
+when I saw Ren&eacute; place a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> bag at the bottom of the boat, I knew he
+meant to come&mdash;perhaps remain some days at Pulwick, and my spirits
+went up, up!</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely day, too; the air had a crisp, cold sparkle, and the
+waters looked so blue under the clear, frosty sky. I could have sung
+as we rowed along, and every time I met Sir Adrian's eye I smiled at
+him out of the happiness of my heart. His look hung on me&mdash;we French
+have a word for that which is not translatable, <i>Il me couvait des
+yeux</i>&mdash;and, as every day of the three we had spent together I had
+thought him younger and handsomer, so this morning out in the bright
+sunlight I said to myself, I could never wish to see a more noble man.</p>
+
+<p>When we landed&mdash;and it was but a little way, for the tide was
+low&mdash;there was the carriage waiting, and Ren&eacute;, all grins, handed over
+our parcels to the footman. Then we got in, the wheels began slowly
+dragging across the sand to the road, the poor horses pulling and
+straining, for it was heavy work. And Ren&eacute; stood watching us by his
+boat, his hand over his eyes, a black figure against the dazzling
+sunshine on the bay; but I could see his white teeth gleam in that
+broad smile of his from out of his shadowy face. As, at length, we
+reached the high road and bowled swiftly along, I would not let Sir
+Adrian have peace to think, for something at my heart told me he hated
+the going back to Pulwick, and I so chattered and fixed his attention
+that as the carriage drew up he was actually laughing.</p>
+
+<p>When we stopped another carriage in front moved off, and there on the
+porch stood&mdash;Rupert and Tanty!</p>
+
+<p>Poor Tanty, her old face all disfigured with tears and a great black
+bonnet and veil towering on her head. I popped <i>my</i> head out of the
+window and called to them.</p>
+
+<p>When they caught sight of me, both seemed to grow rigid with
+amazement. And then across Rupert's face came such a look of fury, and
+such a deathly pallor! I had thought, certainly, he would not weep the
+eyes out of his head for me; but that he should be stricken with
+<i>anger</i> to see me alive I had hardly expected, and for the instant it
+frightened me.</p>
+
+<p>But then I had no time to observe anything else, for Tanty collapsed
+upon the steps and went off into as fine a fit of hysterics as I have
+ever seen. But fortunately it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> did not last long. Suddenly in the
+middle of her screams and rockings to and fro she perceived Sir Adrian
+as he leant anxiously over her. With the utmost energy she clutched
+his arm and scrambled to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you, me poor child?" she cried, "Is it you?"</p>
+
+<p>And then she turned from him, as he stood with his gentle, earnest
+face looking down upon her, and gave Rupert a glare that might have
+slain him. I knew at once what she was thinking: I had experienced
+myself that it was impossible to see Sir Adrian and connect his
+dignified presence for one second with the scandalous impression
+Rupert would have conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>As for Rupert, he looked for the first time since I knew him
+thoroughly unnerved.</p>
+
+<p>Then Tanty caught me by the arm and shook me:</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>dare</i> you, miss, how dare you?" she cried, her face was flaming.</p>
+
+<p>"How dare I what?" asked I, as I hugged her.</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you be walking about when it is dead you are, and give us
+all such a fright&mdash;there&mdash;there, you know what I mean.&mdash;Adrian," she
+whimpered, "give me your arm, my nephew, and conduct me into your
+house. All this has upset me very much. But, oh, am I not glad to see
+you both, my children!"</p>
+
+<p>In they went together. And my courage having risen again to its usual
+height, I waited purposely on the porch to tease Rupert a little. I
+had a real pleasure in noticing how he trembled with agitation beneath
+his mask.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, are you glad to see me, Cousin Rupert?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>He took my hand; his fingers were damp and cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask, my fair cousin?" he sneered. "Do you not see me overcome
+with joy? Am I not indeed especially favoured by Providence, for is
+not this the second time that a beloved being has been restored into
+my arms like Lazarus from the grave?"</p>
+
+<p>I was indignant at the heartlessness of his cynicism, and so the
+answer that leaped to my lips was out before I had time to reflect
+upon its unladylikeness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said I, "and each time you have cried in your soul, like Martha,
+'Behold, he stinketh.'"</p>
+
+<p>My cousin laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a sharp tongue," he said, "take care you are not cut with it
+yourself some day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Just then the footmen who had been unpacking Tanty's trunks from the
+first carriage laid a great wooden box upon the porch, and one of them
+asked Rupert which room they should bring it to.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert looked at it strangely, and then at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it where you will," he exclaimed at last. "There lies good
+money-value wasted&mdash;though, after all, one never knows."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" said I, struck by a sinister meaning in his accents.</p>
+
+<p>"Mourning, beautiful Molly&mdash;mourning for
+you&mdash;crape&mdash;gowns&mdash;weepers&mdash;wherewith to have dried your sister's
+tears&mdash;but not needed yet, you see."</p>
+
+<p>He bared his teeth at me over his shoulder&mdash;I could not call it a
+smile&mdash;and then paused, as he was about to brush past into the hall,
+to give me the <i>pas</i>, with a mocking bow.</p>
+
+<p>He does not even attempt now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw
+for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is
+always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little
+Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to
+greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had
+circumvented the plotter.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, how foolish I was to laugh! Rupert is a dangerous enemy, and I
+have made him mine; and in a few hours he has shuffled the cards, and
+now he holds the trumps again. For that there is <i>du Rupert</i> in this
+sudden departure of my knight, I am convinced. Of course, <i>his</i>
+reasons are plain to see. It is the vulgarest ambition that prompts
+him to oust his brother for as long as possible&mdash;for ever, if he can.</p>
+
+<p>And now, <i>I</i> am outwitted. <i>Je rage.</i></p>
+
+<p>I have never been so unhappy. My heart feels all crushed. I see no
+help anywhere. I cannot in common decency go and seek Sir Adrian upon
+his island again, and so I sit and cry.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Immediately upon his arrival Tanty was closeted with Sir Adrian in the
+chamber allotted to her for so long a space of time that Rupert,
+watching below in an inward fever, now flung back in his chair biting
+his nails, now restlessly pacing the room from end to end, his mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+working on the new problem, his ears strained to catch the least sound
+the while, was fain at last to ring and give orders for the immediate
+sounding of the dinner bell (a good hour before that meal might be
+expected) as the only chance of interrupting a conference which boded
+so ill to his plans. Meanwhile Madeleine sobbed out the story of her
+grief and joy on Molly's heart; and Miss Sophia, who thus
+inconsiderately arrested in the full congenial flow of a new grief,
+was thrown back upon her old sorrows for consolation, had felt
+impelled to pay a visit to the rector's grave with the watering-can,
+and an extra pocket-handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Never perhaps since that worthy clergyman had gasped out his last
+struggling breath upon her bosom had she known more unmixed
+satisfaction than during those days when she hovered round poor
+prostrate Madeleine's bed and poured into her deaf ear the tale of her
+own woes and the assurances of her thoroughly understanding sympathy.
+She had been looking forward, with a chastened eagerness, to the
+arrival of the mourning, and had already derived a good deal of
+pleasure from the donning of certain aged weeds treasured in her
+wardrobe; it was therefore a distinct though quite unconscious
+disappointment when the news came which put an untimely end to all
+these funereal revels.</p>
+
+<p>At the shrill clamour of the bell, as Rupert anticipated, Adrian
+emerged instantly from his aunt's room, and a simultaneous jingle of
+minor bells announced that the ladies' attention was in all haste
+being turned to toilet matters.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever had passed between his good old relative and his sensitive
+brother, Rupert's quick appraising glance at the latter's face, as he
+went slowly down the corridor to his own specially reserved apartment,
+was sufficient to confirm the watcher in his misgiving that matters
+were not progressing as he might wish.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian seemed absorbed, it is true, in grave thought, but his
+countenance was neither distressed nor gloomy. With a spasm of fierce
+annoyance, and a bitter curse on the meddling of old females and
+young, Rupert had to admit that never had he seen his brother look
+more handsome, more master of the house and of himself, more <i>sane</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later the guests of Pulwick assembled in the library one
+by one, with the exception of Sophia, still watering the last
+resting-place of the Rev. Herbert Lee.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian came first, closely followed by Tanty, who turned a marked
+shoulder upon her younger nephew and devoted all her attention to the
+elder&mdash;in which strained condition of affairs the conversation between
+the three was not likely to be lively. Next the sisters, attired alike
+in white, entered together, bringing a bright vision of youth and
+loveliness into the old room.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of them Adrian sprang to his feet with a sudden sharp
+ejaculation, upon which the two girls halted on the threshold, half
+shy, half smiling. For the moment, in the shadow of the doorway, they
+were surprisingly like each other, the difference of colouring being
+lost in their curious similarity of contour.</p>
+
+<p>My God, were there then two C&eacute;ciles?</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful, miraculous, consoling had been to the mourner in his
+loneliness the apparition of his dead love restored to life, every
+time his eyes had fallen upon Molly during these last few blessed
+days; but this new development was only like a troublous mocking
+dream.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty turned in startled amazement. She could feel the shudder that
+shook his frame, through the hand with which he still unconsciously
+grasped at the back of her chair. An irrepressible smile crept to
+Rupert's lips.</p>
+
+<p>The little interlude could not have lasted more than a few seconds
+when Molly, recovering her usual self-possession, came boldly forward,
+leading her sister by the tips of her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Adrian," she said, "my sister Madeleine has many things to say
+to you in thanks for your care of my valuable person, but just now she
+is too bashful to be able to utter one quarter of them."</p>
+
+<p>As the girls emerged into the room, and the light from the great
+windows struck upon Madeleine's fair curls and the delicate pallor of
+her cheek; as she extended her hand, and raised to Adrian's face,
+while she dropped her pretty curtsey, the gaze of two unconsciously
+plaintive blue eyes, the man dashed the sweat from his brow with a
+gesture of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could be more unlike the dark beauty of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> ghost of his
+dreams or its dashing presentment now smiling confidently upon him
+from Tanty's side.</p>
+
+<p>He took the little hand with tender pressure: C&eacute;cile's daughter must
+be precious to him in any case. Madeleine, moreover, had a certain
+appealing grace that was apt to steal the favour that Molly won by
+storm.</p>
+
+<p>"But, indeed, I could never tell Sir Adrian how grateful I am," said
+she, with a timidity that became her as thoroughly as Molly's
+fearlessness suited her own stronger personality.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of her voice, again the distressful nightmare-like
+feeling seized Sir Adrian's soul.</p>
+
+<p>Of all characteristics that, as the phrase is, "go in families,"
+voices are generally the most peculiarly generic.</p>
+
+<p>When Molly first addressed Sir Adrian, it had been to him as a voice
+from the grave; now Madeleine's gentle speech tripped forth upon that
+self-same note&mdash;C&eacute;cile's own voice!</p>
+
+<p>And next Molly caught up the sound, and then Madeleine answered again.
+What they said, he could not tell; these ghosts&mdash;these speaking
+ghosts&mdash;brought back the old memories too painfully. It was thus
+C&eacute;cile had spoken in the first arrogance of her dainty youth and
+loveliness; and in those softer tones when sorrow and work and failure
+had subdued her proud spirit. And now she laughs; and hark, the laugh
+is echoed! Sir Adrian turns as if to seek some escape from this
+strange form of torture, meets Rupert's eye and instinctively braces
+himself into self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, in her comfortable, commonplace,
+cheerful tone: "This dinner bell of yours, Adrian, has raised false
+hopes, which seem to tarry in their fulfilment. What are we waiting
+for, may I ask?"</p>
+
+<p>Adrian looked at his brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert, you know, my dear aunt," he said, "has the ordering of these
+matters."</p>
+
+<p>"Sophia is yet absent," quoth Rupert drily, "but we can proceed
+without her, if my aunt wishes."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, yes. Sophia!" snorted Miss O'Donoghue, grasping Sir Adrian's
+arm to show herself quite ready for the march, "Sophia! We all know
+what she is. Why, my dear Adrian, she'll never hear the bell till it
+has stopped this half hour."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dinner," cried Rupert sharply to the butler, whom his pull of the
+bell-rope had summoned. And dinner being served, the guests trooped
+into that dining-room which was full of such associations to Sir
+Adrian. It was a little thing, but, nevertheless, intensely galling to
+Rupert to have to play second gentleman, and give up his privileges as
+host to his brother. Usually indeed Adrian cared too little to stand
+upon his rights, and insisted upon Rupert's continuing to act in his
+presence as he did in his absence; but this afternoon Tanty had left
+him no choice.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, as Mr. Landale sat down between the sisters, and turned
+smiling to address first one and then the other, it would have taken a
+very practised eye to discern under the extra urbanity of his
+demeanour the intensity of his inward mortification. He talked a great
+deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering
+Molly into scornful and eager retorts, and preventing Madeleine from
+relapsing into that state of dreaminess out of which the rapid
+succession of her recent sorrow and joy had somewhat shaken her.</p>
+
+<p>The girls were both excited, both ready to laugh and jest. Tanty,
+satisfied to see Adrian preside at the head of the table with a grave,
+courteous, and self-contained manner that completely fulfilled her
+notions of what family dignity required of him, cracked her jokes, ate
+her dinner, and quaffed her cup with full enjoyment, laughing
+indulgently at her grand-nieces' sallies, and showing as marked a
+disfavour to Rupert as she deemed consistent with good manners.</p>
+
+<p>The poor old lady little guessed how the workings in each brother's
+mind were all the while, silently but inevitably, tending towards the
+destruction of her newly awakened hopes.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>There was silence between Sir Adrian and Rupert when at last they were
+left alone together. The elder's gaze wandering in space, his absent
+hand softly beating the table, his relaxed frame&mdash;all showed that his
+mind was far away from thought of the younger's presence. The relief
+to be delivered from the twin echoes of a haunting voice&mdash;once the
+dearest on earth to him&mdash;was immense. But his whole being was still
+quivering under the first acuteness of so disturbing an impression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His years of solitude, moreover, had ill prepared him for social
+intercourse; the laughter, the clash of conversation, the noise on
+every side, the length of the meal, the strain to maintain a fit and
+proper attitude as host, had tried to the utmost nerves by nature
+hypersensitive.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert, who had leisure to study the suddenly lined and tired
+lineaments of the abstracted countenance before him, noted with
+self-congratulation the change that a few hours seemed to have wrought
+upon it, and decided that the moment had come to strike.</p>
+
+<p>"So, Adrian," he said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the
+glass of wine he had been toying with&mdash;Rupert was an abstemious man.
+"So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous r&ocirc;le of rescuer of
+distressed damsels&mdash;squire of dames and what not. The last one would
+have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing
+up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any of us would have
+thought what a blessing in disguise your freak of self-exile was
+destined to become to us!"</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of the incisive voice Adrian had returned with a slight
+shiver from distant musing to the consciousness of the other's
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>"And did you not always look upon my exile as a blessing undisguised,
+Rupert?" answered he, fixing his brother with his large grave gaze.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert's eyelids wavered a little beneath it, but his tone was coolly
+insolent as he made reply:</p>
+
+<p>"If it pleases you to make no count of our fraternal affection for
+you, my dear fellow; if by insisting upon <i>our</i> unnatural depravity
+you contrive a more decent excuse for your own vagaries, you have my
+full permission to dub me Cain at once and have done with it."</p>
+
+<p>A light sigh escaped the elder man, and then he resolutely closed his
+lips. It was by behaviour such as this, by his almost diabolical
+ingenuity in the art of being uncongenial, that Rupert had so largely
+contributed to make his own house impossible to him. But where was the
+use of either argument or expostulation with one so incapable of even
+understanding the mainsprings of his actions? Moreover (<i>he</i>, above
+all, must not forget it) Rupert had suffered through him in pride and
+self-esteem.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> And yet, despite Sir Adrian's philosophic mind, despite
+his vast, pessimistic though benevolent tolerance for erring human
+nature, his was a very human heart; and it added not a little to the
+sadness of his lot at every return to Pulwick (dating from that first
+most bitter home-coming) to feel in every fibre of his being how
+little welcome he was where the ties of flesh and blood alone, not to
+speak of his most ceaseless yet delicate generosity, should have
+ensured him a very different reception.</p>
+
+<p>Again he sighed, this time more deeply, and the corners of Rupert's
+lips, the arch of his eyebrows, moved upwards in smiling
+interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have given you a shock," said Mr. Landale, carelessly, "to
+see the resemblance between Molly and poor C&eacute;cile; not, of course,
+that <i>I</i> can remember her; but Tanty says it is something startling."</p>
+
+<p>Adrian assented briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay it seems quite painful to you at first," proceeded Rupert,
+much in the same deliberate manner as a surgeon may lay bare a wound,
+despite the knowledge of the suffering he is inflicting, "I noticed
+that you seemed upset during dinner. But probably the feeling will
+wear off."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably."</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine resembles her father, I am told; but then you never saw the
+<i>feu Comte</i>, did you? Well, they are both fine handsome girls, full of
+life and spirits. It is our revered relative's intention to leave them
+here&mdash;as perhaps she has told you&mdash;for two months or so."</p>
+
+<p>"I have begged her," said Sir Adrian gravely, "to make them understand
+that I wish them to look upon Pulwick as their home."</p>
+
+<p>"Very right, very proper," cried the other; "in fact I knew that was
+what you would wish&mdash;and your wishes, of course, are my law in the
+matter. By the way, I hope you quite understand, Adrian, how it
+happened that I did <i>not</i> notify to you the arrival of these guests
+extraordinary&mdash;knowing that you have never got over their mother's
+death, and all that&mdash;it was entirely from a wish to spare you.
+Besides, there was your general prohibition about my visitors; I did
+not dare to take the responsibility in fact. And so I told Tanty."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to doubt the purity of your motives, though it would
+have grieved me had <i>these</i> visitors (no ordinary ones as you yourself
+admit) come and gone without my knowledge. As it fell out, however,
+even without that child's dangerous expedition, I should have been
+informed in any case&mdash;Ren&eacute; knew."</p>
+
+<p>"Ren&eacute; knew?" cried Rupert, surprised; and "damn Ren&eacute;" to himself with
+heart-felt energy.</p>
+
+<p>That the infernal little spy, as he deemed his brother's servant,
+should have made a visit to Pulwick without his knowledge was
+unpleasant news, and it touched him on his tenderest point.</p>
+
+<p>But now, replenishing his half-emptied glass to give Adrian no excuse
+for putting an end to the conference before he himself desired it, he
+plunged into the heart of the task he had set himself without further
+delay:</p>
+
+<p>"And what would you wish me to do, Adrian," he asked, with a pretty
+air of deference, "in the matter of entertaining these ladies? I have
+thought of several things likely to afford them amusement, but, since
+you are here, you will readily understand that I should like your
+authorisation first. I am anxious to consult you when I can," he
+added, apologetically. "So forgive my attacking you upon business
+to-night when you seem really so little fitted for it&mdash;but you know
+one cannot count upon you from one minute to another! What would you
+say if I were to issue invitations for a ball? Pulwick was noted for
+its hospitality in the days of our fathers, and the gloom that has
+hung over the old home these last eight years has been (I suppose)
+unavoidable in the circumstances&mdash;but none the less a pity. No fear
+but that our fair cousins would enjoy such a festivity, and I think I
+can promise you that the sound of our revels should not reach as far
+as your hermitage."</p>
+
+<p>A slow colour had mounted to Adrian's cheeks; he drew his brows
+together with an air of displeasure; Rupert, quick to read these
+symptoms, hastened to pursue the attack before response should be
+made:</p>
+
+<p>"The idea does not seem to please you," he cried, as if in hurt
+surprise. "'Tis true I have now no legal right to think of reviving
+the old hospitable traditions of the family; but you must remember,
+Adrian, you yourself have insisted on giving me a moral right to act
+host here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> in your absence&mdash;you have over and over again laid stress
+upon the freedom you wished me to feel in the matter. Hitherto I have
+not made use of these privileges; have not cared to do so, beyond an
+occasional duty dinner to our nearest neighbours. A lonely widower
+like myself, why should I? But now, with these gay young things in the
+house&mdash;so near to us in blood&mdash;I had thought it so much our duty to
+provide fitting entertainment for them that your attitude is
+incomprehensible to me. Come! does it not strike you as savouring a
+little of the unamiable dog in the fable? I know you hate company
+yourself, and all the rest of it; but how can these things here affect
+you upon your island? As for the budget, it will stand it, I assure
+you. I speak hotly; pray excuse me. I own I have looked forward to the
+thought of seeing once more young and happy faces around me."</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake me," said Sir Adrian with an effort; "while you are
+acting as my representative you have, as you know, all liberty to
+entertain what guests you choose, and as you see fit. It is natural,
+perhaps, that you should now believe me anxious to hurry back to the
+lighthouse, and I should have told you before that it is my intention
+this time to remain longer than my wont, in which circumstance the
+arrangements for the entertaining of our relatives will devolve upon
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert broke into a loud laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, but the idea is too ludicrous! What sort of funeral
+festivities do you propose to provide to the neighbourhood, with you
+and Sophia presiding, the living images of mourning and desolation?
+There, my dear fellow, I <i>must</i> laugh. It will be the skeleton at the
+feast with a vengeance. Why, even to-night, in the bosom of your
+family, as it were, your presence lay so like a wet blanket upon us
+all that, 'pon my soul, I nearly cracked my voice trying to keep those
+girls from noticing it! Seriously, I am delighted, of course, that you
+should feel so sportive, and it is high time indeed that the
+neighbourhood should see something of you, but I fear you are
+reckoning beyond your strength. Anyhow, command me. I shall be anxious
+to help you all I can in this novel departure. What are your plans?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have laid no plans," answered Sir Adrian coldly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> after a slight
+pause, "but you do not need me to tell you, Rupert, that to surround
+myself with such gaiety as you suggest is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to make our poor little cousins lead as melancholy an
+existence as you do yourself then," cried Rupert with an angry laugh.
+Matters were not progressing as he could have wished. "I fear this
+will cause a good deal of disappointment, not only to them but to our
+revered aunt&mdash;for she is very naturally anxious to see her charges
+married and settled, and she told me that she more or less counted
+upon my aid in the matter. Now as you are here of course I have, thank
+Heaven, nothing more to say one way or another. But you will surely
+think of asking a few likely young fellows over to the house,
+occasionally? We are not badly off for eldest sons in the
+neighbourhood; Molly, who is as arrant a little flirt, they tell me,
+as she is pretty, will be grateful to you for the attention, on the
+score of amusement at least."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale, speaking somewhat at random out of his annoyance to have
+failed in immediately disgusting the hermit of the responsibilities
+his return home might entail, here succeeded by chance in producing
+the desired impression.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of Molly&mdash;C&eacute;cile's double&mdash;marrying&mdash;worse still, making
+love, coquetting before his eyes, was intolerable to Adrian. To have
+to look on, and see <i>C&eacute;cile's</i> eyes lavish glances of love; <i>her</i>
+lips, soft words and lingering smiles, upon some country fool; to have
+himself to give this duplicate of his love's sweet body to one
+unworthy perhaps&mdash;it stung him with a pain as keen as it was
+unreasonable. It was terrible to be so made, that the past was ever as
+living as the present! But he must face the situation, he must grapple
+with his own weakness. Tender memories had lured him from his retreat
+and made him for a short time almost believe that he could live with
+them, happy a little while, in his own home again; but now it was
+these very memories that were rising like avengers to drive him hence.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the child must marry if there her happiness lay. Ay, and
+both C&eacute;cile's children must be amused, made joyful, while they still
+could enjoy life&mdash;Rupert was right&mdash;right in all he said&mdash;but he,
+Adrian, could not be there to see. That was beyond his endurance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was impossible of course, for one so single-minded himself, to
+follow altogether the doublings of such a mind as Rupert's; but
+through the melancholy relief of this sudden resolution, Adrian was
+distinctly conscious of the underlying duplicity, the unworthy motives
+which had prompted his brother's arguments.</p>
+
+<p>He rose from the table, and looked down with sad gaze at the younger's
+beautiful mask of a face.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows," he said, "God knows, Rupert, I do not so often inflict my
+presence upon you that you should be so anxious to show me how much
+better I should do to keep away. I admit nevertheless the justice of
+all you say. It is but right that Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye should be
+surrounded with young and cheerful society; and even were I in a state
+to act as master of the revels (here he smiled a little dreamily), my
+very presence, as you say, would cast a gloom upon their
+merrymaking&mdash;I will go. I will go back to the island to-night&mdash;I can
+rely upon you to assist me to do so quietly without unnecessary scenes
+or explanations&mdash;yes&mdash;yes&mdash;I know you will be ready to facilitate
+matters! Strange! It is only a few hours ago since Tanty almost
+persuaded me that it was my duty to remain here; now you have made me
+see that I have no choice but to leave. Have no fear, Rupert&mdash;I go. I
+shall write to Tanty. But remember only, that as you treat C&eacute;cile's
+children, so shall I shape my actions towards you in future."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly he moved away, leaving Rupert motionless in his seat; and long
+did the younger brother remain moodily fixing the purple bloom of the
+grapes with unseeing eyes.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III</h2>
+
+<h3>"CAPTAIN JACK," THE GOLD SMUGGLER</h3>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="section" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GOLD SMUGGLER AND THE PHILOSOPHER</h3>
+
+
+<p>On the evening of the day which had seen Miss Molly's departure for
+the main land, Ren&eacute;, after the usual brisk post-prandial altercation
+with old Margery by her kitchen fire, was cheerfully finding his way,
+lantern in hand, to his turret, when in the silence of the night he
+heard the door of the keep open and close, and presently recognised
+Sir Adrian's tread echoing on the flagged steps beneath him.</p>
+
+<p>Astonished at this premature return and full of vague dismay, he
+hurried down to receive his master.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cloud on Sir Adrian's face, plainly discernible in spite
+of the unaltered composure of his manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not expect your honour back so soon," said Ren&eacute;, tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>"I myself did not anticipate to return. I had thought I might perhaps
+stay some days at Pulwick. But I find there is no home like this one
+for me, Ren&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. But when Ren&eacute; had rekindled a blaze upon the
+hearth and set the lamp upon the table, he stood a moment before
+withdrawing, almost begging by his look some further crumb of
+information.</p>
+
+<p>"My room is ready, I suppose?" inquired Sir Adrian.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your honour," quoth the man ruefully, "Margery and I put it back
+exactly as&mdash;as before."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night then, good-night!" said the master after a pause, warming
+his hands as the flames began to leap through the network of twigs. "I
+shall go to bed, I am tired; I had to row myself across. You will take
+the boat back to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; opened his mouth to speak; caught the sound of a sigh coming from
+the hearthside, and, shaking his head, in silence obeyed the implied
+dismissal. And bitterly did he meditate in his bunk, that night, upon
+the swift <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>crumbling of those air-castles he had built himself so
+gaily erstwhile, in the rose and blue atmosphere that <i>La Demoiselle</i>
+had seemed to bring with her to Scarthey.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>From the morrow the old regular mode of life began again in the keep.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian read a good deal, or at least appeared so to do; but Ren&eacute;,
+who kept him more than ever under his glances of wistful sympathy,
+noted that far from being absorbed, as of old, in the pages of his
+book, the recluse's eyes wandered much off its edges into space; that
+when writing, or at least intent on writing, his pen would linger long
+in the bottle and hover listlessly over the paper; that he was more
+abstracted, even than his wont, when looking out of the eastern
+window; and that on the platform of the beacon it was the landward
+view which most drew his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>There was also more music in the keep than was the custom in evener
+days. Seated at his organ the light-keeper seemed to find a voice for
+such thoughts as were not to be spoken or written, and relief for the
+nameless pity of them. But never a word passed between the two men on
+the subject that filled both their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>It was Sir Adrian's pleasure that things at Scarthey should seem to be
+exactly the same as before, and that was enough for Ren&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," mused the faithful fellow, within his disturbed mind, "the
+ruins now look like a house the day after an interment. If we were
+lonely before, my faith, now we are desolate?" and, trying to find
+something or somebody to charge with the curse of it, he invariably
+fell to upon Mr. Landale's sleek head, why, he could hardly have
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>Three new days had thus passed in the regularity, if not the serenity
+of the old&mdash;they seemed old already, buried far back in the past,
+those days that had lapsed so evenly before the brightness of youthful
+and beautiful life had entered the keep for one brief moment, and
+departing, again left it a ruin indeed&mdash;when the retirement of
+Scarthey was once more invaded by an unexpected visitor. It was about
+sundown of the shortest day. Sir Adrian was at his organ, almost
+unconsciously interpreting his own sadness into music. In time the
+yearning of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> his soul had had expression, the echo of the last sighing
+chord died away in the tranquil air, yet the musician, with head bent
+upon his breast, remained lost in far-away thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>A slight shuffling noise disturbed him; turning round to greet Ren&eacute; as
+he supposed, he was astonished to see a man's figure lolling in his
+own arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>As he peered inquiringly into the twilight, the intruder rose to his
+feet, and cried with a voice loud and clear, pleasant withal to the
+ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Adrian, I am sorry you have stopped so soon; I never heard
+anything more beautiful! The door was ajar, and I crept in like a cat,
+not to disturb you."</p>
+
+<p>Still in doubt, but with his fine air of courtesy, the light-keeper
+advanced towards the uninvited guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I mistaken," he said, with some hesitation, "surely this is Hubert
+Cochrane's voice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jack Smith's voice, my dear fellow; Jack Smith, at your service,
+please to remember," answered the visitor, with a genial ring of
+laughter in his words. "Not that it matters much here, I suppose! Had
+I not heard the peal of your organ I should have thought Scarthey
+deserted indeed. I could find no groom of the chambers to announce me
+in due form."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, the two had drawn near each other and clasped hands
+heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, to think of your knowing my voice in this manner! You have a
+devilish knack of spotting your man, Sir Adrian. It is almost four
+years since I was here last, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four years?&mdash;so it is; and four years that have done well by you, it
+would appear. What a picture of strength and lustiness! It really
+seems to regenerate one, and put heart of grace in one, only to take
+you by the hand.&mdash;Welcome, Captain Smith!"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have more succinctly described the outer man of him who
+chose to be known by that most nondescript of patronymics. Sir Adrian
+stood for a moment, contemplating, with glances of approval such as he
+seldom bestowed on his fellow-man, the symmetrical, slender, yet
+vigorous figure of his friend, and responding with an unwonted
+cheerfulness to the smile that lit up the steel-blue eyes, and parted
+the shapely,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> strong, and good-humoured mouth of the privateersman.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, and what a buck we have become!" continued the baronet,
+"what splendid plumage! It is good to see you so prosperous. And so
+this is the latest fashion? No doubt it sets forth the frame of a
+goodly man, though no one could guess at the 'sea dog' beneath such a
+set of garments. I used to consider my brother Rupert the most
+especial dandy I had ever seen; but that, evidently, was my limited
+experience: even Rupert cannot display so perfect a fit in
+bottle-green coats, so faultless a silken stock, buckskins of such
+matchless drab!"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack laughed, blushed slightly under the friendly banter, and
+allowed himself to be thrust back into the seat he had just vacated.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome again, on my lonely estate. I hope this is not to be a mere
+flying visit? You know my misanthropy vanishes when I have your
+company. How did you come? Not by the causeway, I should say," smiling
+again, and glancing at the unblemished top-boots.</p>
+
+<p>"I have two men waiting for me in the gig below; my schooner, the
+<i>Peregrine</i>, lies in the offing."</p>
+
+<p>The elder man turned to the window, and through the grey curtain of
+crepuscule recognised the rakish topsail schooner that had excited
+Molly's admiration some days before. He gazed forth upon it a few
+meditative moments.</p>
+
+<p>"Not knowing whether I would find you ready to receive me," pursued
+the captain, "I arranged that the <i>Peregrine</i> was to wait for me if I
+had to return to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Which, of course, is not to be heard of," said Sir Adrian. "Here is
+Renny; he will carry word that with me you remain to-night.... Come,
+Renny, do you recognise an old acquaintance?"</p>
+
+<p>Already well disposed towards any one who could call this note of
+pleasure into the loved voice, the Breton, who had just entered,
+turned to give a broad stare at the handsome stranger, then burst into
+a guffaw of pure delight. "By my faith, it is Mr. the Lieutenant!" he
+ejaculated; adding, as ingeniously as Tanty herself might have done,
+that he would never have known him again.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Mr. the Captain now, Renny," said that person, and held out a
+strong hand to grip that of the little Frenchman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> which the latter,
+after the preliminary rubbing upon his trousers that his code of
+manners enjoined, readily extended.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it is a good wind that sent you here this day," said he, with a
+sigh of satisfaction when this ceremony had been duly gone through.</p>
+
+<p>"You say well," acquiesced his master, "it has ever been a good wind
+that has brought Captain Jack across my path."</p>
+
+<p>And then receiving directions to refresh the gig's crew and dismiss
+them back to their ship with instructions to return for orders on the
+morrow, the servant hurried forth, leaving the two friends once more
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," said Captain Jack, when the door had closed upon the
+messenger. "That will exactly suit my purpose. I have a good many
+things to talk over with you, since you so kindly give me the
+opportunity. In the first place, let me unburden myself of a debt
+which is now of old standing&mdash;and let me say at the same time," added
+the young man, rising to deposit upon the table a letter-case which he
+had taken from his breast-pocket, "that though my actual debt is now
+met, my obligation to you remains the same and will always be so. You
+said just now that I looked prosperous, and so I am&mdash;owing somewhat to
+good luck, it is true, but owing above all to you. No luck would have
+availed me much without <i>that</i> to start upon." And he pointed to the
+contents of the case, a thick bundle of notes which his host was now
+smilingly turning over with the tip of his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I might have sent you a draft, but there is no letter-post that I
+know of to Scarthey, and, besides, it struck me that just as these
+four thousand pounds had privately passed between you and me, you
+might prefer them to be returned in the same manner."</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer it, since it has brought you in person," said Sir Adrian,
+thrusting the parcel into a drawer and pulling his chair closer
+towards his guest. "Dealings with a man like you give one a taste of
+an ideal world. Would that more human transactions could be carried
+out in so simple and frank a manner as this little business of ours!"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, you are a greater marvel to me every time I see
+you&mdash;which is not by any means often enough!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The other raised his eyebrows in interrogation, and the sailor went
+on:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really possible that it is to <i>my</i> mode of dealing that you
+attribute the delightful simplicity of a transaction involving a
+little fortune from hand to hand? And where pray, in this terraqueous
+sublunary sphere&mdash;I heard that good phrase from a literary exquisite
+at Bath, and it seems to me comprehensive&mdash;where, then, on this
+terraqueous sublunary globe of ours, Sir Adrian Landale, could one
+expect to find another person ready to lend a privateersman, trading
+under an irresponsible name, the sum of four thousand pounds, without
+any other security than his volunteered promise to return it&mdash;if
+possible?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian, ignoring the tribute to his own merits, arose and placed
+his friendly hand on the speaker's shoulder: "And now, my dear Jack,"
+he said gravely, "that the war is over, you will have to turn your
+energies in another direction. I am glad you are out of that unworthy
+trade."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack bounded up: "No, no, Sir Adrian, I value your opinion too
+much to allow such a statement to pass unchallenged. Unworthy trade!
+We have not given back those French devils one half of the harm they
+have done to our own merchant service; it was war, you know, and you
+know also, or perhaps you don't&mdash;in which case let me tell you&mdash;that
+my <i>Cormorant</i> has made her goodly name, ay, and brought her commander
+a fair share of his credit, by her energy in bringing to an incredible
+number of those d&mdash;&mdash;d French sharks&mdash;beg pardon, but you know the
+pestilent breed. Well, we shall never agree upon the subject I fear.
+As for me, the smart of the salt air, the sting of the salt breeze,
+the fighting, the danger, they have got into my blood; and even now it
+sometimes comes over me that life will not be perfect life to me
+without the dancing boards under my feet and the free waves around me,
+and my jolly boys to lead to death or glory. Yet, could you but know
+it, this is the veriest treason, and I revoke the words a thousand
+times. You look amazed, and well you may: ah, I have much to tell you!
+But I take it you will not care to hear all I have been able to
+achieve on the basis of your munificent help at my&mdash;ahem, unworthy
+trade."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no," said Sir Adrian smiling, "I can quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> imagine it, and
+imagine it without enthusiasm, though, perhaps, as you say, such
+things have to be. But I should like to know of these present
+circumstances, these prospects which make you look so happy. No doubt
+the fruits of peace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose in one way they may be called so. Yet without the war
+and your helping hand they would even now hang as far from me as the
+grapes from the fox.&mdash;When I arrived in England three months after the
+peace had been signed, I had accumulated in the books of certain banks
+a tolerably respectable account, to the credit of a certain person,
+whose name, oddly enough, you on one or two occasions have applied,
+absently, to Captain Jack Smith. I was, I will own, already feeling
+inclined to discuss with myself the propriety of assuming the name in
+question, when, there came something in my way of which I shall tell
+you presently; which something has made me resolve to remain Captain
+Smith for some time longer. The old <i>Cormorant</i> lay at Bristol, and
+being too big for this new purpose, I sold her. It was like cutting
+off a limb. I loved every plank of her; knew every frisk of her! She
+served me well to the end, for she fetched her value&mdash;almost. Next,
+having time on my hands, I bethought myself of seeing again a little
+of the world; and when I tell you that I drove over to Bath, you may
+perhaps begin to see what I am coming to."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian suddenly turned in his chair to face his friend again, with
+a look of singular attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, not exactly, and yet&mdash;unless&mdash;? Pshaw! impossible&mdash;&mdash;!"
+upon which lucid commentary he stopped, gazing with anxious inquiry
+into Captain Jack's smiling eyes. "Ah, I believe you have just a
+glimmer of the truth with that confounded perspicacity of yours,"
+saying which the sailor laughed and blushed not unbecomingly. "This is
+how it came about: I had transactions with old John Harewood, the
+banker, in Bristol, transactions advantageous to both sides, but
+perhaps most to him&mdash;sly old dog. At any rate, the old fellow took a
+monstrous fancy to me, over his claret, and when I mentioned Bath,
+recommended me to call upon his wife (a very fine dame, who prefers
+the fashion of the Spa to the business of Bristol, and consequently
+lives as much in the former place as good John Harewood will allow).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+Well, you wonder at my looking prosperous and happy. Listen, for here
+is the <i>hic</i>: At Lady Maria Harewood's I met one who, if I mistake
+not, is of your kin. Already, then, somewhere at the back of my memory
+dwelt the name of Savenaye&mdash;&mdash;Halloa, bless me! I have surely said
+nothing to&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man broke off, disconcerted. Sir Adrian's face had become
+unwontedly clouded, but he waved the speaker on impatiently: "No, no,
+I am surprised, of course, only surprised; never mind me, my thoughts
+wandered&mdash;please go on. So you have met her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, that I have! Now it is no use beating about the bush. You who
+know her&mdash;you do know her of course&mdash;will jump at once to the only
+possible conclusion. Ah, Adrian!" Captain Jack pursued, pacing
+enthusiastically about, "I have been no saint, and no doubt I have
+fancied myself as a lover once or twice ere this; but to see that
+girl, sir, means a change in a man's life: to have met the light of
+those sweet eyes is to love, to love in reality. It is to feel ashamed
+of the idiotic make-believes of former loves. To love her, even in
+vague hope, is to be glorious already; and, by George, to have her
+troth, is to be&mdash;I cannot say what ... to be what I am now!"</p>
+
+<p>The lover's face was illumined; he walked the room like one treading
+on air as the joy within him found its voice in words.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian listened with an extraordinary tightness at his heart. He
+had loved one woman even so; that love was still with him, as the
+scent clings to the phial; but the sight of this young, joyful love
+made him feel old in that hour&mdash;old as he had never realised before.
+There was no room in his being for such love again. And yet...? There
+was a tremulous anxiety in the question he put, after a short pause.
+"There are <i>two</i> Demoiselles de Savenaye, Jack; which is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack halted, turned on his heels, and exclaimed
+enthusiastically: "To me there is but one&mdash;one woman in the
+world&mdash;Madeleine!" His look met that of Sir Adrian in full, and even
+in the midst of his own self-centred mood he could not fail to notice
+the transient gleam that shot in the elder's eyes, and the sudden
+relaxation of his features. He pondered for a moment or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> two, scanning
+the while the countenance of the recluse; then a smile lighted up his
+own bronzed face in a very sweet and winning way. "As her kinsman,
+have I your approval?" he asked and proceeded earnestly: "To tell the
+truth at once, I was looking to even more than your approval&mdash;to your
+support."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian's mood had undergone a change: as a breeze sweeping from a
+new quarter clears in a moment a darkening mist from the face of the
+earth, Captain Jack's answer had blown away for the nonce the
+atmosphere of misgiving that enveloped him. He answered promptly, and
+with warmth: "Being your friend, I am glad to know of this; being her
+kinsman, I may add, my dear <i>Hubert</i>"&mdash;there was just a tinge of
+hesitation, followed by a certain emphasis, on the change of name&mdash;"I
+promise to support you in your hopes, in so far as I have any
+influence; for power or right over my cousin I have none."</p>
+
+<p>The sailor threw himself down once more in his arm-chair; and, tapping
+his shining hessians with the stem of his long clay in smiling
+abstraction, began, with all a lover's egotism, to expatiate on the
+theme that filled his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a singular, an admirable, a never sufficiently-to-be-praised
+conjunction of affairs which has ultimately brought me near you when I
+was pursuing the Light o' my Heart, ruthlessly snatched away by a
+cunning and implacable dragon, known to you as Miss O'Donoghue. I say
+<i>dragon</i> in courtesy; I called her by better names before I realised
+what a service she was unconsciously rendering us by this sudden
+removal."</p>
+
+<p>"Known to me!" laughed Sir Adrian. "My own mother's sister!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I still further retract. Moreover, seeing how things have turned
+out, I must now regard her as an angel in disguise. Don't look so
+surprised! Has she not brought my love under your protection? I
+thought I was tolerably proof against the little god, but then he had
+never shot his arrows at me from between the long lashes of Madeleine
+de Savenaye. Oh, those eyes, Adrian! So unlike those southern eyes I
+have known so well, too well in other days, brilliant, hard,
+challenging battle from the first glance, and yet from the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+promising that surrender which is ever so speedy. Pah! no more of such
+memories. Before <i>her</i> blue eyes, on my first introduction, I
+felt&mdash;well, I felt as the novice does under the first broadside."</p>
+
+<p>The speaker looked dreamily into space, as if the delicious moment
+rose again panoramically before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he pursued, "that did me no harm, after all. Lady Maria
+Harewood, who, I have learned since, deals strongly in sentiment, and,
+being unfortunately debarred by circumstances from indulgence in the
+soothing luxury on her own behalf, loves to promote matches more
+poetical&mdash;she calls it more 'harmonious'&mdash;than her own very prosaic
+one, she, dear lady, was delighted with such a rarity as a bashful
+privateersman&mdash;her 'tame corsair,' as I heard her call your humble
+servant.&mdash;I was a hero, sir, a perfect hero of romance in the course
+of a few days! On the strength of this renown thrust upon me I found
+grace before the most adorable blue eyes; had words of sympathy from
+the sweetest lips, and smiles from the most bewitching little mouth in
+all the world. So you see I owe poor Lady Maria a good thought.... You
+laugh?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian was smiling, but all in benevolence, at the artlessness of
+this eager youth, who in all the unconscious glory of his looks and
+strength, ascribed the credit of his entrance into a maiden's heart to
+the virtue of a few irresponsible words of recommendation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! those were days! Everything went on smoothly, and I was debating
+with myself whether I would not, at once, boldly ask her to be the
+wife of Hubert Cochrane; though the casting of Jack Smith's skin would
+have necessitated the giving up of several of his free-trading
+engagements."</p>
+
+<p>"Free trading! You do not mean to say, man alive, that you have turned
+smuggler now!" interrupted Sir Adrian aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Smuggler," cried Jack with his frank laugh, "peace, I beg, friend!
+Miscall not a gentleman thus. Smuggler&mdash;pirate? I cut a pretty figure
+evidently in your worship's eyes. Lucky for me you never would be
+sworn as a magistrate, or where should I be ... and you too, between
+duty and friendship?&mdash;But to proceed: I was about, as I have said, to
+give that up for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> reasons I mentioned, when, upon a certain fine
+evening, I crossed the path of one of the most masterful old maids I
+have ever seen, or even heard of; and, would you believe it?"&mdash;this
+with a quizzical look at his host's grave face&mdash;"this misguided old
+lady took such a violent dislike to me at first sight, and expressed
+it so thoroughly well, that, hang me if I was not completely brought
+to. And all for escorting my dear one from Lady Maria's house to her
+own! Well, the walk was worth it&mdash;though the old crocodile was on the
+watch for us, ready to snap; had got wind of the secret, somehow, a
+secret unspoken even between us two. This first and last interview
+took place on the flags, in front of No. 17 Camden Place, Bath. Oh! It
+was a very one-sided affair from the beginning, and ended abruptly in
+a door being banged in my face. Then I heard about Miss O'Donoghue's
+peculiarities in the direction of exclusiveness. And then, also, oddly
+enough, for the first time, of the great fortune going with my
+Madeleine's hand. Of course I saw it all, and, I may say, forgave the
+old lady. In short, I realised that, in Miss O'Donoghue's mind, I am
+nothing but an unprincipled fortune-seeker and adventurer. Now you,
+Adrian, can vouch that, whatever my faults, I am none such."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian threw a quiet glance at his friend, whose eyes sparkled as
+they met it.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows," continued the latter, "that all I care for, concerning
+the money, is that <i>she</i> may have it. This last venture, the biggest
+and most difficult of all, I then decided to undertake, that I might
+be the fitter mate for the heiress&mdash;bless her! Oh, Adrian, man, could
+you have seen her sweet tearful face that night, you would understand
+that I could not rest upon such a parting. In the dawn of the next
+morning I was in the street&mdash;not so much upon the chance of meeting,
+though I knew that such sweetness would have now to be all stolen&mdash;but
+to watch her door, her window; a lover's trick, rewarded by lover's
+luck! Leaning on the railings, through the cold mist (cold it was,
+though I never felt it, but I mind me now how the icicles broke under
+my hand), what should I see, before even the church-bells had set to
+chiming, or the yawning sluts to pull the kitchen curtains, but a
+bloated monster of a coach, dragging and sliding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> up the street to
+halt at her very door. Then out came the beldam herself, and two
+muffled-up slender things&mdash;my Madeleine one of course; but I had a
+regular turn at sight of them, for I swear I could not tell which was
+which! Off rattled the chariot at a smart pace; and there I stood,
+friend, feeling as if my heart was tied behind with the trunks."</p>
+
+<p>The sailor laughed, ran his fingers through his curls and stamped in
+lively recollection.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to be drawn from their landlady. But I am not the man to
+allow a prize to be snatched from under my very nose. So,
+anathematising Miss O'Donoghue's family-tree, root, stem, and
+branch&mdash;except that most lovely off-shoot I mean to transplant (you
+will forgive this heat of blood; it was clearing for action so to
+speak)&mdash;I ran out and overtook the ostler whom I had seen putting the
+finishing touch to the lashing of boxes behind! <i>'Gloucester!'</i> says
+he. The word was worth the guinea it cost me, a hundred times
+over.&mdash;In less than an hour I was in the saddle, ready for pursuit,
+cantering boot to boot with my man&mdash;a trusty fellow who knows how to
+hold his tongue, and can sit a horse in the bargain. Neither at
+Gloucester, nor the next day, up to Worcester, could we succeed in
+doing more than keep our fugitives in view. When they had alighted at
+one inn, as ascertained by my squire, we patronised the opposition
+hostelry, and the ensuing morning cantered steadily in pursuit, on
+<i>our</i> new post-horses half an hour after they had rumbled away with
+<i>their</i> relays. But the evening of our arrival at Worcester, my fellow
+found out, at last, what the next stage was to be, and&mdash;clever chap,
+he lost nothing for his sharpness&mdash;that the Three Kings' Heads had
+been recommended to the old lady as the best house in Shrewsbury. This
+time we took the lead, and on to Shrewsbury, and were at the glorious
+old Kings' Heads (I in a private room, tight as wax) a good couple of
+hours before the chariot made its appearance. And there, man, there!
+my pretty one and I met again!"</p>
+
+<p>"That was, no doubt," put in Sir Adrian, in his gentle, indulgent way,
+"what made the Kings' Heads so glorious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay. Right! And yet it was but a few seconds, on the stair, under a
+smoky lamp, but her beauty filled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> the landing with radiance as her
+kindness did my soul.&mdash;It was but for a moment, all blessed moment,
+too brief, alas! Ah, Adrian, friend&mdash;old hermit in your cell&mdash;<i>you</i>
+have never known life, you who have never tasted a moment such as
+that! Then we started apart: there was a noise below, and she had only
+time to whisper that she was on her way to Pulwick to some
+relatives&mdash;had only heard it that very day&mdash;when steps came up the
+stairs, creaking. With a last promise, a last word of love, I leaped
+back into my own chamber, there to see (through the chink between door
+and post) the untimely old mischief-maker herself pass slowly, sour
+and solemn, towards her apartments, leaning upon her other niece's
+arm. How could I have thought <i>that</i> baggage like my princess?
+Handsome, if you will; but, with her saucy eye, her raven head, her
+brown cheek, no more to be compared to my stately lily than brass to
+gold!"</p>
+
+<p>The host listening wonderingly, his eyes fixed with kindly gravity
+upon the speaker as he rattled on, here gave a slight start, all
+unnoticed of his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning, when I had seen the coach and its precious freight
+move on once more northward, I began the retreat south, hugging myself
+upon luck and success. I had business in Salcombe&mdash;perhaps you may
+have heard of the Salcombe schooners&mdash;in connection with the fitting
+out of that sailing wonder, the <i>Peregrine</i>. And so," concluded
+Captain Jack, laughing again in exuberance of joy, "you may possibly
+guess one of the reasons that has brought her and me round by your
+island."</p>
+
+<p>There ensued a long silence, filled with thoughts, equally pressing
+though of widely different complexion, on either side of the hearth.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>During the meal, which was presently set forth and proclaimed ready by
+Ren&eacute;, the talk, as was natural in that watchful attendant's presence,
+ran only on general topics, and was in consequence fitful and
+unspontaneous. But when the two men, for all their difference of age,
+temper, and pursuits so strongly, yet so oddly united in sympathy,
+were once more alone, they naturally fell back under the influence of
+the more engrossing strain of reflection. Again there was silence,
+while each mused,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> gazing into space and vaguely listening to the
+plash of high water under the window.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been a strong motive," said Sir Adrian, after his dreamy
+fashion, like one thinking aloud, "to induce a man like you to abandon
+his honourable name."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack flushed at these words, drew his elbows from the table,
+and shot a keen, inquiring glance at his friend, which, however, fell
+promptly before the latter's unconscious gaze and was succeeded by one
+of reflective melancholy. Then, with a slight sigh, he raised his
+glass to the lamp, and while peering abstractedly through the ruby,
+"The story of turning my back upon my house," he said musingly,
+"shaking its very dust off my feet, so to speak, and starting life
+afresh unbeholden to my father (even for what he could not take away
+from me&mdash;my own name),&mdash;is a simple affair, although pitiful enough
+perhaps. But memories of family wrongs and family quarrels are of
+their nature painful; and, as I am a mirth-loving fellow, I hate to
+bring them upon me. But perhaps it has occurred to you that I may have
+brought some disgrace upon the name I have forsaken."</p>
+
+<p>"I never allowed myself to think so," said Sir Adrian, surprised.
+"Your very presence by my fireside is proof of it."</p>
+
+<p>Again the captain scrutinised his host; then with a little laugh:
+"Pardon me," he cried, "with another man one might accept that likely
+proof and be flattered. But with you? why, I believe I know you too
+well not to feel sure that you would have received me as kindly and
+unreservedly, no matter what my past if only you thought that I had
+repented; that you would forgive even a <i>crime</i> regretted; and having
+forgiven, forget.... But, to resume, you will believe me when I say
+that there was nothing of the sort. No," he went on, with a musing
+air, "but I could tell you of a boy, disliked at home for his stubborn
+spirit, and one day thrashed, thrashed mercilessly&mdash;at a time when he
+had thought he had reached to the pride of man's estate, thrashed by
+his own father, and for no just cause.... Oh, Adrian, it is a terrible
+thing to have put such resentment into a lad's heart." He rose as he
+spoke, and placed himself before the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>"If ever I have sons," he added after a pause, and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> the words his
+whole handsome face relaxed, and became suffused with a tender glow,
+"I would rather cut my right hand off than raise such a spirit in
+them. Well, I daresay you can guess the rest; I will even tell you in
+a few words, and then dismiss the subject.&mdash;I have always had a
+certain shrewdness at the bottom of my recklessness. Now there was a
+cousin of the family, who had taken to commerce in Liverpool, and who
+was therefore despised, ignored and insulted by us gentry of the
+Shaws. So when I packed my bundle, and walked out of the park gate, I
+thought of him; and two days later I presented myself at his mansion
+in Rodney Street, Liverpool. I told him my name, whereat he scowled;
+but he was promptly brought round upon hearing of my firm
+determination to renounce it and all relations with my father's house
+for ever, and of my reasons for this resolve, which he found
+excellent. I could not have lighted upon a better man. He hated my
+family as heartily as even I could wish, and readily, out of spite to
+them, undertook to aid me. He was a most enterprising scoundrel, had a
+share in half a dozen floating ventures. I expressed a desire for life
+on the ocean wave, and he started me merrily as his nephew, Jack
+Smith, to learn the business on a slaver of his. The 'ebony trade,'
+you know, was all the go then, Adrian. Many great gentlemen in
+Lancashire had shares in it. Now it is considered low. To say true, a
+year of it was more than enough for me&mdash;too much! It sickened me. My
+uncle laughed when I demurred at a second journey, but to humour me,
+as I had learned something of the sailing trade, he found me another
+berth, on board a privateer, the <i>St. Nicholas</i>. My fortune was made
+from the moment I set foot on that lucky ship, as you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have never seen your father since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither father, nor brothers, nor any of my kin, save the cousin in
+question. All I know is that my father is dead&mdash;that he disinherited
+me expressly in the event of my being still in the flesh; my eldest
+brother reigns; many of us are scattered, God knows where. And my
+mother"&mdash;the sailor's voice changed slightly&mdash;"my mother lives in her
+own house, with some of the younger ones. So much I have ascertained
+quite recently. She believes me dead, of course. Oh, it will be a good
+day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> Adrian, when I can come back to her, independent, prosperous,
+bringing my beautiful bride with me!... But until I can resume my name
+in all freedom, this cannot be."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, my dear fellow, these further risks and adventures? Surely,
+even at your showing you have enough of this world's goods; why not
+come forward, now, at once, openly? I will introduce you, as soon as
+may be, in your real character, for the sake of your mother&mdash;of
+Madeleine herself."</p>
+
+<p>The sailor shook his head, tempted yet determined.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not free to do so. I have given my word; my honour is engaged,"
+he said. Then abruptly asked: "Have you ever heard of guinea
+smuggling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Guinea smuggling! No," said Sir Adrian, his amazement giving way to
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"No? You surprise me. You who are, or were, I understand, a student of
+philosophical matters, freedom of exchange, and international
+intercourse and the rest of it&mdash;things we never shall have so long as
+governments want money, I am thinking.&mdash;However, this guinea smuggling
+is a comparatively new business. Now, <i>I</i> don't know anything about
+the theory; but I know this much of the practice that, while our
+preventive service won't let guineas pass the Channel (as goods) this
+year, somebody on the other side is devilish anxious to have them at
+almost any cost. And the cost, you know, is heavy, for the risk of
+confiscation is great. Well, your banker or your rich man will not
+trust his bullion to your common free trader&mdash;he is not quite such a
+fool."</p>
+
+<p>"No," put in Sir Adrian, as the other paused on this mocking
+proposition. "In the old days, when I was busy in promoting the
+Savenaye expedition, I came across many of that gentry, and I cannot
+mind a case where they could have been trusted with such a freight.
+But perhaps," he added with a small smile, "the standard may be higher
+now."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack grinned appreciatively. "That is where the 'likes of me'
+comes in. I will confess this not to be my first attempt. It is known
+that I am one of the few whose word is warranty. What is more, as I
+have said, it is known that I have the luck. Thus, even if I could
+bring my own name into such a trade, I would not; it would be the
+height of folly to change now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For all his disapproval Sir Adrian could not repress a look of
+amusement. "I verily believe, Jack," he said, shaking his head, "that
+you are as superstitious yourself as the best of them!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to make a good thing out of it," said Jack, evasively. "And
+even with all that is lovely to keep me on shore, I would hardly give
+it up, if I could. As things stand I could not if I would. Do not
+condemn me, Adrian,&mdash;that would be fatal to my hopes&mdash;nay, I actually
+want your help."</p>
+
+<p>"I would you were out of it," reiterated Sir Adrian; "it takes so
+little to turn the current of a man's life when he seems to be making
+straight for happiness. As to the morals of it, I fail, I must admit,
+to perceive any wrong in smuggling, at least in the abstract, except
+that a certain kind of moral teaches that all is wrong that is against
+the law. And yet so many of our laws are so ferocious and inept, and
+as such the very cause of so much going wrong that might otherwise go
+well; so many of those who administer them are themselves so ferocious
+and inept, that the mere fact of a pursuit being unlawful is no real
+condemnation in my eyes. But, as you know, Jack, those who place
+themselves above some laws almost invariably renounce all. If you are
+hanged for stealing a horse, or breaking some fiscal law and hanged
+for killing a man, the tendency, under stress of circumstances is
+obvious. Aye, have we not a proverb about it: as well be hanged for a
+sheep as for a lamb?... There are gruesome stories about your free
+traders&mdash;and gruesome endings to them. I well remember, in my young
+days, the clanking gibbet on the sands near Preston and the three
+tarred and iron-riveted carcases hanging, each in its chains, with the
+perpetual guard of carrion crows.... Hanging in chains is still on the
+statute book, I believe. But I'll stop my croaking now. You are not
+one to be drawn into brutal ways; nor one, I fear, to be frightened
+into prudence. Nevertheless," laughing quietly, "I am curious to know
+in what way you expect help from me, in practice. Do you, seriously,
+want me to embark actually on a smuggling expedition?&mdash;I demur, my
+dear fellow."</p>
+
+<p>Obviously relieved of some anxiety, the other burst out laughing.
+"Never fear! I know your dislike to bilge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> water too well. I
+appreciate too well also your comfortable surroundings," he returned,
+seating himself once more complacently in his arm-chair, "much as I
+should love your company on board my pleasure ship&mdash;for, if you
+please, the <i>Peregrine</i> is no smuggling lugger, but professes to be a
+yacht. Still, you can be of help for all that, and without lifting
+even a finger to promote this illicit trade. You may ignore it
+completely, and yet you will render me incalculable service, provided
+you do not debar me from paying you a few more visits in your
+solitude, and give me the range of your caves and cellars."</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome enough," said the recluse. "I trust it may end as
+well as it promises." And, after a pause, "Madeleine does not know the
+nature of your present pursuit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oddly enough, and happily (for our moments of interview are short, as
+you may imagine) she is not curious on the subject. I don't know what
+notions the old Lady Maria may have put into her head about me. I
+think she believes that I am engaged on some secret political intrigue
+and approves of such. At least I gathered as much from her sympathetic
+reticence; and, between ourselves, I am beginning to believe it
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"How is that?" asked the listener, moved to fresh astonishment by this
+new departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I may tell you, who not only can be as silent as the tomb, but
+really have a right to know, since you are tacitly of the conspiracy.
+This time the transaction is to be with some official of the French
+Court. They want the metal, and yet wish to have it secretly. What
+their motive may be is food for reflection if you like, but it is no
+business of mine. And, besides the fact that one journey will suffice
+for a sum which at the previous rate would have required half a score,
+all the trouble and uncertainty of landing are disposed of; at any
+rate, I am, when all is ready, to be met by a government vessel, get
+my <i>quid pro quo</i> as will be settled, and there the matter is to end."</p>
+
+<p>"A curious expedition," mused Sir Adrian.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the sailor, "my last will be the best. By the way, will
+you embark a few bags with me? I will take no commission."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian could not help laughing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you; I have no wish to launch any more of my patrimony on
+ventures&mdash;since it would be of no service to you. I had almost as lief
+you had made use of my old crow's nest without letting me into the ins
+and outs of your projects. But, be it as it may, it is yours, night
+and day. Your visits I shall take as being for me."</p>
+
+<p>"What a man you are, upon my soul, Sir Adrian!" cried Captain Jack,
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Later on, when the "shaking down" hour, in Captain Jack's phraseology,
+had sounded, and the two friends separated to rest, the young man
+refused the offer, dictated by hospitality, of his host's own bedroom.
+Sir Adrian did not press the point, and, leaving his guest at liberty
+to enjoy the couch arranged by Ren&eacute; in a corner under the bookshelves,
+even as when Mademoiselle de Savenaye had been the guest of the peel,
+himself retired to that now hallowed apartment.</p>
+
+<p>"Odd fellow, that," soliloquised Captain Jack, as, slowly divesting
+himself, he paced about the long room and, in the midst of roseate
+reflections, examined his curious abode. "Withal, as good as ever
+stepped. It was a fine day's work our old <i>St. Nicholas</i> did, about
+this time eight years ago. Rather unlike a crowded battery deck,
+this," looking from the solemn books to the glinting organ pipes, and
+conscious of the great silence. "As for me, I should go crazy by
+myself here. But it suits him. Queer fish!" again ruminated the young
+sailor. "He hates no one and yet dislikes almost everybody, except
+that funny little Frenchy and me. Whereas <i>I</i> like every man I
+meet&mdash;unless I detest him!... My beautiful plumage!" this whilst
+carefully folding the superfine coat and thereon the endless silken
+stock. "Now there's a fellow who does not care a hang for any woman
+under the sun, and yet enters into another chap's love affairs as if
+he understood it all. I believe it will make him happy to win my cause
+with Madeleine. I wish one could do something for <i>his</i> happiness. It
+is absurd, you know," as though apostrophising an objector, "a man
+can't be happy without a woman. And yet again, my good Jack, you never
+thought that before you met Madeleine. He has not met his Madeleine,
+that's what it means. Where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> ignorance is bliss.... Friend Adrian! Let
+us console ourselves and call you ignorantly happy, in your old crow's
+nest. You have not stocked it so badly either.&mdash;For all your ignorance
+in love, you have a pretty taste in liquor."</p>
+
+<p>So thinking, he poured himself a last glass of his host's wine, which
+he held for a moment in smiling cogitation, looking, with the mind's
+eye, through the thick walls of the keep, across the cold mist-covered
+sands of Scarthey and again through the warm and scented air of a
+certain room (imagination pictured) where Madeleine must at that hour
+lie in her slumber. After a moment of silent adoration he sent a
+rapturous kiss landwards and tossed his glass with a last toast:</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine, my sweet! To your softly closed lids."</p>
+
+<p>And again Captain Jack fell to telling over the precious tale of that
+morning's interview, furtively secured, by that lover's luck he so
+dutifully blessed, under the cluster of Scotch firs near the grey and
+crumbling boundary walls of Pulwick Park.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>"LOVE GILDS THE SCENE AND WOMAN GUIDES THE PLOT"</h3>
+
+
+<p>Tanty's wrath upon discovering Sir Adrian's departure was all the
+greater because she could extort no real explanation from Rupert, and
+because her attacks rebounded, as it were, from the polished surface
+he exposed to them on every side. Madeleine's indifference, and
+Molly's apparently reckless spirits, further discomposed her during
+supper; and upon the latter young lady's disappearance after the meal,
+it was as much as she could do to finish her nightly game of patience
+before mounting to seek her with the purpose of relieving her
+overcharged feelings, and procuring what enlightenment she might.</p>
+
+<p>The unwonted spectacle of the saucy damsel in tears made Miss
+O'Donoghue halt upon the threshold, the hot wind of anger upon which
+she seemed to be propelled into the room falling into sudden
+nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no mistake about it. Molly was weeping; so
+energetically indeed, with such a passion of tears and sobs, that the
+noise of Tanty's tumultuous entrance fell unheeded upon her ears.</p>
+
+<p>All her sympathies stirred within her, the old lady advanced to the
+girl with the intention of gathering her to her bosom. But as she drew
+near, the black and white of the open diary attracted her eye under
+the circle of lamplight, and being possessed of excellent long sight,
+she thought it no shame to utilise the same across her grand-niece's
+prostrate, heaving form, before making known her presence.</p>
+
+<p><i>"And so I sit and cry."</i></p>
+
+<p>Miss Molly was carrying out her programme with much precision, if
+indeed her attitude, prone along the table, could be described as
+sitting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue's eyes and mouth grew round, as with the expression of
+an outraged cockatoo she read and re-read the tell-tale phrases. Here
+was a complication she had not calculated upon.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear," she cried, clacking her tongue in disconsolate fashion,
+so soon as she could get her breath. "What is the meaning of this, my
+poor girl?"</p>
+
+<p>Molly leaped to her feet, and turning a blazing, disfigured
+countenance upon her relative, exclaimed with more energy than
+politeness: "Good gracious, aunt, what <i>do</i> you want?"</p>
+
+<p>Then catching sight of the open diary, she looked suspiciously from it
+to her visitor, and closed it with a hasty hand. But Miss O'Donoghue's
+next words settled the doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to be sure, what a state you have put yourself into," she
+pursued in genuine distress. "What has happened then between you and
+that fellow, whom I declare I begin to believe as crazy as Rupert
+says, that you should be crying your eyes out over his going back to
+his island?&mdash;you that I thought could not shed a tear if you tried.
+Nothing left but to sit and cry, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"So you have been reading my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly,
+stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my
+private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness,
+relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of
+rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this
+disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the
+world. I wish I were dead, I do."</p>
+
+<p>Again Tanty opened her arms, and this time she did draw the stormy
+creature to a bosom, as warm and motherly as if all the joys of
+womanhood had not been withheld from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me all about it, my poor child." There was a distinct feeling of
+comfort in the grasp of the old arms, comfort in the very ring of the
+deep voice. Molly was not a secretive person by nature, and moreover
+she retained quite enough shrewdness, even in her unwonted break-down,
+to conjecture that with Tanty lay her sole hope of help. So rolling
+her dark head distractedly on the old maid's shoulder, the young maid
+narrated her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> tale of woe. Pressed by a pointed question here and
+there, Tanty soon collected a series of impressions of Molly's visit
+to Scarthey, that set her busy mind working upon a startlingly new
+line. It was her nature to jump at conclusions, and it was not strange
+that the girl's passionate display of grief should seem to be the
+unmistakable outcome of tenderer feelings than the wounded pride and
+disappointment which were in reality its sole motors.</p>
+
+<p>"I am convinced it is Rupert that is at the bottom of it," cried Molly
+at last, springing into uprightness again, and clenching her hands.
+"His one idea is to drive his brother permanently from his own
+home&mdash;and he <i>hates me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Tanty sat rigid with thought.</p>
+
+<p>So Molly was in love with Sir Adrian Landale, and he&mdash;who knows&mdash;was
+in love with her too; or if not with her, with her likeness to her
+mother, and that was much the same thing when all was said and done.
+Could anything be more suitable, more fortunate? Could ever two birds
+be killed with one stone with more complete felicity than in this
+settling of the two people she most loved upon earth? Poor pretty
+Molly! The old lady's heart grew very tender over the girl who now
+stood half sullenly, half bashfully averting her swollen face; five
+days ago she had not known her handsome cousin, and now she was
+breaking her heart for him.</p>
+
+<p>It might be, indeed, as she said, that they had to thank Rupert for
+this&mdash;and off flew Tanty's mind upon another tangent. Rupert was very
+deep, there could be no doubt of that; he was anxious enough to keep
+Adrian away from them all; what would it be then when it came to a
+question of his marriage?</p>
+
+<p>Tanty, with the delightful optimism that seventy years' experience had
+failed to damp, here became confident of the approach of her younger
+nephew's complete discomfiture, and in the cheering contemplation of
+that event chuckled so unctuously that Molly looked at her amazed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is well for you, my dear," said the old lady, rising and wagging
+her head with an air of enigmatic resolution, "that you have got an
+aunt."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Some two days later, Ren&eacute;, sitting upon a ledge of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> old Scarthey
+wall, in the spare sunshine which this still, winter's noon shone
+pearl-like through a universal mist, busy mending a net, to the tune
+of a melancholy, inward whistle, heard up above the licking of the
+waves all around him and the whimper of the seagulls overhead, the
+beat of steady oars approaching from land side.</p>
+
+<p>Starting to his feet, the little man, in vague expectation, ran to a
+point of vantage from which to scan the tideway; after a few seconds'
+investigation he turned tail, dashed into the ruins, up the steps, and
+burst open the door of the sitting-room, calling upon his master with
+a scared expression of astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack, poring over a map, his pipe sticking rakishly out of one
+side of his mouth, looked up amused at the Frenchman's evident
+excitement, while Adrian, who had been busy with the uppermost row of
+books upon his west wall, looked down from his ladder perch, with the
+pessimist's constitutional expectation of evil growing upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>"One comes in a boat," ejaculated Ren&eacute;, "and I thought I ought to warn
+his honour, if his honour will give himself the trouble to look out."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be the devil to frighten Renny in this fashion," muttered
+Captain Jack as distinctly as the clench of his teeth upon the pipe
+would allow him. Sir Adrian paled a little, he began to descend his
+ladder, mechanically flicking the dust from his cuffs.</p>
+
+<p>"Your honour," said Ren&eacute;, drawing to the window and looking out
+cautiously, "I have not yet seen her, but I believe it is old
+miss&mdash;the aunt of your honour and these ladies."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack's pipe fell from his dropping jaw and was broken into
+many fragments as he leaped to his feet with an elasticity of limb and
+a richness of expletive which of themselves would have betrayed his
+calling.</p>
+
+<p>Flinging his arm across one of Adrian's shoulders he peeped across the
+other out of the window, with an alarm half mocking, half genuine.</p>
+
+<p>"The devil it is, friend Renny," he cried, drawing back and running
+his hands with an exaggerated gesture of despair through his brown
+curls; "Adrian, all is lost unless you hide me."</p>
+
+<p>"My aunt here, and alone," exclaimed Adrian, retreat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>ing from the
+window perturbed enough himself, "I must go down to meet her. Pray God
+it is no ill news! Hurry, Renny, clear these glasses away."</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of all that's sacred, clear me away first!" interposed
+Captain Jack, this time with a real urgency; through the open lattice
+came the sound of the grating of the boat's keel upon the sand and a
+vigorous hail from a masculine throat&mdash;"Ahoy, Renny Potter, ahoy!"
+"Adrian, this is a matter of life and death to my hopes, hide me in
+your lowest dungeon for goodness' sake; I do not know my way about
+your ruins, and I am convinced the old lady will nose me out like a
+badger."</p>
+
+<p>There was no time for explanation; Sir Adrian made a sign to Ren&eacute;, who
+highly enjoying the situation and grinning from ear to ear, was
+already volunteering to "well hide Mr. the Captain," and the pair
+disappeared with much celerity into the inner room, while Adrian,
+unable to afford himself further preparation, hurried down the great
+stairs to meet this unexpected guest.</p>
+
+<p>He emerged bareheaded into the curious mist which hung pall-like upon
+the outer world, and seemed to combine the opposite elements of glare
+and dulness, just as Tanty, aided by the stalwart arm of the boatman,
+who had rowed her across, succeeded in dragging her rheumatic limbs up
+the last bit of ascent to the door of the keep.</p>
+
+<p>She halted, disengaged herself, and puffing and blowing surveyed her
+nephew with a stony gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear aunt," cried Adrian, "nothing has happened, I trust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sufficient has already happened, nephew, I should <i>hope</i>," retorted
+the old lady with extreme dignity, "sufficient to make me desire to
+confer with you most seriously. I thank you, young man," turning to
+William Shearman who stood on one side, his eager gaze upon "the
+master," ready to pull his forelock so soon as he could catch his eye,
+"be here again in an hour, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will allow me to escort you myself," exclaimed Adrian, rising
+to the situation, "and I hope there need be no hurry so long as
+daylight lasts&mdash;Good-morning, Will, I am glad the new craft is a
+success&mdash;you need not wait. Tanty, take my arm, I beg, the steps are
+steep and rough."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gripping her nephew's arm with her bony old woman's hand, Miss
+O'Donoghue began a laborious ascent, pausing every five steps to
+breathe stertorously and reproachfully, and look round upon the
+sandstone walls with supreme disdain; but this was nothing to the air
+with which, when at last installed upon a high hard chair, in the
+sitting-room (having sternly refused the easy one Sir Adrian humbly
+proffered), she deliberately proceeded to survey the scene. In truth,
+the neatness that usually characterised Adrian's surroundings was
+conspicuously absent from them, just then.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three maps lay overlapping each other upon the table beside the
+tray with its flagon of amber ale, which had formed the captain's
+morning draught; and the soiled glass, the fragments of his pipe, and
+its half-burnt contents lay strewn about the prostrate chair which
+that lively individual had upset in his agitation. Adrian's ladder,
+the books he had been handling and had not replaced, the white ash of
+the dying fire, all contributed to the unwonted aspect of somewhat
+melancholy disorder; worse than all, the fumes of the strong tobacco
+which the sailor liked to smoke in his secluded moments hung rank,
+despite the open window, upon the absolute motionlessness of the
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty snorted and sniffed, while Adrian, after picking up the chair,
+began to almost unconsciously refold the maps, his eyes fixed
+wonderingly upon his visitor's face.</p>
+
+<p>This latter delivered herself at length of some of the indignation
+that was choking her, in abrupt disjointed sentences, as if she were
+uncorking so many bottles.</p>
+
+<p>"Well I'm sure, nephew, I am not surprised at your <i>extraordinary</i>
+behaviour, and if this is the style you prefer to live in&mdash;style, did
+I say?&mdash;sty would be more appropriate. Of course it is only what I
+have been led to expect, but I must say I was ill prepared to be
+treated by you with actual disrespect. My sister's child and I your
+guest, not to speak of your aunt, and you your mother's son, and her
+host besides! It is a slap in the face, Adrian, a slap in the face
+which has been a very bitter pill to have to swallow, I assure you&mdash;I
+may say without exaggeration, in fact, that it has cut me to the
+quick."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely," cried the nephew, laughing with gentle indulgence at
+this complicated indictment, "surely you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> cannot suppose I would have
+been willingly guilty of the smallest disrespect to you. I am a most
+unfortunate man, most unfortunately situated, and if I have offended,
+it is, you must believe, unwittingly and unavoidably. But you got my
+letter&mdash;I made my motives clear to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I got your letter yesterday," responded Tanty, not at all
+softened, "and a more idiotic production from a man of your
+attainments, allow me to remark, I never read. Adrian, you are making
+a perfect fool of yourself, and <i>you cannot afford it</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear you will never really understand my position," murmured Adrian
+hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty rattled her large green umbrella upon the floor with a violence
+that made her nephew start, then turned upon him a countenance
+inflamed with righteous anger.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only three days ago since I gave you fully my view of the
+situation," she remarked, "you were good enough at the time to admit
+that it was a remarkably well-balanced one. I should be glad if you
+will explain in what manner your position could have changed in the
+space of just three hours after, to lead you to rush back to your
+island, really as if you were a mole or a wild Indian, or some other
+strange animal that could not bear civilised society, without even so
+much as a good-bye to me, or to your cousins either? What is
+that?&mdash;you say you wrote&mdash;oh, ay&mdash;you wrote&mdash;to Molly as well as to
+me; rigmaroles, my dear nephew, mere absurd statements that have not a
+grain of truth in them, that do not hold water for an instant. You are
+not made for the world forsooth, nor the world for you! and if that is
+not flying in the face of your Creator, and wanting to know better
+than Providence!&mdash;And then you say, 'you cast a gloom by your mere
+presence.' Fiddle-de-dee! It was not much in the way of gloom that
+Molly brought back with her from her three days' visit to you&mdash;or if
+that is gloom&mdash;well, the more your presence casts of it the
+better&mdash;that is all I can say. Ah, but you should have seen her, poor
+child, after you went away in that heartless manner and you had
+removed yourself and your shadow, and your precious gloom&mdash;if you
+could have seen how unhappy she has been!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" exclaimed the man with a paling face, "what are you
+saying?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Only the truth, sir&mdash;Molly is breaking her heart because of your base
+desertion of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Good God," muttered Adrian again, rose up stiffly in a sort of
+horrified astonishment and then sat down again and passed his hand
+over his forehead like a man striving to awaken from a painful dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Adrian, don't be more of a fool than you can possibly help!"
+cried his relative, exasperated beyond all expression by his
+inarticulate distress. "You are so busy contemplating all sorts of
+absurdities miles away that I verily believe you cannot see an inch
+beyond your nose. My gracious! what is there to be so astonished at?
+How did you behave to the poor innocent from the very instant she
+crossed your threshold? Fact is, you have been a regular gay Lothario.
+Did you not"&mdash;cried Tanty, starting again upon her fine vein of
+metaphor&mdash;"did you not deliberately hold the cup of love to those
+young lips only to nip it in the bud? The girl is not a stock or a
+stone. You are a handsome man, Adrian, and the long and the short of
+it is, those who play with fire must reap as they have sown."</p>
+
+<p>Tanty, who had been holding forth with the rapidity of a loose
+windmill in a hurricane, here found herself forced to pause and take
+breath; which she did, fanning herself with much energy, a triumphant
+consciousness of the unimpeachability of her logic written upon her
+heated countenance. But Adrian still stared at her with the same
+incredulous dismay; looking indeed as little like a gay Lothario as it
+was possible, even for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean," he said at last, in slow broken sentences, as his mind
+wrestled with the strange tidings; "am I to understand that Molly,
+that bright beautiful creature, has been made unhappy through me? Oh,
+my dear Tanty," striving with a laugh, "the idea is too absurd, I am
+old enough to be her father, you know&mdash;what evidence can you have for
+a statement so distressing, so extraordinary."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not quite in my dotage yet," quoth Tanty, drily; "neither am I
+in the habit of making unfounded assertions, nephew. I have heard what
+the girl has said with her own lips, I have read what she has written
+in her diary; she has sobbed and cried over your cruelty in these very
+arms&mdash;I don't know what further evidence&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Sir Adrian had started up again&mdash;"Molly crying, Molly crying for
+me&mdash;God help us all&mdash;C&eacute;cile's child, whom I would give my life to keep
+from trouble! Tanty, if this is true&mdash;it must be true since you say
+so, I hardly know myself what I am saying&mdash;then I am to blame, deeply
+to blame&mdash;and yet&mdash;I have not said one word to the child&mdash;did
+nothing...." here he paused and a deep flush overspread his face to
+the roots of his hair; "except indeed in the first moment of her
+arrival&mdash;when she came in upon me as I was lost in memories of the
+past&mdash;like the spirit of C&eacute;cile."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph," said Tanty, pointedly, "but then you see what you took for
+C&eacute;cile's spirit happened to be Molly in the flesh." She fixed her
+sharp eyes upon her nephew, who, struck into confusion by her words,
+seemed for the moment unable to answer. Then, as if satisfied with the
+impression produced, she folded her hands over the umbrella handle and
+observed in more placid tones than she had yet used:</p>
+
+<p>"And now we must see what is to be done."</p>
+
+<p>Adrian began to pace the room in greater perturbation.</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be done?" he repeated, "alas! what can be done? Tanty, you
+will believe me when I tell you that I should have cut off my right
+hand rather than brought this thing upon the child&mdash;but she is very
+young&mdash;the impression, thank heaven, cannot in the nature of things
+endure. She will meet some one worthy of her&mdash;with you, Tanty, kindest
+of hearts, I can safely trust her future. But that she should suffer
+now, and through me, that bright creature who flitted in upon my dark
+life, like some heaven-sent messenger&mdash;these are evil tidings. Tanty,
+you must take her away, you must distract her mind, you must tell her
+what a poor broken-down being I am, how little worthy of her sweet
+thoughts, and she will learn, soon learn, to forget me, to laugh at
+herself."</p>
+
+<p>Although addressing the old lady, he spoke like a man reasoning with
+himself, and the words dropped from his lips as if drawn from a very
+well of bitterness. Tanty listened to him in silence, but the tension
+of her whole frame betrayed that she was only gathering her forces for
+another explosion.</p>
+
+<p>When Adrian's voice ceased there was a moment's silence and then the
+storm burst; whisking herself out of her chair,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> the umbrella came
+into play once more. But though it was only to thump the table, it was
+evident Miss O'Donoghue would more willingly have laid it about the
+delinquent's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian, are you a man at all?" she ejaculated fiercely. Then with
+sudden deadly composure: "So <i>this</i> is the reparation you propose to
+make for the mischief you have wrought?"</p>
+
+<p>"In God's name!" cried he, goaded at length into some sort of
+despairing anger himself, "what would you have me do?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer came with the promptitude of a return shot:</p>
+
+<p>"Do? why marry her, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Marry her!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There was a breathless pause. Tanty, leaning forward across the table,
+crimson, agitated, yet triumphant; Adrian's white face blasted with
+astonishment. "Marry her," he echoed at length once more, in a whisper
+this time. Then with a groan: "This is madness!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue caught him up briskly. "Madness? My good fellow, not a
+bit of it; on the contrary, sanity, happiness, prosperity.&mdash;Adrian,
+don't stand staring at me like a stuck pig! Why, in the name of
+conscience, should not you marry? You are a young man still&mdash;pooh,
+pooh, what is forty!&mdash;you are a very fine-looking man, clever,
+romantic&mdash;hear me out, sir, please&mdash;<i>and you have made the child love
+you</i>. There you are again, as if you had a pain in your stomach; you
+would try the patience of Job! Why, I don't believe there is another
+man on earth that would not be wild with joy at the mere thought of
+having gained such a prize. A beautiful creature, with a heart of gold
+and a purse of gold to boot."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, heavens, aunt!" interrupted the man, passionately, "leave that
+question out of the reckoning. The one thing, the only thing, to
+consider is <i>her</i> happiness. You cannot make me believe it can be for
+her happiness that she should marry such as me."</p>
+
+<p>"And why shouldn't it be for her happiness?" answered the dauntless
+old lady. "Was not she happy enough with you here in this God-forsaken
+hole, with nothing but the tempest besides for company? Why should not
+she be happy, then, when you come back to your own good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> place? Would
+not you be <i>kind</i> to her?&mdash;would not you cherish her if she were your
+wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would I not be kind to her?&mdash;would I not cherish her?&mdash;would I
+not&mdash;&mdash;? My God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Adrian," cried Tanty, charmed at this unexpected disclosure of
+feeling and the accent with which it was delivered, "I declare you are
+as much in love with the girl as she is with you. Why, now you shall
+just come back with me to Pulwick this moment, and she shall tell you
+herself if she can find happiness with you or not. Oh&mdash;I will hear no
+more&mdash;your own heart, your feelings as a gentleman, as a man of
+honour, all point, my dear nephew, in the same direction. And if you
+neglect this warning voice you will be blind indeed to the call of
+duty. Come now, come back to your home, where the sweetest wife ever a
+man had awaits you. And when I shall see the children spring up around
+you, Adrian, then God will have granted my last wish, and I shall die
+in peace.... There, there, I am an old fool, but when the heart is
+over full, then the tears fall. Come, Adrian, come, I'll say no more;
+but the sight of the poor child who loves you shall plead for her
+happiness and yours. And hark, a word in your ear: let Rupert bark and
+snarl as he will! And what sort of a devil is it your generosity has
+made of <i>him</i>? You have done a bad day's work there all these years,
+but, please God, there are better times dawning for us all.&mdash;What are
+you doing, Adrian? Oh! writing a few orders to your servant to explain
+your departure with me&mdash;quite right, quite right, I won't speak a word
+then to interrupt you. Dear me! I really feel quite in spirits. Once
+dear Molly and you settled, there will be a happy home for Madeleine:
+with you, we can look out a suitable husband for her. Well, well, I
+must not go too fast yet, I suppose: but I have not told you in what
+deep anxiety I have been on <i>her</i> account by reason of a most
+deplorable affair&mdash;a foolish girl's fancy only, of course, with a most
+undesirable and objectionable creature called <i>Smith</i>.... Oh! you are
+ready, are you?&mdash;My dear Adrian, give me your arm then, and let us
+proceed."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Silence had reigned for but a few seconds in the great room of the
+keep when Captain Jack re-entered, bearing on his face an expression
+at once boyishly jubilant and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> mockingly astonished. He planted
+himself in front of the landward window, and gazed forth a while.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes my old Adrian, as dutifully escorting that walking sack of
+bones, that tar-barrel ornament&mdash;never mind, old lady, from this
+moment I shall love you for your brave deeds of this
+morning&mdash;escorting his worthy aunt as dutifully as though he were a
+penniless nephew.... Gently over the gunnel, madam! That's done! So
+you are going to take my gig? Right, Adrian. Dear me, how she holds
+forth! I fancy I hear her from here.&mdash;Give way, my lads! That's all
+right. Gad! Old Adrian's carried off on a regular journey to Cythera,
+under a proper escort!"</p>
+
+<p>With this odd reminiscence of early mythological reading, the sailor
+burst into a loud laugh and walked about slapping his leg.</p>
+
+<p>"Would ever any one have guessed anything approaching this?
+Star-gazing, book-grubbing Sir Adrian ... in love! Adrian the
+solitary, the pessimist, the I-don't-know-what superior man, in love!
+Neither more nor less! In love, like an every-day inhabitant of these
+realms, and with that black-eyed sister of mine that is to be! My
+word, it's too perfect! Adrian my brother-in-law&mdash;for if I gauge that
+fine creature properly&mdash;splendid old lady&mdash;she won't let him slide
+back this time. No, my dear Adrian, you are hooked for matrimony and a
+return to the living world. That black-eyed jade too, that Molly
+sister of my Madeleine, will wake up and lead you a life, by
+George!... Row on, my lads," once more looking at the diminishing
+black spot upon the grey waters. "Row on&mdash;you have never done a better
+day's work!"</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, entering a few moments later, with an open note in his hand,
+found his master's friend still chuckling, and looked at him
+inquisitively.</p>
+
+<p>"His honour has returned to Pulwick," said he, in puzzled tones,
+handing the missive.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, lad," answered the sailor, cheerily. "The fact is, my good Renny,
+that in that room of Sir Adrian's where you ensconced me for safety
+from that most wonderful specimen of her sex (I refer to your master's
+worthy aunt), it was impossible to avoid overhearing many of her
+remarks&mdash;magnificent voice for a storm at sea, eh? Never mind what it
+was all about, my good man; what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> I heard was good news. Ah!"
+directing his attention to the note; "his honour does not say when he
+will return, but will send back the gig immediately; and you, M.
+Potter, are to look after me for as long as I choose to stop here."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; required no reflection to realise that anything in the shape of
+good news which took his master back to his estate must be good news
+indeed; and his broad face promptly mirrored, in the broadest of
+grins, the captain's own satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"For sure, we will try to take care of M. the captain, as well as if
+his honour himself was present. He told me you were to be master
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Make it so. I should like some dinner as soon as possible, and one of
+my bro&mdash;&mdash;of Sir Adrian's best bottles. It's a poor heart that never
+rejoices. Meanwhile, I want to inspect your ruins and your caves in
+detail, if you will pilot me, Renny. This is a handy sort of an old
+Robinson Crusoe place for hiding and storing, is it not?"</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>A JUNIOR'S OPINION</h3>
+
+
+<p>A rarely failing characteristic of very warm-hearted and strongly
+impulsive people is their inability of graduating their likes and
+dislikes; a state of mind which cannot fail to lead to frequent
+alterations of temper.</p>
+
+<p>On more than one occasion, since the domineering old lady had started
+upon her peregrinations, had her favour for the two brothers undergone
+reversal; but the ground Rupert gained by Adrian's offences was never
+of safe tenure. At the present hour, under the elation of her
+victorious sally upon the hermit's pessimistic entrenchments&mdash;the only
+thing in him of which she disapproved&mdash;he at once resumed the warm
+place she liked to keep for him in her heart. And as a consequence
+"Master Rupert," as she contemptuously called the "locum tenens
+Squire," who, in the genealogical order of things, should have been a
+person of small importance, fell promptly into his original state of
+disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>During the drive from the village (where she had ordered the carriage
+to await her return) to the gates of Pulwick, Miss O'Donoghue
+entertained her companion with an indignant account of his brother's
+ingratitude, of his hypocritical insinuating method of disparagement
+of Sir Adrian himself, winding up each indictment with a shrewd, "but
+he could not impose upon <i>me</i>," which, indeed, she firmly believed.</p>
+
+<p>Her object was, of course, to strengthen the baronet in his resolve to
+return to the headship of his family&mdash;little guessing what a strong
+incentive to seclusion these very tales of a state of things he
+suspected but too well would have proved, had it not been for the new
+unforeseen motive that the morning's revelation had brought.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Molly know of your visit to me?" he asked, as the carriage
+halted before the gate, and the enormous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> red-headed Cumbrian
+gatekeeper with his rosy Moggie, proudly swung it open to stand on
+either side, the one bowing with jubilant greeting and the other
+curtseying with bashful smiles at the real master. "Does she expect my
+visit?" relapsing into gravity after returning the salutation in
+kindliness.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told no one of my purpose this day. Rupert walked off to the
+stables immediately after breakfast&mdash;going a-hunting he said he was,
+and offered to bear the girls to the meet. And then, feeling lonely
+without his company," added Tanty, with a wink, "I ordered the
+carriage and thought I would go and have a peep at the place where
+poor Molly was drowned, just for a little diversion. Whether the
+little rogue expects you or not, after your note of the other day, I
+am sure I could not take upon myself to say. She sits watching that
+crazy old tower of yours by day and your light by night. Well, well, I
+must not tell tales out of school, you may find out for yourself. But
+mind you, Adrian," she impressed on him, sagely, "it is not I who
+bring you back: you return of your own accord. The child would murder
+me, if she knew&mdash;with that proud heart of hers."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Tanty, trust me. This incomprehensible discovery of yours,
+which I cannot yet believe in, really is, so far as my discretion is
+concerned, as if I had never heard of it. Heavens! I have been a
+blundering fool, but I could not insult her with a hint of it for the
+world. I have come to see Rupert to-day, as usual, of course&mdash;and, as
+you say ... I shall see for myself. You have opened my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue looked at her nephew with admiration. "<i>Voyez un
+peu</i>," she said, "<i>comme l'amour vous d&eacute;gourdit</i> even a doleful Sir
+Adrian! Faith, here we are. This has been a pleasant ride, but my old
+bones are so tired, and you and yours have set them jogging so much of
+late, that I think I'll never want to stir a foot again once I get
+back to Bunratty ... except indeed to come and be godmother to the
+heir."</p>
+
+<p>Having lent a dutiful arm up the stairs to his now beaming relative,
+Sir Adrian came down pensively and entered the library.</p>
+
+<p>There, booted and spurred, but quietly installed at a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> writing table,
+sat Mr. Landale, who rose in his nonchalant manner and with cold looks
+met his brother.</p>
+
+<p>There was no greeting between them, but simply thus:</p>
+
+<p>"I understood from Aunt Rose you were out hunting."</p>
+
+<p>"Such was my intention, but when I found out that she had gone to see
+you&mdash;don't look so astonished, Adrian&mdash;a man must know what is going
+on in his household&mdash;I suspected you would escort her back; so I
+desisted and waited for you. It is an unexpected pleasure to see you,
+for I thought we had sufficiently discussed all business, recently.
+But doubtless you will profit of the opportunity to go into a few
+matters which want your attention. Do you mean to remain?"</p>
+
+<p>Speaking these words in a detached manner, Mr. Landale kept a keenly
+observant look upon his brother's countenance. In a most unwonted way
+the tone and the look irritated Sir Adrian.</p>
+
+<p>"I came back, Rupert, because there were some things I wished to see
+for myself here," he answered frigidly. And going to the bell, rang it
+vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>On the servant's appearance, without reference to his brother, he
+himself, and very shortly, gave orders:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall dine here to-day. Have the tapestry-room made ready for me."</p>
+
+<p>Then turning to Rupert, whose face betrayed some of the astonishment
+aroused by this most unusual assumption of authority, and resuming as
+it were the thread of his speech, he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"No, Rupert, I have no desire to talk business with you. It is a pity
+you should have given up your day. Is it yet too late?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Adrian," said Mr. Landale, clenching his hand nervously
+round his fine cambric handkerchief, "there must be something of
+importance in the wind to have altered your bearing towards me to this
+extent. I have no wish to interfere. I came back and gave up good
+company for the reason I have stated. I will now only point out that,
+with your sudden whims, you render my position excessively false in a
+house where, at your own wish, I am ostensibly established as master."</p>
+
+<p>And without waiting for another word, the younger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> brother, having
+shot the arrow which hitherto never failed to reach the bull's-eye of
+the situation, left the room with much dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Once more alone, Sir Adrian, standing motionless in the great room,
+darkened yet more in the winter light by the heavy festoons of
+curtains that hung over the numerous empty bookshelves, the souls of
+which had migrated to the peel to keep the master company, cogitated
+upon this first unpleasant step in his new departure, and wondered
+within himself why he had felt so extraordinarily moved by anger
+to-day at the cold inquisitiveness of his brother. No doubt the sense
+of being watched thus, held away at arm's-length as it were, was cause
+sufficient. And yet that was not it; ingratitude alone, even to
+enmity, in return for benefits forgot could not rouse this bitterness.
+But had it not been for Tanty's interference he would be now exiled
+from his home until the departure of C&eacute;cile's child, just as, but for
+chance, he would have been kept in actual ignorance of her arrival. It
+was his brother's doing that he had blindly withdrawn himself when his
+presence would have caused happiness to her. Yes, that was it. Rupert
+had a scheme. That was what dwelt in his eyes,&mdash;a scheme which would
+bring, indeed did bring, unhappiness to that dear guest.... No wonder,
+now, that the unconscious realisation of it awoke all the man's blood
+in him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Rupert," Sir Adrian found himself saying aloud, "I let you reign
+at Pulwick so long as you crossed not one jot of such pleasure and
+happiness that might belong to C&eacute;cile's child. But here our wills
+clash; and now, since there cannot be two masters in a house as you
+say, <i>I</i> am the master here."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>As Sir Adrian's mind was seething in this unusual mood, Miss
+O'Donoghue, entering her nieces' room, found Molly perched, in riding
+dress, on the window-sill, looking forth upon the outer world with
+dissatisfied countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale had sent word at the last moment that, to his intense
+regret, he could not escort the ladies to the meet, some important
+business having retained him at Pulwick.</p>
+
+<p>So much did Miss Molly pettishly explain in answer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> to the
+affectionate inquiry concerning the cloud on her brow, slashing her
+whip the while and pouting, and generally out of harmony with the
+special radiance of the old lady's eye and the more than usual
+expansiveness of the embrace which was bestowed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut, tut, now," observed the artful person in tones of deep
+commiseration. "Ah well, Rupert's a poor creature which ever side he
+turns up. Will you go now, my child, and fetch me the letters I left
+on the drawing-room table? Isn't it like me to spend half the morning
+writing them and leave them down there after all!"</p>
+
+<p>Molly rose unwillingly, threw her whip on the bed, her hat on the
+floor; and mistily concerned over Tanty's air of irrepressible and
+pleasurable excitement, walked out of the room, bestowing as she
+passed her long pier glass a moody glance at her own glowering beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use of <i>you</i>?" she muttered to herself, "Anybody can fetch
+and carry for old aunts and look out of windows on leafless trees!"</p>
+
+<p>The way to the drawing-room was through the library. As Molly,
+immersed in her reflections, passed along this room, she stopped with
+a violent start on perceiving the figure of Sir Adrian, a tall
+silhouette against the cold light of the window. As she came upon him,
+her face was fully illumined, and there was a glorious tale-telling in
+the widening of her eyes and the warm flush that mounted to her cheek
+that on the instant scattered in the man's mind all wondering doubts.
+A rush of tenderness filled him at one sweep, head and heart, to the
+core.</p>
+
+<p>"Molly!" he cried, panting; and then with halting voice as she
+advanced a pace and stood with mouth parted and brilliant expectant
+eyes: "You took away all light and warmth with you when you left my
+lonely dwelling. I tried to take up my life there, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you have come back&mdash;for me?" And drawn by his extended hands she
+advanced, her burning gaze fixed upon his.</p>
+
+<p>"I dared not think of seeing you again," he murmured, clasping her
+hands; "yet my return ... pleases you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Thus was crowned this strange wooing, was clenched a life's union,
+based upon either side on fascinating unrealities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was drawn into his arms; and against his heart she lay, shaking
+with little shivers of delight, looking into the noble face bent so
+lovingly over hers, her mind floating between unconscious exultation
+and languorous joy.</p>
+
+<p>For a long while without a word he held her thus on his strong arm,
+gazing with a rending conflict of rapture and anguish on the beautiful
+image of his life's love, until his eyes were dimmed with rising
+tears. Then he slowly stooped over the up-turned face, and as she
+dropped her lids with a faint smile, kissed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>There came a warning rattle at the door handle, and Molly, disengaging
+herself softly from her betrothed's embrace, but still retaining his
+arm, turned to witness the entrance of Miss O'Donoghue and Mr.
+Landale.</p>
+
+<p>On the former's face, under a feigned expression of surprise, now
+expanded itself in effulgence the plenitude of that satisfaction which
+had been dawning there ever since her return from the island.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert held himself well in hand. He halted, it is true, for an
+instant at the first sight of Sir Adrian and Molly, and put his
+handkerchief furtively to his forehead to wipe the sudden cold sweat
+which broke out upon it. But the hesitation was so momentary as to
+pass unperceived; and if his countenance, as he advanced again, bore
+an expression of disapproval, it was at once dignified and restrained.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are there, Molly," exclaimed the old lady with inimitable
+airiness. "Just imagine, my dear, I had those letters in my pocket all
+the while, after all. You did not find them, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>But Adrian, still retaining the little hand on his arm, came forward
+slowly and broke through the incipient flow.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Rose," said he in a voice still veiled by emotion, "I know your
+kind heart will rejoice with me, although you may not be so surprised,
+as no doubt Rupert will be, at the news we have for you, Molly and I."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Adrian," interrupted Rupert gravely, "to any who know
+your life and <i>your past</i> as I do, the news you seem to have for us
+must seem strange indeed. So strange that you will excuse me if I
+withhold congratulations. For, if I mistake not," he added, with a
+delicately shaded change of tone to sympathetic courtesy, and slightly
+turning his handsome face towards Molly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> "I assume that my fair
+cousin de Savenaye has even but now promised to be my sister, Lady
+Landale."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian who, softened by the emotion of this wonderful hour, had
+made a movement to grasp his brother's hand, but had checked himself
+with a passionate movement of anger, instantly restrained, as the
+overt impertinence of the first words fell on his ears, here looked
+with a shadowing anxiety at the girl's face.</p>
+
+<p>But Molly, who could never withhold the lash of her tongue when Rupert
+gave the slightest opening, immediately acknowledged her enemy's
+courtly bow with sauciness.</p>
+
+<p>"What! No congratulations from the model brother? Not even a word of
+thanks to Molly de Savenaye for bringing the truant to his home at
+last? But you malign yourself, my dear Rupert. I believe 'tis but
+excess of joy that ties your tongue."</p>
+
+<p>With gleaming smile Mr. Landale would have opposed this direct thrust
+by some parry of polished insult; but he met his elder's commanding
+glance, remembered his parting words on two previous occasions, and
+wisely abstained, contenting himself with another slight bow and a
+contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time Miss O'Donoghue, with an odd mixture of farcically
+pretended astonishment and genuine triumph, fell on the girl's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible, soul of my heart, my sweet child&mdash;I can't believe
+it&mdash;though I vow I knew it all along! So I am to see my two favourites
+made one by holy matrimony!" punctuating her exclamation with kisses
+on the fair young face, and wildly seeking in space with her dried-up
+old fingers to meet Adrian's hand. "I, the one barren stock of the
+O'Donoghues, shall see my sister's children re-united. Ah, Adrian,
+what a beautiful coat this will make for you to hand to your children!
+O'Donoghue, Landale, Kermel&eacute;gan, Savenaye&mdash;eighteen quarters with this
+heiress alone, Adrian child, for the descendants of Landale of
+Pulwick!" And Miss O'Donoghue, overcome by this culminating vision of
+happiness and perfection, fairly burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this scene, Mr. Landale, after listening mockingly for
+a few instants, retired with ostentatious discretion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Later in the day, as Madeleine bent her pretty ears, dutifully yet
+with wandering attention, to Molly's gay prognostications concerning
+Pulwick under her sway; whilst the servants in the hall, pantry and
+kitchen discussed the great news which, by some incomprehensible
+agency, spread with torrent-like swiftness through the whole estate;
+while Miss O'Donoghue was feverishly busy with the correspondence
+which was to disseminate far and wide the world's knowledge of the
+happy betrothal, Sir Adrian met his brother walking meditatively along
+the winding path of the garden, flicking with the loop of his crop the
+border of evergreens as he went. From their room, Molly and Madeleine,
+ensconced in the deep window-seat, could see the meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"How I should like to hear," said Molly. "I know this supple wretch
+will be full of Adrian's folly in marrying me&mdash;first, because, from
+the Rupertian point of view, it is a disastrous thing that his elder
+should marry at all; and secondly, because Molly, mistress at Pulwick
+Priory, means a very queer position indeed for Mr. Rupert Landale. How
+I wish my spirit could fly into Adrian's head just for a moment!
+Adrian is too indulgent. It requires a Molly to deal with such
+impertinence."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed you are unjust with our cousin," said Madeleine, gently. "Why
+this hatred? I cannot understand."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not, Madeleine. Rupert is charming&mdash;with you. I am not
+blind. But take care he does not find out <i>your</i> secret, miss. Oh, I
+don't ask you any more about it. But if he ever does&mdash;<i>gare, ma
+ch&egrave;re</i>."</p>
+
+<p>But at the present juncture, Molly's estimate of Sir Adrian's mood was
+mistaken. His love of peace, which amounted to a well-known weakness
+where he alone was concerned, weighed not a feather in the balance
+when such an interest as that now engaged was at stake.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, Rupert Landale was to be taken by surprise again,
+that day, and again not pleasantly. On noticing his brother's
+approach, he stopped his angry flickings, and slowly moved to meet
+him. At first they walked side by side in silence. Presently Sir
+Adrian began:</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert," he said gravely, "after our first interview to-day, it was
+my intention to have begged your pardon for a certain roughness in my
+manner which I should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> have controlled and which you resented. I would
+have done so, had you allowed me, at that moment when I announced my
+forthcoming marriage and my heart was full of good-will to all,
+especially to you. Now, on the contrary, to re-establish at least that
+outward harmony without which life in common would be impossible, I
+expect from you some expression of regret for your behaviour."</p>
+
+<p>The first part of his brother's say was so well in accordance with his
+more habitual mood, that Mr. Landale had already sketched his equally
+habitual deprecating smile; but the conclusion changed the entire
+standpoint of their relations.</p>
+
+<p>"An expression of regret&mdash;from <i>me</i>?" cried he, exaggerating his
+astonishment almost to mockery.</p>
+
+<p>"From any one but my brother," said Adrian, with a slight but
+perceptible hardening in his tone, "I should say an apology for an
+impertinence."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale, now genuinely taken aback, turned a little pale and
+halted abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian, Adrian!" he retorted, quickly. "This is one of your mad
+moments. I do not understand."</p>
+
+<p>"No, brother, I am not mad, and never have been, dearly as you would
+wish me to be so in reality&mdash;since Death would have none of me. But
+though you know this yourself but too well, you have never understood
+me really. Now listen&mdash;once for all. Try and see our positions as they
+are: perhaps then matters will go more pleasantly in the future for
+you as well as for me."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale looked keenly at the speaker's face for a second, and then
+without a word resumed his walk, while Sir Adrian by his side pursued
+with quiet emphasis:</p>
+
+<p>"When I returned, from the other world so to speak, at least from your
+point of view (one which I fully understood), I found that this very
+return was nothing short of a calamity for all that remained of my
+kin. I had it in my power to reduce that misfortune to a great extent.
+You loved the position&mdash;that worldly estimation, that fortune, all
+those circumstances which, with perfect moral right, you had hitherto
+enjoyed. They presented little attraction to me. Moreover, there were
+many reasons, which I am quite aware you know, that made this very
+house of mine a dismal dwelling for me. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> see I have no wish to
+give too generous a colour to my motives, too self-denying a character
+to the benefits I conferred upon you. But, as far as you are
+concerned, they were benefits. For them I received no gratitude; but
+as I did not expect gratitude it matters little. I might, however,
+have expected at least that you should be neutral, not directly
+hostile to me&mdash;&mdash;Pray let me finish" (in anticipation of a rising
+interruption from his companion), "I shall soon have done, and you
+will see that I am not merely recriminating. Hostile you have been,
+and are now. So long as the position you assumed towards me only bore
+on our own relations, I acquiesced: you had so much more to lose than
+I could gain by resenting your hidden antagonism. I held you, so to
+speak, in the hollow of my hand; I could afford to pass over it all.
+Moreover, I had chosen my own path, which was nothing if not peaceful.
+I say, you always were hostile to me; you have been so, more than ever
+since the arrival of C&eacute;cile de Savenaye's children. You were, however,
+grievously mistaken if you thought&mdash;I verily believe you did&mdash;that I
+did not realise the true motives that prompted you to keep me away
+from them.&mdash;I loved them as their mother's children; I love Molly with
+a sort of love I myself do not understand, but deep enough for all its
+strangeness. Yet I submitted to your reasoning, to your plausible
+representations of the disastrous effects of my presence. I went back
+to my solitude because it never entered my mind that it could be in my
+power to help their happiness; you indeed had actually persuaded me of
+the contrary, as you know, and I myself thought it better to break the
+unfortunate spell that was cast on me. Unfortunate I thought it, but
+it has proved far otherwise."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the end of the alley, and as they turned back, facing
+each other for a moment, Sir Adrian noticed the evil smile playing
+upon his brothers lips.</p>
+
+<p>"It has proved otherwise," he repeated. "How I came to change my
+views, I daresay you have guessed, for you have, of late, kept a good
+watch on your mad brother, Rupert. At any rate you know what has come
+to pass. Now I desire you to understand this clearly&mdash;interference
+with me as matters stand means interference with Molly: and as such I
+must, and shall, resent it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, Adrian, and what have I done <i>now</i>?" was Mr. Landale's quiet
+reply. He turned a gravely attentive, innocently injured countenance
+to the paling light.</p>
+
+<p>"When I said you did not understand me," returned Sir Adrian with
+undiminished firmness; "when I said you owed me some expression of
+regret, it was to warn you never again to assume the tone of
+insinuation and sarcasm to me, which you permitted yourself to-day in
+the presence of Molly. You could not restrain this long habit of
+censuring, of unwarrantable and impertinent criticism, of your elder,
+and when you referred to my past, Molly could not but be offended by
+the mockery of your tones. Moreover, you took upon yourself, if I have
+heard aright, to disapprove openly of our marriage. Upon what ground
+that would bear announcing I know not, but let this be enough: try and
+realise that our respective positions are totally changed by this
+unforeseen event, and that, as Molly is now to be mistress at Pulwick,
+I must of course revoke my tacit abdication. Nevertheless, if you
+think you can put up with the new state of things, there need be
+little alteration in your present mode of life, my dear Rupert; if you
+will only make a generous effort to alter your line of conduct."</p>
+
+<p>And here, Sir Adrian, succumbing for a moment to the fault, so common
+to kindly minds, of discounting the virtue of occasional firmness by a
+sudden return to geniality, offered his hand in token of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale took it; his grasp, however, was limp and cold.</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite ready to express regret," he said in a toneless voice,
+"since that would seem to be gratification to you, and moreover seems
+to be the tacit condition on which you will refrain from turning me
+out. I ought indeed to have abstained from referring, however vaguely,
+to past events, for the plain reason that anything I could say would
+already have come too late to prevent the grievous deed you have now
+pledged yourself to commit."</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert&mdash;!" exclaimed Sir Adrian stepping back a pace, too amazed, at
+the instant, for indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, in your turn, hear me, Adrian," continued Mr. Landale with his
+blackest look. "I have listened to your summing up of our respective
+cases with perfect patience, notwithstanding a certain assumption of
+superiority which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>&mdash;allow me to insist on this&mdash;is somewhat ridiculous
+from you to me. You complain of my misunderstanding you. Briefly, this
+is absurd. As a matter of fact I understand you better than you do
+yourself. On the other hand it is you that do not understand me. I
+have no wish to paraphrase your little homily of two minutes ago, but
+the heads of my refutation are inevitably suggested by the points of
+your indictment. To use your own manner of speech, my dear Adrian, I
+have no wish to assume injured disinterestedness, when speaking of my
+doings with regard to you and your belongings and especially to this
+old place of yours, of our family. You have only to look and see for
+yourself...."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale made a wide comprehensive gesture which seemed to embrace
+the whole of the noble estate, the admirably kept mansion with walls
+now flushed in the light of the sinking sun, the orderly maintenance
+of the vast grounds, the prosperousness of its dependencies&mdash;all in
+fact that the brothers could see with the eyes of the body from where
+they stood, and all that they could see with the eyes of the mind
+alone: "Go and verify whether I fulfilled my duty with respect to the
+trust which was yours, but which you have allowed to devolve upon my
+shoulders, and ask yourself whether you would have fulfilled it
+better&mdash;if as well. I claim no more than this recognition; for, as you
+pointed out, the position carried its advantages, if it entailed
+arduous responsibility too. It was my hope that heirs of my body would
+live to perpetuate this pride&mdash;this work of mine. It was not to be.
+Now that you step in again and that possibly your flesh will reap the
+benefits I have laboured to produce, ask yourself, Adrian, whether
+you, who shirked your own natural duties, would have buckled to the
+task, under <i>my</i> circumstances&mdash;distrusted by your brother, disliked
+and secretly despised by all your dependants, who reserved all their
+love and admiration for the 'real master' (oh, I know the cant
+phrase), although he chose to abandon his position and yield himself
+to the stream of his own inertness, the real master who in the end can
+find no better description for these years of faithful service than
+'hostility' and 'ingratitude.'"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian halted a pace, a little moved by the speciousness of the
+pleading. The incidental reference to that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> one grief of his brother's
+life was of a kind which could never fail to arouse generous sympathy
+in his heart. But Mr. Landale had not come to the critical point of
+his say, and he did not choose to allow the chapter of emotion to
+begin just yet.</p>
+
+<p>"But," he continued, pursuing his restless walk, "again to use your
+own phraseology, I am not merely recriminating. I, too, wish you to
+understand me. It would be useless to discuss now, what you elect to
+call my hostility in past days. I had to keep up the position demanded
+by our ancient name; to keep it up amid a society, against whose every
+tenet almost&mdash;every prejudice, you may call them&mdash;you chose to run
+counter. My antagonism to your mode of acting and thinking was
+precisely measured by your own against the world in which the
+Landales, as a family, hold a stake. Let that, therefore, be
+dismissed; and let us come at once to the special hostility you
+complain of in me, since the troublesome arrival of Aunt Rose and her
+wards. As the very thing which I was most anxious to prevent, if
+possible, has, after all, come to pass, the present argument may seem
+useless; but you have courted it yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Most anxious to prevent&mdash;if possible...!" repeated Sir Adrian,
+slowly. "This, from a younger brother, is almost cynical, Rupert!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cynical!" retorted Mr. Landale, with a furious laugh. "Why, you have
+given sound to the very word I would, in anybody else's case, have
+applied to a behaviour such as yours. Is it possible, Adrian," said
+Rupert, turning to look his brother in the eyes with a look of
+profound malice, "that it has not occurred to you yet, that <i>cynical</i>
+will be the verdict the world will pass on the question of your
+marriage with that young girl?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian flushed darkly, and remained silent for a pace or two;
+then, with a puzzled look:</p>
+
+<p>"I fail to understand you," he said simply. "I am no longer young, of
+course; yet, in years, I am not preposterously old. As for the other
+points&mdash;name and fortune&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Rupert interrupted him with a sharp exclamation, which betrayed
+the utmost nervous exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! If I did not know you so well, I would say you were playing at
+candour. This&mdash;this unconventionality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> of yours would have led you
+into curious pitfalls, Adrian, had you been obliged to live in the
+world. My 'hostility' has saved you from some already, I know&mdash;more is
+the pity it could not save you from this&mdash;for it passes all bounds
+that you should meditate such an unnatural act, upon my soul, in the
+most natural manner in the world. One must be an Adrian Landale, and
+live on a tower for the best part of one's life, to reach such a pitch
+of&mdash;unconventionality, let us call it."</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake," exclaimed Sir Adrian, suddenly losing patience,
+"what are you driving at, man? In what way can my marriage with a
+young lady, who, inconceivable as it may be, has found something to
+love in me; in what way, I say, can it be accounted cynical? I am not
+subtle enough to perceive it."</p>
+
+<p>"To any one but you," sneered the other, coming to his climax with a
+sort of cruel deliberation, "it would hardly require special
+subtleness to perceive that for the man of mature age to marry the
+<i>daughter</i>, after having, in the days of his youth, been the lover of
+the <i>mother</i>, is a proceeding, the very idea of which is somewhat
+revolting in the average individual.... There are many rou&eacute;s in St.
+James' who would shrink before it; yet you, the enlightened
+philosopher, the moralist&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Adrian, breathing quickly, laid his hand heavily on his
+brother's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"When you say the mother's lover, Rupert," he said, in a contained
+voice, which was as ominous of storm as the first mutters of thunder,
+"you mean that I loved her&mdash;you do not mean to insinuate that that
+noble woman, widowed but a few weeks, whose whole soul was filled with
+but one lofty idea, that of duty, was the mistress&mdash;the mistress of a
+boy, barely out of his teens?"</p>
+
+<p>Rupert shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I insinuate nothing, my dear Adrian; I think nothing. All this is
+ancient history which after all has long concerned only you. You know
+best what occurred in the old days, and of course a man of honour is
+bound to deny all tales affecting a lady's virtue! Even you, I fancy,
+would condescend so far. But nevertheless, reflect how this marriage
+will rake up the old story. It will be remembered how you, for the
+sake of remaining by C&eacute;cile de Savenaye's side, abandoned your home to
+fight in a cause<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> that did not concern you; nay, more, turned your
+back for the time upon those advanced social theories which even at
+your present season of life you have not all shaken off. You travelled
+with her from one end of England to the other, in the closest
+intimacy, and finally departed over seas, her acknowledged escort. She
+on her side, under pretext of securing the best help on her political
+mission that England can afford her, selected a young man notoriously
+in love with her, at the very age when the passions are hottest, and
+wisdom the least consideration&mdash;as her influential agent, of course.
+Men are men, Adrian&mdash;especially young men&mdash;small blame to you, young
+that you were, if then ... but you cannot expect, in sober earnest,
+the world to believe that you went on such a wild pilgrimage for
+nothing! Women are women&mdash;especially young women, of the French
+court&mdash;who have never had the reputation of admiring bashfulness in
+stalwart young lovers...."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian's hand, pressing upon his brother's shoulder, as if
+weighted by all his anger, here forced the speaker into silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Shame! Shame, Rupert!" he cried first, his eyes aflame with a
+generous passion; then fiercely: "Silence, fellow, or I will take you
+by that brazen throat of yours and strangle the venomous lie once for
+all." And then, with keen reproach, "That you, of my blood, of hers
+too, should be the one to cast such a stigma on her memory&mdash;that you
+should be unable even to understand the nature of our intercourse....
+Oh, shame, on you for your baseness, for your vulgar, low
+suspiciousness!... But, no, I waste my breath upon you, you do not
+believe this thing. You have outwitted yourself this time. Hear me
+now: If anything could have suggested to me this alliance with the
+child of one I loved so madly and so hopelessly, the thought that such
+dastardly slander could ever have been current would have done so. The
+world, having nothing to gain by the belief, will never credit that
+Sir Adrian Landale would marry the daughter of his paramour&mdash;however
+his own brother may deem to his advantage to seem to think so! The
+fact of Molly de Savenaye becoming Lady Landale would alone, had such
+ill rumours indeed been current in the past, dispel the ungenerous
+legend for ever."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were a few moments of silence while Sir Adrian battled, in the
+tumult of his indignation, for self-control again; while Rupert,
+realising that he had outwitted himself indeed, bestowed inward curses
+upon most of his relations and his own fate.</p>
+
+<p>The elder brother resumed at length, with a faint smile:</p>
+
+<p>"And so, you see, even if you had spoken out in time, it would have
+been of little avail." Then he added, bitterly. "I have received a
+wound from an unforeseen quarter. You have dealt it, to no purpose,
+Rupert, as you see ... though it may be some compensation to such a
+nature as yours to know that you have left in it a subtle venom."</p>
+
+<p>The sun had already sunk away, and its glow behind the waters had
+faded to the merest tinge. In the cold shadow of rising night the two
+men advanced silently homewards. Sir Adrian's soul, guided by the
+invidious words, had flown back to that dead year, the central point
+of his existence&mdash;It was true: men will be men&mdash;in that very house,
+yonder, he had betrayed his love to her; on board the ship that took
+them away and by the camp fire on the eve of fight, he had pleaded the
+cause of his passion, not ignobly indeed, with no thought of the
+baseness which Rupert assigned to him, yet with a selfish disregard of
+her position, of his own grave trust. And it was with a glow of pride,
+in the ever living object of his life's devotion&mdash;of gratitude
+almost&mdash;that he recalled the noble simplicity with which the woman,
+whom he had just heard classed among the every-day sinners of society,
+had, without one grandiloquent word, without even losing her womanly
+softness, kept her lover as well as herself in the path of her lofty
+ideal&mdash;till the end. And yet she did love him: at the last awful
+moment, sinking into the very jaws of death, the secret of her heart
+had escaped her. And now&mdash;now her beauty, and something of her own
+life and soul was left to him in her child, as the one fit object on
+which to devote that tenderness which time could not change.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>After a while, from the darkness by his side came the voice of his
+brother again, in altered, hardly recognisable accents.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Adrian, those last words of yours were severe&mdash;unjust. I do not
+deserve such interpretation of my motives. Is it my fault that you are
+not as other men? Am I to be blamed for judging you by the ordinary
+standard? But you have convinced me: you were as chivalrous as C&eacute;cile
+was pure, and if needs be, believe me, Adrian, I will maintain it so
+in the face of the world. Yes, I misunderstood you&mdash;and wounded you,
+as you say, but such was not my intention. Forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>They had come to the door. Sir Adrian paused. There was a rapid
+revulsion in his kindly mind at the extraordinary sound of humble
+words from his brother; and with a new emotion, he replied, taking the
+hand that with well-acted diffidence seemed to seek his grasp:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we have both something to forgive each other. I fear you did
+not misjudge me so much as you misjudged her who left me that precious
+legacy. But believe that, believe it as you have just now said,
+Rupert, the mother of those children never stooped to human
+frailty&mdash;her course in her short and noble life was as bright and pure
+as the light of day."</p>
+
+<p>Without another word the two brothers shook hands and re-entered their
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian sought Miss O'Donoghue whom he now found in converse with
+Molly, and with a grave eagerness, that put the culminating touch to
+the old lady's triumph, urged the early celebration of his nuptials.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale repaired to his own study where in solitude he could give
+loose rein to his fury of disappointment, and consider as carefully as
+he might in the circumstances how best to work the new situation to
+his own advantage.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Even on that day that had been filled with so many varied and poignant
+emotions for him; through the dream in which his whole being seemed to
+float, Sir Adrian found a moment to think of the humble followers whom
+he had left so abruptly on the island, and of the pleasure the
+auspicious news would bring to them.</p>
+
+<p>It was late at night, and just before parting with the guest who was
+so soon to be mistress under his roof, he paused on the stairs before
+a window that commanded a view of the bay. Molly drew closer and leant
+against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> his shoulder; and thus both gazed forth silently for some
+time at the clear distant light, the luminous eye calmly watching over
+the treacherous sands.</p>
+
+<p>That light of Scarthey&mdash;it was the image of the solitary placid life
+to which he had bidden adieu for ever; which even now, at this brief
+interval of half a day, seemed as far distant as the years of despair
+and vicissitude and disgust to which it had succeeded. A man can feel
+the suddenly revealed charm of things that have ceased to be, without
+regretting them.</p>
+
+<p>With the dear young head that he loved, with a love already as old as
+her very years, pressing his cheek; with that slender hand in his
+grasp, the same, for his love was all miracle, that he had held in the
+hot-pulsed days of old&mdash;he yet felt his mind wander back to his nest
+of dreams. He thought with gratitude of Ren&eacute;, the single-minded,
+faithful familiar; of old Margery, the nurse who had tended C&eacute;cile's
+children, as well as her young master; thought of their joy when they
+should hear of the marvellous knitting together into the web of his
+fate, of all those far-off ties.</p>
+
+<p>In full harmony with such fleeting thoughts, came Molly's words at
+length breaking the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take me back to that strange old place of yours, Adrian,
+when we are married?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian kissed her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"And would you not fear the rough wild place, child," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for ever, I mean," laughed the girl, "for then my mission would
+not be fulfilled&mdash;which was to make of Adrian, Sir Adrian, indeed. But
+now and again, to recall those lovely days, when&mdash;when you were so
+distracted for the love of Murthering Moll and the fear lest she
+should see it. You will not dismantle those queer rooms that received
+so hospitably the limping, draggled-tailed guest&mdash;they must again
+shelter her when she comes as proud Lady Landale! How delicious it
+would be if the tempest would only rage again, and the sea-mew shriek,
+and the caverns roar and thunder, and I knew you were as happy as I am
+sure to be!"</p>
+
+<p>"All shall be kept up even as you left it," answered Sir Adrian moved
+by tender emotion; "to be made glorious again by the light of your
+youth and fairness. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> Renny shall be cook again, and maid of all
+work. My poor Renny, what joy when he hears of his master's happiness,
+and all through the child of his beloved mistress! But he will have to
+spend a sobering time of solitude out there, till I can find a
+substitute for his duties."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very much attached to that funny little retainer, Adrian!"
+said Molly after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"To no man alive do I owe so much. With no one have I had, through
+life, so much in common," came the grave reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," returned the girl, "you would thank me for telling you of the
+means of making the good man's exile less heavy, until you take him
+back with you."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt." There was a tone of surprise and inquiry in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it is simple enough. Have you never heard of his admiration for
+Moggie Mearson, our maid? Let them marry. They will make a good pair,
+though funny. What, you never knew it? Of course not, or you would not
+have had the heart to keep the patient lovers apart so long. Let them
+marry, my Lord of Pulwick: it will complete the romance of the
+persecuted Savenayes of Brittany and their helpful friends of the
+distant North."</p>
+
+<p>Musing, Sir Adrian fell into silence. The faithful, foolish heart that
+never even told its secret desire, for very fear of being helped to
+win it; by whom happiness and love were held to be too dearly bought
+at the price of separation from the lonely exile!</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eh bien</i>, dreamer?" cried the girl gaily.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Molly," said Sir Adrian, turning to her with shining eyes.
+"This is a pretty thought, a good thought. Renny will indeed doubly
+bless the day when Providence sent you to Pulwick."</p>
+
+<p>And so, the following morn, Mr. Renny Potter was summoned to hear the
+tidings, and informed of the benevolent prospects more privately
+concerning his own life; was bidden to thank the future Lady Landale
+for her service; was gently rebuked for his long reticence, and
+finally dismissed in company of the glowing Moggie with a promise that
+his nuptials should be celebrated at the same time as those of the
+lord of the land. The good fellow, however, required first of all an
+assurance that these very fine plans would not entail any
+interference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> with his duties to his master before he would allow
+himself to be pleased at his fortunes. Great and complex, then, was
+his joy; but it would have been hard to say, as Moggie confessed to
+her inquiring mistress that night, when he had returned to his post,
+whether the pride and delight in his master's own betrothal was not
+uppermost in his bubbling spirits.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO MONTHS LATER: THE QUICK AND THE DEAD</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Neighbour, what doth thy husband when he cometh home from work?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">He thinks of her he loved before he knew me<br /></span>
+<span class="i25"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p><i>February 18th.</i> Upon the 18th of January, 1815, did I commit that
+most irreparable of all follies; then by my own hand I killed fair
+Molly de Savenaye, who was so happy, so free, so much in love with
+life, and whom I loved so dearly, and in her stead called into
+existence Molly Landale, a poor-spirited miserable creature who has
+not given me one moment's amusement. How could I have been so stupid?</p>
+
+<p>Let me examine.</p>
+
+<p>It is only a month ago, only a month, 4 weeks, 31 days, millions of
+horrible dreary minutes, Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly! since you stood,
+that snowy day, in the great drawing-room (<i>my</i> drawing-room now, I
+hate it), and vowed twice over, once before the Jesuit father from
+Stonyhurst, once before jolly, hunting heretical parson Cochrane to
+cleave to Adrian Landale till death bid you part! Brr&mdash;what ghastly
+words and with what a light heart I said them, tripped them out, <i>ma
+foi</i>, as gaily as "good-morning" or "good-night!" They were to be the
+<i>open sesame</i> to joys untold, to lands flowing with milk and honey, to
+romance, adventure, splendour&mdash;and what have they brought me?</p>
+
+<p>It is a cold day, sleeting, snowing, blowing, all that is abominable.
+My lord and master has ridden off, despite it, to some distant farm
+where there has been a fire. The "Good Sir Adrian," as they call him
+now&mdash;he is <i>that</i>; but, oh dear me&mdash;there! I must yawn, and I'll say
+no more on this head, at present, for I want to think and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> work my
+wretched problem out in earnest, and not go to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>It is the first time I have taken heart to write since yonder day of
+doom, and God knows when I shall have heart again! Upon such an
+afternoon there is nothing better to do, since Sir Adrian would have
+none of my company&mdash;he is so precious of me that he fears I should
+melt like sugar in the wet&mdash;he never guessed that it was just because
+of the storm I wished the ride! Were we to live a hundred years
+together&mdash;which, God forfend&mdash;he would never understand me.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, lack-a-day, oh, misery me! (My lady, you are wandering; come back
+to business.)</p>
+
+<p>What, then, has marriage brought me? First of all a husband. That is
+to say, another person, a man who has the right to me&mdash;to whom I
+myself have given that right&mdash;to have me, to hold me, as it runs in
+the terrible service, the thunders of which were twice rolled out upon
+my head, and which have been ringing there ever since. And I, Molly,
+gave of my own free will, that best and most blessed of all gifts, my
+own free will, away. I am surrounded, as it were, by barriers; hemmed
+in, bound up, kept in leading strings. I mind me of the seagull on the
+island. 'Tis all in the most loving care in the world, of course, but
+oh! the oppression of it! I must hide my feelings as well as I can,
+for in my heart I would not grieve that good man, that <i>excellent</i>
+man, that pattern of kind gentleman&mdash;oh, oh, oh&mdash;it will out&mdash;that
+<i>dreary</i> man, that dull man, that most melancholy of all men! Who
+sighs more than he smiles, and, I warrant, of the two, his sighs are
+the more cheerful; who looks at his beautiful wife as if he saw a
+ghost, and kisses her as if he kissed a corpse!</p>
+
+<p>There is a mate for Molly! the mate she chose for herself!</p>
+
+<p>So much for the husband. What else has marriage brought her?</p>
+
+<p>Briefly I will capitulate.</p>
+
+<p>A title&mdash;I am <i>my lady</i>. For three days it sounded prettily in my
+ears. But to the girl who refused a duchess' coronet, who was born
+comtesse&mdash;to be the baronet's lady&mdash;Tanty may say what she likes of
+the age of creation, and all the rest of it&mdash;that advantage cannot
+weigh heavy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> in the balance. Again then, I have a splendid
+house&mdash;which is my prison, and in which, like all prisoners, I have
+not the right to choose my company&mdash;else would Sophia and Rupert still
+be here? They are going, I am told occasionally; but my intimate
+conviction is, however often they may be going, <i>they will never go</i>.
+<i>Item four:</i> I have money, and nothing to spend it on&mdash;but the poor.</p>
+
+<p>What next? What next?&mdash;alas, I look and I find nothing! This is all
+that marriage has brought me; and what has it not taken from me?</p>
+
+<p>My delight in existence, my independence, my hopes, my belief in the
+future, my belief in <i>love</i>. Faith, hope, and charity, in fact,
+destroyed at one fell sweep. And all, to gratify my curiosity as to a
+romantic mystery, my vanity as to my own powers of fascination! Well,
+I have solved the mystery, and behold it was nothing. I have eaten of
+the fruit of knowledge, and it is tasteless in my mouth.</p>
+
+<p>I have made my capture with my little bow and spear, and I am as
+embarrassed of my captive as he of me. We pull at the chain that binds
+us together; nay, such being the law of this world between men and
+women, the positions are reversed, my captive is now my master, and
+Molly is the slave.</p>
+
+<p>Tanty, I could curse thee for thy officiousness, from the tip of thy
+coal black wig to the sole of thy platter shoe&mdash;but that I am too good
+to curse thee at all!</p>
+
+<p>Poor book of my life that I was so eager to fill in, that was to have
+held a narrative all thrilling, and all varied, now will I set forth
+in thee, my failure, my hopelessness, and after that close thee for
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>Of what use indeed to chronicle, when there is nought to tell but
+flatness, chill monotony, on every side; when even the workings of my
+soul cannot interest me to follow, since they can now foreshadow
+nothing, lead to nothing but fruitless struggle or tame resignation!</p>
+
+<p>I discovered my mistake&mdash;not the whole of it, but enough to give me a
+dreadful foreboding of its hideousness, not two hours after the
+nuptial ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian had borne himself up to that with the romantic, mysterious
+dignity of presence that first caught my silly fancy; behind which I
+had pictured such fascinating depths of passion&mdash;of fire&mdash;Alas! When
+he looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> at me it was with that air of wondering, almost timid,
+affection battling with I know not what flame of rapture, with which
+look I have become so fatally familiar since&mdash;without the flame of
+rapture, be it understood, which seems to have rapidly burnt away to a
+very ash of grey despondency and self-reproach. I could have sworn
+even as he gave me his arm to meet and receive the congratulations of
+our guests, that the glow upon his cheek, the poise of his head
+denoted the pride any man, were he not an idiot nor a brute, must feel
+in presenting his bride&mdash;such a bride!&mdash;to the world. Then we went in
+to the great dining hall where the wedding feast, a very splendid one,
+was spread. All the gentlemen looked with admiration at me; many with
+envy at Adrian. I knew that I was beautiful in my fine white satin
+with my veil thrown back, without the flattering whispers that reached
+me now and again; but these were sweet to hear nevertheless. I knew
+myself the centre of all eyes, and it elated me. So too did the
+tingling flavour of the one glass of sparkling wine I drank to my
+fortunes. Immediately upon this silent toast of Lady Landale to
+herself, Rupert rose and in choice words and silver-ringing voice
+proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom. There was a merry
+bustling pause while the glasses were filled; then rising to their
+feet as with one man, all the gentlemen stood with brimming goblets
+one instant extended, the next emptied to the last drop; and then the
+cheers rang out, swelling up the rafters, three times three, seeming
+to carry my soul along with them. I felt my heart expand and throb
+with an emotion I never knew in it before, which seemed to promise
+vast future capacities of pain and delight. I turned to my husband
+instinctively; looking for, expecting, I could not explain why, an
+answering fire in his eyes. This was the last moment of my illusions.
+From thence they began to shrivel away with a terrifying rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian sat with a face that looked old and lined and grey; with
+haggard unseeing eyes gazing forth into space as though fixing some
+invisible and spectre show. He seemed as if wrapt in a world of his
+own, to which none of us had entrance; least of all, I, his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The shouts around us died away, there were cries upon him for
+"Speech&mdash;speech," then playful queries&mdash;"How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> is this, Sir Adrian? So
+bashful, egad!" next nudges were exchanged, looks of wonder, and an
+old voice speaking broadly:</p>
+
+<p><i>"Yes, by George,"</i> it was saying, <i>"I remember it well, by George, in
+this very room, now twenty years ago, 'Here, gentlemen,' says old Sir
+Tummas, 'Here's to Madam de Savenaye,' and gad, ma'am, we all
+yelled,&mdash;she was a lovely creature&mdash;Eh&mdash;Eh?"</i></p>
+
+<p>"Hush," said some one, and there was a running circle of frowns and
+the old voice ceased as abruptly as if its owner had been seized by
+the weasand. In the heavy embarrassed silence, I caught Tanty's red
+perturbed look and Rupert's smile.</p>
+
+<p>But Adrian sat on&mdash;like a ghost among the living, or a live man among
+the dead. And this was my gallant bridegroom! I seized him by the
+hand&mdash;"Are you ill, Adrian?"</p>
+
+<p>He started and looked round at me&mdash;Oh that look! It seemed to burn
+into my soul, I shall never forget the hopelessness, the dull sadness
+of it, and then&mdash;I don't know what he read in my answering glance&mdash;the
+mute agonised question, followed by a terror.</p>
+
+<p>"They want you to speak," I whispered, and shook the cold hand I held
+in a fury of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>His lips trembled: he stared at me blankly. "My God, my God, what have
+I done?" he muttered to himself, "C&eacute;cile's child&mdash;C&eacute;cile's child!"</p>
+
+<p>I could have burst out sobbing. But seeing Rupert's face bent down
+towards his plate, demure and solemn, yet stamped, for all his
+cleverness, with an almost devilish triumph, my pride rose and my
+courage. Every one else seemed to be looking towards us: I stood up.</p>
+
+<p>"Good friends," I said, "I see that my husband is so much touched by
+the welcome that you are giving his bride, the welcome that you are
+giving him after his long exile from his house, that he is quite
+unable to answer you as he would wish. But lest you should
+misunderstand this silence of his, I am bold enough to answer you in
+his name, and&mdash;since it is but a few moments ago that you have seen us
+made one, I think I have the right to do so.... We thank you."</p>
+
+<p>My heart was beating to suffocation&mdash;but I carried bravely on till I
+was drowned in a storm of acclamations to which the first cheers were
+as nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They drank my health again, and again I heard the old gentleman of the
+indiscreet voice&mdash;I have learned since he is stone deaf, and I daresay
+he flattered himself he spoke in a whisper&mdash;proclaim that I was <i>my
+mother all over again: begad&mdash;so had she spoken to them twenty years
+ago in this very room!</i></p>
+
+<p>Here Tanty came to the rescue and carried me off.</p>
+
+<p>I dared not trust myself to look at Adrian as I left, but I knew that
+he followed me to the door, from which I presumed that he had
+recovered his presence of mind in some degree.</p>
+
+<p>Since that day we have been like two who walk along on opposite banks
+of a widening stream&mdash;ever more and more divided.</p>
+
+<p>I have told no one of my despair. It is curious, but, little wifely as
+I feel towards him, there is something in me that keeps me back from
+the disloyalty of discussing my husband with other people.</p>
+
+<p>And it is not even as it might have been&mdash;this is what maddens me. <i>We
+are always at cross purposes.</i> Some wilful spirit wakes in me, at the
+very sound of his voice (always gentle and restrained, and echoing of
+past sadness); under his mild, tender look; at the every fresh sign of
+his perpetual watchful anxiety&mdash;I give him wayward answers, frowning
+greetings, sighs, pouts; I feel at times a savage desire to wound, to
+anger him, and as far as I dare venture I have ventured, yet could not
+rouse in him one spark, even of proper indignation.</p>
+
+<p>The word of the riddle lay in that broken exclamation of his at our
+wedding feast.</p>
+
+<p>"C&eacute;cile's child!"</p>
+
+<p>His wife, then, is only C&eacute;cile's child to him. I have failed when I
+thought to have conquered&mdash;and with the consciousness of failure have
+lost my power, even to the desire of regaining it. My dead mother is
+my rival; her shade rises between me and my husband's love. Could he
+have loved me, I might perhaps have loved him&mdash;and now&mdash;now I,
+<i>Molly</i>, I, shall perhaps go down to my grave without having known
+<i>love</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I had found it on that day when he took me in his arms in
+that odious library&mdash;my heart melted when he so tenderly kissed my
+lips. And now the very remembrance of that moment angers me.
+Tenderness! Am I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> only a weak, helpless child that I can arouse no
+more from the man to whom I have given myself! I thought the gates of
+life had been opened to me&mdash;behold, they led me to a warm comfortable
+prison! And this is Molly's end!</p>
+
+<p>There is a light in Madeleine's eyes, a ring in her voice, a smile
+upon her lip. She has bloomed into a beauty that I could hardly have
+imagined, and this is because of this unknown whom she <i>loves</i>. She
+breathes the fulness of the flower; and by-and-by, no doubt, she will
+taste the fulness of the fruit; she will be complete; she will be fed
+and I am to starve. What is coming to me? I do not know myself. I feel
+that I could grudge her these favours, that I <i>do</i> grudge them to her.
+I am sick at heart.</p>
+
+<p>And she&mdash;even she has proved false to me. I know that she meets this
+man. Adrian too knows it, and more of him than he will tell me; and he
+approves. I am treated like a child. The situation is strange upon
+every side; Madeleine loving a plebeian&mdash;a sailor, not a king's
+officer&mdash;stooping to stolen interviews! Adrian the punctilious, in
+whose charge Tanty solemnly left her, pretending ignorance, virtually
+condoning my sister's behaviour! For though he has distinctly refused
+to enlighten me or help me to enlighten myself, he could not, upon my
+taxing him with it, deny that he was in possession of facts ignored by
+me.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is Rupert paying now open court to this sly damsel&mdash;for the
+sake of her beautiful eyes, or for the beautiful eyes of her casket?
+And last and strangest, the incongruous friendship struck up this week
+between her and that most irritating of melancholy fools, Sophia. The
+latter bursts with suppressed importance, she launches glances of
+understanding at my sister; sighs, smiles (when Rupert's eye is not on
+her), starts mysteriously. One would say that Madeleine had made a
+confidant of her&mdash;only that it would be too silly. What? Make a
+confidant of that funereal mute and deny <i>me</i> the truth! If I had the
+spirit for it I would set myself to discovering this grand mystery;
+and then let them beware! They would have none of Molly as a friend:
+perhaps she will yet prove one too many upon the other side.</p>
+
+<p>If I have grown bitter to Madeleine, it is her own fault; I would have
+been as true as steel to her if she had but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> trusted me. Now and
+again, when a hard word and look escape me, she gives me a great
+surprised, reproachful glance, as of a petted child that has been
+hurt; but mostly she scarcely seems to notice the change in
+me&mdash;Moonlike in dreamy serenity she sails along, wrapt in her own
+thoughts, and troubles no more over Molly's breaking her heart than
+over Rupert's determined suit. To me when she remembers me, she gives
+the old caresses, the old loving words; to him smiles and pretty
+courtesy. Oh, she keeps her secret well! But I came upon her in the
+woods alone, last Friday, fresh, no doubt, from her lover's arms;
+tremulous, smiling, yet tearful, with face dyed rose. And when to my
+last effort to attain the right of sisterhood she would only stammer
+the tell-tale words: <i>she had promised!</i> and press her hot cheeks
+against mine, I thrust her from me, indignant, and from my affections
+for ever. Yet I hold her in my power, I could write to Tanty, put
+Rupert on the track.... Nay, I have not fallen so low as to become
+Rupert's accomplice yet!</p>
+
+<p>And so the days go on. Between my husband's increasing melancholy, my
+own mad regrets, Rupert's watchfulness, Madeleine's absorption and
+Sophia's twaddle, my brain reels. I feel sometimes as if I could
+scream aloud, as we all sit round the table, and I know that <i>this</i> is
+the life that I am doomed to, and that the days may go on, go on thus,
+till I am old. Poor Murthering Moll the second! Why even the convent,
+where at least I knew nothing, would have been better! No, it is not
+possible! Something is still to come to me. Like a bird, my heart
+rises within me. I have the right to my life, the right to my
+happiness, say what they may.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DAWN OF AN EVENTFUL DAY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Rupert's behaviour at home, since his brother's wedding, had been, as
+even Molly was bound to admit to herself, beyond reproach in
+tactfulness, quiet dignity, and seeming cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>He abdicated from his position of trust at once and without the
+smallest reservation; wooed Madeleine with so great a discretion that
+her dreamy eyes saw in him only a kind relative; and he treated his
+sister-in-law, for all her freaks of bearing to him, with a perfect
+gentleness and gentility.</p>
+
+<p>At times Sir Adrian would watch him with great eyes. What meant this
+change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he
+had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his
+plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their
+true light to him, and awakened some innate generosity of feeling; or
+yet if&mdash;this with misgiving&mdash;it was love for pretty Madeleine that was
+working the marvel. If so, how would this proud rebellious nature bear
+another failure?</p>
+
+<p>Rupert spoke with unaffected regret about leaving Pulwick, at the same
+time, in spite of Molly's curling lip, giving it to be understood that
+his removal was only a matter of time.</p>
+
+<p>For the ostensible purpose, indeed, of finding himself another home he
+made, in the beginning of March, the second month after his brother's
+marriage, several absences which lasted a couple of days or more, and
+from which he would return with an eager sparkle in his eye, almost a
+brightness on his olive cheek, to sit beside Madeleine's embroidery
+frame, pulling her silks and snipping with her scissors, and talking
+gaily, persistently, with such humour and colour as at last to draw
+that young lady's attention from far off musings to his words with
+smiles and laughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Molly would sit unoccupied, brooding, watching them, now
+fiercely, from under her black brows, now scornfully, now
+abstractedly; the while she nibbled at her delicate finger-nails, or
+ruthlessly dragged them along the velvet arms of her chair with the
+gesture of a charming, yet distracted, cat.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian would first tramp the rooms with unwitting restlessness,
+halting, it might be, beside his wife to strive to engage her into
+speech with him; and, failing, would betake himself at length with a
+heavy sigh to solitude; or, yet, he would sit down to his organ&mdash;the
+new one in the great hall which had been put up since his marriage, at
+Molly's own gay suggestion, during their brief betrothal&mdash;and music
+would peal out upon them till Lady Landale's stormy heart could bear
+it no longer, and she would rise in her turn, fly to the shelter of
+her room and roll her head in the pillows to stifle the sound of sobs,
+crying from the depths of her soul against heaven's injustice; anon
+railing in a frenzy of impotent anger against the musician, who had
+such passion in him and gave it to his music alone.</p>
+
+<p>During Rupert's absences that curious intimacy which Molly had
+contemptuously noted between her sister and sister-in-law displayed
+itself in more conspicuous manner.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale's long sallow visage sported its airs of mystery and
+importance, its languishing leers undisguisedly, so long as her
+brother Rupert's place was empty; and though her visits to the
+rector's grave were now almost quotidian, she departed upon them with
+looks of wrapt importance, and, returning, sought Madeleine's chamber
+(when that maiden did not herself stroll out to meet her in the
+woods), her countenance invariably wreathed with suppressed, yet
+triumphant smiles, instead of the old self-assertive dejection.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>The 15th of March of that year was to be a memorable day in the lives
+of so many of those who then either dwelt in Pulwick, or had dealings
+on that wide estate.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale, who had passed the midnight hour in poring over the
+delightful wickedness of Lara, and, upon at length retiring to her
+pillow, had had a sentimental objection to shutting out the romantic
+light of the moon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> by curtain or shutter, was roused into wakefulness
+soon after dawn by a glorious white burst of early sunshine. As a
+rule, the excellent soul liked to lie abed till the last available
+moment; but that morning she was up with the sun. When dressed she
+drew a letter from a secret casket with manifold precautions as though
+she were surrounded with prying eyes, and, placing it in her reticule,
+hastened forth to seek the little lonely disused churchyard by the
+shore. She afterwards remarked that she could never forget in what
+agitation of spirits and with what strange presentiment of evil she
+was led to this activity at so unwonted an hour. The truth was,
+however, that Miss Landale tripped along through the damp wooded path
+as gaily as if she were going to visit her living lover instead of his
+granite tomb; and that in lieu of evil omens a hundred fantastically
+sentimental thoughts floated through her brain, as merrily and
+irresponsibly as the motes in the long shafts of brilliancy that
+cleaved, sword-like through the mists, upon her from out the east.
+Visions of Madeleine's face when she would learn before breakfast that
+Sophia had actually been to the churchyard already; visions of whom
+she might meet there; rehearsals of a romantic scene upon that
+hallowed spot, of her own blushes, her knowing looks, her playful
+remonstrances, with touching allusions to one who had loved and lost,
+herself, and who thus, &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale tossed her long faded ringlets quite coquettishly, turned
+one slim bony hand with coy gesture before her approving eyes. Then
+she patted her reticule and hurried on with fresh zest, enjoying the
+tart whisper of the wind against her well bonneted face, the exquisite
+virginal beauty of the earth in the early spring of the day and of the
+year.</p>
+
+<p>As she stepped out of the shadow of the trees, her heart leaped and
+then almost stood still as she perceived in the churchyard lying below
+her, beside the great slab of granite which lay over the remains of
+her long-departed beloved one, the figure of a man, whose back was
+turned towards her, and whose erect outline was darkly silhouetted
+against the low, dazzling light.</p>
+
+<p>Then a simper of exceeding archness crept upon Miss Landale's lips;
+and with as genteel an amble as the somewhat precipitate nature of the
+small piece of ground that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> yet divided her from the graveyard would
+allow, she proceeded on her way.</p>
+
+<p>At the click of the lych-gate under her hand the man turned sharply
+round and looked at her without moving further. An open letter
+fluttered in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>His face was still against the light, and Miss Landale's eyes had wept
+so many tears by day and night that her sight was none of the best.
+She dropped a very elegant curtsey, simpered, drew nearer, and threw a
+fetching glance upwards. Then her shrill scream rang through the still
+morning air and frightened the birds in the ruined church.</p>
+
+<p>"You are early this morning, Sophia," said Mr. Landale.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia sank upon the tombstone. To say that she was green or yellow
+would ill describe the ghastliness of the tint that suffused her
+naturally bilious countenance; still speechless, she made a frantic
+plunge towards the great urn that adorned the head of the grave. Mr.
+Landale looked up from his reading again with a quiet smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have done in one minute," he remarked, "It is a fine
+production, egad! full of noble protestations and really high-sounding
+words. And then, my dear Sophia, you can take charge of it, and I
+shall be quite ready for the other, which I presume you have as usual
+with you&mdash;ah, in your bag! Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert?" ejaculated the unfortunate lady, first in agonised query,
+and next in agonised reproach, clasping her hands over the precious
+reticule&mdash;"Rupert!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale neatly folded the sheet he had been reading, moistened
+with his tongue a fresh wafer which he drew from his waistcoat pocket,
+and, deftly placing it upon the exact spot from which the original one
+had been removed, handed the letter to his sister with a little bow.
+But, as with a gesture of horror the latter refused to take it, he
+shrugged his shoulders and tossed it carelessly into the urn.</p>
+
+<p>"Now give me Madeleine's," he said, peremptorily.</p>
+
+<p>Rolling upwards eyes of appeal the unhappy Iris called upon heaven to
+witness that she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her
+solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fictitious flame of courage
+withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her
+brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> of his face
+bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between
+his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of insolent determination, she
+allowed him, unresisting, to take the bag from her side; protesting
+against the breach of faith only by her moans and the inept wringing
+of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale opened the bag, tossed with cynical contempt upon the flat
+tombstone, sundry precious relics of the mouldering bones within, and
+discovered at length in an inner pocket a dainty flower-scented note.
+Then he flung down the bag and proceeded with the same deliberation to
+open the letter and peruse its delicate flowing handwriting.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word," he vowed, "I think this is the prettiest she has
+written yet! What a sweet soul it is! Listen, Sophia: 'You praise me
+for my trust in you&mdash;but, Jack, dear love, my trust is so much a part
+of my love that the one would not exist without the other. Therefore,
+do not give me any credit, for you know I could not help loving you.'
+Poor heart! poor confiding child! Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Landale as if to
+himself, carefully proceeding the while with his former man&oelig;uvres
+to end by placing the violated missive, to all appearance intact,
+beside its fellow, "we have here a rank fellow, a foul traitor to deal
+with!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, wheeling round to his sister, and fixing her with piercing eyes:
+"Sophia," he exclaimed, in tones of sternest rebuke, "I am surprised
+at you. I am, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale raised mesmerised, horror-stricken eyes upon him; his
+dark utterances had already filled her foolish soul with blind dread.
+He sat down beside her, and once more enclosed the thin arm in his
+light but warning grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophia," he said solemnly, "you little guess the magnitude of the
+harm you have been doing; the frightful fate you have been preparing
+for an innocent and trusting girl; the depth of the villainy you are
+aiding and abetting. You have been acting, as I say, in ignorance,
+without realising the awful consequences of your folly and duplicity.
+But that you should have chosen <i>this</i> sacred place for such illicit
+and reprehensible behaviour; that by the grave of this worthy man who
+loved you, by the stones chosen and paid for by my fraternal
+affection, you should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> plot and scheme to deceive your family, and
+help to lead a confiding and beautiful creature to ruin, I should
+never have expected from <i>you</i>, Sophia&mdash;Sophia!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale collapsed into copious weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure, brother," she sobbed, "I never meant any harm. I am sure
+nobody loves the dear girl better than I do. I am sure I never wished
+to hide anything from you!&mdash;Only&mdash;they told me&mdash;they trusted me&mdash;they
+made me promise&mdash;Oh brother, what terrible things you have been
+saying! I cannot believe that so handsome a young gentleman can mean
+anything wrong&mdash;I only wish you could have seen him with her, he is so
+devoted&mdash;it is quite beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas&mdash;the tempter always makes himself beautiful in the eyes of the
+tempted! Sophia, we can yet save this unhappy child, but who knows how
+soon it may be too late!&mdash;You can still repair some of the wrong you
+have done, but you can only do so by the most absolute obedience to
+me.... Believe me, I know the truth about this vile adventurer, this
+Captain Jack Smith."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Heavens!" cried Sophia, "Rupert, do not tell me, lest I swoon
+away, that he is married already?"</p>
+
+<p>"The man, my dear, whose plots to compromise and entangle a lovely
+girl you have favoured, is a villain of the deepest dye&mdash;a pirate."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" shivered Sophia with fascinated misery&mdash;thrilling recollections
+of last night's reading shooting through her frame.</p>
+
+<p>"A smuggler, a criminal, an outlaw in point of fact," pursued Mr.
+Landale. "He merely seeks Madeleine for her money&mdash;has a wife in every
+port, no doubt&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale did not swoon; but her brother's watchful eye was
+satisfied with the effect produced, and he went on in a well modulated
+tone of suppressed emotion:</p>
+
+<p>"And after breaking her heart, ruining her body and soul, dragging her
+to the foulest depths he would have cast her away like a dead
+weed&mdash;perhaps murdered her! Sophia, what would your feelings be then?"</p>
+
+<p>A hard red spot had risen to each of Miss Landale's cheek bones; her
+tears had dried up under the fevered glow.</p>
+
+<p>"We believed," she said trembling in every limb, "that he was working
+on a mission to the French court&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Faugh&mdash;" cried Mr. Landale, contemptuously, "smuggling French brandy
+for our English drunkards and traitorous intelligence for our French
+enemies!"</p>
+
+<p>"Such a handsome young man, so gentlemanly, such an air!" maundered
+the miserable woman between her chattering teeth. "It was quite
+accidental that we met, Rupert, quite accidental, I assure you.
+Madeleine&mdash;poor dear girl&mdash;came down with me here, I wanted to show
+her the g-grave&mdash;&mdash;" here Sophia gurgled convulsively, remembering her
+brother's cruel reproaches.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"She came here with me, and as I was kneeling down, planting crocuses
+just here, Rupert, and she was standing <i>there</i>, a young man suddenly
+leaped over the wall, and fell at her feet. He had not seen
+<i>me</i>&mdash;Alas, it reminded me of my own happiness! And he was so
+well-dressed, so courteous&mdash;and seemed such a perfect gentleman&mdash;and
+he took off his hat so gracefully I am sure I never could have
+believed it of him. And they confided in me and I promised
+by&mdash;by&mdash;those sacred ashes to keep their secret. I remembered of
+course what Tanty had said in her letter, and quite understood he was
+the young gentleman in question&mdash;but they explained to me how she was
+under a wrong impression altogether. He said that the instant he laid
+eyes upon me, he saw I had a feeling heart, and he knew they could
+trust me. He spoke so nobly, Rupert, and said: What better place could
+they have for their meetings than one consecrated to such faithful
+love as this? It was so beautiful&mdash;and oh dear! I can't but think
+there is some mistake." And Miss Landale again wrung her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"But I have proof!" thundered her brother, "convincing proof, of what
+I have told you. At this very moment the man who would marry
+Madeleine, forsooth, runs the risk of imprisonment&mdash;nay, of the
+gallows! You may have thought it strange that I should have opened and
+read letters not addressed to me, but with misfortune hanging over a
+beloved object I did not pause to consider myself. My only thought was
+to save her."</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Landale looked very magnanimous, and thrust his fingers as he
+spoke through the upper buttons of his waistcoat with the gesture
+which traditionally accompanies such sentiments: these cheap effects
+proved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> generally irresistible with Sophia. But his personality had
+paled before the tremendous drama into which the poor romance-loving
+soul was so suddenly plunged, and in which in spite of all her woe she
+found an awful kind of fascination. Failing to read any depth of
+admiration in her roving eye, Rupert promptly abandoned
+grandiloquence, and resuming his usual voice and manner, he dropped
+his orders upon her heat of agitation like a cool relentless stream
+under which her last protest fizzed, sputtered, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to unmask the gay lover at my own time and in my own way;
+never fear, I shall deal gently with <i>her</i>. You will now take this
+letter of his and put it in your bag, leaving hers in that curious
+post-office of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Rupert."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will give his letter to her at once when you go in without
+one word of having met me."</p>
+
+<p>"Y ... yes, Rupert."</p>
+
+<p>"As you are too great a fool to be trusted if you once begin to talk,
+you will have a headache for the rest of the day and go to bed in a
+dark room."</p>
+
+<p>"Y ... yes, Rupert."</p>
+
+<p>"You will moreover swear to me, now, that you will not speak of our
+interview here till I give you leave; say I swear I will not."</p>
+
+<p>"I swear I will not."</p>
+
+<p>"So help me God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rupert."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>So help me God</i>, you fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Sophia's lips murmured an inaudible something; but there was such
+complete submission in every line and curve of her figure, in the very
+droop of her ringlets and the helpless appeal of her gaze that Rupert
+was satisfied. He assisted her to arise from her tombstone, bundled
+the clerical love-tokens back into the bag, duly placed Captain Jack's
+letter in the inner pocket, and was about to present her with his arm
+to conduct her homewards, when he caught sight of a little ragged
+urchin peeping through the bars of the gate, and seemingly in the very
+act of making a mysterious signal in the direction of Miss Landale's
+unconscious figure.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert stared hard at the ruddy, impudent face, which instantly
+assumed an appearance of the most defiant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>unconcern, while its owner
+began to devote his energies to shying stones at an invisible rook
+upon the old church tower with great nicety of aim.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophia," said her brother in a low tone, "go to the gate: that boy
+wants to speak to you. Go and see what he wants and return to me."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Landale gasped, gazed at her brother as if she thought him mad,
+looked round at the little boy, coloured violently, then meeting
+Rupert's eye again staggered off without a word of protest.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert, shaken with silent laughter, humming a little song to himself,
+stooped to pick a couple of tender spring flowers from the border
+beside the grave, and after slipping them into a button-hole of his
+many caped overcoat, stood looking out over the stretch of land and
+sea, where Scarthey rose like a dream against the sparkle of the water
+and the exquisite blue of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Presently rapid panting breaths and a shuffling rustle of petticoats
+behind him informed him of his sister's return.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are there, my dear," he said loudly. "One of your little
+fishing friends from the village, I suppose&mdash;a Shearman, unless I am
+mistaken. Yes, a Shearman; I thought so. Well, shall we return home
+now? They will be wondering what has become of us. Pray take my arm."
+Then beneath his breath, seeing that words were struggling to Sophia's
+lips, "Hold your tongue."</p>
+
+<p>The small ragged boy watched their departure with a derisive grin, and
+set off at a brisk canter down to the shore, jingling some silver coin
+in his pocket with relish as he went.</p>
+
+<p>When Rupert and Sophia had reached the wood the former paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Letter or message?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rupert, it was a letter; had I not better destroy it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give it to me."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>A hasty scrawl, it seemed, folded anyhow. Only two or three lines, yet
+Rupert conned them for a curiously long time.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling," it ran, "meet me to-day in the ruins at noon. A
+misfortune has happened to me, but if you trust me, all will still be
+well.&mdash;Your Jack."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> Mr. Landale at length handed it back to Sophia.</p>
+
+<p>"You will give it to Madeleine with the other," he said briefly.
+"Mention the fact of the messenger having brought it." And then in a
+terrible bass he added, "And remember your oath!"</p>
+
+<p>She trembled; but as he walked onwards through the wood, his lips were
+smiling, and his eyes were alight with triumph.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DAY: MORNING</h3>
+
+
+<p>The appointment of a regular light-keeper at Scarthey, intended to
+release Ren&eacute; and old Margery from their exile, had been delayed so as
+to suit the arrangement which was to leave for a time the island
+domain of Sir Adrian at the disposal of Captain Jack. Meanwhile
+Moggie's presence greatly mitigated the severity of her husband's
+separation from his master.</p>
+
+<p>On his side the sailor was in radiant spirits. All worked as he could
+wish, and Sir Adrian's marriage, besides being a source of unselfish
+satisfaction, was, with regard to his own prospects, an unexpected
+help; for, his expedition concluded, he would now be able in the most
+natural manner to make his appearance at Pulwick, an honoured guest of
+the master, under the pride of his own name. And for the rest, hope
+unfolded warm-coloured visions indeed.</p>
+
+<p>During the weeks which had elapsed since Sir Adrian's departure,
+Captain Jack's visits to the island had been fitful and more or less
+secret&mdash;He always came and left at night. But as it was understood
+that the place was his to be used and enjoyed as he thought best,
+neither his sudden appearances with the usual heavy travelling-bag,
+nor his long absences excited any disturbance in the arcadian life led
+by Ren&eacute; between his buxom young wife and the old mother&mdash;as the
+good-humoured husband now termed the scolding dame.</p>
+
+<p>A little sleeping closet had been prepared and allotted to the use of
+the peripatetic guest in one of the disused rooms when Ren&eacute;'s own
+accommodation under the light tower had been enlarged for the new
+requirements of his matrimonial status. And so Monsieur the Captain
+(in Ren&eacute;'s inveterate outlandish phraseology) found his liberty of
+action complete. Both the women's curiosity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> was allayed, and all
+tendency to prying into the young stranger's mysterious purposes amid
+their seclusion condemned beforehand, by Ren&eacute;'s statement: that
+Monsieur the Captain was a trusted friend of the master&mdash;one indeed
+(and here the informant thought fit to stretch a point, if but
+slightly) to whom the Lord of Pulwick was indebted, in bygone days,
+for life and freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Except when weather-bound, a state of things which at that time of
+year occurred not unfrequently, Ren&eacute; journeyed daily as far as the
+Hall, ostensibly to report progress and take possible orders, but
+really to gratify himself with the knowledge that all was well with
+the master.</p>
+
+<p>About the breakfast hour, upon this 15th of March, as Sir Adrian was
+discussing with the bailiff sundry matters of importance to the
+estate, a tap came to the door, which he recognised at once as the
+Frenchman's own long accustomed mode of self-announcement.</p>
+
+<p>Since he had assumed the reins of government, the whilom recluse had
+discovered that the management of such a wide property was indeed no
+sinecure; and moreover&mdash;as his brother, who certainly understood such
+matters in a thoroughly practical manner, had warned him&mdash;that a
+person of his own philosophical, over-benevolent and abstracted turn
+of mind, was singularly ill-fitted for the task. But a strong sense of
+duty and a determination to act by it will carry a man a long way. He
+had little time for dreaming and this was perhaps a providential
+dispensation, for Sir Adrian's musings had now lost much of the grave
+placidity born of his long, peaceful residence in his Thelema of
+Scarthey. The task was long and arduous; on sundry occasions he was
+forced to consult his predecessor on the arcana of landed estate
+government, which he did with much simplicity, thereby giving Mr.
+Landale, not only inwardly mocking satisfaction, but several
+opportunities for the display of his self-effacing loyalty and
+superior capacities.</p>
+
+<p>The business of this day was of sufficiently grave moment to make
+interruption unwelcome&mdash;being nothing less than requests from a number
+of tenants to the "Good Sir Adrian," "the real master come to his own
+again"&mdash;for a substantial reduction of rent; a step towards which the
+master's heart inclined, but which his sober reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> condemned as
+preposterous. But Ren&eacute;'s countenance, as he entered, betrayed news of
+such import that Sir Adrian instantly adjourned the matter on hand,
+and, when the bailiff had retired, anxiously turned to the new-comer,
+who stood in the doorway mopping his steaming brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Renny," said he, "what is wrong? Nothing about your wife&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, your honour," answered the man, "your honour is very good.
+Nothing wrong with our Moggie. But the captain.... I ran all the way
+from the Shearmans."</p>
+
+<p>"No accident there, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear there is, your honour. The captain&mdash;he has been attacked this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Not wounded&mdash;!" exclaimed Sir Adrian. "Not dead, Renny?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, your honour, well. But he has, I fear, killed one of the men
+... the revenue men&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then, seeing his master start aghast, he went on rapidly;</p>
+
+<p>"At least he is very bad&mdash;but what for did he come to make the spy
+upon our island? We have left him at the Shearmans&mdash;the mother
+Shearman will nurse him. But the captain, your honour"&mdash;the speaker
+lowered his voice to a whisper and advanced a step, looking
+round&mdash;"that is the worst of all, the captain has turned mad, I
+believe&mdash;Instead of going off with his ship and his crew, (they are
+safe out to sea, as they should be) he remains at Scarthey. Yes&mdash;in
+your honour's rooms. He is walking up and down and clutching his hair
+and talking to himself, like a possessed. And when I respectfully
+begged him to consider that it was of the last folly his having rested
+instead of saving himself, I might as well have tried to reason a
+mule. And so, knowing that your honour would never forgive me if
+misfortune arrived, I never drew breath till I reached here to tell
+you. If his honour would come himself he might be able to make Mr. his
+friend hear reason&mdash;Your honour will run no risk, for it is only
+natural that you should go to the peel after what has occurred&mdash;but if
+you cannot get Mr. the captain to depart this night, there will arrive
+to us misfortune&mdash;it is I who tell you so."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go back with you, at once," said Sir Adrian, rising much
+perturbed. "Wait here while I speak to Lady Landale."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Molly was standing by the great log fire in the hall, yawning fit to
+dislocate her pretty jaws, and teasing the inert form of old Jim, as
+he basked before the flame, with the tip of her pretty foot. She
+allowed her eyes to rest vaguely upon her husband as he approached,
+but neither interrupted her idle occupation nor endeavoured to
+suppress the yawn that again distended her rosy lips.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her for a moment in silence; then laying a hand upon her
+shoulder, said gently: "My child, I am called back to Scarthey and
+must leave instantly. You&mdash;you will be careful of yourself&mdash;amuse
+yourself during my absence&mdash;it may be for two or three days."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale raised her black brows with a fine air of interrogation,
+and then gazed down at the old dog till the lashes swept her cheek,
+while a mocking dimple just peeped from the corner of her mouth and
+was gone again. "Oh yes," she answered drily, "I shall take endless
+care of myself and amuse myself wildly. You need have no fear of
+that."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian sighed, and his hand fell listless from her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, then," he said, and stooped it seemed hesitatingly to lay
+his lips between the little dark tendrils of hair that danced upon her
+forehead. But with a sudden movement she twitched her face away.
+"Despite all the varied delights which bind me to Pulwick," she
+remarked carelessly, "the charms of Sophia and Rupert's company, and
+all the other <i>amusements</i>&mdash;I have a fancy to visit your old owl's
+nest again&mdash;so we need not waste sentiment upon a tender parting, need
+we?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian's cheek flushed, and with a sudden light in his eyes he
+glanced at her quickly; but his countenance faded into instant
+melancholy again, at sight of her curling lip and cold amused gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not have me?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will come&mdash;you will be welcome&mdash;as welcome," his voice shook a
+little, "as my wife must always be wherever I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;oh," yawned Lady Landale, "(excuse me pray&mdash;it's becoming quite
+an infirmity) so that is settled. I hope it will storm to-night, that
+the wind will blow and howl&mdash;and then I snuggle in the feather bed in
+that queer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> old room and try and fancy I am happy Molly de Savenaye
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Adrian's lip quivered; yet in a second or two he spoke lightly. "I do
+not want to hurry you, but I have to leave at once." Then struck by a
+sudden thought, by that longing to bring pleasure to others which was
+always working in him, "Why not let Madeleine come with you too?" he
+asked, "she could share your room, and&mdash;it would be a pleasure to her
+I think." He sighed as he thought of the trouble in store for the
+lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale grew red to the roots of her hair and shot a look of
+withering scorn at her husband's unconscious face. "It would be
+charming," she said, sarcastically, "but after all I don't know that I
+care to go so much&mdash;oh, don't stare at me like that, for goodness'
+sake! A woman may change her mind, I suppose&mdash;at least, in a trifle
+here and there if she can't as regards the whole comfort of her
+life.&mdash;Well, well, perhaps I shall go&mdash;this afternoon&mdash;later&mdash;you can
+start now. I shall follow&mdash;I can always get a boat at the Shearmans.
+And I shall bring Madeleine, of course&mdash;it is most kind and thoughtful
+of you to suggest it. <i>Mon Dieu</i>, I have a husband in a thousand!"</p>
+
+<p>She swept him a splendid curtsey, kissed her hand at him, and then
+burst out laughing at the pale bewilderment of his face.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>When Sir Adrian returned to the morning-room, he found Ren&eacute;, half
+hidden behind the curtain folds, peering curiously out of the window
+which overlooked the avenue. On his master's entrance, the man turned
+his head, placed his finger on his lip, and beckoned him to approach.
+"If I may take the liberty," said he with subdued voice, "will his
+honour come and look out, without showing himself?"</p>
+
+<p>And he pointed to a group, consisting of Mr. Landale and two men in
+blue jackets and cockaded hats of semi-naval appearance, now slowly
+approaching the house. Mr. Landale was listening with bent head,
+slightly averted, to the smaller of his two companions&mdash;a stout
+square-looking fellow, who spoke with evident volubility, whilst the
+other followed defferentially one pace in rear. Presently the trio
+halted, a few yards from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> entrance, and Mr. Landale, cutting
+designs upon the sand with the end of his stick in a meditative way,
+appeared to be giving directions at some length, on the conclusion of
+which the two men, touching their hats with much respect, departed
+together, while the magistrate pensively proceeded on his way to the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"Those, your honour," said Ren&eacute;, "were with him that was struck in the
+fight this morning. It was I rowed them over, together with the
+wounded. I left them at the Shearmans, and slipped away myself to
+carry the news. If I might take upon myself to advise, it would be
+better if your honour would come with me now, at once, for fear Mr.
+Landale should delay us by questioning me&mdash;Mr. Landale being a
+magistrate, as I heard these men say; and Moggie has assured me that
+he always arranges himself for knowing when I arrive from the
+island&mdash;ever since the day when the demoiselles had just come, and I
+found it out. Ever since then he has not liked me, Mr. Landale. Come
+away, your honour, before he finds out I have been here to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Following upon this advice, which he found to the point, Sir Adrian
+left his house by a back passage; and, through a side garden, found
+his way to the coast and to the fishing village.</p>
+
+<p>The wounded man who had not recovered consciousness, lay in the
+brother Shearman's hut, as Ren&eacute; had said, surrounded by such uncouth
+attendance as the rude fisherfolk could dispense. After giving
+directions for the summoning of medical aid and the removal, if it
+should prove advisable, of the patient to the Hall, but without a
+single comment upon the unfortunate occurrence, Sir Adrian then took
+the road of the peel.</p>
+
+<p>During the transit, walking rapidly by his master's side, across the
+now bare causeway, Ren&eacute; gave his account of events.</p>
+
+<p>The captain (he related) after three days' absence had re-appeared the
+night before the last, and requested him to warn the womankind not to
+be alarmed if they heard, as no doubt they would, strange noises on
+the beach at night. He was, said he, storing provisions and water for
+the forthcoming journey, and the water in the well was so excellent
+that he had determined to take in his store. Of course his honour
+understood well that Ren&eacute;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> did not concern himself in these matters;
+but that was the explanation he conveyed to his wife, lest she should
+be alarmed and wonder. As for the old mother, she was too deaf to be
+awakened out of sleep by anything short of the trumpet of the last
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>As announced, there had been during the night the noise of a party of
+men landing, of the hoisting and rolling of barrels&mdash;a great
+<i>remue-m&eacute;nage</i> altogether&mdash;and the next morning, that was yesterday,
+the captain had slept sound in his bunk till late.</p>
+
+<p>During several hours of the following day, he had some secret work to
+do in the caves of which Ren&eacute; had shown the ins and outs, and whilst
+so engaged had requested that watch should be kept from the
+light-tower, and message sent by some arranged signal should any one
+approach the island. But no one had come near. Whilst at his post, the
+watcher had heard at different times the sound of hammering; and when
+the captain had come to relieve him, the good gentleman was much
+begrimed with dust and hot with work, but appeared in excellent
+humour. In the castle, he sang and whistled for joyfulness, and made
+jokes with Moggie, all in his kind way, saying that if he were not to
+be married himself soon, he would feel quite indignant and jealous at
+the happiness of such a rascal as her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! he was happy&mdash;Monsieur the Captain&mdash;he had brought Moggie a
+beautiful shawl; and to Ren&eacute;, he had given a splendid watch, telling
+him to keep count of the hours of his unmerited bliss. Alas, this
+morning all had been different indeed! The captain looked another man;
+his face was as white as linen. The very look of him would have told
+any one that a misfortune had occurred. Ren&eacute; did not quite understand
+it himself, but this is what had taken place:</p>
+
+<p>The captain had left Scarthey on foot late in the evening, and when he
+returned (he was not long away) he bade Ren&eacute; again not to mind what he
+heard during the night; and, in faith, once more there had been a real
+noise of the devil; men coming to and fro, a deal of rowing on the
+water, away and back again, in the early night and then once more
+before dawn.</p>
+
+<p>"But I was not unquiet," said Ren&eacute;, "I knew they had come for the
+remainder of what Mr. Smith was pleased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> to call his provisions. From
+our room I could see by the light on the stairs that the lamp was
+burning well, and Moggie slept like a child, so sound, she never
+moved. Just before the rising sun, I had got up and put out the lamp,
+and was going to bed again, when there came thumps of the devil at the
+lower door. Well knowing that the captain had his own way of
+entering&mdash;for he had spent many days in finding out all sorts of droll
+passages in the ruins&mdash;I was quite seized; and as I hurried down, the
+thumps came again and great cries for the lighthouse-keeper. And, your
+honour, when I unbarred the door, there was a man in uniform whom I
+did not know, and he asked me, grumbling, if I knew of the pretty
+doings on the beach, whilst I slept like pig, he said&mdash;Of course I
+made the astonished as his honour may imagine: I knew nothing, had
+heard nothing, though my heart was beating like to burst not knowing
+what was coming. Then he ordered me to lend a hand and bring a ladder
+to carry away one of his men who had been murdered by the smugglers,
+he said. And there, on the sands, in front of the small cave was
+another man, in a blue coat too, watching over the body of one who was
+stretched out, quite tranquil, his face covered with blood and his
+eyes closed. They are gone, says the gross man. And I was glad, as
+your honour may well think, to see the chaloupe full of the captain's
+men rowing hard towards the vessel. She had just come out of the river
+mouth and was doubling round the banks. We carried the man on his
+ladder to the kitchen and we and the women did all we could, but he
+remained like a log. So after a time the two men (who said they had
+come along the dyke soon after midnight, on foot, as they thought it
+would be more secret, and had watched all night in the bent) wanted to
+eat and drink and rest. They had missed their game, the big man said;
+they had been sent to find out what sort of devil's tricks were being
+played on in the island unbeknown to Sir Adrian;&mdash;but it was the
+devil's luck altogether, for the smugglers had slipped away and would
+not be seen in this part of the world again. That is the way the fat
+man spoke. The other had nothing to say, but swallowed our bacon and
+our beer as if he did not care. And then, your honour, they told me I
+should have to lend them the yawl to go on land, and go myself to
+help, and take the body with us. And as he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> speaking, I saw Moggie
+the wife, who had been backwards and forwards serving them, looking at
+me very straight but without blowing a word, as if she had fear. And
+all at once I felt there was something on foot. So I drew the men more
+beer and said I would see after the yawl. Outside the door the wife
+whispered: 'Upstairs, quick! Renny,' and she herself whisked back into
+the kitchen so that she should not cause suspicion to those
+others&mdash;Ah, your honour, that is a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," interrupted his master, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I went upstairs, four by four; and there, in your honour's
+room, without an attempt to conceal himself (when any moment it might
+have entered into those brigands' heads downstairs to search the
+place), there was Monsieur the Captain, raging up and down, like a
+wolf in cage, as I had the honour to describe before. No wonder Moggie
+was afraid for him. A woman is quick to feel danger ahead. He looked
+at me as if he did not know me, his face all unmade. 'You know what
+has happened;' he says. 'Am I not the most unfortunate...? All is
+lost.' 'With respect,' says I; 'nothing is lost so long as life is
+safe, but it is not a good thing Monsieur the Captain that you are
+here, like this, when you should be on your good ship as many miles
+away as she can make. Are you mad?' to him I say, and he to me, 'I
+think I am.' 'At least let me hide you,' I beg of him, 'I know of many
+beautiful places,' and so for the matter of that does he. But it was
+all lost trouble. At length he sits down at the table and begins to
+write, and his look brightens: 'You <i>can</i> help me, my good friend,' he
+says; 'I have a hope left&mdash;who knows&mdash;who knows,'&mdash;and he writes a few
+lines like an enraged and folds them and kisses the billet. 'Find
+means,' says he, 'Ren&eacute;, to get Johnny, the Shearman boy, to take this
+to the old churchyard and place it in the place he knows of; or,
+better still, should he chance upon Miss Landale to give it to her. He
+is a sharp rogue,' says he, 'and I can trust his wits; but should you
+not find him, dear Ren&eacute;, you must do the commission for me yourself.
+Now go&mdash;go,' he cries, and pushes me to the stairs. And, as I dared
+remain no more, I had to leave him. Of course Monsieur the Captain has
+not been here all this time without telling me of his hopes, and it is
+clear that it is to bid farewell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> to Mademoiselle Madeleine that he is
+playing with his life. It is as ill reasoning with a lover as a
+lunatic: they are the same thing, <i>Ma foi</i>, but I trust to your honour
+to bring him to his senses if any one can. And so, to continue, I went
+down and I told the men in blue the boat was ready, we carried the
+body; I left them at the Shearmans, as your honour knows. I found
+Johnny and gave him the letter; he knew all about what to do, it
+seemed. And then I came straight to the Hall."</p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed a miserable business!" said Sir Adrian.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; heaved a great sigh of sympathy, as he noticed the increasing
+concern on his master's face.</p>
+
+<p>"You heard them mention my brother's name?" inquired the latter, after
+following the train of his misgivings for a few moments. "You have
+reason to think that Mr. Landale knew of these men's errand; other
+reason, I mean, than having seen them with him just now?"</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;'s quick mind leaped at the meaning of the question:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your honour. 'Mr. Landale will want to know of this,' says the
+fat one; 'though it is too late,' he says." And Ren&eacute; added ruefully:
+"I have great fear. The captain is not at the end of his pains, if Mr.
+Landale is ranged against him!"</p>
+
+<p>Such was also Sir Adrian's thought. But he walked on for a time in
+silence; and, having reached Scarthey, rapidly made his way into the
+peel.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack was still pacing the room much as Ren&eacute; had described when
+Sir Adrian entered upon him. The young man turned with a transient
+look of surprise to the new-comer, then waved away the proffered hand
+with a bitter smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know," he said, "who it is you would shake hands with&mdash;an
+outlaw&mdash;a criminal. Ah, you have heard? Then Renny, I suppose, has
+told you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," groaned the other, holding his friend by both shoulders and
+gazing sorrowfully into the haggard face, "the man may die&mdash;oh, Jack,
+Jack, how could you be so rash?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say how it all happened," answered Captain Jack, falling to
+his walk to and fro again in the extremity of his distress, and ever
+and anon mopping his brow. "I felt such security in this place. All
+was loaded but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> last barrel, when, all of a sudden, from God knows
+where, the man sprang on me and thrust his dark lantern in my face.
+'It is Smith,' I heard him say. I do believe now that he only wanted
+to identify me. No man in his senses could have dared to try and
+arrest me surrounded by my six men. But I had no time to think then,
+Adrian. I imagined the fellow was leading a general attack.... If that
+last barrel was seized the whole secret was out; and that meant ruin.
+Wholesale failure seemed to menace me suddenly in the midst of my
+success. I had a handspike in my hand with which I had been helping to
+roll the kegs. I struck with it, on the spur of the moment; the man
+went down on the spot, with a groan. As he fell I leaped back, ready
+for the next. I called out, 'Stretchers, lads; they want to take your
+captain?' My lads gathered round me at once. But there was silence;
+not another creature to be seen or heard. They set to work to get that
+last blessed bit of cargo, the cause of all the misery, on board with
+the rest; while I stood in the growing dawn, looking down at the
+motionless figure and at the blood trickling into the sand, trying to
+think, to settle what to do, and only conscious of one thing: the
+intense wish that I could change places with my victim. Can you
+wonder, Adrian, that my brain was reeling? You who know all, all this
+means to me, can you wonder that I could not leave this shore&mdash;even
+though my life depended on it&mdash;without seeing her again! Curwen, my
+mate, came up to me at last, and I woke up to some sort of reason at
+the idea that they, the crew and the ship, must be removed from the
+immediate danger. But the orders I gave must have seemed those of a
+madman: I told him to sail right away but to double back in time to
+have the schooner round again at twelve noon to-day, and then to send
+the gig's crew to pick me up on Pulwick sand. 'Life and death,' said I
+to him, and he, brave fellow, 'Ay, ay, sir,' as if it was the most
+simple thing in the world, and off with him without another word."</p>
+
+<p>"What imprudence, what imprudence!" murmured Sir Adrian.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? None will believe that I have not seized the opportunity
+of making my escape with the others. The height of imprudence may
+become the height of security. I have as yet no plan&mdash;but it will
+come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> My luck shall not fail me now! who knows: nothing perhaps is
+damaged but an excise man's crown. Thank heaven, the wind cannot fail
+us to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"But, meanwhile," urged Sir Adrian, quite unconvinced, highly
+disturbed, "that treasure on board.... I know what has been your
+motive, Jack, but indeed it is all nothing short of insanity, positive
+insanity. Can you trust your men?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would trust them with my own secrets, willingly enough; but not
+with those of other people. So they do not know what I have in those
+barrels. Four thousand golden guineas in each...! No, the temptation
+would be too terrible for the poor lads. Not a soul knows that, beyond
+you and me. Curwen has charge of the cargo, such as it is. But I can
+answer for it none of them will dream of tampering with the casks.
+They are picked men, sober, trusty; who have fought side by side with
+me. I am their best friend. They are mine, body and soul, I believe.
+They do know there is some risk in the business, but they trust me.
+They are sure of treble pay, and besides, are not troubled with
+squeamishness. As for Curwen, he would go to hell for me, and never
+ask a question. No, Adrian, the scheme was perfect, but for this
+cursed blow of mine this morning. And now it is a terrible
+responsibility," continued the young man, again wiping his forehead;
+"every ounce of it weighs on my shoulders. But it is not that that
+distracts me. Oh, Adrian ... Madeleine!"</p>
+
+<p>The elder man felt his heart contract at the utter despairing of that
+cry.</p>
+
+<p>"When my handspike crashed on that damned interferer's skull," the
+sailor went on, "I felt as if the blow had opened an unfathomable
+chasm between her and me. Now I am felon&mdash;yes, in law, a felon! And
+yet I am the same man as yesterday. I shall have to fly to-night, and
+may never be able to return openly to England again. All my golden
+dreams of happiness, of honour, vanished at the sound of that cursed
+blow. But I must see her, Adrian, I <i>must</i> see her before I go. I am
+going to meet her at noon, in the ruins of Pulwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!" ejaculated the other aghast. "Listen, Jack, unfortunate
+man! When I heard of the&mdash;the misfortune, and of your folly in
+remaining, I instantly planned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> a last meeting for you. As it fell
+out, my wife has a fancy to spend the night here: I have asked her to
+bring her sister with her. But this inconceivably desperate plan of
+leaving in your ship, in broad light of day, frustrates all I would
+have done for you. For God's sake let us contrive some way of warning
+the <i>Peregrine</i> off till midnight; keep hidden, yourself; do not
+wilfully run your head into the noose!"</p>
+
+<p>But the young man had stopped short in his tramping, and stood looking
+at his friend, with a light of hope flaming in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"You have done that, Adrian! You have thought of that!" he repeated,
+as if mechanically. A new whirlwind of schemes rushed through his
+mind. For a while he remained motionless, with his gaze fixed on Sir
+Adrian, putting order in his own thoughts with that genius of
+precision and swiftness which, in strong natures, rises to meet a
+crisis. Then advancing, and seizing him by both hands:</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian," he cried, in something more like his own voice, again, "I
+shall yet owe my happiness to you, to this thought, this sublime
+thought of your heart!"</p>
+
+<p>And, as Sir Adrian, astounded, unable to understand this extremity of
+hopefulness, following upon the previous depth of misery, stared back
+at him, speechless, the latter proceeded in still more surprising
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you listen to me, this time. I have been selfish in running the
+risk of having you mixed up in my dangerous affairs. But, God is my
+witness, I acted under the belief that all was absolutely secure. Now,
+however, you must do nothing more that might implicate you. Remember,
+do nothing to let people suspect that you have seen me to-day. Renny,
+too, must keep close counsel. You know nothing of my future movements.
+Remain here for a while, do not even look out of the window.... I fear
+we shall not meet for a long time. Meanwhile, God bless you&mdash;God bless
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>After another wrench of the hands he held in his, the sailor released
+them and fairly ran out of the room, without heeding his friend's
+bewildered expostulations. At the door of the keep he met Ren&eacute; again.
+And after a brief but earnest colloquy, the man whose life was now
+forfeit to the community and upon whose head there would soon be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+price, was quietly walking along the causeway, making for the shore,
+with the greatest apparent unconcern and deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst Sir Adrian, alone in his chamber, with his head resting
+upon his hand, anxiously pondered upon the possible issues of this
+nefarious day's doings, the sailor advanced, in broad daylight towards
+the land to keep his appointment.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>A solitary speck of life upon the great waste, with the consciousness
+of the precarious thread of chance upon which it hung! What wonder
+that, for all his daring, the traveller felt, as he deliberately
+regulated his pace to the most nonchalant gait, a frantic desire to
+run forward, or to lie down! How many approach glasses might now be
+laid, like so many guns, upon him from secret points of the coast
+until he came within range of recognition; what ambushes those clumps
+of gorse and juniper, those plantations of alders and young firs on
+the bluffs yonder, might conceal? The eye could reach far and wide
+upon the immense stretch of sand, along the desert coast; and his
+solitary figure, moving upon the yellow strand was a mark for miles
+around. Steadily, nevertheless did he advance; the very daring, the
+unpardonable foolhardiness of the deed his safety. And yet the strain
+was high. Were they watching the island? Among the eager crew, to each
+of whom the capture might mean a splendid prize and chance of
+promotion, was there one would have the genius of suddenly suspecting
+that this foolhardy wayfarer might be the man they wanted and not
+merely Sir Adrian returning on foot towards his home?... And then came
+the answer of hopeful youth and hardy courage&mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>No. The preventive are a lubberly lot&mdash;It will require something
+better than a water-guard to track and take Lucky Jack Smith!</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>But for all his assurance Lucky Jack Smith drew a long breath of
+relief when he felt the shadow of Pulwick woods closing around him at
+last.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+<hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DAY: NOON</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">There stood two men and they did point their fingers at that house.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And on his finger one had blood; the other's finger shook.<br /></span>
+<span class="i25"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Broken lengths of wall, a crumbling indication of the spring of once
+exquisite arches, windows gaping darkly like the eye sockets of a
+skull&mdash;this was all that was left of the old priory of Pulwick, whilom
+proud seat of clerical power and learning. But the image of decay was
+robbed of all melancholy by the luxuriance of climbing vegetation, by
+the living screen of noble firs and larches arranged in serried ranks
+upon the slopes immediately behind it, with here and there a rugged
+sentinel within the ruinous yards and rooms themselves; by wild bushes
+of juniper and gorse and brambles. And, with the bright noon sun
+pouring down upon the worn red sandstone, and gilding the delicate
+tassels of the larches' green needles; with the light of young love,
+spreading glamour upon every leaf and stone, in the eyes of the
+lovers, the scene, witness of so many sweet meetings, bore that day a
+beautiful and home-like aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack was standing upon the grass-grown floor of what had been
+the departed monks' refectory, with ears eagerly bent to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Three ragged walls, a clump of fir trees, and a bank of brambles
+screened him from any chance passer-by, and he now and again peered
+through a crevice on to a path through the woods, cautiously, as if
+fearful to venture forth. His face was pale beneath its tan, and had
+none of its usual brightness; his attire for him was disordered; his
+whole appearance that of a man under the pressure of doubt and
+anxiety. Yet, when the sound of a light footfall struck among the
+thousand whispering noises of wind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> and leaf that went to make up the
+silence of the ruins, the glory of joy that lit up eye and lip left no
+room for any other impression.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine stood in the old doorway: a vision of beautiful life amid
+emblems of decay and death.</p>
+
+<p>"I come alone to-day," she said, with her half-shy smile. And then,
+before she could utter a further word of explanation, she was gathered
+into her lover's strong arms with a passion he had never as yet shown
+in his chivalrous relations with her. But it was not because they met
+without the sympathetic rapture of Miss Landale's eye upon them; not
+because there was no other witnesses but the dangling ivy wreath, the
+stern old walls, the fine dome of spring sky faintly blue; not because
+of lover's audacious joy. This Madeleine, feeling the stormy throbbing
+of his heart against hers, knew with sure instinct. She pushed him
+gently from her as soon as she could, the blushes chased from her
+cheeks by pale misgivings, and looked at him with eyes full of
+troubled questioning.</p>
+
+<p>Then he spoke, from his full heart:</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine, something has happened&mdash;a misfortune, as I wrote to you. I
+must now start upon my venture sooner than I thought&mdash;at once. I shall
+have to <i>fly</i> in fact, to-day. There have been spies upon me, and my
+secret trust is in danger. How they have tracked me, how suspicion has
+been aroused, I cannot guess. But I have been tracked. A fellow came
+at dawn. I had to defend my secret&mdash;the secret not my own, the charge
+entrusted to me. The man was hurt. I cannot explain, dear love, there
+is no time; even now I run the risk of my life by being here, and life
+is so dear to me now, my Madeleine! Hush! No, do not be afraid! I am
+afraid of nothing, so long as you trust me. Will you trust me? I
+cannot leave you here behind; and now, with this cursed stroke of
+ill-luck, this suspicion upon me, it may be long before I can return
+to England. I cannot leave you behind, I cannot! Will you trust me,
+Madeleine, will you come with me? We shall be married in France, my
+darling. You should be as a queen in the guard of her most humble
+slave. I am half mad to think I must go. Ah, kiss me, love, and say
+yes! Listen! I must sail away and make believe that I have gone. My
+<i>Peregrine</i> is a bird that none can overtake, but I shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> come back
+to-night. Listen: If you will be on the island to-night&mdash;Sir Adrian is
+there already, and I hear your sister is coming&mdash;a freak of fancy&mdash;and
+he, God bless him, has told her to bring you too (it shows my luck has
+not deserted me yet). I shall be there, unknown to all except Renny. I
+cannot meet you nearer home, but you will be my own brave bride and
+keep your own counsel. You will not be frightened, will you, my
+beautiful love? All you have to do is to follow Renny's instructions.
+My ship will be back, waiting, an hour after dark, ready, when you set
+foot on it, to spread its wings with its treasures&mdash;treasures, indeed!
+And then we shall have the world before us&mdash;riches, love, such love!
+And once safe, I shall be free to prove to you that it is no common
+blood I would mate with that dear and pure stream that courses in your
+veins. You shall soon know all; will you trust me?"</p>
+
+<p>She hung upon his hot words, looking at him with loving, frightened
+eyes. Now he gathered her to his arms again, again his bursting heart
+throbbed its stormy passion to her ear. She was as one carried away by
+a torrent against which resistance is useless. He bent his head over
+her face; the scent of the bunch of violets in her breast rose
+deliciously to his nostrils. Alas! Hubert Cochrane was not to reach
+that kiss of acquiescence, that kiss from which it seemed that but so
+small a fraction of space and time divided him! Some one, who had
+stepped along in the shadow as silently as a cat coming upon a bird,
+clapped here a hand upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you, sir, and what do you want?" exclaimed Captain Jack,
+wrenching himself free, falling back a pace and measuring the
+new-comer from head to foot with furious glances, while, with burning
+blushes Madeleine faltered:</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert!"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing awakens anger in hot blood sooner than an unsanctioned touch.
+In certain moods the merest contact is as infuriating as a blow. Such
+an insult, added to the irreparable injury of interrupting their
+meeting at the most exquisite and crucial moment, drove Captain Jack
+beside himself with rage.</p>
+
+<p>But Madeleine's hand was still on his arm. She felt it suddenly harden
+and twitch with murderous anger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> But, by an effort that made the
+veins of his temple swell like whipcord, he refrained from striking
+the double offender.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale surveyed the pair for a moment in silence with his grave
+look; then coldly he answered the sailor's irate speech.</p>
+
+<p>"My name, fellow, is Rupert Landale. I am here to protect my cousin
+from an unprincipled and criminal adventurer."</p>
+
+<p>"You take a sharp tone sir," cried Captain Jack, the flush on his face
+deepening yet a shade, his nostrils ominously dilated, yet speaking
+without further loss of self-control. "You probably count upon the
+presence of this lady to prevent my resenting it; but as my time with
+her is short and I have still much to say, I shall be forced promptly
+to eject you from the ruins here, unless you will be good enough to
+immediately remove yourself. I shall hope for another meeting with you
+to discuss the question as to your right of interference; but
+to-day&mdash;I cannot spare the time."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert smiled without moving; then the sailor gently disengaging
+himself from Madeleine would have put her behind him but that she
+pressed forward and laid a hand upon an arm of each of the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay, Jack," she pleaded, "let me speak. There is some mistake here.
+Cousin Rupert, you cannot know that I am engaged to this gentleman and
+that he is a friend of your brother's as well as of other good friends
+of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor child," answered Rupert, closing a cold hand gently over hers
+and speaking with a most delicate tenderness of accent, "you have been
+grossly imposed upon, and so have others. As for my poor brother
+Adrian, he is, if anything, easier to deceive than you, innocent
+convent-bred girl! I would have you to go home, my dear, and leave me
+to deal with this&mdash;gentleman. You have bitter truths to learn; would
+it not be better to wait and learn them quietly without further
+scandal?"</p>
+
+<p>This was too much for Captain Jack, who fairly ground his teeth.
+Rupert's honeyed tones, his grasp of Madeleine's hand were more
+unbearable even than the words. He advanced upon the elder man and
+seizing him by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> the collar whirled him away from the girl as easily as
+a straw puppet.</p>
+
+<p>The fine gentleman of sensitive nerves and unworked sinews had no
+chance against the iron strength of the man who had passed all the
+years of virility fighting against sea and storm. The two faced each
+other; Jack Smith, red and panting with honest rage, only the sense of
+his lady's proximity keeping him from carrying his high-handed
+measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly
+black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered
+from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst
+enemy could have attributed it to fear.</p>
+
+<p>An unequal match it would seem, yet unequal in a way that the young
+man, in the conscious glory of his strength could not have conceived.
+Madeleine neither screamed nor fainted; she had grown white, in
+natural apprehension, but her eyes fixed upon her lover's face shone
+with admiration. Mr. Landale turned slowly towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine," he said, readjusting his stock and smoothing the folds of
+his collar with a steadfast striving after coolness, "you have been
+grossly deceived. The man you would trust with your life and honour is
+a mere smuggler. He has no doubt told you fine stories, but if he has
+given himself out for aught else he lied, take my word for it&mdash;he
+lied. He is a common smuggler, and the vessel he would carry you away
+in is packed with smuggled goods. To-day he has attacked and wounded
+an officer, who, in the discharge of his duty, endeavoured to find out
+the nature of his suspicious purpose. Your would-be lover's neck is in
+danger. A felon, he runs the risk of his life every moment he remains
+on land&mdash;but he would make a last effort to secure the heiress! Look
+at him," his voice raising in spite of himself to a shriller
+pitch&mdash;"he cannot deny it!"</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine gazed from one to the other. Her mind, never a very quick
+one at decision, was too bewildered to act with clearness; moreover
+with her education and ignorance of the world the indictment conveyed
+no special meaning to her.</p>
+
+<p>But there was an agony of suspense and beseeching in the glance that
+her lover cast upon her; and to that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> appeal she smiled proudly. Hers
+were no true love, she felt, were its confidence shaken by the
+slandering of anger. Then the thought of his danger, danger admitted
+by his own lips, flashed upon her with terror. She rushed to him,</p>
+
+<p>"Oh go, Jack, go!&mdash;As you love me, go!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale, who had already once or twice cast impatient looks of
+expectation through a window of the east wall, taken by surprise at
+this unforeseen result of his speech, suddenly climbed up upon a
+broken piece of stone-work, from which there was an abrupt descent
+towards the shore, and began to signal in eager gesticulation. There
+was a sound of heavy running footfalls without. Captain Jack raised
+his head, every nerve on the alert.</p>
+
+<p>"Go, go," again cried Madeleine, dreading she knew not what.&mdash;A fat
+panting red face looked over the wall; Mr. Landale turned for a second
+to throw at the lovers a glance of elation.</p>
+
+<p>But it seemed as if the sailor's spirits rose at the breath of danger.
+He rapidly looked round upon the ruins from which there were no other
+outlets than the window guarded by Mr. Landale, and the doorway in
+which the red-faced new-comer now stood, framed in red stone; then,
+like a cat he darted on to the ledge of the wall at the opposite end,
+where some invading boughs of larch dropped over the jagged crest,
+before the burly figure in the blue coat of the preventive service had
+recovered from the surprise of finding a lady in his way, or gathered
+his wits and his breath sufficiently to interfere.</p>
+
+<p>There the nimble climber stood a moment balancing himself lightly,
+though the ivied stones rocked beneath him.</p>
+
+<p>"I go, love," he cried in ringing voice, "but one word from you and I
+go&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I trust you! I will trust you!" screamed the girl in despair,
+while her fascinated gaze clung to the erect figure silhouetted
+against the sky and the stout man looked up, open-mouthed. Mr. Landale
+snarled at him:</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot, fool&mdash;shoot!" And straining forward, himself drew a pistol
+from the man's belt, cocked it and thrust it into his grasp.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack kissed his hand to Madeleine with a joyful gesture, then
+waved his hat defiantly in Rupert's direction, and with a spring
+disappeared, just as the pistol cracked, drawing a shriek of terror
+from the girl, and its bullet flattened itself against the upper stone
+of the wall&mdash;considerably wide of the mark.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, this way&mdash;&mdash;!" screamed Mr. Landale from his window sill, "you
+have another!"</p>
+
+<p>But the preventive shook his head, and thrust his smoking barrel back
+through his belt, with an air of philosophical resignation; and slowly
+approaching the window, through which the fugitive could now be seen
+steadily bowling down the seaward slope, observed in slow, fat tones:</p>
+
+<p>"Give you a hand, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Rupert, thrusting his extended arm aside jumped down beside him as if
+he would have sprung at his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you so late?&mdash;why have you brought no one with you? I gave
+you notice enough. You fool! You have let him slip through your
+fingers, now, after all! Couldn't you even shoot straight? Such a mark
+as he made against the sky&mdash;Pah! well may the sailors say, lubberly as
+a land preventive&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there you are, Mr. Landale!" answered the man with
+imperturbable, greasy good-humour. "The way you shoved that there
+pistol into my hand was enough to put off anybody. But you country
+magistrate gentlemen, as I have always said, you are the real sort to
+make one do illegal actions with your flurry and your hurry over
+everything. 'Shoot!' says you, and damme, sir, if I didn't shoot
+straight off before I knew if I were on my head or on my heels. It's a
+mercy I didn't hit the sweet young lady&mdash;it is indeed. And as for the
+young gentleman, though to be sure he did show a clean pair of heels
+at the sight of me, I had no proper time for i-dentification&mdash;no time
+for i-den-ti-fi-cation, Mr. Landale, sir. So I say, sir, it's a mercy
+I did not hit him either, now I can think of it. Ah, slow and sure,
+that's my motter! I takes my man on his boat, in the very middle of
+his laces and his brandy and his silk&mdash;I takes him, sir, in the very
+act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows
+fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why
+it's a good job too&mdash;but none<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> of this promiscuous work for Augustus
+Hobson. Slow and sure, that's my motter."</p>
+
+<p>The speaker who had been rolling a quid of tobacco in his mouth during
+this exposition of policy, here spat emphatically upon the grass, and
+catching Madeleine's abstracted eye, begged pardon for the liberty
+with a gallant air.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, so slow, man, that you are pretty sure to fail," muttered Mr.
+Landale.</p>
+
+<p>"I knows my business, sir, meaning no offence," retorted Mr. Hobson
+serenely. "When I has no orders I acts on regulation. I brought no one
+with me because I had no one to bring, having sent, as per regulation,
+my one remaining man to give notice to the water service, seeing that
+that there schooner has had the impudence to come back, and is at this
+very moment cruising quite happy-like just the other side of the bank;
+though if ever their cutter overhauls her&mdash;well, I'm a Dutchman! You
+might have done wiser, perhaps (if I may make so bold as to remark),
+to leave the management of this business to them as understands such
+things. As to being late, sir, you told me to be in the ruins at
+twelve noon, and I beg to insinuate that it's only just past the hour
+now."</p>
+
+<p>At this point the preventive man drew from his capacious breeches a
+brass time-piece, of congenial stoutness, the face of which he turned
+towards the magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>The latter, however, waved the proffered witness impatiently aside.
+Furtively watching his cousin, who, leaning against the door-post, her
+pale head thrown out in strong relief by the dark stones, stood as if
+absolutely detached from her surroundings, communing over troubled
+thoughts with her own soul, he said with deliberate distinctness:</p>
+
+<p>"But have I been misled, then, in understanding that you were with the
+unfortunate officer who was so ferociously assaulted this morning?
+that you and he did come upon this Captain Smith, red-handed as you
+call it, loading or unloading his vessel on Scarthey Island?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, sir," rolled out the other, unctuously, "there you are again,
+you see. Poor Nat Beavor, he was one of your hot-headed ones, and see
+what it has brought <i>him</i> to&mdash;a crack in his skull, sir, so that it
+will be days before he'll know himself again, the doctor says, if ever
+he does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> in this world, which I don't think. Ah, I says to him, when
+we started in the dawn this morning agreeable to our arrangement with
+you: 'For peeping and prying on the quiet without any running risks
+and provoking others to break the law more than they're doing, I'm
+your man,' says I; 'but as for attacking desperate individles without
+proper warrant and authority, not to speak of being one to ten, I tell
+you fair, Nat Beavor, I'll have nothing to do with it.' But Nat, he
+went off his head, clean, at the sight of Captain Jack and his men a
+trundling the little kegs down the sands, as neat and tidy as could
+be; and so he cut out from behind the rocks, and I knew there was
+mischief ahead! Ah, poor fellow, if he would only have listened to me!
+I did my best for him, sir; started off to call up the other man, who
+was on the other side of the ruins, as soon as I saw his danger, but
+when I came back&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The birds were flown, of course," interrupted Rupert with a sneer,
+"and you found the body of your comrade who had been dastardly
+wounded, and who, I hear, is dead now. So the villain has twice
+escaped you. Cousin Madeleine," hastily breaking off to advance to the
+girl, who now awakening from her reflective mood seemed about to leave
+the ruins, "Cousin Madeleine, are you going? Let me escort you back."</p>
+
+<p>She slowly turned her blue eyes, burning upon him from her white face.
+"Cousin Rupert, I do not want your company." Then she added in a
+whisper, yet with a passion for which Rupert would never have given
+her credit and which took him vastly by surprise, "I shall never
+forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>"My God, Madeleine," cried he, with genuine emotion, "have I deserved
+this? I have had no thought but to befriend you, I have opened your
+eyes to your own danger&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue, sir," she broke in, with the same repressed anger.
+"Cease vilifying the man I love. All your aspersions, your wordy
+accusations will not shake my faith in him. <i>Mon Dieu</i>," she cried,
+with an unsteady attempt at laughter, looking under her lashes and
+tilting her little white round chin at Mr. Hobson, who, now seated
+upon a large stone, and with an obtrusive quid of tobacco bulging in
+an imperfectly shorn cheek, was mopping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> his forehead with a doubtful
+handkerchief. "<i>That</i> is the person, I suppose, whose testimony I am
+to believe against my Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Jack was prompt enough in running away from him, such as he is,"
+retorted her cousin bitterly. He could not have struck, for his
+purpose, upon a weaker joint in her poor woman's armour of pride and
+trust.</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath sharply, as if indeed she had received a blow.
+"Well, say your say," she exclaimed, coming to a standstill and facing
+him; "I will hear all that you and your&mdash;your friend have to say,
+lest," with a magnificent toss of her head, "you fancy I am afraid, or
+that I believe one word of it all. I know that Jack&mdash;that Captain
+Smith, as he is called&mdash;is engaged upon a secret and important
+mission; but it is one, Rupert, which all English gentlemen should
+wish to help, not impede."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what the mission is&mdash;do you know to whom? And if, my fair
+cousin, it is such that all English gentlemen would help, why then
+this secrecy?"</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lip; but it trembled. "What is it you accuse him of?" she
+asked, with a stamp of her foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me," said Rupert gently, "it is the kinder thing that you
+should know the truth, and believe me, every word I say I can
+substantiate. This Captain Jack Smith, whatever his real name may be,
+was picked up when a mere boy by an old Liverpool merchant, starving
+in the streets of that town. This merchant, by name Cochrane, an
+absurd person who gave himself out to be a relative of Cochrane of
+Shaws, adopted the boy and started him upon a slaver, that is a ship
+which does trade in negro slaves, my dear&mdash;a pretty trade. He next
+entered a privateer's ship as lieutenant. You know what these
+are&mdash;ocean freebooters, tolerated by government for the sake of the
+harm they wreck upon the ships of whatever nation we may happen to be
+at war with&mdash;a sort of pirate ship&mdash;hardly a much more reputable
+business than the slaver's; but Captain Smith made himself a name in
+it. Now that the war is over, he has taken to a lower traffic
+still&mdash;that of smuggling."</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>what</i> is smuggling?" cried the girl, tears brimming up at last
+into her pretty eyes, and all her heat of valiance suddenly gone.
+"What does it mean?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is smuggling? Bless your innocence! I beg your pardon, my
+dear&mdash;miss I should say&mdash;but if you'll allow <i>me</i> I think I'm the man
+to explain that 'ere to you." The husky mellifluous tones of the
+preventive-service man, who had crept up unnoticed to listen to the
+conversation, here murmured insinuatingly in her ear.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert hesitated; then reading shrinking aversion upon Madeleine's
+face, shrewdly conjectured that the exposition of her lover's doings
+might come with more force from Mr. Hobson's lips than from his own,
+and allowed the latter to proceed unmolested.</p>
+
+<p>"Smuggling, my pretty," wheezed the genial representative of the
+custom laws, "again asking pardon, but it slipped out, smuggling is,
+so to say, a kind of stealing, a kind of cheating and that of a most
+rank and heinous kind. For, mind you, it ain't stealing from a common
+man, nor from the likes of you and me, nor from a nobleman either:
+it's cheating and stealing from his most gracious Majesty himself. For
+see you, how 'tis, his Majesty he says, 'Every keg of brandy,' says
+he, 'and every yard of lace and every pipe o' tobacco as is brought
+into this here country shall be paid for, so much on, to me, and
+that's called a tax, miss, and for that there are the custom houses
+and custom officers&mdash;which is me&mdash;to see his Majesty paid right and
+proper his lawful dues. But what does your smuggler do, miss&mdash;your
+rollicking, dare-devil chap of a smuggler? Why he lands his lace and
+his brandy and his 'baccy unbeknownst and sells 'em on the sly&mdash;and
+pockets the profit! D'ye see?&mdash;and so he cheats his Majesty, which is
+a very grievous breaking of the law; so much so that he might as well
+murder at once&mdash;Kind o' treason, you may say&mdash;and that's what makes
+'em such desperate chaps. They knows if they're caught at it, with
+arms about them, and two or three together&mdash;it's&mdash;clank."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hobson grasped his own bull neck with an unpleasantly significant
+gesture and winked knowingly at the girl, who turned white as death
+and remained gazing at him with a sort of horrified fascination which
+he presently noted with an indulgent smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take on now, my lass&mdash;no offence, miss&mdash;but I can't bear to see
+a fine young 'oman like you upset-like&mdash;I'm a damned, hem, hem, a real
+soft hearted fellow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> Your sweetheart's heels have saved his gullet
+this time&mdash;and though he did crack poor Nat upon the skull (as I can
+testify for I as good as saw him do it&mdash;which makes it a hanging
+matter twice over I won't deny), yet there's a good few such as him
+escapes the law and settles down arter, quite respectable-like. A bit
+o' smuggling now is a thing many a pretty fellow has taken to in his
+day, and has made a pretty penny out of too, and is none the worse
+looked to arter, as I said. Aye, and there's many a gentleman and a
+magistrate to boot as drinks his glass of smuggled brandy and smokes
+his smuggled baccy and finds them none the worse, oh dear no! Human
+nature it is and human nature is a queer thing. Even the ladies, miss,
+are well-known to be soft upon the smuggled lace: it's twice as cheap
+you see as t'other, and they can get double as handsome for the money.
+Begging your pardon&mdash;if I may make so bold&mdash;" stretching out a great,
+coarse, tobacco-stained finger and thumb to close them appreciatively
+upon the hanging lace of Madeleine's neck handkerchief, "may be your
+spark brought you that there, miss, now? He, he, he&mdash;as pretty a bit
+of French point it is as has ever been my fate to lay hands on&mdash;Never
+fear," as the girl drew back with a gesture of loathing from the
+contact. "I ain't agoing to seize it off you or take you up,
+he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;eh, Mr. Landale? I'm a man o' my duty, I hope, but our
+orders don't run as far as that."</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert!" cried Madeleine, piteously turning a dark gaze of anguish at
+him&mdash;it seemed as if she were going to faint.</p>
+
+<p>He hastened up to her, shouldering the clumsy form of Mr. Augustus
+Hobson unceremoniously out of the way: the fellow had done his work
+for the time being, and this last piece of it so efficaciously indeed
+that his present employer felt, if not remorse, at least a certain
+pity stir within him at the stricken hopelessness of the girl's
+aspect. He passed his arm round her waist as she shivered and swayed.
+"Lean on me," he said, his fine eyes troubled with an unwonted
+softness and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Rupert," she whispered, clutching at his sleeve, eagerly fixing him
+with a look eloquent of unconscious pleading, "all these things
+this&mdash;this man talks of are things which are brought into England&mdash;are
+they not? I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> know that&mdash;<i>he</i> was bringing nothing into the country,
+but he was going to another country upon some important trust, the
+nature of which he had promised not to reveal. Therefore he cannot be
+cheating the King, if that is smuggling&mdash;Oh Rupert, is there not some
+grievous mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"My poor child," said Rupert, holding her close and tenderly, and
+speaking with a gentle gravity in which there was this time less
+hypocrisy, "there is one thing which is smuggled out of England, and
+it is as dishonest and illegal work as the other, the most daring and
+dangerous smuggling of all in fact; one in which none but a desperate
+man would engage&mdash;that of gold."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, gold," exclaimed the girl sharply, withdrawing herself from her
+cousin's arms, while a ray of intelligence and hope lit up her face.
+"Gold for the French King's service."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert betrayed no emotion; he drew from the inner pocket of his coat
+a crushed news-sheet.</p>
+
+<p>"Deceived there, as well as everywhere else, poor little cousin," he
+said. "And did the scoundrel say so? Nay, he is a damnable scoundrel
+who could betray your trustfulness to your own sweet face. Gold
+indeed&mdash;but not for the King&mdash;gold for the usurper, for the tyrant who
+was supplied already, no doubt, by the same or similar traitor hands
+with enough to enable him to escape from the island where he was so
+justly imprisoned. See here, Madeleine, Bonaparte is actually landed
+in France: it has all been managed with the most devilish ingenuity
+and takes the whole world by surprise. And your lover, doubtless, is
+engaged upon bringing him fresh supplies to enable him to begin again
+and rack humanity with hideous wars. Oh, he never told you of the
+Corsican's escape, yet this news is three days old. See you, my dear,
+this explains the whole mystery, the necessity for absolute secrecy;
+all England is friendly to the French monarch; no need to smuggle gold
+for his aid&mdash;but the other...! It is treason, the blackest treason on
+every side of it, treason to his King, to his country, to <i>your</i> King,
+to you. And he would have cozened you with tales of his loyalty to the
+rightful cause!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the paper," said Madeleine. A tide of blood had swept into
+her face; she was no longer white and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> shaken, but erect and beautiful
+in strong indignation. Rupert examined her, as if a little doubtful
+how to take the sudden change; but he handed her the printed sheet in
+silence. She read with lips and nostrils expanded by her quick
+breathing; then crumpled up the sheet and cast it at his feet. And
+after a pause, with her princess air of dignity, "I thank you, cousin
+Rupert," she said; then, passing him with stately steps, moved towards
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>He pressed forward to keep up with her; and upon the other side,
+smiling, irrepressible, jocose, Mr. Hobson did the same.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not fit to go alone," urged the former, while the latter
+engagingly protruding an elbow, announced that he'd be proud to give
+her an arm as far as the Hall.</p>
+
+<p>She drew away from this well-meaning squire of dames with such
+shuddering distaste, and looked once more so white and worn and
+sickened after her sudden blaze of passion, that Mr. Landale, seeing
+that the only kindness was to let her have her will, arrested his
+companion roughly enough, and allowed her to proceed as she wished.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>And so, with bent head, Madeleine hurried forth. And the same glorious
+sun smiled down upon her in her anguish that had greeted her when she
+hastened an hour before glowing and light-hearted&mdash;if, indeed, a heart
+so full of love could be termed light&mdash;to meet her lover; the same
+brambles caught her dress, the same bird trilled his song. But
+Madeleine thought neither of ray nor leaf, nor yet of mating
+songsters: all the spring world, as she went, was to her strewn with
+the wreck of her broken hopes, and encompassed by the darkness of her
+lonely future.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Mr. Landale and the preventive service man stood some time watching
+her retreating figure through the wood, and then walked slowly on for
+a while, in silent company.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the latter, who during the last part of the interview, had
+begun to feel a little ruffled by the magistrate's persistently
+overbearing manner, inquired with something of dudgeon in his voice:
+"Begging your pardon, sir, what was that I heard the young lady call
+out just now? 'Gold!' she cries. Is it guineas that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> nipping young man
+is a taking over seas, if I may make so bold? Now you see, sir, we
+haven't had no orders about no gold on this station&mdash;that sort of
+thing is mostly done down south. But what I wants to know is: Why, if
+you knew all about the fellow's little games, you sent us to spy on
+him? Ah, poor Nat would want a word or two with you on that score, I
+fancy! Now it's as plain as Salisbury...."</p>
+
+<p>"But I know nothing certain," impatiently interrupted Mr. Landale. "I
+know no more than you do yourself. Only not being a perfect idiot, I
+can put two and two together. What in the name of goodness can a man
+smuggle <i>out</i> of England but gold? But I wanted the proofs. And your
+business, it was agreed with the Chief Officer, was to follow my
+instructions."</p>
+
+<p>"And so we did," grumbled Mr. Hobson; "and a pretty business it's
+turned out! Nat's to pocket his bludgeoning, I suppose, and I am to
+bear the blame and lose my share. A cargo of guineas, by God! I might
+have nosed it, down south, but here.... Blast it! But since you was so
+clever over it, sir, why in blazes&mdash;if I may speak so to a gentleman
+and a magistrate," pursued the man with a rueful explosion of disgust,
+"didn't you give <i>me</i> the hint? Why, guineas is contraband of
+war&mdash;it's treason, sir&mdash;and guineas is a cargo that's <i>fought</i> for,
+sir! I shouldn't have moved with two men in a boat patrol, d'ye think?
+I should have had the riding officers, and the water-guard, and a
+revenue cruiser in the offing, and all tight and regular. But you
+<i>would</i> have all the credit, and where are you? and <i>where's</i> my
+share? and where is Nat?&mdash;Bah!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are forgetting yourself, officer," said Mr. Landale, looking
+severely into the eyes of the disappointed preventive man, whose
+rising ebullition became on the instant reduced.</p>
+
+<p>"So I am, sir, so I am&mdash;and beg your pardon. But you must admit, it's
+almost enough to make ... but never mind, sir, the trick is done.
+Whatever it may be that that there schooner carries in her bottom, she
+is free now to take it, barring accident, wherever she pleases. I'll
+trouble you to look this way, sir."</p>
+
+<p>They had emerged from the wooded part of the park, and the rising
+ground on which they stood commanded a wide sea-view, west of the
+great bay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There she is again, sir," said Mr. Hobson, waving his broad paw, like
+a showman displaying his goods, with a sort of enraged
+self-satisfaction. "There is the schooner, ready to hoist sail as soon
+as he comes alongside. And that there black point which you may see,
+if your eyes are good enough, is a six-oared galley with as
+ship-shaped a crew&mdash;if it's the same as I saw making off this
+morning&mdash;as ever pulled. Your Captain Smith, you may take your oath,
+is at the tiller, and making fun of us two to the lads. In five
+minutes he will be on board, and then the revenue cutter from the
+station may give chase if she likes!... And there she is, due to the
+time&mdash;about a mile astern. But bless you, that's all my eye, you may
+take your oath! They know well enough that in an open sea they can't
+run down a Salcombe schooner. But to earn their pay they will hang on
+till they lose her, and then sail home, all cosy.&mdash;I'm thinking," he
+added slily, with a side glance at the magistrate: "we won't hang him
+<i>this</i> time."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale made no answer; during the last few minutes his
+reflections had enabled him to take a new view of the situation. After
+all the future fate of Captain Jack was of little moment. He had been
+successfully exposed before Madeleine, whose love for the young man
+was, as had just been sufficiently proved, chiefly composed of those
+youthful illusions which dispelled once, never can return.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert fell gradually into a reverie in which he found curious
+satisfaction. His work had not been unsuccessful, whatever Mr.
+Hobson's opinion might be. But, as matters stood between Madeleine and
+her lover, the girl's eyes had been opened in time, and that without
+scandal.... And even the escape of Captain Jack was, upon reflection,
+the best thing that could have happened.</p>
+
+<p>And so it was with a return to his usual polite bearing, that he
+listened to the officer's relapse into expostulation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now if you had only given me the hint first of all," the man was
+grumblingly saying, "and then let me act&mdash;for who would have suspected
+a boat, yacht-rigged like that?&mdash;A friend of Sir Adrian's, too! If
+you'd only left it to me! Why that six-oared galley alone is agin the
+law unless you can prove good reason for it ... as for the vessel
+herself...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear Mr. Hobson," interrupted Mr. Landale,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> smiling
+propitiously. "I have no doubt you would have secured him. I have made
+a mess of it. But now you understand, least said, soonest mended, both
+for me and (between ourselves, Mr. Hobson) for the young lady."</p>
+
+<p>The man, in surprise at this sudden alteration of manner, stopped
+short and gaped; and presently a broad smile, combined with a knowing
+wink, appeared on his face. He received the guineas that Mr. Landale
+dropped in his palm with an air of great candour, and, without further
+parley, acted on the kind advice to repair to the Priory and talk with
+one Mrs. Puckett the housekeeper, on the subject of corporeal
+refreshment.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>"Well," said Molly, bursting in upon her sister, who sat by her
+writing-table, pen in hand, and did not even raise her head at the
+unceremonious entrance. "This is evidently the day for mysterious
+disappearances. First Rupert and Sophia; then my lord and master who
+is fetched hurriedly to his island (that isle of misfortune!) God
+knows for what&mdash;though <i>I</i> mean to know presently; then you,
+Mademoiselle, and Rupert again. It is, faith, quite a comedy. But the
+result has been that I have had my meals alone, which is not so gay.
+Sophia is in bed, it turns out; Rupert out a-riding, on important
+business, of course! all he does is desperately important. And there
+you are&mdash;alone in your room, moping. God, child, how pale you are!
+What ails you then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Molly," cried Madeleine, ignoring Lady Landale's question and
+feverishly folding the written sheet which lay under her hand, "if you
+love me, if ever you loved me, will you have this letter conveyed by a
+safe messenger to Scarthey, and given to Ren&eacute;&mdash;to none but Ren&eacute;, at
+once? Oh, Molly, it will be a service to me, you little guess of what
+moment!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voyez un peu!</i>" said Lady Landale coolly. "What trust in Molly, all
+at once! Aha, I thought it would come. If I love you? Hum, I'm not so
+sure about that. If ever I loved you?&mdash;a droll sort of plea, in truth,
+considering how you have requited my love!"</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine turned a dazed look upon her sister, who stood surveying
+her, glowing like a jewel of dazzling radiance, from her setting of
+black mantle and black plumed hat. "So you will not!" she answered
+hopelessly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> and let her forehead fall upon her hand without further
+protest.</p>
+
+<p>"But I did not say I would not&mdash;as it happens I am going to the island
+myself. How you stare&mdash;oh you remember now do you? Who told you I
+wonder?&mdash;of course, such a couple as we are, Adrian and I, could not
+be divided from each other for over half a day, could we? By the way,
+I was to convey a gracious invitation to you too. Will you come with
+me?&mdash;No?&mdash;strange girl. So even give me the letter, I will take it
+to&mdash;no, not to Ren&eacute;, 'tis addressed to Captain Smith, I see. Dear
+me&mdash;you don't mean to say, Madeleine, that you are corresponding with
+that person; that he is near us? What would Tanty say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Molly, cease your scoffs," implored poor Madeleine, wearily. "You
+are angry with me, well, now rejoice, for I am punished&mdash;well
+punished. Oh, I would tell you all but I cannot! my heart is too sick.
+See, you may read the letter, and then you will understand&mdash;but for
+pity's sake go&mdash;Do not fail to go; he will be there on the island at
+dark&mdash;he expects <i>me</i>&mdash;Oh, Molly! I cannot explain&mdash;indeed I cannot,
+and there is no time, it will soon be dusk; but there is terrible
+danger in his being there at all."</p>
+
+<p>Molly took the letter, turned it over with scornful fingers and then
+popped it in her pocket. "If he expects you," she asked, fixing cold,
+curious eyes on her sister's distress, "and he is in danger, why
+<i>don't</i> you go?"</p>
+
+<p>A flush rose painfully to Madeleine's face, a sob to her throat.
+"Don't ask me," she murmured, turning away to hide her humiliation. "I
+have been deceived, he is not what I thought."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale gazed at the shrinking figure for a little while in
+silence. Then remarking contemptuously: "Well you are a poor
+creature," turned upon her heel to leave her. As she passed the little
+altar, she paused to whisk a bunch of violets out of a vase and dry
+the stems upon her sister's quilt.</p>
+
+<p>"Molly," cried Madeleine, in a frenzy, "give me back my letter, or
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"I go, I go," said Lady Landale with a mocking laugh. "How sweet your
+violets smell!&mdash;There, do not agitate yourself: I'm going to meet your
+lover, my dear. I vow I am curious to see the famous man, at last."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE NIGHT</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">So the blood burned within her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And thus it cried to her:<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And there, beside the maize field<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">The other one was waiting&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">He, the mysterious one.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The mantle of night had already fallen upon the land when Lady
+Landale, closely wrapped in her warmest furs, with face well ensconced
+under her close bonnet, and arms buried to the elbow in her muff,
+sallied from her room on the announcement that the carriage was
+waiting. As, with her leisurely daintiness, she tripped it down the
+stairs, she crossed Mr. Landale, and paused a moment, ready for the
+skirmish, as she noticed the cynical curiosity with which he examined
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Whither, my fair sister," said he, ranging himself with his best
+courtesy against the bannisters, "so late in the day?"</p>
+
+<p>"To my lord and master's side, of course," said Molly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;is not Adrian coming back to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently not, since he has graciously permitted me to join him upon
+his rock. I trust you will not find it too unhappy in our absence:
+that would be the crowning misfortune of a day when everything seems
+to have gone wrong. Sophia invisible with her vapours; Madeleine with
+the megrim; and you in and out of the house as excited and secret as
+the cat when she has licked all the cream. I suppose I shall end by
+knowing what it is all about. Meanwhile I think I shall enjoy the
+tranquillity of the island&mdash;although I have actually to tear myself
+away from the prospect of a t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te evening with you."</p>
+
+<p>But as Rupert's serenity was not to be moved, her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> ladyship hereupon
+allowed herself to be escorted to the carriage without further parley.</p>
+
+<p>As she drove away through the dark night, first down the level,
+well-metalled avenue, then along the uneven country road, and finally
+through the sand of the beach in which hoofs and tyres sank
+noiselessly, inches deep, Molly gave herself up, with almost childish
+zest to the leaven of imagination.... Here, in this dark carriage, was
+reclining, not Lady Landale (whose fate deed had already been signed,
+sealed and delivered to bring her nothing but disappointment), but her
+happier sister, still confronted with the fascinating unknown,
+hurrying under cover of night, within sound of the sea, to that
+enthralling lure, a lover&mdash;a real lover, ardent, daring, <i>young</i>,
+ready to risk all, waiting to spread the wings of his boat, and carry
+her to the undiscovered country.</p>
+
+<p>Glowing were these fleeting images of the "might have been," angry the
+sudden relapses into the prose of reality.</p>
+
+<p>No, Madeleine, the coward, who thought she had loved her lover, was
+now in her room, weak and weeping, whilst he, no doubt, paced the deck
+in mad impatience (as a lover should), now tortured by the throes of
+anxiety, now hugging himself with the thought of his coming bliss ...
+that bliss that never was to be his. And in the carriage there was
+only Molly, the strong-hearted but the fettered by tie and vow, the
+slave for ever of a first girlish fancy but too successfully
+compassed; only Lady Landale rejoining her husband in his melancholy
+solitude; Lady Landale who never&mdash;never! awful word! would know the
+joys which yonder poor fool had had within her grasp and yet had not
+clutched at.</p>
+
+<p>Molly had read, as permitted, her sister's letter, and to some
+purpose; and scorn of the girl who from some paltry quibble could
+abandon in danger the man she professed to love, filled her soul to
+the exclusion of any sisterly or ever womanly pity.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of half an hour the carriage was stopped by the black
+shadow of a man, who seemed to spring up from the earth, and who,
+after a few rapid words interchanged with the coachman, extinguished
+both the lights, and then opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning on the offered elbow Molly jumped down upon the yielding
+sand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ren&eacute;?" she asked; for the darkness even on the open beach was too
+thick to allow of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"Ren&eacute;, your ladyship&mdash;or Mademoiselle is it?" answered the man in his
+unmistakable accent. "I must ask; for, by the voice no one can tell,
+as your ladyship, or Mademoiselle knows&mdash;and the sky is black like a
+chimney."</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Landale, Ren&eacute;," and as he paused, she added, "My sister would
+not come."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>mon Dieu</i>! She would not come," repeated the man in tones of
+dismay; and the black shadow was struck into a moment of stillness.
+Then with an audible sigh Mr. Potter roused himself, and saying with
+melancholy resignation, "The boat is there, I shall be of return in a
+minute, My Lady," took the traveller's bag on his shoulder and
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage began to crunch its way back in the darkness and Molly
+was left alone.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>In front of her was a faint white line, where the rollers spread their
+foam with mournful restless fugue of long drawn roar and hissing sigh.</p>
+
+<p>In the distance, now and then glancing on the crest of the dancing
+billows, shone the steady light of Scarthey. The rising wind whistled
+in the prickly star-grass and sea-holly. Beyond these, not a sight,
+not a sound&mdash;the earth was all mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Molly looked at the light&mdash;marking the calm spot where her husband
+waited for her; its very calm, its familiar placidity, monotony,
+enraged her; she hearkened to the splashing, living waves, to the
+swift flying gusts of the storm wind, and her soul yearned to their
+life, and their mysteriousness.</p>
+
+<p>What she longed for, she herself could not tell. No words can
+encompass the desire of pent-up young vitality for the unknown, for
+the ideal, for the impossible. But one thing was overpoweringly real:
+that was the dread of leaving just then the wide, the open world whose
+darkness was filled to her with living scenes of freedom and space,
+and blood-stirring emotions; of re-entering the silent room under the
+light; of consorting with the shadowy personality, her husband; of
+feeling the web of his melancholy, his dreaminess, imprison as it were
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> wings of her imagination and the thoughtful kindness of his gaze,
+paralyse the course of her hot blood through her veins.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, thither she was going, must be going! Ah Madeleine, fool&mdash;you
+may well weep, yonder on your pillow, for the happiness that was yours
+and that you have dropped from your feeble hands!</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>In a few minutes the black shadow re-appeared close to her.</p>
+
+<p>"If My Lady will lean on my shoulder, I shall lead her to the boat."
+And after a few steps, the voice out of the darkness proceeded in
+explanation: "I have not taken a lantern, I have put out those of the
+carriage, for I must tell My Lady, that since what arrived this
+morning, there may be <i>gabelous</i>&mdash;they call them the preventive
+here&mdash;in every corner, and the light might bring them, as it does the
+night papilions, and ... as I thought Mademoiselle was to accompany
+you&mdash;they might have frightened her. These people want to know so
+much!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing of what has happened this morning, that you speak of
+as if the whole world must know," retorted Lady Landale coolly. "You
+are all hatching plots and sitting on secrets, but nobody confides in
+me. It seems then, that you expected Mademoiselle, my sister, here for
+some purpose and that you regret she did not come; may I ask for an
+explanation?"</p>
+
+<p>A few moments elapsed before the man replied, and then it was with
+embarrassment and diffidence: "For sure, I am sorry, My Lady ... there
+have been misfortunes on the island this morning&mdash;nothing though to
+concern her ladyship&mdash;and, as for Mademoiselle, mother Margery would
+have liked to see her, no doubt ... and Maggie the wife also&mdash;and&mdash;and
+no doubt also Mademoiselle would have liked to come.... What do I
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course!" said Molly with her little note of mocking laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Then again they walked a while in silence. As Ren&eacute; lifted his mistress
+in his arms to carry her over the licking hissing foam, she resumed:
+"It is well, Ren&eacute;, you are discreet, but I am not such a fool as
+people seem to think. As for her, you were right in thinking that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+might easily be frightened. She was afraid even to come out!"</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; shoved his boat off, and falling to his sculls, suddenly relapsed
+into the old vernacular: "<i>Ah Madame</i>," he sighed, "<i>c'est bien
+triste&mdash;un gentilhomme si beau&mdash;si brave!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>During the crossing no further words passed between them.</p>
+
+<p>"So brave&mdash;so handsome?" The echo of the words came back to the woman
+in every lap of the water on the sides of the boat, in every strain of
+the oars.</p>
+
+<p>The keel ground against the beach, and Ren&eacute; leaped out to drag the
+boat free of the surf. As he did so, two blacker outlines segregated
+themselves from the darkness and a rough voice called out, subdued but
+distinct: "Savenaye, St. Malo!"</p>
+
+<p>"Savenaye, St. Malo!" repeated Ren&eacute;, and helped Lady Landale to
+alight. Then one of the figures darted forward and whispered a rapid
+sentence in the Frenchman's ear. Ren&eacute; uttered an exclamation, but his
+mistress intervened with scant patience:</p>
+
+<p>"My good Ren&eacute;," said she, "take the bag into the peel, and come back
+for me. I have a message for these gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; hesitated. As he did so a rustle of anger shook the lady in her
+silks and furs. "Do you hear me?" she repeated, and he could guess how
+her little foot stamped the yielding sand.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oui, Madame</i>," said he, hesitating no longer. Immediately the other
+two drew near. Molly could just see that they stood in all deference,
+cap in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," began one of these in hurried words, "there is not a moment
+to be lost: the captain had to remain on board."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" interrupted Lady Landale with much asperity, "not come in
+person!" She had been straining her eyes to make out something of her
+interlocutor's form, unable to reconcile her mind's picture with the
+coarse voice that addressed her&mdash;And now all her high expectations
+fell from her in an angry rush. "Have I come all this way to be met by
+a messenger! Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," entreated the husky voice, "I am the mate of the <i>Peregrine</i>.
+The captain has directed me to beg and pray you not to be afraid, but
+to have good courage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> and confidence in us&mdash;the schooner is there; in
+five minutes you can be safe on board. You see, madam," continued the
+man with an earnestness that spoke well of his devotion, "the captain
+found he couldn't, he dared not leave the ship&mdash;he is the only one who
+knows the bearings of these waters here&mdash;any one of us might run her
+on the bank, and where would we be then, madam, and you, if we were
+found in daylight still in these parts?&mdash;'For God's sake, Curwen,'
+says he, 'implore the lady not to be afraid and tell her to trust, as
+she has promised,' so he says. And for God's sake, say I, madam, trust
+us. In five minutes you will be with him? Say the word, madam, am I to
+make the signal? There he is, eating his heart out. There are all the
+lads ready waiting for your foot on the ladder, to hoist sail. No time
+to lose, we are already behind. Shall I signal?"</p>
+
+<p>Molly's heart beat violently; under the sudden impulse, the
+fascination of the black chasm, of the peril, the adventure, the
+unfathomed, took possession of her, and whirled her on.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said.</p>
+
+<p>On the very utterance of the word the man, who had not yet spoken,
+uncovered a lantern, held it aloft, as rapidly replaced it under his
+coat, and moved away.</p>
+
+<p>Almost immediately, against the black pall, behind the dim line of
+grey that marked the shore, suddenly sprang up three bright points in
+the form of a triangle.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if all the darkness around had been filled with life; as if
+the first fulfilment of those promises with which it had been drawing
+this woman's soul was now held out to her to lure her further still.</p>
+
+<p>"See, madam, how they watch!&mdash;By your leave."</p>
+
+<p>And with no further warning, Molly felt herself seized with
+uncompromising, but deferential, energy, by a pair of powerful arms;
+lifted like a child, and carried away at a bear-like trot. By the
+splashing she judged it was through the first line of breakers. Then
+she was handed into another irresistible grasp. The boat lurched as
+the mate jumped in. Then:</p>
+
+<p>"Now give way, lads," he said, "and let her have it. Those lights must
+not be burning longer than we can help. Tain't wholesome for any of
+us."</p>
+
+<p>And under the pulse of four willing pairs of arms the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> skiff, like a
+thing of life, clove the black waters and rose to the billows.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, madam," explained the mate, "we could not do without the
+lights, to show us where she lay, and give us a straight course. We
+are all right so long as we keep that top 'un in the middle&mdash;but he
+won't be sorry, I reckon, when he can drop them overboard. They can't
+be seen from the offing yet, but it's astounding how far a light will
+reach on a night like this. Cheerily, lads, let her have it!"</p>
+
+<p>But Molly heeded him not. She had abandoned herself to the thrilling
+delight of the excitement. The die was cast&mdash;not by her own hand, no
+one should be able to hold her responsible&mdash;she had been kidnapped.
+Come what might she must now see the adventure out.</p>
+
+<p>The lights grew larger; presently a black mass, surmounted by a kind
+of greyish cloud, loomed through the pitch of the night; and next it
+was evident that the beacon was hanging over the side of a ship,
+illuminating its jagged leaping water line.</p>
+
+<p>A voice, not too loud, yet, even through the distance, ringing clear
+in its earnestness sounded from above. "Boat ahoy! what boat is that?"</p>
+
+<p>And promptly the helmsman by Molly's side returned: "Savenaye, St.
+Malo."</p>
+
+<p>On the instant the lights went out. There was a creaking of block and
+cordage, and new ghostly clouds rose over the ship&mdash;sails loosened to
+the wind. As the skiff rowers came alongside, boat-hooks leaped into
+action and gripped the vessel; an arm, strong as steel, was held out
+for the passenger as she fearlessly put her foot on the ladder;
+another, a moment later, with masterful tenderness bent round her
+waist, and she was fairly lifted on board the <i>Peregrine</i>. But before
+her foot touched the deck, she felt upon her lips, laid like a burning
+seal, a passionate kiss; and her soul leaped up to it, as if called
+into sudden life from slumber, like the princess of fairy lore. She
+heard Madeleine's mysterious lover whisper in her ear: "At last! Oh,
+what I have suffered, thinking you would not come!"</p>
+
+<p>From the warm shelter of her loosened cloak the violets in her bosom
+sent forth a wave of sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment these two were in all creation alone to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> each other,
+while in a circle the <i>Peregrine's</i> crew stood apart in respectful
+silence: a broad grin of sympathy upon the mouth of every mother's
+son.</p>
+
+<p>Released at last, Lady Landale took a trembling step on the deck. Into
+what strange world had she come this night?</p>
+
+<p>The schooner, like a mettled steed whose head is suddenly set free,
+was already in motion, and with gentle forward swaying leaps rising to
+the wave and gathering speed under her swelling sails.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack had seized Molly's hand, and the strong clasp trembled
+round the little fingers; he said no more to her; but, in tones
+vibrating with emotion which all the men, now silently seeking their
+posts in the darkness, could hear:</p>
+
+<p>"My lads," he cried, "the lady is safe with us after all. Who shall
+say that your skipper is not still Lucky Smith? Thank you, my good
+fellows! Now we have yet to bring her safe the other side.
+Meanwhile&mdash;no cheering, lads, you know why&mdash;there is a hundred guineas
+more among you the hour we make St. Malo. Stand to, every man. Up with
+those topsails!"</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the last words been spoken when, from the offing, on the
+wings of the wind, came a long-drawn hail, faint through the distance,
+but yet fatally distinct: "Ahoy, what schooner is that?"</p>
+
+<p>Molly, who had not withdrawn her hand, felt a shock pass over Captain
+Jack's frame. He turned abruptly, and she could see him lean and
+strain in the direction of the voice.</p>
+
+<p>The call, after an interval, was repeated. But the outlook was
+impenetrable, and it was weird indeed to feel that they were seen yet
+could not see.</p>
+
+<p>Molly, standing close by his side, knew in every fibre of her own body
+that this man, to whom she seemed in some inexplicable fashion already
+linked, was strongly moved. Nevertheless she could hardly guess the
+extremity of the passion that shook him. It was the frenzy of the
+rider who feels his horse about to fail him within a span of the
+winning post; of the leader whose men waver at the actual point of
+victory. But the weakness of dismay was only momentary. Calm and
+clearness of mind returned with the sense of emergency. He raised his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+night-glass, with a steady hand this time, and scanned the depth of
+blackness in front of him: out of it after a moment, there seemed to
+shape itself the dim outline of a sail, and he knew that he had waited
+too long and had fallen in again with the preventive cutter. Then
+glancing aloft, he understood how it was that the <i>Peregrine</i> had been
+recognised.</p>
+
+<p>The overcast sky had partly cleared to windward during the last
+minutes; a few stars glinted where hitherto nothing but the most
+impenetrable pall had hung. In the east, the rays of a yet invisible
+moon, edging with faint silver the banks of clouds just above the
+horizon, had made for the schooner a tell-tale background indeed.</p>
+
+<p>On board no sound was heard now save the struggle of rope and canvas,
+the creaking of timber and the swift plashing rush of water against
+her rounded sides as she sped her course.</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine," he said, forcibly controlling his voice, and bringing, as
+he spoke, his face close to Molly's to peer anxiously at its
+indistinct white oval, "we are not free yet; but in a short time, with
+God's help, we shall have left those intermeddling fools yonder who
+would bar our way, miles out of the running. But I cannot remain with
+you a moment longer; I must take the helm myself. Oh, forgive me for
+having brought you to this! And, should you hear firing, for Heaven's
+sake do not lose courage. See now, I will bring you to your cabin;
+there you will find warmth and shelter. And in a little while, a very
+little while, I will return to you to tell you all is well. Come, my
+dearest love."</p>
+
+<p>Gently he would have drawn her towards the little deck-cabin, guiding
+her steps, as yet untutored to the motion of the ship, when out of the
+black chasm, upon the weather bow of the <i>Peregrine</i>, leaped forth a
+yellow tongue of light fringed with red and encircled by a ruddy
+cloud; and three seconds later the boom of a gun broke with a dull,
+ominous clangour above the wrangling of sea and wind. Molly
+straightened herself. "What is that?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The warning gun," he answered, hurriedly, "to say that they mean to
+see who we are and that if we do not stop the next will be shotted.
+Time presses, Madeleine, go in&mdash;fear nothing! We shall soon be on
+their other side, out of sight in darkness again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I shall stop with you. Let no thought of me hinder you. I am not
+afraid. I want to see."</p>
+
+<p>At these words the lover was struck with a surprise that melted into a
+proud and new joy. He had loved Madeleine for her woman's grace and
+her woman's heart; now, he told himself, he must worship her also for
+her brave soul. But this was no time for useless words. It was not
+more unsafe for her on deck than in the cabin, and at the thought of
+her beside him during the coming struggle the strength of a god rose
+within him. "Come," he answered, briefly, and moved with her to the
+helm which a sailor silently surrendered to him whilst she steadied
+herself by holding to the binnacle&mdash;the only place on board at that
+time where (from sheer necessity) any light had been allowed to
+remain. It was faint enough, but the reflection from the
+compass-board, as he bent to examine it, was sufficient to make just
+visible, with a dim fantastic glow, the strong beauty of his face, and
+put a flash into each wide dilated eye.</p>
+
+<p>And thus did Molly, for the first time, see Captain Jack.</p>
+
+<p>She sank down at the foot of the binnacle, her hands clasped round her
+knees, as if hugging the new rapture as closely to her as she could.
+And looking up at the alert figure before her which she now began to
+discern more clearly under the lightening sky; at the face which she
+divined, although she could only see the watchful gleam of the eyes as
+now and again they sought her down in the shadow at his feet, she felt
+herself kindle in answer to the glow of his glorious life-energy. They
+were going, side by side, this young hero of romance and she, to fight
+their way through some unknown peril!</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine, my sweet bride, my brave love, they are about to fire
+again, and this time you will hear the shot burring; but be not
+afraid, it will strike ahead of us."</p>
+
+<p>Another flash sprang out of the night, much nearer this time, and
+louder, for it belched forth a shot which ploughed its way in the
+water across the schooner's bow.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not afraid," said Molly again; and she laughed a little fierce,
+nervous laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"They are between us and the open sea. Thus far the luck is on their
+side. Had you come but half an hour sooner, Madeleine, we should be
+running as free as any king's ship. Now they think, no doubt, they
+will drive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> me on to the sand; but," he tossed back his head with a
+superb gesture; "there is no power from heaven or hell that can keep
+me out of my course to-night."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the preventive cutter was faintly discernible two cables
+length on the larboard bow. There came another hail&mdash;a loud, husky
+bellow from over the water, "Schooner ahoy! Heave to, or we'll sink
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine," said Captain Jack; "come closer to me, lie down, behind
+me, quick&mdash;The next shot will be in my rigging. Heave to?&mdash;with my
+treasures, my bride on board and a ten knot breeze...!" And he looked
+down at Molly, laughing in his contempt. Then he shouted some order
+which brought the <i>Peregrine</i> some points more off the wind, and she
+bounded forward with renewed zest. "Sink us! Why don't you fire now,
+you lubbers?" He glanced back over his shoulder to see the beacon of
+Scarthey straight over the stern. "You have got us in line with the
+light, and that's your last chance. In another minute I shall be past
+you. Ah, I can see you now, my fine fellows!&mdash;Courage, Madeleine."</p>
+
+<p>To Molly, of course, his words conveyed no meaning, except that the
+critical moment had come, that the ship which carried her flying upon
+the water like a living thing, eager, yet obedient in all its motions
+to the guiding will of the man beside her, was rushing to the fray.
+The thought fired her soul, and she sprang up to look over the side.</p>
+
+<p>"What," she exclaimed, for the little cutter on close quarters looked
+insignificant indeed by the side of the noble vessel that so
+scornfully bore down on her. "Is that all!"</p>
+
+<p>"They have a gun, and we have none," answered Captain Jack. "Down,
+Madeleine! down behind, in the name of God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I crouch if you stand up?"</p>
+
+<p>The man's heart swelled within him; but as he looked with proud
+admiration at the cloaked and hooded figure by his side, the cutter's
+gun fired for the third time. With roar and hiss the shot came over
+the bow of the schooner, as she dipped into the trough, and raking the
+deck, crashed through her side on the quarter. Molly gave a shriek and
+staggered.</p>
+
+<p>A fearful malediction burst from Captain Jack's lips: he left the
+tiller and sprang to her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the hands, believing his skipper to have been struck, ran to
+the helm, and again put the vessel on her proper course which a few
+moments later was to make her shoot past the revenue cutter.</p>
+
+<p>"Wounded, Madeleine! Wounded through my fault! By the living God, they
+shall pay for this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," groaned Molly, "something has cut me in the arm and shoulder."
+Then rapidly gathering composure, "But it's not much, I can move it."</p>
+
+<p>At one glance the sailor saw from the position of the shot hole in the
+vessel's side that the wound could only have been made by a splinter.
+But the possibility of exposing his beloved to such another risk was
+not to be borne&mdash;a murderous rush of blood flew to his brain.</p>
+
+<p>The cutter, perceiving the tactics of the swifter schooner, was now
+tacking about with the intention of bringing the gun to bear upon her
+once more as she attempted to slip by. But Captain Jack in his
+new-fanned fury had made up his mind to a desperate cast of the die.</p>
+
+<p>"Starboard, hard a starboard," he called out in a voice that his men
+had known well in old fighting days and which was heard as far as the
+cutter itself. "They shall not fire that gun again!"</p>
+
+<p>With a brief, "Starboard it is, sir," the man who had taken the helm
+brought the ship round, and the silent, active crew in a trice were
+ready to go about. Majestically the schooner changed her course, and
+as the meaning of the man&oelig;uvre became fearfully apparent, shouts
+and oaths arose in confusion from the cutter.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" eagerly asked Molly, enthralled by the
+superb motion of the vessel under her foot as it swept round and
+increased speed upon the new tack.</p>
+
+<p>He held her in his arms. His hand had sought her wounded shoulder and
+pressed the lacerated spot in his effort to staunch the precious blood
+that rose warm through the cloth, torturing his cold fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to clear those men from our way to freedom and to love! I
+am going to sink that boat: they shall pay with their lives for this!
+Come to the other side, Madeleine, and watch how my stout <i>Peregrine</i>
+sweeps our course&mdash;and then I may see how these scoundrels have
+mangled you, my love. But, nay, this is no sight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> for you. Hold on
+close to me, sweet, and hide your eyes while they go."</p>
+
+<p>He steadied himself firmly with one hand on the rigging.</p>
+
+<p>Now musket shots flashed on board the cutter in quick succession, and
+sundry balls whizzed over the poop, intended for the helmsman by their
+side. Captain Jack gnashed his teeth, as the menacing drone of one of
+them came perilously close to the beloved head by his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, every man. We'll run her down!" he called. His voice was
+like the blast of bugles. Cheers broke out from every part of the
+ship, drowning the yells of execration and the shouts of fear from
+below. And now, with irresistible sway, the rushing <i>Peregrine</i> heavy
+and powerful was closing and bearing down upon her frailer enemy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a spell of suspense when all was silence, save the rush and
+turmoil of the waters, and the flapping of the cutter's sails,
+helpless for the moment in the teeth of the breeze. Like a charging
+steed the schooner seemed to leap at her foe. Then came the shock.
+There was a brief check in her career, she rose by the head; the
+rigging strained and sighed, the masts swayed groaning, but stood.
+Over the bows, in the darkness was heard a long-drawn crash, was seen
+a white wall of foaming water rising silently to break the next moment
+with a great roar.</p>
+
+<p>The cutter, struck obliquely amidships, was thrown straightway on her
+beam ends: the <i>Peregrine</i>, with every sail spread and swollen, held
+her as the preying bird with outstretched wings holds its quarry, and
+pressed her down until she began to fill and settle. It was with
+wide-open eyes, with eager, throbbing heart that Molly watched it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Lights, my lads," cried Captain Jack, with a shout of exultation,
+when the anxious instant had passed. "Take in every man you can save
+but handspike is the word for the first who shows fight! Curwen, do
+you get her clear again."</p>
+
+<p>All around upon the deck, sprang rumour and turmoil, came shouts and
+sounds of scuffling and the rushing of feet; from the blank waters
+came piteous calls for help. But paying little heed to aught but
+Molly, Captain Jack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> seized a lighted lantern from the hands of a
+passing sailor and drew her aside.</p>
+
+<p>Fevered with pain and fascinated by the horror of fight and death's
+doings, yet instinctively remembering to pull her hood over her face,
+she allowed herself to be taken into the little deck cabin.</p>
+
+<p>He placed the lantern upon the table:</p>
+
+<p>"Rest here," he said quickly, once more striving to see her beneath
+the jealous shade. "I must find out if anything is amiss on board the
+ship and attend to these drowning men&mdash;even before you, my darling!
+But I shall be back instantly. You are not faint?"</p>
+
+<p>The light shone full on his features which Molly eagerly scanned from
+her safe recess. When she met his eyes, full of the triumph of love
+and hope, her soul broke into fierce revolt&mdash;again she felt upon her
+lips that kiss of young passionate love that had been the first her
+life had ever known ... and might be the last, for the disclosure was
+approaching apace.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad of the respite.</p>
+
+<p>"Go," she said with as much firmness as she could muster. "Let me not
+stand between you and your duty. I am strong."</p>
+
+<p>Strong indeed&mdash;Captain Jack might have wondered whence had come to
+this gentle Madeleine this lioness-strength of soul and body, had he
+had time to wonder, time for aught but his love thoughts and his fury,
+as he dashed back again panting for the moment when he could have her
+to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Any damage, Curwen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bowsprit broken, and larboard bulwark stove in, otherwise everything
+has stood."</p>
+
+<p>"Casualties?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. We have three of the cutter's men on board already. They
+swarmed over the bows. One had his cutlass out and had the devil's
+impudence to claim the schooner, but a boat-hook soon brought him to
+reason. There they be, sir," pointing to a darker group huddled round
+the mast. "I have lowered the gig to see if we can pick up the others,
+damn them!"</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as they are all on board bring them aft, I will speak to
+them."</p>
+
+<p>When, with a master's eye, he had rapidly inspected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> his vessel from
+the hold to the rigging, without finding aught to cause anxiety for
+its safety, Captain Jack returned to the poop, and there found the
+party of prisoners arranged under the strong guard of his own crew.
+Molly stood, wrapped up in her cloak, at the door of the cabin,
+watching.</p>
+
+<p>One of the revenue men came forward and attempted to speak&mdash;but the
+captain impatiently cut him short.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no time to waste in talk, my man," he said commandingly. "How
+many were you on board the cutter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nine," answered the man sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"How many have we got here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Six, sir," interposed Curwen. "Those three," pointing to three
+disconsolate and dripping figures, "were all we could pick up."</p>
+
+<p>"Hark ye, fellows," said the captain. "You barred my road, I had to
+clear you away. You tried to sink me, I had to sink you. You have lost
+three of your ship-mates, you have yourselves to blame for it; your
+shot has drawn blood from one for whom I would have cut down forty
+times your number. I will send you back to shore. Away with you! No, I
+will hear nothing. Let them have the gig, Curwen, and four oars."</p>
+
+<p>"And now God speed the <i>Peregrine</i>," cried Jack Smith, as the revenue
+men pushed off in the direction of the light and the wind was again
+swelling every sail of his gallant ship. "We are well out of our
+scrape. Shape her course for St. Malo, Curwen. If this wind holds we
+should be there by the nineteenth in the morning, at latest."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIGHT FOR THE OPEN</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">As o'er the grass, beneath the larches there<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">We gaily stepped, the high noon overhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Then Love was born&mdash;was born so strong and fair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Knowest thou! Love is dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Gipsy Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>At last he was free. He had wrested his bride and the treasure trusted
+to his honour from the snares so unexpectedly laid on his path;
+whatever troubles might remain stored against him in the dim distance
+of time, he would not reck them now. The present and the immediate
+future were full of splendour and triumph.</p>
+
+<p>All those golden schemes worked out under yonder light of
+Scarthey&mdash;God bless it&mdash;now receding in the gloom behind his swift
+running ship, whether in the long watches of the night, or in the
+recent fevered resolves of imminent danger, they had come to pass
+after all! And she, the light of his life, was with him. She had
+trusted her happiness, her honour, herself, to his love. The thought
+illumined his brain with glory as he rushed back to the silent muffled
+figure that still stood awaiting his coming.</p>
+
+<p>"At last!" he said, panting in the excess of his joy; "At last,
+Madeleine ... I can hardly believe it! But selfish brute that I am,
+you must be crushed with fatigue. My brave darling, you would make me
+forget your tender woman's frame, and you are wounded!"</p>
+
+<p>Supporting her&mdash;for the ship, reaching the open sea, had begun to roll
+more wildly&mdash;he led her back into the little room now lighted by the
+fitful rays of a swinging lamp. With head averted, she suffered
+herself to be seated on a kind of sofa couch.</p>
+
+<p>When he had closed the door, he seized her hand, on which ran streaks
+of half-dried blood, and covered it with kisses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Madeleine! here in the sanctuary I had prepared for you, where I
+thought you would be so safe, so guarded, tell me that you forgive me
+for having brought this injury to you. Wounded, torn, bleeding.... I
+who would give all my blood, my life, if life were not so precious to
+me now that you have come into it, to save you from the slightest
+pain! At least here you are secure, here you can rest, but&mdash;but there
+is no one to wait on you, Madeleine." He fell on his knees beside her.
+"Madeleine, my wife, you must let me tend you." Then, as she shivered
+slightly, but did not turn to him, he went on in tones of the most
+restrained tenderness mingled with humblest pleading:</p>
+
+<p>"Had it not been for your accident, I had not ventured even to cross
+the threshold of this room. But your wound must be dressed; darling,
+darling, allow me, forgive me; the risk is too great."</p>
+
+<p>Rising to his feet again he gently pulled at her cloak. Molly spoke
+not a word, but untied it at the neck and let it fall away from her
+fair young body; and keeping her hooded face still rigidly averted,
+she surrendered her wounded arm.</p>
+
+<p>He muttered words of distress at the sight of the broad blood stains;
+stepped hurriedly to a little cupboard where such surgical stores as
+might be required on board were hoarded, and having selected scissors,
+lint, and bandages, came back and again knelt down by her side to cut
+off, with eager, compassionate hands, the torn and maculated sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>The wound was but a surface laceration, and a man would not have given
+a thought to it in the circumstances. But to see this soft, white
+woman's skin, bruised black in parts, torn with a horrid red gap in
+others; to see the beauty of this round arm thus brutally marred, thus
+twitching with pain&mdash;it was monstrous, hideously unnatural in the
+lover's eyes!</p>
+
+<p>With tenderness, but unflinchingly, he laved the mangled skin with
+cool, fresh water; pulled out, with far greater torture to himself
+than to her, some remaining splinters embedded in the flesh; covered
+the wound with lint, and finished the operation by a bandage as neat
+as his neat sailor's touch, coupled with some knowledge of surgery,
+gained in the experiences of his privateering days, could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> accomplish
+it. He spoke little: only a word of encouragement, of admiration for
+her fortitude now and then; and she spoke not at all during the
+ministration. She had raised her other hand to her eyes, with a
+gesture natural to one bracing herself to endurance, and had kept it
+there until, his task completed, her silence, the manner in which she
+hid her face from him awoke in him all that was best and loftiest in
+his generous heart.</p>
+
+<p>As he rose to his feet and stood before her, he too dared not speak
+for fear of bruising what he deemed an exquisite maidenliness, before
+which his manhood was abashed at itself. For some moments there was no
+sound in the cabin save that of the swift rushing waters behind the
+wooden walls and of the labour and life of the ship under full sail;
+then he saw the tumultuous rising of her bosom, and thought she was
+weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine," he cried with passionate anxiety, "speak! Let me see your
+face&mdash;are you faint? Lie upon this couch. Let me get you wine&mdash;oh that
+these days were passed and I could call you wife and never leave you!
+Madeleine, my love, speak!"</p>
+
+<p>Molly rose to her feet, and with a gesture of anger threw off her hood
+and turned round upon him. And there in the light of the lamp, he
+glared like one distraught at the raven locks, the burning eyes of a
+strange woman.</p>
+
+<p>She was very pale.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Molly, defiantly, when twice or thrice his laboured breath
+had marked the passing of the horrible moment, "I am not Madeleine."
+Then she tried to smile; but unconsciously she was frightened, and the
+smile died unformed as she pursued at random:</p>
+
+<p>"You know me&mdash;perhaps by hearsay&mdash;as I know you, Captain Smith."</p>
+
+<p>But he, shivering under the coldness of his disappointment, answered
+in a kind of weary whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you&mdash;you who speak with her voice, who stand at her height
+and move and walk as she does? I have seen you surely&mdash;Ah, I know....
+Madam, what a cruel mockery! And she, where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>Still staring at her with widely dilated eyes, he seized his forehead
+between his hands. The gesture was one of utter despair. Before this
+weakness Molly promptly resumed the superiority of self-possession.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, and this time the smile came back to her face, "I am
+Lady Landale, and my sister Madeleine&mdash;I grieve to have to say so&mdash;has
+not had that courage for which you gave her credit to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Little was required at a moment like this to transmute such thoughts
+as seethed in the man's head to a burst of fury. Fury is action, and
+action a relief to the strained heart. There was a half-concealed,
+unintended mockery in her tones which brought a sudden fire of anger
+to his eyes. He raised both hands and shook them fiercely above his
+head:</p>
+
+<p>"But why&mdash;why in the name of heaven&mdash;has such a trick been played on
+me ... at such a time?"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and trembling with the effort, restrained himself to a more
+decent bearing before the woman, the lady, the friend's wife. His arms
+fell by his side, and he repeated in lower tones, though the flame of
+his gaze could not be subdued:</p>
+
+<p>"Why this deception, this playing with the blindness of my love? Why
+this comedy, which has already had one act so tragic?&mdash;Yes, think of
+it, madam, think of the tragedy this is now in my life, since she is
+left behind and I never now, with these men's lives to account for,
+may go back and claim her who has given me her troth! Already I staked
+the fortune of my trust, on the bare chance that she would come. What
+though her heart failed her at the eleventh hour?&mdash;God forgive her for
+it!&mdash;surely she never sanctioned this masquerade?... Oh no! she would
+not stoop to such an act, and human life is not a thing to jest upon.
+She never played this trick, the thought is too odious. What have you
+done! Had I known, had I had word sooner&mdash;but half an hour
+sooner&mdash;those corpses now rolling under the wave with their sunken
+ship would still be live men and warm.... And I&mdash;I should not be the
+hopeless outlaw, the actual murderer that this night's work has made
+of me!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice by degrees rose once more to the utmost ring of bitterness
+and anger. Molly, who had restored her cloak to her shoulders and sat
+down, ensconced in it as closely as her swaddled arm would allow her,
+contemplated him with a curious mixture of delight and terror; delight
+in his vigour, his beauty, above everything in his mastery and
+strength; and delight again at the new thrill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> of the fear it imposed
+upon her daring soul. Then she flared into rage at the thought of the
+coward of her blood who had broken faith with such a man as this, and
+she melted all into sympathy with his anger&mdash;A right proper man most
+cruelly used and most justifiably wrathful!</p>
+
+<p>And she, being a woman whose face was at most times as a book on which
+to read the working of her soul, there was something in her look, as
+in silence she listened and gazed upon him, which struck him suddenly
+dumb. Such a look on a face so like, yet so unlike, that of his love
+was startling in the extreme&mdash;horrible.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped back, and made as if he would have rushed from the room.
+Then bethinking himself that he was a madman, he drew a chair near her
+in a contrary mood, sat down, and fixed his eyes upon her very
+steadily.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her long lids, and demurely composed her features by some
+instinct that women have, rather than from any sense of the impression
+she had produced.</p>
+
+<p>A little while they sat thus again in silence. In the silence, the
+rolling of the ship and the manner in which, as she raced on her way,
+she seemed to breathe and strain, worked in with the mood of each; in
+his, with the storm and stress of his soul; in hers, as the very
+expression of her new freedom and reckless pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Then he spoke; the strong emotion that had warmed her had now left his
+voice. It was cold and scornful.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam, I await your explanation. So far, I find myself only the
+victim of a trick as unworthy and cruel as it is purposeless."</p>
+
+<p>She had delayed carrying out her mission with the most definite
+perverseness. She could not but acknowledge the justice of his
+reproof, realise the sorry part she must play in his eyes, the
+inexcusable folly of the whole proceeding, and yet she was strung to a
+very lively indignation by the tone he had assumed, and suddenly saw
+herself in the light of a most disinterested and injured virtue.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Smith," she exclaimed, flashing a hot glance at him, "you
+assume strangely the right to be angry with me! Be angry if you will
+with things as they are; rail against fate if you will, but be
+grateful to me.&mdash;I have risked much to serve you."</p>
+
+<p>The whole expression of his face changed abruptly to one of eager,
+almost entreating, inquiry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do me the favour," she continued, "to look into the pocket of my
+cloak&mdash;my arm hurts me if I move&mdash;you will find there a letter
+addressed to you. I was adjured to see that it should reach you in
+safety. I promised to place it in your own hands. This could hardly
+have been done sooner, as you know."</p>
+
+<p>The words all at once seemed to alter the whole situation. He sprang
+up and came to her quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, forgive me, make allowances for me, Lady Landale, I am quite
+distracted!" There had returned a tinge of hope into his voice. "Where
+is it?" he eagerly asked, seeking, as directed, for the pocket. "Ah!"
+and mechanically repeating, "Forgive me!" he drew out the letter at
+last and retreated, feverishly opening it under the light of the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>Molly had turned round to watch. Up to this she had felt no regret for
+his disillusion, only an irritable heat of temper that he should waste
+so much love upon so poor an object. But now all her heart went to him
+as she saw the sudden greyness that fell on his face from the reading
+of the very first line; there was no indignation, no blood-stirring
+emotion; it was as if a cold pall had fallen upon his generous spirit.
+The very room looked darker when the fire within the brave soul was
+thus all of a sudden extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>He read on slowly, with a kind of dull obstinacy, and when he came to
+the miserable end continued looking at the paper for the moment. Then
+his hand fell; slowly the letter fluttered to the floor, and he let
+his eyes rest unseeingly, wonderingly upon the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>After a little while words broke from him, toneless, the mere echo of
+dazed thoughts: "It is over, all over. She has lost her trust. She
+does not love me any more."</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the letter again, and sitting down placed it in front of
+him on the table. "'Tis a cruel letter, madam, that you have brought
+me," he said then, looking up at Molly with the most extraordinary
+pain in his eyes. "A cruel letter! Yet I am the same man now that I
+was this morning when she swore she would trust me to the end&mdash;and she
+could not trust me a few hours longer! Why did you not speak? One word
+from you as you stepped upon the ship would have saved my soul from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+the guilt of these men's death!" Then with a sharper uplifting of his
+voice, as a new aspect of his misfortune struck him: "And you&mdash;you,
+too! What have I to do with you, Adrian's wife? He does not know?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply, and he cried out, clapping his hands together:</p>
+
+<p>"It only wanted this. My God, it is I&mdash;I, his friend, who owes him so
+much, who am to cause him such fear, such misery! Do you know, madam,
+that it is impossible that I should restore you to him for days yet.
+And then when, and where, and how? God knows! Nothing must now come
+between me and my trust. I have already dishonourably endangered it.
+To attempt to return with you to-night, as perhaps you fancy I
+will&mdash;as, of course, I would instantly do had I alone myself and you
+to consider, would be little short of madness. It would mean utter
+ruin to many whom I have pledged myself to serve. And yet Adrian&mdash;my
+honour pulls me two ways&mdash;poor Adrian! What dumb devil possessed you
+that you did not speak before. Had you no thought for your woman's
+good name? Ill-fated venture, ill-fated venture, indeed! Would God
+that shot had met me in its way&mdash;had only my task been accomplished!"</p>
+
+<p>He buried his head in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale flushed and paled alternately, parted her lips to speak,
+and closed them once more. What could she say, and how excuse herself?
+She did not repent what she had done, though it had been sin all
+round; she had little reck of her woman's good name, as he called it;
+the death of the excise men weighed but lightly, if at all, upon her
+conscience; the thought of Adrian was only then a distasteful memory
+to be thrust away; nay&mdash;even this man's grief could not temper the
+wild joy that was in her soul to-night. Fevered with fatigue, with
+excitement, by her wound, her blood ran burning in her veins, and beat
+faster in every pulse.</p>
+
+<p>And as she felt the ship rise and fall, and knew that each motion was
+an onward leap that separated her further and ever further from dull
+home and dull husband, and isolated her ever more completely with her
+sister's lover, she exulted in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he lifted his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," he said, "I believe that you meant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> most kindly, and as
+you say, I should be grateful. Your service is ill-requited by my
+reproaches, and you have run risk indeed&mdash;merciful Heaven, had my old
+friend's wife been killed upon my ship through my doings! But you see
+I cannot command myself; you see how I am situated. You must forgive
+me. All that can be done to restore you to your home as soon as
+possible shall be done, and all, meanwhile, to mitigate the discomfort
+you must suffer here&mdash;And for your good intention to her and me, I
+thank you."</p>
+
+<p>He had risen, and now bowed with a dignity that sat on his sailor
+freedom in no wise awkwardly. She, too, with an effort, stood up as if
+to arrest his imminent departure. A tall woman, and he but of average
+height, their eyes were nearly on a level. For a second or two her
+dark gaze sought his with a strange hesitation, and then, as if the
+truth in him awoke all the truth in her, the natural daring of her
+spirit rose proudly to meet this kindred soul. She would let no
+falsehood, no craven feminine subterfuge intervene between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not thank me," she exclaimed, glowing with a brilliant scorn in
+which the greatness of her beauty, all worn as she was, struck him
+into surprise, yet evoked no spark of admiration. "What I did I did,
+to gratify myself. Oh, aye, if I were as other women I should smile
+and take your compliments, and pose as the martyr and as the
+self-sacrificing devoted sister. But I will not. It was nothing to me
+how Madeleine got in or out of her love scrapes. I would not have gone
+one step to help her break her promise to you, or even to save your
+life, but that it pleased me so to do. Madeleine has never chosen to
+make me her confidant. I would have let her manage her own affairs
+gaily, had I had better things to occupy my mind&mdash;but I had not,
+Captain Smith. Life at Pulwick is monotonous. I have roaming blood in
+my veins: the adventure tempted, amused me, fascinated me&mdash;and there
+you have the truth! Of course I could have given the letter to the men
+and sent them back to you with it&mdash;it was not because of my promise
+that I did not do it. Of course I could have spoken the instant I got
+on board, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;" here a flood of colour dyed her face with a
+gorgeous conscious crimson, and a dimple faintly came and went at the
+corner of her mouth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> "perhaps I would have spoken. But then, you must
+remember, you closed my lips!"</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" said Captain Jack, and looked at her with a sort of horror.</p>
+
+<p>But this she could not see for her eyes were downcast. "And now that I
+have come," she went on, and would have added, "I am glad I did," but
+that all of a sudden a new bashfulness came upon her, and she
+stammered instead, incoherently: "As for Adrian&mdash;Ren&eacute; knew I had a
+message for you, and Ren&eacute; will tell him&mdash;he is not stupid&mdash;you
+know&mdash;Ren&eacute;, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad," answered the man gravely, after a pause, "if you have
+reasonable grounds for believing that your husband knows you to be on
+my ship. He will then be the less anxious at your disappearance: for
+he knows too, madam, that his wife will be as honoured and as guarded
+in my charge as she would be in her mother's house."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed again in a stately way and then immediately left her.</p>
+
+<p>Molly sank back upon her couch, and she could not have said why, burst
+into tears. She felt cold now, and broken, and her stiffening wound
+pained her. But nevertheless, as she lay upon the little velvet
+pillow, and wept her rare tears were strangling sobs, the very ache of
+her wound had a strange savour that she would not have exchanged for
+any past content.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;, having obeyed his mistress's orders, and left her alone with the
+sailors on the beach, withdrew within the shelter of the door, but
+remained waiting, near enough to be at hand in case he should be
+called.</p>
+
+<p>It was still pitch dark and the rollers growled under a rough wind; he
+could catch the sound of a man's voice, now and again, between the
+clamour of the sea and the wuthering of the air, but could not
+distinguish a word. Presently, however, this ceased, and there came to
+him the unmistakable regular beat of oars retreating. The interview
+was over, and breathing a sigh of relief at the thought that, at last,
+his master's friend would soon be setting on his way to safety, the
+servant emerged to seek her ladyship.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later he dashed into Sir Adrian's room with a livid
+face, and poured forth a confused tale:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Milady had landed without Mademoiselle; had stopped to speak to two of
+the <i>Peregrine</i>, whilst he waited apart. The men had departed in their
+boat.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Peregrine</i> men! But the ship has been out of sight these eight
+hours!" ejaculated Sir Adrian, bewildered. Then, catching fear from
+his servant's distraught countenance:</p>
+
+<p>"My wife," he exclaimed, bounding up; and added, "you left her,
+Renny?"</p>
+
+<p>The man struck his breast: he had searched and called.... My Lady was
+nowhere to be found. "As God is my witness," he repeated, "I was
+within call. My Lady ordered me to leave her. Your honour knows My
+Lady has to be obeyed."</p>
+
+<p>"Get lanterns!" said Sir Adrian, the anguish of a greater dread
+driving the blood to his heart. Even to one who knew the ground well,
+the isle of Scarthey, on a black, stormy night, with the tide high,
+was no safe wandering ground. For a moment, the two&mdash;comrades of so
+many miserable hours&mdash;faced each other with white and haggard faces.
+Then with the same deadly fear in their hearts, they hurried out into
+the soughing wind, down to the beach, baited on all sides by the
+swift-darting hissing surf. Running their lanterns close to the
+ground, they soon found, by the trampled marks upon the sand, where
+the conclave had been held. From thence a double row of heavy
+footprints led to the shelving bit of beach where it was the custom
+for boats to land from seawards.</p>
+
+<p>"See, your honour, see," cried Ren&eacute;, in deepest agitation, "the print
+of this little shoe, here&mdash;and there, and here again, right down to
+the water's edge. Thank God&mdash;thank God! My Lady has had no accident.
+She has gone with the sailors to the boat. Ah! here the tide has
+come&mdash;we can see no farther."</p>
+
+<p>"But why should she have gone with them?" came, after a moment, Sir
+Adrian's voice out of the darkness. "Surely that is strange&mdash;and yet
+... Yes, that is indeed her foot-print in the sand."</p>
+
+<p>"And if your honour will look to sea, he will perceive the ship's
+lights yonder, upon the water. That is the captain's ship.... Your
+honour, I must avow to you that I have concealed something from
+you&mdash;it was wrong, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>indeed, and now I am punished&mdash;but that poor
+Monsieur the Captain, I was so sorry for him, and he so enamoured. He
+had made a plan to lift off Mademoiselle Madeleine with him to-night,
+marry her in France; and that was why he came back again, at the risk
+of his life. He supplicated me not to tell you, for fear you would
+wish to prevent it, or think it your duty to. Mademoiselle had
+promised, it seemed, and he was mad with her joy, the poor gentleman!
+and as sure of her faith as if she had been a saint in Heaven. But My
+Lady came alone, your honour, as I said. The courage had failed to
+Mademoiselle, I suppose, at the last moment, and Madame bore a message
+to the captain. But the captain was not able to leave his ship, it
+seems; and, my faith," cried Mr. Potter; his spirits rising, as the
+first ghastly dread left him, "the mystery explains itself! It is
+quite simple, your honour will see. As the captain did not come to the
+island, according to his promise to Mademoiselle&mdash;he had good reasons,
+no doubt&mdash;Madame went herself to his ship with her message. She had
+the spirit for it&mdash;Ah! if Mademoiselle had had but a little of it
+to-night, we should not be where we are!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian caught at the suggestion out of the depths of his despair.
+"You are right, Renny, you must be right. Yet, on this rough sea, in
+this black night&mdash;what madness! The boat, instantly; and let us row
+for those lights as we never rowed before!"</p>
+
+<p>Even as the words were uttered the treble glimmer vanished. In vain
+they strained their eyes: save for the luminous streak cast by their
+own beacon lamp, the gloom was unbroken.</p>
+
+<p>"His honour will see, a boat will be landing instantly with My Lady
+safe and sound," said Ren&eacute; at last. But his voice lacked confidence,
+and Sir Adrian groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>And so they stood alone in silence, forced into inaction, that most
+cruel addition to suspense, by the darkness and the waters which
+hemmed them in upon every side. The vision of twenty dangerous places
+where one impetuous footfall might have hurled his darling into the
+cruel beating waves painted themselves&mdash;a hideous phantasmagory&mdash;upon
+Sir Adrian's brain. Had the merciless waters of the earth that had
+murdered the mother, grasped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> at the child's life also? He raised his
+voice in a wild cry, it seemed as if the wind caught it from him and
+tore it into shreds.</p>
+
+<p>"Hark!" whispered Ren&eacute;, and clasped his master's icy hand. Like an
+echo of Sir Adrian's cry, the far-off ring of a human voice had risen
+from the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Again it came.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est de la mer, Monseigneur!</i>" panted the man; even as he spoke the
+darkness began to lift. Above their heads, unnoticed, the clouds had
+been rifted apart beneath the breath of the north wind; the horizon
+widened, a misty wing-like shape was suddenly visible against the
+receding gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The captain's ship! The <i>Peregrine</i>!</p>
+
+<p>As master and man peered outward as if awaiting unconsciously some
+imminent solution from the gliding spectre, it seemed as if the night
+suddenly opened on the left to shoot forth a burst of red fire. A few
+seconds later, the hollow boom of cannon shook the air around them.
+Sir Adrian's nails were driven into Ren&eacute;'s hands.</p>
+
+<p>The flaming messenger had carried to both minds an instant knowledge
+of the new danger.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Heavens!" muttered Adrian. "He will surrender; he must
+surrender! He could not be so base, so wicked, as to fight and
+endanger <i>her</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>But the servant's keener sight, trained by long stormy nights of
+watching, was following in its dwindling, mysterious course that misty
+vision in which he thought to recognize the <i>Peregrine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Elle file, elle file joliment la go&euml;lette!</i> Mother of Heaven, there
+goes the gun again! I never thought my blood would turn to water only
+to hear the sound of one like this. But your honour must not be
+discouraged; he can surely trust the captain. Ah, the clouds&mdash;I can
+see no more."</p>
+
+<p>The wild blast gathering fresh droves of vapour from the huddled
+masses on the horizon was now, in truth, herding them fiercely across
+the spaces it had cleared a few moments before. Confused shouts,
+strange clamour seemed to ring out across the waves to the listeners:
+or it might have been only the triumphant howlings of the rising
+storm.</p>
+
+<p>"Will not your honour come in? The rain is falling."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, Renny, no, give me my lantern again, friend, and let us examine
+anew."</p>
+
+<p>Both knew it to be of no avail, but physically and mentally to move
+about was, at least, better than to stand still. Step by step they
+scanned afresh the sand, the shingle, the rocks, the walls, to return
+once more to the trace of the slender feet, leading beside the great
+double track of heavy sea boots to the water's edge.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian knelt down and gazed at the last little imprint that seemed
+to mock him with the same elusive daintiness as Molly herself, as if
+he could draw from it the answer to the riddle.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; endeavouring to stand between his master and the driving blast
+laid down his lantern too, and strove by thumping his breast
+vigorously to infuse a little warmth into his numbed limbs and at the
+same time to relieve his overcharged feelings.</p>
+
+<p>As he paused at length, out of breath, the noise of a methodical thud
+and splash of oars arose, above the tumult of the elements, very near
+to them, upon their left.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"She returns, she returns," shouted Ren&eacute;, capering, in the excess of
+the sudden joy, and waving his lantern; then he sent forth a vigorous
+hail which was instantly answered close by the shore.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold up your light, your honour&mdash;ah, your honour, did I not say
+it?&mdash;while I go to help Madame. Now then, you others down there,"
+running to the landing spot, "make for the light!"</p>
+
+<p>The keel ground upon the shingle.</p>
+
+<p>"My Lady first," shouted Ren&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>Some one leaped up in the boat and flung him a rope with a curse.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady, ay, ay, my lad, you'd better go and catch her yourself.
+There she goes," pointing enigmatically behind him with his thumb.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian, unable to restrain his impatience, ran forward too, and
+threw the light of his lantern upon the dark figures now rising one by
+one and pressing forward. Five or six men, drenched from head to foot,
+swearing and grumbling; with faces pinched with cold, all lowering
+with the same expression of anger and resentment and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> shining whitely
+at him out of the confusion. He saw the emptying seats, the shipped
+oars, the name <i>Peregrine</i> in black letters upon the white paint of
+the dingey; and she?... she was not there!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute;'s strong hands came at last to drag him away, and then Ren&eacute;'s
+voice, in a hot whisper close to his ear, aroused him:</p>
+
+<p>"It is good news, your honour, after all, good news. My Lady is on
+board the <i>Peregrine</i>. I made these men speak. They are the revenue
+men&mdash;that God may damn 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 <i>Peregrine</i> is as sound
+as a bell, they say&mdash;ah, she is a good ship! And the captain, out of
+his kind heart, sent these villains ashore 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&mdash;not even a
+message&mdash;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."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE THREE COLOURS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The sun was high above the Welsh hills; the <i>Peregrine</i> 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&mdash;nature's kind restorer to healthy
+brain and limbs&mdash;after the ceaseless fatigue and emotions of the last
+thirty-six hours.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then memory, the ruthless, arose and buffeted his soul.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of all, in spite of reason and feeling alike his
+essential buoyancy asserted 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> he
+loved to feel her speed; around him spread the vast spaces in which
+his spirit rejoiced&mdash;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&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he stamped his foot to choke down the oath of
+qualification&mdash;this encumbrance. Adrian's wife and Madeleine's sister,
+as such entitled to all honour, all care, and devotion; and yet, as
+such again, hideously, doubly unwelcome to him!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a fine day, sir," by way of opening conversation.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Curwen," he said, "that you brought me the wrong young
+lady last night?"</p>
+
+<p>The sailor jumped back in amazement. "The wrong young lady, sir,"
+staring with starting, incredulous eyeballs, "the wrong, young lady!"
+here he clapped his thigh, "Well of all&mdash;the wrong young lady! Are you
+quite sure, sir?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack laughed aloud. But it was with a bitter twist at the
+corners of his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Well I'm&mdash;&mdash;," 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't blame you&mdash;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&mdash;the lady&mdash;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&mdash;or she either," added Captain Jack as a
+mendacious after thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Well I'm&mdash;&mdash;," reiterated Curwen who then rubbed his scrubby,
+bristling chin, scratched his poll and finally broke into another
+grin&mdash;this time of the kind classified as sheepish.</p>
+
+<p>"And what'll be to do now?"</p>
+
+<p>"By the God 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&mdash;I see is astir
+before me."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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, nobody 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;but here she comes."</p>
+
+<p>This was an unwontedly long speech for Curwen; and, silent again, he
+effaced himself discreetly, just in time to avoid the angry
+ejaculation 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am strong," answered she, and flushed, and looked out across
+the sea, inhaling the air with dilated nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>Within her, her soul was crying out to him. It was as if there was a
+tide there, as fierce and passionate 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you are well attended to," began the man constrainedly again.
+"I fear you will have to endure much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> discomfort. I had reckoned&mdash;&mdash;."
+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.</p>
+
+<p>She played for a while with her little finger tips upon the rail, then
+turned her gaze, full and bold, upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not complain," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed gravely. "We will do our best for you, and if you will take
+patience, the time will pass at last, as all time passes. I have a few
+books, they shall be brought into your cabin. In three days we shall
+be in St. Malo&mdash;There, if you like&mdash;&mdash;" he hesitated, embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" echoed Lady Landale with her eyes still fixed upon his
+downcast face&mdash;"If I like&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"We could leave you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her bosom rose and fell quickly with stormy breaths. "Alone,
+moneyless, in a strange town&mdash;that is well and kindly thought!" she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I know of such a place&mdash;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&mdash;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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Your sister? But your sister was to have been my wife!"</p>
+
+<p>Burning through the mists of her unshed tears once more her glance
+returned to his: "And I&mdash;" 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&mdash;"Oh do with me what you will, but for God's sake leave me in
+peace!" And stamping, turned her shoulder on him to stare straight
+outwards as before.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack drew back, paused an instant, clutched his hair with a
+desperate gesture and slowly walked away.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>The voyage of the <i>Peregrine</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>She had seen but little of Captain Jack these last two days;
+interchanged but few and formal words with him, now and then, as they
+met morning and evening or came across each other during the day. She
+felt that he avoided her. But she had seen him, she had heard his
+voice, they had been close to each other upon the great seas, however
+divided, and this had been something to feed upon. Now what prospect
+before her hungry heart but&mdash;starvation?</p>
+
+<p>At least the last precious moments should not be lost to her. She rose
+and dressed in haste; a difficult operation in her maimed state.
+Before leaving her narrow quarters, she peered into the looking-glass
+with an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> eagerness she had never displayed in the days of her vain
+girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>"What a fright!" she said to the anxious face that looked back at her
+with yearning eyes and dark burning lips. And she thought of
+Madeleine's placid fairness as Cain might of Abel's modest altar.</p>
+
+<p>When she emerged upon deck, a strange and beautiful scene was spread
+to her gaze. A golden haze enveloped the water and the coast, but out
+of it, in brown jagged outline, against the blazing background of
+glowing sunlight rose the towers, the pointed roofs and spires of that
+old corsair's hive, St. Malo. The waters were bright green, frothed
+with oily foam around the ship. The masts cast strange long black
+shadows, and Molly saw one spring from her own feet as she moved into
+the morning glow. The <i>Peregrine</i>, she noticed, was cruising parallel
+with the coast, instead of making for the harbour, and just now all
+was very still on board. Two men, conspicuous against the yellow sky,
+stood apart, a little forward, with their backs turned to her.</p>
+
+<p>One of these was Captain Jack, gazing steadily at the town through a
+telescope; the other the mate. Both were silent. Silently herself and
+unnoticed Molly went up and stood beside them; observing her sister's
+lover as intently as he that unknown distant point, she presently saw
+the lean hand nearest her tremble ever so slightly as it held the
+glass; then he turned and handed it to his companion, saying briefly,
+"See what you make of it."</p>
+
+<p>The man lifted the glass, set it, looked, dropped his hand and faced
+his captain. Their eyes met, but neither spoke for a second or two.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so, then?" said the captain at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, sir, no mistake about that. There's the tricolour up again&mdash;and
+be damned to it&mdash;as large as life, to be sure!"</p>
+
+<p>The healthy tan of the captain's face had not altered by one shade;
+his mouth was set in its usual firm line, but, by the intuition of her
+fiery soul, the woman beside him knew that he had received a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"A strange thing," went on Curwen in a grumbling guttural bass, "and
+it's only a year ago since they set up the old white napkin again. You
+did not look for this, sir?" He too had his intuitions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, Curwen, it is the last thing I looked for. And it spells failure
+to me&mdash;failure once more!"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he turned his head slightly and perceiving Molly standing
+close behind him glanced up sharply and frowned, then strove to smooth
+his brow into conventional serenity and greeted her civilly.</p>
+
+<p>Curwen, clenching his hard hands together round the telescope, retired
+a step and stood apart, still hanging on his captain's every gesture
+like a faithful dog.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it mean?" asked Molly, disregarding the morning salutation.</p>
+
+<p>"It means strange things to France," responded Captain Jack slowly,
+with a bitter smile; "and to me, Madam, it means that I have come on a
+wild goose chase&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stretched out his hand for the glass once more as he
+spoke&mdash;although even by the naked eye the flag, minute as it was,
+could be seen to flash red in the breeze&mdash;and sought the far-off
+flutter again; and then closing the instrument with an angry snap,
+tossed it back.</p>
+
+<p>"But what does it mean?" reiterated Molly, a wild impatience, a wild
+hope trembling in her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"It means, Madam, that I have brought my pigs to the wrong market,"
+cried Captain Jack, still with the smile that sat so strangely upon
+his frank lips; "that the goods I have to deliver, I cannot deliver.
+For if there is any meaning in symbols, by the wave of that tricolour
+yonder the country has changed rulers again. My dealings were to be
+with the king's men, and as they are not here, at least, no longer in
+power&mdash;how could they be under that rag?&mdash;I must even trot the cargo
+home again. Not a word to the men, Curwen, but give the order to sheer
+off! We have lowered the blue, white and red too often, have not we?
+to risk a good English ship, unarmed, under the nozzles of those
+Republican or Imperial guns."</p>
+
+<p>The man grinned. The two could trust each other. Molly turned away and
+moved seawards, for she knew that the joy upon her face was not to be
+hidden. Captain Jack fell to pacing the deck with bent head, and long,
+slow steps.</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed in dovetailing the last secret arrangements of his venture,
+and more intent still, during his very few hours of idleness, on the
+engrossing thought of love, he had had no knowledge of the
+extraordinary challenge to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> fate cast by Bonaparte, of that challenge
+which was to end in the last and decisive clash of French and English
+hosts. He had not even heard of the Corsican's return to France with
+his handful of grenadiers, for newspapers were scarce at Scarthey. But
+even had he heard, like the rest of the world, he would no doubt have
+thought no more of it than as a mad freak born of the vanquished
+usurper's foolhardy restlessness.</p>
+
+<p>But the conclave of plenipotentiaries assembled at Vienna were not
+more thunderstruck when, on that very 19th of March, the semaphore
+brought them news of the legitimate King of France once more fled, and
+of his country once more abandoned to the hated usurper, than was
+Captain Jack as he watched the distant flagstaff in the sunrise, and
+saw, when the morning port gun had vomited forth its white cloud on
+the ramparts of St. Malo, the fatal stripes run up the slender line in
+lieu of the white standard.</p>
+
+<p>But Jack Smith's mind, like his body, was quick in action. The sun had
+travelled but a degree or two over the wide undulating land, the mists
+were yet rising, when suddenly he halted, and called the mate in those
+commanding tones that had, from the first time she had heard them,
+echoed in Molly's heart:</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her alongside one of those smacks yonder, the furthest out to
+sea."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon followed Curwen's hoarse bellow, an ordered stampede upon
+the deck, and gracefully, with no more seeming effort than a swan upon
+a garden pond, the <i>Peregrine</i> veered and glided towards the rough
+skiff with its single ochre sail and its couple of brown-faced
+fishermen, who had left their nets to watch her advance. Captain Jack
+leant over the side, his hands over his mouth, and hailed them in his
+British-French&mdash;correct enough, but stiff to his tongue, as Molly
+heard and smiled at, and loved him for, in woman's way, when she loves
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahoy, the friend! A golden piece for him who will come on board and
+tell the news of the town."</p>
+
+<p>A brief consultation between the fisher pair.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Un &eacute;cu d'or</i>," repeated Captain Jack. Then there was a flash of
+white teeth on the two weather-beaten faces.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>On y va, patron</i>," cried one of the fellows, cheerfully,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> and jumped
+into his dinghey, while his comrade still stared and grinned, and the
+stalwart lads of the <i>Peregrine</i> grinned back at the queer foreign
+figure with the brown cap and the big gold earrings.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the fisherman's bare feet were thudding on the deck, and he stood
+before the English captain, cap in hand, his little, quick black eyes
+roaming in all directions, over the wonders of the beautiful white
+ship, with innocent curiosity. But before Captain Jack could get his
+tongue round another French phrase, Molly, detaching herself from her
+post of observation, came forward, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me speak to him," she said, "he will understand me better, and it
+will go quicker. What is it you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack hesitated a moment, saw the advantage of the suggestion,
+and then accepted the offer with the queer embarrassment that always
+came over him in his relations with her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I like to talk the father and mother tongue," she said, gaily and
+sweetly. Her eyes danced; he had never seen her in this mood, and, as
+before, grudgingly had to admit her beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you will allow it," she went on, "I am glad to be of use too."</p>
+
+<p>The fisherman, twirling his cap in his knotted fingers, stared at her
+open mouthed. <i>Une si belle dame!</i> like a queen and speaking his
+tongue that it was a music to listen to. This was in truth a ship of
+marvels. <i>Ah, bon Dieu, oui, Madame</i>, there were news at St. Malo, but
+it depended upon one's feelings whether they were to be regarded as
+good or bad&mdash;<i>Dame</i>, every one has one's opinions&mdash;but for
+him&mdash;<i>pourvu qu'on lui fiche la paix</i>&mdash;what did it matter who sat on
+the throne&mdash;His Majesty the King&mdash;His Majesty the Emperor, or Citizen
+Bonaparte. Oh, a poor fisherman, what was it to him? He occupied
+himself with his little fishes, not with great folk. (Another
+white-teethed grin.) What had happened? <i>Parbleu</i>, it began by the
+military, those accursed military (this with a cautious look around,
+and gathering courage by seeing no signs of disapproval, proceeding
+with greater volubility). The poor town was full of them, infantry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+and artillery; regiments of young devils&mdash;and a band of old ones too.
+The veterans of <i>celui l&agrave;</i> (spitting on the deck contemptuously) they
+were the worst; that went without saying. A week ago there came a
+rumour that he had escaped&mdash;was in France&mdash;and then the ferment
+began&mdash;duels every day&mdash;rows in the caf&eacute;s, fights in the ports. At
+night one would hear shouts in the streets&mdash;<i>Vive l'Empereur!</i> and it
+spread, it spread. <i>Ma foi</i>&mdash;one regiment mutinied, then another&mdash;and
+then it was known that the Emperor had reached Paris. Oh, then it was
+warm! All those gentlemen, the officers who were for the King, were
+arrested. Then there was a grand parade on the <i>place d'armes</i>&mdash;Yes,
+he went there too, though he did not care much about soldiers. All the
+garrison was there. The colonel of the veterans came out with a flag
+in its case. <i>Portez armes!</i> Good. They pull out the flag from the
+case: it's the old tricolour with the eagle on the top! <i>Presentez
+armes!</i> And this time it was all over. Ah, one should have seen that,
+heard the houras, seen the bonfires! <i>Monsieur le Maire</i> and the rest,
+appointed by the King, they were in a great fright, they had to give
+way&mdash;what does Madame say? Traitors? Oh, <i>b&eacute;dame</i> (scratching his
+head), it was no joke with the military just now&mdash;the whole place was
+under military law and, <i>saperlotte</i>, when the strong commands it is
+best for the weak to obey. As for him, he was only a poor fisherman.
+What did he know? he was not a politician: every one to his trade. So
+long as they let one have the peace&mdash;He thanked the gentleman, thanked
+him much; thanked the lady, desired to wish her the good-morning and
+<i>Monsieur</i> too. Did they like no little fresh soles this morning? He
+had some leaping then below in his boat. No? well the good-morning
+then.</p>
+
+<p>They had heard enough. The fisherman paddled back to his skiff, and
+Molly stood watching from a little distance the motionless figure of
+the captain of the <i>Peregrine</i> as with one hand clenching the
+hand-rail he gazed towards St. Malo with troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes Curwen advanced and touched him lightly on the
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack turned slowly to look at him: his face was a little pale
+and his jaw set. But the mate, who had served under him since the day
+he first stepped upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> old <i>St. Nicholas</i>, a gallant, fair-faced
+lad (and who knew "every turn of him," as he would have expressed it
+himself), saw that he had taken his decision; and he stepped back
+satisfied, ready to shape his course for the near harbour, or for the
+Pacific Ocean, or back to Scarthey itself at his master's bidding.</p>
+
+<p>"Call the men up," said the captain, "they have earned their bounty
+and they shall have it. Though their skipper is a poorer man than he
+thought to be, by this fool's work yonder, his good lads shall not
+suffer. Tush, man, that's the order&mdash;not a word. And after that,
+Curwen, let her make for the sea again, northwards."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LIGHT AGAIN&mdash;THE LADY AND THE CARGO</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Does not all the blood within me<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">As the spring to meet the sunshine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i25"><i>Hiawatha.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Curwen," said Captain Jack, suddenly&mdash;the two stood together at the
+helm on the afternoon of the same day, and the <i>Peregrine</i> was once
+more alone, a speck upon the waste of waters, "I have made up my mind
+to return to Scarthey."</p>
+
+<p>The mate wagged his bushy eyebrows and shifted his hand on the helm.
+"Ay, ay, sir," he said, after just an instant's pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I would not run you and the men into unnecessary danger, that you may
+be sure of; but the fact is, Curwen, I'm in a devil of a fix all
+round. There's no use hiding it from you. And, all things considered,
+to land the lady and the cargo at the lighthouse itself, gives me as
+fair a chance of getting out of it as any plan I can think of. The
+cargo's not all my own and it's a valuable one, I daresay you have
+guessed as much; and it's not the kind we want revenue men to pry
+into. I could not unload elsewhere that I know of, without creating
+suspicion. As to storing it elsewhere, it's out of the question.
+Scarthey's the place, though it's a damned risky one just now! But
+we've run many a risk together in our day, have we not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, sir; who's afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's the lady," lowering his voice; "she's Lady Landale, my
+friend's wife, the wife of the best friend ever man had. Ay, you
+remember him, I doubt not&mdash;the gentleman seaman of the <i>Porcupine</i>&mdash;I
+owe him more than I can ever repay, and he owes me something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> too.
+That sort of thing binds men together; and see what I have done to
+him&mdash;carried off his wife!"</p>
+
+<p>Curwen grunted, enigmatically, and disengaged a hand to scratch his
+chin.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have speech with him. I must, it is enough to drive me mad to
+think what he may be thinking of me. What I purpose is this: we'll
+disguise the ship as far as we can (we have the time), paint her a new
+streak and alter those topsails, change the set of the bowsprit and
+strike out her name."</p>
+
+<p>"That's unlucky," said the mate.</p>
+
+<p>"Unlucky, is it? Well, she's not been so lucky this run that we need
+fear to change the luck. Then, Curwen, we'll slip in at night at a
+high tide, watching for our opportunity and a dark sky; we'll unship
+the cargo, and then you shall take command of her and carry her off to
+the East Coast and wait there, till I am able to send you word or join
+you. It will only be a few hours danger for the men, after all."</p>
+
+<p>Still keeping his seaman eye upon the compass, Curwen cleared his
+throat with a gruesome noise. Then in tones which seemed to issue with
+difficulty from some immense depth:</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "that ain't a bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"How now?" cried his captain, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," rolling his head portentously; "that don't run to a
+bargain, that don't. The lads of the <i>Peregrine</i> 'll stick to their
+skipper through thick and thin. I'll warrant them, every man Jack of
+them; and if there was one who grumbled, I'd have my knife in him
+before another caught the temper from him&mdash;I would, or my name's not
+Curwen. If ye bid us steer to hell we'll do it for you, sir, and
+welcome. But for to go and leave you there&mdash;no, sir, it can't be
+done."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack gave a little laugh that was as tender as a woman's tear.
+Curwen rolled his head again and mumbled to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be done."</p>
+
+<p>Then Jack Smith clapped his hand on the sailor's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's got to be done!" he cried. "It is the only thing you can do
+to help me, Curwen. To have our <i>Peregrine</i> out in the daylight on
+that coast would be stark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> madness&mdash;no disguise could avail her, and
+you can't change your ugly old phiz, can you? As for me, I must have a
+few days on shore, danger or no danger. Ah, Curwen," with a sudden,
+passionate outbreak, "there are times when a man's life is the least
+of his thoughts!"</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I stop with you, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would not trust the ship to another, and you would double the risk
+for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I could double a blow for you too," cried the fellow, hoarsely. "But
+if it's got to be&mdash;it must be. I'll do it, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I count on it," said the captain, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>As the ring of his retreating steps died away upon his ear the mate
+shook his head in melancholy fashion:</p>
+
+<p>"Women," he said, "is very well, I've nought to say against them in
+their way. And the sea's very well&mdash;as I ought to know. But women and
+the sea, it don't agree. They's jealous one of the other and a man
+gets torn between."</p>
+
+<p>As Molly sat in her cabin, watching the darkening sky outside with
+dreaming eyes, she started on seeing Captain Jack approach, and
+instead of passing her with cold salute, halt and look in.</p>
+
+<p>"I would speak a word with you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"On deck, then," said Molly. She felt somehow as if under the broad
+heaven they were nearer each other than in that narrow room. The sea
+was rough, the wind had risen and still blew from the north, it was
+cold; but her blood ran too fast these days to heed it.</p>
+
+<p>She drew one of the capes of her cloak over her head and staggering a
+little, for the schooner, sailing close to the wind, pitched and
+rolled to some purpose, she made for her usual station at the
+bulwarks.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He briefly told her his purpose of returning to Scarthey direct.</p>
+
+<p>Her eye dilated; she grew pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that not dangerous?"</p>
+
+<p>He made a contemptuous gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"But they must be watching for you on that coast. You have sunk the
+boat&mdash;killed those men. To return there&mdash;My God, what folly!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must land my goods, Madam. You forget that I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> have more contraband
+on board than, smuggler as I am, even I bargained for."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is for me?&mdash;I would rather fling myself into the waves this
+instant than that you should expose yourself to danger."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I should fling myself after you, and that would be more
+dangerous still."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled a little mockingly upon her as he spoke; but the words
+called a transient fire into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"You would risk your life to save me?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"To save Adrian's wife, Madam."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bah!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He would have gone then, but she held him with her free hand. She was
+again white to the lips. But her eyes&mdash;how they burned!</p>
+
+<p>He would have given all his worth to avoid what he felt was coming. A
+woman, at such a juncture may forbid speech, or deny her ear: a man,
+unless he would seem the first of Josephs or the last of coxcombs,
+dare not even hint at his unwelcome suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not have you go into this danger, I will not!" stammered Molly
+incoherently. The dusk was spreading, and her eyes seemed to grow
+larger and larger in the uncertain light.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Landale, you misunderstand. It is true that to see you safely
+restored to your husband's roof is an added reason for my return to
+Scarthey&mdash;but were you not on board, I should go all the same. I will
+tell you why, it is a secret, but you shall know it. I have treasures
+on board, vast treasures confided to me, and I must store them in
+safety till I can give them back to their rightful owners. This I can
+only do at Scarthey&mdash;for to cruise about with such a cargo
+indefinitely is as impossible as to land it elsewhere. And more than
+this, had I not that second reason, I have yet a third that urges me
+to Scarthey still."</p>
+
+<p>"For Madeleine?" she whispered, and her teeth gleamed between her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>He remained silent and tried gently to disengage himself from her
+slender fingers, but the feeling of their frailness, the knowledge of
+her wound, made her feeble grasp as an iron vice to his manliness.</p>
+
+<p>She came closer to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you not remember then&mdash;what she has said to you? what she wrote to
+you in cold blood&mdash;the coward&mdash;in the very moment when you were
+staking your life for love of her? I remember, if you do not&mdash;'You
+have deceived me,' she wrote, and her hand never trembled, for the
+words ran as neatly and primly as ever they did in her convent copy
+books. 'You are not what you represented yourself to be&mdash;You have
+taken advantage of the inexperience of an ignorant girl, I have been
+deluded and deceived. I never wish to see you, to hear of you again.'"</p>
+
+<p>"For Heaven's sake, Lady Landale&mdash;&mdash;" cried the man fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>Molly laughed&mdash;one of those laughs that have the ring of madness in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I not remember? Ah, that is not all! She knows you now for what
+you are, knows what your 'mission' is&mdash;but you must not believe she
+writes in anger. No, she&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack's patience could bear no further strain.</p>
+
+<p>"Be silent," he commanded fiercely, and wrenched his arm away to face
+her with menacing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, does it rouse so much anger in you even to hear repeated what she
+did not hesitate to write, did not hesitate to allow me to read? And
+yet you love her? If you had seen her, if you knew her as I do! I tell
+you she means it; when she wrote that she was not angry; it was the
+truth&mdash;she did it in cold blood. She loved you, you think, and yet she
+believed you a liar; she loved you, and she thinks you a traitor to
+all she holds dear. She believes that of <i>you</i>, and you ... you love
+her still!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Landale!"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen&mdash;she could never love you, as you should be loved. She was not
+born your kin. Between you and her there is nothing&mdash;nothing but your
+own fancy. Do not risk your life again for her&mdash;your life!"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, drew her breath with a long gasp, the spray from a
+turbulent wave came dashing across the bows into her face, and as once
+the blood of C&eacute;cile de Savenaye had been roused by the call of the
+wild waters to leave safety and children and seek her doom, so now the
+blood she had transmitted to her child, leaped to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> same impulse
+and bore her onwards with irresistible force.</p>
+
+<p>"When," she pursued, "in the darkness you took me in your arms and
+kissed me; what did the touch of my lips bring to you? My lips, not
+Madeleine's.... Were you not happy then? Oh, you were, do not deny it,
+I felt, I knew our souls met! My soul and yours, not yours and
+Madeleine's. And I knew then that we were made for each other. The sea
+and the wide free life upon it: it draws me as it draws you; it was
+that drew me to you before I had ever seen you. Listen, listen. Do not
+go to Scarthey&mdash;you have your beautiful ship, your faithful
+crew&mdash;there are rich and wonderful worlds, warm seas that beckon. You
+can have life, money, adventure&mdash;and love, love if you will. Take it,
+take me with you! What should I care if you were an adventurer, a
+smuggler, a traitor? What does anything matter if we are only
+together? Let us go, we have but one life, let us go!"</p>
+
+<p>Bereft of the power of movement he stood before her, and the sweat
+that had gathered upon his brow ran down his face. But, as the meaning
+of her proposition was borne in upon him, a shudder of fury shook him
+from head to foot. No man should have offered dishonour to Jack Smith
+and not have been struck the next instant at his feet. But a woman&mdash;a
+woman, and Adrian's wife!</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Landale," he said, after a silence during which the beating of
+her heart turned her sick and cold, and all her fever heat fell from
+her, leaving nothing but the knowledge of her shame, her misery, her
+hopeless love. "Lady Landale, let me bring you back to your cabin&mdash;it
+is late."</p>
+
+<p>She went with him as one half-conscious. At the door she paused. The
+light from within fell upon his face, deeply troubled and white, but
+upon the lips and brows, what scorn! He was a god among men.... How
+she loved him, and he scorned her! Poor Murthering Moll!</p>
+
+<p>She looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no word for me?" she cried passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Only this, Lady Landale: I will forget."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Back towards the distant northern light the schooner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> clove her
+valiant way in spite of adverse winds and high seas.</p>
+
+<p>The return journey was slower than the outward, and since the second
+day of it the lady kept much to her cabin, while the captain would
+pace the deck till far into the night, with unwonted uneasiness. To
+him the white wings of his <i>Peregrine</i> were bearing him all too slowly
+for endurance, while to the stormy woman's heart that beat through the
+night watches in passionate echo to his restless tread, every instant
+that passed but brought nearer the prospect of a future so intolerable
+that she could not bring herself to face it.</p>
+
+<p>A gloom seemed to have come over the tight little craft, and to have
+spread even to the crew, who missed the ring of their captain's jolly
+laugh and the sound of his song.</p>
+
+<p>When, within a day's sail of the goal, the planned disguise was
+finally carried out upon the schooner's fair sides and rigging, her
+beautiful stretch of sail curtailed, and her name (final disgrace),
+superseded by the unmeaning title of <i>The Pretty Jane</i>, open murmurs
+broke out which it required all Curwen's severity&mdash;and if the old
+martinet did not execute the summary justice he had threatened he was
+quite equal to the occasion nevertheless&mdash;and all Jack's personal
+influence to quell.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn of the next day crept gloomily upon a world of rain; with
+long faces the men paddled about the deck, doing their duty in
+silence; Curwen's old countenance, set into grimmer lines than ever,
+looked as if it had just been detached from the prow of some vessel
+after hard experience of stress and storm. The spirits of the captain
+alone seemed to rise in proportion as they drew nearer land.</p>
+
+<p>"The moon sets at half-past eleven," he said to Curwen, "but we need
+not fear her to-night. By half-past twelve I reckon on your having
+those twenty-five damned casks safe in the cave you took them from; it
+is a matter of three journeys. And then the nose of the <i>Pretty Jane</i>
+must be pointed for the Orkneys. All's going well."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Night had fallen. "The gaudy bubbling and remorseful day" had "crept
+into the bosom of the sea." From the cross-trees the look-out man had
+already been able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> distinguish through the glass the faint distant
+glimmer of Scarthey beacon, when Captain Jack knocked for admittance
+at Lady Landale's cabin for the last time, as he thought, with a sigh
+of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"In the course of an hour, Madam," he said in a grave tone, "I hope to
+restore you to land. As for me, I shall have again to hide in the
+peel, though I hope it will not be for long. My fate&mdash;and by my fate I
+mean not only my safety, but my honour, which, as you know, is now
+bound up in the safety of the treasures&mdash;will be in your hands. For I
+must wait at Scarthey till I can see Adrian again, and upon your
+return to Pulwick I must beg you to be the bearer of a message to ask
+him to come and see me."</p>
+
+<p>She replied in a voice that trembled a little:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not fail you."</p>
+
+<p>But her great eyes, dark circled, fixed upon him with a meek,
+sorrowful look, spoke dumbly the troublous tale of her mind. In her
+subdued mood the likeness to Madeleine was more obtrusive than it had
+ever yet been. He contemplated her with melancholy, and drew a heavy
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Molly groaned in the depths of her soul, though her lips tight set
+betrayed no sound. Oh, miserable chaos of the human world, that such
+pent up love should be wasted&mdash;wasted; that they, too, young and
+strong and beautiful, alone together, so near, with such glorious
+happiness within their reach, should yet be so perversely far asunder!</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. They looked into each other's eyes; but he
+was unseeing; his mind was far away, dwelling upon the memory of that
+last meeting with his love under the fir trees of Pulwick only ten
+days ago, but now as irrevocably far as things seem that may never
+again be. At length, she made a movement which brought him back to
+present reality&mdash;a movement of her wounded arm as if of pain. And he
+came back to Lady Landale, worn with the fatigue of these long days in
+the cramped discomfort of a schooner cabin, thinned by pain and
+fevered thinkings, shorn of all that daintiness of appearance which
+can only be maintained in the midst of luxury, and yet, by the light
+of the flickering lamp, more triumphantly beautiful than ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His thoughts leaped to his friend with a pang of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>"You are suffering&mdash;you are ill," he said. "Thus do I bring you back
+to him who last saw you so full of strength.... But you will recover
+at Pulwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Suffering, ill! Ah, my God!" As if suffocating, she pressed her hand
+upon her heart, and bowed her head till it rested on the table. And
+then he heard her murmur in a weary voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Recover at Pulwick! My God, my God! The air at Pulwick will stifle
+me, I think."</p>
+
+<p>He waited a moment in silence and saw that she was weeping. Then he
+went out and closed the door behind him with gentle hand.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all the lights of the ship were now extinguished, and in a
+gloom as great as that in which they had started upon their
+unsuccessful venture, the <i>Peregrine</i> and her crew returned to the
+little island which had already been so fateful to them.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack had taken the helm himself, and Curwen stood upon his
+right hand waiting patiently for his commands. For an hour or so they
+hung off the shore. The rain fell close and fine around them; it was
+as if sea and sky were merging by slow imperceptible degrees into one.
+The beacon light looming, halo encircled, through the mist, seemed,
+like a monster eye, to watch with unmoved contempt the restlessness of
+these pigmies in the grand solitude of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Who shall say with what conflict of soul Molly, in her narrow
+seclusion, saw the light of Scarthey grow out of the dimness till its
+rays fell across the darkened cabin and glimmered on her wedding ring?</p>
+
+<p>At last the captain drew his watch, and by the faint rays upon the
+binnacle saw the hour had come.</p>
+
+<p>"Boat loaded, Curwen?" he asked in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"This hour, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Ready to cast?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Curwen."</p>
+
+<p>Low, from man to man, the order ran through the ship, and the anchor
+was dropped, almost within a musket shot of the peel. It was high
+tide, but no hand but Captain Jack's would have dared risk the vessel
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> close. She swung round, ready to slip at a moment's notice.</p>
+
+<p>He left the helm; and in the wet darkness cannoned against the burly
+figure of his mate.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Curwen? Remember we have not a moment to lose. Remain here&mdash;as
+soon as the men are back from the last run, sheer off."</p>
+
+<p>He grasped the horny hand.</p>
+
+<p>Curwen made an inarticulate noise in his big throat, but the grip of
+his fingers upon his master's was of eloquence sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>"Let some one call the lady."</p>
+
+<p>A couple of men ran forward with dark lanterns. The rest gathered
+round.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my lads, brisk and silent is the word."</p>
+
+<p>The cabin door opened, and Molly came forth, the darkness hid the
+pallor of her face, but it could not hide the faltering of her steps.
+Captain Jack sprang forward and gave her his arm, and she leant upon
+it without speaking, heavily. For one moment she stopped as if she
+could not tear her feet from the beloved planks, but Curwen caught her
+by the other arm; and then she was on the swinging ladder. And so she
+left the <i>Peregrine</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>The gig was almost filled with barrels; there was only room for the
+four oarsmen selected, besides the captain and herself. The boat
+shoved off. She looked back and saw, as once before, the great wall of
+the ship's side rise sheer above the sea, saw the triangle of light
+again slide down to lie a span above the water-line. With what a
+leaping heart she had set forth, that black night, away from the
+hateful lighthouse beam to that glimmer of promise and mystery! And
+now! She felt herself grow sick at the thought of that home-coming; at
+the vision of the close warm rooms, of her husband's melancholy eyes.
+Yet, as she sat, the sleeve of the captain's rough sailor coat touched
+her shoulder, and she remembered she was still with him. It was not
+all death yet.</p>
+
+<p>In less than three minutes they touched ground. He jumped into the
+water, and stretched out his arms for Molly. She rose giddily, and his
+embrace folded her round. The waves rolled in with surge and thud and
+dashed their spray upon them; and still the rain fell and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> beat upon
+her head, from which she had impatiently pushed her hood. But her
+spirit had no heed for things of the body this night.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if the sea would open sudden deeps before them! if even the
+quicksand would seize them in its murderous jaws, what ecstasy the
+hideous lingering death might hold for her, so that only she lay,
+thus, in his arms to the end!</p>
+
+<p>It was over now; his arms had clasped her for the last time. She stood
+alone upon the dry sand, and her heart was in hell.</p>
+
+<p>He was speaking; asking her pardon for not going at once with her to
+see her into the keep, but he dared not leave the beach till his cargo
+was landed, and he must show the men the way to the caves. Would she
+forgive him, would she go with him?</p>
+
+<p>Forgive him! Go with him! She almost laughed aloud. A few poor moments
+more beside him; they would be as the drops of water to the burning
+tongue of Dives.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she would go with him.</p>
+
+<p>One by one the precious caskets were carried between a couple of men,
+who stumbled in the darkness, close on their captain's heels. And the
+lady walked beside him and stood beside him without a word, in the
+falling rain. The boat went backwards and forwards twice; before the
+hour had run out, the luckless cargo was all once more landed, and the
+captain heard with infinite relief the last oar-strokes dwindling away
+in the distance, and saw the lights suddenly disappear.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been very patient," he said to Molly then, with a gentle
+note in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not answer. Are the souls of the damned patient?</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>"My Lady and Mr. the Captain! My God&mdash;my God! so wet&mdash;so tired!
+Enter&mdash;enter in the name of heaven. It is good, in verity, to have My
+Lady back, but, Mr. the Captain, is it well for <i>him</i> to be here? And
+Madam is ill? She goes pale and red by turns. Madam has the fever for
+sure! And her arm is hurt, and she is as wet as the first time she
+came here. Ah, Lord God, what are we coming to? Fire we must have. I
+shall send the wife."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ay, do so, man," cried Captain Jack, looking with concern at Lady
+Landale, who in truth seemed scarcely able to stand, and whose
+fluctuating colour and cracked fevered lips gave painful corroboration
+to Ren&eacute;'s surmise, "your mistress must be instantly attended to."</p>
+
+<p>But Molly arrested the servant as he would have hurried past upon his
+errand.</p>
+
+<p>"Your master?" she said in a dry whisper, "is he at Pulwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"His honour! My faith, I must be but half-awake yet. Imbecile that I
+am, his honour&mdash;where is he? Is he not with you? No, indeed, he is not
+at Pulwick, My Lady; he has gone to St. Malo to seek you. Nothing
+would serve him but that he must go. And so he did not reach in time
+to meet you? Ah, the poor master&mdash;what anxiety for him!"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack glanced in dismay at his friend's wife, met her suddenly
+illumined gaze and turned abruptly on his heel, with a grinding noise.</p>
+
+<p>"See to your mistress," he said harshly, "I hear your women folk are
+roused overhead; hurry them, and when Lady Landale no longer requires
+you, I must speak with you on an urgent business of my own. You will
+find me in my old room."</p>
+
+<p>"Go with the captain at once, Ren&eacute;, since he wants you," interposed
+Molly quickly, "here comes Moggie. She will take care of me. Leave me,
+leave me. I feel strong again. Good-night, Captain Smith, I shall see
+you to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a wistful query in her voice and look.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Smith bowed distantly and coldly, and hastened from the room,
+accompanied by Ren&eacute;, while open-mouthed and blinking, rosy, blowsy,
+and amazed, Mrs. Potter made her entry on the scene and stared at her
+mistress with the roundest of blue eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>"My good Renny," said the captain, "I have no time to lose. I have a
+hard hour's work to do, before I can even think of talking. I want
+your help. Your light will burn all safe for the time, will it not?
+Hark ye, man, you have been so faithful a fellow to my one friend that
+I am going to trust to you matters which concern my own honour and my
+own life. Ask no question, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> do what I tell you, if you would help
+one who has helped your master long ago; one whom your master would
+wish you to help."</p>
+
+<p>Thus adjured, Ren&eacute; repressed his growing astonishment at the
+incomprehensible development of events. And having, under direction,
+provided the sailor with a lantern, and himself with a wide tarpaulin
+and sundry carpenter's tools, he followed his leader readily enough
+through the ruinous passages, half choked up with sand, which led from
+the interior of the ruins to one of the sea caves.</p>
+
+<p>Before reaching the open-mouthed rocky chamber, the captain obscured
+the light, and Ren&eacute; promptly barked his shins against a barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sacrebleu</i>," he cried, feeling with quick hands the nature of the
+obstruction, "more kegs?"</p>
+
+<p>"The same, my friend! Now hang that tarpaulin against the mouth of the
+cave and be sure it is close; then we may again have some light upon
+the matter. What we must do will not bear interference, and moving
+glimmers on a dark night have told tales before this."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the beach entrance was made secure, the captain uncovered
+his lantern; and as the double row of kegs stood revealed, his eyes
+rapidly scanned their number. Yes, they were all there: five and
+twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, to work, man! We have to crack every one of these nuts, and take
+the kernels out."</p>
+
+<p>Even as he spoke, he turned the nearest cask on end, with a blow of
+chisel and mallet stove in the head and began dragging out quantities
+of loose tow. In the centre of the barrel, secured in position on to a
+stout middle batten, was a bag of sailcloth closely bound with cord.
+This he lifted with an effort, for it was over a hundred-weight, and
+flung upon the sand in a corner.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the kernel you see," he said to Ren&eacute;, who had watched the
+operation with keen interest. "And when we have shelled them all I
+will show you where to put them in safety. Now carry on&mdash;the quicker
+the better. The sooner we have it all upstairs, the freer I shall
+breathe."</p>
+
+<p>Without another word, entering into the spirit of haste which seemed
+to fill his companion, and nobly control<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>ling his seething curiosity,
+Ren&eacute; set to work on his side, with his usual dexterousness.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour of speechless destructive labour completed the first part
+of the task. Then the two men carried the weighty bags into the room
+which had been Captain Jack's in the keep. And when they had travelled
+to and fro a dozen times with each heavy load, and the whole treasure
+was at length accumulated upstairs, Ren&eacute;, with fresh surprise and
+admiration, saw the captain lift the hearthstone and disclose a recess
+in the heavy masonry&mdash;presumably a flue, in the living days of
+Scarthey peel&mdash;which, although much blocked with stony rubbish, had
+been evidently improved by the last lodger during his period of
+solitary residence into a convenient and very secure hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>Here was the precious pyramid now heaped up; the stone was returned to
+its place, and the two stood in front of each other mopping their
+faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank goodness, it is done," said Jack Smith. "And thank you too,
+Renny. To-morrow, break up these casks and add the staves to your
+firewood stack; then nobody but you, in this part of the world, need
+be any the wiser about our night's work.&mdash;A smart piece of running,
+eh?&mdash;Phew, I am tired! Bring me some food, and some brandy, like a
+good fellow. Then you can back to your pillow and flatter yourself
+that you have helped Jack Smith out of a famous quandary."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; grinned and rushed to execute the order. He had less desire for
+his pillow than for the gratification of his hyper-excited curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>But although pressed to quaff one cup of good fellowship and yet
+another, he was not destined to get his information, that night, from
+the captain, who had much ado to strangle his yawns sufficiently to
+swallow a mouthful or two of food.</p>
+
+<p>"No one must know, Renny," was all he said, at last, between two
+gapes, kicking the hearthstone significantly, and stretching his arms,
+"not even the wife." Then he flung himself all dressed upon his bed.</p>
+
+<p>"And my faith," said Ren&eacute;, when he sought his wife a moment later, "he
+was fast asleep before I had closed the door."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE END OF THE THREAD</h3>
+
+
+<p>Madeleine had appeared greatly distressed at the thought that, through
+her, her sister was now in so doubtful and precarious a situation. It
+was part of her punishment, she told herself for her sins of deceit
+and unmaidenliness in encouraging and meeting a clandestine lover.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone through some very bitter hours since her tryst at the
+ruins. The process of cutting off a malignant growth that has become
+part of oneself is none the less painful because the conviction is
+clear that it is for one's health to do so, and the will is firm not
+to falter. Not the less is the flesh mangled, do nerves throb, and
+veins bleed. But Madeleine was determined that nobody should even
+guess her sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert had counted upon Sophia's old habit of obedience to him, and
+upon her superstitious terrors not to betray to the young girl the
+part he had played in the unmasking of her lover; but he had an
+unexpected, and even more powerful ally in Madeleine's own pride. When
+Miss Sophia had tremblingly endeavoured to falter out a few words of
+sympathy and sorrow, upon the distressing subject, Madeleine quickly
+interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Never speak even his name again, Sophia; all that is finished for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>There was such a cold finality in her voice, that the poor confidant's
+expansiveness withered up within her beyond even the hope of
+blossoming again.</p>
+
+<p>When Rupert heard of Captain Jack's latest doings, and especially of
+his sister-in-law's disappearance, he thought that the fates were
+propitious indeed. In his wildest schemes he could not have planned
+anything that would have suited his game more perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>Though he thought it incumbent upon him to pull a face of desperate
+length whenever the subject was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> touched, in his innermost soul he had
+hardly ever enjoyed so delightful a joke as this d&eacute;nouement to his
+brother's marriage and to his cousin's engagement. And, strange to
+say, though he would most gravely protest against any interpretation
+of his kinswoman's disappearance save the one which must most redound
+to her credit, the story, started by the gossips in the village upon
+the return of the revenue men, that Lady Landale had bolted with the
+handsome smuggler, grew and spread apace all over the county, more
+especially from such houses as Rupert was wont to visit.</p>
+
+<p>That all his hints and innuendoes should fail, apparently, to make
+Madeleine put upon the case the interpretation he would have liked,
+was at once a matter of secret sneering and of admiration to his
+curiously complicated mind.</p>
+
+<p>The days went by, to all appearance placidly enough, for the trio at
+Pulwick. Madeleine shunned none of the usages of life in common,
+worked and talked with Sophia of a morning, rode or walked out with
+Rupert of an afternoon; and passed the evening at her embroidery frame
+meeting his efforts to entertain her as amiably as before.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert thought he knew enough of the human heart, and more especially
+the feminine, to draw satisfactory conclusions from this behaviour.
+For a girl to bear no malice to the man who had taken it upon himself
+to demonstrate to her the unworthiness of her lover, argued, to his
+mind, that her affections could not have been very deeply engaged in
+that quarter. It was clear that she felt gratitude for a timely
+rescue. Nay, might he not go further, and lay the flattering unction
+to his soul that she would not be unwilling to transfer these same
+blighted feelings to a more suitable recipient?</p>
+
+<p>A slight incident which took place a few nights later, tended still
+more to increase the kindness of Madeleine's manner to him upon the
+next day; but this was for a reason that he little suspected.</p>
+
+<p>It had been an anniversary with Sophia&mdash;none less indeed than that of
+the lamented Rector's demise. When her young cousin had retired to her
+room, the desire to pursue her thither with a packet of old letters,
+and other treasures exhumed from the depths of her cupboards, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>
+proved too strong for a soul burning for congenial sympathy; and
+Sophia had spent a couple of very delightful hours pouring forth
+reminiscences and lamentations into the bosom of one who, as she said,
+she knew could understand her.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine a little wearied, stifling a sigh or a yawn as the minutes
+ticked by, was too gentle, too kind-hearted to repel the faithful, if
+loquacious mourner; so she had sat and listened, which was all that
+Sophia required.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the stroke of twelve, Miss Landale rose at length, collected her
+relics, and mopping her swollen eyes, embraced her cousin, and bade
+her good-night with much effusion, while with cordial alacrity the
+latter conducted her to the door.</p>
+
+<p>But here Sophia paused. Holding the flat silver candlestick with one
+hand, with the other clasping to her bosom her bundle of superannuated
+love letters, she glanced out into the long black chasm of corridor
+with a shudder, and vowed she had not the courage to traverse it alone
+at such an hour. She cast as she spoke such a meaning glance at
+Madeleine's great bed, that, trembling lest her next words should be a
+proposal to share it for the night, the young girl hurriedly
+volunteered to re-conduct her to her own apartment.</p>
+
+<p>Half way down the passage they had to pass the door of the picture
+gallery, which was ajar, disclosing light within. At the sight of
+Rupert standing with his back to them, looking fixedly at the picture
+upon the opposite wall, Sophia promptly thought better of the scream
+she was preparing, and seized her cousin by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away, come away," she whispered, "he will be much displeased if
+he sees us."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine allowed herself to be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's
+previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an
+explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the
+haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as
+exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the
+unreasonableness of her sister's dislike to Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>He was gazing at his dead wife's picture. He could not bear, Sophia
+said, for any one to find him there; could not bear the smallest
+allusion to his grief, but at night, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> she had herself discovered
+quite by accident, he would often spend long spells as they had just
+seen him.</p>
+
+<p>There was something in Madeleine's own nature, a susceptible proud
+reserve which made this trait in her cousin's character thoroughly
+congenial; moreover, what woman is not drawn with pity towards the man
+who can so mourn a woman.</p>
+
+<p>She met him therefore, the next day, with a softness, almost a
+tenderness, of look and smile which roused his highest hopes. And when
+he proposed, after breakfast, that they should profit by the mild
+weather to stroll in the garden while Sophia was busy in the house,
+she willingly consented.</p>
+
+<p>Up the gravel paths, between the gooseberry bushes, to the violet beds
+they went. It was one of those balmy days that come sometimes in early
+spring and encourage all sorts of false hopes in the hearts of men and
+vegetables. "A growing day," the farmers call them; indeed, at such
+times you may almost hear the swelling and the bursting of the buds,
+the rising of the sap, the throbbing and pushing of the young green
+life all around.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine grew hot with the weight of her fur tippet, the pale face
+under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a
+moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he
+sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was
+thus a maiden looked who waited to be won; and though all of true love
+that he could ever give to woman lay buried with his little bride, he
+felt his pulses quicken with a certain &aelig;sthetic pleasure in the
+situation. Presently he rose, and, after arranging his bunch of purple
+sweetness into dainty form, offered it silently to his companion.</p>
+
+<p>She took it, smiling, and carried it mechanically to her face.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the scent of the violets! Upon the most delicate yet mighty
+pinions she was carried back, despite all her proud resolves to that
+golden hour, only five days ago, when she lay upon her lover's broad
+breast, and heard the beating of his heart beneath her ear.</p>
+
+<p>Again she felt his arm around her, so strong, yet so gentle; saw his
+handsome face bent towards her, closer&mdash;ever closer&mdash;felt again the
+tide of joy that coursed through her veins in the expectation of his
+kiss.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No, no, she must not&mdash;she would not yield to this degrading folly. If
+it were not yet dead, then she must kill it.</p>
+
+<p>She had first grown pale, but the next moment a deep crimson flooded
+her face. She turned her head away, and Rupert saw her tremble as she
+dropped the hand that held the flowers close clenched by her side. He
+formed his own opinion of what was passing within her, and it made
+even his cold blood course hotly in his veins.</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine," he said, with low rapid utterance; "I am not mistaken, I
+trust, in thinking you look on me as a good friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, yes;" answered the girl, with an effort, turning her
+tremulous face towards him; "a good friend indeed."</p>
+
+<p>Had he not been so five days ago? Aye, most truly, and she would have
+it so, in spite of the hungry voice within her which had awaked and
+cried out against the knowledge that had brought such misery.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her set her little teeth and toss her head, and knew she was
+thinking of the adventurer who had dared aspire to her. And he gained
+warmer courage still.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more than a friend, sweet?"</p>
+
+<p>"A kind cousin; almost a brother."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; not a brother, Madeleine. Nay, hear me," taking her hands and
+looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but
+something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or
+less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a
+brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no
+one to whom my coming or my going, my living or my dying makes one
+pulse beat of difference&mdash;except poor Sophia. Let us join our
+loneliness and make of it a beautiful and happy home. Madeleine, I
+have learned to love you deeply!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes glowed between their narrowing eyelids, his voice rang
+changes upon chords of most exquisite tenderness; his whole manner was
+charged with a courtly reverence mingled with the subtlest hint of
+passion. Rupert as a lover had not a flaw in him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet fear, suspicion, disgust chased each other in Madeleine's mind in
+quick succession. What did he mean? How could it be that he loved her?
+Oh! if <i>this</i> had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> his purpose, what motive was prompting him
+when he divided her from her deceiving lover? Was no one true then?
+Was this the inconsolable widower whose grief she had been so
+sympathetically considering all the morning; for whose disinterested
+anxiety and solicitude on her behalf her sore heart had forced itself
+to render gratitude? Oh! how terrible it all was ... what a hateful
+world!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Madeleine?" he pressed forward and slid his arm around her.</p>
+
+<p>All her powers of thought and action restored by the deed, she
+disengaged herself with a movement of unconscious repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Rupert, I am sure you mean kindly by me, but it is quite
+impossible&mdash;I shall never marry."</p>
+
+<p>He drew back, as nonplussed as if she had struck him in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, my dear Madeleine."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Cousin Rupert, no more."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl, I have been precipitate."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can make any difference. That I could never marry you, so
+much you must believe; that I shall never marry at all you are free to
+believe or not, as you please. I am sorry you should have spoken."</p>
+
+<p>"Still hankering after that beggarly scoundrel?" muttered Rupert, a
+sneer uncovering his teeth betrayed hideously the ungenerous soul
+within. He was too deeply mortified, too shaken by this utter
+shattering of his last ambitions to be able to grasp his usual
+self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine gave him one proud glance, turned abruptly away, and walked
+into the house.</p>
+
+<p>She went steadily up to her room, and, once there, without hesitation
+proceeded to unlock a drawer in her writing-table and draw from it a
+little ribbon-tied parcel of letters&mdash;Jack's letters.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart had failed her, womanlike, before the little sacrifice when
+she had unshrinkingly accomplished the larger one. Now, however, with
+determined hand, she threw the letters into the reddest cavern of her
+wood-fire and with hard dry eyes watched them burn. When the last
+scrap had writhed and fluttered and flamed into grey ash, she turned
+to her altar, and, extending her arm, called out aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"I have done with it all for ever&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the next instant flinging herself upon her bed, she drew her brown
+ringlets before her face, and under this veil wept for her broken
+youth and her broken heart, and the hard cold life before her.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>There is a kind of love a man can give to woman but once in his
+lifetime: the love of the man in the first flush of manhood for the
+woman he has chosen to be his mate, untransferable and never to be
+forgotten: love of passion so exquisite, of devotion so pure, born of
+the youth of the heart and belonging to an existence and personality
+lost for ever. A man may wed again, and (some say) love again, but
+between the boards of the coffin of his first wife&mdash;if he has loved
+her&mdash;lie secrets of tenderness, and sweetness, and delight, which,
+like the spring flowers, may not visit the later year.</p>
+
+<p>But, notwithstanding this, a second wooing may have a charm and an
+interest of its own, even the wooing which is to precede a marriage of
+convenience.</p>
+
+<p>So Rupert found. The thought of an alliance with Madeleine de Savenaye
+was not only engrossing from the sense of its own intrinsic
+advantages, but had become the actual foundation-stone of all his new
+schemes of ambition.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, more: such admiration and desire as he could still feel for
+woman, he had gradually come to centre upon his fair and graceful
+cousin, who added to her personal attractions the other indispensable
+attributes, blood, breeding and fortune. Mr. Landale was as
+essentially refined and fastidious in his judgment as he was
+unmeasured in his ambition.</p>
+
+<p>His error of precipitancy had been pardonable enough; and mere
+self-reproach for an ill-considered man&oelig;uvre would not have
+sufficed to plunge him into such a depth of bitter and angry
+despondency as that in which he now found himself. But the rebuff had
+been too uncompromising to leave him a single hope. He was too shrewd
+not to see that here was no pretty feminine nay, precursor of the
+yielding yea, not to realise that Madeleine had meant what she said
+and would abide by it. And, under the sting of the moment betrayed
+into a degradingly ill-mannered outburst, he had shown that he
+measured the full bearings of the position.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So, the wind still sat in that quarter!</p>
+
+<p>Failing the mysterious smuggler, it was to be nobody with the Savenaye
+heiress&mdash;and least of all Rupert Landale.</p>
+
+<p>And this, though the scoundrel had been thoroughly shown up; though he
+had started upon his illegal venture and was gone, never to return if
+he valued his neck, after murdering four officers of the crown and
+sinking a king's vessel; though he had carried away with him (ah!
+there was consolation in that excellent jest which had so far
+developed into Sir Adrian's wild goose chase to France and might still
+hold some delicate d&eacute;nouement), had carried with him no less a person
+than Lady Landale herself (the fellow had good taste, and either of
+the sisters was a dainty morsel), he still left the baneful trail of
+his influence behind him upon the girl he had deluded and beguiled!</p>
+
+<p>Rupert Landale, who, for motives of his own had pleased himself by
+hunting down Madeleine's lover, had felt, in the keenness of his
+blood-hound work, something of the blood-hound instinct of destruction
+and ferocity spring up within him before he had even set eyes on his
+quarry. And the day they had stood face to face this instinctive
+hatred had been intensified by some singular natural antagonism. Added
+to this there was now personal injury and the prey was out of reach.
+Impotence for revenge burned into the soul of him like a corrosive
+poison. Oh, let him but come within his grip again and he should not
+escape so easily.</p>
+
+<p>Sits the wind still in that quarter?</p>
+
+<p>The burthen droned in his head, angry conclusion to each long spell of
+inconclusive thought, as he still paced the garden, till the noon hour
+began to wane. And it was in this mood, that, at length, returning to
+his study, he crossed in one of the back passages a young woman
+enveloped in a brilliant scarlet and black shawl, who started in
+evident dismay on being confronted with him.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert knew by sight and name every wench of kitchen and laundry, as
+well as every one of the buxom lasses or dames whom business brought
+periodically to the great hall. That this person was neither of the
+household nor one of the usual back-door visitors, he would have seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
+at a glance, even had not her own embarrassment drawn his closer
+attention. He looked keenly and recognised the gatekeeper's daughter
+Moggie.</p>
+
+<p>Having married Sir Adrian's servant and withdrawn to take up her abode
+in the camp of the enemy, so to speak, she was not one whom Mr.
+Landale would have regarded with favour in any case; but now,
+concentrating his thoughts from their aimless whirl of dissatisfaction
+upon the present encounter, he was struck by the woman's manner.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she was most undoubtedly frightened. He examined her with a
+malevolent eye which still discountenanced her. And, though he made no
+inquiry, she forthwith stammered out: "I&mdash;I came, sir, to see if there
+be news of her Ladyship ... or of Sir Adrian, sir&mdash;Renny can't leave
+the island, you know, and he be downright anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my good woman, calm yourself. Nothing wrong; nothing to hide in
+this very laudable anxiety of you and your good man! No, we have no
+news yet&mdash;that is quickly told, Mrs. Potter."</p>
+
+<p>He kept her for a moment quailing and scared under his cruel gaze,
+then went on his way, working upon the new problems she had brought
+him to solve. No matter was too small for Rupert's mind, he knew how
+inextricably the most minute and apparently insignificant may be
+connected with the most important events of life.</p>
+
+<p>The woman was singularly anxious to explain, reflected he, pausing at
+his chamber door, singularly ready with her explanation&mdash;too ready.
+She must have lied. No doubt she lied. Liar was written upon every
+line of the terrified face of her. What was that infernal little
+French husband of hers hatching now? He had been in the Smith plot, of
+course. Ah, curse that smuggling fellow: he cropped up still on every
+side! Pray the fates he would crop up once too often for his own
+safety yet; who knew!</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Potter, the innocent news-gatherer, must not be allowed
+to roam unwatched at her own sweet will about the place. Hark! what
+clumping, creaking, steps! These could only be produced by Ren&eacute;'s
+fairy-footed spouse: the house servants had been too well drilled by
+his irritable ear to venture in such shoe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> leather within its range.
+He closed his door, and gently walked back along the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed Molly's apartment, he could hear the creaking of a
+wardrobe door; and, a startling surmise springing into his brain, he
+quietly slipped into an opposite room and waited, leaving the door
+slightly ajar.</p>
+
+<p>As he expected, a few minutes later, Moggie re-appeared loaded with a
+bulky parcel, glancing anxiously right and left. She tiptoed by him;
+but, after a few steps, suddenly turning her head once more, met his
+eyes grimly fixed upon her through the narrow aperture. With a faint
+squeal she paddled off as though a fiend were at her heels.</p>
+
+<p>"Something more than anxiety for news there, Mrs. Potter," said Mr.
+Landale, apostrophising the retreating figure with a malignant, inward
+laugh! Then, when the last echo of her stout boots had faded away, he
+entered his sister-in-law's room, looked around and meditatively began
+to open various presses and drawers. "You visited this one at any
+rate, my girl," thought he, as he recognised the special sound of the
+hinges. "And, for a lady's maid, you have left it in singular
+disorder. As for this," pulling open a linen drawer half-emptied, and
+showing dainty feminine apparel, beribboned and belaced, in the most
+utter disorder&mdash;"why, fie on you, Mrs. Potter! Is this the way to
+treat these pretty things?"</p>
+
+<p>He had seen enough. He paused a moment in the middle of the room with
+his nails to his lips, smiling to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mrs. Potter, I fancy you might have given us a little news,
+yourself! Most unkind of my Lady Landale to prefer to keep us in this
+unnatural anxiety&mdash;most unkind indeed! She must have singularly good
+reasons for so doing.... Captain Smith, my friend, Mr. Cochrane, or
+whatever may be your name, we have an account to settle. And there is
+that fool of an Adrian scurrying over the seas in search of his
+runaway wife! By George! my hand is not played out yet!"</p>
+
+<p>Slowly he repaired to his study. There he sat down and wrote, without
+any further reflection, an urgent letter to the chief officer of the
+newly established Preventive Service Station. Then he rang the bell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One of the grooms will ride at once to Lancaster with this," he said
+to the servant, looking at the missive in his hand. But instead of
+delivering it he paused: a new idea had occurred. How many of these
+servants might not be leagued in favour of that interloper, bribed, or
+knowing him, perhaps, to have been a friend of Sir Adrian, or yet
+again out of sheer spite to himself? No; he would leave no loop-hole
+for treachery now.</p>
+
+<p>"Send the groom to me as soon as he is ready," he continued, and when
+the footman had withdrawn, enclosed the letter, with its tale-telling
+superscription, in another directed to a local firm of attorneys, with
+a covering note instructing them to see that the communication, on His
+Majesty's Service, should reach the proper hands without delay.</p>
+
+<p>When the messenger had set forth, Mr. Landale, on his side, had his
+horse saddled and sallied out in the direction of Scarthey sands.</p>
+
+<p>As from the top of the bluff he took a survey of the great bay, a
+couple of figures crossing the strand in the distance arrested his
+attention; he reined in his horse behind a clump of bushes and
+watched.</p>
+
+<p>"So ho! Mrs. Potter, your careful husband could not leave the island?"
+muttered he, as he marked the unmistakable squat figure of the one, a
+man carrying a burden upon his shoulder, whilst, enveloping the woman
+who walked briskly by his side, flared the brilliant-hued shawl of
+Moggie. "That lie alone would have been sufficient to arouse
+suspicion. Hallo, what is the damned <i>crapaud</i> up to?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was suggested by the man's movements, as, after returning
+the parcel to his consort at the beginning of the now bare causeway,
+he turned tail, while she trudged forward alone.</p>
+
+<p>"The Shearman's house! I thought as much. Out he comes again, and not
+by himself. I have made acquaintance with those small bare legs
+before. I should have been astonished indeed if none of the Shearman
+fellows had been mixed up with the affair. I shall be even yet with
+those creditable friends of yours, brother Adrian. So, it's you again,
+Johnny, my lad; the pretty Mercury.... Can it be possible that Captain
+Smith is at his old games once more?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale's eyes shone with a curious eager light; he laughed a
+little mirthless laugh, which was neither pleasant to hear nor to
+give. "Dear me," he said aloud, as he watched the pair tramp together
+towards Scarthey, "for plotters in the dark, you are particularly easy
+to detect, my good friends!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he checked himself, realising what a mere chance it had been,
+after all&mdash;a fortuitous meeting in the passage&mdash;that had first aroused
+his suspicions, and placed between his fingers the end of the thread
+he now thought it so simple to follow up. But he did hold the thread,
+and depended no longer upon chance or guess-work, but on his own
+relentless purpose to lay the plotters by the heels, whatever their
+plot might be.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of an hour and a half, Johnny Shearman, whistling,
+light-hearted, and alone, was nearing his native house once more, when
+the sight of a horseman, rapidly advancing across the sands, brought
+him to a standstill, to stare with a boy's curiosity. Presently,
+however, recognising Mr. Landale&mdash;a person for whom he had more dread
+than admiration&mdash;he was starting off homeward again at a brisk canter,
+when a stern hail from the rider arrested him.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnny!" The boy debated a moment, measured the distance between the
+cottage and himself, and shrewdly recognised the advisability of
+obeying. "Johnny, my boy, I want you at the Hall; take hold of my
+stirrup, and come along with me."</p>
+
+<p>The boy, with every symptom of reluctance, demurred, pleading a
+promise to return to his mother. Then he suddenly perceived a look in
+the gentleman's eye, which gave him a frantic, unreasoned desire to
+bolt at once, and at any cost. But the horseman anticipated the
+thought; bending in the saddle, he reached out his arm and seized the
+urchin by the collar.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you little devil, what is the matter with you?" he asked,
+grinning ominously into the chubby, terrified face. "It strikes me it
+is time you and I should come to a little understanding. Any more
+letters from the smuggler to-day, eh? Ah, would you, you young idiot!"
+and Mr. Landale's fingers gave a sudden twist to the collar, which
+strangled the rising yell. "Listen, Johnny," tightening his grasp
+gradually until the brown face grew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span> scarlet, then purple, and the
+goggling eyes seemed to start out of their sockets; "that is what it
+feels like to be hanged. They squeeze your neck so; and they leave you
+dangling at the end of a rope till you are dead, dead, dead, and the
+crows come and eat you. Do you want to be hanged?"</p>
+
+<p>For some moments more he kept the writhing lad under the torture; then
+loosening his grip, without however relinquishing his hold, allowed
+him to taste once more the living air.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to be hanged, Johnny Shearman?" he asked again gravely.
+The lad burst into gasping sobs, and looked up at his captor with an
+agony of fear in his bloodshot eyes. "No," continued Mr. Landale, "I
+am sure you don't, eh?" with a renewed ominous contraction of the
+hand. "It's a fearful thing, is hanging. And yet many a lad, hardly
+older than you, has been hanged for less than you are doing.
+Magistrates can get people hanged, and I am a magistrate, you know.
+<i>Stop that noise!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Now," continued the gentleman, "there are one or two little things I
+want to know myself, Johnny, and it's just possible I might let you
+off for this time if by chance you were able to tell them to me. So,
+for your sake, I hope you may be."</p>
+
+<p>He could see that the boy's mind was now completely turned with
+fright.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were to try to run away again I should know you had secrets to
+keep from me, and then, Johnny Shearman, it would go hard with you
+indeed! Now come along beside me, up to the Hall."</p>
+
+<p>Quite certain of his prey, he released him, and, setting his horse to
+a trot, smiled to note the desperate clutch of the lad upon his
+stirrup leather, as, with the perspiration dripping from his face, and
+panting breath, he struggled to keep up the pace alongside.</p>
+
+<p>Marched with tremendous ceremony into the magistrate's study and
+directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale
+installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of
+judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a
+pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and
+physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was
+comparatively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> little that he had to say, and no doubt he wished most
+fervently he had greater revelations to make, and could thus
+propitiate the arbiter of the appalling fate he firmly believed might
+lie in store for him. Meagre as his narrative was, however, it quite
+sufficed for Mr. Landale.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, Johnny," he said more pleasantly, well knowing the
+inducement that a sudden relaxation from fear offers to a witness's
+garrulity, "I think I may say you will not hang this time&mdash;that is,"
+with a sudden hardening of his voice, and making a great show of
+checking the answers with pen and ink in his most magisterial manner,
+"that is if you have really told me <i>all</i> you know and it be all
+<i>true</i>. Now let us see, and take care. You saw no one at the peel
+to-day but Renny Potter, Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Crackenshaw?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"But you heard other voices in the next room&mdash;a man's voice&mdash;whilst
+you were waiting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Renny Potter came back and gave you a message for your brothers.
+This message they made you repeat, over and over again. How did it
+go?" And as Mr. Landale frowningly looked at his paper, the boy
+tremblingly repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"I mun tell brothers Will an' Rob, that one or t'other mun watchen the
+light o' nights, to-night, to-morrow night, an' ontil woord coom
+again. If light go out they mun setten forth in they ketch thot
+moment, fettled op for a two-three days' sailing. If wind is contrairy
+like, they mun take sweeps. This for the master's service&mdash;for Sir
+Adrian's service!"&mdash;amending the phrase with a sharp reading of the
+blackness of Mr. Landale's swift upward look.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," murmured the latter after a pause. "And you were to tell no one
+else. You were to keep it above all from getting to my ears. Very
+good, Johnny. If you have spoken the truth, you are safe."</p>
+
+<p>There was a special cell, off the official study, with high windows,
+bolts and bars, and a wooden bench, for the temporary housing of such
+desperate criminals as might be brought to the judgment of Rupert
+Landale, Esquire, J.P. There he now disposed of the young offender who
+snivelled piteously once more; and having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> locked the door and
+pocketed the key, returned to his capacious arm-chair, where, as the
+twilight waned over the land, he fell to co-ordinating his scheme and
+gloating upon this unexpected turn of Fortune's wheel.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>At that hour Madeleine, alone in her chamber, knelt before her little
+altar, wrestling with the rebellion of her soul and besieging the
+heavens with a cry for peace.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Sir Adrian having failed to hear aught of the <i>Peregrine</i> at St. Malo,
+filled with harassing doubt about its fate but clutching still at
+hope&mdash;as men will, even such pessimists as he&mdash;stood on the deck of
+his homeward bound ship, straining his eyes in the dusk for the coast
+line.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>In the peel, the beacon had just been lighted by Ren&eacute;, in whose
+company, up in his secluded turret, sat Captain Jack, smoking a pipe,
+but so unusually silent as to have reduced even the loquacious
+Frenchman to silence too. Below them Lady Landale, torn between the
+dread of a final separation from the loadstar of her existence and the
+gnawing anxiety roused in her bosom by Moggie's account of Mr.
+Landale's watchfulness, was pacing the long book-lined room with the
+restlessness of a caged panther.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>On the road from Lancaster to Pulwick a posse of riding officers and a
+carriage full of hastily gathered preventive men were trotting on
+their way to the Priory.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LIGHT GOES OUT</h3>
+
+
+<p>The light of Scarthey had not been shining for quite an hour over the
+wilderness, when Lady Landale, suddenly breaking the chain of her
+restless tramp, ran to the door and called for Moggie.</p>
+
+<p>There was so shrill a tone of anguish in the summons that the young
+woman rushed into the room in trembling expectancy: yet it was to find
+her mistress alone and the place undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Moggie," said Lady Landale, panting and pressing her hands upon her
+side as if in the endeavour to control the beating of her heart,
+"something is going to happen; I know it, I feel it! Tell Captain
+Smith that I must speak to him, here, at once."</p>
+
+<p>Infected by the terror upon her mistress's face, Madame Lap&ocirc;tre flew
+upon her errand; a moment later, Captain Jack entered the room and
+stood before Lady Landale with a look of impatient inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is wicked, it is mad!" cried she passionately; "it is tempting
+God to remain here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of whom are you speaking?" he asked, with an involuntary glance of
+contempt at the distracted figure. "If it is of yourself, I entirely
+concur. How often these last days, and how earnestly have I not begged
+of you to return to Pulwick? Was not the situation you placed me in
+with regard to Adrian already odious enough that it needed this added
+folly? Oh, I know&mdash;I know what you would say: spare it me. My safety?
+You fear for me? Ah, Lady Landale, that you could have but left me in
+peace!"</p>
+
+<p>He had waxed hot with anger from his first would-be calmness, as he
+spoke. This dismal life of close but inharmonious proximity, started
+upon the seas and continued under his absent friend's own roof had
+tried his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> impetuous temper to the utmost. Upon the morrow of their
+return he had, indeed, exercised all his powers of persuasion to
+induce Lady Landale to proceed to the Priory; but, impelled by her
+frantic dread of the separation, and entrenching herself behind the
+argument that her mysterious re-appearance would awaken suspicion
+where people would otherwise believe the <i>Peregrine</i> still in foreign
+parts, she had declared her irrevocable determination not to quit the
+island until she knew him to be safe. And he had remained, actuated by
+the dual desire, first to exonerate himself personally in her
+husband's eyes from any possible suspicion of complicity in Molly's
+flight&mdash;the bare thought of which had become a horrible torment to
+him&mdash;then to encompass through that good friend's means an interview
+and full explanation with Madeleine, which not only the most ordinary
+precaution for his life, but likewise every instinct of pride forbade
+him now to seek himself.</p>
+
+<p>Thus began a state of affairs which, as the days succeeded each other
+without news of Sir Adrian, became every moment more intolerable to
+his loyalty. The inaction, the solitary hours of reflection; the
+maddening feeling of unavailing proximity to his heart's dearest, of
+impotency against the involving meshes of the present false and
+hateful position; all this had brought into the young man's soul a
+fever of anger, which, as fevers will, consumed him the more fiercely
+because of his vigour and strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was with undisguised hatred and with scorn immeasurable that he now
+surveyed the woman who had degraded him in his own eyes. At another
+time Molly might have yielded before his resentment, but at this hour
+her whole being was encompassed by a single thought.</p>
+
+<p>"It is for you&mdash;for you!" she repeated with ashen lips; "you must go
+before it is too late."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it not too late?" stormed he. "Too late, indeed, do I see my
+treachery to Adrian, my more than brother! Upon my ship I could not
+avoid your company, but here&mdash;Oh, I should have thought of him and not
+of myself, and done as my honour bade me! You are right; since you
+would not go, I should have done so. It was weak; it was mad; worse,
+worse&mdash;dishonourable!"</p>
+
+<p>But she had no ears for his reproaches, no power to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> feel the wounds
+he dealt her woman's heart with such relentless hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will go," she cried. "Tell Ren&eacute;, the signal."</p>
+
+<p>He started and looked at her with a different expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard anything; has anything happened?" he asked, recovering
+self-restraint at the thought of danger.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," she replied, "not yet, but it is coming."</p>
+
+<p>Her look and voice were so charged with tragic force that for the
+moment he was impressed, and, brave man though he was, felt a little
+cold thrill run down his spine. She continued, in accents of the most
+piercing misery:</p>
+
+<p>"And it will have been through me&mdash;it will have been through me! Oh,
+in mercy let me make the signal! Say you will go to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go."</p>
+
+<p>There followed a little pause of breathless silence between them. Then
+as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory
+knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed
+with lugubrious reverberation through the old stone passages around
+them.</p>
+
+<p>At first, terror-stricken, her tongue clave to her palate, her feet
+were rooted to the ground; then with a scream she flung herself upon
+him and would have dragged him towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"They have come&mdash;hide&mdash;hide!"</p>
+
+<p>He threw up his head to listen, while he strove to disengage himself.
+The blood had leaped to his cheek, and fire to his eye. "And if it be
+Adrian?" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>Another knock thundered through the still air.</p>
+
+<p>"It is but one man," cried Ren&eacute; from his tower down the stairs. "You
+may open, Moggie."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no," screamed Molly beside herself, and tighter clasped her arms
+round Captain Jack's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian, it is Adrian!" said he. "Hush, Madam, let me go! Would you
+make the breach between me and my friend irreparable?"</p>
+
+<p>Both his hands were on her wrists in the vain endeavour to disengage
+himself from her frenzied grip; the door was flung open and Rupert
+Landale stood in the opening, and looked in upon them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Damnation!" muttered Jack between his teeth and flung her from him,
+stamping his foot.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert gazed from one to the other; from the woman, who, haggard and
+dishevelled, now turned like a fury upon him, to the sailor's fierce
+erect figure. Then he closed the door with an air of grave
+deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" demanded Molly&mdash;"you have come here for no good
+purpose. What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke she strove to place herself between the two men.</p>
+
+<p>"I came, my dear sister-in-law," said Rupert in his coldest, most
+incisive voice, "to learn why, since you have come back from your
+little trip, you choose to remain in the ruins rather than return to
+your own house and family. The reason is clear to see now. My poor
+brother!"</p>
+
+<p>The revulsion of disappointment had added to the wrath which the very
+sight of Rupert Landale aroused in Jack Smith's blood; this
+insinuation was the culminating injury. He took a step forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Have a care, sir," he exclaimed, "how you outrage in my presence the
+wife of my best friend! Have a care&mdash;I am not in such a hurry to leave
+you as when last we met!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Landale raised his eyebrows, and again sent a look from Molly back
+to the sailor, the insolence of which lashed beyond all control the
+devils in the sailor's soul.</p>
+
+<p>"We have an account to settle, it seems to me, Mr. Landale," said he,
+taking another step forward and slightly stooping his head to look the
+other in the eye. Crimson fury was in his own. "I doubt much whether
+it was quite wise of you, assuming that you expected to find me here,
+to have come without that pistolling retinue with which you provided
+yourself last time."</p>
+
+<p>Rupert smiled and crossed his arms. Cowardice was no part of his
+character. He had come in advance of his blood-hounds, in part to
+assure himself of the correctness of his surmises, but also to feast
+upon the discomfiture of this man and this woman whom he hated. To
+have found them together, and thus, had been an unforeseen and
+delicious addition to his dish of vengeance, and he would linger over
+it while he could.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Captain Smith, and about this account? Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span> Landale, I beg of
+you, be silent. You have brought sufficient disgrace upon our name as
+it is. Nay, sir," raising his voice, "it is useless to shake your head
+at me in this furious style; nothing can alter facts. <i>I saw.</i> Who has
+an account to demand then&mdash;you, whose life is already forfeit for an
+accumulation of crimes; you, screened by a conspiracy of bribed
+servants and ... your best friend's wife, as you dare call your
+paramour; or I, in my brother's absence the natural guardian of his
+family, of his honour? But I am too late. One sister I saved from the
+ignominy you would have brought upon her. The other I could not save."</p>
+
+<p>With a roar Jack Smith would have sprung at the speaker; but, once
+more, his friend's wife rushed between.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him speak," she cried, "what matter what he says? But
+you&mdash;remember your promise. I will make the signal."</p>
+
+<p>The signal! The mask of Rupert's face, sternly and sadly rebuking, was
+not proof against the exquisite aptness of this proposal. His men
+outside were waiting for the signal, surrounding the island from land
+and seaward, (for the prey was not to be allowed to escape them
+again); but how to make it without creating suspicion had not yet
+suggested itself to his fertile brain. Now, while he held her lover in
+play, Molly would herself deliver him to justice. Excellent,
+excellent! Truly life held some delightful jokes for the man of
+humour!</p>
+
+<p>The light of triumph came and went upon his countenance like a flash,
+but when the life hangs upon the decision of a moment the wits become
+abnormally sharp. Jack Smith saw it, halted upon his second headlong
+onslaught, and turned round.&mdash;Too late: Molly was gone. He brought his
+gaze back upon his enemy and saw he had been trapped.</p>
+
+<p>Their gleams met like duelling blades, divining each other's purpose
+with the rapidity of thrust answering thrust. Both made a leap for the
+door. But Rupert was nearest; he first had his hand on the key and
+turned it, and, with newly-born genius of fight, suddenly begotten of
+his hatred, quickly stooped, eluded the advancing grasp, was free for
+one second, and sent the key crashing through the window into the
+darkness of the night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Baffled by the astounding swiftness of the act, the sailor, wheeling
+round, had already raised his fist to crush his feebler foe, when, in
+the midst of his fury, a glimmer of the all-importance of every second
+of time stayed his hand. He threw himself upon the heavy ladder that
+rested against Sir Adrian's rows of books, and, clasping it by the
+middle, swung it above his head. The battering blow would, no doubt,
+have burst panel, lock, and hinges the next instant, but again Rupert
+forestalled him, and charged him before the door could be reached.</p>
+
+<p>Overbalanced by the weight he held aloft, Captain Jack was hurled down
+headlong beneath the ladder, and lay for a moment stunned by the
+violence of the fall.</p>
+
+<p>When the clouds cleared away it was to let him see Rupert's face
+bending over him, his pale lips wreathed into a smile of malignant
+exultation.</p>
+
+<p>"Caught!" said Mr. Landale, slowly, pausing over each word as though
+to prolong the savour of it in his mouth, "caught this time! And it is
+your mistress's hand that puts the noose round your neck. That is what
+I call poetical justice."</p>
+
+<p>The prostrate man, collecting his scattered wits and his vast
+strength, made a violent effort to spring to his feet. But Rupert's
+whole weight was upon him, his long thin fingers were gripping him by
+each shoulder, his face grinned at him, close, detested, infuriating.
+The grasp that held him seemed to belong to no flesh and blood, it was
+as the grasp of skeleton hands, the grinning face became like a
+death's head.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall come to your hanging, Captain Jack Smith, or rather, Mr.
+Hubert Cochrane of the Shaws."</p>
+
+<p>These were the last words of Rupert Landale. A red whirl passed
+through the sailor's brain, his hands fell like lashes round the
+other's neck and drew it down. <i>If Hubert Cochrane dies so does Rupert
+Landale: that throat shall never give sound to that name again.</i></p>
+
+<p>Over and over they roll like savage beasts, but yet in deathly
+silence. For the pressure of the fingers on his gullet, fingers that
+seem to gain fresh strength every moment and pierce into his very
+flesh, will not allow even a sigh to pass Rupert's lips, and Jack can
+spare no atom of his energy from the fury of fight: not one to spare
+even for the hearing of the frantic knocks at the door, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> calls,
+the hammering at the lock, the desperate efforts without to prise it
+open.</p>
+
+<p><i>But if Rupert Landale must die so shall Hubert Cochrane, and by the
+hangman's hand, treble doomed by this.</i> The same thought fills both
+these men's heads; the devil of murder has possession of both their
+souls. But, true to himself to the last, it is with Rupert a
+calculating devil. The officers must soon be here: he will hold the
+scoundrel yet with the grasp of death, and his enemy shall be found
+red-handed&mdash;red-handed!</p>
+
+<p>His hatred, his determination of vengeance, the very agony of the
+unequal struggle for life gave him a power that is almost a match for
+the young athlete in his frenzy.</p>
+
+<p>The dying efforts of his victim tax Jack's strength more than the
+living fight; but his hands are still locked in their fatal clutch
+when at last, with one fearful and spasmodic jerk, Rupert Landale
+falls motionless. Then exhaustion enwraps the conqueror also, like a
+mantle. He, too, lies motionless with his cheek on the floor, face to
+face with the corpse, dimly conscious of the voluptuousness of
+victory. But the dead grasp still holds him by the wrists, and it
+grows cold now, and rigid upon them. It is as if they were fettered
+with iron.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Lady Landale's dread of her once despised kinsman, now that she knew
+what a powerful weapon he held in his hands, this night, was almost
+fantastic.</p>
+
+<p>As she darted from the room, she fell against Ren&eacute;, who, with a white
+face and bent ear, stood at the door, eavesdropping, ready to rush to
+the help of Sir Adrian's friend upon the first hint of necessity. But
+he had heard more than he bargained for.</p>
+
+<p>The scared, well-nigh agonised look of inquiry with which he turned to
+his mistress was lost upon her. In her whirlwind exit, she seized upon
+him and dragged him with her to the ladder that led to the tower.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick, Ren&eacute;, the signal!"</p>
+
+<p>And with the birdlike swiftness of a dream flight she was up the steps
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>Panting in her wake, ran the sturdy fellow, his brain seething in a
+chaos of conflicting thought. Mr. the Captain must be helped, must be
+saved: this one thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> was clear at any rate. His honour would wish it
+so&mdash;no matter what had happened. Yes, he would obey My Lady and make
+the signal. But, what if Mr. Landale were right? Not indeed in his
+accusation of Mr. the Captain, Ren&eacute; knew, Ren&eacute; had seen enough to
+trust him: he was no false friend; but as regarded My Lady? Alas! My
+Lady had indeed been strange in her manner these days; and even
+Moggie, as he minded him now, even Moggie had noticed, had hinted, and
+he had not understood.</p>
+
+<p>The man's fingers fumbled over the catch of the great lantern, he
+shook as if he had the palsy. Goodness divine, if his master were to
+come home to this!</p>
+
+<p>Impatiently Lady Landale pushed him upon one side. What ailed the
+fellow, when every second was crucial, life or death bringing?
+Medusa-like for one second her face hung, white-illumined, set into
+terrible fixity, above the great flame, the next instant all was
+blackness to their dazzled eyes. The light of Scarthey was out!</p>
+
+<p>She groped for Ren&eacute;; her hot fingers burnt upon his cold rough hand
+for a second.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go down to the sands," she said, whispering as if she feared,
+even here, the keenness of Rupert's ear, "and you&mdash;hurry to him, stop
+with him, defend him, your master's friend!"</p>
+
+<p>She flitted from him like a shadow, the ladder creaked faintly beneath
+her light footfall, and then louder beneath his weighty tread.</p>
+
+<p>His master's friend!</p>
+
+<p>Ay, he would stand by him, for his master's sake and for his own sake
+too&mdash;the good gentleman!&mdash;And they would get him safe out of the way
+before his honour's return.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Out upon the beach ran Molly.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mild still night; through veils of light mist the moon shone
+with a tranquil bride-like grace upon the heaving palpitating waters
+and the mystery of the silent land.</p>
+
+<p>A very night for lovers, it seemed; for sweet meetings and sweeter
+partings; a night that mocked with its great passionless calm at the
+wild anguish of this woman's impatience. Yet a night upon which sound
+travelled far.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> She bent her ear&mdash;was there nothing to hear yet,
+nothing but the lap of the restless waters? Were those men false?</p>
+
+<p>She rushed to and fro, from one point to another along the sands in a
+delirium of impotent desire.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, hurry, hurry, hurry!</p>
+
+<p>And as she turned again, there, upon the waters out in the offing,
+glimmered a light, curtseying with the swell of the waves; the sails
+of a ship caught the moonbeams. She could see the vessel plainly and
+that it was bearing full for the island. Alas! This might scarcely be
+the little Shearman boat manned by two fishermen only; even she,
+unversed in sea knowledge could tell that. It was as large as the
+<i>Peregrine</i> itself&mdash;certainly as large as the cutter.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>cutter</i>!</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath, and clapped her hands to her lips to choke down
+the wild scream of fear that rose to them.</p>
+
+<p>At the same instant, a dull thud of oars, a subdued murmur of a deep
+voice rose from the other side of the island.</p>
+
+<p>They were coming, coming from the landward, these rescuers of her
+beloved. And yonder, with swelling canvas, came the hell ship from out
+the open sea, sent by Rupert's infernal malice and cleverness, to make
+their help of no avail; to seize him, in the very act of flight.</p>
+
+<p>She ran in the direction of the sound, and with all her strength
+called upon the new-comers to speed.</p>
+
+<p>"Here&mdash;here, for God's sake! Hasten or it will be too late!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice seemed to her, in the midst of the endless space, weak as a
+child's; but it was heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming!" answered a gruff shout from afar. And the oar beat came
+closer, and fell with swifter rhythm. Stumbling, catching in her
+skirts, careless of pool or stone beneath her little slippered feet,
+Lady Landale came flying round the ruins: a couple of boats crashed in
+upon the shingle, and the whole night seemed suddenly to become alive
+with dark figures&mdash;men in uniform, with gleams upon them of brass
+badges and shining belts, and in their hands the gleam of arms.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment she could not move. It was as if her knees were giving
+way, and she must fall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>None of them saw her in the shadow; but as they passed, she heard them
+talking to each other about the signal, the signal which they had been
+told to look for, which had been brought to them ... the signal <i>she</i>
+had made. Then with a wave of rage, the power of life returned to her.
+This was Rupert's work! But all was not lost yet. The other boat was
+coming, the other boat must be the rescue after all; the Shearman's
+boat, or&mdash;who knows?&mdash;if there was mercy in Heaven, the <i>Peregrine</i>,
+whose crew might have heard of their captain's risk.</p>
+
+<p>Back she raced to the seaward beach, hurling&mdash;unknowing that she spoke
+at all&mdash;invectives upon her husband's brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Serpent, blood-hound, devil, devil, you shall not have him!"</p>
+
+<p>As she reached the landing-place, breathless, a boat was landing in
+very truth. Even as she came up a tall figure jumped out upon the
+sand, and crunched towards her with great strides.</p>
+
+<p>She made a leap forward, halted, and cried out shrilly:</p>
+
+<p>"Adrian!"</p>
+
+<p>"Molly&mdash;wife! Thank God!" His arms were stretched out to her, but he
+saw her waver and shudder from him, and wring her hands. "My God, what
+has happened? The light out, too! What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>She fastened on him with a sudden fierceness, the spring of a wild
+cat.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," she said, drawing him towards the peel, "if you would save
+him, lose not a second."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment, still; she tugged at him like one demented,
+panting her abjurations at him, though her voice was failing her.
+Then, without a word, he fell to running with her towards the keep,
+supporting her as they went.</p>
+
+<p>The great door had swung back on its hinges, and the men were
+pressing, in a dark body, into the dim-lit recesses, when Sir Adrian
+and his wife reached the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the uniforms only confirmed the homecomer in his own
+forebodings anent the first act of the drama that was being enacted
+upon his peaceful island. He needed no further pushing from the
+frantic woman at his side. Lost in bringing her back, perhaps, his
+only friend! Lost by his loyalty and his true friendship!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They dashed up the stone stairs just as the locked door of the
+living-room burst with a crash, under the efforts of many stalwart
+shoulders; they saw the men crush forwards, and fall back, and herd on
+again, with a hoarse murmur that leaped from mouth to mouth.</p>
+
+<p>And Ren&eacute; came running out from the throng with the face of one that
+has seen Death. And he caught his mistress by the arm, and held her by
+main force against the wall. He showed no surprise at the sight of his
+master&mdash;there are moments in life that are beyond surprise&mdash;but cried
+wildly:</p>
+
+<p>"She must not see!"</p>
+
+<p>She fought like a tigress against the faithful arms, but still they
+held her, and Sir Adrian went in alone.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of men were dragging Captain Jack to his feet, forcing his
+hands from the dead man's throat; it seemed as if they had grown as
+rigid and paralysed in their clasp like the corpse hands that had now,
+likewise, to be wrenched from their clutch of him.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced around, as though dazed, then down at the disfigured purple
+face of his dead enemy, smiled and held out his hands stiffly for the
+gyves that were snapped upon them.</p>
+
+<p>And then one of the fellows, with some instinctive feeling of decency,
+flung a coat over the slain man, and Captain Jack threw up his head
+and met Adrian's horror-stricken, sorrowful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At the unexpected sight he grew scarlet; he waved his fettered hands
+at him as they hustled him forth.</p>
+
+<p>"I have killed your brother, Adrian," he called out in a loud voice,
+"but I brought back your wife!"</p>
+
+<p>Some of the men were speaking to Sir Adrian, but drew back
+respectfully before the spectacle of his wordless agony.</p>
+
+<p>But, as Molly, with a shriek, would have flung herself after the
+prisoner, her husband awoke to action, and, pushing Ren&eacute; aside, caught
+her round the waist with an unyielding grip: his eyes sought her face.
+And, as the light fell on it, he understood. Aye, she had been brought
+back to him. But how?</p>
+
+<p>And Ren&eacute;, watching his master's countenance, suddenly burst out
+blubbering, like a child.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<h3>HUSBAND AND WIFE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Tout comprendre&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">c'est tout pardonner.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Staring straight before her with haggard, unseeing eyes, her hands
+clasped till the delicate bones protruded, her young face lined into
+sudden agedness, grey with unnatural pallor, framed by the black
+masses of her dishevelled hair, it was thus Sir Adrian found his wife,
+when at length he was free to seek her.</p>
+
+<p>He and Ren&eacute; had laid the dead man upon the bed that had been occupied
+by his murderer, and composed as decently as might be the hideous
+corpse of him who had been the handsomest of his race. Ren&eacute; had given
+his master the tale of all he knew himself, and Sir Adrian had ordered
+the boat to be prepared, determined to convey Lady Landale at once
+from the scene of so much horror. His own return to Pulwick, moreover,
+to break the news to Sophia, to attend to the removal of the body and
+the preparation for the funeral was of immediate necessity.</p>
+
+<p>As he approached his wife she raised her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want with me?" she asked, with a stony look that arrested
+him, as he would gently have taken her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I would bring you home."</p>
+
+<p>"Home!" the pale lips writhed in withering derision.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, home, Molly," he spoke as one might to a much-loved and
+unreasonable sick child&mdash;with infinite tenderness and
+compassion&mdash;"your own warm home, with your sister. You would like to
+go to Madeleine, would not you?"</p>
+
+<p>She unclasped her hands and threw them out before her with a savage
+gesture of repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>"To Madeleine?" she echoed, with an angry cry; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> then wheeling
+round upon him fiercely: "Do you want to kill me?" she said, between
+her set teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian's weary brow contracted. He paused and looked at her with
+profoundest sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Then she asked, hoarsely:</p>
+
+<p>"Where have they taken him to?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Lancaster, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Will they hang him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I pray God not."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no use of praying to God, God is merciless. What will they
+do to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will be tried, Molly, in due course, and then, according to the
+sentence of the judges.... My poor child, control yourself, he shall
+be defended by the best lawyers that money can get. All a man can do
+for another I shall do for him."</p>
+
+<p>She shot the sombre fire of her glance at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that I love him," she said, with a terrible composure.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden whiteness spread round Sir Adrian's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" he said again beneath his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I love him. I always wanted to see him. I was sick and tired of
+life at Pulwick, and that was why I went on board his ship. I went
+deliberately because I could not bear the dulness of it all. He
+mistook me for Madeleine in the dark&mdash;he kissed me. Afterwards I told
+him that I loved him. I begged him to take me away with him, for ever.
+I love him still, I would go with him still&mdash;it is as well that you
+should know. Nothing can alter it now. But he did not want me. He
+loves Madeleine."</p>
+
+<p>The words fell from her lips with a steady, cruel, deliberateness. She
+kept her eyes upon him as she spoke, unpityingly, uncaring what
+anguish she inflicted; nay, it seemed from some strange perversity,
+glad to make him suffer.</p>
+
+<p>But hard upon a man as it must be to hear such a confession from his
+wife's lips, doubly hard to such a one as Adrian, whose heart bled for
+her pain as well as for his own, he held himself without departing for
+a second from his wonted quiet dignity. Only in his earnest gaze upon
+her there was perhaps, if possible, an added tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>But she, to see him so unmoved, was moved herself to a sudden scorn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What manner of man was this, that not love, nor jealousy, nor anger
+had power to stir?</p>
+
+<p>"And now what will you do with me?" she asked him again, with superb
+contempt on eye and lip. "For a guilty wife I am to you, as far as the
+will could make me, and I have no claim upon you any more."</p>
+
+<p>"No claim upon me!" he repeated, with a wonder of grief in his voice.
+"Ah, Molly, hush child! You are my wife. The child of the woman I
+loved&mdash;the woman I love for her own sake. You can no more put yourself
+out of my life now than you can out of my heart; had you been as
+guilty in deed as you may have been in purpose my words would be the
+same. Your husband's home is your home, my only wish to cherish and
+shelter you. You cannot escape my care, poor child, and some day you
+may be glad of it. My protection, my countenance you will always have.
+God! who am I that I should judge you? Is there any sin of human
+frailty that a human being dare condemn? Guilty? What is your guilt
+compared to mine for bringing you to this, allying my melancholy age
+with your bright youth?"</p>
+
+<p>He fell into the chair opposite to her and covered his face with his
+hands. As, for a minute's space, his self-control wavered, she watched
+him, wearily. Her heat of temper had fallen from her very quickly; she
+broke into a moan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what does it matter? What does anything matter now? I love him
+and I have ruined him&mdash;had it not been for me he would be safe!"</p>
+
+<p>After a little silence Sir Adrian rose. "I must leave you now, I must
+go to Pulwick," he said. His heart was yearning to her, he would have
+gathered her to his arms as a father his erring child, but he
+refrained from even touching her. "And you&mdash;what would you do? It
+shall be as you like."</p>
+
+<p>"I would go to Lancaster," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"The carriage shall be sent for you in the morning and Renny and his
+wife shall go with you. I will see to it. After Rupert's funeral&mdash;my
+God, what a night this has been!&mdash;I will join you, and together we
+shall work to save his life."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, hesitated, and was about to turn away when suddenly she
+caught his hand and kissed it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He knew she would as readily have kissed Ren&eacute;'s hand for a like
+promise; that her gratitude was a pitiable thing for him, her husband,
+to bear; and yet, all the way, on his sad and solitary journey to
+Pulwick, the touch of her lips went with him, bringing a strange
+sweetness to his heart.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>There was a vast deal of wonder in the county generally, and among the
+old friends of his father's house in particular, when it became known
+that Sir Adrian Landale had engaged a noted counsel to defend his
+brother's murderer and was doing all he could to avert his probable
+doom. In lowered tones were whispered strange tales of Lady Landale's
+escapade. People wagged wise and virtuous heads and breathed
+scandalous hints of her power upon her infatuated husband; and then
+they would tap their foreheads significantly. Indeed it needed all the
+master of Pulwick's wide-spread reputation for mental unsoundness to
+enable him to carry through such proceedings without rousing more
+violent feelings. As it was, it is to be doubted whether his
+interference had any other effect than that of helping to inflame the
+public mind against the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The jury's verdict was a foregone conclusion; and though the learned
+lawyer duly prepared a very fine speech and pocketed some monstrous
+fees with a great deal of complaisance, he was honest enough not to
+hold out the smallest hope of being able to save his client.</p>
+
+<p>The conviction was too clear, the "crimes" the prisoner had committed
+were of "too horrible and bloody a character, threatening the very
+foundations of society," to admit of a merciful view of the case.</p>
+
+<p>As the trial drew near, Sir Adrian's despondency increased; each day
+seemed to bring a heavier furrow to his brow, an added weight to his
+lagging steps. He avoided as much as possible all meetings with his
+wife, who, on the contrary, recovered stronger courage with the flight
+of time, but whose feverish interest in his exertions was now
+transferred to some secret plans that she was for ever discussing with
+Ren&eacute;. The prisoner himself showed great calmness.</p>
+
+<p>"They will sentence me of course," he said quietly to Adrian, "but
+whether they will hang me is another question.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> I don't think that my
+hour has come yet or that the cord is twisted which will hang Jack
+Smith."</p>
+
+<p>In other moods, he would ridicule Sir Adrian's labours in his cause
+with the most gentle note of affectionate mockery. But, from the
+desire doubtless to save one so disinterested and unworldly from any
+accusation of complicity, he was silent upon the schemes on which he
+pinned his hopes of escape.</p>
+
+<p>The first meeting of the friends after the scene at Scarthey had been,
+of course, painful to both.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered the cell, Adrian had stretched out his hand in
+silence, but Captain Jack held his own pressed to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"It is like you to come," he said gloomily, "but you cannot shake the
+hand that stifled your brother's life out of him. And I should do it
+again, Adrian! Mark you, I am not repentant!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me your hand, Jack," said Adrian steadfastly. "I am not of those
+who shift responsibility from the dead to the living. You were
+grievously treated. Oh, give me your hand, friend, can I think of
+anything now but your peril and your truth to me?"</p>
+
+<p>For an instant still the younger man hesitated and inquiringly raised
+his eyes laden with anxious trouble, to the elder man's face.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife has told me all," said Sir Adrian, turning his head to hide
+his twitching lip.</p>
+
+<p>And then Jack Smith's hand leaped out to meet his friend's upon an
+impulse of warm sympathy, and the two faced each other, looking the
+words they could not utter.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>The year eighteen hundred and fifteen which delivered England at last
+from the strain of outlandish conflict saw a revival of official
+activity concerning matters of more homely interest. The powers that
+were awoke to the necessity, among other things, of putting a stop by
+the most stringent means to the constant and extensive leakage in the
+national revenue proceeding from the organisation of free traders or
+smugglers.</p>
+
+<p>After twenty years of almost complete supineness on the part of the
+authorities, the first efforts made towards a systematic "Preventive"
+coast service, composed of customs, excise and naval officials in
+proportion varied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> according to the localities, remained singularly
+futile. And to the notorious inability of these latter to cope with
+the experience and the devilish daring of the old established free
+traders, was due no doubt to the ferocity of the inquisitional laws
+presently levelled against smuggling and smugglers&mdash;laws which
+ruthlessly trenched upon almost every element of the British subjects'
+vaunted personal freedom, and which added, for the time, several new
+"hanging cases" to the sixty odd already in existence.</p>
+
+<p>That part of the indictment against Captain Jack Smith and the other
+criminals still at large, which dealt with their offences against the
+smuggling act, would in later times have broken down infallibly from
+want of proper evidence: not a tittle of information was forthcoming
+which could support examination. But a judge of assizes and a jury in
+1815, were not to be baulked of the necessary victim by mere
+circumstantiality when certain offences against society and against
+His Majesty had to be avenged; and the dispensers of justice were less
+concerned with strict evidence than with the desirability of making
+examples. Strong presumption was all that was required to them to hang
+their man; and indeed the hanging of Captain Jack upon the other and
+more serious counts than that of unlawful occupation, was, as has been
+said, a foregone conclusion. The triple charge of murder being but too
+fully corroborated.</p>
+
+<p>Every specious argument that could be mooted was of course put forward
+by counsel for the defence, to show that the death of the preventive
+men and of Mr. Landale on Scarthey Island and the sinking of the
+revenue cutter must be looked upon, on the one hand, as simple
+manslaughter in self-defence, and as the result of accidental
+collision, on the other. But, as every one anticipated, the charge of
+the judge and the finding of the jury demanded strenuously the extreme
+penalty of the law. Besides this the judge deemed it advisable to
+introduce into the sentence one of those already obsolete penalties of
+posthumous degradation, devised in coarser ages for the purpose of
+making an awful impression upon the living.</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner at the bar," said his lordship at the conclusion of the last
+day's proceedings, "the sentence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span> law which I am about to pass
+upon you and which the court awards is that you now be taken to the
+place whence you came, and from thence, on the day appointed, to the
+place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck until you be dead,
+dead, dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack, standing bolt upright, with his eyes fixed upon the
+speaker, calm as he ever had been when awaiting the enemy's broadside,
+hearkened without stirring a muscle. But when the judge, after
+pronouncing the last words with a lingering fulness and
+impressiveness, continued through the heavy silence: "And that, at a
+subsequent time, your body, bound in irons, shall be suspended upon a
+gibbet erected as near as possible to the scenes of your successive
+crimes, and shall there remain as a lasting warning to wrong-doers of
+the inevitable ultimate end of such an evil life as yours," a wave of
+crimson flew to the prisoner's forehead, upon which every vein swelled
+ominously.</p>
+
+<p>He shot a glance of fury at the large flabby countenance of the
+righteous arbiter of his doom, whilst his hands closed themselves with
+an involuntary gesture of menace. Then the tide of anger ebbed; a
+contemptuous smile parted his lips. And, bowing with an air of light
+mockery to the court, he turned, erect and easy, to follow his turnkey
+out of the hall.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<h3>IN LANCASTER CASTLE</h3>
+
+
+<p>All that his friendship for the condemned man, all that his love and
+pity for his almost distracted wife, could suggest, Sir Adrian Landale
+had done in London to try and avert Captain Jack's doom. But it was in
+vain. There also old stories of his peculiar tenets and of his
+well-known disaffection to the established order of things, had been
+raked up against him. Unfavourable comparisons had been drawn between
+him and Rupert; surprise and disapproval had been expressed at the
+unnatural brother, who was displaying such energy to obtain mercy for
+his brother's murderer. Finally an influential personage, whom Sir
+Adrian had contrived to interest in the case, in memory of an old
+friendship with his father, informed the baronet that his persistence
+was viewed with extreme disfavour in the most exalted quarter, and
+that His Royal Highness himself had pronounced that Captain Jack was a
+damned rascal and richly deserved his fate.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning, indeed, the suppliant had been without hope.
+Though he was resolved to leave no stone unturned, no possibility
+untried in the effort to save his friend, well-nigh the saddest part
+of the whole business to him was the realisation that the prisoner had
+not only broken those custom laws (of which Sir Adrian himself
+disapproved as arbitrary) but also, as he had been warned, those other
+laws upon which depend all social order and security; broken them so
+grievously that, whatever excuses the philosopher might find in heat
+of blood and stress of circumstances, given laws at all, the sentence
+could not be pronounced otherwise than just.</p>
+
+<p>And so, with an aching heart and a wider horror than ever of the cruel
+world of men, and of the injustices to which legal justice leads, Sir
+Adrian left London to hurry back to Lancaster with all the speed that
+post-horses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span> could muster. The time was now drawing short. As the
+traveller rattled along the stony streets of the old Palatine town,
+and saw the dawn breaking, exquisite, primrose tinted, faintly
+beautiful as some dream vision over the distant hills, his soul was
+gripped with an iron clutch. In three more days the gallant heart,
+breaking in the confinement of the prison yonder, would have throbbed
+its last! And he longed, with a desire futile but none the less
+intense, that, according to that doctrine of Vicarious Atonement
+preached to humanity by the greatest of all examples, he could lay
+down his own weary and disappointed life for his friend.</p>
+
+<p>Having breakfasted at the hotel, less for the necessity of food than
+for the sake of passing the time till the morning should have worn to
+sufficient maturity, he sought on foot the quiet lodgings where he had
+installed his wife under Ren&eacute;'s guard before starting on his futile
+quest. Early as the hour still was&mdash;seven had but just rung merrily
+from some chiming church clock&mdash;the faithful fellow was already astir
+and prompt to answer his master's summons.</p>
+
+<p>One look at the latter's countenance was sufficient to confirm the
+servant's own worst forebodings.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, your honour, and is it indeed so. <i>Ces gredins!</i> and will they
+hang so good a gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Renny, not so loud," cried the other with an anxious look at
+the folding-doors, that divided the little sitting-room from the inner
+apartment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, his honour need have no fear. My Lady is gone, gone to Pulwick.
+His honour need not disquiet himself; he can well imagine that I would
+not allow her to go alone&mdash;when I had been given a trust so precious.
+No, no, the old lady, Miss O'Donoghue, your honour's aunt and her
+ladyship's, she has heard of all these terrible doings, and came to
+Lancaster to be with My Lady. <i>Ma foi</i>, I know not if she be just the
+person one would have chosen, for she has scolded a great deal, and is
+as agitated&mdash;as agitated as a young rabbit. But, after all, she loves
+the poor young lady with all her heart, and I think she has roused her
+a little. His honour knows," said the man, flushing to the roots of
+his hair, whilst he shifted nervously from one foot to another, "that
+My Lady has been much upset about the poor captain. After his honour
+went, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span> would sit, staring out of the window there, just where the
+street turns up to the castle, and neither ate nor slept, nor talked
+to speak of. Of course, as I told the old Demoiselle, I knew it was
+because My Lady had taken it to heart about the signal that she
+made&mdash;thinking to save him&mdash;and which only brought the gabelous on
+him, that his honour's infernal brother (God forgive me, and have
+mercy on his soul) had set to watch. And My Lady liked to see me
+coming and going, for she sent me every day to the prison; she did not
+once go herself."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian drew a long breath. With the most delicate intuition of his
+master's thoughts, Ren&eacute; avoided even a glance at him while he
+continued in as natural a tone as he could assume:</p>
+
+<p>"But the day after the old miss came, she, My Lady, told me to find
+out if he would see her. He said no; but that the only kindness any
+one could do him now would be to bring him Mademoiselle Madeleine, and
+let him speak to her once more. And My Lady, when she heard this, she
+started off that day with the old one to fetch Mademoiselle herself at
+Pulwick. And she left me behind, your honour, for I had a little plan
+there."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; faltered and a crestfallen look crept upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian remembered how before his departure for London his servant
+had cheerily assured him that Mr. the Captain would be safe out of the
+country long before he returned, "faith of him, Ren&eacute;, who had already
+been in two prisons, and knew their ways, and how to contrive an
+escape, as his honour well knew." A sad smile parted his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you failed, Renny," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, your honour, those satanic English turnkeys! With a Frenchman,
+the job had been done; but it is a bad thing to be in prison in
+England. His honour can vouch I have some brains. I had made plans&mdash;a
+hundred plans, but there was ever something that did not work. The
+captain, he too, was eager, as your honour can imagine. My faith, we
+thought and we thought, and we schemed and contrived, and in the end,
+there was only one thing to complete our plot&mdash;to bribe the jailer.
+Would your honour believe&mdash;it was only that one little difficulty. My
+Lady had given me a hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span> guineas, I had enough money, your honour
+sees. But the man&mdash;I had smoked with him, drunk with him, ay, and made
+him drunk too, and I thought all was going well, but when I hinted to
+him what we wanted&mdash;Ah! he was a brute&mdash;I tell you I had hard work to
+escape the prison myself, and only for my leaving him with some of the
+money, I should now be pinched there too. I hardly dare show my face
+in the place any more. And my poor Lady builds on the hope, and Mr.
+the Captain&mdash;I had to tell him, he took it like an angel. Ah, the poor
+gentleman! He looked at me so brave and kind! 'I am as grateful, my
+poor friend, as if you had done it,' said he, 'and perhaps it is all
+for the best.' All for the best&mdash;ah, your honour!"</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; fairly broke down here, and wept on his sleeve. But Sir Adrian's
+eyes, circled and worn with watching and thought, shone dry with a far
+deeper grief, as, a few moments later, he passed along the street
+towards the walls of the castle.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>There was in those days little difficulty in obtaining admission to a
+condemned prisoner; and, in the rear of the red-headed, good-tempered
+looking jailer&mdash;the same, he surmised, whose sternness in duty had
+baffled the Breton's simple wiles&mdash;he stepped out of the sweet morning
+sunshine into the long stone passages. The first tainted breath of the
+prison brought a chill to his blood and oppression to his lungs, and
+the gloom of the place enveloped him like a pall.</p>
+
+<p>With a rattle of keys a door dismally creaking on its hinges was swung
+back at last, and the visitor was ushered into the narrow cell, dark
+for all its whitewashed walls, where Captain Jack was spending his
+last hours upon earth. The hinges groaned again, the door slammed, and
+the key once more grated in the lock. Sir Adrian was alone with his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment there was silence; the contraction of the elder man's
+heart had brought a giddiness to his brain, a dimness of his eyes,
+through which he was ill able to distinguish anything.</p>
+
+<p>But then there was a clank of fetters&mdash;ah, what a sound to connect
+with lucky Jack Smith, the gayest, freest, and most buoyant of men!
+And a voice cried:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Adrian!"</p>
+
+<p>It had a joyful ring, well-nigh the old hearty tones. It struck Adrian
+to the soul.</p>
+
+<p>He could have borne, he thought, to find his friend a broken man,
+changed out of all recognition, crushed by his misfortunes; but to
+find him the same, a little pale, indeed, and thinner, with a steady
+earnestness in the sea-blue eyes instead of the old dancing-light, but
+still gallant and undaunted, still radiating vigorous life and breezy
+energy by his very presence, this was a cruelty of fate which seemed
+unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," the prisoner had continued, "I declare I thought you were
+only the incorruptible jailer taking his morning survey. They are
+desperately careful of me, Adrian, and watch me with maternal
+solicitude lest I should strangle myself with my chains, these pretty
+bracelets which I have had to wear ever since poor Renny was found
+out, or swallow my pillow&mdash;dash me! it's small enough&mdash;and spoil the
+pretty show for Saturday! Why, why, Adrian, old friend?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden change of tone to the warmest concern, for Sir
+Adrian had staggered and would have fallen had not Jack, as nimbly as
+his fetters would allow him, sprung to support him and conduct him to
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>A shaft of light struck through the tiny barred window on to the elder
+man's face, and showed it against the surrounding darkness deathly
+white and wet with anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"I have done all I could, Hubert," he murmured, in an extinguished
+voice, "but to no avail."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, I guessed as much. But never fret for me, Adrian: I have
+looked death too often in the face to play the poltroon, now. I don't
+say it's the end I should have chosen for myself; but it is
+inevitable, and there is nothing, as you know, my friend, that a man
+cannot face if he knows it must be faced."</p>
+
+<p>The grasp of his strong warm hands, all manacled as they were, upon
+the other's nerveless clammy fingers, sent, more than the words,
+something of the speaker's own courage to his friend's wrung heart.
+And yet that very courage was an added torment.</p>
+
+<p>That from a community, so full of evil, feeble, harmful wretches, this
+noble soul, no matter how it had sinned,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span> should be banished at the
+bidding of justice&mdash;what mockery of right was this? The world was out
+of joint indeed. He groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I'll have none of it," cried Jack. "Our last talk, Adrian, must
+not be spoiled by futile regrets. Yes, our last talk it is to be,
+for"&mdash;the prisoner's face became transfigured with a tenderness so
+exquisite that Adrian stared at its beauty, amazed&mdash;"I have begged
+her, Madeleine, to come and see me once more. I think she can be here
+to-day, at latest to-morrow. And after that I would not see any of
+those I love again, that I may fit myself to meet my God."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with the utmost simplicity. Adrian bowed his head silently.
+Then averting his eyes, he said: "My wife has gone to Pulwick to fetch
+her."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack crimsoned. "That is kind," he answered, in a low voice;
+and, after a pause, pursued: "I hope you do not think it wrong of me
+to wish to see her. But you may trust me. I shall distress her as
+little as is possible in the circumstances. It is not, as you can
+fancy"&mdash;his face flushed again as he spoke&mdash;"to indulge in a pathetic
+parting scene, or beg from her sweet lips one last kiss&mdash;that would be
+too grossly selfish, and however this poor body of mine, so soon to be
+carrion, may yearn to hold her once more closely, these lips, so soon
+to touch death, shall touch hers no more. I have risen so far above
+this earthliness, that in so many hours I am to shake off for ever,
+that I can trust myself to meet her soul to soul. She must believe me
+now, and I would tell her, Adrian, that my deceit was not
+premeditated, and that the man she once honoured with her love is not
+the base wretch she deems. I think it may comfort her. If she does
+mourn for me at all&mdash;she has so proud a spirit, my princess, as I used
+to call her&mdash;it may comfort her to know that I was not all unworthy of
+the love she once gave me, of the tears she may yet give to its memory
+and mine."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian pressed his hand, but again could not speak, and Captain
+Jack went on:</p>
+
+<p>"You will give her a happy home, will you not, till she has one of her
+own? You and your old dragon of an aunt, whose bark is so much worse
+than her bite, will watch and guard her. Ah, poor old lady! she is one
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span> those that will not weep for Jack Smith, eh, Adrian? Well, well, I
+have had a happy life, barring one or two hard raps of fate, and when
+only I have seen Madeleine once more, I'll feel all taut for the port,
+though the passage there be a rough one."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian turned his gaze with astonishment upon him. The sailor read
+his thoughts:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think," he said, while a sudden shadow crossed his face, "don't
+think that I don't realise my position, that I have not had to fight
+my battle. In the beginning I had hopes; never in the success of your
+mission, but, absurd as it was, in Renny's scheme. The good fellow's
+own hopefulness was infectious, I believe. And when that fell
+through&mdash;well then, man, I just had to make up my mind to what was to
+be. It was a battle, as I told you. I have been in danger of death
+many a time upon the brave old <i>St. Nicholas</i>, and my
+<i>Cormorant</i>&mdash;death from the salt sea, from musket ball and cannon
+shot, fearful deaths of mangling and hacking. But death on the
+gallows, the shameful death of the criminal; to be hung; to be
+executed&mdash;Pah! Ay! it was a battle&mdash;two nights and one day I fought
+it. And I tell you, 'tis a hard thing to bring the living flesh and
+the leaping blood to submit to such as that. At first I thought
+indeed, it could not be borne, and I must reckon upon your or Renny's
+friendship for a secret speed. I should have had the pluck to starve
+myself if need be, only I am so damned strong and healthy, I feared it
+could not have been managed in the time. At any rate, I could have
+dashed my brains out against the wall&mdash;but I see it otherwise now. The
+prison chaplain, a good man, Adrian, has made me realise that it would
+be cowardly, that I should accept my sentence as atonement, as
+deserved&mdash;I <i>have</i> deserved to die."</p>
+
+<p>It had been Sir Adrian's own thought; but he broke out now in
+inarticulate protest. It seemed too gross, too monstrous.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Adrian, I have. You warned me, good friend, in your peaceful
+room&mdash;ah, how long ago it seems now! that night, when all that could
+make life beautiful lay to my hand for the taking. Oh, man, why did I
+not heed you! You warned me: he who breaks one law will end by
+breaking many. You were right. See the harm I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span> wreaked&mdash;those poor
+fellows, who were but doing their duty bravely, whose lives I
+sacrificed without remorse! Your brother, too, whose soul, with the
+most deliberate vindictiveness, I sent before its Maker, without an
+instant's preparation! A guilty soul it was; for he hounded me down,
+one would almost think for the sport of it.... God! when I think that,
+but for him, for his wanton interference&mdash;but there, the devils are
+loose again! I must not think on him. Do I not deserve my fate, if the
+Bible law be right? 'He who sheds blood, his blood shall be shed.'
+Never was sentence more just. I have sinned, I have repented; I am now
+ready to atone. I believe the sacrifice will be accepted."</p>
+
+<p>He laid his hand, for a minute, upon the Bible on the table, with a
+significant gesture.</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Adrian, the philosopher, though he could find no words to
+impeach the logic of his friend's reasoning, and was all astir with
+admiration for a resignation as perfect as either Christian or Stoic
+could desire, found his soul rising in tumultuous rebellion against
+the hideous decree. The longing that had beset him in the dawn, now
+seized upon him with a new passion, and the cry escaped his lips
+almost unwittingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if I could die for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said Jack, with his sweet smile, "your life is too valuable,
+too precious to the world. Adrian, believe me, you can still do much
+good with it. And I know you will be happy yet."</p>
+
+<p>It was the only allusion he had made to his friend's more personal
+sorrows. Before the latter had time to reply, he hastened to proceed:</p>
+
+<p>"And now to business. All the gold entrusted to me lies at Scarthey
+and, faith, I believe it lies as weightily on my mind as if it was all
+stored there instead! Renny knows the secret hiding-place. Will you
+engage to restore it to its owners, in all privacy? This is a terribly
+arduous undertaking, Adrian, and it is asking much of your friendship;
+but if I know you, not too much. And it will enable my poor bones to
+lie at rest, or rather," with a rueful laugh, "hang at rest on their
+gibbet; for you know I am to be set up as a warning to other fools,
+like a rat on a barn door. I have, by the kindness of the chaplain,
+been able to write out a full schedule of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span> different sums, and to
+whom they are due. He has taken charge of the closed packet directed
+to you, and will give it to you intact, I feel sure. He is a man of
+honour, and I trust him to respect the confidence I have placed in
+him.... Egad! the poor old boys will be right glad to get their coin
+back in safety. A couple of them have been up here already, to
+interview me, in fear and trembling. They were hard set to credit me
+when I assured them that they would be no losers in the end, after
+all&mdash;barring the waiting. You see, I counted upon you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never rest until it is done," said Sir Adrian, simply. And
+Captain Jack as simply answered: "Thank you. Among the treasure there
+is also &pound;10,000 of my own; the rest of my laboriously acquired fortune
+is forfeit to the Crown, as you know&mdash;much good may it do it! But this
+little hoard I give to you. You do not want it, of course, and
+therefore it is only to be yours that you may administrate it in
+accordance to my wishes. Another charge&mdash;but I make no apology. I wish
+you to divide it in three equal shares: two to be employed as you see
+best, for the widows and families of those poor fellows of the
+preventive service, victims of my venture; the third, as well as my
+beautiful <i>Peregrine</i>, I leave to the mate and men who served me so
+faithfully. They have fled with her, and must avoid England for some
+time. But Renny will contrive to hear of them; they are bound to
+return in secret for tidings, and I should like to feel that the
+misery I have left behind me may be mitigated.... And now, dear
+Adrian, that is all. The man outside grows impatient. I hear him
+shuffling his keys. Hark! there he knocks; the fellow has a certain
+rude feeling for me. An honest fellow. Dear Adrian, good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"My God! this is hard&mdash;is there nothing else&mdash;nothing&mdash;can indeed all
+my friendship be of no further help?&mdash;Hubert!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush," cried Jack Smith hastily, "Adrian, you alone of all
+living beings now know me by that name. Never let it cross your lips
+again. I could not die in peace were it not for the thought that I
+bring no discredit upon it. My mother believes me dead&mdash;God in His
+mercy has spared me the crowning misery of bringing shame to her white
+hairs&mdash;shame to the old race. Hubert Cochrane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span> died ten years ago.
+Jack Smith alone it is that dies by the hangman's hand. One other,"
+his voice softened and the hard look of pain left his face, "one other
+shall hear the secret besides you&mdash;but I know she will never speak of
+it, even to you&mdash;and such is my wish."</p>
+
+<p>It was the pride of race at its last and highest expression.</p>
+
+<p>There was the sound, without, of the key in the lock.</p>
+
+<p>"One last word&mdash;if you love me, nay, as you love me&mdash;do not be there
+on Saturday! This parting with you&mdash;the good-bye to her&mdash;that is my
+death. Afterwards what happens to this flesh," he struck at himself
+with his chained hands, "matters no more than what will happen to the
+soulless corpse. I know you would come to help me with the feeling of
+your love, your presence&mdash;but do not&mdash;do not&mdash;and now good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>Adrian seized his friend by the hands with a despairing grip, the door
+rolled back with its dismal screech.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner smiled at him with tender eyes. This man whom, all
+unwillingly he had robbed of his wife's heart, was broken with grief
+that he could not save the life that had brought him misery. Here was
+a friend to be proud of, even at the gate of death!</p>
+
+<p>"God be with you, dear Adrian! God bless you and your household, and
+your children, and your children's children! Hear my last words: <i>From
+my death will be born your happiness, and if its growth be slow, yet
+it will wax strong and sure as the years go by</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The words broke from him with prophetic solemnity; their hands fell
+apart, and Adrian, led by the jailer, stumbled forth blindly. Jack
+Smith stood erect, still smiling, watching them: were Adrian to turn
+he should find no weakness, no faltering for the final remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>But Adrian did not turn. And the door closed, closed upon hope and
+happiness and life, shut in shame and death. Out yonder, with Adrian,
+was the fresh bright world, the sea, the sunshine, the dear ones; here
+the prison smells, the gloom, the constraint, the inflicted dreadful
+death. All his hard-won calm fled from him; all his youth, his immense
+vitality woke up and cried out in him again. He raised his hands and
+pulled fiercely at his collar as if already the rope were round his
+neck strangling him. His blood hammered in his brain. God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>&mdash;God&mdash;it
+was impossible&mdash;it could not be&mdash;it was a dream!</p>
+
+<p>Beyond, from far distant in the street came the cry of a little child:</p>
+
+<p>"Da-da&mdash;daddy."</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner threw up his arms and then fell upon his face upon the
+bed, torn by sobs.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Adrian would have children; but Hubert Cochrane, who, from the
+beautiful young brood that was to have sprung from his loins would
+have grafted on the old stock a fresh and noble tree, he was to pass
+barren out of life and leave no trace behind him.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ONE HE LOVED AND THE ONE WHO LOVED HIM</h3>
+
+
+<p>On the evening of the previous day Lady Landale and her Aunt had
+arrived at Pulwick. The drive had been a dismal one to poor Miss
+O'Donoghue. Neither her angry expostulations, nor her tender
+remonstrances, nor her attempts at consolation could succeed in
+drawing a connected sentence from Molly, who, with a fever spot of red
+upon each cheek only roused herself from the depth of thought in which
+she seemed plunged to urge the coachman to greater speed. Miss
+O'Donoghue tried the whole gamut of her art in vain, and was obliged
+at last to desist from sheer weariness and in much anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine and Sophia were seated by the fireside in the library when
+the unexpected travellers came in upon them. Sophia, in the blackest
+of black weeds, started guiltily up from the volume of "The Corsair,"
+in which she had been plunged, while Madeleine, without manifesting
+any surprise, rose placidly, laid aside her needlework&mdash;a coarse
+flannel frock, evidently destined for charity&mdash;and bestowed upon her
+sister and aunt an affectionate though unexpansive embrace.</p>
+
+<p>She had grown somewhat thinner and more thoughtful-looking since Molly
+and she had last met, on that fatal 15th of March, but otherwise was
+unchanged in her serene beauty. Molly clutched her wrist with a
+burning hand, and, paying not the slightest attention to the other
+two, nor condescending to any preamble, began at once, in hurried
+words to explain her mission.</p>
+
+<p>"He has asked for you, Madeleine," she cried, her eyes flaming with
+unnatural brilliance as they sought her sister's mild gaze. "He has
+asked for you, I will take you back with me, to-morrow, not later than
+to-morrow. Don't you understand?" shaking her impatiently as she held
+her, "he is in prison, condemned to death, he has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span> asked for you, he
+wants to see you. On Saturday&mdash;on Saturday&mdash;&mdash;" Something clicked in
+her throat, and she raised her hand to it with an uneasy gesture, one
+that those who surrounded her had grown curiously familiar with of
+late.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine drew away from her at this address, the whole fair calm of
+her countenance troubled like a placid pool by the casting of a stone.
+Clasping her hands and looking down: "I saw that the unfortunate man
+was condemned," she said. "I have prayed for him daily, I trust he
+repents. I am truly sorry for him. From my heart I forgive him the
+deception he practised upon me. But&mdash;&mdash;" a slight shudder shook her,
+"I could not see him again&mdash;surely you could not wish it of me."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with such extreme gentleness that for a minute the woman
+before her, in the seething turmoil of her soul, failed to grasp the
+meaning of her words.</p>
+
+<p>"You could not go!" she repeated in a bewildered way, "I could not
+wish it of you&mdash;!" then with a sort of shriek which drew Tanty and
+Miss Sophia hurriedly towards her, "Don't you understand&mdash;on
+Saturday&mdash;if it all fails, they will hang him?"</p>
+
+<p>"A-ah!" exclaimed Madeleine with a movement as if to ward off the
+sound&mdash;the cry, the gesture expressive, not of grief, but of shrinking
+repugnance. But after a second, controlling herself:</p>
+
+<p>"And what should that be now, sister, to you or to me?" she said
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale clapped her hands together.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is the woman he loves!" she cried with a shrill laugh. And
+she staggered, and sank back upon a chair in an attitude of utter
+prostration.</p>
+
+<p>"Molly, Molly," exclaimed her sister reprovingly, while she glanced in
+much distress at Miss O'Donoghue, "you are not yourself; you do not
+know what you are saying."</p>
+
+<p>"Remember," interposed Sophia in tragic tones, "that you are speaking
+of the murderer of my beloved brother." Then she dissolved in tears,
+and was obliged to hide her countenance in the folds of a vast
+pocket-handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"Killing vermin is not murder!" cried Molly fiercely, awakening from
+her torpor.</p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue, who in the most unwonted silence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span> had been watching
+the scene with her shrewd eyes, here seized the horrified Sophia by
+the elbow and trundled her, with a great deal of energy and
+determination, to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of this, you foolish creature," she said in a stern whisper,
+"and don't attempt to show your nose here again till I give it leave
+to walk in!" Then returning to the sisters, and looking from Molly's
+haggard, distracted face to Madeleine's pale one: "If you take my
+advice, my dear," she said, a little drily, to the latter, "you will
+not make so many bones about going to see that poor lad in the prison,
+and you'll stop wrangling with your sister, for she is just not able
+to bear it. We shall start to-morrow, Molly," turning to Lady Landale,
+and speaking in the tone of one addressing a sick child, "and
+Madeleine will be quite ready as early as you wish."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear aunt," said Madeleine, growing white to the lips, "I am very
+sorry if Molly is ill, but you are quite mistaken if you think I can
+yield to her wishes in this matter. I could not go; I could not; it is
+impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear her," cried the other, starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you
+made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"&mdash;her
+voice broke into a wail&mdash;"you who ought to be so proud to know he
+loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him,
+refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing
+the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never loved
+him. You don't even understand what it is to love.... But what could
+one expect from you, who abandoned him in the moment of danger. You
+are afraid; afraid of the painful scene, the discomfort, the sight of
+the prison, of his beautiful face worn and changed&mdash;afraid of the
+discredit. Oh! I know you, I know you. But mind you, Madeleine de
+Savenaye, he wishes to see you, and I swore you would go to him, and
+you shall go, if I have to drag you with these hands of mine."</p>
+
+<p>Her grip was so fierce, her eyes so savage, the words so strange, that
+Madeleine screamed faintly, "She is mad!" and was amazed that Miss
+O'Donoghue did not rush to the rescue!</p>
+
+<p>But Miss O'Donoghue, peering at her from the depths of her arm-chair,
+merely said snappishly: "Ah, child,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span> can't you say you will go, and
+have done! Oughtn't you to be ashamed to be so hard-hearted?" and
+mopped her perspiring and agitated countenance with her kerchief. Then
+upon the girl's bewildered mind dawned a glimmer of the truth; and,
+blushing to the roots of her hair, she looked at her sister with a
+growing horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Molly, Molly!" she said again, with a sort of groan.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go?" cried Molly from between her set teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Again the girl shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Less than ever&mdash;now," she murmured. And as Molly threw her from her,
+almost with violence, she covered her face with her hands and fell,
+weeping bitter tears, upon the couch behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale, with great steps, stormed up and down the room, her eyes
+fixed on space, her lips moving; now and again a word escaped her
+then, sometimes hurled at her sister, sometimes only in desperate
+communing with herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Base, cowardly, mean! Oh, my God, cruel&mdash;cruel! To go back without
+her."</p>
+
+<p>After a little, with a sudden change of mood, she halted and stood a
+while, as if in deep reflection, holding her hand to her head, then
+crossing the room hurriedly, she knelt down, and flung her arms round
+the weeping figure.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma petite Madeleine</i>," she said in a voice of the most piteous
+pleading, "thou and I, we were always good friends; thou canst not
+have the heart to be so cruel to me now. See, my darling, he must die,
+they say&mdash;oh, Madeleine, Madeleine! And he asked for you. The one
+thing, he told Ren&eacute;, the only thing we could do for him on earth was
+to let him see you once more. My little sister, you cannot refuse: he
+loves you. What has he done to offend you? Your pride cannot forgive
+him for being what he is, I suppose; yet such as he is you should be
+proud of him. He is too noble, too straightforward to have
+intentionally deceived you. If he did wrong, it was for love of you.
+Madeleine, Madeleine!"</p>
+
+<p>Her tones trailed away into a moan.</p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue sobbed loudly from her corner. Madeleine, who had
+looked at her sister at first with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span> repulsion, seemed moved; she
+placed her hands upon her shoulders, and gazed sadly into the flushed
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Molly," she said hesitatingly, "this is dreadful! But I
+too&mdash;I too was led into deceit, into folly." She blushed painfully. "I
+would not blame you; it was not your fault that you were carried away
+in his ship. You went only for my sake: I cannot forget that. Yet that
+he should have this unhappy power over you too, you with your good
+husband, you a married woman, oh, my poor sister, it is terrible! He
+is a wicked man; I pray that he may yet repent."</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens," interrupted Molly, her passion up in arms again, loosening
+as she spoke her clasp upon her sister, and rising to her feet to look
+down on her with withering scorn, "have I not made myself clear? Are
+you deaf, stupid, as well as heartless? It is you&mdash;you&mdash;<i>you</i> he
+loves, <i>you</i> he wants. What am I to him?" with a curious sob, half of
+laughter, half of anguish. "Your pious fears are quite unfounded as
+far as he is concerned&mdash;the wicked man, as you call him! Oh, he spurns
+my love with as much horror as even you could wish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Molly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay&mdash;Molly, and Molly&mdash;how shocked you are! Yes, I love him, I don't
+care who hears it. I love him&mdash;Adrian knows&mdash;he is not as virtuous as
+you, evidently, for Adrian pities me. He is doing all he can, though
+they say it is in vain, to get a reprieve for him&mdash;though I <i>do</i> love
+him! While you&mdash;you are too good, too immaculate even to soil your
+dainty foot upon the floor of his prison, that floor that I could kiss
+because his shoe has trod it. But it is impossible! no human being
+could be so hard, least of all you, whom I have seen turn sick at the
+sight of a dead worm&mdash;Madeleine&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Crouching down in the former imploring manner, while her breast heaved
+with dry tearless sobs: "It cannot hurt you, you who loved him." And
+then with the old pitiful cry, "it is the only thing he wants, and he
+loves you."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine disengaged herself from the clinging hands with a gesture
+almost of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me," she said, after a pause, "try and compose yourself and
+understand. All this month I have had time to think, to realise, to
+pray. I have seen what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span> the world is worth, that it is full of horror,
+of sin, of trouble, of dreadful dissensions&mdash;that its sorrow far
+outweighs its happiness. I <i>have</i> suffered," her pretty lips quivered
+an instant, but she hardened herself and went on, "but it is better
+so&mdash;it was God's will, it was to show me where to find real comfort,
+the true peace. I have quite made up my mind. I was only waiting to
+see you again and tell you&mdash;next week I am going back to the convent
+for ever. Oh, why did we leave it, Molly, why did we leave it!" She
+broke down, and the tears gushed from her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Landale had listened in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;is that all?" she said impatiently, when her sister ceased
+speaking, while in the background Tanty groaned out a protest, and
+bewailed that she was alive to see the day. "What does it matter what
+you do afterwards&mdash;you can go to the convent&mdash;go where you will then;
+but what has that to say to your visit to <i>him</i> now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have done with all human love," said Madeleine solemnly, crossing
+her hands on her breast, and looking upward with inspired eyes. "I did
+love this man once," she answered, hardening herself to speak firmly,
+though again her lips quivered&mdash;"he himself killed that love by his
+own doing. I trusted him; he betrayed that trust; he would have
+betrayed me, but that I have forgiven, it is past and done with. But
+to go and see him now, to stir up in my heart, not the old love, it
+could not be, but agitation, sorrow&mdash;to disturb this quietness of
+soul, this calm which God has given me at last after so much prayer
+and struggle&mdash;no, no&mdash;it would not be right, it cannot be! Moreover,
+if I would, I could not, indeed I could not. The very thought of it
+all, the disgrace, that place of sin and shame, of him in chains,
+condemned&mdash;a criminal&mdash;a murderer!..."</p>
+
+<p>A nervous shudder shook her from head to foot, she seemed in truth to
+sicken and grow faint, like one forced to face some hideous nauseating
+spectacle. "As for him," she went on in low, feeble tones, "it will be
+the best too. God knows I forgive him, that I am sorry for him, that I
+regret his terrible fate. But I feel it would be worse for him to see
+me&mdash;if he must die, it would be wrong to distract him from his last
+preparations. And it would only be a useless pain to him, for I could
+not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span>pretend&mdash;he would see that I despise him. I thought I loved a
+noble gentleman, not one who was even then playing with crime and
+cheating."</p>
+
+<p>The faint passionless voice had hardly ceased before, with a loud cry,
+Molly sprang at her sister as if she would have strangled her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, unnatural wretch," she exclaimed, "you are not fit to live!"</p>
+
+<p>Tanty rushed forward and dragged the infuriated woman away.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine rose up stiffly&mdash;swayed a moment as she stood&mdash;and then fell
+unconscious to the ground.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Next day in the dawn Lady Landale came into her sister's bedroom. Her
+circled eyes, her drawn face bespeaking a sleepless night.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine was lying, beautiful and white, like a broken lily, in the
+dim light of the lamp; Sophia, an unlovely spectacle in curl papers,
+wizened and red-eyed from her night's watch, looked up warningly from
+the arm-chair beside her. But Molly went unhesitatingly to the window,
+pulled the curtains, unbarred the shutters, and then walked over to
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>As she approached, Madeleine opened her blue eyes and gazed at her
+beseechingly.</p>
+
+<p>"There is yet time," said Molly in a hollow voice. "Get up and come
+with me."</p>
+
+<p>The wan face upon the pillow grew whiter still, the old horror grew in
+the uplifted eyes, the wan lips murmured, "I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>There was an immense strength of resistance in the girl's very
+feebleness.</p>
+
+<p>Molly turned away abruptly, then back again once more.</p>
+
+<p>"At least you will send him a message?"</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine drew a deep breath, closed her eyes a moment and seemed to
+whisper a prayer; then aloud she said, while, like a shadow so faint
+was it, a flush rose to her cheeks:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him that I forgive him, that I forgive him freely&mdash;that I shall
+always pray for him." The flush grew deeper. "Tell him too that I
+shall never be any man's bride, now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes again and the colour slowly ebbed away. Molly
+stood, her black brows drawn, gazing down upon her in silence.&mdash;Did
+she love him after all? Who can fathom the mystery of another's heart?</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell him," she answered at last. "Good-bye, Madeleine&mdash;I shall
+never see you or speak to you again as long as I live."</p>
+
+<p>She left the room with a slow, heavy step.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine shivered, and with both hands clasped the silver crucifix
+that hung around her neck; two great tears escaped from her black
+lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Miss Sophia moaned. She, poor soul,
+had had tragedy enough, at last.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>When the jailer brought in the mid-day meal after Adrian's departure,
+he found the prisoner seated very quietly at his table, his open Bible
+before him, but his eyes fixed dreamily upon the space of dim
+whitewashed wall, and his mind evidently far away.</p>
+
+<p>Upon his guardian's entrance he roused himself, however, and begged
+him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the
+bed and to assist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to
+be spick and span.</p>
+
+<p>"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.</p>
+
+<p>When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the
+surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.</p>
+
+<p>The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to
+deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street
+noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled,
+all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day
+struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor
+delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess
+his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell
+after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she
+did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of
+this.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon had waned&mdash;golden without, full of grey shadows in the
+prison room&mdash;when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy
+tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing passage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and
+the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and
+closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before,
+the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was
+impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with
+outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall
+by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.</p>
+
+<p>The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's
+brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out
+of the black frame.</p>
+
+<p>An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern
+demand, "<i>Madeleine!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I went for her, I went for her myself&mdash;I did all I could&mdash;she would
+not come."</p>
+
+<p><i>She would not come!</i></p>
+
+<p>It is a sort of unwritten law that the supremely afflicted have the
+right, where possible, to the gratification of the least of their
+wishes. That Madeleine could refuse to come to him in his last
+extremity, had never once crossed her lover's brain. He stood
+bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"She is not ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ill!" Lady Landale's red lips curved in scorn, "No&mdash;not ill&mdash;but a
+coward!" She spat the word fiercely as if at the offender's face.</p>
+
+<p>There fell a minute's silence, broken only by a few labouring
+deep-drawn breaths from the prisoner's oppressed lungs. Then he stood
+as if turned to stone, not a muscle moving, his eyes fixed, his jaw
+set.</p>
+
+<p>Molly trembled before this composure, beneath which she divined a
+suffering so intense that her own frail barriers of self-restraint
+were well-nigh broken down by a torrent of passionate pity.</p>
+
+<p>But she braced herself with the feeling of the moment's urgency. She
+had no time to lose.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear me," she cried in low hurried tones, laying a hand upon his
+folded arm and then drawing it away again as if frightened by the
+rigid tension she felt there. "Waste no more thought on one so
+unworthy&mdash;all is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span> lost&mdash;I bring you hope, life. Oh, for God's
+sake, wake up and listen to me&mdash;I can save you still. Captain Smith,
+Jack&mdash;<i>Jack!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rose as high as she dare lift it, but no statue could be
+more unhearing.</p>
+
+<p>The woman cast a desperate look around her; hearkened fearfully, all
+was silent within the prison; then with tremulous haste she cast off
+her immense cloak, pulled her bonnet from her head, divested herself
+of her long full skirt and stood, a strange vision, lithe,
+unconscious, unashamed, her slender woman's figure clad in complete
+man's raiment, with the exception of the coat. Her dark head cropped
+and curly, her face, with its fever-bloom, rising flower-like above
+the folds of her white shirt.</p>
+
+<p>With anxious haste she compared herself with the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Ren&eacute; told me well," she said; "with your coat upon me none would tell
+the difference in this dark room. I am nearly as tall as you too.
+Thanks be to God that he made me so. <i>Jack</i>," calling in his ear,
+"don't you see? Don't you understand? It is all quite easy. You have
+only to put on these clothes of mine, this cloak, the bonnet comes
+quite over the face; stoop a little as you go out and hold this
+handkerchief to your face as if in tears. The carriage waits outside
+and Ren&eacute;. The rest is planned. I shall sit on the bed with your coat
+on. It is a chance&mdash;a certainty. When I found Ren&eacute; had failed, I swore
+that I would save you yet. Ever since I came from Pulwick this morning
+he and I have worked together upon this last plan. There is not a
+flaw; it must succeed. Oh, God, he does not hear me! Jack&mdash;Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook him with a sort of fury, then, falling at his feet, clasped
+his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake&mdash;for God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, and again came the murmur:</p>
+
+<p>"She would not come&mdash;&mdash;" He lifted his hand to his forehead and looked
+round, then down at her, as if from a great height.</p>
+
+<p>She saw that he was aroused at last, sprang to her feet, and poured
+out the details of the scheme again.</p>
+
+<p>"I run no risk, you see. They would not dare to punish me, a
+woman&mdash;Lady Landale&mdash;even if they could. Be quick, the precious
+moments are going by. I gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span> the man some gold to leave us as long as
+he could, but any moment he may be upon us."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor woman," said Jack, and his voice seemed as far off as his gaze;
+"see these chains."</p>
+
+<p>She staggered back an instant, but the next, crying:</p>
+
+<p>"The file&mdash;the file&mdash;that was why Ren&eacute; gave it to me." She seized the
+skirt as it lay at her feet, and, striving with agonised endeavours to
+control the trembling of her hands, drew forth from its pocket a file
+and would have taken his wrist. But he held his hands above his head,
+out of her reach, while a strange smile, almost of triumph, parted his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"The bitterness of death is past," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She tore at him in a frenzy, but, repulsed by his immobility, fell
+again broken at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>In a torrent of words she besought him, for Adrian's sake, for the
+sake of the beautiful world, of his youth, of the sweetness of
+life&mdash;in her madness, at last, for her own sake! She had ruined him,
+but she would atone, she would make him happy yet. If he died it was
+death to her....</p>
+
+<p>When at length her voice sank away from sheer exhaustion, he helped
+her to rise, and seated her on the chair; then told her quietly that
+he was quite determined.</p>
+
+<p>"Go home," said he, "and leave me in peace. I thank you for what you
+would have done, thank you for trying to bring Madeleine," he paused a
+moment. How purely he had loved her&mdash;and twice, twice she had failed
+him. "Yet, I do not blame her," he went on as if to himself; "I did
+not deserve to see her, and it has made all the rest easy. Remember,"
+again addressing the woman whom hopelessness seemed for a moment to
+have benumbed, "that if you would yet do me a kindness, be kind to
+her. If you would atone&mdash;atone to Adrian."</p>
+
+<p>"To Adrian?" echoed Molly, stung to the quick, with a pale smile of
+exceeding bitterness. And with a rush of pride, strength returned to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I leave you resolved to die then?" she asked him, fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave me glad to die," he replied, unhesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke no more, but got up to replace her garments. He assisted her
+in silence, but as his awkward bound hands touched her she shuddered
+away from him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As she gathered the cloak round her shoulders again, there was a noise
+of heavy feet at the door.</p>
+
+<p>The jailer thrust in his rusty head and looked furtively from the
+prisoner to his visitor as they stood silently apart from each other;
+then, making a sign to some one whose dark figure was shadowed behind
+him without, entered with a hesitating sidelong step, and, drawing
+Captain Jack on one side, whispered in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"The blacksmith's yonder. He's come to measure you, captain, for them
+there irons you know of&mdash;best get the lady quietly away, for he wunnut
+wait no longer."</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner smiled sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready," he said, aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll keep him outside a minute or two," added the man, wiping his
+brow, evidently much relieved by his charge's calmness. "I kep' him
+back as long as I could&mdash;but happen it's allus best to hurry the
+parting after all."</p>
+
+<p>He moved away upon tiptoe, in instinctive tribute to the lady's
+sorrow, and drew the door to.</p>
+
+<p>Molly threw back her veil which she had lowered upon his entrance, her
+face was livid.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she asked, articulating with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;a fellow to see to my irons."</p>
+
+<p>He moved his hands as he spoke, and she understood him, as he had
+hoped, to refer only to his manacles.</p>
+
+<p>She drew a gasping breath. How they watched him! Yet all was not lost
+after all.</p>
+
+<p>"I will leave the file," she said, in a quick whisper; "you will
+reflect; there is yet to-morrow," and rushed to hide it in his bed.
+But he caught her by the arm, his patience worn out at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Useless," he answered, harshly. "I shall not use it. Moreover, it
+would be found, and I am sure it is not your wish to bring unnecessary
+hardship upon my last moments. I should lose the only thing that is
+left to me, the comfort of being alone. And to-morrow I shall see no
+one."</p>
+
+<p>The door groaned apart:</p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry, mum," came the husky voice in the opening, "Time's up."</p>
+
+<p>She turned a look of agony upon Captain Jack's determined figure. Was
+this to be the end? Was she to leave him so, without even one kind
+word?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alas, poor soul! All her hopes had fallen to this&mdash;a parting word.</p>
+
+<p>He was unpitying; his arms were folded; he made no sign.</p>
+
+<p>She took a step away and swayed; the turnkey came forward
+compassionately to lead her out. But the next instant she wheeled
+round and stood alone and erect, braced up by the extremity of her
+anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>have</i> a message," she cried, as if the words were forced from her.
+"I could not make her come, but I made her send you a message. She
+told me to say that she forgave you, freely; that she would always
+pray for you. She bade me tell you too that she would never be any
+man's bride now."</p>
+
+<p>It had been like the rending of body and soul to tell him this. As she
+saw the condemned man's face quiver and flush at last out of its
+impassiveness, she thought hell itself could hold no more hideous
+torment.</p>
+
+<p>He extended his arms:</p>
+
+<p>"Now welcome death!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>And she turned and fled down the passage as though driven upon this
+last cry.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>"E-h, he be a strange one!" said the jailer afterwards to his mate.
+"If ye'd heard that poor lady sob as she went by! I've seen many a one
+in the same case, but I was sore for her, I was that. And he&mdash;as
+cool&mdash;joking with Robert over the hanging irons the next minute. 'New
+sort of tailor I've got,' says he. 'Make them smart,' he says, 'since
+I'm to wear them in so exalted a position.' So exalted a position,
+that's what he says. 'And they've got to last me some long time, you
+know,' says he."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be something worth looking at on Saturday. I could almost wish
+he could ha' got off, only that it's a fine sight to see a real
+gentleman go through it. Ah, it's they desperate villains has the
+proper pluck!"</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>LAUNCHED ON THE GREAT WAVE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Sir Adrian made, at first personally, then through Miss O'Donoghue,
+two attempts to induce his wife to return to Pulwick, or at any rate
+to leave Lancaster on the next day. But the contempt, then the fury,
+which she opposed to their reasoning rendered it worse than useless.</p>
+
+<p>The very sight of her husband, indeed, seemed to exasperate the
+unfortunate woman to such a degree that, in spite of his anxiety
+concerning her, he resolved to spare her even to the consciousness of
+his presence, and absented himself altogether from the house.</p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue, unable to cope with a state of affairs at once so
+distressing and so unbecoming, finally retired to her own apartment
+with a book of piety and some gruel, and abandoned all further
+endeavour to guide her unruly relations. So that Molly found herself
+left to her own resources, in the guardianship of Ren&eacute;, the only
+company her misery could tolerate.</p>
+
+<p>Three times she went to the castle, to be met each time with the
+announcement that, by the express wish of the prisoner, no visitors
+were to be admitted to him again. Then in restless wandering about the
+streets&mdash;once entering the little chapel where the silent tabernacle
+seemed, with its closed door, to offer no relenting to the stormy cry
+of her soul, and sent her forth uncomforted in the very midst of
+Ren&eacute;'s humble bead-telling, to pace the flags anew&mdash;so the terrible
+day wore to a close for her; and so that night came, precursor of the
+most terrible day of all.</p>
+
+<p>The exhaustion of Lady Landale's body produced at last a fortunate
+torpor of mind. Flung upon her bed she fell into a heavy sleep, and
+Tanty who announced her intention of watching her, when Ren&eacute;'s
+guardianship had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span> of necessity to cease, had the satisfaction of
+informing Adrian, as he crept into the house, like one who had no
+business there, of this consoling fact before retiring herself to the
+capacious arm-chair in which she heroically purposed to spend the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was bright in the heavens, there was a clatter and bustle in
+the street, when Molly woke with a great start out of this sleep of
+exhaustion. Her heart beating with heavy strokes, she sat up in bed
+and gazed upon her surroundings with startled eyes. What was this
+strange feeling of oppression, of terror? Why was she in this sordid
+little room? Why was her hair cut short? Ah, my God! memory returned
+upon her all too swiftly. It was for to-day&mdash;<i>to-day</i>; and she was
+perhaps too late. She might never see him again!</p>
+
+<p>The throbbing of her heart was suffocating, sickening, as she slipped
+out of bed. For a moment she hardly dared consult the little watch
+that lay ticking upon her dressing table. It was only a few minutes
+past seven; there was yet time.</p>
+
+<p>The energy of her desire conquered the weakness of her overwrought
+nerves.</p>
+
+<p>Noiselessly, so as to avoid awakening the slumbering watcher in the
+arm-chair, but steadily, she clothed herself, wrapt the dark mantle
+round her; and then, pausing for a moment to gaze with a fierce
+disdain at the unconscious face of Miss O'Donoghue, which, with snores
+emerging energetically and regularly from the great hooked nose,
+presented a weird and witchlike vision in the frame of a nightcap,
+fearfully and wonderfully befrilled, crept from the room and down the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>At Ren&eacute;'s door she paused and knocked.</p>
+
+<p>He opened on the instant. From his worn face she guessed that he had
+been up all night. He put his finger to his lips as he saw her, and
+glanced meaningly towards the bed.</p>
+
+<p>The words she would have spoken expired in a quick-drawn breath. Her
+husband, with face of deathlike pallor and silvered hair abroad upon
+the pillow, lay upon the poor couch, still in his yesterday attire,
+but covered carefully with a cloak. His breast rose and fell
+peacefully with his regular breath.</p>
+
+<p>The scorn with which she had looked at Miss O'Donoghue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span> now shot forth
+a thousand times intensified from Molly's circled eyes upon the
+prostrate figure.</p>
+
+<p>"Asleep!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>And then with that incongruity with which things trivial and
+irrelevant come upon us, even in the supremest moments of life, the
+thought struck her sharply how old a man he was. Her lip curved.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, My Lady&mdash;asleep," answered Ren&eacute; steadily&mdash;it seemed as if the
+faithful peasant had read her to her soul. "Thank God, asleep. It is
+enough to have to lose one good gentleman from the world this day. If
+his honour were not sleeping at last, I should not answer for him&mdash;I
+who speak to you. I took upon myself to put some of the medicine, that
+he has had to take now and again, when his sorrows come upon him and
+he cannot rest, into his soup last night. It has had a good effect.
+His honour will sleep three or four hours still, and that, My Lady,
+must be. His honour has suffered enough these last days, God knows!"</p>
+
+<p>The wife turned away with an impatient gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, Madame, at his white hairs. All white now&mdash;they that were of a
+brown so beautiful, all but a few locks, only a few months past! Well
+may he look old. When was ever any one made to suffer as he has been,
+in only forty years of life? Ah, My Lady, we were at least tranquil
+upon our island!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a volume of reproach in the quiet simplicity of the words,
+though Lady Landale was too bent on her own purpose to heed them. But
+she felt that they lodged in her mind, that she would find them there
+later; but not now&mdash;not now.</p>
+
+<p>"It is to be for nine o'clock, you know," she said, with desperate
+calmness. "I must see him again. I must see him well. Alone I shall
+not be able to get a good place in the crowd. Oh, I would see all!"
+she added, with a terrible laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; cast a glance at his master's placid face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready to come with My Lady," he said then, and took his hat.</p>
+
+<p>A turbulent, tender April day it was. Gusts of west wind, balmy and
+sweet with all the sweet budding life of the fields beyond, came
+eddying up the dusty streets and blowing merrily into the faces of the
+holiday crowd that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span> already pressed in a steady stream towards the
+castle courtyard to see the hanging. In those days there were hangings
+so many after assizes that an execution could hardly be said to
+possess the interest of novelty. But there were circumstances enough
+attending the forthcoming show to give it quite a piquancy of its own
+in the eyes of the worthy Lancastrian burghers, who hurried with wives
+and children to the place of doom, anxious to secure sitting or
+standing room with a good view of the gallows-tree.</p>
+
+<p>It was not every day, indeed, that a <i>gentleman</i> was hanged. So
+handsome a man, too, as the rumours went, and so dare-devil a fellow;
+friend of the noble family of Landale, and a murderer of its most
+respected member. Could justice ever have served up a spicier dish
+whereon to regale the multitude?</p>
+
+<p>First the courtyard, then, the walls, the roofs of the adjoining
+houses, swarmed with an eager crowd. Every space of ground and slate
+and tile, every ledge and window, was occupied. As thick as bees they
+hung&mdash;men, women, and children; a sea of white faces pressed together,
+each still, yet all as instinct with tremulous movement as a field of
+corn in the wind; while the hoarse, indescribable murmur that seizes
+one with so strange and fearsome an impression, the voice of the
+multitude, rose and fell with a mighty pulsation, broken here and
+there by the shriller cry of a child.</p>
+
+<p>Overhead the sky, a delicious spring blue sky, flecked with tiny white
+clouds, looked down like a great smile upon the crowd that laughed and
+joked beneath.</p>
+
+<p>No pity in heaven or on earth.</p>
+
+<p>But as the felon came out into the air, which, warm and fickle, puffed
+against his cheek, he cast one steady glance around upon the black
+human hive and then looked up into the white flecked ether, without
+the quiver of a nerve.</p>
+
+<p>He drew the spring breath into his lungs with a grateful expansion of
+his deep chest. How fresh it was! And the sky, how fair and blue!</p>
+
+<p>As the eagerly expected group emerged from the prison door and was
+greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart
+there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her
+knees and crooning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span> a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws,
+ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her attention upon the
+condemned man.</p>
+
+<p>The creature was well known for miles around as a constant attendant
+at such spectacles, and had become in the course of time a privileged
+spectator. No one would have dreamt of disputing the first place to
+old Judy. Since the day when, still a young woman, she had seen her
+two sons, mere lads, hanged, the one for sheep-stealing, the other for
+harbouring the booty, she had, by a strange freak of nature, taken a
+taste for the spectacle of justice at work, and what had been the
+cause of her greatest sorrow became the only solace of her life. Judy
+and her pipe had become as familiar a figure at the periodical
+entertainment as the executioner himself&mdash;more so, indeed, for she had
+seen many generations of these latter, and could compare their styles
+with the judgment of a connoisseur.</p>
+
+<p>But as Captain Jack advanced, the pallor of his clean shorn, handsome
+face illumined not so much by the morning sun without it seemed as by
+the shining of the bright spirit within; as gallantly clad as he had
+ever been, even in the old Bath days when he had been courting fair
+Madeleine de Savenaye; his head proudly uplifted, his tread firm,
+strong of soul, strong of body&mdash;some chord was struck in the perverted
+old heart that had so long revelled in unholy and gruesome pleasure.
+She drew the pipe from her lips, and broke out into screeching
+lamentations.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, me boy, me boy, me beautiful boy! Is it hang him they will, and
+he so beautiful and brave? The murthering villains, my curse on
+them&mdash;a mother's curse&mdash;God's curse on them&mdash;the black murtherers!"</p>
+
+<p>She scrambled to her feet, and shook her fist wildly in the face of
+one of the sheriff's men.</p>
+
+<p>A woman in the crowd, standing rigid and motionless, enveloped in
+mourning robes, here suddenly caught up the words with a muttering
+lip.</p>
+
+<p>"Murderers, who said murderers? Don't they know who murdered him?
+Murdering Moll, Murdering Moll!"</p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's love, Madam," cried a man beside her, who seemed in such
+anxiety concerning her as to pay little heed to the solemn procession
+which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span> now attracting universal attention, "let me take you away!"</p>
+
+<p>But she looked at him with a distraught, unseeing eye, and pulled at
+the collar of her dress as if she were choking.</p>
+
+<p>Old Judy's sudden expression of opinion created a small disturbance.
+The procession had to halt; a couple of officials good-naturedly
+elbowed her on one side.</p>
+
+<p>But she thrust a withered hand expanded in protest over their
+shoulders, as the prisoner came forward again.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless ye, honey, God bless ye: it's a wicked world."</p>
+
+<p>He turned towards her; for the last time the old sweet smile sprang to
+lip and eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, mother," he said, and raised his hand to his bare head
+with courteous gesture.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd howled and swayed. He passed on.</p>
+
+<p>And now the end! There is the cart; the officers draw back to make way
+for the man who is to help him with his final toilet. The chaplain,
+too, falls away after wringing his hand again and again. Good man, he
+weeps and cannot speak the sacred words he would. Why weep? We must
+all die! How blue the sky is: he will look once more before drawing
+down the cap upon his eyes. His hands are free, for he is to die as
+like a gentleman as may be. Just the old blue that used to smile down
+at him upon his merry <i>Peregrine</i>, and up at him from the dancing
+waves. He had always thought he would have liked to die upon the sea,
+in the cool fresh water ... a clean, brave death.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to die in a crowd. Even the very beasts would creep into
+cave or bush to die decently&mdash;unwatched.</p>
+
+<p>A last puff of sweeping wind in his face; then darkness, blind,
+suffocating....</p>
+
+<p>Ah, God is good! Here is the old ship giving and rising under his feet
+like the living creature he always thought her, and here is dazzling
+brilliant sunshine all around, so bright he scarce can see the free
+white-crested waves that are dashing down upon him; but he is upon the
+sea indeed, upon the sea alone, and the waves are coming. Hark how
+they roar, see how they gather! The brave <i>Peregrine</i> she dips and
+springs, she will weather the breakers with him at the helm no matter
+how they rear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span> On, on they come, mountain high, overwhelming, bitter
+drenching.</p>
+
+<p>A great wave in very truth, it gathers and breaks and onward rolls,
+and carries the soul of Hubert Cochrane with it.</p>
+
+<p>The woman in the black cloak falls as if she had been struck, and as
+those around her draw apart to let her companion and another man lift
+her and carry her away, they note with horror that her face is dark
+and swollen, as if the cord that had just done its evil work yonder
+had been tightened also round her slender throat.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GIBBET ON THE SANDS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Woman! take up thy life once more<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Where thou hast left it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Nothing is changed for thee, thou art the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Thou who didst think that all things<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Would be wholly changed for thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Pulwick again. The whirlwind of disaster that upon that fatal
+fifteenth of March had burst upon the house of Landale has passed and
+swept away. But it has left deep trace of its passage.</p>
+
+<p>The restless head, the busy hand, the scheming brain of Rupert Landale
+lie now mouldering under the sod of the little churchyard where first
+they started the mischief that was to have such far reaching effects.
+Low, too, lies the proud head of the mistress of Pulwick, so stricken,
+indeed, so fever-tortured, that those who love her best scarce dare
+hope more for her than rest at last under the same earth that presses
+thus lightly above her enemy's eternal sleep.</p>
+
+<p>There is a great stillness in the house. People go to and fro with
+muffled steps, the master with bent white head; Miss O'Donoghue,
+indefatigable sick nurse; Madeleine, who may not venture as far as the
+threshold of her sister's room, and awaits in prayer and tears the
+hour of that final bereavement which will free her to take wing
+towards the cloister for which her soul longs; Sophia, crushed finally
+by the sorrows she has played at all her days. Seemingly there is
+peace once more upon them all, but it is the peace of exhaustion
+rather than that of repose. And yet&mdash;could they but know it, as the
+sands run down in the hour-glass of time there are golden grains
+gathering still to drop into the lives of each.</p>
+
+<p>But meanwhile none may read the future, and Molly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span> fights for her life
+in the darkened room, the gloom of which, to the souls of the dwellers
+at Pulwick, seems to spread even to the sunny skies without.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>When Lady Landale was brought back to her home from Lancaster, it was
+held by every one who saw her that Death had laid his cold finger on
+her forehead, and that her surrender to his call could only be a
+matter of hours.</p>
+
+<p>The physician in attendance could point out no reasonable ground for
+hope. Such a case had never come within his experience or knowledge,
+and he was with difficulty induced to believe that it was not the
+result of actual violence.</p>
+
+<p>"In every particular," said he, "the patient's symptoms are those of
+coma resulting from prolonged strangulation or asphyxia. These
+spectacles are very dangerous to highly sensitive organisations. Lady
+Landale no doubt felt for the miserable wretch in the benevolence of
+her heart. Imagination aiding her, she realised suddenly the horror of
+his death throes, and this vivid realisation was followed by the
+actual simulacrum of the torture. We have seen hysterical subjects
+simulate in the same manner diverse diseases of which they themselves
+are organically free, such as epilepsy, or the like. But Lady
+Landale's condition is otherwise serious. She is alive; more I cannot
+say."</p>
+
+<p>According to his lights, he had bled the patient, as he would have
+bled, by rote, to recall to life one actually cut down from the beam.
+But, although the young blood did flow, bearing testimony to the fact
+that the heart still beat in that deathlike frame, the vitality left
+seemed so faint as to defy the power of human ministration.</p>
+
+<p>The flame of life barely flickered; but the powers of youth were of
+greater strength in the unconscious body than could have been
+suspected, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, they asserted
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>With the return of animation, however, came a new danger: fever,
+burning, devastating, more terrible even than the almost mortal
+syncope; that fever of the brain which wastes like the rack, before
+which science stands helpless, and the watcher sinks into despair at
+his impotence to screen a beloved sufferer from the horrible,
+ever-recurring phantoms of delirium.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Had not Sir Adrian intuitively known well-nigh every act of the drama
+which had already been so fatal to his house, Molly's frenzied
+utterances would have told him all. Every secret incident of that
+storm of passion which had desolated her life was laid bare to his
+sorrowing heart:&mdash;her aspirations for an ideal, centred suddenly upon
+one man; her love rapture cruelly baulked at every step; the consuming
+of that love fire, resisting all frustration of hope, all efforts of
+conscience, of honour; how her whole being became merged into that of
+the man she loved and whom she had ruined, her life in his life, her
+very breath in his breath. And then the lamentable, inevitable end:
+the fearful confrontation with his death. Again and again, in never
+ceasing repetition, was that fair, most dear body, that harrowed soul,
+dragged step by step through every iota of the past torture, always to
+fall at last into the same stillness of exhaustion&mdash;appalling image of
+final death that wrung Adrian with untold agonies of despair.</p>
+
+<p>For many days this condition of things lasted unaltered. In the
+physician's own words it was impossible that life could much longer
+resist such fierce onslaughts. But one evening a change came over the
+spirit of the sufferer's vision.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a somewhat longer interval between the paroxysms; Sir
+Adrian seated as usual by the bed, waiting now with a sinking heart
+for the wonted return of the frenzy, clamouring in his soul to heaven
+for pity on one whom seemingly no human aid could succour, dared yet
+draw no shadow of hope from the more prolonged stillness of the
+patient. Presently indeed, she grew restless, tossed her arms,
+muttered with parched lips. Then she suddenly sat up and listened as
+if to some deeply annoying and disquieting sound, fell back again
+under his gentle hands, rolling her little black head wearily from
+side to side, only however to start again, and again listen. Thus it
+went on for a while until the haunted, weary eyes grew suddenly
+distraught with terror and loathing. Straining them into space as if
+seeking something she ought to see but could not, she began to speak
+in a quick yet distinct whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"How it creaks, creaks&mdash;creaks! Will no one stop that creaking! What
+is it that creaks so? Will no one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span> stop that creaking!" And again she
+placed her cheek on the pillow, covering her ear with her little,
+wasted hand, and for a while remained motionless, moaning like a
+child. But it was only to spring up again, this time with a cry which
+brought the physician from the adjacent sleeping room in alarm to her
+bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, God," she shrieked, her eyes distended and staring as if into the
+far distance through walls and outlying darkness. "I see it! They have
+done it, they have done it! It is hanging on the sands&mdash;how it creaks
+and sways in the wind! It will creak for ever, for ever.... Now it
+spins round, it looks this way&mdash;the black face! It looks at <i>me</i>!" She
+gave another piercing cry, then her frame grew rigid. With mouth open
+and fixed eyeballs she seemed lost in the frightful fascination of the
+image before her brain.</p>
+
+<p>As, distracted by the sight of her torments, Adrian hung over her,
+racking his mind in the endeavour to soothe her, her words struck a
+chill into his very soul. He cast a terrified glance at the doctor who
+was ominously feeling her pulse.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a change," he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you before," he retorted irritably, "that you should
+attach no more importance to the substance of these delirious
+wanderings than you would to the ravings of madness. It is the fact of
+the delirium itself which must alarm us. She is less and less able to
+bear it."</p>
+
+<p>The patient moaned and shuddered, resisting the gentle force that
+would have pressed her down on her pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh the creaking, the creaking! Will no one stop that creaking! Must I
+hear it go on creak, creak, creak for ever, and see it sway and
+sway.... Will no one ever stop it!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian took a sudden resolution. "I will," he said, low and clear
+into her ear. She sank down on the instant and looked at him, back
+from her far distance, almost as if she understood him and the pitiful
+cry for the help he would have given his heart's blood to procure for
+her, was silent for the moment upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I will prepare an opiate," said the physician in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"And I," said Sir Adrian to him, with a strange expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span> upon his
+pale face, "am going to stop that creaking."</p>
+
+<p>The man of medicine gazed after him with a look of intense
+astonishment which rapidly changed to one of professional interest.</p>
+
+<p>"It is evident that I shall soon have another mentally deranged
+patient to see to," he remarked to himself as he rose to seek the
+drugs he meant to administer.</p>
+
+<p>Downstairs, Sir Adrian immediately called for Ren&eacute;, and being informed
+that he had left for the island early in the afternoon and had
+announced his return before night, cast a cloak over his shoulders and
+hurried forth in the hope of meeting him upon his homeward way. His
+pulses were beating well-nigh as wildly as those of the fever stricken
+woman upstairs in the house. He dared not pause to reflect on his
+purpose, or seek to disentangle the confusion of his thoughts, for
+fear of being confronted with the hopelessness of their folly. But the
+exquisite serenity of the night sky, where swam the moon, "a silver
+splendour;" the freshness of the sweeping breeze that dashed, keen
+from the east, over the sea against his face; all the glorious
+distance, the unconsciousness and detachment of nature from the fume
+and misery of life, brought him unwittingly to a calmer mood.</p>
+
+<p>He had reached the extreme confine of the pine wood, when, across the
+sands that stretched unbroken to the lips of the sea, a figure
+advanced towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"Renny!" called Sir Adrian.</p>
+
+<p>"Your honour!" cried the man, breaking into a run to meet him. O God!
+how ghostly white looked the master's face in the moon-flood!</p>
+
+<p>"My Lady&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not worse; yet not better&mdash;and that means worse now. But there is a
+change. Renny," sinking his voice and clasping the man's sturdy arm
+with clammy hand, "is it true they have placed him on the sands
+to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>The man stared.</p>
+
+<p>"How did your honour know? Yes&mdash;they have done so. It is true: the
+swine! not more than an hour, in verity. How could it have come so
+soon to your honour's ears? This morning, indeed, they came from the
+town in a cart, and planted the great gibbet on Scarthey Point, at low
+water. And to-night they brought the body, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span> bound in irons, and
+from a boat, for it was high tide, they riveted it on the chain. And
+it is to remain for ever, your honour&mdash;so they say."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange," murmured Sir Adrian to himself, gazing seaward with
+awestruck eyes. "And did you," he asked, "hear its creaking, Renny, as
+it swayed in the wind?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Ren&eacute; cast a quick glance of alarm at his master. The master had
+a singular manner with him to-night! Then edging closer to him he
+whispered in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>"They say it is to hang for ever. There is a warning to those who
+would interfere with this justice of theirs. But, your honour, there
+came one to the island to-day, I do not know if your honour knows him,
+the captain's second on that vessel of misfortune. And I believe, your
+honour, the dawn will never see that poor, black body hanging over
+yonder like a scarecrow, to spoil our view. This man, this brave
+mariner, Curwen is his name, he is mad furious with us all! He has
+just but come from hearing of his captain's fate, and he is ready to
+kill us, that we let him be murdered without breaking some heads for
+him. Faith, if it could have done any good, it is not I that would
+have balanced about it! But, as I told him, there was no use running
+one's own head into a loop of rope when that would please nobody but
+Mr. the Judge. But he is not to be reasoned with. He is like a wild
+animal. When I left him," said Ren&eacute;, dropping his voice still lower,
+"he was knocking a coffin together out of the old sea wood on
+Scarthey. He said his captain would rest better in those boards that
+were seasoned with salt water. And when I went away, your honour, and
+left him hammering there&mdash;faith, I thought that the coffin was like to
+be seasoned by another kind of salt water too."</p>
+
+<p>His face twitched and the ready tears sprang to his own eyes which,
+unashamed, he now wiped with his sleeve after his custom. But Sir
+Adrian's mind was still drifting in distant ghastly companionship.</p>
+
+<p>"How the wind blows!" he said, and shuddered a little. "How the poor
+body must sway in the wind, and the chains creak."</p>
+
+<p>"If it can make any difference to the poor captain he will lie in
+peace to-night, please God," said Ren&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Sir Adrian, "and you and I, friend, will go too, and help
+this good fellow in his task. I hope, I believe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span> that I should have
+done this thing of my own thought, had I had time to think at all. But
+now, more hangs upon those creaking chains than you can dream of. This
+is a strange world&mdash;and it is full of ghosts to-night. But we must
+hurry, Renny."</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Bound even to the tips of her burning little fingers by the spell of
+the opiate, Lady Landale lay in the shadowed room as one dead, yet in
+her sick brain fearfully awake, keenly alive.</p>
+
+<p>At first it was as if she too was manacled in chains till she could
+not move a muscle, could not breathe or cry because of the ring round
+her breast; and she was hanging with the black figure, swaying, while
+the rusty iron links went creak, creak, creak, with every swing to and
+fro. Then suddenly she seemed to stand, as it were, out of herself and
+to be seeing with the naked soul alone. And what she saw was the great
+stretch of beach and sea, white, white, white, in the moonlight and
+spreading, it seemed, for leagues and leagues, spreading till all the
+world was only beach and sea.</p>
+
+<p>But close to her in the whitest moonlight rose the great gibbet, gaunt
+and black, cutting the pale sky in two and athwart; and hanging from
+it was the black figure that swayed and swung. And though the winds
+muttered and the waves growled, she could not hear them with the ears
+of the soul, for that the whole of this great world of sea and sand
+was filled with the creaking of the chains.</p>
+
+<p>But now, across the bleak and pallid spaces came three black figures.
+And, as she looked and watched and they drew nearer, the dreadful
+burthen of the gibbet swung round as if to greet them, and she too,
+felt in her soul that she knew them all three, though not by names, as
+creatures of earth know each other, but by the kinship of the soul.
+This man with hair as white as the white beach, hair that seemed to
+shine silver as he came; and him yonder who followed him as a dog his
+master; and yonder again the third, in the seaman's dress, with hard
+face hewn into such rugged lines of grief and fury&mdash;she knew them all.
+And next they reached the gibbet: and one swarmed up the black post,
+and hammered and filed and prised, and then, oh merciful God! the
+creaking stopped at last!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now she could hear the wash of the waves, the rush of the wholesome
+wind!</p>
+
+<p>A mist came across her vision; faintly she saw the stiffened
+disfigured corpse which yet she felt had once been something she had
+loved with passion, laid reverently upon a stretcher, its irons
+loosened and cast away, and then covered with a great cloak. Then the
+sea, the beach, the white moon faded and waved and receded. Molly's
+soul went back to her body again, while blessed tears fell one by one
+from her hot eyes. She breathed; her limbs relaxed; round the tired
+brain came, with a soft hush like that of gentle wings, dark oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Bending over her, for he was aware that for good or evil the crisis
+was at hand, the physician saw moisture bead upon the suddenly
+smoothed brow, heard a deep sigh escape the parted lips. And then with
+a movement like a weary child's she drew her arms close and fell
+asleep.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Having laid his friend to his secret rest, deep in the rock of
+Scarthey, where the free waves that his soul had revelled in would
+beat till the world's end, Sir Adrian returned to Pulwick in the early
+morning, spent with the long and heavy night's toil&mdash;for it had taxed
+the strength of even three men to hollow out a grave in such a soil.
+On the threshold he was greeted by the physician.</p>
+
+<p>"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messengers of
+glad tidings!" From afar, by the man's demeanour, he knew that the
+tidings were glad. And most blessed they were indeed to his ears, but
+to them alone not strange. Throughout every detail of his errand his
+mind had dwelt rather with the living than the dead. What he had done,
+he had done for her; and now, the task achieved, it seemed but natural
+that the object for which it had been undertaken should have been
+achieved likewise.</p>
+
+<p>But, left once more with her, seeing her once more wrapt in placid
+sleep, whom he had thought he would never behold at rest again save in
+the last sleep of all, the revulsion was overpowering. He sat down by
+her side, and through his tears gazed long at the lovely head, now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span> in
+its pallor and emaciation so sadly like that of his dead love in the
+sorrowful days of youth; and he thanked heaven that he was still of
+the earth to shield her with his devotion, to cherish her who was now
+so helpless and bereft.</p>
+
+<p>And with such tears and such thoughts came a forgetfulness of that
+anguish which in him, as well as in her, had for so long been part of
+actual existence.</p>
+
+<p>When Tanty entered on tiptoe some hours later, she saw her niece
+motionless upon her pillow, sleeping as easily and reposefully as a
+child. And close to her head, Sir Adrian, reclining in the arm-chair,
+asleep likewise. His arm was stretched limply over the bed and, on its
+sleeve still stained with the red mud of the grave in Scarthey, rested
+Lady Landale's little, thin, ivory-white fingers.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Thus ended Molly's brief but terrible madness.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have hope, real hope?" asked Sir Adrian, of the physician as
+they met again that day in the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>"Every hope," replied the man of science with the proud consciousness
+of having, by his wisdom, pulled his patient out of the very jaws of
+death. "Recovery is now but a question of a time; of a long time, of
+course, for this crisis has left her weaker than the new-born babe.
+Repose, complete repose, sleep: that is almost everything. And she
+will sleep. Happily, as usual in such cases, Lady Landale seems to
+have lost all memory. But I must impress upon you, Sir Adrian, that
+the longer we can keep her in this state, the better. If you have
+reason to believe that even the sight of <i>you</i> might recall
+distressing impressions, you must let me request of you to keep away
+from the sick room till your wife's strength be sufficiently restored
+to be able to face emotions."</p>
+
+<p>This was said with a certain significance which called the colour to
+Sir Adrian's cheek. He acquiesced, however, without hesitation; and,
+banished from the place where his treasure lay, fell to haunting the
+passages for the rest of the day and to waylaying the privileged
+attendants with a humble resignation which would have been sorrowful
+but for the savour of his recent relief from anguish.</p>
+
+<p>But the next morning, Lady Landale, though too weak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span> of body to lift a
+finger, too weak of mind to connect a single coherent phrase,
+nevertheless took the matter into her own hands, and proved that it is
+as easy to err upon the side of prudence as upon its reverse.</p>
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue, emerging silently from the room after her night's
+vigil, came upon her nephew at his post, and, struck to her kind heart
+by his wistful countenance, bade him with many winks and nods enter
+and have a look at his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make a sound," she whispered to him, "and then she won't hear
+you. But, faith she's sleeping so well, it's my belief if you danced a
+jig she would not stir a limb. Go in, child, go in. It's beautiful to
+see her!"</p>
+
+<p>And Adrian, pressed by his own longing, was unable to resist the
+offer. Noiselessly he stepped across the forbidden threshold and stood
+for a long time contemplating the sleeper in the dim light. As he was
+about to creep out at length, she suddenly opened her eyes and fixed
+them wonderingly upon him. Fearful of having done the cruel deed
+against which he had been warned, he felt his heart contract and would
+have rushed away, in an agony of self-accusation, when there occurred
+what seemed to him a miracle.</p>
+
+<p>A faint smile came upon the pale lips, and narrowed ever so little the
+large sunken eyes. Yes; by all that was beautiful, it was a
+smile&mdash;transient and piteous, but a smile. And for him!</p>
+
+<p>As he bent forward, almost incapable of believing, the lips relaxed
+again and the lids drooped, but she shifted her hands upon the bed,
+uneasily, as if seeking something. He knelt, trembling, by her side,
+and as with diffident fingers he clasped the wandering hands he felt
+them faintly cling to his. And his heart melted all in joy. The man of
+science had reasoned astray; there need be no separation between the
+husband who would so dearly console, and the wife who needed help so
+sorely.</p>
+
+<p>For a long while he remained thus kneeling and holding her hands. It
+seemed as though some of the life strength he longed to be able to
+pour from himself to her, actually passed into her frame: as though
+there were indeed a healing virtue in his all encompassing tenderness;
+for, after a while, a faint colour came to the sunken cheeks. And
+presently, still holding his hand, she fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span> once more into that
+slumber which was now her healing.</p>
+
+<p>After this it was found that the patient actually became fretful and
+fevered again when her husband was too long absent from her side; and
+thus it came to pass that he began to supersede all other watchers in
+her room. Tanty in highest good humour, declared that her services
+were no longer necessary, and volunteered to conduct Madeleine to the
+Jersey convent, whither (her decision being irrevocable) it was
+generally felt that it would be well for the latter to proceed before
+her sister's memory with returning strength should have returned
+likewise.</p>
+
+<p>This memory, without which the being he loved would remain afflicted
+and incomplete, yet upon the working of which so much that was still
+uncertain must hinge&mdash;Sir Adrian at once yearned for, and dreaded it.</p>
+
+<p>Many a time as he met the sweet and joyful greeting in those eyes
+where he had grown accustomed to find nought but either mockery or
+disdain, did he recall his friend's prophetic words: "Out of my death
+will grow your happiness." Was there happiness indeed yet in store in
+the future? Alas, happiness for them dwelt in oblivion; and, some day,
+"remembrance would wake with all her busy train, and swell at <i>her</i>
+breast," and then&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, however, the present had a sweetness of its own. There was
+now free scope for the passion of devotedness which almost made up the
+sum of this man's character&mdash;a character which, to the Molly of
+wayward days, to the hot-pulsed, eager, impatient "Murthering Moll,"
+had been utterly incomprehensible and uncongenial. And to the Molly
+crushed in the direst battle of life, whom one more harshness of fate,
+even the slightest, would have straightaway hurled back into the grave
+that had barely been baulked of its prey, it gave the very food and
+breath of her new existence.</p>
+
+<p>Week after week passed in this guise, during which her natural
+healthiness slowly but surely re-established itself; weeks that were
+happy to him, in later life, to look back upon, though now full of an
+anxiousness which waxed stronger as recovery drew nearer.</p>
+
+<p>There was little talking between them, and that kept by him studiously
+on subjects of purely ephemeral, childish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span> interest. Her mind, by the
+happy dispensation of nature which facilitates healing by all means
+when once healing has begun, was blank to any impressions save the
+luxury of rest, of passive enjoyment, indifferent to ought but the
+passing present. She took pleasure in flowers, in the gambols of pet
+animals, in long listless spells of cloud-gazing when the heavens were
+bright, in the presence of her husband in whom she only saw a being
+whose eyes were always beautiful with the light of kindness, whose
+touch invariably soothed her when fatigue or irritation marred the
+even course of her feelings.</p>
+
+<p>She had ever a smile for him, which entered his soul like the radiance
+of sunshine through a stormy sky.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the days went by. Like a child she ate and slept and
+chattered&mdash;irresponsible chatter that was music to his ear. She
+laughed and teased him too, as a child would; till sad, as it was, he
+hugged the incomplete happiness to his heart with a dire foreboding
+that it might be all he was to know in life.</p>
+
+<p>But one evening, in sudden freak, she bade him open the shutters, pull
+the curtains, and raise the window that she might, from her pillow,
+look forth upon the night, and smell the sweet night air.</p>
+
+<p>She had been unusually well that day, and on her face now filling out
+once more into its old soft oval, bloomed again a look of warm life
+and youth. Unsuspecting, unthinking Sir Adrian obeyed. It was a dim,
+close night, and the blush-roses nodded palely into the room from the
+outer darkness as he raised the sash. There was no moon, no stars
+shone in the mist hung sky; there was no light to be seen anywhere
+except one faint glimmer in the distance&mdash;the light upon Scarthey
+Island.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a star?" said Molly, after a moment's dreamy silence.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian started. A vision of all that might hang upon his answer
+flashed through his brain. With a trembling hand he pulled the
+curtain. It was too late.</p>
+
+<p>Molly sat up in bed, with a contracted brow and hands outstretched as
+one who would seize a tantalising escaping memory.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to watch it then, at night, from this window," she whispered.
+"What was it? The light of Scarthey?" Then suddenly, with a scream;
+"The light of Scarthey!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Adrian sprang to her side but she turned from him, shrank from him,
+with a look of dread which seared him to the soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not come near me, do not touch me," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>And then he left her.</p>
+
+<hr class="mid" />
+
+<p>Miss O'Donoghue was gone upon her journey with Madeleine. There was
+none in whom he might confide, with whom seek counsel. But presently,
+listening outside the door in an agony of suspense, he heard a storm
+of sobs. In time these gradually subsided; and later he learnt from
+Moggie, whom he had hurriedly ordered to her mistress's side, that his
+wife was quiet and seemed inclined to rest.</p>
+
+<p>On the next day, she expressed no desire to see him and he dared not
+go to her unsought. He gathered a great dewy bunch of roses and had
+them brought to her upon her breakfast tray instead of bringing them
+himself as had been his wont.</p>
+
+<p>She had taken the roses, Moggie told him, and laid them to her cheek.
+"The master sent them, said I," continued the sturdy little matron,
+who was far from possessing the instinctive tact of her spouse; "an'
+she get agate o'crying quiet like and let the flowers fall out of her
+hands on the bed&mdash;Eh, what ever's coom to her, sin yesterday? Wannut
+you go in, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless she sends for me," said Sir Adrian hastily. "And remember,
+Moggie, do not speak my name to her. She must not be worried or
+distressed. But if she sends for me, come at once. You will find me in
+the library."</p>
+
+<p>And in the library he sat the long, long day, waiting for the summons
+that did not come. She never sent for him.</p>
+
+<p>She had wept a good deal during the day, the faithful reporter told
+him in the evening, but always "quiet like;" had spoken little, and
+though of unwonted gentleness of manner had persistently declined to
+be carried to the garden as usual, or even to leave her room. Now she
+had gone back to bed, and was sleeping peacefully.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later Sir Adrian left his home for Scarthey once again. It is
+to be doubted whether, through all the vicissitudes of his existence
+he ever carried into the sheltering ruins a heart more full of cruel
+pain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Tanty returned to Pulwick from her travels again, it was to find
+in Miss Landale the only member of the family waiting to greet her.
+The old lady's displeasure on learning the reason of this defection,
+was at first too intense to find relief in words. But presently the
+strings of her tongue were loosened under the influence of the usual
+feminine restorative; and, failing a better listener, she began to
+dilate upon the situation with her wonted garrulity.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my good Sophia, I will thank you for another cup of tea. What
+should we do without tea in this weary world? I declare it's the only
+pleasure left to me now&mdash;for, of all the ungrateful things in life,
+working for your posterity is the most ungrateful. Posterity is born
+to trample on one.... And now, sit down and tell me exactly how
+matters stand. My niece is greatly better, I hear. The doctor
+considers her quite convalescent? At least this is very satisfactory.
+Very satisfactory indeed! Just now she is resting. Quite so. I should
+not dream of disturbing her; more especially as the sight of me would
+probably revive painful memories, and we must not risk her having a
+bad night&mdash;of course not. Ah, my dear, memory, like one's teeth, is a
+very doubtful blessing. Far more trouble than pleasure when you have
+it, and yet a dreadful nuisance when you have not&mdash;But what's this I
+hear about Adrian? Gone back to that detestable island of his again! I
+left him and Molly smiling into each other's eyes, clasping each
+other's hands like two turtle-doves. Why, she could not as much as
+swallow a mouthful of soup, unless he was beside her to feed her&mdash;And
+now I am told he has not been near her for four days. What is the
+meaning of this? Oh, don't talk to me, Sophia! It's more than flesh
+and blood can bear. Here am I, having been backward and forward over
+nine hundred miles, looking after you all, at my age, till I don't
+know which it is, Lancashire or Somerset I'm in, or whether I'm on my
+head or my heels, though I'm sure I can count every bone of my body by
+the aching of them;&mdash;and I did think I was coming back to a little
+peace and comfort at length. That island of his, Sophia, will be the
+death of me! I wish it was at the bottom of the sea: that is the only
+thing that will bring your brother to his senses, I believe. Now he
+might as well be in his grave at once,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span> like Rupert, for all the good
+he is; though, for that matter it's more harm than good poor Rupert
+ever did while he was alive&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, Aunt Rose," here exclaimed Sophia, heroically, her
+corkscrew ringlets trembling with agitation, "but I must beg you to
+refrain from such remarks&mdash;I cannot hear my dear brother...."</p>
+
+<p>But Miss O'Donoghue waved the interruption peremptorily away.</p>
+
+<p>"Now it's no use your going on, Sophia. <i>We</i> don't think a man flies
+straight to heaven just because he's dead. And nothing will ever make
+me approve of Rupert's conduct in all this dreadful business. Of
+course one must not speak evil of those who can't defend themselves,
+but for all that he is dead and buried, Rupert might argue with me
+from now till doomsday, and he never would convince me that it is the
+part of a gentleman to act like a Bow Street runner. I <i>hope</i>, my
+dear, he has found more mercy than he gave. I <i>hope</i> so. But only for
+him my poor dear grand-niece Molly would never have gone off on that
+mad journey, and my poor grand-niece Madeleine would not be buried
+alive on that other island at the back of God's speed. Ah, yes, my
+dear, it has been a very sad time! I declare I felt all the while as
+if I were conducting a corpse to be buried; and now I feel as if I had
+come back from the dear girl's funeral. We had a dreadful passage, and
+she was <i>so</i> sick that I'm afraid even if she wanted to come out of
+that place again she'd never have the courage to face the crossing.
+She was a wreck&mdash;a perfect wreck, when she reached the convent. Many a
+time I thought she would only land to find herself dead. <i>I</i> wanted
+her to come to the hotel with me, where I should have popped her into
+bed with a hot bottle; but nothing would serve her but that she must
+go to the convent at once. 'I shall not be able to rest till I am
+there,' she said. 'And it's precious little rest you will get there,'
+said I, 'if it's rest you want?&mdash;What with the hard beds, and all the
+prayers you have to say, and the popping out of bed, as soon as you
+are asleep, to sing in the middle of the night, and those blessed
+little bells going every three minutes and a half. There is no rest in
+a convent, my dear.' But I might as well have talked to the wall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When I went to see her the next day, true enough, she declared that
+she was more content already, and that her soul had found what it
+yearned for&mdash;peace. She was quite calm, and sent you all messages to
+say how she would pray for you and for the repose of the souls of
+those you loved&mdash;Rupert, your rector and all&mdash;that they may reach
+eternal bliss."</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid!" exclaimed the pious Protestant, in horrified tones.</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid?&mdash;You're a regular heathen, Sophia. Oh, I know what you
+mean quite well. But would it not have been better for you to have
+been praying for that poor fellow who never lived to marry you, all
+these years, than to have been wasting your time weeping over spilt
+milk? Tell me <i>that</i>, miss. Please to remember, too, that you could
+not have come to be the heretic you are, if your great grandfather had
+not been the time-server he was. Any how, you need not distress
+yourself. I don't think Madeleine's prayers will do any one any harm,
+even Rupert; though, honestly, I don't think they are likely to be of
+much good in <i>that</i> quarter. However, there, there, we won't discuss
+the subject any more. Poor darling; so I left her. I declare I never
+liked her so much as when I said good-bye, for I felt I'd never see
+her again. And the Reverend Mother&mdash;oh! she is a very good, holy
+woman&mdash;a Jerningham, and thus, you know, a connection of mine. She was
+an heiress but chose the cloister. And I saw the buckles sable on a
+memorial window in the chapel erected to another sister&mdash;also a
+nun&mdash;they are a terribly pious family. I knew them at once, for they
+are charges I also am entitled to bear, as you know, or, rather, don't
+know, I presume; for you have all the haziest notion of what sort of
+blood it is that runs in your veins. Well, as I said, she is a holy
+woman! She tried to console me in her pious way. Oh, it was very
+beautiful, of course:&mdash;bride of heaven and the rest of it. But I had
+rather seen her the bride of a nice young man. Many is the time I have
+wished I had not been so hasty about that poor young Smith. I don't
+believe he <i>was</i> purely Smith after all. He must have had some good
+blood in his veins! Oh, of course, of course, he was dreadfully
+wicked, I know; but he was a fine fellow, and all these complications
+would have been avoided.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span> But, after all, it was Rupert's fault if
+everything ended in tragedy ... there, there, we won't speak another
+word about your brother; we must leave him to the Lord&mdash;and," added
+Miss O'Donoghue, piously under her breath, "if it's not the devil, He
+is playing with him, it's a poor kind of justice up there!&mdash;Alas, my
+poor Sophia, such is life. One only sees things in their true light
+when they're gone into the darkness of the past. And now we must make
+the best of the present, which, I regret to find, seems disposed to be
+peculiarly uncomfortable. But I have done what I could, and now I owe
+it myself to wash my hands of you and look after my own soul.&mdash;I'll
+take no more journeys, at any rate, except to lay my bones at
+Bunratty; if I live to reach it alive."</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span></p><hr class="section" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LIGHT REKINDLED</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Look not upon the sky at eventide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">For that makes sorrowful the heart of man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Look rather here into my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And joyful shalt thou always be.<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Luteplayer's Song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It was on the fifth day after Sir Adrian's return to his island home.
+Outwardly the place was the same. A man had been engaged to attend to
+the lighthouse duties, but he and his wife lived apart in their own
+corner of the building and never intruded into the master's apartments
+or into the turret-room which had been Captain Jack's.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment that Sir Adrian, attended by Ren&eacute;, had re-entered the
+old rooms, the peel had resumed its wonted aspect. But the peace, the
+serenity which belonged to it for so many years, had fled&mdash;fled, it
+seemed to Sir Adrian, for ever. Still there was solitude and, in so
+far, repose. It was something to have such a haven of refuge for his
+bruised spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The whole morning of this day had been spent in counting out and
+securing, in separate lots, duly docketted and distinguished, a
+portion of that unwieldy accumulation of wealth, the charge of which
+he had accepted, against the time when it should be called for and
+claimed by its depositors.</p>
+
+<p>The task was by no means simple, and required all his attention; but
+there is a blessing even in mere mechanical labour, that soothes the
+torment of the mind. In the particular occupation upon which he had
+been engaged there was, moreover, a hidden touching element. It was
+work for the helpless dead, work for that erring man but noble soul
+who had been his loyal friend. As Sir Adrian tied up each bag of gold
+and labelled it with the name of some unknown creditor who had trusted
+Jack, dimly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span> thought occurred that it would stand material proof,
+call for recognition that this Captain Smith, who had died the death
+of a felon, had been a true man even in his own chosen lawless path.</p>
+
+<p>On the table, amid the papers and books, a heap of gold pieces yet
+untold, remainder of his allotted day's task, awaited still his
+ministering hand. But he was tired. It was the dreamy hour of the day
+when the shadows grow long, the shafts of light level; and Sir Adrian
+sat at his open window, gazing at the distant view of Pulwick, while
+his thoughts wandered into the future, immediate and distant. With the
+self-detachment of his nature these thoughts all bore upon the future
+of the woman whom he pictured to himself lying behind those sunlit
+windows yonder, framed by the verdure of leafy June, gathering slowly
+back her broken strength for the long life stretching before her.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike the musings which in the lonely days of old had ever drifted
+irresistibly towards the past and gathered round the image of the
+dead, all the power of his mind was now fixed upon what was to come,
+upon the child, still dearer than the mother, who had all her life to
+live. What would she do? What could <i>he</i> do for her, now that she
+required his helping hand no more? Life was full of sorrow past and
+present; and in the future there lurked no promise of better things.
+The mind of man is always fain, even in its darkest hour, to take
+flight into some distant realm of hope. To those whom life has utterly
+betrayed there is always the hope of approaching death&mdash;but this,
+even, reason denied to him. He was so strong; illness had never taken
+hold of him; he came from such long-lived stock! He might almost
+outlive her, might for ever stand as the one ineluctable check upon
+her peace of mind. And his melancholy reflections came circling back
+to their first starting-point&mdash;that barren rock of misery in a vast
+sea of despondency&mdash;there was nothing to be done.</p>
+
+<p>The barriers raised between them, on his side partly by the poisonous
+words of his brother, partly by the phantom of that old love of which
+the new had at first been but an eluding reflex, and on hers, by the
+chilly disillusion which had fallen so soon upon her ardent nature;
+these sank into insignificance, contrasted to the whirl of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span> baulked
+passion which had passed over her life, to leave it utterly blasted,
+to turn her indifference to hate.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that was the burden of his thoughts: she hated and dreaded him.
+His love, his forbearance, his chivalrousness had been in vain. All he
+had now to live upon was the memory of those few days when, under the
+spell of oblivion the beloved child had smiled on him in the
+unconscious love born of her helplessness and his care. But even this
+most precious remembrance of the present was now, like that of the
+past, to be obscured by its abrupt and terrible end.</p>
+
+<p>Death had given birth to the first and last avowal of love in her who
+had perished between his arms under the swirling waters of the
+Vilaine&mdash;but it was Life itself, returning life and health of mind,
+which had changed looks of trust and affection into the chilly stare
+of dread in the eyes of her whom with all the strength of his hoarded
+manhood he now loved alone. The past for all its sorrows had held
+sweetness: the present, the future, nothing but torment. And now, even
+the past, with its love and its sorrow was gone from him, merged in
+the greater love and sorrow of the present. How long could he bear
+it?&mdash;Useless clamour of the soul! He must bear it. Life must be
+accepted.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Adrian rose and, standing, paused a moment to let his sight,
+wandering beyond the immense sands, seek repose for a moment in the
+blue haze marking the horizon of the hills. The day was pure,
+exquisite in its waning beauty; the breeze as light and soft as a
+caress. In the great stillness of the bay the sisters sea and land
+talked in gentle intermittent murmurs. Now and then the cries of
+circling sea-fowl brought a note of uncanny joy into the harmony that
+seemed like silence in its unity.</p>
+
+<p>A beautiful harmonious world! But to him the very sense of the outer
+peace gave a fresh emphasis to the discordance of his own life. He
+brought his gaze from afar and slowly turned to resume his work. But
+even as he turned a black speck upon the nearer arm of sea challenged
+his fleeting attention. He stood and watched&mdash;and, as he watched, a
+sensation, the most poignant and yet eerie he had ever known clutched
+him by the heart.</p>
+
+<p>A boat was approaching: a small row-boat in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span> the oars were plyed
+by a woman. By the multi-coloured, glaring shawl (poor Jack's
+appreciated gift) he knew her, but without attaching name or
+personality to his recognition; for all his being was drawn to the
+something that lay huddled, black and motionless, in the stern. He
+felt to the innermost fibre of him that this something was a woman
+too&mdash;this woman Molly. But the conviction seized him with a force that
+was beyond surprise. And all the vital heat in him fled to his heart,
+leaving him deadly cold.</p>
+
+<p>As her face grew out of the distance towards him, a minute white patch
+amid the dark cloud of silk and lace that enwrapt it, it seemed as
+though he had known for centuries that she was thus to come to him.
+And the glow of his heart spread to his brain.</p>
+
+<p>When the boat was about to land, he began, like one walking in his
+sleep, to move away; and, slowly descending the stairs of the keep, he
+advanced towards the margin of the sea. He walked slowly, for the body
+was heavy whilst the soul trembled within its earthly bounds.</p>
+
+<p>Molly had alighted and was toiling, with her new born and yet but
+feeble strength upon the yielding sand, supported between Ren&eacute; and
+Moggie. She halted as she saw him approach, and, when he came close,
+looked up into his face. Her frail figure wavered and bent, and she
+would have fallen on her knees before him, but that he opened his arms
+wide and caught her to him.</p>
+
+<p>An exclamation rose to Moggie's lips, to die unformed under an
+imperious glance from Ren&eacute; who, with shining eyes and set mouth, had
+stood apart to watch the momentous issue.</p>
+
+<p>Adrian felt his wife nestle to him as he held her. And then the tide
+of his long-bound love overflowed. And gathering her up in his arms as
+if she were a child, he turned to carry the broken woman with him into
+the shelter, the silence of the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the outer wall, just out of reach of high water, yet
+within reach of its salt spray, a little mound of red stony soil rose
+very slightly above the green turf; at its head, a small stone cross,
+roughly hewn, was let into the masonry itself. The grave of Hubert
+Cochrane was not obtrusive: in a few months it would have merged again
+into the greensward, and its humble memorial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span> symbol would be covered
+with moss and lichen like the matrix of stone which encompassed it.</p>
+
+<p>Involuntarily as he passed it, the man, with his all too light burden,
+halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too:
+he shook with a brief agony of jealousy&mdash;jealousy of the dead! The
+next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him
+again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by
+those loyal lips&mdash;now clay beneath that clay&mdash;were coming true, that,
+out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise a new and stately
+mansion.</p>
+
+<p>Grasping her closer he hurried into the sanctuary of the old room,
+where he had first seen her bright young beauty.</p>
+
+<p>At the door he gently suffered her to stand, still supporting her with
+one arm about her waist. As they entered, she cast a rapid glance
+around: her eyes, bedewed with rising tears, fell upon the heap of
+gold glinting under the rays of the sinking sun, and she understood
+the nature of the task her coming had interrupted. Her tears gushed
+forth; catching his hand between hers, and looking up at him with a
+strange, wonderful humility, she pressed it to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>What need for words between them, then?</p>
+
+<p>He stood a little while motionless in front of her, entranced yet
+still almost incredulous, as one suddenly freed from long intolerable
+pain, when there rose once more, for the last time, before his mind's
+eye the ideal image that had been the companion of twenty years of his
+existence. It was vivid almost as life. He saw C&eacute;cile de Savenaye bend
+over her child with grave and tender look, then turn and smile upon
+him with the old exquisite sweetness that he had adored so madly in
+that far off past. And then, it was as if she had merged into Molly.
+Behold, she was gone! there was no C&eacute;cile, only Molly the woman he
+loved. Molly, whom now he seized to his heart, who smiled at him
+through her tears as he bent to kiss her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight was waning and the light of Scarthey beamed peacefully over
+the yellow sands; and the waves receded dragging away sand and shingle
+from the foot of the hidden grave.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Light of Scarthey, by Egerton Castle
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Light of Scarthey
+
+
+Author: Egerton Castle
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2008  [eBook #26045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Karen Dalrymple, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY
+
+A Romance
+
+by
+
+EGERTON CASTLE
+
+  Author of
+  "The Pride of Jennico," "Young
+  April," etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Take whichsoever way thou wilt--the ways are all alike;
+But do thou only come--I bade my threshold wait thy coming.
+From out my window one can see the graves, and on my life
+The graves keep watch." _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+MCM
+
+Copyright, 1899,
+by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
+All rights reserved.
+
+Fourth Edition.
+
+
+
+
+  I Dedicate
+  THIS BOOK TO THE
+  MEMORY OF
+  FREDERICK ANDREWS LARKING
+  OF THE ROCKS, EAST MALLING, KENT
+  THAT, SO LONG AS ANYTHING OF MINE SHALL ENDURE,
+  THERE MAY ENDURE ALSO
+  A RECORD OF OUR FRIENDSHIP AND OF
+  MY SORROW
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
+
+
+_Among the works of every writer of Fiction there are generally one or
+two that owe their being to some_ haunting _thought, long communed
+with--a thought which has at last found a living shape in some story
+of deed and passion._
+
+_I say one or two advisedly: for the span of man's active life is
+short and such haunting fancies are, of their essence, solitary. As a
+matter of fact, indeed, the majority of a novelist's creations belong
+to another class, must of necessity (if he be a prolific creator) find
+their conception in more sudden impulses. The great family of the
+"children of his brain" must be born of inspirations ever new, and in
+alluring freshness go forth into the world surrounded by the
+atmosphere of their author's present mood, decked in the colours of
+his latest imaginings, strengthened by his latest passional
+impressions and philosophical conclusions._
+
+_In the latter category the lack of long intimate acquaintance between
+the author and the friends or foes he depicts, is amply compensated
+for by the enthusiasm appertaining to new discoveries, as each
+character reveals itself, often in quite unforeseen manner, and the
+consequences of each event shape themselves inevitably and sometimes
+indeed almost against his will._
+
+_Although dissimilar in their genesis, both kinds of stories can, in
+the telling, be equally life-like and equally alluring to the reader.
+But what of the writer? Among his literary family is there not one
+nearer his heart than all the rest--his_ dream-child? _It may be the
+stoutest of the breed or it may be the weakling; it may be the
+first-born, it often is the Benjamin. Fathers in the flesh know this
+secret tenderness. Many a child and many a book is brooded over with a
+special love even before its birth.--Loved thus, for no grace or merit
+of its own, this book is my dream-child._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Here, by the way, I should like to say my word in honour of
+_Fiction_--"fiction" contradistinguished from what is popularly termed
+"serious" writing._
+
+_If, in a story, the characters and the events are truly convincing;
+if the former are appealingly human and the latter are so carefully
+devised and described as never to evoke the idea of improbability,
+then it can make no difference in the_ intellectual pleasure _of the
+reader whether what he is made to realise so vividly is a record of
+fact or of mere fancy. Facts we read of are of necessity past: what is
+past, what is beyond the immediate ken of our senses, can only be
+realised in imagination; and the picture we are able to make of it for
+ourselves depends altogether on the sympathetic skill of the recorder.
+Is not Diana Vernon, born and bred in Scott's imagination, to the full
+as living now before us as Rob Roy Macgregor whose existence was so
+undeniably tangible to the men of his days? Do we not see, in our
+mind's eye, and know as clearly the lovable "girt John Ridd" of_ Lorna
+Doone _the romance as his contemporaries, Mr. Samuel Pepys of the hard
+and uncompromising_ Diary _or King James of_ English Annals?
+
+_Pictures, alike of the plainest facts or of the veriest imaginings,
+are but pictures: it matters very little therefore whether the man or
+the woman we read of but never can see in the flesh has really lived
+or not, if what we do read raises an emotion in our hearts. To the
+novelist, every character, each in his own degree, is almost as
+living as a personal acquaintance; every event is as clear as a
+personal experience. And if this be true of the story written_ a la
+grace de la plume, _where both events and characters unfold themselves
+like the buds of some unknown plant, how much more strongly is it the
+case of the story that has so long been mused over that one day it had
+to be told! Then the marking events of the actors' lives, their
+adventures, whether of sorrow or of joy, their sayings and doings,
+noble or bright or mistaken, recorded in the book, are but a tithe of
+the adventures, sayings and doings with which the writer seems to be
+familiar. He might write or talk about them, in praise or
+vindictiveness as he loves or dreads them, for many a longer day--but
+he has one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect
+the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things
+therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will
+unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless
+consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on
+which, in a continuous life-drama, is based one particular episode._
+
+_Of such a kind is the story of Adrian Landale._
+
+_The haunting thought round which the tale of the sorely
+tempest-tossed dreamer is gathered is one which, I think, must at one
+time or other have occurred to many a man as he neared the maturity of
+middle-life:--What form of turmoil would come into his heart if, when
+still in the strength of his age but after long years of hopeless
+separation, he were again brought face to face with the woman who had
+been the one passion of his life, the first and only love of his
+youth? And what if she were still then exactly as he had last seen
+her--she, untouched by years even as she had so long lived in his
+thoughts: he, with his soul scarred and seamed by many encounters
+bravely sustained in the Battle of Life?_
+
+_The problem thus propounded is not solvable, even in fiction, unless
+it be by "fantastic" treatment. But perhaps the more so on this
+account did it haunt me. And out of the travail of my mind around it,
+out of the changing shadows of restless speculation, gradually
+emerged, clear and alive, the being of Adrian Landale and his two
+loves._
+
+_Here then was a man, whose mind, moulded by nature for grace and
+contemplation, was cast by fate amid all the turmoils of_ Romance _and
+action. Here was one of those whose warm heart and idealising
+enthusiasm must wreathe the beauty of love into all the beauties of
+the world; whose ideals are spent on one adored object; who, having
+lost it, seems to have lost the very sense of love; to whom love never
+could return, save by some miracle. But fortune, that had been so
+cruelly hard on him, one day in her blind way brings back to his door
+the miraculous restitution--and there leaves him to struggle along the
+new path of his fate! It is there also that I take up the thread of
+the speculation, and watch through its vicissitudes the working of the
+problem raised by such a strange circumstance._
+
+_The surroundings in a story of this kind are, of the nature of
+things, all those of_ Romance. _And by_ Romance, _I would point out,
+is not necessarily meant in tale-telling, a chain of events fraught
+with greater improbability than those of so-called real life. (Indeed
+where is now the writer who will for a moment admit, even tacitly,
+that his records are not of reality?) It simply betokens, a
+specialisation of the wider genus_ Novel; _a narrative of strong
+action and moving incident, in addition to the necessary analysis of
+character; a story in which the uncertain violence of the outside
+world turns the course of the actors' lives from the more obvious
+channels. It connotes also, as a rule, more poignant emotions--emotions
+born of strife or peril, even of horror; it tells of the shock of arms
+in life, rather than of the mere diplomacy of life._
+
+_Above all_ Romance _depends upon picturesque and varied setting; upon
+the scenery of the drama, so to speak. On the other hand it is not
+essentially (though this has sometimes been advanced) a narrative of
+mere adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of
+character and manners we find in the true "novel." Rather be it said
+that it is one in which the hidden soul is made patent under the
+touchstone of blood-stirring incidents, of hairbreadth risks, of
+recklessness or fierceness. There are soaring passions, secrets of the
+innermost heart, that can only be set free in desperate
+situations--and those situations are not found in the tenor in
+every-day, well-ordered life: they belong to Romance._
+
+_Spirit-fathers have this advantage that they can bring forth their
+dream-children in what age and place they list: it is no times of
+now-a-days, no ordinary scenery, that would have suited such
+adventures as befell Adrian Landale, or Captain Jack, or "Murthering
+Moll the Second."_
+
+_Romantic enough is the scene, which, in a manner, framed the display
+of a most human drama; and fraught it is, even to this day, in the
+eyes of any but the least imaginative, with potentialities for strange
+happenings.[A] It is that great bight of Morecambe; that vast of brown
+and white shallows, deserted, silent, mysterious, and treacherous with
+its dreaded shifting sands; fringed in the inland distance by the
+Cumbrian hills, blue and misty; bordered outwards by the Irish sea,
+cold and grey. And in a corner of that waste, the islet, small and
+green and secure, with its ancient Peel, ruinous even as the noble
+abbey of which it was once the dependant stronghold; with its still
+sturdy keep, and the beacon, whose light-keeper was once a Dreamer of
+Beautiful Things._
+
+[Footnote A: _Those who like to associate fiction with definite places
+may be interested to know that the prototype of Scarthey is the_ Piel
+of Foudrey, _on the North Lancashire coast, near the edge of Morecambe
+Bay, and that Pulwick was suggested by Furness Abbey. Barrow-in-Furness
+was then but a straggling village. A floating light, facing the mouth
+of the Wyre, now fulfils the duties devolving on the beacon of Scarthey
+at the time of this story._]
+
+_And romantic the times, if by that word is implied a freer scope than
+can be found in modern years for elemental passions, for fighting and
+loving in despite of every-day conventions; for enterprise, risks,
+temptations unknown in the atmosphere of humdrum peace and order. They
+are the early days of the century, days when easy and rapid means of
+communication had not yet destroyed all the glamour of distance, when
+a county like Lancashire was as a far-off country, with a spirit, a
+language, customs and ideas unknown to the Metropolis; days when, if
+there were no lifeboat crews, there could still be found rather
+experienced "wreckers," and when the keeping of a beacon, to light a
+dangerous piece of sea, was still within the province of a
+public-spirited landlord. They are the days when the spread of
+education had not even yet begun (for weal or for woe) its levelling
+work; days of cruel monopolies and inane prohibitions, and ferocious
+penal laws, inept in the working, baleful in the result; days of
+keel-hauling and flogging; when the "free-trader" still swung, tarred
+and in chains, on conspicuous points of the coast--even as the
+highwayman rattled at the cross-road--for the encouragement of the
+brotherhood; when it was naturally considered more logical (since hang
+you must for almost any misdeed) to hang for a sheep than a lamb, and
+human life on the whole was held rather cheap in consequence. They are
+the days when in Liverpool the privateers were daily fitting out or
+bringing in the "prizes," and when, in Lord Street Offices, distant
+cargoes of "living ebony" were put to auction by steady, intensely
+respectable, Church-going merchants. But especially they are the days
+of war and the fortunes of war; days of pressgangs, to kidnap
+unwilling rulers of the waves; of hulks and prisons filled to
+overflowing, even in a mere commercial port like Liverpool, with
+French prisoners of war._
+
+_A long course of relentless hostilities, lasting the span of a
+full-grown generation, had cultivated the predatory instinct of all
+men with the temperament of action, and seemed to justify it.
+Venturesome, hot-spirited youths, with their way to make in the world
+(who in a former age might have been reduced to "the road") took up
+privateering on a systematic scale. In such an atmosphere there could
+not fail to return a belief in the good old_ border rule, _"the simple
+plan: that they should take who have the power, and they should keep
+who can." And it must be remembered that an island country's border is
+the enemy's coast! On that ethical understanding many privateer owners
+built up large fortunes, still enjoyed by descendants who in these
+days would look upon high-sea looting of non-combatants with definite
+horror._
+
+_The years of the great French war, however, fostered a species of
+nautical enterprise more venturesome even than privateering, raiding,
+blockade-running and all the ordinary forms of smuggling that are
+usual when two coast lines are at enmity. I mean that smuggling of
+gold specie and bullion which incidentally was destined to affect the
+course of Sir Adrian's life so powerfully._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_As Captain Jack's last venture may, at this distance of time, appear
+a little improbable, it is well to state here some little-known facts
+concerning the now rather incomprehensible pursuit of gold
+smuggling--a romantic subject if ever there was one._
+
+_The existence at one time of this form of "free-trade" is all but
+forgotten. Indeed very little was ever heard of it in the world,
+except among parties directly interested, even at the time when it
+played an important part in the machinery of governments. Its rise
+during the years of Napoleonic tyranny on the continent of Europe, and
+its continuance during the factitious calm of the First Restoration in
+France, were due to circumstances that never existed before and are
+little likely to occur again._
+
+_The accumulation of a fund of_ gold _coin, reserved against sudden
+contingency, was one of Bonaparte's imperial ideas. In a modified and
+more modern form, this notion of a "war-chest," untouched and
+unproductive in peace-time, is still adhered to by the Germans: they
+have kept to heart many of their former conqueror's lessons, lessons
+forgotten by the French themselves--and the enormous treasure of gold
+bags guarded at Spandau is a matter of common knowledge. Napoleon,
+however, in his triumphant days never, and for obvious reasons, lacked
+money. It was less an actual treasure that he required and valued so
+highly for political and military purposes, than an ever ready reserve
+of wealth easily portable, of paramount value at all times;
+"concentrated," so to speak. And nothing could come nearer to that
+description than rolls of English guineas. Indeed the vast numbers of
+these coins which fitfully appeared in circulation throughout Europe
+justified the many weird legends concerning the power of "British
+Gold"_--l'or Anglais!
+
+_There is every reason to believe that, in days when the national
+currency consisted chiefly of lumbering silver_ ecus, _the Bourbon
+government also appreciated to the full the value of a_ private _gold
+reserve. At any rate it was at the time of the first Restoration that
+the golden guinea of England found in France its highest premium._
+
+_Without going into the vexed and dreary question of single or double
+standard, it will suffice to say that during the early years of the
+century now about to close, gold coin was leaving England at a rate
+which not only appeared phenomenal but was held to be injurious to the
+community._
+
+_As a matter of fact most of it was finding its way to France, whilst
+Great Britain was flooded with silver. It was then made illegal to
+export gold coin or bullion. The prohibition was stringently, indeed
+at one time, ruthlessly, enforced. In this manner the new and highly
+profitable traffic in English guineas entered the province of the
+"free-trader"; the difference introduced in his practice being merely
+one of degree. Whereas, in the case of prohibited imports, the chief
+task lay in running the illicit goods and distributing them, in the
+case of guinea-smuggling its arduousness was further increased by the
+danger of collecting the gold inland and clearing from home harbours._
+
+_Very little, as I said, has ever been heard of this singular trade,
+and for obvious reasons. In the first place it obtained only for a
+comparatively small number of years, the latter part of the Great War:
+the last of it belonging to the period of the_ Hundred Days. _And in
+the second it was, at all times, of necessity confined to a very small
+number of free-trading skippers. Of adventurous men, in stirring days,
+there were of course a multitude. But few, naturally, were the men to
+whose honour the custody of so much ready wealth could safely be
+intrusted. "That is where," as Captain Jack says sometimes in this
+book, "the 'likes of me' come in."_
+
+_The exchange was enormously profitable. As much as thirty-two
+shillings in silver value could, at one time, be obtained on the other
+side of the water for an English guinea. But the shipper and broker,
+in an illegal venture where contract could not be enforced, had to be
+a man whose simple word was warranty--and indeed, in the case of large
+consignments, this blind trust had to be extended to almost every man
+of his crew. What a romance could be written upon this theme alone!_
+
+_In the story of Adrian Landale, however, it plays but a subsidiary
+part. Brave, joyous-hearted Captain Jack and his bold venture for a
+fortune appear only in the drama to turn its previous course to
+unforeseen channels; just as in most of our lives, the sudden
+intrusion of a new strong personality--transient though it may be, a
+tempest or a meteor--changes their seemingly inevitable trend to
+altogether new issues._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_It was urged by my English publishers that, in_ "The Light of
+Scarthey," _I relate two distinct love-stories and two distinct phases
+of one man's life; and that it were wiser (by which word I presume was
+meant more profitable) to distribute the tale between two books, one
+to be a sequel to the other. Happily I would not be persuaded to cut a
+fully composed canvas in two for the sake of the frames. "It is the
+fate of sequels," as Stevenson said in his dedication of _Catriona_,
+"to disappoint those who have waited for them." Besides, life is
+essentially continuous.--It may not be inept to state a truism of this
+kind in a world of novels where the climax of life, if not indeed its
+very conclusion, is held to be reached on the day of marriage! There
+is often, of course, more than one true passion of love in a man's
+life; and even if the second does not really kill the memory of the
+first, their course (should they be worth the telling) may well be
+told separately. But if, in the story of a man's love for two women,
+the past and the present are so closely interwoven as were the reality
+and the "might-have-been" in the mind of Adrian Landale, any
+separation of the two phases, youth and maturity, would surely have
+stultified the whole scheme of the story._
+
+_I have also been taken to task by some critics for having, the tale
+once opened at a given time and place, harked back to other days and
+other scenes: an inartistic and confusing method, I was told. I am
+still of contrary opinion. There are certain stories which_ belong,
+_by their very essence, to certain places. All ancient buildings have,
+if we only knew them, their human dramas: this is the very soul of the
+hidden but irresistible attraction they retain for us even when
+deserted and dismantled as now the Peel of Scarthey. For the sake of
+harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere,
+it was imperative that in this drama--wherever the intermediate scenes
+might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea,
+or in Lancaster Castle--the Prologue should be witnessed on the green
+islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing
+Scene of rest and tenderness._
+
+  _E. C.,
+  49, Sloane Gardens,
+  London, S. W.
+
+  October 1899._
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+
+SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY
+
+  CHAP.                                                         PAGE
+
+       I. The Peel of Scarthey                                     1
+      II. The Light-Keeper                                         6
+     III. Day Dreams: A Philosopher's Fate                        16
+      IV. Day Dreams: A Fair Emissary                             32
+       V. The Awakening                                           43
+      VI. The Wheel of Time                                       53
+     VII. Forebodings of Gladness                                 63
+    VIII. The Path of Wasted Years                                70
+      IX. A Genealogical Epistle                                  85
+
+
+PART II
+
+"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"
+
+       X. The Threshold of Womanhood                              97
+      XI. A Masterful Old Maid                                   113
+     XII. A Record and a Presentment                             122
+    XIII. The Distant Light                                      136
+     XIV. The Tower of Liverpool: Master and Man                 144
+      XV. Under the Light                                        156
+     XVI. The Recluse and the Squire                             174
+
+
+PART III
+
+"CAPTAIN JACK," THE GOLD SMUGGLER
+
+    XVII. Gold Smuggler and the Philosopher                      191
+   XVIII. "Love Gilds the Scene and Woman Guides the Plot"       211
+     XIX. A Junior's Opinion                                     224
+      XX. The Quick and the Dead                                 244
+     XXI. The Dawn of an Eventful Day                            252
+    XXII. The Day: Morning                                       262
+   XXIII. The Day: Noon                                          276
+    XXIV. The Night                                              294
+     XXV. The Fight for the Open                                 309
+    XXVI. The Three Colours                                      323
+   XXVII. Under the Light Again: The Lady and the Cargo          335
+  XXVIII. The End of the Thread                                  349
+    XXIX. The Light Goes Out                                     364
+     XXX. Husband and Wife                                       375
+    XXXI. In Lancaster Castle                                    382
+   XXXII. The One He Loved and the One Who Loved Him             393
+  XXXIII. Launched on the Great Wave                             406
+   XXXIV. The Gibbet on the Sands                                413
+    XXXV. The Light Rekindled                                    430
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY
+
+    _We all were sea-swallowed, though some cast again;
+    And by that destiny to perform an act,
+    Whereof what's past is Prologue._
+
+    THE TEMPEST
+
+
+
+
+THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PEEL OF SCARTHEY
+
+    He makes a solitude and calls it peace.
+
+    BYRON.
+
+
+Alone in the south and seaward corner of the great bight on the
+Lancastrian coast--mournfully alone some say, gloriously alone to my
+thinking--rises in singular unexpected fashion the islet of Scarthey;
+a green oasis secure on its white rocky seat amidst the breezy
+wilderness of sands and waters.
+
+There is, in truth, more sand than water at most times round Scarthey.
+For miles northward the wet strand stretches its silent expanse, tawny
+at first, then merging into silver grey as in the dim distance it
+meets the shallow advance of briny ripple. Wet sand, brown and dull,
+with here and there a brighter trail as of some undecided river
+seeking an aimless way, spreads westward, deep inland, until stopped
+in a jagged line by bluffs that spring up abruptly in successions of
+white rocky steps and green terraces.
+
+Turn you seaward, at low tide there lies sand again and shingle
+(albeit but a narrow beach, for here a depth of water sinks rapidly)
+laved with relentless obstinacy by long, furling, growling rollers
+that are grey at their sluggish base and emerald-lighted at their
+curvetting crest. Sand yet again to the south, towards the nearer
+coast line, for a mile or perhaps less, dotted, along an irregular
+path, with grey rocks that look as though the advance guard of a giant
+army had attempted to ford its insecure footing, had sunk into its
+treacherous shifting pits, and left their blanching skull-tops half
+emerging to record the disaster.
+
+On the land side of the bight, far away beyond the grandly desolate,
+silent, yellow tract, a misty blue fringe on the horizon heralds the
+presence of the North Country; whilst beyond the nearer beach a
+sprinkling of greenly ensconced homesteads cluster round some peaceful
+and paternal looking church tower. Near the salty shore a fishing
+village scatters its greystone cabins along the first terrace of the
+bluffs.
+
+Outwards, ever changing in colour and temper roll and fret the grey
+waters of the Irish Sea, turbulent at times, but generally lenient
+enough to the brown-sailed ketches that break the regular sweep of the
+western horizon as they toil at the perpetual harvest of the deep.
+
+Thus stands Scarthey. Although appearing as an island on the charts,
+at low tides it becomes accessible dry-foot from the land by a narrow
+causeway along the line of the white shallow reefs, which connect the
+main pile to the rocky steps and terraces of the coast. But woe betide
+man or beast that diverges many feet from the one secure path! The
+sands of the great bay have already but too well earned their sinister
+reputation.
+
+During the greater part of the day, however, Scarthey justifies its
+name--Skard- or Scarth-ey, the Knoll Island in the language of the old
+Scandinavian masters of the land.
+
+In fair weather, or in foul, whether rising out of sunny sands when
+the ebbing waters have retired, or assailed on all sides by ramping
+breakers, Scarthey in its isolation, with its well-preserved ruins and
+its turret, from which for the last hundred years a light has been
+burning to warn the seafarer, has a comfortable look of security and
+privacy.
+
+The low thick wall which in warlike times encompassed the bailey (now
+surrounding and sheltering a wide paddock and neat kitchen gardens)
+almost disappears under a growth of stunted, but sturdy trees; dwarf
+alders and squat firs that shake their white-backed leaves, and swing
+their needle clusters, merrily if the breeze is mild, obstinately if
+the gale is rousing and seem to proclaim: "Here are we, well and
+secure. Ruffle and toss, and lash, O winds, the faithless waters, _we_
+shall ever cling to this hospitable footing, the only kindly soil
+amid this dreariness; here you once wafted our seed; here shall we
+live and perpetuate our life."
+
+On the sea front of the bailey walls rise, sheer from the steep rock,
+the main body and the keep of the Peel. They are ruinous and shorn of
+their whilom great height, humbled more by the wilful destruction of
+man than by the decay of time.
+
+But although from a distance the castle on the green island seems
+utterly dismantled, it is not, even now, all ruin. And, at the time
+when Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick, eighth baronet, adopted it as his
+residence, it was far from being such.
+
+True, the greater portion of that mediaeval building, half monastic,
+half military, exposed even then to the searching winds many bare and
+roofless chambers; broken vaults filled with driven sands; more than
+one spiral stair with hanging steps leading into space. But the
+massive square keep had been substantially restored. Although roofless
+its upper platform was as firm as when it was first built; and in a
+corner, solidly ensconced, rose the more modern turret that sheltered
+the honest warning light.
+
+The wide chambers of the two remaining floors, which in old warlike
+days were maintained bare and free, and lighted only by narrow
+watching loopholes on all sides, had been, for purposes of peaceful
+tenanncy, divided into sundry small apartments. New windows had been
+pierced into the enormous thickness of stone and cement; the bare
+coldness of walls was also hidden under more home-like panellings.
+Close-fitting casements and solid doors insured peace within; the wind
+in stormy hours might moan or rage outside this rocky pile, might hiss
+and shriek and tear its wings among the jagged ruins, bellow and
+thunder in and out of opened vaults, but it might not rattle a window
+of the modern castellan's quarters or shake a latch of his chamber
+door.
+
+There, for reasons understood then only by himself, had Sir Adrian
+elected, about the "year seven" of this century and in the prime of
+his age, to transplant his lares and penates.
+
+The while, this Adrian Landale's ancestral home stood, in its placid
+and double pride of ancient and settled wealth, only some few miles
+away as the bee flies, in the midst of its noble park, slightly
+retired from the coast-line; and from its upper casements could be
+descried by day the little green patch of Scarthey and the jagged
+outline of its ruins on the yellow or glimmering face of the great
+bay, and by night the light of its turret. And there he was still
+living, in some kind of happiness, in the "year fourteen," when, out
+of the eternal store of events, began to shape themselves the latter
+episodes of a life in which storm and peace followed each other as
+abruptly as in the very atmosphere that he then breathed.
+
+For some eight years he had nested on that rock with no other
+companions but a dog, a very ancient housekeeper who cooked and washed
+for "t' young mester" as she obstinately persisted in calling the man
+whom she had once nursed upon her knee, and a singular sturdy foreign
+man (Rene L'Apotre in the language of his own land, but known as Renny
+Potter to the land of his adoption); which latter was more than
+suspected of having escaped from the Liverpool Tower, at that time the
+lawful place of custody of French war prisoners.
+
+His own voluntary captivity, however, had nothing really dismal for
+Adrian Landale. And the inhabited portions of Scarthey ruins had
+certainly nothing prison-like about them, nothing even that recalled
+the wilful contrition of a hermitage.
+
+On the second floor of the tower (the first being allotted to the use,
+official and private, of the small household), clear of the
+surrounding walls and dismantled battlements, the rooms were laid out
+much as they might have been up at Pulwick Priory itself, yonder
+within the verdant grounds on the distant rise. His sleeping quarters
+plainly, though by no means ascetically furnished, opened into a large
+chamber, where the philosophic light-keeper spent the best part of his
+days. Here were broad and deep windows, one to the south with a wide
+view of the bay and the nearer coast, the other to the west where the
+open sea displayed her changeable moods. On three sides of this room,
+the high walls, from the white stone floor to the time-blackened beams
+that bore the ceiling, almost disappeared under the irregular rows of
+many thousand of volumes. Two wooden arm-chairs, bespeaking little
+aversion to an occasional guest, flanked the hearth.
+
+The hearth is the chief refuge of the lone thinker; this was a cosy
+recess, deep cut in the mediaeval stone and mortar; within which, on
+chilly days, a generous heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shot
+forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing
+cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched
+to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls
+and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants
+as the briny air would favour.
+
+At the far end of the room rose in systematical clusters the pipes of
+a small organ, built against the walls where it bevelled off a corner.
+And in the middle of the otherwise bare apartment stood a broad and
+heavy table, giving support to a miscellaneous array of books, open or
+closed, sundry philosophical instruments, and papers in orderly
+disorder; some still in their virginal freshness, most, however,
+bearing marks of notemaking in various stages.
+
+Here, in short, was the study and general keeping-room of the master
+of Scarthey, and here, for the greater part, daily sat Sir Adrian
+Landale, placidly reading, writing, or thinking at his table; or at
+his organ, lost in soaring melody; or yet, by the fireside, in his
+wooden arm-chair musing over the events of that strange world of
+thought he had made his own; whilst the aging black retriever with
+muzzle stretched between his paws slept his light, lazy sleep, ever
+and anon opening an eye of inquiry upon his master when the latter
+spoke aloud his thoughts (as solitary men are wont to do), and then
+with a deep, comfortable sigh, resuming dog-life dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LIGHT-KEEPER
+
+    He who sits by the fire doth dream,
+    Doth dream that his heart is warm.
+    But when he awakes his heart is afraid for the bitter cold.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+The year 1814 was eventful in the annals of the political world.
+Little, however, of the world's din reached the little northern
+island; and what there came of it was not willingly hearkened to.
+There was too much of wars past and present, too many rumours of wars
+future about it, for the ear of the recluse.
+
+Late in the autumn of that red-letter year which brought a short
+respite of peace to war-ridden Europe--a fine, but rather tumultuous
+day round Scarthey--the light-keeper, having completed the morning's
+menial task in the light-turret (during a temporary absence of his
+factotum) sat, according to custom, at his long table, reading.
+
+With head resting on his right hand whilst the left held a page ready
+to turn, he solaced himself, pending the appearance of the mid-day
+meal, with a few hundred lines of a favourite work--the didactic
+poems, I believe, of a certain Doctor Erasmus Darwin, on the analogies
+of the outer world.
+
+There was quite as little of the ascetic in Adrian Landale's physical
+man as of the hermitage in his chosen abode.
+
+With the exception of the hair, which he wore long and free, and of
+which the fair brown had begun to fade to silver-grey, the master of
+Scarthey was still the living presentment of the portrait which, even
+at that moment, presided among the assembly of canvas Landales in the
+gallery of Pulwick Priory. Eight years had passed over the model since
+the likeness had been fixed. But in their present repose, the features
+clear cut and pronounced, the kindly thoughtful eyes looked, if
+anything, younger than their counterfeit; indeed, almost
+incongruously young under the flow of fading hair.
+
+Clean shaven, with hands of refinement, still fastidious, his long
+years of solitude notwithstanding, as to general neatness of attire,
+he might at any moment of the day have walked up the great stair of
+honour at Pulwick without by his appearance eliciting other remarks
+than that his clothes, in cut and colour, belonged to fashions now
+some years lapsed.
+
+The high clock on the mantelshelf hummed and gurgled, and with much
+deliberation struck one. Only an instant later, lagging footsteps
+ascended the wooden, echoing stairs without, and the door was pushed
+open by the attendant, an old dame. She was very dingy as to garb,
+very wrinkled and feeble as to face, yet with a conscious achievement
+of respectability, both in appearance and manner, befitting her post
+as housekeeper to the "young master." The young master, be it stated
+at once, was at that time fast approaching the end of his second score
+years.
+
+"Margery," said Adrian, rising to take the heavy tray from the
+knotted, trembling hands; "you know that I will not allow you to carry
+those heavy things upstairs yourself." He raised his voice to
+sing-song pitch near the withered old ear. "I have already told you
+that when Renny is not at home, I can take my food in your kitchen."
+
+Margery paused, after her wont, to wait till the sounds had filtered
+as far as her intellect, then proceeded to give a few angry
+headshakes.
+
+"Eh! Eh! It would become Sir Adrian Landale o' Pulwick--Barrownite--to
+have 's meat i' the kitchen--it would that. Nay, nay, Mester Adrian,
+I'm none so old but I can do my day's work yet. Ah! an' it 'ud be well
+if that gomerl, Renny Potter, 'ud do his'n. See here, now, Mester
+Adrian, nowt but a pint of wine left; and it the last," pointing her
+withered finger, erratically as the palsy shook it, at a cut-glass
+decanter where a modicum of port wine sparkled richly under the
+facets. "And he not back yet, whatever mischief's agate wi' him,
+though he kens yo like your meat at one." And then circumstances
+obliged her to add: "He is landing now, but it's ower late i' the
+day."
+
+"So--there, Margery," sang the "Squire," giving his old nurse
+affectionate little taps on the back. "Never fash yourself; tides
+cannot always fit in with dinner-hours, you know. And as for poor
+Renny, I believe after all you are as fond of him, at the bottom of
+your heart, as I am. Now what good fare have you got for me to-day?"
+bending from his great height to inspect the refection, "Ah--hum,
+excellent."
+
+The old woman, after another pause for comprehension, retired battling
+with dignity against the obvious pleasure caused by her master's
+affectionate familiarity, and the latter sat down at a small table in
+front of the south window.
+
+Through this deep, port-hole-like aperture he could, whilst disposing
+of his simple meal, watch the arrival of the yawl which did ferrying
+duty between Scarthey and the mainland. The sturdy little craft,
+heavily laden with packages, was being hauled up to its usual place of
+safety high on the shingle bank, under cover of a remnant of walling
+which in the days of the castle's strength had been a secure
+landing-place for the garrison's boats, but which now was almost
+filled by the cast-up sands and stone of the beach.
+
+This was done under the superintendence of Rene, man of all work, and
+with the mechanical intermediary of rollers and capstan, by a small
+white horse shackled to a lever, and patiently grinding his steady
+rounds on the sand.
+
+His preliminary task achieved, the man, after a few friendly smacks,
+set the beast free to trot back to his loose pasture: proceeding
+himself to unship his cargo.
+
+Through the narrow frame of his window, the master, with eyes of
+approval, could see the servant dexterously load himself with a
+well-balanced pile of parcels, disappearing to return after intervals
+empty-handed, within the field of view, and select another burden, now
+heavier now more bulky.
+
+In due course Rene came up and reported himself in person, and as he
+stopped on the threshold the dark doorway framed a not unstriking
+presentment; a young-looking man for his years (he was a trifle junior
+to his master), short and sturdy in build, on whose very broad
+shoulders sat a phenomenally fair head--the hair short, crisp, and
+curly, in colour like faded tow--and who, in smilingly respectful
+silence, gazed into the room out of small, light-blue eyes, brimful of
+alertness and intelligence, waiting to be addressed.
+
+"Renny," said Adrian Landale, returning the glance with one of
+comfortable friendliness, "you will have to make your peace with
+Margery; she considers that you neglect me shamefully. Why, you are
+actually twenty minutes late after three days' journeying, and perils
+by land and sea!"
+
+The Frenchman answered the pleasantry by a broader smile and a scrape.
+
+"And, your honour," he said, "if what is now arriving on us had come
+half an hour sooner, I should have rested planted there" (with a jerk
+of the flaxen head towards the mainland), "turning my thumbs, till
+to-morrow, at the least. We shall have a grain, number one, soon."
+
+He spoke English fluently, though with the guttural accent of
+Brittany, and an unconquerable tendency to translate his own jargon
+almost word for word.
+
+In their daily intercourse master and man had come for many years past
+to eschew French almost entirely; Rene had let it be understood that
+he considered his proficiency in the vernacular quite undeniable, and
+with characteristic readiness Sir Adrian had fallen in with the little
+vanity. In former days the dependant's form of address had been
+_Monseigneur_ (considering, and shrewdly so, an English landowner to
+stand in that relation to a simple individual like himself); in later
+days "Monseigneur" having demurred at the appellation, "My lord," in
+his own tongue, the devoted servant had discovered "Your honour" as a
+happy substitute, and adhered to this discovery with satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, we are going to have a squall, say you," interpreted the master,
+rising to inspect the weather-glass, which in truth had fallen deep
+with much suddenness. "More than a squall, I think; this looks like a
+hurricane coming. But since you are safe home, all's well; we are
+secure and sound here, and the fishing fleet are drawing in, I see,"
+peering through the seaward window. "And now," continued Adrian,
+laying down his napkin, and brushing away a few crumbs from the folds
+of a faultless silk stock, "what have you for me there--and what
+news?"
+
+"News, your honour! Oh, for that I have news this time," said Mr.
+Renny Potter, with an emphatic nod, "but if your honour will permit, I
+shall say them last. I have brought the clothes and the linen, the
+wine, the brandy, and the books. Brandy and wine, your honour, I
+heard, out of the last prize brought into Liverpool, and a Nantes ship
+it was, too"--this in a pathetically philosophical tone. Then after a
+pause: "Also provisions and bulbs for the devil's pot, as Margery will
+call it. But there is no saying, your honour eats more when I have
+brought him back onions, eschalot, and _ail_; now do I lie, your
+honour? May I?" added the speaker, and forthwith took his answer from
+his master's smile; "may I respectfully see what the old one has
+kitchened for you when I was not there?"
+
+And Adrian Landale with some amusement watched the Frenchman rise from
+the package he was then uncording to examine the platters on the table
+and loudly sniff his disdain.
+
+"Ah, ah, boiled escallops again. Perfectly--boiled cabbage seasoned
+with salt. Not a taste in the whole affair. Prison food--oh, yes, old
+woman! Why, we nourished ourselves better in the Tower, when we could
+have meat at all. Ah, your honour," sighed the man returning to his
+talk; "you others, English, are big and strong, but you waste great
+things in small enjoyment!"
+
+"Oho, Renny," said the light-keeper squire, as he leant against the
+fireplace leisurely filling a long clay pipe, "this is one of your
+epigrams; I must make a note of it anon; but let me see now what you
+really have in those parcels of books--for books they are, are they
+not? so carefully and neatly packed."
+
+"Books," assented the man, undoing the final fold of paper. "Mr. Young
+in the High Street of Liverpool had the packets ready. He says you
+must have them all; and all printed this year. What so many people can
+want to say, I for my count cannot comprehend. Three more parcels on
+the stairs, your honour. Mr. Young says you must have them. But it
+took two porters to carry them to the Preston diligence."
+
+Not without eagerness did the recluse of Scarthey bend over and finger
+the unequal rows of volumes arrayed on the table, and with a smile of
+expectation examine the labels.
+
+"The Corsair" and "Lara" he read aloud, lifting a small tome more
+daintily printed than the rest. "Lord Byron. What's this? Jane Austen,
+a novel. 'Roderick, last of the Goths.' Dear, dear," his smile fading
+into blankness; "tiresome man, I never gave him orders for any such
+things."
+
+Rene, battling with his second parcel, shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The librarian," he explained, "said that all the world read these
+books, and your honour must have them."
+
+"Well, well," continued the hermit, "what else? 'Jeremy Bentham,' a
+new work; Ricardo, another book on economy; Southey the Laureate,
+'Life of Nelson.' Really, Mr. Young might have known that naval deeds
+have no joy for me, hardly more than for you, Renny," smiling grimly
+on his servant. "'Edinburgh Review,' a London magazine for the last
+six months; 'Rees's Cyclopaedia,' vols. 24-27; Wordsworth, 'The
+Recluse.' Ah, old Willie Wordsworth! Now I am anxious to see what he
+has to say on such a topic."
+
+"Dear Willie Wordsworth," mused Sir Adrian, sitting down to turn over
+the pages of the 'Excursion,' "how widely have our lives drifted apart
+since those college days of ours, when we both believed in the coming
+millennium and the noble future of mankind--noble mankind!"
+
+He read a few lines and became absorbed, whilst Rene noiselessly
+busied himself in and out of the chamber. Presently he got up, book in
+hand, slowly walked to the north window, and passively gazed at the
+misty distance where rose the blue outline of the lake hills.
+
+"So my old friend, almost forgotten," he murmured, "that is where you
+indite such worthy lines. It were enough to tempt me out into men's
+world again to think that there would be many readers and lovers
+abroad of these words of yours. So, that is what five and twenty years
+have done for you--what would you say to what they have done for
+me...?"
+
+It was a long retrospect.
+
+Sir Adrian was deeply immersed in thought when he became aware that
+his servant had come to a standstill, as if waiting for a return of
+attention. And in answer to the mute appeal he turned his head once
+more in Rene's direction.
+
+"Your honour, everything is in its place," began the latter, with a
+fitting sense of his own method. "I have now to report that I saw your
+man of business in Lancaster, and he has attended to the matter of the
+brothers Shearman's boat that was lost. I saw the young men themselves
+this morning. They are as grateful to Sir Adrian as people in this
+country can express." This last with a certain superiority.
+
+Sir Adrian received the announcement of the working of one of his
+usual bounties with a quiet smile of gratification.
+
+"They also told me to say that they would bring the firewood and the
+turf to-morrow. But they won't be able to do that because we shall
+have dirty weather. Then they told me that when your honour wants fish
+they begged your honour to run up a white flag over the lantern--they
+thought that a beautiful idea--and they would bring some as soon as
+possible. I took on myself to assure them that I could catch what fish
+your honour requires; and the prawns, too ... but that is what they
+asked me to say."
+
+"Well, well, and so you can," said the master, amused by the show of
+sub-acute jealousy. "What else?"
+
+"The books of the man of business and the banker are on the table. I
+have also brought gazettes from Liverpool." Here the fellow's
+countenance brimmed with the sense of his news' importance. "I know
+your honour cares little for them. But this time I think you will read
+them. Peace, your honour, it is the peace! It is all explained in
+these journals--the 'Liverpool Mercury.'"
+
+Renny lifted the folded sheets from the table and handed them with
+contained glee. "There has been peace these six months, and we never
+knew it. I read about it the whole way back from the town. The Emperor
+is shut up on an island--but not so willingly as your Honour, ah,
+no!--and there is an end of citizen Bonaparte. Peace, France and
+England no longer fighting, it is hard to believe--and our old kings
+are coming back, and everything to be again as in the old days."
+
+Sir Adrian took the papers, not without eagerness, and glanced over
+the narrative of events, already months old, with all the surprise of
+one who, having wilfully shut himself out from the affairs of the
+world, ignored the series of disasters that had brought about the
+tyrant's downfall.
+
+"As you say, my friend, it is almost incredible," he said, at length.
+Then thoughtfully: "And now you will be wanting to return home?" said
+he.
+
+Rene, who had been scanning his master's face with high expectation,
+felt his heart leap as he thought he perceived a hidden tone of regret
+in the question.
+
+He drew himself up to his short height, and with a very decided voice
+made answer straightway:
+
+"I shall go away from your honour the day when your honour dismisses
+me. If your honour decides to live on this rock till my hour, or his,
+strikes--on this rock with him I remain. I am not conceited, I hope,
+but what, pray, will become of your honour here without me?"
+
+There was force in this last remark, simply as it was pronounced.
+Through the mist of interlacing thoughts suggested by the word Peace!
+(the end of the Revolution, that distant event which, nevertheless,
+had had such sweeping influence over the course of his whole life), it
+brought a faint smile to Sir Adrian's lips.
+
+He took two steps forward and laid his hand familiarly on the man's
+broad shoulder, and, in a musing way, he said at intervals:
+
+"Yes, yes, indeed, good Renny, what would become of me?--what would
+have become of me?--how long ago it seems!--without you? And yet it
+might have been as well if two skeletons, closely locked in embrace,
+blanched by the grinding of the waters and the greed of the crabs, now
+reposed somewhere deep in the sands of that Vilaine estuary.... This
+score of years, she has had rest from the nightmare that men have made
+of life on God's beautiful earth. I have been through more of it, my
+good Renny."
+
+Rene's brain was never equal to coping with his master's periodic fits
+of pessimism, though he well knew their first and ever-present cause.
+In a troubled way he looked about the room, so peaceful, so retired
+and studious; and Sir Adrian understood.
+
+"Yes, yes, you are right; I have cut off the old life," he made answer
+to the unspoken expostulation, "and that I can live in my own small
+world without foregoing all my duties, I owe to you, my good friend;
+but startling news like this brings back the past very livingly, dead
+though it be--dead."
+
+Rene hesitated; he was pondering over the advisability of disburdening
+himself of yet another strange item of information he had in reserve;
+but, as his master, rousing himself with an effort as if to dismiss
+some haunting thought, turned round again to the table, he decided
+that the moment was not propitious.
+
+"So you have seen to all these things," said Sir Adrian wearily.
+"Good; I will look over them."
+
+He touched the neat pile of books and papers, listlessly, as he spoke,
+yet, instead of sitting down, remained as he was, with eyes that had
+grown wondering, staring out across the sea.
+
+"Look," he said presently, in a low voice, and Rene noticed a rare
+flush of colour rise to the thin cheeks. "Look--is not this day just
+like--one we both remember well...? Listen, the wind is coming up as
+it did then. And look at yonder sky!"
+
+And taking the man by the arm, he advanced slowly with him towards the
+window.
+
+In the west the heavens on the horizon had grown threateningly dark;
+but under the awe-inspiring slate-coloured canopy of clouds there
+opened a broad archway filled with primrose light--the luminous arch,
+well known to seafarers, through which charge the furious southwestern
+squalls. The rushing of the storm was already visible in the distance
+over the grey waters, which having been swayed for days by a steady
+Aquilon were now lashed in flank by the sudden change of wind.
+
+The two men looked out for a while in silence at the spectacle of the
+coming storm. In the servant's mind ran various trivial thoughts
+bearing on the present--what a lucky matter it was that he should have
+returned in time; only just in time it was; from the angry look of the
+outer world the island would now, for many a day be besieged by seas
+impassable to such small craft as alone could reach the reef. Had he
+tarried but to the next tide (and how sorely he had been tempted to
+remain an hour more in the gatekeeper's lodge within sight and hearing
+of buxom Moggie, Margery's grand-daughter), had he missed the tide,
+for days, maybe for weeks, would the master have had to watch and
+tend, alone, the beacon fire. But here he was, and all was well; and
+he had still the marvellous news to tell. Should he tell them now? No,
+the master was in one of his trances--lost far away in the past no
+doubt, that past that terminated on such a day as this. And Sir
+Adrian, with eyes fixed on the widening arch of yellow light, was
+looking inwards on the far-away distance of time.
+
+Men, who have been snatched back to life from death in the deep,
+recall how, before seeming to yield the ghost, the picture of their
+whole existence passed in vivid light before the eye of their mind.
+Swift beyond the power of understanding are such revelations; in one
+flash the events of a good or an evil life leap before the seeing
+soul--moment of anguish intolerable or of sublime peace!
+
+On such a boisterous day as this, some nineteen years before, by the
+sandy mouth of the river Vilaine, on the confines of Brittany and
+Vendee had Adrian Landale been drowned; under such a sky, and under
+the buffets of such an angry wind had he been recalled to life, and in
+the interval, he had seen the same pictures which now, coursing back
+many years in a few seconds, passed before his inward vision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DAY DREAMS: A PHILOSOPHER'S FATE
+
+Le beau temps de ma jeunesse ... quand j'etais si malheureux.
+
+
+The borderland between adolescence and manhood, in the life of men of
+refined aspirations and enthusiastic mettle, is oftener than not an
+unconsciously miserable period--one which more mature years recall as
+hollow, deceiving, bitterly unprofitable.
+
+Yet there is always that about the memories of those far-off young
+days, their lofty dreams long since scattered, their virgin delights
+long since lost in the drudgery of earthly experience, which ever and
+anon seizes the heart unawares and fills it with that infinite
+weakness: that mourning for the dead and gone past, which yet is not
+regret.
+
+In the high days of the Revolutionary movement across the water,
+Adrian Landale was a dreamy student living in one of those venerable
+Colleges on the Cam, the very atmosphere of which would seem
+sufficient to glorify the merits of past ages and past institutions.
+
+Amidst such peaceful surroundings this eldest scion of an ancient,
+north-country race--which had produced many a hardy fighter, though
+never yet a thinker nor even a scholar--amid a society as prejudiced
+and narrow-minded as all privileged communities are bound to become,
+had nevertheless drifted resistlessly towards that unfathomable sea
+whither a love for the abstract beautiful, a yearning for
+super-earthly harmony and justice, must inevitably waft a young
+intelligence.
+
+As the academical years glided over him, he accumulated much classical
+lore, withal read much latter-day philosophy and developed a fine
+youthful, theoretical love for the new humanitarianism. He dipped
+aesthetically into science, wherein he found a dim kind of help
+towards a more recondite appreciation of the beauties of nature. His
+was not a mind to delight in profound knowledge, but rather in
+"intellectual cream."
+
+He solaced himself with essays that would have been voted brilliant
+had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and
+Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitted to be highly
+polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the
+understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was
+conceded an interpreter of no mean order.
+
+In fact the worship of his soul might have been said to be the
+Beautiful in the abstract--the Beautiful in all its manifestations
+which include Justice, Harmony, Truth, and Kindliness--the one
+indispensable element of his physical happiness, the Beautiful in the
+concrete.
+
+This is saying that Adrian Landale, for all his array of definite
+accomplishments, which might have been a never-failing source of
+interest in an easy existence, was fitted in a singularly unfortunate
+manner for the life into which one sudden turn of fortune's wheel
+unexpectedly launched him.
+
+During the short halcyon days of his opening independence, however, he
+was able to make himself the centre of such a world as he would have
+loved to live in. He was not, of course, generally popular, either at
+college or at home; nor yet in town, except among that small set in
+whose midst he inevitably found his way wherever he went; his
+inferiors in social status perhaps, these chosen friends of his; but
+their lofty enthusiasms were both appreciative of and congenial to his
+own. Most of them, indeed, came in after-life to add their names to
+England's roll of intellectual fame, partly because they had that in
+them which Adrian loathed as unlovely--the instinct and will of
+strife, partly; it must be added, because they remained free in their
+circumstances to follow the lead of their nature. Which freedom was
+not allotted to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On one magnificent frosty afternoon, early in the year 1794, the
+London coach deposited Adrian Landale in front of the best hostelry in
+Lancaster, after more than a year's separation from his family.
+
+This separation was not due to estrangement, but rather to the
+instigation of his own sire, Sir Thomas--a gentleman of the "fine old
+school"--who, exasperated by the, to him, incomprehensible and
+insupportable turn of mind developed by his heir (whom he loved well
+enough, notwithstanding, in his own way), had hoped, in good
+utilitarian fashion, that a prolonged period of contact with the
+world, lubricated by a plentiful supply of money, might shake his "big
+sawney of a son" out of his sickly-sentimental views; that it would
+show him that _gentlemen's_ society--and, "by gad, ladies' too"--was
+not a thing to be shunned for the sake of "wild-haired poets, dirty
+firebrands, and such cattle."
+
+The downright old baronet was even prepared, in an unformed sort of
+way, to see his successor that was to be return to the paternal hearth
+the richer for a few gentlemanly vices, provided he left his nonsense
+behind him.
+
+As the great lumbering vehicle, upon the box seat of which sat the
+young traveller, lost in dreamy speculation according to his wont,
+drew clattering to a halt, he failed at first to notice the central
+figure in the midst of the usual expectant crowd of inn guests and inn
+retainers, called forward by the triumphant trumpeting which heralds
+the approach of the mail. There, however, stood the Squire of Pulwick,
+"Sir Tummus" himself, in portly and jovial importance.
+
+The father's eyes, bright and piercing under his bushy white brows,
+had already detected his boy from a distance; and they twinkled as he
+took note, with all the pride of an author in his work, of the
+symmetry of limb and shoulders set forth by the youth's faultless
+attire--and the dress of men in the old years of the century was
+indeed calculated to display a figure to advantage--of the lightness
+and grace of his frame as he dismounted from his perch; in short of
+the increased manliness of his looks and bearing.
+
+But a transient frown soon came to overshade Sir Thomas's ruddy
+content as he descried the deep flush (an old weakness) which mantled
+the young cheeks under the spur of unexpected recognition.
+
+And when, later, the pair emerged from the inn after an hour's
+conversation over a bottle of burnt sherry--conversation which, upon
+the father's side, had borne, in truth, much the character of
+cross-examination--to mount the phaeton with which a pair of
+high-mettled bays were impatiently waiting the return homewards, there
+was a very definite look of mutual dissatisfaction to be read upon
+their countenances.
+
+Whiling away the time in fitful constrained talk, parcelled out by
+long silences, they drove again through the gorgeous, frost-speckled
+scenery of rocky lands until the sheen of the great bay suddenly
+peered between two distant scars, proclaiming the approach to the
+Pulwick estate. The father then broke a long spell of muteness, and
+thus to his son, in his ringing country tones, as if pursuing aloud
+the tenor of his thoughts:
+
+"Hark'ee, Master Adrian," said he, "that you are now a man of parts,
+as they say, I can quite see. You seem to have read a powerful lot of
+things that do not come our way up here. But let us understand each
+other. I cannot make head or tail of these far-fetched new-fangle
+notions you, somehow or other, have fallen in love with--your James
+Fox, your Wilberforce, your Adam Smith, they may be very fine fellows,
+but to my humble thinking they're but a pack of traitors to king and
+country, when all is said and done. All this does not suit an English
+gentleman. You think differently; or perhaps you do not care whether
+it does or not. I admit I can't hold forth as you do; nor string a lot
+of fine words together. I am only an old nincompoop compared to a
+clever young spark like you. But I request you to keep off these
+topics in the company I like to see round my table. They don't like
+Jacobins, you know, no more do I!"
+
+"Nor do I," said Adrian fervently.
+
+"Nor do you? Don't you, sir, don't you? Why, then what the devil have
+you been driving at?"
+
+"I am afraid, sir, you do not understand my views."
+
+"Well, never mind; I don't like 'em, that's short, and if you bring
+them out before your cousin, little Madame Savenaye, you will come off
+second best, my lad, great man as you are, and so I warn you!"
+
+In tones as unconcerned as he could render them the young man sought
+to turn the intercourse to less personal topics, by inquiring further
+anent this unknown cousin whose very name was strange to him.
+
+Sir Thomas, easily placable if easily roused, started willingly enough
+on a congenial topic. And thus Adrian conceived his first impression
+of that romantic being whose deeds have remained legendary in the
+French west country, and who was destined to exercise so strong an
+influence upon his own life.
+
+"Who is she?" quoth the old gentleman, with evident zest. "Ay. All
+this is news to you, of course. Well: she _was_ Cecile de Kermelegan.
+You know your mother's sister Mary Donoghue (murthering Moll, they
+called her on account of her killing eyes) married a M. de Kermelegan,
+a gentleman of Brittany. Madame de Savenaye is her daughter (first
+cousin of yours), that means that she has good old English blood in
+her veins and Irish to boot. She speaks English as well as you or I,
+her mother's teaching of course, but she is French all the same; and,
+by gad, of the sort which would reconcile even an Englishman with the
+breed!"
+
+Sir Thomas's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm; his son examined him with
+grave wonder.
+
+"The very sight of her, my boy, is enough to make a man's heart warm.
+Wait till you see her and she begins to talk of what the red-caps are
+doing over there--those friends of yours, who are putting in practice
+all your fine theories! And, bookworm as you are, I'll warrant she'll
+warm your sluggish blood for you. Ha! she's a rare little lady. She
+married last year the Count of Savenaye."
+
+Adrian assumed a look of polite interest.
+
+"Emigre, I presume?" he said, quietly.
+
+"Emigre? No, sir. He is even now fighting the republican rapscallions,
+d--n them, and thrashing them, too, yonder in his country. She stuck
+by his side; ay, like a good plucked one she did, until it became
+palpable that, if there was to be a son and heir to the name, she had
+better go and attend to its coming somewhere else, in peace. Ho, ho,
+ho! Well, England was the safest place, of course, and, for her, the
+natural one. She came and offered herself to us on the plea of
+relationship. I was rather taken aback at first, I own; but, gad, boy,
+when I saw the woman, after hearing what she had had to go through to
+reach us at all, I sang another song. Well, she is a fine
+creature--finer than ever now that the progeny has been satisfactorily
+hatched; a brace of girls instead of the son and heir, after all! Two
+of them; no less. Ho, ho, ho! And she was furious, the pretty dear!
+However, you'll soon see for yourself. You will see a woman, sir, who
+has loaded and fired cannon with her own hands, when the last man to
+serve it had been shot. Ay, and more than that, my lad--she's brained
+a hulking sans-culotte that was about to pin her servant to the floor.
+The lad has told me so himself, and I daresay he can tell you more if
+you care to practise your French with master Rene L'Apotre, that's the
+fellow! A woman who sticks to her lord and master in mud and
+powder-smoke until there is precious little time to spare, when she
+makes straight for a strange land, in a fishing-smack, with no other
+protector than a peasant; and now, with an imp of a black-eyed infant
+to her breast (Sally Mearson's got the other; you remember Sally, your
+own nurse's daughter?), looks like a chit of seventeen. That's what
+you'll see, sir. And when she sails downstairs for dinner, dressed up,
+powdered and high-heeled, she might be a princess, a queen who has
+never felt a crumpled roseleaf in her life. Gad! I'm getting poetical,
+I declare."
+
+In this strain did the Squire, guiding his horses with strong,
+dexterous hand, expatiate to his son; the crisp air rushing past them,
+making their faces glow with the tingling blood until, burning the
+ground, they dashed up the avenue that leads to the white mansion of
+Pulwick, and halted amidst a cloud of steam before its Palladian
+portico.
+
+What happened to Adrian the moment after happens, as a rule, only once
+in a man's lifetime.
+
+Through the opening portals the guest, whose condensed biography the
+Squire had been imparting to his son (all unconsciously eliciting
+thereby more repulsion than admiration in the breast of that
+fastidious young misogynist), appeared herself to welcome the return
+of her host.
+
+Adrian, as he retired a pace to let his father ascend the steps, first
+caught a glimpse of a miraculously small and arched foot, clad in pink
+silk, and, looking suddenly up, met fully the flash of great dark
+eyes, set in a small white face, more brilliant in their immense
+blackness than even the glinting icicles pendant over the lintel that
+now shot back the sun's sinking glory.
+
+The spell was of the kind that the reason of man can never sanction,
+and yet that have been ever and will be while man is. This youth,
+virgin of heart, dreamy of head who had drifted to his twentieth
+year, all unscathed by passion or desire, because he had never met
+aught in flesh and blood answering to his unconscious ideal, was
+struck to the depth of his soul by the presence of one, as unlike this
+same ideal as any living creature could be; struck with fantastic
+suddenness, and in that all-encompassing manner which seizes the
+innermost fibres of the being.
+
+It was a pang of pain, but a revelation of glory.
+
+He stood for some moments, with paling cheeks and hotly-beating heart,
+gazing back into the wondrous eyes. She, yielding her cheek carelessly
+to the Squire's hearty kiss, examined the new-comer curiously the
+while:
+
+"Why--how now, tut, tut, what's this?" thundered the father, who,
+following the direction of her eyes, wheeled round suddenly to
+discover his son's strange bearing, "Have you lost all the manners as
+well as the notions of a gentleman, these last two years? Speak to
+Madame de Savenaye, sir!--Cecile, this is my son; pray forgive him, my
+dear; the fellow's shyness before ladies is inconceivable. It makes a
+perfect fool of him, as you see."
+
+But Madame de Savenaye's finer wits had already perceived something
+different from the ordinary display of English shyness in the young
+man, whose eyes remained fixed on her face with an intentness that
+savoured in no way, of awkwardness. She now broke the spell with a
+broader smile and a word of greeting.
+
+"You are surprised," said she in tripping words, tinged with a
+distinct foreign intonation, "to see a strange face here, Mr.
+Adrian--or, shall I say cousin? for that is the style I should adopt
+in my Brittany. Yes, you see in me a poor foreign cousin, fleeing for
+protection to your noble country. How do you do, my cousin?"
+
+She extended a slender, white hand, one rosy nail of which, bending
+low, Adrian gravely kissed.
+
+"_Mais, comment donc!_" exclaimed the lady, "my dear uncle did you
+chide your son just now? Why, but these are Versailles manners--so
+gallant, so courtly!"
+
+And she gave the boy's fingers, as they lingered under hers, first a
+discreet little pressure, and then a swift flip aside.
+
+"Ah! how cold you are!" she exclaimed; and then, laughing, added
+sweetly: "Cold hands, warm heart, of course."
+
+And with rapping heels she turned into the great hall and into the
+drawing-room whither the two men--the father all chuckles, and the son
+still struck with wonder--followed her.
+
+She was standing by the hearth holding each foot alternately to the
+great logs flaming on the tiles, ever and anon looking over her shoulder
+at Adrian, who had advanced closer, without self-consciousness, but
+still in silence.
+
+"Now, cousin," she remarked gaily, "there is room for you here, big as
+you are, to warm yourself. You must be cold. I know already all about
+your family, and I must know all about you, too! I am very curious, I
+find them all such good, kind, handsome people here, and I am told to
+expect in you something quite different from any of them. Now, where
+does the difference come in? You are as tall as your father, but in
+face--no, I believe it is your pretty sisters you are like in face."
+
+Here the Squire interrupted with his loud laugh, and, clapping his
+hand on his stalwart son's head:
+
+"You have just hit it, Cecile, it's here the difference lies. Adrian,
+I really believe, is a little mistake of Dame Nature; his brain was
+meant for a girl and was tacked on to that big body by accident, ho,
+ho, ho! He is quite lady-like in his accomplishments--loves music, and
+plays, by gad, better than our organist. Writes poetry, too. I found
+some devilish queer things on his writing-table once, which were not
+_all_ Latin verses, though he would fain I thought so. And as for
+deportment, Madame Cecile, why there is more propriety, in that
+hobbedehoy, at least, more blushing in him, than in all the
+bread-and-butter misses in the county!"
+
+Adrian said nothing; but, when not turned towards the ground, his gaze
+still sought the Countess, who now returned the look with a ripening
+smile open to any interpretation.
+
+"Surely," she remarked, glancing then at the elder for an instant with
+some archness, "surely you English gentlemen, who have so much
+propriety, would not rather ... there was young Mr. Bradbury, we heard
+talked of yesterday, whom every farmer with a red-cheeked lass of his
+own--"
+
+"No, no!" hastily interrupted the baronet, with a blush himself, while
+Adrian's cheek in spite of the recent indictment preserved its smooth
+pallor--in truth, the boy, lost in his first love-dream, had not
+understood the allusion. "No, I don't want a Landale to be a
+blackguard, you know, but--" And the father, unable to split this
+ethical hair, to logical satisfaction, stopped and entered another
+channel of grumbling vituperation, whilst the Countess, very much
+amused by her private thoughts, gave a little rippling laugh, and
+resumed her indulgent contemplation of the accused.
+
+"What a pity, now, school-boy Rupert is not the eldest; there would be
+a country gentleman for you! Whereas, this successor that is to be of
+mine is a man of books and a philosopher. Forsooth, a first-class
+bookworm; by gad, I believe the first of our race! And he might make a
+name for himself, I've been told, among that lot, though the pack o'
+nonsense he treats us to at times cannot, I'm thinking, really go down
+even among those college fuzzle-heads. But I am confounded if that
+chap will ever be of any use as a landlord whenever he steps into my
+shoes. He hates a gun, and takes more pleasure--what was it he said
+last time he was here?--oh, yes, more pleasure in watching a bird dart
+in the blue than bringing it down, be it never so neat a shot. Ho, ho!
+did ye ever hear such a thing? And though he can sit a horse--I will
+say that for him (I should like to see a Landale that could not!)--I
+have seen this big boy of mine positively sicken, ay! and scandalise
+the hunt by riding away from the death. Moreover, I believe that, when
+I am gone, he will always let off any poaching scoundrel on the plea
+that the vermin only take for their necessity what we preserve for
+sport."
+
+The little foreign lady, smiling no longer, eyed her big cousin with
+wondering looks.
+
+"Strange, indeed," she remarked, "that a man should fail to appreciate
+the boon of man's existence, the strength and freedom to dominate, to
+be up and doing, to _live_ in fact. How I should long to be a man
+myself, if I ever allowed myself to long for anything; but I am a
+woman, as you see," she added, rising to the full height of her
+exquisite figure, "and must submit to woman's lot--and that is just
+now to the point, for I must leave you to go and see to the wants of
+that _mioche_ of mine which I hear whining upstairs. But I do not
+believe my uncle's account of you is a complete picture after all,
+cousin Adrian. I shall get it out of you anon, catechise you in my own
+way, and, if needs be, convert you to a proper sense of the glorious
+privileges of your sex."
+
+And she ran out of the room.
+
+"Well, my lad," said Sir Thomas, that evening, when the ladies had
+left the two men to their decanter, "I thought my Frenchwoman would
+wake you up, but, by George, I hardly expected she would knock you all
+of a heap so quick. Hey! you're winged, Adrian, winged, or this is not
+port."
+
+"I cannot say, sir," answered Adrian, musing.
+
+The old man caught up the unsatisfactory reply in an exasperated
+burlesque of mimicry: "I cannot say, sir--you cannot say? Pooh, pooh,
+there is no shame in being in love with her. We all are more or less;
+pass the bottle. As for you, since you clapped eyes on her you have
+been like a man in the moon, not a word to throw to a dog, no eyes, no
+ears but for your own thoughts, so long as madam is not there. Enter
+madam, you're alive again, by George, and pretty lively, too! Gad, I
+never thought I'd ever see _you_ do the lady's man, all in your own
+queer way, of course; but, hang it all, she seems to like it, the
+little minx! Ay, and if she has plenty of smiles for the old man she's
+ready to give her earnest to you--I saw her, I saw her. But don't you
+forget she's married, sir, very much married, too. She don't forget it
+either, I can tell you, though you may think she does. Now, what sort
+of game is she making of you? What were you talking about in the
+picture gallery for an hour before dinner, eh?"
+
+"To say the truth," answered the son, simply, "it was about myself
+almost the whole time."
+
+"And she flattered you finely, I'll be bound, of course," said his
+elder, with a knowing look. "Oh, these women, these women!"
+
+"On the contrary, sir, she thinks even less of me than you do. That
+woman has the soul of a savage; we have not one thought in common."
+
+The father burst into a loud laugh. "A pretty savage to look at,
+anyhow; a well-polished one in the bargain, ho, ho, ho! Well, well, I
+must make up my mind, I suppose, that my eldest son is a lunatic in
+love with a savage."
+
+Adrian remained silent for a while, toying with his glass, his young
+brow contracted under a painful frown. At length, checking a sigh, he
+answered with deliberation:
+
+"Since it is so palpable to others, I suppose it must be love, as you
+say. I had thought hitherto that love of which people talk so much was
+a feeling of sweetness. What I feel in this lady's presence is much
+more kin to anguish; for all that, as you have noticed, I appear to
+live only when she is nigh."
+
+The father looked at his son and gaped. The latter went on, after
+another pause:
+
+"I suppose it is so, and may as well own it to myself and to you,
+though nothing can come of it, good or bad. She is married, and she is
+your guest; and even if any thought concerning me could enter her
+heart, the merest show of love on my part would be an insult to her
+and treason to you. But trust me, I shall now be on my guard, since my
+behaviour has already appeared strange."
+
+"Tut, tut," said the Baronet, turning to his wine in some dudgeon, his
+rubicund face clouding as he looked with disfavour at this strange
+heir of his, who could not even fall in love like the rest of his
+race. "What are you talking about? Come, get out of that and see what
+the little lady's about, and let me hear no more of this. She'll not
+compromise herself with a zany like you, anyhow, that I'll warrant."
+
+But Adrian with all the earnestness of his nature and his very young
+fears was strenuously resolved to watch himself narrowly in his
+intercourse with his too fascinating relative; little recking how
+infinitesimal is the power of a man's free-will upon the conduct of
+his life.
+
+The next morning found the little Countess in the highest spirits.
+Particularly good news had arrived from her land with the early
+courier. True, the news were more than ten days old, but she had that
+insuperable buoyancy of hopefulness which attends active and healthy
+natures.
+
+The Breton peasants (she explained to the company round the breakfast
+table), headed by their lords (among whom was her own _Seigneur et
+Maitre_) had again crushed the swarms of ragged brigands that called
+themselves soldiers. From all accounts there was no hope for the
+latter, their atrocities had been such that the whole land, from
+Normandy to Guyenne, was now in arms against them.
+
+And in Paris, the hot pit whence had issued the storm of foulness that
+blasted the fair kingdom of France after laying low the hallowed heads
+of a good king and a beautiful queen, in Paris, leaders and led were
+now chopping each other's heads off, _a qui mieux mieux_. "Those
+thinkers, those lofty patriots, _hein, beau cousin_, for whom, it
+seems, you have an admiration," commented the lady, interrupting her
+account to sip her cup of cream and chocolate, with a little finger
+daintily cocked, and shoot a mocking shaft at the young philosopher
+from the depth of her black eyes.
+
+"Like demented wolves they are destroying each other--Pray the God of
+Justice," quoted she from her husband's letter, "that it may only
+last; in a few months, then, there will be none of them left, and the
+people, relieved from this rule of blood, will all clamour for the
+true order of things, and the poor country may again know peace and
+happiness. Meanwhile, all has yet to be won, by much devotion and
+self-sacrifice in the cause of God and King; and afterwards will come
+the reward!...
+
+"And the revenge," added Madame de Savenaye, with a little, fierce
+laugh, folding the sanguine budget of news. "Oh! they must leave us a
+few for revenge! How we shall make the hounds smart when the King
+returns to his own! And then for pleasures and for life again. And we
+may yet meet at the mansion of Savenaye, in Paris," she went on gaily,
+"my good uncle and fair cousins, for the King cannot fail to recall
+his faithful supporter. And there will be feasts and balls. And there,
+maybe, we shall be able to repay in part some of your kindness and
+hospitality. And you, cousin Adrian, you will have to take me through
+pavanne and gavotte and minuet; and I shall be proud of my northern
+cavalier. What! not know how one dances the gavotte? _Fi donc!_ what
+ignorance! I shall have to teach you. Your hand, monsieur," slipping
+the missive from the seat of war into her fair bosom. "La! not that
+way; with a _grace_, if you please," making a profound curtsey. "Ah,
+still that cold hand; your great English heart must be a very
+furnace. Come, point your right foot--so. And look round at your
+partner with--what shall I say--_admiration serieuse_!"
+
+That she saw admiration, serious enough in all conscience in Adrian's
+eyes, there was little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark
+every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty,
+the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable
+foot--pointed _so_--and treading the ground with the softness of a
+kitten at play; the maddening curve of her waist, which a sacque,
+depending from an exquisite nape, partly concealed, only to enhance
+its lithe suppleness; the divinely young throat and bust; and above
+all the dazzling black rays from eyes alternately mocking, fierce or
+caressing.
+
+Well might his hand be cold with all his young untried blood, biting
+at his heart, singing in his head. Why did God place such creatures on
+His earth to take all savour from aught else under the sun?
+
+"Fair cousin, fair cousin, though I said serious admiration, I did not
+mean you to look as if you were taking me to a funeral. You are
+supposed to be enjoying yourself, you know!"
+
+The youth struggled with a ghastly smile; and the father laughed
+outright. But Madame de Savenaye checked herself into gravity once
+more.
+
+"Alas! _Nous n'en sommes pas encore la_," she said, and relinquished
+her adorer's hand. "We have still to fight for it.... Oh! that I were
+free to be up and doing!"
+
+The impatient exclamation was wrung out of her, apparently, by the
+appearance of two nurses, each bearing an infant in long, white robes
+for the mother's inspection; a preliminary to the daily outing.
+
+The elder of these matrons was Adrian's own old nurse who, much
+occupied with her new duties of attendant to Madame de Savenaye and
+one of her babies, now beheld her foster-son again for the first time
+since his return.
+
+"Eh--but you've grown a gradely mon, Mester Adrian!" she cried, in her
+long-drawn Lancastrian, dandling her bundle energetically from side to
+side in the excess of her admiration, and added with a laugh of
+tender delight: "Eh, but you're my own lad still, as how 'tis!" when,
+blushing, the young man crossed the room and stooped to kiss her,
+glancing shyly the while at the white bundle in her arms.
+
+"Well, and how are the little ones?" quoth Madame de Savenaye,
+swinging her dainty person up to the group and halting by beaming
+Sally--the second nurse, who proudly held forth her charge--merely to
+lay a finger lightly on the infant's little cheek.
+
+"Ah, my good Sally, your child does you credit!--Now Margery, when you
+have done embracing that fine young man, perhaps you will give me my
+child, _hein_?"
+
+Both the nurses blushed; Margery at the soft impeachment as she
+delivered over the minute burden; her daughter in honest indignation
+at the insulting want of interest shown for her foster-babe.
+
+"No, I was not made to play with puppets like you, mademoiselle," said
+the comtesse, addressing herself to the unconscious little being as
+she took it in her arms, but belying her words by the grace and
+instinctive maternal expertness with which she handled and soothed the
+infant. "Yes, you can go, Sarah--_au revoir_, Mademoiselle Madeleine.
+Fie the little wretch, what faces she pulls! And you, Margery, you
+need not wait either; I shall keep this creature for a while. Poor
+little one!" sang the mother, walking up and down, and patting the
+small back with her jewelled hand as she held the wee thing against
+her shoulder, "indeed I shall have soon to leave you----"
+
+"What's this--what's this?" exclaimed the master of the house with
+sudden sharpness. He had been surveying the scene from the hearthrug,
+chuckling in benevolent amusement at little Madam's ways.
+
+Yes, it was her intention to return to her place by the side of her
+lord, she explained, halting in her walk to face him gravely; she had
+come to that resolution. No doubt her uncle would take the children
+under his care until better times--those good times that were so fast
+approaching. Buxom Sally could manage them both--and to spare, too!
+
+Adrian felt his heart contract at the unexpected announcement; a look
+of dismay overspread Sir Thomas's face.
+
+"Why--what? what nonsense, child!" cried he again in rueful tones.
+"_You_, return to that place now ... what good do you think you could
+do--eh?" But here recollecting himself, he hesitated and started upon
+a more plausible line of expostulation. "Pooh, pooh! You can't leave
+the little ones, your husband does not ask you to come back and leave
+them, does he? In any case," with assumed authority, "I shall not let
+you go."
+
+She looked up with a smile.
+
+"Would _you_ allow your friends to continue fighting alone for all you
+love, because you happened to be in safe and pleasant circumstances
+yourself?" she asked. Then she added ingenuously: "I have heard you
+say of one that was strong of will and staunch to his purpose, that he
+was a regular Briton. I thought that flattering: I am a Briton, of
+Brittany, you know, myself, uncle: would you have _me_ be a worthless
+Briton? As to what a woman can do there--ah, you have no idea what it
+means for all these poor peasants of ours to see their lords remain
+among them, sharing their hardship in defence of their cause.
+Concerning the children," kissing the one she held and gazing into its
+face with wistful look, "they can better afford to do without me than
+my husband and our men. A strong woman to tend them till we come back,
+is all that is wanted, since a good relative is willing to give them
+shelter. Rene cannot be long in returning now, with the last news.
+Indeed, M. de Savenaye says that he will only keep him a few days
+longer, and, according to the tidings he brings must I fix the date
+for my departure."
+
+Sir Thomas, with an inarticulate growl, relapsed into silence; and she
+resumed her walk with bent head, lost in thought, up and down the
+great room, out of the pale winter sunshine into the shadow, and back
+again, to the tune of "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre," which she hummed
+beneath her breath, while the baby's foolish little head, in its white
+cap from which protruded one tiny straight wisp of brown hair, with
+its beady, unseeing black eyes and its round mouth dribbling
+peacefully, bobbed over her shoulder as she went.
+
+Adrian stood in silence too, following her with his eyes, while the
+picture, so sweet to see, so strange to one who knew all that was
+brewing in the young mother's head and heart, stamped itself upon his
+brain.
+
+At the door, at length, she halted a moment, and looked at them both.
+
+"Yes, my friends," she said, and her eyes shot flame; "I must go
+soon." The baby bobbed its head against her cheek as if in
+affirmative; then the great door closed upon the pair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DAY DREAMS: A FAIR EMISSARY
+
+
+Many guests had been convened to the hospitable board of Pulwick upon
+the evening which followed Adrian's return home; and as, besides the
+fact that the fame of the French lady had spread enthusiasm in most of
+the male breasts of the district and anxious curiosity in gentler
+bosoms, there was a natural neighbourly desire to criticise the young
+heir of the house after his year's absence, the county had responded
+in a body to the invitation.
+
+It was a goodly company therefore that was assembled in the great
+withdrawing rooms, when the Countess herself came tripping down the
+shallow oaken stairs, and found Adrian waiting for her in the hall.
+
+He glanced up as she descended towards him to cover her with an ardent
+look and feast his eyes despairingly on her beauty; and she halted a
+moment to return his gaze with a light but meaning air of chiding.
+
+"Cousin!" she said, "you have very singular manners for one supposed
+to be so shy with ladies. Do you know that if my husband were here to
+notice them you might be taken to task?"
+
+Adrian ran up the steps to meet her. The man in him was growing apace
+with the growth of a man's passion, and by the boldness of his answer
+belying all his recent wise resolutions, he now astonished himself
+even more than her.
+
+"You are going back to him," he said, with halting voice. "All is
+well--for him; perhaps for you. For us, who remain behind there is
+nothing left but the bitterness of regret--and envy."
+
+Then in silence they descended together.
+
+As they were crossing the hall there entered suddenly to them,
+stumbling as he went, Rene, the young Breton retainer, whom the lord
+of Savenaye had appointed as squire to his lady upon her travels, and
+who, since her establishment at Pulwick, had been sent to carry news
+and money back to Brittany.
+
+No sooner had the boy--for such he was, though in intelligence and
+blind devotion beyond his years--passed into the light, than on his
+haggard countenance was read news of disastrous import. Recent tears
+had blurred his sunburnt cheek, and the hand that tore the hat from
+his head at the unexpected sight of his mistress, partly in
+instinctive humility, partly, it seemed, to conceal some papers he
+held against his breast, twitched with nervous anguish.
+
+"Rene!" cried the Countess, eagerly, in French. "What hast thou
+brought? Sweet Jesu! Bad news--bad news? Give!"
+
+For an instant the courier looked around like a hunted animal seeking
+a retreat, and then up at her in dumb pleading; but she stamped her
+foot and held him to the spot by the imperiousness of her eye.
+
+"Give, I tell thee," she repeated; and, striking the hat away,
+snatched the papers from his hand. "Dost thou think I cannot bear ill
+news--My husband?"
+
+She drew nearer to a candelabra, and the little white hands
+impatiently broke the seals and shook the sheets asunder.
+
+Sir Thomas, attracted by his favourite's raised tones and uneasy at
+her non-appearance, opened the drawing-room door and came forward
+anxiously, whilst his assembled guests, among whom a sense that
+something of importance was passing had rapidly spread, now gathered
+curiously about the open doorway.
+
+The Countess read on, unnoticing, with compressed lips and knitted
+brows--those brows that looked so black on the fair skin, under the
+powdered hair.
+
+"My husband! ah, I knew it, my Andre ... the common fate of the
+loyal!" A sigh lifted the fair young bosom, but she showed no other
+sign of weakness.
+
+Indeed those who watched this unexpected scene were struck by the
+contrast between the bearing of this young, almost girlish creature,
+who, holding the written sheets with firm hands to the light, read
+their terrible contents with dry eyes, and that of the man who had
+sunk, kneeling, at her feet, all undone, to have had the bringing of
+the news.
+
+The silence was profound, save for the crackling of the pages as she
+turned them over, and an occasional long-drawn sob from the messenger.
+
+When she came to the end the young widow--for such she was
+now--remained some moments absorbed in thought, absently refolding the
+letter into its original neatness. Then her eyes fell on Rene's
+prostrate figure and she stooped to lay a kind hand for an instant on
+his shoulder.
+
+"Bear up, my good Rene," she said. At her voice and touch he dragged
+his limbs together and stood humbly before her.
+
+"We must be brave," she went on; "your master's task is done--ours,
+yours and mine, is not."
+
+He lifted his bloodshot eyes to her with the gaze of a faithful dog in
+distress, scraped an uncouth bow and abruptly turned away, brushing
+the tears from his cheek with his sleeve, and hurrying, to relieve his
+choking grief in solitude. She stood a while, again absorbed in her
+own reflection, and of those who would have rushed to speak gentle
+words to her, and uphold her with tender hands, had she wept or
+swooned, there was none who dared approach this grief that gave no
+sign.
+
+In a short time, however, she seemed to recollect herself and awaken
+to the consciousness of the many watching eyes.
+
+"Good uncle," she said, going up to the old man and kissing his cheek,
+after sweeping the assembled company with dark, thoughtful gaze. "Here
+are news that I should have expected sooner--but that I would not
+entertain the thought. It has come upon us at last, the fate of the
+others ... Andre has paid his debt to the king, like many hundreds of
+true people before--though none better. He has now his reward. I glory
+in his noble death," she said with a gleam of exaltation in her eyes,
+then added after a pause, between clenched teeth, almost in a whisper:
+
+"And my sister too--she too is with him--but I will tell you of it
+later; they are at rest now."
+
+Jovial Sir Thomas, greatly discomposed and fairly at a loss how to
+deal with the stricken woman, who was so unlike any womankind he had
+ever yet come across, patted her hand in silence, placed it within his
+arm and quietly led her into the drawing-room, rolling, as he did so,
+uneasy eyes upon his guests. But she followed the current of her
+thoughts as her little feet kept pace beside him.
+
+"That is bad--but worse--the worst of all, the cause of God and king
+is again crushed; everything to begin afresh. But, for the present,
+we"--here she looked round the room, and her eyes rested an instant
+upon a group of young men, who were surveying her from a corner with
+mingled admiration and awe--"we, that is Rene and I, have work to do
+in this country before we return. For you will keep us a little
+longer?" she added with an attempt at a smile.
+
+"Will I keep you a little longer?" exclaimed the squire hotly, "will I
+ever let you go, now!"
+
+She shook her head at him, with something of her natural archness.
+Then, turning to make a grave curtsey to the circle of ladies around
+her:
+
+"I and my misfortune," she said, "have kept your company and your
+dinner waiting, I hardly know how long. No doubt, in their kindness
+they will forgive me."
+
+And accepting again her uncle's arm which, delighted at the solution
+of the present difficulty, and nodding to Adrian to start the other
+guests, he hastened to offer her, she preceded the rest into the
+dining-hall with her usual alert bearing.
+
+The behaviour of the Countess of Savenaye, had affected the various
+spectators in various ways. The male sex, to a man, extolled her
+fortitude; the ladies, however, condemned such unfeminine strength of
+mind, while the more charitable prophesied that she would pay dearly
+for this unnatural repression. And the whispered remark of one of the
+prettier and younger damsels, that the loss of a husband did not seem
+to crush her, at any rate, met, on the whole, with covert approval.
+
+As for Adrian, who shall describe the tumult of his soul--the regret,
+the hungering over her in her sorrow, the wild unbidden hopes and his
+shame of them? Careful of what his burning eyes might reveal, he
+hardly dared raise them from the ground; and yet to keep them long
+from her face was an utter impossibility. The whispered comments of
+the young men behind him, their admiration, and astonishment drove him
+to desperation. And the high-nosed dowager, whom it was his privilege
+to escort to his father's table, arose from it convinced that Sir
+Thomas's heir had lost in his travels the few poor wits he ever
+possessed.
+
+The dinner that evening was without doubt the most dismal meal the
+neighbourhood had ever sat down to at the hospitable board of Pulwick,
+past funeral refections not excepted. The host, quite taken up with
+his little foreign relative, had words only for her; and these,
+indeed, consisted merely in fruitless attempts to induce her to
+partake largely of every course--removes, relieves, side-dishes,
+joints, as their separate turn came round. Long spells of silence fell
+upon him meantime, which he emphasised by lugubriously clearing his
+throat. Except for the pretty courtesy with which she would answer
+him, she remained lost in her own thoughts--ever and anon consulting
+the letter which lay beside her to fall again, it seemed, into a
+deeper muse; but never a tear glinted between her black lashes.
+
+More than once Adrian from his distant end of the table, met her eyes,
+fixed on him for a moment, and the look, so full of mysterious
+meanings made his heart beat in anguish, expecting he knew not what.
+
+Among the rest of the assembly, part deference to a calamity so
+stoutly borne, part amazement at such strange ways, part discomfort at
+their positions as feasters in the midst of mourning, had reduced
+conversation to the merest pretence. The ladies were glad enough when
+the time came for them to withdraw; nor did most of the men view with
+reluctance a moment which would send the decanters gliding freely over
+the mahogany, and relieve them from this unwonted restraint.
+
+Madame de Savenaye had, however, other interests in store for these
+latter.
+
+She rose with the rest of the ladies, but halted at the door, and
+laying her hand upon her uncle's arm, said an earnest word in his ear,
+in obedience to which he bundled out his daughters, as they hung back
+politely, closed the door upon the last skirt, and reconducted the
+Countess to the head of the table, scratching his chin in some
+perplexity, but ready to humour her slightest whim.
+
+She stood at her former place and looked for a moment in silence from
+one to another of the faces turned with different expressions of
+astonishment and anticipation towards her--ruddy faces most of them,
+young, or old, handsome or homely, the honest English stamp upon each;
+and distinct from them all, Adrian's pallid, thoughtful features and
+his ardent eyes.
+
+Upon him her gaze rested the longest. Then with a little wave of her
+hand she prayed them to be seated, and waited to begin her say until
+the wine had passed round.
+
+"Gentlemen," then quoth she, "with my good uncle's permission I shall
+read you the letter which I have this night received, so that English
+gentlemen may learn how those who are faithful to their God and their
+King are being dealt with in my country. This letter is from Monsieur
+de Puisaye, one of the most active partisans of the Royal cause, a
+connection of the ancient house of Savenaye. And he begins by telling
+me of the unexpected reverses sustained by our men so close upon their
+successes at Chateau-Gonthier, successes that had raised our loyal
+hopes so high. 'The most crushing defeat,' he writes, 'has taken place
+near the town of Savenaye itself, on your own estate, and your
+historic house is now, alas! in ruins.... During the last obstinate
+fight your husband had been wounded, but after performing prodigies of
+valour--such as, it was hoped or trusted, the king should in time hear
+of--he escaped from the hands of his enemies. For many weeks with a
+few hundred followers he held the fields in the Marais, but he was at
+last hemmed in and captured by one of the monster Thureau's _Colonnes
+Infernales_, those hellish legions with an account of whose deeds,' so
+says this gallant gentleman our friend, 'I will not defile my pen, but
+whose boasts are like those of Attila the Hun, and who in their malice
+have invented obscene tortures worthy of Iroquois savages for all who
+fall into their clutches, be they men, women, or children.... But, by
+Heaven's mercy, dear Madame,' says M. de Puisaye to me, 'your noble
+husband was too weak to afford sport to those demons, and so he has
+escaped torment. He was hanged with all speed indeed, for fear he
+might die first of his toils and his wounds, and so defeat them at the
+last.'"
+
+A rustling murmur of horror and indignation went round the table; but
+the little woman faced the audience proudly.
+
+"He died," she said, "as beseems a brave man. But this is not all. I
+had a sister, she was very fair--like me some people said, in
+looks--she used to be the merry one at home in the days of peace," she
+gave a little smile, far more piteous than tears would be--"She chose
+to remain among her people when they were fighting, to help the
+wounded, the sick." Here Madame de Savenaye paused a moment and put
+down the letter from which she had been reading; for the first time
+since she had begun to speak she grew pale; knitting her black brows
+and with downcast eyes she went on: "Monsieur de Puisaye says he asks
+my pardon humbly on his knees for writing such tidings to me, bereaved
+as I am of all I hold dear, but 'it is meet,' he says, 'that the
+civilised world should know the deeds these followers of _liberty_ and
+_enlightenment_ have wrought upon gallant men and highborn ladies,'
+and I hold that he says well."
+
+She flashed once more her black gaze round upon the men, who with
+heads all turned towards her and forgetting their wine, hung upon her
+words. "It is right that I should know, and you too! It is meet that
+such deeds should be made known to the world: my sister was taken by
+these men, but less fortunate than my husband she had life enough left
+for torture--she too is dead now; M. de Puisaye adds: Thank God! And
+that is all that I can say too--Thank God!"
+
+There was a dead silence in the room as she ceased speaking, broken at
+last, here and there, along the table by exclamations and groans and a
+deep execration from Sir Thomas, which was echoed deep-mouthed by his
+guests.
+
+Adrian himself, the pacific, the philosopher, with both arms,
+stretched out on the table, clenched his hands, and set his teeth and
+gazed into space with murderous looks.
+
+Then the clear young voice went on again:
+
+"You, who have honoured mothers and wives of your own, and have young
+sweethearts, or sisters or daughters--you English gentlemen who love
+to see justice, how long will you allow such things to be done while
+you have arms to strike? We are not beaten yet; there are French
+hearts still left that will be up and doing so long as they have a
+drop of blood to shed. Our gallant Bretons and Vendeens are uniting
+once more, our emigres are collecting, but we want aid, brave English
+friends, we want arms, money, soldiers. My task lies to my hand; the
+sacred legacy of my dead I have accepted; is there any of you here who
+will help the widow to maintain the fight?"
+
+She had risen to her feet; the blood glowed on her cheek as she
+concluded her appeal; a thousand stars danced in her eyes.
+
+Old men and young they leapt up, with a roar; pressing round her,
+pouring forth acclamations, asseverations and oaths--Would they help
+her? By God--they would die for her--Never had the old rafters of
+Pulwick rung to such enthusiasm.
+
+And when with proud smiles and crimsoned face she withdraws at last
+from so much ardour, the door has scarcely fallen behind her before
+Sir Thomas proposes her health in a bellow, that trembles upon tears:
+
+"Gentlemen, this lady's courage is such as might put most men's
+strength to shame. Here is, gentlemen, to Madame de Savenaye!"
+
+And she, halting on the stairs for a moment, to still her high-beating
+heart, before she lay her babe against it, hears the toast honoured
+with three times three.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the Lancastrian ladies had succeeded at length in collecting and
+carrying off such among the hiccupping husbands, and maudlin sons, who
+were able to move, Sir Thomas re-entering the hall, after speeding the
+last departing chariot, and prudently leaning upon his tall son--for
+though he had a seasoned head the night's potations had been deep and
+fiery--was startled well-nigh into soberness, at the sight of his
+niece waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
+
+"Why, Cis, my love, we thought you had been in bed this long while!
+why--where have you been then since you ran away from the dining-room?
+By George!" chuckling, "the fellows were mad to get another glimpse of
+you!"
+
+His bloodshot eye hung over her fondly. There was not a trace of
+fatigue upon that delicate, pretty face.
+
+"I wanted to think--I have much to think on now. I have had to read
+and ponder upon my instructions here,"--tapping her teeth with the
+letter, she still carried, "Good uncle, I would speak with you--yes,
+even now," quick to notice Adrian's slight frown of disapproval (poor
+fellow, he was sober enough at any rate!), "there is no time like the
+present. I have my work to do, and I shall not rest to-night, till I
+have planned it in my head."
+
+Surely the brilliancy of those eyes was feverish; the little hands she
+laid upon them to draw them into the dim-lit library were hot as fire.
+
+"Why, yes, my pretty," quoth the good uncle, stifling a portentous
+yawn, and striving to look wondrous wise, "Adrian, she wants to
+consult me, sir, hic!"
+
+He fell into an arm-chair as he spoke, and she sank on her knees
+beside him, the firelight playing upon her eager face, while Adrian,
+in the shadow, watched.
+
+"Do you think," she asked of the old man, eagerly, "that these
+gentlemen, who spoke so kindly to me a few hours ago, will be as much
+in earnest in the morning?"
+
+"Why d--n them! if they go back on their word, I'll call them out!"
+thundered Sir Thomas, in a great rage all of a sudden. She surveyed
+him inquiringly, and shot a swift keen glance from the placid, bulky
+figure in the chair, to Adrian pale and erect, behind it, then rose to
+her feet and stood a few paces off, as it were pondering.
+
+"What is now required of me--I have been thinking it well over," she
+said at last, "can hardly be achieved by a woman alone. And yet, with
+proper help and support, I think I could do more than any man by
+himself. There is that in a woman's entreaties which will win, when a
+man may fail. But I must have a knight at my side; a protector, at the
+same time as a faithful servant. These are not the times to stand on
+conventional scruples. Do you think, among these gentlemen, any could
+be found with sufficient enthusiasm, for the Royal cause, here
+represented by me, to attend, and support me through all the fatigues,
+the endless errands, the interviews--ay, also the rebuffs, the
+ridicule at times, perhaps the danger of the conjuration, which must
+be set on foot in this country--to do all that, without hope of other
+reward than the consciousness of helping a good cause, and--and the
+gratitude of one, who may have nothing else to give?"
+
+She stopped with a little nervous laugh: "No, it is absurd! no man,
+on reflection would enter into such a service unless it were for his
+own country."
+
+As the last words fell from her lips, she suddenly turned to Adrian
+and met his earnest gaze.
+
+"Or for his kindred," said the young man, coming up to her with grave
+simplicity, "if his kindred required it."
+
+A gleam of satisfaction passed across her face. The father, who had
+caught her meaning--sharp enough, as some men can be in their
+cups--nodded his head with great vigour.
+
+"Yes, why should you think first of strangers," he grumbled, "when you
+have your own blood, to stand by you--blood is thicker than water,
+ain't it? Am I too old, or is he too young, to wait on you--hey,
+madam?"
+
+She extended her hand, allowing it to linger in Adrian's grasp, whilst
+she laid the other tenderly on the old man's shoulder.
+
+"My good uncle! my kind cousin! Have I the choice already between two
+such cavaliers? I am fortunate indeed in my misfortune. In other
+circumstances to decide would be difficult between two men, each so
+good; but," she added, after a moment's hesitation, and looking at
+Adrian in a manner that made the young man's heart beat thickly, "in
+this case it is obvious I must have some one whom I need not fear to
+direct."
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered the baronet, "I'd go with you, my darling, to the
+world's end; but there's that young philosopher of mine breaking his
+heart for you. And when all's said and done, it's the young fellow
+that'll be the most use to you, I reckon. Ay, you've chosen already,
+I'll be bound. The gouty old man had best stop at home. Ho, ho, ho!
+You've the luck, Adrian; more luck than you deserve."
+
+"It is I who have more luck than I deserve," answered Madame de
+Savenaye, smiling upon her young knight as, taking heart of grace, he
+stooped to seal the treaty upon her hand. "To say the truth, I had
+hoped for this, yet hardly dared to allow myself to count upon it. And
+really, uncle, you give your own son to my cause?--and you, cousin,
+you are willing to work for me? I am indeed strengthened at the outset
+of my undertaking. I shall pray that you may never have cause to
+regret your chivalrous goodness."
+
+She dropped Adrian's hand with a faint pressure, and moved sighing
+towards the door.
+
+"Do you wonder that I have no tears, cousin?" she said, a little
+wistfully; "they must gather in my heart till I have time to sit down
+and shed them."
+
+Thus it was that a letter penned by this unknown M. de Puisaye from
+some hidden fastness in the Bocage of Brittany came to divert the
+course of Adrian Landale's existence into a channel where neither he,
+nor any of those who knew him, would ever have dreamed to see it
+drift.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+    Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,
+    Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee?
+
+    LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Sir Adrian Landale, in his sea-girt fastness, still absorbed in dreams
+of bygone days, loosed his grasp of faithful Rene's shoulder and fell
+to pacing the chamber with sombre mien; while Rene, to whom these fits
+of abstraction in his master were not unfamiliar, but yet to his
+superstitious peasant soul, eerie and awe-inspiring visitations,
+slipped unnoticed from his presence.
+
+The light-keeper sate down by his lonely hearth and buried his gaze in
+the glowing wood-embers, over which, with each fitful thundering rush
+of wind round the chimney, fluttered little eddies of silvery ash.
+
+So, that long strife was over, which had wrought such havoc to the
+world, had shaped so dismally the course of his own life! The monster
+of selfish ambition, the tyrannic, insatiable conqueror whose very
+existence had so long made peaceable pursuits unprofitable to mankind,
+the final outcome of that Revolution that, at the starting point, had
+boded so nobly for human welfare--he was at last laid low, and all the
+misery of the protracted struggle now belonged to the annals of the
+past.
+
+It was all over--but the waste! The waste of life and happiness, far
+and wide away among innocent and uninterested beings, the waste
+remained.
+
+And, looking back on it, the most bitter portion of his own wrecked
+life was the short time he had yet thought happy; three months, spent
+as knight-errant.
+
+How far they seemed, far as irrevocable youth, those days when, in the
+wake of that love-compelling emissary, he moved from intrigue to
+intrigue among the emigres in London, and their English sympathisers,
+to bustling yet secret activity in seafaring parts!
+
+The mechanical instrument directed by the ingenious mind of Cecile de
+Savenaye; the discreet minister who, for all his young years, secured
+the help of some important political sympathiser one day, scoured the
+country for arms and clothing, powder and _assignats_ another; who
+treated with smuggling captains and chartered vessels that were to run
+the gauntlet on the Norman and Breton coast, and supply the means of
+war to struggling and undaunted loyalists. All this relentless work,
+little suited, on the whole, to an Englishman, and in a cause the
+rights of which he himself had, up to then, refused to admit, was then
+repaid a hundredfold by a look of gratitude, of pleasure even, a few
+sweet moments of his lady's company, before being sent hence again
+upon some fresh enterprise.
+
+Ah, how he loved her! He, the youth on the threshold of manhood, who
+had never known passion before, how he loved this young widowed mother
+who used him as a man to deal for her with men, yet so loftily treated
+him as a boy when she dealt with him herself. And if he loved her in
+the earlier period of his thraldom, when scarce would he see her one
+hour in the twenty-four, to what all-encompassing fervour did the
+bootless passion rise when, the day of departure having dawned and
+sunk, he found himself on board the privateer, sailing away with her
+towards unknown warlike ventures, her knight to protect her, her
+servant to obey!
+
+On all these things mused the recluse of Scarthey, sinking deeper and
+deeper into the past: the spell of haunting recollection closing on
+him as he sat by his hearthside, whilst the increasing fury of the
+gale toiled and troubled outside fighting the impassable walls of his
+tower.
+
+Could it have been possible that she--the only woman that had ever
+existed for him, the love for whom had so distorted his mind from its
+natural sympathies, had killed in him the spring of youth and the
+savour of life--never really learnt to love him in return till the
+last?
+
+And yet there was a woman's soul in that delicious woman's body--it
+showed itself at least once, though until that supreme moment of union
+and parting, it seemed as if a man's mind alone governed it, becoming
+sterner, more unbendable, as hardships and difficulties multiplied.
+
+In the melancholy phantasm passing before his mind's eye, of a period
+of unprecedented bloodshed and savagery, when on the one side Chouans,
+Vendeens, and such guerillas of which Madame de Savenaye was the
+moving spirit, and on the other the _colonnes infernales_ of the
+revolutionary leaders, vied with each other in ferocity and cunning,
+she stood ever foremost, ever the central point of thought, with a
+vividness that almost a score of years had failed to dim.
+
+When the mood was upon him, he could unfold the roll of that story
+buried now in the lonely graves of the many, or in the fickle memories
+of the few, but upon his soul printed in letters of fire and blood--to
+endure for ever.
+
+Round this goddess of his young and only love clustered the sole
+impressions of the outer world that had ever stirred his heart: the
+grandeur of the ocean, of the storm, the glory of sunrise over a
+dishevelled sea, the ineffable melancholy of twilight rising from an
+unknown strand; then the solemn coldness of moonlight watches, the
+scent of the burnt land under the fierce sun, when all nature was
+hushed save the dreamy buzz of insect-life: the green coolness of
+underwood or forest, the unutterable harmony of the sighing breeze,
+and the song of wild birds during the long patient ambushes of
+partisan war; the taste of bread in hunger, of the stream in the fever
+of thirst, of approaching sleep in exhaustion--and, mixed with these,
+the acrid emotions of fight and carnage, anguish of suspense, savage
+exultation of victory--all the doings of a life which he, bred to
+intellectual pleasures and high moral ideas, would have deemed a
+nightmare, but which, lived as it was in the atmosphere of his longing
+and devotion, yet held for him a strange and pungent joy: a cup of
+cruel memories, yet one to be lingered over luxuriously till the
+savour of each cherished drop of bitterness be gathered to the
+uttermost.
+
+Now, in the brightness of the embers, between the fitful flames of
+crumbling wood, spreads before his eyes the dreary strand near
+Quiberon, immense in the gathering darkness of a boisterous evening.
+Well hidden under the stone table of a Druidical men-hir glows a small
+camp-fire sedulously kept alive by Rene for the service of The Lady.
+She, wrapped up in a coarse peasant-cloak, pensively gazes into the
+cheerless smoke and holds her worn and muddy boots to the smouldering
+wood in the vain hope of warmth.
+
+And Adrian stands silently behind her, brooding on many things--on the
+vicissitudes of that desultory war which has left them not a roof
+whereunder they can lay their heads, during which the little English
+contingent has melted from them one by one; on the critical action of
+the morrow when the republican columns, now hastening to oppose the
+landing of the great royalist expedition to Quiberon (that supreme
+effort upon which all their hopes centre) must be surprised and cut
+off at whatever cost; on the mighty doings to follow, which are to
+complete the result of the recent sea fight off Ushant and crown their
+devoted toil with victory at last....
+
+And through his thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous
+disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on
+the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming slipper and dainty
+silken stocking.
+
+Now and then an owl-cry, repeated from point to point, tells of
+unremitting guard, but for which, in the vast silence, none could
+suspect that a thousand men and more are lying stretched upon the
+plain all around them, fireless, well-nigh without food, yet patiently
+waiting for the morrow when their chiefs shall lead them to death; nor
+that, in a closer circle, within call, are some fifty _gars_, remnant
+of the indomitable "Savenaye band," and tacitly sworn bodyguard to The
+Lady who came back from ease and safety over seas to share their
+peril.
+
+No sound besides, but the wind as it whistles and moans over the
+heath--and the two are together in the mist which comes closing in
+upon them as if to shroud them from all the rest, for even Rene has
+crept away, to sleep perhaps.
+
+She turns at last towards him, her small face in the dying light of
+this sullen evening, how wan and weather-beaten!
+
+"Pensive, as usual, cousin?" she says in English, and extends her
+hand, browned and scratched, that was once so exquisite, and she
+smiles, the smile of a dauntless soul from a weary body.
+
+Poor little hands, poor little feet, so cold, so battered, so
+ill-used! He, who would have warmed them in his bosom, given his heart
+for them to tread upon, breaks down now, for the first time; and
+falling on his knees covers the cold fingers with kisses, and then
+lays his lips against those pitiful torn boots.
+
+But she spurns him from her--even from her feet:
+
+"Shame on you!" she says angrily; and adds, more gently, yet with some
+contempt: "_Enfant, va!_--is this the time for such follies?"
+
+And, suddenly recalled to honour and grim actuality, he realises with
+dismay his breach of trust--he, who in their earlier days in London
+had called out that sprightly little emigre merely for the vulgar
+flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that
+the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de
+Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own
+across the face--ay, and shot him in the shoulder, all in the secret
+early dawn of the day they left England--for daring to remark within
+his hearing: "By George, the handsome Frenchwoman and her cousin may
+be a little less than kin, but they are a little more than kind."
+
+But yet, as the rage of love contending in his heart with
+self-reproach, he rises to his feet in shame, she gives him her hand
+once more, and in a different voice:
+
+"Courage, cousin," says she, "perhaps some day we may both have our
+reward. But will not my knight continue to fight for my bidding, even
+without hope of such?"
+
+Pondering on this enigmatic sentence he leaves her to her rest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When next he finds himself by her side the anticipated action has
+begun; and it is to be the last day that those beautiful burning eyes
+shall see the glory of the rising sun.
+
+The Chouans are fighting like demons, extended in long skirmishing
+lines, picking out the cluster of gunners, making right deadly use of
+their English powder; imperceptibly but unflinchingly closing their
+scattered groups until the signal comes and with ringing cries:
+"_Notre Dame d'Auray!_" and "_Vive le roi!_" they charge, undismayed
+by odds, the serried ranks of the Republicans.
+
+She, from the top of the druidical stone, watches the progress of the
+day. Her red, parted mouth twitches as she follows the efforts of the
+men. Behind her, the _gars_ of Savenaye, grasping with angry clutch,
+some a new musket, others an ancient straightened scythe, gaze
+fiercely on the scene from under their broad felts. Now and then a
+flight of republican bullets hum about their ears, and they look
+anxiously to Their Lady, but that fearless head never bends.
+
+Then the moment arrives, and with a fervent, "God be with you, brave
+people," she hurls, by a stirring gesture, the last reserve on to the
+fight.
+
+And now he finds himself in the midst of the furious medley, striking
+mechanically, his soul away behind on that stone, with her. Presently,
+as the frenzy waxes wilder, he is conscious that victory is not with
+them, but that they are pressed back and encompassed, and that for
+each blue coat cast down amidst the yells and oaths, two more seem to
+come out of the rain and smoke; whilst the bare feet and wooden shoes
+and the long hair of his peasants are seen in ever-lessening ranks.
+And, in time, they find themselves thrown back to the men-hir; she is
+there, still calm but ghastly white, a pistol in each hand. Around
+her, through the wet smoke, rise and fall with sickening thuds the
+clubbed muskets of three or four men, and then one by one these sink
+to the ground too. With a wailing groan like a man in a nightmare, he
+sees the inevitable end and rushes to place his body before hers. A
+bullet shatters his sword-blade; now none are left around them but the
+begrimed and sinister faces of their enemies.
+
+As they stand prisoners, and unheeding the hideous clamour, he, with
+despair thinking of her inevitable fate at the hands of such victors,
+and scarcely daring to look at her, suddenly sees _that_ in her eyes
+which fills his soul to overflowing.
+
+"All is lost," she whispers, "and I shall never repay you for all you
+have done, cousin!"
+
+The words are uttered falteringly, almost plaintively.
+
+"We are not long now for this world, friend," she adds more firmly.
+"Give me your forgiveness."
+
+How often has Adrian heard this dead voice during the strange
+vicissitudes of these long, long years! And, hearing it whisper in the
+vivid world of his brain, how often has he not passionately longed
+that he also had been able to yield his poor spark of life on the last
+day of her existence.
+
+For the usual fate of Chouan prisoners swiftly overtakes the surviving
+leaders of the Savenaye "band of brigands," as that doughty knot of
+loyalists was termed by their arch-enemy, Thureau.
+
+A long journey towards the nearest town, in an open cart, under the
+pitiless rain, amidst a crowd of evil-smelling, blaspheming, wounded
+republicans, who, when a more cruel jolt than usual awakens their
+wounds, curse the woman in words that should have drawn avenging bolts
+from heaven. She sits silent, lofty, tearless; but her eyes, when they
+are not lost in the grey distance, ever wistfully seek his face.
+
+The day is drawing to a close; they reach their goal, a miserable,
+grey, draggled town at the mouth of the Vilaine, and are roughly
+brought before the arbiter of their lives--Thureau himself, the
+monstrous excrescence of the times, who, like Marat and Carrier, sees
+nothing in the new freedom but a free opening for the lowest instincts
+of ferocity.
+
+And before this monstrous beast, bedizened in his general's frippery,
+in a reeking tavern-room, stand the noble lady of Savenaye and the
+young heir of Pulwick.
+
+The ruffian's voice rings with laughter as he gazes on the silent
+youthful pair.
+
+"Aha, what have we here; a couple of drowned rats? or have we trapped
+you at last, the ci-devant Savenaye and her _godam_ from England? I
+ought really to send you as a present to the Convention, but I am too
+soft-hearted, you see, my pigeons; and so, to save time and make sure,
+we will marry you to-day."
+
+One of the officers whispers some words in his ear, which Thureau,
+suddenly growing purple with rage, denies with a foul oath and an
+emphatic thump of his huge fist on the table.
+
+"Hoche has forbidden it, has he? Hoche does not command here. Hoche
+has not had to hunt down the brigands these last two years. Dead the
+beast, dead the venom, I say. And here is the order," scribbling
+hurriedly on a page torn from a pocket-book. "It shall not be said
+that I have had the bitch of Savenaye in my hands and trusted her on
+the road again. Hoche has forbidden it! Call the cantineer and hop:
+the marriage and quick--the soup waits."
+
+Unable to understand the hidden meaning of the order, Adrian looks at
+his lady askance, to find that, with eyes closed upon the sight of the
+grinning faces, she is whispering prayers and fervently crossing
+herself. When she turns to him again her face is almost serene.
+
+"They are going to drown us together; that is their republican
+marriage of aristocrats," she says in soft English. "I had feared
+worse. Thank heaven there is no time now for worse. We shall be firm
+to the last, shall we not, cousin?"
+
+There is a pathetic smile on her worn weather-stained face, as the
+cantineer and a corporal enter with ropes and proceed to pinion the
+prisoners.
+
+But, as they are marched away once more under the slanting rain, are
+forced into a worn-out boat and lashed face to face, her fortitude
+melts apace.
+
+"There, my turtle-doves," sneers the truculent corporal, "another
+kindness of the general. The Nantes way is back to back, but he
+thought it would amuse you to see each other's grimaces."
+
+On the strand resounds the muffled roll of wet drums, announcing the
+execution of national justice; with one blow of an axe the craft is
+scuttled; a push from a gaff sends it spinning on the swift swollen
+waters into the estuary. Adrian's lips are on her forehead, but she
+lifts her face; her eyes now are haggard.
+
+"Adrian," she sobs, "you have forgiven me? I have your death on my
+soul! Oh, Adrian, ... I could have loved you!"
+
+Helpless and palsied by the merciless ropes, she tries passionately to
+reach her little mouth to his. A stream of fire rushes through his
+brain--maddening frenzy of regret, furious clinging to escaping
+life!--Their lips have met, but the sinking craft is full, and, with a
+sudden lurch, falls beneath the eddies.... A last roll of the drums,
+and the pinioned bodies of these lovers of a few seconds are silently
+swirling under the waters of the Vilaine.
+
+And now the end of this poor life has come--with heart-breaking sorrow
+of mind and struggle of body, overpowering horror at the writhings of
+torture in the limbs lashed against his--and vainly he strives to
+force his last breath into her hard-clenched mouth.
+
+Such was the end of Adrian Landale, aged twenty--the end that should
+have been--The pity that it was not permitted!
+
+After the pangs of unwelcome death, the misery of unwelcome return to
+life. Oh, Rene, Rene, too faithful follower; thou and the other true
+men who, heedless of danger, hanging on the flanks of the victorious
+enemy, never ceased to watch your lady from afar. You would have saved
+her, could courage and faithfulness and cunning have availed! But,
+since she was dead, Rene, would thou hadst left us to drift on to the
+endless sea! How often have I cursed thee, good friend, who staked thy
+life in the angry bore to snatch two spent bodies from its merciless
+tossing. It was not to be endured, said you, that the remains of the
+Lady of Savenaye should drift away unheeded, to be devoured by the
+beasts of the sea! They now repose in sacred ground, and I live on!
+Oh, hadst thou but reached us a minute later!--ah, God, or a minute
+earlier!
+
+Rarely had Sir Adrian's haunting visions of the past assumed such
+lurid reality. Rising in torment from the hearth to pace unceasingly
+the length and breadth of the restful, studious room, so closely
+secure from the outer turmoil of heaven and earth, he is once more
+back in the unknown sea-cave, in front of the angry breakers. Slowly,
+agonisingly, he is recalled to life through wheeling spaces of pain
+and confusion, only that his bruised and smarting eyes may see the
+actual proof of his own desolateness--a small, stark figure wrapped in
+coarse sailcloth, which now two or three ragged, long-haired men are
+silently lifting between them.
+
+He wonders, at first, vaguely, why the tears course down those wild,
+dark faces; and then, as vainly he struggles to speak, and is gently
+held down by some unknown hand, the little white bundle is gone, and
+he knows that _there_ was the pitiful relict of his love--that he will
+never see her again!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Adrian halted in front of his seaward window, staring at the
+driven rain, which bounded and plashed and spread in minute torrents
+down the glass, obscuring the already darkening vision of furious sea
+and sky.
+
+The dog, that for some moments had shown an anxious restlessness in
+singular concert with his master's, now rose at last to sniff beneath
+the door. No sound penetrated the roar of the blast; but the old
+retriever's uneasiness, his sharp, warning bark at length recalled Sir
+Adrian's wandering thoughts to the present. And, walking up to the
+door, he opened it.
+
+Oh, God! Had the sea given up its dead?
+
+Sir Adrian staggered back, fell on his knees and clapped his hands
+together with an agonised cry:
+
+"Cecile...!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE WHEEL OF TIME
+
+                     And to his eye
+    There was but one beloved face on earth,
+    And that was shining on him.
+
+    BYRON.
+
+
+Upon the threshold she stood, looking in upon him with dark, luminous
+eyes; round the small wet face tangles of raven hair fell limp and
+streaming; dark raiments clung to her form, diapered with sand and
+sea-foam, sodden with the moisture that dripped from them to the
+floor; under the hem of her skirt one foot peered forth, shoeless in
+its mud-stained stocking.
+
+Sir Adrian stared up at her, his brain whirling with a frenzy of joy,
+gripped in its soaring ecstasy by terror of the incomprehensible.
+
+On the wings of the storm and the wind had she come to him, his
+love--across the awful barriers that divide life and death? Had his
+longings and the clamour of his desolate soul reached her, after all
+these years, in the far-beyond, and was her sweet ghost here to bid
+him cease from them and let her lie at rest? Or, yet, had she come to
+call him from the weary world that their souls might meet and be one
+at last?... Then let her but lay her lips against his, as once in the
+bitterness of death, that his sorely-tried heart may break with the
+exquisite pang and he, too, may die upon their kiss.
+
+Swift such thoughts were tossing in the turmoil of his mind when the
+vision smiled ... a young, rosy, living smile; and then reason,
+memory, the wonder of her coming, the haunting of her grave went from
+him; possessed by one single rapturous certainty he started up and
+gathered the wet form into his strong arms--yet gently as if he feared
+to crush the vision into void--and showered kisses on the wet face.
+
+Not death--but life! A beating heart beneath his; a lithe young form
+under his hand, warm lips to his kisses, ... Merciful Heaven! Were,
+then, these twenty years all an evil, fevered dream, and was he awake
+at length?
+
+She turned her face from him after a moment and put her hand against
+his breast to push him from her; and as she did so the wonder in the
+lovely, familiar eyes turned to merriment, and the lips parted into
+laughter.
+
+The sound of the girlish laughter broke the spell. Sir Adrian stepped
+back, and passed his hand across his forehead with a dazed look.
+
+And still she laughed on.
+
+"Why, cousin Landale," she said, at length between the peals; "I came
+to throw myself upon your kindness for shelter from the storm, but--I
+had not anticipated such a reception."
+
+The voice, clear and sweet, with just a tinge of outlandish
+intonation, struck Adrian to the heart.
+
+"I have not heard," he faltered, "that voice for twenty years...!"
+
+Then, coming up to her, he took her hands; and, drawing her towards
+the firelight, scanned her features with eager, hungering eyes.
+
+"Do not think me mad, child," he said at last; "tell me who you
+are--what has brought you here? Ah, God, at such a moment! Who is it,"
+he pursued, as if to himself, whilst still she smiled mockingly and
+answered not; "who is it, then, since Cecile de Savenaye is dead--and
+I am not dreaming--nor in fever? No vision either--this is flesh and
+blood."
+
+"Yes, indeed," mocked the girl with another burst of merriment; "flesh
+and blood, please, and very living! Why, cousin Landale, you that knew
+Cecile de Savenaye so well have you forgotten two babes that were born
+at your own house of Pulwick? I believe, 'tis true, I have somewhat
+altered since you saw me last."
+
+And again the old room echoed to the unwonted sound of a girl's
+laughter.
+
+Now was the hallucination clearing; but the reality evoked a new and
+almost as poignant tenderness. Cecile--phantom of a life-time's love,
+reborn in the flesh, young as on the last day of her earthly
+existence, coming back into his life again, even the same as she had
+left it! A second wonder, almost as sweet as the first! He clung to
+it as one clings to the presence of a dream, and, joy unspeakable, the
+dream did not melt away, but remained, smiling, beautiful, unchanged.
+
+"Cecile's daughter ..." he murmured: "Cecile's self again; but she was
+not so tall, I think," and drew trembling, reverent hands from her
+head to her straight young shoulders. And then he started, crying in a
+changed voice:
+
+"How wet and cold you are! Come closer to the fire--sit you into this
+chair, here, in the warmth."
+
+He piled up the hearth with faggots till the flames roared again. She
+dropped into the proffered chair with a little shiver; now that he
+recalled her to it, she was wet and cold too.
+
+He surveyed her with gathering concern.
+
+"My child," he began, and hesitated, continuing, after a short pause
+of musing--for the thought struck him as strange--"I may call you so,
+I suppose; I that am nearly old enough to be your father; my mind was
+so unhinged by your sudden appearance, by the wonderful resemblance,
+that I have neglected all my duties as host. You will suffer from
+this--what shall we do to comfort you? Here, Jem, good dog! Call
+Rene!"
+
+The old retriever who, concluding that the visitor was welcome, had
+returned to his doze, here gathered his stiff limbs together, hobbled
+out through the doorway to give two or three yelping barks at some
+point on the stairs, and then crawl back to his cosy corner by the
+hearth.
+
+The girl laughed again. It was all odd, new, exciting. Adrian looked
+down at her. Cecile, too, had had a merry heart, even through peril
+and misfortune.
+
+And now there were hasty steps upon the stairs, creaking above the
+outer tumult of sea and wind; and, in accordance with the
+long-established custom of summoning him, Rene appeared upon the
+threshold, holding a pair of candles.
+
+At the sight of the figure sitting by the fire he halted, as if rooted
+to the ground, and threw up his hands, each still clutching its
+candle.
+
+"Mademoiselle...!" he ejaculated. "Mademoiselle here!" Then, rapidly
+recovering his quick wits, he deposited his burden of light upon the
+table, advanced towards the lady, made an uncouth but profound bow,
+and turned to his master.
+
+"And this, your honour," he remarked, oracularly, and in his usual
+manner of literal adaptation, "was also part of the news I had for
+your honour from my last journey; but, my faith, I did not know how to
+take myself to it, as your honour was so much occupied with old times
+this evening. But I had seen Mademoiselle at the castle, as
+Mademoiselle can tell you herself. And if your honour," he added, with
+a look of astonishment, "will have the goodness to say how it is
+possible that Mademoiselle managed to arrive here on our isle, in this
+weather of all the devils--reverence speaking, and I humbly beg the
+pardon of Mademoiselle for using such words--when it was with pain I
+could land myself, and that before the storm--I should be grateful to
+your honour. For I avow I cannot comprehend it at all. Ah, your
+honour!" continued Rene, with an altered tone, "'tis a strange thing,
+this!"
+
+The looks of master and man crossed suddenly, and in the frank blue
+eyes of the Breton peasant, Sir Adrian read a reflex of his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Yes," he said, more in answer to the look than to the exclamation,
+"yes, it is a strange thing, friend."
+
+"And his Honour cannot read the riddle any more than you yourself,
+Rene," quoth Mademoiselle de Savenaye, composedly from her corner;
+"and, as for me, I can give no explanations until I am a little
+warmer."
+
+"Why, truly," exclaimed Sir Adrian, striking his forehead, "we are a
+very pair of dolts! Hurry, Renny, hurry, call up Margery, and bid her
+bring some hot drink--tea, broth, or what she has--and blankets. Stay!
+first fetch my furred cloak; quick, Rene, every moment is precious!"
+
+With all the agitation of a rarely excited man Sir Adrian threw more
+wood on the fire, hunted for a cushion to place beneath her feet, and
+then, seizing the cloak from Rene's hands, he helped her to rise, and
+wrapped its ample folds round her as carefully as if she were too
+precious almost to be touched.
+
+Thus enveloped she sank back in the great arm-chair with a cosy,
+deliberate, kitten-like movement, and stretched out her feet to the
+blaze, laying the little shoeless one upon Jem's grey muzzle.
+
+Adrian knelt beside her, and began gently to chafe it with both hands.
+And, as he knelt, silence fell between them, and the storm howled out
+yonder; he heard her give a little sigh--that sigh which would escape
+from Cecile's weariness in moments of rest, which had once been so
+familiar and so pathetic a sound in his ear. And once more the power
+of the past came over him; again he was upon the heath near Quiberon,
+and Cecile was sitting by him and seeking warmth by the secret fire.
+
+"Oh, my darling," he murmured, "your poor little feet were so cold;
+and yet you would not let me gather them to my breast." And, stooping
+slowly, he kissed the pretty foot in its torn, stained stocking with a
+passion he had not yet shown.
+
+The girl looked on with an odd little smile. It was a novel
+experience, to inspire--even vicariously--such feelings as these; and
+there was something not unpleasant in the sense of the power which had
+brought this strange handsome man prostrate before her--a maidenly
+tremor, too, in the sensation of those burning lips upon her feet.
+
+He raised his eyes suddenly, with the old expectation of a rebuff; and
+then, at the sight of the youthful, curious face above him, betook
+himself to sighing too; and, laying the little foot back tenderly upon
+the cushion, he rose.
+
+From between the huge fur collar which all but covered her head, the
+black eyes followed him as alertly as a bird's; intercepting the soft
+melancholy of his gaze, she smiled at him, mischievous, confident, and
+uncommunicative, and snuggled deeper into the fur.
+
+Leaning against the high mantel-board, he remained silent, brooding
+over her; the clock ticked off solemnly the fleeting moments of the
+wonderful hour; and ever and anon the dog drew a long breath of
+comfort and stretched out his gaunt limbs more luxuriously to the
+heat. After a while Sir Adrian spoke.
+
+"He who has hospitality to dispense," said he, smiling down at her
+mutinous grace, "should never ask whence or how the guest came to his
+hearth ... and yet--"
+
+She made a slight movement of laziness, but volunteered nothing; and
+he continued, his look becoming more wistful as he spoke:
+
+"Your having reached this rock, during such weather, is startling
+enough; it is God's providence that there should live those in these
+ruins who are able to give you succour. But that you should come in to
+me at the moment you did--" He halted before the bold inquisitive
+brightness of her eyes. "Some day perhaps you will let me explain," he
+went on, embarrassed. "Indeed I must have seemed the most absolute
+madman, to you. But he who thinks he sees one returned from death in
+angry waters, may be pardoned some display of emotion."
+
+The girl sat up briskly and shook herself as if in protest against the
+sadness of his smile and look.
+
+"I rise indeed from a watery grave," she said lightly, "or at least
+from what should have been my grave, had I had my deserts for my
+foolishness; as it has turned out I do not regret it now; though I
+did, about midway."
+
+The red lips parted and the little teeth gleamed. "I have found such
+kindness and welcome." She caressed the dog who, lazily, tried to lick
+her hand. "It is all such an adventure; so much more amusing than
+Pulwick; so much more interesting than ever I fancied it might be!"
+
+"Pulwick; you come from Pulwick?" said Sir Adrian musing; "true, Rene
+has said it but just now. Yet, it is of a piece with the strangeness
+of it all."
+
+"Yes," said Mademoiselle de Savenaye, once more collecting her cloak,
+which her hurried movement had thrown off her shoulder. "Madelon and I
+are now at Pulwick--I am Molly, cousin, please to remember--or rather
+I am here, very warm now, and comfortable, and she is somewhere along
+the shore--perhaps--she and John, as wet as drowned rats. Well, well,
+I had best tell you the tale from the beginning, or else we never
+shall be out of the labyrinth.--We started from Pulwick, for a ride by
+the shore, Madelon and I. When we were on the strand it came on to
+rain. There was smoke out of your chimney. I proposed a canter as far
+as the ruins, for shelter. I knew very well Madelon would not follow;
+but I threw poor Lucifer--you know Lucifer, Mr. Landale has reserved
+him for me; of course you know Lucifer, I believe he belongs to you!
+Well, I threw him along the causeway. John, he's the groom you know,
+and Madelon, shrieked after me. But it was beautiful--this magnificent
+tearing gallop in the rain--I was not going to stop.--But when we
+were half way, Lucifer and I, I saw suddenly that the foam seemed to
+cover the sand in front of me. Then I pulled up quick and turned round
+to look behind me. There was already a frightful wind, and the sand
+and the rain blinded me almost, but there was no mistake--the sea was
+running between the shore and me. Oh! my God! but I was frightened
+then; I beat poor Lucifer until my whip broke, and he started away
+with a will. But when his feet began to splash the water he too became
+frightened and stopped. I did not know what to do; I pulled out my
+broach to spur him with the pin, but, at the first prick I gave him,
+he reared, and swerved and I fell right on my face in the froth. I got
+up and began to run through the water; then I came to some stones and
+I knew I was saved, though the water was up to my knees and rushing by
+like a torrent. When I had clambered up the beach I thought again of
+poor Lucifer. I looked about and saw him a little way off. He was
+shaking and tossing his dear black head, and neighing, though I really
+did not hear him, for the wind was in my ears; his body was stock
+still, I could not see his legs.... And gradually he sank lower, and
+lower, and lower, and at last the water passed over his head. Oh! it
+was horrible, horrible!"
+
+The girl shuddered and her bright face clouded. After a moment she
+resumed:
+
+"It was only then I thought of the moving sands they spoke of the
+other day at Pulwick--and that was why Madelon and that poltroon groom
+would not follow me! Yet perhaps they were wise, after all, for the
+thought of being buried alive made me turn weak all of a sudden. My
+knees shook and I had to sit down, although I knew I had passed
+through the danger. But I was so sorry for poor Lucifer! I thought if
+I had come down and led him, poor fellow, he might have come with me.
+Death is so awful, so hideous; he was so full of life and carried me
+so bravely, only a few minutes before! Is it not a shame that there
+should be such a thing as death?" she cried, rebelliously, and looked
+up at the man above her, whose face had grown white at the thought of
+the danger she had barely escaped.
+
+"I waited," she resumed at length, "till I thought he must be quite
+dead, there below, and came up to the ruins, and looked for an
+entrance. I knocked at some doors and called, but the wind was so
+loud, no one heard. And then, at last, there was one door I could
+open, so I entered and came up the stairs and startled you, as you
+know. And that is how I came here and how Lucifer is drowned."
+
+As she finished her tale at last, she looked up at her companion. But
+Sir Adrian, who had followed her with ever-deepening earnestness of
+mien, remained silent; noticing which she added quickly and with a
+certain tinge of defiance:
+
+"And now, no doubt, you are not quite so pleased as you seemed at
+first with the apparition which has caused you the loss of one of your
+best horses!"
+
+"Why child," cried Sir Adrian, "so that you be safe you might have
+left all Pulwick at the bottom of the sands for me!" And Rene who
+entered the room at that moment, heading the advance of Dame Margery
+with the posset, here caught the extraordinary sound of a laugh on his
+master's lips, and stepped back to chuckle to himself and rub his
+hands.
+
+"Who would have believed that!" he muttered, "and I who was afraid to
+tell his honour! Oh, yes, there are better times coming. Now in with
+you, Mother Margery, see for yourself who is there."
+
+Holding in both hands a fragrant, steaming bowl, the old crone made
+her slow entrance upon the scene, peering with dim eyes, and dropping
+tremulous curtseys every two or three steps.
+
+"Renny towd me as you wanted summat hot for a lady," she began
+cautiously; and then having approached near for recognition at last,
+burst forth into a long-drawn cry!
+
+"Eh, you never says! Eh, dear o' me," and was fain to relinquish the
+bowl to her fellow-servant who narrowly watching, dived forward just
+in time to catch it from her, that she might clasp her aged hands
+together once and again with ever-renewed gestures of astonishment.
+"An' it were truth then, an' I that towd Renny to give over his
+nonsense--I didn't believe it, I welly couldn't. Eh, Mester Adrian,
+but she's like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit an' image
+she is--e-eh, she is!"
+
+Molly de Savenaye laughed aloud, stretched out her hand for the bowl,
+and began with dainty caution to sip its scalding contents.
+
+"Ah, my dear Margery," said the master, "we little thought what a
+guest the sea would cast up at our doors to-night! and now we must do
+our best for her; when she's finished your comforting mixture I shall
+give her into your charge. You ought to put her to bed--it will not be
+the first time."
+
+"Ah! it will not, and a troublesome child she was," replied Margery,
+after the usual pause for the assimilation of his remark, turning to
+the speaker from her palsied yet critical survey of her whilom
+nursling.
+
+"And I'll see to her, never fear, I'll fettle up a room for her at
+once--blankets is airing already, an' sheets, an' Renny he's seen to
+the fire, so that as soon as Miss, here, is ready, I am."
+
+Upon which, dropping a last curtsey with an assumed dignity which
+would have befitted a mistress of the robes, she took her departure,
+leaving Adrian smiling with amusement at her specious manner of
+announcing that his own bedroom--the only one available for the
+purpose in the ruins--was being duly converted into a lady's bower.
+
+"It grieves me to think," mused he after a pause, while Rene still
+bursting with ungratified curiosity, hung about the further end of the
+room, "of the terrible anxiety they must be in about you at Pulwick,
+and of our absolute inability to convey to them the good news of your
+safety."
+
+The girl gave a little laugh, with her lips over the cup, and shrugged
+her shoulders but said nothing.
+
+"My God, yes," quoth Rene cheerfully from his corner. "Notre Dame
+d'Auray has watched over Mademoiselle to-day. She would not permit the
+daughter to die like the mother. And now we have got her ladyship we
+shall keep her too. This, if your honour remembers his sailor's
+knowledge, looks like a three-days' gale."
+
+"You are right, I fancy," said Sir Adrian, going over to him and
+looking out of the window. "Mademoiselle de Savenaye will have to take
+up her abode in our lighthouse for a longer time than she bargained. I
+do not remember hearing the breakers thunder in our cave so loud for
+many years. I trust," continued the light-keeper, coming down to his
+fair guest again, "that you may be able to endure such rough
+hospitality as ours must needs be!"
+
+"It has been much more pleasant and I feel far more welcome already
+than at Pulwick," remarked Mademoiselle, between two deliberate sips,
+and in no way discomposed, it seemed, at the prospect held out to her.
+
+"How?" cried Sir Adrian with a start, while the unwonted flush mounted
+to his forehead, "you, not welcome at Pulwick! Have they not welcomed
+a child of Cecile de Savenaye at Pulwick?... Thank God, then, for the
+accident that has sent you to me!"
+
+The girl looked at him with an inquisitive smile in her eyes; there
+was something on her lips which she restrained. Surrendering her cup,
+she remarked demurely:
+
+"Yes, it was a lucky accident, was it not, that there was some one
+to offer shelter to the outcast from the sea? It is like a tale of
+old. It is delightful. Delightful, too, not to be drowned, safe and
+sound ... and welcome in this curious old place."
+
+She had risen and, as the cloak fell from her steaming garments, again
+she shivered.
+
+"But you are right," she said, "I must go to bed, and get these damp
+garments off. And so, my Lord of Scarthey, I will retire to my
+apartments; my Lady in Waiting I see yonder is ready for me."
+
+With a quaint mixture of playfulness and gravity, she extended her
+hand, and Adrian stooped and kissed it--as he had kissed fair Cecile
+de Savenaye's rosy finger-tip upon the porch of Pulwick, twenty years
+before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FOREBODINGS OF GLADNESS
+
+
+Molly de Savenaye in her improvised bedroom, wet as she was, could
+hardly betake herself to disrobing, so amused was she in surveying the
+fresh and romantic oddity of her surroundings, with their mixture of
+barbarous rudeness and almost womanish refinement.
+
+Old Margery's fumbling hands were not nimble either, and it was long
+since she had acted as attendant upon one of her own sex. And so the
+matter progressed but slowly; but the speed of Margery's tongue was
+apparently not affected by its length of service. It wagged
+ceaselessly; the girl between her own moods of curious speculation
+vouchsafing an amused, half-contemptuous ear.
+
+Presently, however, as the nurse's reminiscences wandered from the
+less interesting topic of her own vicissitudes, the children she had
+reared or buried, and the marvellous ailments she had endured, to an
+account of those days when she had served the French Madam and her
+babes, Molly, slowly peeling a clinging sleeve from her arm, turned a
+more eager and attentive face to her.
+
+"Ah," quoth Margery, appraising her with blear eyes, "it's a queer
+thing how ye favour your mother, miss. She had just they beautiful
+shoulders and arms, as firm an' as white; but you're taller, I think,
+and may be so, to speak, a stouter make altogether. Eh, dear, you were
+always a fine child and the poor lady set a deal of store on you, she
+did. She took you with her and left your sister with my Sally, when
+she was trapesing up to London and back with Mester Adrian, ay, and me
+with ye. And many the day that I wished myself safe at Pulwick! And I
+mind the day she took leave of you, I do that, well."
+
+Here Dame Margery paused and shook her head solemnly, then pursued in
+another key:
+
+"See now, miss, dear, just step out of they wet things, will ye now,
+and let me put this hot sheet round ye?"
+
+"But I want to hear about myself," said Molly, gratefully wrapping the
+hot linen round her young beauty, and beginning to rub her black locks
+energetically. "Where was it my mother parted from me?"
+
+"Why, I'll tell you, miss. When Madam--we allus used to call her
+Madam, ye know--was goin' her ways to the ship as was to take her to
+France, I took you after her mysel' down to the shore that she might
+have the very last of ye. Eh, I mind it as if it were yesterday.
+Mester Adrian was to go with her--Sir Adrian, I should say, but he was
+but Mester Adrian then--an' a two three more o' th' gentry as was all
+fur havin' a share o' th' fightin'. Sir Thomas himsel' was theer--I
+like as if I could see him now, poor owd gentleman, talkin' an'
+laughin' very hard an' jov'al, an' wipin' 's e'en when he thought
+nobody noticed. Eh, dear, yes! I could ha' cried mysel' to see th'
+bonny young lady goin' off fro' her bairns. An' to think she niver
+came back to them no more. Well, well! An' Mester Adrian too--such a
+fine well-set-up young gentleman as he were--and _he_ niver comed back
+for ten year an' when he did, he was that warsened--" she stopped,
+shook her head and groaned.
+
+"Well, but how about me, nurse," observed Molly, "what about _me_?"
+
+"Miss, please it was this way. Madam was wantin' a last look at her
+bairn--eh, she did, poor thing! You was allus her favoryite, ye know,
+miss--our Sally was wet-nurse to Miss Maddyline, but Madam had you
+hersel'. Well, miss, I'd brought you well lapped up i' my shawl an'
+William Shearman--that was Thomas Shearman's son, feyther to William
+an' Tom as lives over yonder at Pulwick village--well, William was
+standin' in 's great sea-boots ready to carry her through th' surf
+into the boat; an' Mester Adrian--Sir Adrian, I mean--stood it might
+be here, miss, an' there was Renny, an' yon were th' t'other gentry.
+Well, Madam stopped an' took you out o' my arms, an' hugged you to her
+breast--an' then she geet agate o' kissin' you--your head an' your
+little 'ands. An' you was jumpin' an' crowin' in her arms--the wind
+had blown your cap off, an' your little downy black hair was standing
+back. (Just let me get at your hair now, miss, please--Eh! it's cruel
+full of sand, my word, it is.)"
+
+"It's 'ard, when all's said an' done, to part wi' th' babe ye've
+suckled, an' Madam, though there was niver nought nesh about 'er same
+as there is about most women, an' specially ladies--she 'ad th'
+mother's 'eart, she 'ad, miss, an when th' time coom for her to leave
+th' little un, I could see, as it were, welly burstin'. There we stood
+wi' th' wind blowin' our clothes an' our 'air, an' the waves roarin',
+an' one bigger nor th' t'others ran up till th' foam reached Madam's
+little feet, but she niver took no notice. Then all of a sudden she
+gets th' notion that she'd like to take you with 'er, an' she turns
+an' tells Mester Adrian so. 'She shall come with me,' she says, quite
+sharp an' determined, an' makes a sign to William Shearman to carry
+'em both over. 'No, no,' says Mester Adrian, 'quite impossible,' says
+he, as wise as if he'd been an owd man i' stead o' nobbut a lad, ye
+might say. 'It would be madness both for you an' th' child. Now,' he
+says, very quiet an' gentle, 'if I might advise, I should say stay
+here with the child.' Eh, I couldn't tell ye all he said, an' then Sir
+Tummas coom bustlin' up, 'Do, now, my dear; think of it,' he says,
+pattin' her o' th' hand. 'Stay with us,' he says, 'ye'll be welcome as
+th' flowers in May!' An' there was Renny wi' 's 'at off, an' th' tears
+pourin' down his face, beggin' an' prayin' Madam to stop--at least, I
+reckoned that was what he were sayin' for it was all in 's own
+outlandish gibberish. The poor lady! she'd look from one to th'
+t'other an' a body a' must think she'd give in--an' then she'd
+unbethink hersel' again. An' Sir Thomas, he'd say, 'Do now, my dear,'
+an' then when she'd look at him that pitiful, he'd out wi' 's red
+'andkercher an' frown over at Mester Adrian, an', says he, 'I wonder
+ye can ax her!' Well, all of a sudden off went th' big gun in th'
+ship--that was to let 'em know, miss, do ye see--an' up went Madam's
+head, an' then th' wind fetched th' salt spray to her face, an' a kind
+o' change came over her. She looked at the child, then across at the
+ship--an' then she fair tossed ye back to me. Big William catched her
+up in his arms just same as another bairn, an' carried her to the
+boat."
+
+"Yes," said Molly, gazing into the burning logs with brilliant eyes,
+but speaking low, as if to herself, so that her attendant's deaf ears
+failed to catch the meaning of the words. "Ah, that was life indeed!
+Happy mother to have seen such life--though she did die young."
+
+"As ye say, miss," answered Margery, making a guess at the most likely
+comment from a daughter's lips, "it was cruel hard--it was that.
+'Come, make haste!' cries the other young gentlemen: my word, they
+were in a hurry lest Madam happen to change her mind. I could welly
+have laughed to see their faces when Mester Adrian were trying to
+persuade her to stop at Pulwick, and let the men go alone. 'T wern't
+for that they reckoned to go all that road to France, ye may think,
+miss. Well, miss, in a few minutes they was all out i' the boat wi'
+th' waves tossin' 'em--an' I stood watchin' with you i' my arms,
+cryin' and kickin' out wi' your little legs, an' hittin' of me wi'
+your little 'ands, same as if ye knowed summat o' what was agate, poor
+lamb, an' was angry wi' me for keepin' ye. Then in a little while the
+big, white sails o' th' ship went swellin' out an' soon it was gone.
+An' that was th' last we saw o' Madam. A two-three year arter you an'
+Miss Maddyline was fetched away, to France, as I've been towd. I doubt
+you didn't so much as think there was such a place as Pulwick, though
+many a one there minds how they dandled and played wi' you when you
+was a wee bairn, miss."
+
+"Well, I am very glad to be back in England, anyhow," said Molly,
+nimbly slipping into bed. "Oh, Margery, what delicious warm sheets,
+and how good it is to be in bed alive, dry, and warm, after all!"
+
+A new atmosphere pervaded Scarthey that night. The peaceful monotony
+of years, since the master of Pulwick had migrated to his "ruins," was
+broken at last, and happily. A warm colour seemed to have crept upon
+the hitherto dun and dull surroundings and brightened all the
+prospects.
+
+At any rate Rene, over his busy work in the lantern, whistled and
+hummed snatches of song with unwonted blithesomeness, and, after
+lighting the steady watch-light and securing all his paraphernalia
+with extra care, dallied some time longer than usual on the outer
+platform, striving to snatch through the driven wraith a glance of the
+distant lights of Pulwick. For there, in the long distance, ensconced
+among the woods, stood a certain gate-lodge of greystone, much covered
+with ivy, which sheltered, among other inmates, the gatekeeper's
+blue-eyed, ripe and ruddy daughter--Dame Margery's pet grandchild.
+
+The idea of ever leaving the master--even for the sake of the
+happiness to be found over yonder--was not one to be entertained by
+Rene. But what if dreams of a return to the life of the world should
+arise after to-day in the recluse's mind? Ah, the master's eyes had
+been filled with light!... and had he not actually laughed?
+
+Rene peered again through the wind, but nothing could be seen of the
+world abroad, save grey, tumbling waters foaming at the foot of the
+islet; fretful waters coalescing all around with the driven, misty
+air. A desolate view enough, had there been room for melancholy
+thoughts in his heart.
+
+Blithely did he descend the steep wooden stairs from the roaring,
+weather-beaten platform, to the more secure inhabited keep; and,
+humming a satisfied tune, he entered upon Margery in her flaming
+kitchen, to find the old lady intent on sorting out a heap of feminine
+garments and spreading them before the fire.
+
+Rene took up a little shoe, sand-soiled and limp, and reverentially
+rubbed it on his sleeve.
+
+"Well, mother," he said, cheerfully, "it is a long while since you had
+to do with such pretty things. My faith, these are droll doings,
+ah--and good, too! You will see, Mother Margery, there will be good
+out of all this."
+
+But Margery invariably saw fit, on principle, to doubt all the
+opinions of her rival.
+
+Eh, she didn't hold so much wi' wenches hersel', an' Mester Adrian,
+she reckoned, hadn't come to live here all by himsel' to have visitors
+breaking in on him that gate!
+
+"There be visitors _and_ visitors, mother--I tell you, I who speak to
+you, that his honour is happy."
+
+Margery, with a mysterious air, smoothed out a long silk stocking and
+gave an additional impetus to the tremor Nature had already bestowed
+upon her aged head.
+
+Well, it wasn't for her to say. She hoped and prayed there was nowt
+bad a coomin' on the family again; but sich likenesses as that of Miss
+to her mother was not lucky, to her minding; it was not. Nowt good had
+come to Mester Adrian from the French Madam. Ah, Mester Adrian had
+been happy like with her too, and she had taken him away from his
+home, an' his people, an' sent him back wi'out 's soul in the end.
+
+"And now her daughter has come to give it him back," retorted Rene,
+as he fell to, with a zest, on the savoury mess he had concocted for
+his own supper.
+
+"Eh, well, I hope nowt bad's i' the road," said Margery with senile
+iteration. "They do say no good ever comes o' saving bodies from
+drowning; not that one 'ud wish the poor Miss to have gone into the
+sands--an' she the babby I weaned too!"
+
+Rene interrupted her with a hearty laugh. "Yes, every one knows it
+carries misfortune to save people from the drowning, but there, you
+see, her ladyship, she saved herself--so that ought to bring good
+fortune. Good-night, Mother Margery, take good care of the lady....
+Ah, how I wish I had the care of her!" he added simply, and, seizing
+his lantern, proceeded to ascend once more to his post aloft.
+
+He paused once on his way, in the loud sighing stairs, struck with a
+fresh aspect of the day's singular events--a quaint thought, born of
+his native religious faith: The Lady, the dear Mistress had just
+reached Heaven, no doubt, and had straightway sent them the young one
+to console and comfort them. Eh bien! they had had their time of
+Purgatory too, and now they might be happy.
+
+Pleasant therefore were Rene's musings, up in the light watcher's
+bunk, underneath the lantern, as, smoking a pipe of rest, he listened
+complacently to the hissing storm around him.
+
+And in the master's sleeping chamber beneath him, now so curiously
+turned into a feminine sanctum, pleasant thoughts too, if less formed,
+and less concerned with the future, lulled its dainty occupant to
+rest.
+
+Luxuriously stretched between the warm lavender-scented sheets,
+watching from her pillow the leaping fire on the hearth, Miss Molly
+wondered lazily at her own luck; at the many possible results of the
+day's escapade; wondered amusedly whether any poignant sorrow--except,
+indeed poor Madeleine's tears--for her supposed demise, really
+darkened the supper party at Pulwick this evening; wondered agreeably
+how the Lord of the Ruined Castle would meet her on the morrow, after
+his singular reception of her this day; how long she would remain in
+these romantic surroundings and whether she would like them as well at
+the end of the visitation.
+
+And as the blast howled with increasing rage, and the cold night drew
+closer on, and the great guns in the sea-cave boomed more angrily with
+the risen tide, she dimly began to dwell upon the thought of poor
+Lucifer being sucked deeper into his cold rapacious grave, whilst she
+was held in the warm embrace of a man whose eyes were masterful and
+yet gentle, whose arm was strong, whose kisses were tender.
+
+And in the delight of the contrast, Mademoiselle de Savenaye fell into
+the profound slumber of the young and vigorous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE PATH OF WASTED YEARS
+
+    And I only think of the woman that weeps;
+    But I forget, always forget, the smiling child.
+                                          _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+That night, even when sheer fatigue had subdued the currents of blood
+and thought that surged in his head, Sir Adrian was too restless to
+avail himself of the emergency couch providently prepared by Rene in a
+corner. But, ceasing his fretful pacing to and fro, he sat down in the
+arm-chair by the hearth where she had sat--the waif of the
+sea--wrapped round him the cloak that had enfolded the young body,
+hugging himself in the salt moisture the fur still retained, to spend
+the long hours in half-waking, firelight dreams.
+
+And every burst of tempest rage, every lash of rain at the window,
+every thud of hurricane breaking itself on impassable ramparts, and
+shriek of baffled winds searching the roofless halls around, found a
+strangely glad echo in his brain--made a sort of burden to his
+thoughts:
+
+Heap up the waters round this happy island, most welcome winds--heap
+them up high and boiling, and retain her long captive in these lonely
+ruins!
+
+And ever the image in his mind's eye was, as before, Cecile--Cecile
+who had come back to him, for all sober reason knew it was but the
+child.
+
+The child----! Why had he never thought of the children these weary
+years? They, all that remained of Cecile, were living and might have
+been sought. Strange that he had not remembered him of the children!
+
+Twenty years since he had last set eyes upon the little living
+creature in her mother's arms. And the picture that the memory evoked
+was, after all, Cecile again, only Cecile--not the queer little
+black-eyed puppet, even then associated with sea-foam and salty
+breeze. Twenty years during which she was growing and waxing in
+beauty, and unawares, maturing towards this wonderful meeting--and he
+had never given a thought to her existence.
+
+In what sheltered ways had this fair duplicate of his love been
+growing from a child to womanhood during that space of life, so long
+to look back upon--or so short and transient, according to the mood of
+the thinker?
+
+And, lazily, in his happier and tender present mood he tried to
+measure once again the cycles of past discontent, this time in terms
+of the girl's own lifetime.
+
+It is bitter in misery to recall past misery--almost as bitter, for
+all Dante's cry, as to dwell on past happiness. But, be the past
+really dead, and a new and better life begun, the scanning back of a
+sombre existence done with for ever, may bring with it a kind of
+secret complacency.
+
+Truly, mused Sir Adrian, for one who ever cherished ideal aspirations,
+for the student, the "man of books" (as his father had been
+banteringly wont to term him), worshipper of the muses, intellectual
+Epicurean, and would-be optimist philosopher, it must be admitted he
+had strangely dealt, and been dealt with, since he first beheld that
+face, now returned to light his solitude! Ah, God bless the child!
+Pulwick at least nursed it warmly, whilst unhappy Adrian, ragged and
+degraded into a mere fighting beast, roamed through the Marais with
+Chouan bands, hunted down by the merciless revolutionists, like
+vermin; falling, as months of that existence passed over him, from his
+high estate to the level of vermin indeed; outlawed, predatory,
+cunning, slinking, filthy--trapped at last, the fit end of vermin!
+
+Scarcely better the long months of confinement in the hulks of
+Rochelle. How often he had regretted it, then, not to have been one of
+the chosen few who, the day after capture, stood in front of six
+levelled muskets, and were sped to rest in some unknown charnel!
+Then!--not now. No, it was worth having lived to this hour, to know of
+that fair face, in living sleep upon his pillow, under the safeguard
+of his roof.
+
+Good it was, that he had escaped at last, though with the blood of one
+of his jailors red upon his hands; the blood of a perhaps innocent
+man, upon his soul. It was the only time he had taken a life other
+than in fair fight, and the thought of it had been wont to fill him
+with a sort of nausea; but to-night, he found he could face it, not
+only without remorse, but without regret. He was glad he had listened
+to Rene's insidious whispers--Rene, who could not endure the captivity
+to which his master might, in time, have fallen a passive, hopeless
+slave, and yet who would have faced a thousand years of it rather than
+escape alone--the faithful heart!
+
+Yes, it was good, and he was glad of it, or time would not have come
+when she (stay, how old was the child then?--almost three years, and
+still sheltered and cherished by the house of Landale)--when she would
+return, and gladden his eyes with a living sight of Cecile, while Rene
+watched in his tower above; ay, and old Margery herself lay once more
+near the child she had nursed.
+
+Marvellous turn of the wheel of fate!
+
+But, who had come for the children, and where had they been taken? To
+their motherland, perhaps; even it might have been before he himself
+had left it; or yet to Ireland, where still dwelt kinsfolk of their
+blood? Probably it was at the breaking up of the family, caused by the
+death of Sir Thomas, that these poor little birds had been removed
+from the nest, that had held them so safe and close.
+
+That was in '97, in the yellow autumn of which year Adrian Landale,
+then French fisherman, parted from his brother Rene L'Apotre upon the
+sea off Belle Isle; parted one grizzly dawn after embracing, as
+brothers should. Oh, the stealthy cold of that blank, cheerless
+daybreak, how it crept into the marrow of his bones, and chilled the
+little energy and spirits he had left! For a whole year they had
+fruitlessly sought some English vessel, to convey this English
+gentleman back to his native land. He could remember how, at the
+moment of separation, from the one friend who had loved both him and
+her, his heart sank within him--remember how he clambered from aboard
+the poor little smack, up the forbidding sides of the English brig;
+how Rene's broken words had bidden God bless him, and restore him
+safely home (home!); remember how swiftly the crafts had moved apart,
+the mist, the greyness and desolateness; the lapping of the waters,
+the hoarse cries of the seamen, all so full of heart-piercing
+associations to him, and the last vision of Rene's simple face, with
+tears pouring down it, and his open mouth spasmodically trying to give
+out a hearty cheer, despite the sobs that came heaving up to it. How
+little the simple fellow dreamed of what bitterness the future was yet
+holding for his brother and master, to end in these reunions at last!
+
+The vessel which had taken Adrian Landale on board, in answer to the
+frantic signals of the fishing-smack, that had sailed from Belle Isle
+obviously to meet her, proved to be a privateer, bound for the West
+Indies, but cruising somewhat out of her way, in the hope of outgoing
+prizes from Nantes.
+
+The captain, who had been led to expect something of importance from
+the smack's behaviour, in high dudgeon at finding that so much bustle
+and waste of time was only to burden him with a mere castaway seeking
+a passage home--one who, albeit a countryman, was too ragged and
+disreputable in looks to be trusted in his assurances of
+reward--granted him indeed the hospitality of his ship, but on the
+condition of his becoming a hand in the company during the forthcoming
+expedition.
+
+There was a rough measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrian
+accepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jump
+overboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removed
+from his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruise
+lasting over a year, during which the only changes rung in the gamut
+of its purpose were the swooping down, as a vulture might, upon
+unprotected ships; flying with superior speed from obviously stronger
+crafts; engaging, with hawk-like bravery, everything afloat that
+displayed inimical colours, if it offered an equal chance of fight.
+
+And this for more than a year, until the privateer, much battered, but
+safe, despite her vicissitudes made Halifax for refitting. Here, at
+the first suitable port she had touched, Adrian claimed and obtained
+his release from obligations which made his life almost unendurable.
+
+Then ensued a period of the most absolute penury; unpopular with most
+of his messmates for his melancholy taciturnity, despised by the more
+brutal as one who had as little stomach for a carouse as for a bloody
+fight, he left the ship without receiving, or even thinking of his
+share of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such mean
+mechanical employment as came in his way, till an opportunity was
+offered of engaging himself as seaman, again from sheer necessity, on
+a homeward-bound merchantman--an opportunity which he seized, if not
+eagerly, for there was no eagerness left in him, yet under the
+pressure of purpose.
+
+Next the long, slowly plodding, toilsome, seemingly eternal course
+across the ocean.
+
+But even a convoy, restricted to the speed of its slowest member, if
+it escape capture or natural destruction, must meet the opposite shore
+at length, and the last year of the century had lapsed in the even
+race of time when, after many dreary weeks, on the first of January
+1801, the long low lines of sandhills on the Lancastrian coast loomed
+in sight. The escort drew away, swiftly southwards, as if in joyful
+relief from the tedious task, leaving the convoy to enter the Mersey,
+safe and sound.
+
+That evening Adrian, the rough-looking and taciturn sailor, set foot,
+for a short while, on his native land, after six years of an exile
+which had made of him at five and twenty a prematurely aged and
+hopelessly disillusioned man.
+
+And Sir Adrian, as he mused, wrapped in the honoured fur cloak, with
+eyes half closed, by his sympathetic fire, recalled how little of joy
+this return had had for him. It was the goal he had striven to reach,
+and he had reached it, that was all; nay, he recalled how, when at
+hand, he had almost dreaded the actual arrival home, dreaded, with the
+infinite heart-sickness of sorrow, the emotions of the family welcome
+to one restored from such perils by flood and field--if not indeed
+already mourned for and forgotten--little wotting how far that return
+to Pulwick, that seemed near and certain, was still away in the dim
+future of life.
+
+Yet, but for the fit of hypochondriacal humour which had fallen black
+upon him that day of deliverance and made him yearn, with an intensity
+increasing every moment, to separate himself from his repugnant
+associates and haste the moment of solitude and silence, he might have
+been rescued, then and for ever, from the quagmire in which perverse
+circumstances had enslaved him.
+
+"Look'ee here, matey," said one of his fellow-workers to him, in a
+transient fit of good-fellowship which the prospect of approaching
+sprees had engendered in him even towards one whom all on board had
+felt vaguely to be of a different order, and disliked accordingly,
+"you don't seem to like a jolly merchantman--but, maybe, you wouldn't
+take more kindly to a man-o'-war. Do you see that there ship?--a
+frigate she is; and, whenever there's a King's ship in the Mersey that
+means that it's more wholesome for the likes of us to lie low. You
+take a hint, matey, and don't be about Liverpool to-night, or until
+she's gone. Now, I know a crib that's pretty safe, Birkenhead way;
+Mother Redcap's, we call it--no one's ever been nabbed at Mother
+Redcap's, and if you'll come along o' me--why then if you won't, go
+your way and be damned to you for a----"
+
+This was the parting of Adrian Landale from his fellow-workers. The
+idea of spending even one night more in that atmosphere of rum and
+filth, in the intimate hearing of blasphemous and obscene language,
+was too repulsive to be entertained, and he had turned away from the
+offer with a gesture of horror.
+
+With half a dozen others, in whose souls the attractions of the town
+at night proved stronger than the fear of the press party, he
+disembarked on the Lancashire side, and separating from his
+companions, for ever, as he thought, ascended the miserable lanes
+leading from the river to the upper town.
+
+His purpose was to sleep in one of the more decent hotels, to call the
+next day for help at the banking-house with which the Landales had
+dealt for ages past, and thence to take coach for Pulwick. But he had
+planned without taking reck of his circumstances. No hotel of repute
+would entertain this weather-beaten common sailor in the meanest of
+work-stained clothes. After failing at various places even to obtain a
+hearing, being threatened with forcible ejectment, derisively referred
+to suitable cribs in Love Lane or Tower Street, he gave up the
+attempt; and, in his usual dejection of spirit, intensified by
+unavowed and unreasonable anger, wandered through the dark streets,
+brooding. Thus aimlessly wandering, the remembrance of his young
+Utopian imaginings came back to him to mock him. Dreams of universal
+brotherhood, of equality, of harmony. He had already seen the apostles
+of equality and brotherhood at work--on the banks of the Vilaine. And
+realising how he himself, now reduced to the lowest level in the
+social scale, hunted with insult from every haunt above that level,
+yet loathed and abhorred the very thought of associating again with
+his recent brothers in degradation, he laughed a laugh of bitter
+self-contempt.
+
+But the night was piercing cold; and, in time, the question arose
+whether the stench and closeness of a riverside eating-house would not
+be more endurable than the cutting wind, the sleet, and the sharper
+pangs of hunger.
+
+His roaming had brought him once more to that quarter of the town
+"best suited to the likes of him," according to the innkeeper's
+opinion, and he found himself actually seeking a house of
+entertainment in the slimy, ill-lighted narrow street, when, from out
+the dimness, running towards him, with bare feet paddling in the
+sludge, came a slatternly girl, with unkempt wisps of red hair hanging
+over her face under the tartan shawl.
+
+"Run, run, Jack," she cried, hoarsely, as she passed by breathless,
+"t' gang's comin' up...."
+
+A sudden loathly fear seized Adrian by the heart. He too, took to his
+heels by the side of the slut with all the swiftness his tired frame
+could muster.
+
+"I'm going to warn my Jo," she gasped, as, jostling each other, they
+darted through a maze of nameless alleys.
+
+And then as, spent with running, they emerged at last into a broader
+street, it was to find themselves in the very midst of another party
+of man-of-war's men, whose brass belt-buckles glinted under the
+flickering light of the oil-lamp swinging across the way.
+
+Adrian stopped dead short and looked at the girl in mute reproach.
+
+"May God strike me dead," she screamed, clapping her hands together,
+"if I knew the bloody thieves were there! Oh, my bonny lad, I meant to
+save ye!" And as her words rang in the air two sailors had Adrian by
+the collar and a facetious bluejacket seized her round the waist with
+hideous bantering.
+
+A very young officer, wrapped up in a cloak, stood a few paces apart
+calmly looking on. To him Adrian called out in fierce, yet anguished,
+expostulation:
+
+"I am a free and independent subject, sir, an English gentleman. I
+demand that you order your men to release me. For heaven's sake," he
+added, pleadingly, "give me but a moment's private hearing!"
+
+A loud guffaw rang through the group. In truth, if appearances make
+the gentleman, Adrian was then but a sorry specimen.
+
+The officer smiled--the insufferable smile of a conceited boy raised
+to authority.
+
+"I can have no possible doubt of your gentility, sir," he said, with
+mocking politeness, and measuring, under the glimmering light, first
+the prisoner, from head to foot, and then the girl who, scratching and
+blaspheming, vainly tried to make her escape; "but, sir, as a
+free-born English gentleman, it will be your duty to help his Majesty
+to fight his French enemies. Take the English gentleman along, my
+lads!"
+
+A roar of approbation at the officer's facetiousness ran through the
+party.
+
+"An' his mother's milk not dry upon his lips," cried the girl, with a
+crow of derisive fury, planting as she spoke a sounding smack on a
+broad tanned face bent towards her. The little officer grew pink.
+"Come, my men, do your duty," he thundered, in his deepest bass.
+
+A rage such as he never had felt in his life suddenly filled Adrian's
+whole being. He was a bigger man than any of the party, and the rough
+life that fate had imposed on him, had fostered a strength of limb
+beyond the common. A thrust of his knee prostrated one of his captors,
+a blow in the eye from his elbow staggered the other; the next instant
+he had snatched away the cutlass which a third was drawing, and with
+it he cleared, for a moment, a space around him.
+
+But as he would have bounded into freedom, a felling blow descended on
+his head from behind, a sheet of flame spread before his eyes, and
+behind this blaze disappeared the last that Adrian Landale was to see
+of England for another spell of years.
+
+When he came back to his senses he was once more on board ship--a
+slave, legally kidnapped; degraded by full and proper warrant from his
+legitimate status for no crime that could even be invented against
+him; a slave to be retained for work or war at his master's pleasure,
+liable like a slave to be flogged to death for daring to assert his
+light of independence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The memory of that night's doing and of the odious bondage to which
+it was a prelude, rarely failed to stir the gall of resentment in Sir
+Adrian; men of peaceable instincts are perhaps the most prone to the
+feeling of indignation.
+
+But, to-night, a change had come over the spirit of his dreams; he
+could think of that past simply as the past--the period of time which
+would have had to be spent until the advent of the wonder-working
+present: these decrees of Fate had had a purpose. Had the past, by one
+jot, been different, the events of this admirable day might never have
+been.
+
+The glowing edifice on the hearth collapsed with a darting of sudden
+flame and a rolling of red cinders. Sir Adrian rose to rebuild his
+fire for the night; and, being once roused, was tempted by the
+ruddiness of the wine, glinting under the quiet rays of the lamp, to
+advance to the table and partake of his forgotten supper.
+
+The calm atmosphere, the warmth and quiet of the room, in which he
+broke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by the
+hearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiry
+concerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; the
+serene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angry
+voices of elements without, answered to the peace--the strange
+peace--that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of such
+uncongenial memories as now rose up before him in vivid concatenation.
+
+She was then five years old. Where was she, when he began that
+seemingly endless cruise with the frigate _Porcupine_? He tried to
+fancy a Cecile five years old--a chubby, curly-headed mite, nursing
+dolls and teasing kittens, whilst he was bullied and browbeaten by
+coarse petty officers, shunned and hated by his messmates, and flogged
+at length by a tyrannizing captain for obduracy--but he could only see
+a Cecile in the spring of womanhood, nestling in the arm-chair yonder
+by the fire and looking up at him from the folds of a fur cloak.
+
+She was seven years old when he was flogged. Ah, God! those had been
+days! And yet, in the lofty soul of him he had counted it no disgrace;
+and he had been flogged again, ay, and a third time for that obstinate
+head that would not bend, that obstinate tongue that would persist in
+demanding restitution of liberty. The life on board the privateer had
+been a matter of bargain; he had bartered also labour and obedience
+with the merchantman for the passage home, but the king had no right
+to compel the service of a free man!
+
+She was but twelve years old when he was finally released from
+thraldom--it had only lasted four years after all; yet what a cycle
+for one of his temper! Four years with scarce a moment of
+solitude--for no shore-leave was ever allowed to one who openly
+repudiated any service contract: four years of a life, where the sole
+prospect of change was in these engagements, orgies of carnage, so
+eagerly anticipated by officers and men alike, including himself,
+though for a reason little suspected by his companions. But even the
+historic sea-fights of the _Porcupine_, so far as they affected Adrian
+Landale, formed in themselves a chain of monotony. It was ever the
+same hurling of shot from ship to ship, the same fierce exchange of
+cutlass-throws and pike-pushes between men who had never seen each
+other before; the same yelling and execrations, sights, sounds, and
+smells ever the same in horror; the same cheers when the enemy's
+colours were lowered, followed by the same transient depression; the
+cleansing of decks from stains of powder and mire of human blood, the
+casting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work,
+broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste
+blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all
+the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him
+again. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, the
+next occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate of
+Adrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber or
+falling tackles should put an end to his dreary life, welcome as such
+an end would have been to him then.
+
+Then ... but not now. Remembering now his unaccountable escape from
+the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose
+eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a
+desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind
+the trite old adage:
+
+"Man proposeth..."
+
+God had disposed otherwise.
+
+It was not destined that Adrian Landale should be shot on the high
+seas any more than he should be drowned in the rolling mud of the
+Vilaine--he was reserved for this day as a set-off to all the
+bitterness that had been meted out to him; he was to see the image of
+his dead love rise from the sea once more. And, meanwhile, his very
+despair and sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not be
+said, if history should take count of the fact, that while the Lord of
+Pulwick had served four years before the mast, he had ever disgraced
+his name by cowardice....
+
+Whether such reasonings were in accordance even with the most
+optimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might have
+doubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with the
+grateful relaxation that a happy break brings in the midst of
+long-drawn melancholy.
+
+Everything had been working towards this end--that he should be the
+light-keeper of Scarthey on the day when out of the raging waters
+Cecile would rise and knock and ask for succour at his chamber.
+
+Cecile! pshaw!--raving again.
+
+Well, the child! Where was she on the day of the last engagement of
+that pugnacious _Porcupine_, in the year 1805, when England was freed
+from her long incubus of invasion? She was then twelve.
+
+It had seemed if nothing short of a wholesale disaster could terminate
+that incongruous existence of his.
+
+The last action of the frigate was a fruitless struggle against
+fearful odds. After a prolonged fight with an enemy as dauntless as
+herself, with two-thirds of her ship's company laid low, and commanded
+at length by the youngest lieutenant, she was tackled as the sun went
+low over the scene of a drawn battle, by a fresh sail errant; and, had
+it not been for a timely dismasting on board the new-comer, would have
+been captured or finally sunk then and there. But that fate was only
+held in reserve for her. Bleeding and disabled, she had drawn away
+under cover of night from her two hard-hit adversaries, to encounter a
+squall that further dismantled her, and, in such forlorn conditions,
+was met and finally conquered by the French privateer _Espoir de
+Brest_, that pounced upon her in her agony as the vulture upon his
+prey.
+
+Among the remainder of the once formidable crew, now seized and
+battened down under French hatches, was of course Adrian Landale--he
+bore a charmed life. And for a short while the only change probable in
+his prospects was a return to French prisons, until such time as it
+pleased Heaven to restore peace between the two nations.
+
+But the fortune of war, especially at sea, is fickle and fitful.
+
+The daring brig, lettre de marque, _L'Espoir de Brest_, soon after her
+unwonted haul of English prisoners, was overtaken herself by one of
+her own species, the _St. Nicholas_ of Liverpool, from whose swiftness
+nothing over the sea, that had not wings, could hope to escape if she
+chose to give the chase.
+
+Again did Adrian, from the darkness among his fellow-captives, hear
+the familiar roar and crash of cannon fight, the hustling and the thud
+of leaping feet, the screams and oaths of battle, and, finally, the
+triumphant shouts of English throats, and he knew that the Frenchman
+was boarded. A last ringing British cheer told of the Frenchman's
+surrender, and when he and his comrades were once more free to breathe
+a draught of living air, after the deathly atmosphere under hatches,
+Adrian learned that the victor was not a man-of-war, but a free-lance,
+and conceived again a faint hope that deliverance might be at hand.
+
+It was soon after this action, last of the fights that Adrian the
+peace-lover had to pass through, and as the two swift vessels, now
+sailing in consort, and under the same colours cleaved the waters,
+bound for the Mersey, that a singular little drama took place on board
+the _Espoir de Brest_.
+
+Among the younger officers of the English privateer, who were left in
+charge of the prize, was a lad upon whom Adrian's jaded eyes rested
+with a feeling of mournful sympathy, so handsome was he, and so young;
+so full of hope and spirits and joy of life, of all, in fact, of which
+he himself had been left coldly bare. Moreover, the ring of the merry
+voice, the glint of the clear eye awakened in his memory some fitful
+chord, the key of which he vainly sought to trace.
+
+One day, as the trim young lieutenant stood looking across the waters,
+with his brave eager gaze that seemed to have absorbed some of the
+blue-green shimmer of the element he loved, all unnoting the haggard
+sailor at his elbow, a sudden flourish of the spy-glass which he, with
+an eager movement, swung up to bear on some distant speck, sent his
+watch and seals flying out of his fob upon the deck at Adrian's feet.
+
+Adrian picked them up, and as he waited to restore them to their
+owner, who tarried some time intent on his distant peering, he had
+time to notice the coat and crest engraved upon one of the massive
+trinkets hanging from their black ribbons.
+
+When at last the officer lowered his telescope, Adrian came forward
+and saluted him with a slight bow, all unconsciously as unlike the
+average Jack Tar's scrape to his superior as can be well imagined:
+
+"Am I not," he asked, "addressing in you, sir, one of the Cochranes of
+the Shaws?"
+
+The question and the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough
+to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian
+surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very
+school-boy found at fault. Speaking with much sharpness:
+
+"My name is Smith, my man," cried he, seizing his belongings, "and
+you--just carry on with that coiling!"
+
+"And my name, sir, is Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory. I would like
+a moment's talk with you, if you will spare me the time. The Cochranes
+of the Shaws have been friends of our family for generations."
+
+A guffaw burst from a group of Adrian's mates working hard by, at this
+recurrence of what had become with them a standing joke; but the
+officer, who had turned on his heels, veered round immediately, and
+stood eyeing the speaker in profound astonishment.
+
+"Great God, is it possible! Did you say you were a Landale of Pulwick?
+How the devil came you here then, and thus?"
+
+"Press-gang," was Adrian's laconic answer.
+
+The lad gave a prolonged whistle, and was lost for a moment in
+cogitation.
+
+"If you are really Mr. Landale," he began, adding hastily, as if to
+cover an implied admission--"of course I have heard the name: it is
+well known in Lancashire--you had better see the skipper. It must have
+been some damnable mistake that has caused a man of your standing to
+be pressed."
+
+The speaker ended with almost a deferential air and the smile that had
+already warmed Adrian's heart. At the door of the Captain's quarters
+he said, with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye:
+
+"A curious error it was you made, I assure you my name is Smith--Jack
+Smith, of Liverpool."
+
+"An excusable error," quoth Adrian, smiling back, "for one of your
+seals bear unmistakably the arms of Cochrane of the Shaws, doubtless
+some heirloom, some inter-marriage."
+
+"No, sir, hang it!" retorted Mr. Jack Smith of Liverpool, his boyish
+face flushing again, and as he spoke he disengaged the trinket from
+its neighbours, and jerked it pettishly overboard, "I know nothing of
+your Shaws or your Cochranes."
+
+And then he rapped loudly at the cabin-door, as if anxious to avoid
+further discussion or comment on the subject.
+
+The result of the interview which followed--interview during which
+Adrian in a few words overcame the skipper's scepticism, and was
+bidden with all the curiosity men feel at sea for any novelty, to
+relate, over a bottle of wine, the chain of his adventures--was his
+passing from the forecastle to the officers' quarters, as an honoured
+guest on board the _St. Nicholas_, during the rest of her cruise.
+
+Thinking back now upon the last few weeks of his sea-going life, Sir
+Adrian realised with something of wonder that he had always dwelt on
+them without dislike. They were gilded in his memory by the rays of
+his new friendship.
+
+And yet that this young Jack Smith (to keep for him the nondescript
+name he had for unknown reasons chosen to assume) should be the first
+man to awaken in the misanthropic Adrian the charm of human
+intercourse, was singular indeed; one who followed from choice the
+odious trade of legally chartered corsair, who was ever ready to
+barter the chance of life and limb against what fortune might bring in
+his path, to sacrifice human life to secure his own end of enrichment.
+
+Well, the springs of friendship are to be no more discerned than
+those of love; there was none of high or low degree, with the
+exception of Rene, whose appearance at any time was so welcome to the
+recluse upon his rock, as that of the privateersman.
+
+And so, turning to his friend in to-night's softened mood, Sir Adrian
+thought gratefully that to him it was that he owed deliverance from
+the slavery of the King's service, that it was Jack Smith who had made
+it possible for Adrian Landale to live to this great day and await its
+coming in peace.
+
+The old clock struck two; and Jem shivered on the rug as the
+light-keeper rose at length from the table and sank in his arm-chair
+once more.
+
+Visions of the past had been ever his companions; now for the first
+time came visions of the future to commingle with them. As if caught
+up in the tide of his visitor's bright young life, it seemed as though
+he were passing at length out of the valley of the shadow of death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rene, coming with noiseless bare feet, in the angry yellow dawn of the
+second day of the storm, to keep an eye on his master's comfort, found
+him sleeping in his chair with a new look of rest upon his face and a
+smile upon his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A GENEALOGICAL EPISTLE
+
+                    ... and braided thereupon
+    All the devices blazoned on the shield,
+    In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
+    A border fantasy of branch and flower.
+
+                                _Idylls of the King._
+
+
+Pulwick Priory, the ancestral home of the Cumbrian Landales, a
+dignified if not overpoweringly lordly mansion, rises almost on the
+ridge of the green slope which connects the high land with the sandy
+strand of Morecambe; overlooking to the west the great brown breezy
+bight, whilst on all other sides it is sheltered by its wooded park.
+
+When the air is clear, from the east window of Scarthey keep, the tall
+garden front of greystone is visible, in the extreme distance, against
+the darker screen of foliage; whitely glinting if the sun is high;
+golden or rosy at the end of day.
+
+As its name implies, Pulwick Priory stands on the site of an extinct
+religious house; its oldest walls, in fact, were built from the spoils
+of once sacred masonry. It is a house of solid if not regular
+proportions, full of unexpected quaintness; showing a medley of
+distinct styles, in and out; it has a wide portico in the best
+approved neo-classic taste, leading to romantic oaken stairs; here
+wide cheerful rooms and airy corridors, there sombre vaulted basements
+and mysterious unforeseen nooks.
+
+On the whole, however, it is a harmonious pile of buildings, though
+gathering its character from many different centuries, for it has been
+mellowed by time, under a hard climate. And it was, in the days of the
+pride of the Landales, a most meet dwelling-place for that ancient
+race, insomuch as the history of so many of their ancestors was
+written successively upon stone and mortar, brick and tile, as well
+as upon carved oak, canvas-decked walls, and emblazoned windows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Exactly one week before the disaster, which was supposed to have
+befallen Mademoiselle Molly de Savenaye on Scarthey sands, the acting
+Lord of Pulwick, if one may so term Mr. Rupert Landale, had received a
+letter, the first reading of which caused him a vivid annoyance,
+followed by profound reflection.
+
+A slightly-built, dark-visaged man, this younger brother of Sir
+Adrian, and vicarious master of his house and lands; like to the
+recluse in his exquisite neatness of attire, somewhat like also in the
+mould of his features, which were, however, more notably handsome than
+Sir Adrian's; but most unlike him, in an emphasised artificiality of
+manner, in a restless and wary eye, and in the curious twist of a thin
+lip which seemed to give hidden sarcastic meaning even to the most
+ordinary remark.
+
+As now he sat by his desk, his straight brows drawn over his
+amber-coloured eyes, perusing the closely written sheets of this
+troublesome missive, there entered to him the long plaintive figure of
+his maiden sister, who had held house for him, under his own minute
+directions, ever since the death in premature child-birth of his young
+year-wed wife.
+
+Miss Landale, the eldest of the family, had had a disappointment in
+her youth, as a result of which she now played the ungrateful _role_
+of old maid of the family. She suffered from chronic toothache, as
+well as from repressed romantic aspirations, and was the _ame damnee_
+of Rupert. One of the most melancholy of human beings, she was tersely
+characterised by the village folk as a "_wummicky_ poor thing."
+
+At the sight of Mr. Landale's weighted brow she propped up her own
+long sallow face, upon its aching side, with a trembling hand, and,
+full of agonised prescience, ventured to ask if anything had happened.
+
+"Sit down," said her brother, with a sort of snarl--He possessed an
+extremely irritable temper under his cool sarcastic exterior, a temper
+which his peculiar anomalous circumstances, whilst they combined to
+excite it, forced him to conceal rigidly from most, and it was a
+relief to him to let it out occasionally upon Sophia's meek, ringleted
+head.
+
+Sophia collapsed with hasty obedience into a chair, and then Mr.
+Landale handed to her the thin fluttering sheets, voluminously crossed
+and re-crossed with fine Italian handwriting:
+
+"From Tanty," ejaculated Miss Sophia, "Oh my dear Rupert!"
+
+"Read it," said Rupert peremptorily. "Read it aloud."
+
+And throwing himself back upon his chair, he shaded his mouth with one
+flexible thin hand, and prepared himself to listen.
+
+"CAMDEN PLACE, BATH, October 29th," read the maiden lady in those
+plaintive tones, which seemed to send out all speech upon the breath
+of a sigh. "MY DEAR RUPERT,--You will doubtless be astonished, but
+your invariably affectionate Behaviour towards myself inclines me to
+believe that you will also be _pleased_ to hear, from these few lines,
+that very shortly after their receipt--if indeed not before--you may
+expect to see me arrive at Pulwick Priory."
+
+Miss Landale put down the letter, and gazed at her brother through
+vacant mists of astonishment.
+
+"Why, I thought Tanty said she would not put foot in Pulwick again
+till Adrian returned home."
+
+Rupert measured the innocent elderly countenance with a dark look. He
+had sundry excellent reasons, other than mere family affection, for
+remaining on good terms with his rich Irish aunt, but he had likewise
+reasons, these less obvious, for wishing to pay his devoirs to her
+anywhere but under the roof of which he was nominal master.
+
+"She has found it convenient to change her mind," he said, with his
+twisting lip. "Constancy in your sex, my dear, is merely a matter of
+convenience--or opportunity."
+
+"Oh Rupert!" moaned Sophia, clasping the locket which contained her
+dead lover's hair with a gesture with which all who knew her were very
+familiar. Mr. Landale never could resist a thrust at the faithful
+foolish bosom always ready to bleed under his stabs, yet never
+resenting them. Inexplicable vagary of the feminine heart! Miss
+Sophia worshipped before the shrine of her younger brother, to the
+absolute exclusion of any sentiment for the elder, whose generosity
+and kindness to her were yet as great as was Rupert's tyranny.
+
+"Go on," said the latter, alternately smiling at his nails and biting
+them, "Tanty O'Donoghue observes that I shall be surprised to hear
+that she will arrive very shortly after this letter, if not before it.
+Poor old Tanty, there can be no mistake about her nationality. Have
+the kindness to read straight on, Sophia. I don't want to hear any
+more of your interesting comments. And don't stop till you have
+finished, no matter how amazed you are."
+
+Again he composed himself to listen, while his sister plunged at the
+letter, and, after several false starts, found her place and
+proceeded:
+
+"Since, owing to his most _unfortunate_ peculiarity of Temperament and
+consequent strange choice of abode, I cannot apply to my nephew
+Adrian, _a qui de droit_ (as Head of the House) I must needs address
+myself to you, my dear Rupert, to request hospitality for myself and
+the two young Ladies now under my Charge."
+
+The letter wavered in Miss Sophia's hand and an exclamation hung upon
+her lip, but a sudden movement of Rupert's exquisite crossed legs
+recalled her to her task.
+
+"These young ladies are _Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye_, and the
+daughters of Madame la Comtesse de Savenaye, who was my sister Mary's
+child. She and I, and Alice your mother, were sister co-heiresses as
+you know, and therefore these young ladies are _my_ grand-nieces and
+your _own_ cousins once removed. Of Cecile de Savenaye, her _strange_
+adventures and ultimate _sad_ Fate in which your own brother was
+implicated, you cannot but have heard, but you may probably have
+forgotten even to the _very existence_ of these charming young women,
+who were nevertheless born at Pulwick, and whom you must at some time
+or other have beheld as infants during your _excellent_ and _lamented_
+father's lifetime. They are, as you are doubtless also unaware--for I
+have remarked a _growing_ Tendency in the younger generations to
+neglect the study of Genealogy, even as it affects their own
+Families--as well born on the father's side as upon the maternal. M.
+de Savenaye bore _argent a la fasce-canton d'hermine_, with an
+_augmentation of the fleurs de lis d'or_, _cleft in twain_ for his
+ancestor's _memorable_ deed at the siege of Dinan."
+
+"There is Tante O'Donoghue fully displayed, _haut volante_ as she
+might say herself," here interrupted Mr. Landale with a laugh. "Always
+the same, evidently. The first thing I remember about her is her
+lecturing me on genealogy and heraldry, when I wanted to go fishing,
+till, school-boy rampant as I was, I heartily wished her impaled and
+debruised on her own Donoghue herse proper. For God's sake, Sophia, do
+not expect me to explain! Go on."
+
+"He was entitled to eighteen quarters, and related to such as Coucy
+and Armagnac and Tavannes," proceeded Miss Sophia, controlling her
+bewilderment as best she might, "also to Gwynne of Llanadoc in this
+kingdom--Honours to which Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye, being sole
+heiresses both of Kermelegan and Savenaye, not to speak of their own
+mother's share of O'Donoghue, which now-a-days is of greater
+substance--are personally entitled.
+
+"If I am the _sole_ Relative they have left in these Realms, Adrian
+and you are the next. I have had the charge of my two young Kinswomen
+during the last six months, that is since they left the Couvent des
+Dames Anglaises in Jersey.
+
+"Now, I think it is time that your Branch of the Family should incur
+the share of the _responsibility_ your relationship to them entails.
+
+"If Adrian were _as_ and _where_ he should be, I feel sure he would
+embrace this opportunity of doing his duty as the Head of the House
+without the smallest hesitation, and I have no doubt that he would
+offer the _hospitality_ of Pulwick Priory and his _Protection_ to
+these amiable young persons for as long as they _remain unmarried_.
+
+"From you, my dear Nephew, who have undertaken under these melancholy
+family circumstances to fill your Brother's place, I do not, however,
+_expect_ so much; all I ask is that you and my niece Sophia be kind
+enough to _shelter_ and _entertain_ your cousins for the space of two
+months, while I remain at Bath for the benefit of my Health.
+
+"At my age (for it is of no use, nephew, for us to deny our years when
+any Peerage guide must reveal them pretty closely to the curious),
+and I am this month passing sixty-nine, at my _age_ the charge of two
+high-spirited young Females, in whom conventional education has failed
+to subdue Aspirations for worldly happiness whilst it has left them
+somewhat inexperienced in the Conventions of Society, I find a _little
+trying_. It does not harmonise with the retired, peaceful existence to
+which I am accustomed (and at my time of life, I think, entitled), in
+which it is my humble endeavour to wean myself from this earth which
+is so full of Emptiness and to prepare myself for that other and
+_better_ Home into which we must all resign ourselves to enter. And
+happy, indeed, my dear Rupert, such of us as will be found worthy; for
+come to it we all must, and the longer we live, the sooner we may
+expect to do so.
+
+"The necessity of producing them in Society, is, however, rendered a
+matter of greater responsibility by the fact of the _handsome_
+Fortunes which these young creatures possess already, not to speak of
+their expectations."
+
+Rupert, who had been listening to his aunt's letter, through the
+intermediary of Miss Sophia's depressing sing-song, with an abstracted
+air, here lifted up his head, and commanded the reader to repeat this
+last passage. She did so, and paused, awaiting his further pleasure,
+while he threw his handsome head back upon his chair, and closed his
+eyes as if lost in calculations.
+
+At length he waved his hand, and Miss Sophia proceeded after the usual
+floundering:
+
+"A neighbour of mine at Bunratty, Mrs. Hambledon of Brianstown, a
+_lively_ widow (herself one of the Macnamaras of the Reeks, and thus a
+distant connection of the Ballinasloe branch of O'Donoghues), and whom
+I had reason to believe I could trust--but I will not anticipate--took
+a prodigious fancy to Miss Molly and proposed, towards the beginning
+of the Autumn, carrying her away to Dublin. At the same time the wet
+summer, producing in me an acute recurrence of that Affection from
+which, as you know, I suffer, and about which you _never fail_ to make
+such kind Enquiries at Christmas and Easter, compelled me to call in
+Mr. O'Mally, the apothecary, who has been my very _obliging_ medical
+adviser for so many years, and who strenuously advocated an immediate
+course of waters at Bath. In short, my dear Nephew, thus the matter
+was settled, your cousin Molly departed _radiant_ with _good_ spirits,
+and _good_ looks for a spell of gayety in Dublin, while your cousin
+Madeleine, prepared (with _equal_ content) to accompany her old aunt
+to Bath. It being arranged with Mrs. Hambledon that she should herself
+conduct Molly to us later on.
+
+"We have been here about three weeks. Though persuaded by good Mr.
+O'Mally that the waters would benefit my old bones, I was actuated, I
+must confess, by another motive in seeking this Fashionable Resort. In
+such a place as this, thronged as it is by all the Rank and Family of
+England, one can at least know _who is who_, and I was not without
+hopes that my nieces, with their faces, their name, and their
+fortunes, would have the opportunity of contracting suitable
+Alliances, and thus relieve me of a charge for which I am, I fear,
+little fitted.
+
+"But, alas! my dear Rupert, I was most woefully mistaken. Bath is
+_distinctly not_ the place for two beautiful and unsophisticated
+Heiresses, and I am certainly neither possessed of the Spirits, nor of
+the Health to guard them from fortune-hunters and _needy nameless_
+Adventurers. While it is my desire to impress upon you, and my niece
+Sophia, that the conduct of these young ladies has been _quite_ beyond
+reproach, I will not conceal from you that the attentions of a certain
+person, of the name of _Smith_, known here, and a favorite in the
+circles of frivolity and fashion as _Captain Jack_, have already made
+Madeleine _conspicuous_, and although the dear girl conducts herself
+with the utmost propriety, there is an air of _Romance_ and _mystery_
+about the Young Man, not to speak of his unmistakable good looks,
+which have determined me to remove her from his vicinity before her
+Affections be _irreparably_ engaged. As for Molly, who is a thorough
+O'Donoghue and the image of her grandmother, that celebrated
+Murthering Moll (herself the toast of Bath in our young days), whose
+elopement with the Marquis de Kermelegan, after he had killed an
+English rival in a duel, was once a nine-days' wonder in this very
+town, and of whom you must have heard, Mrs. Hambledon restored her to
+my care only three days ago, and she has already twenty Beaux to her
+String, though favouring _nobody_, I am bound to say, but her own
+amusement. Yesterday she departed under Mrs. Hambledon's chaperonage,
+in the Company of a dozen of the highest in rank here, on an
+expedition to Clifton; the while my demure Madeleine spends the day at
+the house of her dear friend Lady Maria Harewood, whither, I only
+learnt upon her return at ten o'clock under his escort, _Captain
+Jack_--in my days that sort of _captain_ would have been strongly
+suspected, of having a shade too much of the _Heath_ or the _London
+Road_ about him--had likewise been convened. It was long after
+midnight when, with a great _tow-row_, a coach full of very merry
+company (amongst whom the widow Hambledon struck me as over-merry,
+perhaps) landed my other Miss _sur le perron_.
+
+"This has decided me. We shall decamp _sans tambou ni trompette_.
+To-morrow, without allowing discussion from the girls (in which I
+should probably be worsted), we pack ourselves into my travelling
+coach, and find our Way to you. But, until we are fairly on the Road,
+I shall not even let these ladies know _whither_ we are bound.
+
+"With your kind permission, then, I shall remain a few days at
+Pulwick, to recruit from the _fatigues_ of such a long Journey, before
+leaving your fair cousins in your charge, and in that of the gentle
+Sophia (whom I trust to entertain them with something besides her
+usual melancholy), till the time comes for me to bring them back with
+me to Bunratty.
+
+"Unless, therefore, you should hear to the contrary, you will know
+that on Tuesday your three _unprotected_ female relatives will be
+hoping to see your travelling carriage arrive to fetch them at the
+Crown in Lancaster.
+
+"Your Affectionate Aunt,
+
+  "ROSE O'DONOGHUE."
+
+As Miss Landale sighed forth the concluding words, she dropped the
+little folio on her lap, and looked at her brother with a world of
+apprehension in her faded eyes.
+
+"Oh, Rupert, what shall we do?"
+
+"Do," said Mr. Landale, quickly turning on her, out of his absorption,
+"you will kindly see that suitable rooms are prepared for your aunt
+and cousins, and you will endeavour, if you please, to show these
+ladies a cheerful countenance, as your aunt requests."
+
+"The oak and the chintz rooms, I suppose," Sophia timidly suggested.
+"Tanty used to say she liked the aspect, and I daresay the young
+ladies will find it pleasant to look out on the garden."
+
+"Ay," returned Rupert, absently. He had risen from his seat, and
+fallen to pacing the room. Presently a short laugh broke from him.
+"Tolerably cool, I must say," he remarked, "tolerably cool. It seems
+to be a tradition with that Savenaye family, when in difficulties, to
+go to Pulwick."
+
+Miss Landale looked up with relief. Perhaps Rupert would think better
+of it, and make up his mind to elude receiving the unwelcome visitors
+after all. But his next speech dashed her budding hopes.
+
+"Ay, as in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to
+lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest--I wish they had
+been addled, I do indeed--we may expect to have the whole place turned
+topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, _faith_ (as Tanty
+says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent
+school--and of these, one a hoyden, and the other lovesick! Faugh!
+Sophia you will have to keep your eyes open when the old lady is gone.
+I'll have no unseemly pranks in this house."
+
+"Oh, Rupert," with a moan of maidenly horror, and conscious
+incompetence.
+
+"Stop that," cried the brother, with a contained intensity of
+exasperation, at which the poor lady jumped and trembled as if she had
+been struck. "All your whining won't improve matters. Now listen to
+me," sitting down beside her, and speaking slowly and impressively,
+"you are to make our relatives feel welcome, do you understand?
+Everything is to be of the best. Get out the embroidered sheets, and
+see that there are flowers in the rooms. Tell the cook to keep back
+that haunch of venison, the girls won't like it, but the old lady
+knows a good thing when she gets it--let there be lots of sweet things
+for the young ones too. I shall be giving some silver out this
+afternoon. I leave it to you to see that it is properly cleaned. What
+are you mumbling about to yourself? Write it down if you can't
+remember, and now go, go--I am busy."
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"
+
+
+    _Then did the blood awaken in the veins
+    Of the young maiden wandering in the fields._
+
+    LUTEPLAYER'S SONG.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE THRESHOLD OF WOMANHOOD
+
+    Onward floweth the water, onward through meadows broad,
+    "How happy," the meadows say, "art thou to be rippling onward."
+    "And my heart is beating, beating beneath my girdle here;"
+    "O Heart," the girdle saith, "how happy art thou that thou beatest."
+
+                             _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+DUBLIN, _October 15th, 1814_.--This day do I, Molly de Savenaye, begin
+my diary.
+
+Madeleine writes to me from Bath that she has purchased a very fine
+book, in which she intends to set forth each evening all that has
+happened her since the morning; she advises me to do so too. She says
+that since _real life_ has begun for us; life, of which every
+succeeding day is not, as in the convent, the repetition of the
+previous day, but brings some new discovery, pleasure, or pain, we
+ought to write down and preserve their remembrance.
+
+It will be so interesting for us to read when a new life once more
+begins for us, and we are _married_. Besides it is the _fashion_, and
+all the young ladies she knows do it. And she has, she says, already
+plenty to write down. Now I _should_ like to know what about.
+
+When ought one to start such a record? Surely not on a day like this.
+
+"Why _demme_" (as Mrs. Hambledon's nephew says), "_what the deyvil_
+have I got to say?"
+
+_Item:_ I went out shopping this morning with Mrs. Hambledon, and,
+bearing Madeleine's advice in mind, purchased at Kelly's, in Sackville
+Street, an album book, bound in green morocco, with clasp and lock,
+which Mr. Kelly protests is quite secure.
+
+_Item:_ We met Captain Segrave of the Royal Dragoons (who was so
+attentive to me at Lady Rigtoun's rout, two days ago). He looked very
+well on his charger, but how conceited! When he saw me, he rolled his
+eyes and grew quite red; and then he stuck his spurs into his horse,
+that we might admire how he could sit it; which he did, indeed, to
+perfection.
+
+Mrs. Hambledon looked vastly knowing, and I laughed. If ever I try to
+fancy myself married to such a man I cannot help laughing.
+
+This, however, is not diary.--_Item:_ We returned home because it
+began to rain, and to pass the time, here am I at my book.
+
+But is _this_ the sort of thing that will be of interest to read
+hereafter? I have begun too late; I should have written in those days
+when I saw the dull walls of our convent prison for the last time. It
+seems so far back now (though, by the calendar it is hardly six
+months), that I cannot quite recall how it felt to live in prison. And
+yet it was not unhappy, and there was no horror in the thought we both
+had sometimes then, that we should pass and end our lives in the cage.
+It did not strike us as hard. It seemed, indeed, in the nature of
+things. But the bare thought of returning to that existence now, to
+resume the placid daily task, to fold up again like a plant that has
+once expanded to sun and breeze, to have never a change of scene, of
+impression, to look forward to nothing but _submission_, sleep, and
+_death_; oh, it makes me turn cold all over!
+
+And yet there are women who, of their own will, give up the _freedom
+of the world_ to enter a convent _after_ they have tasted life! Oh, I
+would rather be the poorest, the ugliest peasant hag, toiling for
+daily bread, than one of these cold cloistered souls, so that the free
+air of heaven, be it with the winds or the rain, might beat upon me,
+so that I might live and love _as I like_, do right _as I like_; ay,
+and do wrong _if_ I liked, with the free will which is my _own_.
+
+We were told that the outer world, with all its sorrows and trials,
+and dangers--how I remember the Reverend Mother's words and face, and
+how they impressed me then, and how I should laugh at them,
+_now!_--that the world was but a valley of tears. We were warned that
+all that awaited us, if we left the fold, was _misery_; that the joys
+of this world were _bitter_ to the taste, its pleasures _hollow_, and
+its griefs _lasting_.
+
+We believed it. And yet, when the choice was actually ours to make,
+we chose all we had been taught to dread and despise. Why? I wonder.
+For the same reason as Eve ate the apple, I suppose. I would, if I had
+been Eve. I almost wish I could go back now, for a day, to the cool
+white rooms, to see the nuns flitting about like black and white
+ghosts, with only a jingle of beads to warn one of their coming, see
+the blue sky through the great bare windows, and the shadows of the
+trees lengthening on the cold flagged floors, hear the bells going
+ding-dong, ding-dong, and the murmur of the sea in the distance, and
+the drone of the school, and the drone of the chapel, to go back, and
+feel once more the dull sort of content, the calmness, the rest!
+
+But no, no! I should be trembling all the while lest the blessed doors
+leading back to that _horrible_ world should never open to me again.
+
+The sorrows and trials of the world! I suppose the Reverend Mother
+really meant it; and if I had gone on living there till my face was
+wrinkled like hers, poor woman, I might have thought so too, in the
+end, and talked the same nonsense.
+
+Was it really I that endured such a life for seventeen years? O God! I
+wonder that the sight of the swallows coming and going, the sound of
+the free waves, did not drive me mad. Twist as I will my memory, I
+cannot recall _that_ Molly of six months ago, whose hours and days
+passed and dropped all alike, all lifeless, just like the slow tac,
+tac, tac of our great horloge in the Refectory, and were to go on as
+slow and as alike, for ever and ever, till she was old, dried,
+wrinkled, and then died. The real Molly de Savenaye's life began on
+the April morning when that dear old turbaned fairy godmother of ours
+carried us, poor little Cinderellas, away in her coach. Well do I
+remember my birthday.
+
+I have read since in one of those musty books of Bunratty, that
+_moths_ and _butterflies_ come to life by shaking themselves out, one
+fine day, from a dull-looking, shapeless, ugly thing they call a
+_grub_, in which they have been buried for a long time. They unfold
+their wings and fly out in the sunshine, and flit from flower to
+flower, and they look beautiful and happy--the world, the wicked
+world, is open to them.
+
+There were pictures in the book; the ugly grub below, dreary and
+brown, and the lovely _butterfly_ in all its colours above. I showed
+them to Madeleine, and said: "Look, Madeleine, as we were, and as we
+are."
+
+And she said: "Yes, those brown gowns they made us wear were ugly; but
+I should not like to put on anything so bright as red and yellow.
+Would you?"
+
+That is the worst of Madeleine; she never realises in the least what I
+mean. And she _does_ love her clothes; that is the difference between
+her and me, she loves fine things because they are fine and dainty and
+all that--I like them because they make _me_ fine.
+
+And yet, how she did weep when she left the convent. Madeleine would
+have made a good nun after all; she does so hate anything ugly or
+coarse. She grows quite white if she hears people fighting; if there
+is a "row" or a "shindy," as they say here. Whereas Tanty and I think
+it all the fun in the world, and would enjoy joining in the fray
+ourselves, I believe, if we dared. I know _I_ should; it sets my blood
+tingling. But Madeleine is a real princess, a sort of Ermine; and yet
+she enjoys her new life, too, the beauty of it, the refinement, being
+waited upon and delicately fed and clothed. But although she has
+ceased to weep for the convent, if it had not been for me she would be
+there still. The only thing, I believe, that could make me weep now
+would be to find one fine morning that this had only been a dream, and
+that I was once more _the grub_! To find that I could not open my
+window and look into the wide, wide world over to the long, green
+hills in the distance, and know that I could wander or gallop up to
+them, as I did at Bunratty, and see for myself _what lies
+beyond_--surely that was a taste of heaven that day when Tanty Rose
+first allowed me to mount her old pony, and I flew over the turf with
+the wind whistling in my ears--to find that I could not go out when I
+pleased and hear new voices and see new faces, and men and women who
+_live each their own life_, and not the _same_ life as mine.
+
+When I think of what I am now, and what I might have remained, I
+breathe deep and feel like singing; I stretch my arms out and feel
+like flying.
+
+Our aunt told us she thought Bunratty would be dull for us, and so it
+was in comparison with this place. Perhaps _this_ is dull in
+comparison with what _may_ come. For good Tanty, as she likes us to
+call her, is intent on doing great things for us.
+
+"Je vous marierai," she tells us in her funny old French, "Je vous
+marierai bien, mes filles, si vous etes sages," and she winks both
+eyes.
+
+_Marriage!_ _That_, it is quite evident, is the goal of every properly
+constituted young female; and every respectable person who has the
+care of said young female is consequently bent upon her reaching that
+goal.
+
+So marriage is _another_ good thing to look forward to. And _love_,
+that love all the verses, all the books one reads are so full of;
+_that_ will come to us.
+
+They say that _love is life_. Well, all I want is to live. But with a
+grey past such as we have had, the present is good enough to ponder
+upon. We now can lie abed if we have sweet dreams and pursue them
+waking, and be lazy, yet not be troubled with the self-indulgence as
+with an enormity; or we can rise and breathe the sunshine at our own
+time. We can be frivolous, and yet meet with smiles in response, dress
+our hair and persons, and be pleased with ourselves, and with being
+admired or envied, yet not be told horrid things about death and
+corruption and skeletons. And, above all--oh, above _all_, we can
+think of the future as different from the past, as _changing_, be it
+even for the worse; as unknown and fascinating, not as a repetition,
+until death, of the same dreary round.
+
+In Mrs. Hambledon's parlour here are huge glasses at either end;
+whenever you look into them you see a never-ending chain of rooms with
+yourself standing in the middle, vanishing in the distance, every one
+the same, with the same person in the middle, only a little smaller, a
+little more insignificant, a little darker, till it all becomes
+_nothing_. It always reminds me of life's prospects in the convent.
+
+I dislike that room. When I told Mrs. Hambledon the reason why, she
+laughed, and promised me that, with my looks and disposition, my life
+would be eventful enough. I have every mind that it shall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_October 18th._--Yesterday, I woke up in an amazing state of
+happiness, though for no particular reason that I can think of. It
+could not be simply because we were to go out for a visit to the
+country and see new people and places, for I have already learned to
+find that most new people are cut out on the same pattern as those one
+already knows. It must have been rather because I awoke under the
+impression of one of my lovely dreams--such dreams as I have only had
+since I left my _grub_ state; dreams of space, air, long, long views
+of beautiful scenery, always changing, always wider, such as swallows
+flying between sky and earth might see, under an exquisite and
+brilliant light, till for very joy I wake up, my cheeks covered with
+tears.
+
+This time, I was sitting on the prow of some vessel with lofty white
+sails, and it was cutting through the water, blue as the sky, with
+wreaths of snow-like foam, towards some unknown shores, ever faster
+and faster, and I was singing to some one next to me on the prow--some
+one I did not know, but who felt with me--singing a song so perfect,
+so sweet (though it had no human words) that I thought _it explained
+all_: the blue of the heaven, the freshness of the breeze, the
+fragrance of the earth, and why we were so eagerly pressing onwards. I
+thought the melody was such that when once heard it could never be
+forgotten. When I woke it still rang in my ears, but now I can no more
+recall it. How is it we never know such delight in waking hours? Is
+that some of the joy we are to feel in Heaven, the music we are to
+hear? And yet it can be heard in this life if one only knew where to
+go and listen. And this life is beautiful which lies in front of us,
+though they would speak of it as a sorrowful span not to be reckoned.
+It is good to be young and think of the life still to come. Every
+moment is precious for its enjoyment, and yet sometimes I find that
+one only knows of a pleasure when it is just gone. One ought to try
+and be more awake at each hour to the happiness it may bring. I shall
+try, and you, my diary, shall help me.
+
+This is really _no_ diary-keeping. It is not a bit like those one
+reads in books. It ought to tell of other people and the events of
+each day. But other people are really very uninteresting; as for
+events, well, so far, they are uninteresting too; it is only what they
+cause to spring up in our hearts that is worth thinking upon; and that
+is so difficult to put in words that mostly I spend my time merely
+pondering and not writing.
+
+Last night Mrs. Hambledon took me to the _play_. It was for the first
+time in my life, and I was full of curiosity. It was a long drama,
+pretty enough and sometimes very exciting. But I could see that though
+the actress was very handsome and mostly so unhappy as to draw tears
+from the spectators, there were people, especially some gentlemen, who
+were more interested in looking at the box where I sat with Mrs.
+Hambledon. Indeed, I could not pretend, when I found myself before my
+glass that night, that I was not amazingly prettier than that Mrs.
+Colebrook, about whose beauty the whole town goes mad.
+
+When I recalled the hero's ravings about his Matilda's eyes and
+cheeks, and her foot and her sylph-like waist, and her raven hair, I
+wondered what _that_ young man would say of me if he were my lover and
+I his persecuted mistress. The Matilda was a pleasing person enough;
+but if I take her point by point, it would be absurd to speak of her
+charms in the same breath with mine. Oh, my dear Molly, how beautiful
+I thought you last night! How happy I should be, were I a dashing
+young lover and eyes like _yours_ smiled on me. I never before thought
+myself prettier than Madeleine, but now I do.
+
+Lovers, love, mistress, bride; they talked of nothing else in the
+play. And it was all ecstasy in their words, and nothing but _misery_
+in fact (just as the Reverend Mother would have had it).
+
+The young man who played the hero was a very fine fellow; and yet when
+I conceive _him_ making love to me as he did last night to Mrs.
+Colebrook, the notion seems really _too_ ludicrous!
+
+What sort of man then is it I would allow to love me? I do not mind
+the thought of lovers sighing and burning for me (as some do now
+indeed, or pretend to) I like to feel that I can crush them with a
+frown and revive them with a smile; I like to see them fighting for my
+favour. But to give a man the right to love me, the right to my
+smiles, the _right to me_! Indeed, I have yet seen _none_ who could
+make me bear the thought.
+
+And yet I think that I could love, and I know that the man that I am
+to love must be living somewhere till fate brings him to me. He does
+not think of me. He does not know of me. And neither of us, I suppose,
+will taste life as life is till the day when we meet.
+
+CAMDEN PLACE, BATH, _November 1st_.--Bath at last, which, must please
+poor Mrs. Hambledon exceedingly, for she certainly did _not_ enjoy the
+transit. I cannot conceive how people can allow themselves to be so
+utterly distraught by illness. I feel I can never have any respect for
+her again; she moaned and lamented in such cowardly fashion, was so
+peevish all the time on board the vessel, and looked so very begrimed
+and untidy and _plain_ when she was carried out on Bristol quay. The
+captain called it _dirty_ weather, but I thought it _lovely_, and I
+don't think I ever enjoyed myself more--except when Captain Segrave's
+Black Douglas ran away with me in Phoenix Park.
+
+It was beautiful to see our brave boat plough the sea and quiver with
+anger, as if it were a living thing, when it was checked by some great
+green wave, then gather itself again under the wind and dash on to the
+fight, until it conquered. And when we came into the river and the sun
+shone once more it glided on swiftly, though looking just a little
+tired for a while until its decks and sails were dry and clean again,
+and I thought it was just like a bird that has shaken and plumed
+itself. I was sorry to leave it. The captain and the mate and the
+sailors, who had wrapped me up in their great, stiff tarpaulin coats
+and placed me in a safe corner where I could sit out and look, were
+also sorry that I should go.
+
+But it was good to be with Madeleine again and Tanty Donoghue, who
+always has such a kind smile on her old wrinkled face when she looks
+at me.
+
+Madeleine was astonished when I told her I had loved the storm at sea
+and when I mimicked poor Mrs. Hambledon. She says she also thought she
+was dying, so ill was she on her crossing, and that she was quite a
+week before she got over the impression.
+
+It seems odd to think that we are sisters, and twin sisters too; in so
+many things she is different from me. She has changed in manner since
+I left her. She seems so absorbed in some great thought that all her
+words and smiles have little meaning in them. I told her I had tried
+to keep my diary, but had not done much work, and when I asked to see
+hers (for a model) Madeleine blushed, and said I should see it this
+day year.
+
+_Madeleine is in love_; that is the only way I can account for that
+blush. I fear she is a sly puss, but there is such a bustle around us,
+and so much to do and see, I have no time to make her confess. So I
+said I would keep mine from her for that period also.
+
+It seems a long span to look ahead. What a number of things will
+happen before this day year!
+
+BATH, _November 3rd_.--Bath is delightful! I have only been here two
+days, and already I am what Tanty, in her old-fashioned way, calls
+_the belle_. Already there are a dozen sparks who declare that my eyes
+have _shot death_ to them. This afternoon comes my Lord of Manningham,
+nicknamed _King of Bath_, to "drink a dish of tea," as he has it, with
+his "dear old friend Miss O'Donoghue."
+
+Tanty has been here three weeks, and he has only just discovered her
+existence, and remembered their tender friendship. Of course, I know
+very well what has really brought him. He is Lord Dereham's
+grandfather on the mother's side, and Lord Dereham, who is the son of
+the Duke of Wells, is "the catch," as Mrs. Hambledon vows, of the
+fashionable world this year. And Lord Dereham has seen me twice, and
+_is in love with me_.
+
+But as Lord Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and
+swears more than he converses--which would be very shocking if it were
+not for his lisp, which makes it very funny--needless to say, my diary
+dear, your Molly is not in love with him--He has no chance.
+
+And so Lord Manningham comes to tea, and Tanty orders me to remain and
+see her "old friend" instead of going to ride with the widow
+Hambledon. The widow Hambledon and I are everywhere together, and she
+knows all the most entertaining people in Bath, whereas Madeleine,
+whom I have hardly seen at all except at night, when I am so dead
+tired that I go to sleep as soon as my head touches the pillow (I vow
+Tanty's manner of speech is catching), Miss Madeleine keeps to her own
+select circle, and turns up her haughty little nose at _my_ friends.
+
+So now Madeleine is punished, for Tanty and I have had the honour of
+receiving the _King of Bath_, and I have been vouchsafed the stamp of
+his august approval.
+
+"My dear Miss O'Donoghue," he cried, as I curtsied, "do my senses
+deceive me, or do I not once more behold _Murthering Moll_?"
+
+"I thought you could not fail to notice the likeness; my niece is,
+indeed, a complete O'Donoghue," says Tanty, amazingly pleased.
+
+"Likeness, ma'am," cried the old wretch, bowing again, and scattering
+his snuff all over the place, while I sweep him another splendid
+curtsey, "likeness, ma'am, why this is no feeble copy, no humble
+imitation, 'tis _Murdering Moll herself_, and glad I am to see her
+again." And then he catches me under the chin, and peers into my face
+with his dim, wicked old eyes. "And so you are Murdering Moll's
+daughter," says he, chuckling to himself. "Ay, she and I were very
+good friends, my pretty child, very good friends, and that not so long
+ago, either. Ay, _Mater pulchra, filia pulchrior_."
+
+"But I happen to be her grand-daughter, please my lord," said I, and
+then I ran to fetch him a chair (for I was dreadfully afraid he was
+going to kiss me). But though no one has ever accused me of speaking
+too modestly to be heard, my lord had a sudden fit of deafness, and I
+saw Tanty give me a little frown, while the old thing--he must be much
+older than Tanty even--tottered into a chair, and went on mumbling.
+
+"I was only a boy in those days, my dear, only a boy, as your good
+aunt will tell you. I can remember how the bells rang the three
+beautiful Irish sisters into Bath, and I and the other dandies stood
+to watch them drive by. The bells rang in the _belles_ in those days,
+my dear, he, he, he! only we used to call them 'toasts' then, and your
+mother was the most beautiful of 'the three Graces'--we christened
+them 'the three Graces'--and by gad she led us all a pretty dance!"
+
+"Ah, my lord," says Tanty, and I could see her old eyes gleam though
+her tone was so pious, "I fear we were three wild Irish girls indeed!"
+
+Lord Manningham was too busy ogling me to attend to her.
+
+"Your mother was just such another as you, and she had just such a
+pair of dimples," said he.
+
+"You mean my grandmother," shouted I in his ear, just for fun, though
+Tanty looked as if she were on pins and needles. But he only pinched
+my cheek again and went on:
+
+"Before she had been here a fortnight all the bucks in the town were
+at her feet. And so was I, so was I. Only, by gad, I was too young,
+you know, as Miss O'Donoghue here will tell you. But she liked me; she
+used to call me her 'little manny.' I declare I might have married
+her, only there were family reasons, and I was such a lad, you know.
+And then Jack Waterpark, some of us thought she would have had _him_
+in the end--being an Irishman, and a rich man, and a marquis to
+boot--he gave her the name of _Murthering Moll_, because of her
+killing eyes, young lady--he! he! he!--and there was Ned Cuffe ready
+to hang himself for her, and Jim Denham, and old Beau Vernon, ay, and
+a score of others. And then one night at the Assembly Rooms, after the
+dancing was over and we gay fellows were all together, up gets
+Waterpark, he was a little tipsy, my dear, and by gad I can hear him
+speak now, with that brogue of his. 'Boys,' he says, 'it's no use your
+trying for her any more, for by God _I've won her_.' And out of his
+breast-pocket he pulls a little knot of blue ribbon. Your mother, my
+dear, had worn a very fine gown that evening, with little knots of
+blue ribbon all over the bodice of it. The words were not out of his
+mouth when Ned Cuffe starts to his feet as white as a sheet: 'It's a
+damned lie,' he cries, and out of his pocket _he_ pulls another little
+knot. 'She gave it to me with her own hands,' he cried and glares
+round at us all. And then Vernon bursts out laughing and flourishes a
+third little bow in our eyes, and I had one too, I need not tell you,
+and so had all the rest, all save a French fellow--I forget his
+name--and it was he she had danced with the most of all. Ah, Miss
+O'Donoghue, how the little jade's eyes sparkle! I warrant you have
+never told her the story for fear she would want to copy her mother in
+other ways besides looks--Hey? Well, my pretty, give me your little
+hand, and then I shall go on--pretty little hand, um--um--um!" and
+then he kissed my hand, the horrid, snuffy thing! but I allowed it,
+for I did so want to hear how it all ended.
+
+"And then, and then," I said.
+
+"And then, my dear, this French fellow, your papa he must have
+been--so I suppose I must not abuse him, and he was a very fine young
+man after all, and a man of honour as well--he stood and cursed us
+all."
+
+"'You English fools,' he said, 'you braggards--cowards.' And he
+seized a glass of wine from the table and with a sweep he dashed it at
+us and ended by flinging the empty glass in Lord Waterpark's face. It
+was the neatest thing you ever saw, for we all got a drop except
+Waterpark, and he got the glass. 'I challenge you all,' said the
+Frenchman, 'I'll fight you one by one, and I shall have her into the
+bargain.' And so he did, my dear, he fought us all, one after the
+other; there were five of us; he was a devil with the sword, but Ned
+Cuffe ran him through for all that--and he was a month getting over
+it, but as soon as he could crawl again he vowed himself ready for
+Waterpark, and weak as he was he ran poor Waterpark through the lungs.
+Some said Jack spitted himself on his sword--but dead he was anyhow,
+and monsieur your father--what was his name? Kerme-something--was off
+with your mother before the rest of us were well out of bed."
+
+"Fie, fie, my lord," said Tanty, "you should not recall old stories in
+this manner!"
+
+"Gad, ma'am, I warrant this young lady is quite ready to provide you
+with a few new ones," chuckled my lord; and as there was no more to be
+extracted from him but foolish old jokes and dreadful smiles, I
+contrived to free my "pretty little hand," and sit down demurely by
+Tanty's side like the modest retiring young female I should be.
+
+But my blood was dancing in my veins--the blood of Murthering
+Moll--doddering old idiot as he is, Lord Manningham is right for once,
+I mean to take quite as much out of life as she did. That indeed is
+worth being young and beautiful for! We know nothing of our family,
+save that both father and mother were killed in Vendee. Tanty never
+will tell us anything about them (except their coats of arms), and I
+am afraid even to start the subject, for she always branches off upon
+heraldry and then we are in for hours of it. But after Lord Manningham
+was gone I asked her when and how my grandmother died.
+
+"She died when your mother was born, my dear," said Tanty, "she was
+not as old as you are now, and your grandfather never smiled again, or
+so they said."
+
+That sobered me a little. Yet she lived her life so well, while she
+did live, that I who have wasted twenty precious years can find in my
+heart rather to envy than to pity my beautiful grandmother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_November 5th._--It is _three o'clock in the morning_, but I do not
+feel at all inclined to go to bed. Madeleine is sleeping, poor pretty
+pale Madeleine! with the tears hardly dry upon her cheeks and I can
+hear her sighing in her sleep.
+
+I was right, she is in love, and the gentleman she loves is not
+approved of by Tanty and the upshot of it all is we are to leave dear
+Bath, delightful Bath, to-morrow--to-day rather--for some unknown
+penitential region which our stern relative as yet declines to name. I
+am longing to hear more about it; but Tanty, who, though she talks so
+much, can keep her own counsel better than any woman I know, will not
+give me any further information beyond the facts that the delinquent
+who has dared to aspire to my sister is a person of _the name of
+Smith_, and that it would not do at all.
+
+I have not the heart to wake Madeleine to make her tell me more, though
+I really ought to pinch her well for being so secretive--besides, my
+head is so full of my own day that I want to get it all written down,
+and I shall never have done so unless I begin at the beginning.
+
+Yesterday, then, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon Lord Dereham's coach
+and four came clattering up to our door to call for me. Mrs. Hambledon
+was already installed and Lady Soames and a dozen other of the
+_fashionables_ of Bath. My little Lord Marquis had kept the box seat
+for me, at which the other ladies, even my dear friend and chaperon,
+looked rather green. The weather was glorious, and off we went with a
+flourish of trumpets and whips, and I knew I should enjoy myself
+monstrously.
+
+And so I did. But it was the drive back that was the _best_ of all. We
+never started till near nine o'clock, and Lord Dereham insisted on my
+sitting beside him again--at which all the ladies looked daggers _at
+me_ and all the gentlemen daggers _at him_. And then we sang songs and
+tore along uphill and down dale, under the beautiful moonlight,
+through the still air, till all at once we found we had lost our way.
+We had to drive on till we came to an inn and we could make inquiries.
+There the gentlemen opened another hamper of wine, and when we set
+off again I promise you they were all pretty _lively_ (and most of
+the ladies too, for the matter of that). As for me, who never drank
+anything but milk or water till six months ago, I have not learnt to
+like wine yet, so, though I sipped out of the glass to keep the fun
+going, I contrived to dispose of the contents, quietly over the side
+of the coach, when no one was looking.
+
+It was a drive to remember. We came to a big hill, and as we were
+going down it at a smart pace the coach began to sway, then the ladies
+began to screech, and even the men looked so scared that I laughed
+outright. Lord Dereham was perfectly tipsy and he did not know the
+road a bit, but he drove in beautiful style and was extraordinarily
+amusing; as soon as the coach took to swaying, instead of slackening
+speed as they all begged him, he _lashed_ the horses into a tearing
+gallop, looking over his shoulder at the rest and cursing them with
+the greatest energy, grinning with rage, and looking more like a
+little white rat than _ever_.
+
+"Give me the whip," said I, "and I shall whip the team while you
+drive."
+
+"_Cuth me_," cried he, "if you are not worth the whole coach-load a
+dozen times over."
+
+On we went; the coach rocked, the horses galloped, and I knew at any
+moment the whole thing might upset, and I flourished my whip and
+lashed at the steaming flanks and I never felt what it was to really
+enjoy myself before.
+
+Presently, although we were tearing along so fast, the coach steadied
+itself and went as straight as an arrow; and this, it seems, it would
+never have done had not Lord Dereham kept up the pace.
+
+And all the rest of the drive his lordship wanted to kiss me. I was
+not a bit frightened, though he was drunk, but every time he grew too
+forward I just flicked at the horses with the whip, and I think he saw
+that I would have cracked him across the face quite as readily if he
+dared to presume.
+
+No doubt a dozen times during the day I could have secured a coronet
+for myself, not to speak of future 'strawberry leaves,' as my aunt
+says, if I had cared to; but who could think of loving a man like
+_that_? He can manage four horses, and he has shot two men in a duel,
+and he can drink three bottles of wine at a sitting, and when one
+tries to find something more to say for him, lo! that is all!
+
+When we at length arrived at Camden Place, for I vowed they must leave
+me home the first, there was the rarest sport. My lord's grooms must
+set to blow the horns, for they were as drunk as their master, while
+one of the gentlemen played upon the knocker till the whole crescent
+was aroused.
+
+Then the doors opened suddenly, _and Tanty appears_ on the threshold,
+holding a candle. Her turban was quite crooked, with the birds of
+Paradise over one eye, and I never saw her old nose look so hooked.
+All the gentlemen set up a shout, and Sir Thomas Wrexham began to crow
+like a cock for no reason on earth that I can think of. The servants
+were holding up lanterns, but the moon was nigh as bright as day.
+
+Tanty just looked round upon them one after another, and in spite of
+her crooked turban I think they all grew frightened. Then she caught
+hold of me, and just whisked me behind her. Next she spied out Mrs.
+Hambledon, who had been asleep inside the coach, and now tumbled
+forth, yawning and gaping.
+
+"And so, madam," cries Tanty to her, not very loud, but in a voice
+that made even me tremble; "so, madam, this is how you fulfil the
+confidence I placed in you. A pretty chaperon you are to have the
+charge of a young lady; though, indeed, considering your years, madam,
+I might have been justified in trusting you."
+
+Mrs. Hambledon, cut short in the middle of a loud yawn by this attack,
+was a sight to see.
+
+"Hoighty-toighty, ma'am!" she cried, indignantly, as soon as she could
+get her voice; "here's a fine to-do. It is my fault, of course, that
+Lord Dereham should mistake the road. And my fault too, no doubt, that
+your miss should make an exhibition of herself riding on the box with
+the gentlemen at this hour of night, when I implored her to come
+inside with me, were it only for the sake of common female propriety."
+
+"Common female indeed!" echoed Tanty, with a snort; "the poor child
+knew better."
+
+"Cuth the old cats! they'll have each other'th eyeth out," here cried
+my lord marquis, interposing his little tipsy person between them. He
+had scrambled down the box after me, and was listening with an air of
+profound wisdom that made me feel fit to die laughing. "Don't you mind
+her, old lady," he went on, addressing Tanty; "Mith Molly ith quite
+able to take care of herself--damme if she'th not."
+
+Aunt Donoghue turned upon him majestically.
+
+"And then that is more than can be said for you, my poor young man,"
+she exclaimed; and I vow he looked as sobered as if she had flung a
+bucket of cold water over him. Upon this she retired and shut the
+door, and marched me upstairs before her without a word.
+
+Before my room door she stopped.
+
+"Mrs. Dempsey has already packed your sister's trunks," she said, in a
+very dry way; "and she will begin to pack yours early--I was going to
+say to-morrow--but you keep such hours, my dear--it will be _to-day_."
+
+I stared at her as if she had gone mad.
+
+"You and your sister," she went on, "have got beyond me. I have taken
+my resolution and given my orders, and there is not the least use
+making a scene."
+
+And then it came out about Madeleine. At first I thought I would go
+into a great passion and refuse to obey, but after a minute or two I
+saw it was, as she said, no use. Tanty was as cool as a cucumber. Then
+I thought perhaps I might mollify her if I could cry, but I couldn't
+pump up a tear; I never can; and at last when I went into my room and
+saw poor Madeleine, who has cried herself to sleep, evidently, I
+understood that there was nothing for us but to do as we were told.
+
+And now I can hear Tanty fussing about her room still--she has been
+writing, too--cra, cra, cra--this last hour. I wonder who to? After
+all there is some fun in being taken off mysteriously we don't know
+where. I should like to go and kiss her, but she thinks I am abed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A MASTERFUL OLD MAID
+
+
+No contrary advice having reached Pulwick since Miss O'Donoghue's
+_letter of invoice_, as Mr. Landale facetiously described it, he drove
+over to Lancaster on the day appointed to meet the party.
+
+And thus it came to pass that through the irresistible management of
+Miss O'Donoghue, who put into the promotion of her scheme all the
+energy belonging to her branch of the family, together with the long
+habit of authority of the _Tante a heritage_, the daughters of Cecile
+de Savenaye returned to that first home of theirs, of which they had
+forgotten even the name.
+
+Mr. Landale had not set eyes on his valuable relative for many years,
+but her greeting, at the first renewal of intercourse which took place
+in the principal parlour of the Lancaster Inn, was as easily detached
+in manner as though they had just met again after a trifling absence
+and she was bringing her charges to his house in accordance with a
+mutual agreement.
+
+"My dear Rupert," cried she, "I am glad to see you again. I need not
+ask you how you are, you look so extremely sleek and prosperous.
+Adrian's wide acres are succulent, hey? I should have known you
+anywhere; though to be sure, you are hardly large enough for the
+breed, you have the true Landale stamp on you, the unmistakable
+Landale style of feature. _Semper eadem._ In that sense, at least, one
+can apply your ancient and once worthy motto to you; and you know,
+nephew, since you have conveniently changed your faith, both to God
+and king, this sentiment strikes one as a sarcasm amidst the
+achievements of Landale, you backsliders! Ah, we O'Donoghues have
+better maintained our device, _sans changier_."
+
+Rupert, to whom the well-known volubility of his aunt was most
+particularly disagreeable, but who had nevertheless saluted the
+stalwart old lady's cheek with much affection, here bent his supple
+back with a sort of mocking gallantry.
+
+"You maintain your _device_, permit me to say, my dear aunt, as
+ostentatiously in your person as we renegade Landales ourselves."
+
+"Pooh, pooh! I am too old a bird to be caught by such chaff, nephew;
+it is pearls before.... I mean it is too late in the day, my dear.
+Keep it for the young things. And indeed I see the sheep's eyes you
+have been casting in their direction. Come nearer, young ladies, and
+make your cousin's acquaintance," beckoning to her nieces, who,
+arrayed in warm travelling pelisses and beaver bonnets of fashionable
+appearance, stood in the background near the fireplace.
+
+"They are very like, are they not?" she continued. "Twins always are;
+as like as two peas. And yet these are as different as day and night
+when you come to know them. Madeleine is the eldest; that is she in
+the beaver fur; Molly prefers bear. Without their bonnets you will
+distinguish them by their complexion. Molly has raven hair (she is the
+truest O'Donoghue), whilst Madeleine is fair, _blonde_, like her
+Breton father."
+
+The sisters greeted their new-found guardian, each in her own way.
+And, in spite of the disguising bonnets and their surprising
+similarity of voice, height, and build, the difference was more marked
+than that of beaver and bear.
+
+Madeleine acknowledged her kinsman's greeting with a dainty curtsey
+and little half-shy smile, marked by that air of distinction and
+breeding which was her peculiar characteristic. Molly, however, who
+thought she had reasonable cause for feeling generally exasperated,
+and who did not see in Mr. Rupert Landale, despite his good looks and
+his good manner, a very promising substitute for her Bath admirers
+(nor in the prospect of Pulwick a profitable exchange for Bath), came
+forward with her bolder grace to flounce him a saucy "reverence,"
+measuring him the while with a certain air of mockery which his
+thin-skinned susceptibility was quick to seize.
+
+He looked back at her down the long tunnel of her bonnet, appraising
+the bloom and beauty within with cold and curious gaze, and then he
+turned to Madeleine and made to her his courteous speech of welcome.
+
+This was sufficient for Miss Molly, who, for six months already
+accustomed to compel admiration at first sight from all specimens of
+the male sex that came across her path, instantly vowed a deadly
+hatred to her cousin, and followed the party into the Landale family
+coach--Rupert preceding, with a lady on each arm--in a temper as black
+as her own locks.
+
+It fell to her lot to sit beside the objectionable relative on the
+back seat, while, by the right of her minute's seniority, Madeleine
+sat beside Tanty in the front. The projecting wings of her headgear
+effectively prevented her from watching his demeanour, unless, indeed,
+she had turned to him, which was, of course, out of the question; but
+certain fugitive conscious blushes upon the young face in front of
+her, certain castings down of long lashes and timid upward glances,
+made Molly shrewdly conjecture that Mr. Landale, through all the
+apparent devotion with which he listened to Tanty's continuous flow of
+observations, was able to bestow a certain amount of attention upon
+her pretty neighbour.
+
+Tanty herself conducted the conversation with her usual high hand,
+feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance;
+and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to
+plant her points where she chose.
+
+Thus the long drive wore to its end. The sun was golden upon Pulwick
+when the carriage at length drew up before the portico. Miss Sophia
+received them in the hall, in a state of painful flutter and timidity.
+She had a constitutional terror of her aunt's sharp eyes, and, though
+she examined her young cousins wistfully, Madeleine's unconscious air
+of dignity repelled her as much as Molly's deliberate pertness.
+
+Rupert conducted his aunt upstairs, and down the long echoing corridor
+towards her apartment.
+
+"Ha, my old quarters," quoth Tanty, disengaging herself briskly from
+her escort to enter the room and look round approvingly, "and very
+comfortable they are. And my two nieces are next door, I see, as gay
+as chintz can make them. Thank you, nephew, I shall keep you no
+longer. We shall dine shortly, I feel sure. Well, well, I do not
+pretend I am not quite ready to do justice to your excellent
+fare--beyond doubt, it will be excellent! Go to your room, girls, your
+baggage is coming up, you see; I shall send Dempsey to assist you
+presently. No, not you, Sophia, I was speaking to the young ones. I
+should like to have a little chat with you, my dear, if you have no
+objection."
+
+One door closed upon Rupert as he smiled and bowed himself out, the
+other upon Molly hustling her sister before her.
+
+Tanty in the highest good humour, having accomplished her desire, and
+successfully "established a lodgment" (to use a military term not
+inappropriate to such a martial spirit) for her troublesome nieces in
+the stronghold of Pulwick, once more surveyed her surroundings: the
+dim old walls, the great four-post bed, consecrated, of course, by
+tradition to the memory of some royal slumberer, the damask hangings,
+and the uncomfortable chairs, with the utmost favour, ending up with a
+humorous examination of the elongated figure hesitating on the
+hearthrug.
+
+"Be seated, Sophia. I am glad to stretch my old limbs after that
+terrible drive. So here we are together again. What are you sighing
+for? Upon my soul, you are the same as ever, I see, the same tombstone
+on your chest, and blowing yourself out with sighs, just as you used.
+That will never give you a figure, my poor girl; it is no wonder you
+are but skin and bones. Ah, can't you let the poor fellow rest in his
+grave Sophia? it is flying in the face of Providence, I call it, to go
+on perpetually stirring up his ashes like that. I hope you mean to try
+and be a little more cheerful with those poor girls. But, there, I
+believe you are never so happy as when you are miserable. And it's a
+poor creature you would be at any time," added the old lady to
+herself, after a second thoughtful investigation of Miss Landale's
+countenance, which had assumed an expression of mulishness in addition
+to an increase of dolefulness during this homily.
+
+Here, to Miss Landale's great relief, the dying sunset, wavering into
+crimson and purple, from its first glory of liquid gold, attracted her
+aunt's attention, and Miss O'Donoghue went over to the window.
+
+Beneath her spread the quaint garden, with its clipped box edges, and
+beyond the now leafless belt of trees, upon the glimmer of the bay,
+the outline of Scarthey, a dark silhouette rose fantastically against
+the vivid sky. Even as she gazed, there leapt upon its fairy turret a
+minute point of white.
+
+The jovial old countenance changed and darkened.
+
+"And Adrian is still at his fool's game over there, I suppose," she
+said irately turning upon Sophia. "When have you seen him last? How
+often does he come here? I gather Master Rupert is nothing if not the
+master. Why don't you answer me, Sophia?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner was as well cooked and served a meal as any under Rupert's
+rule, which is saying a good deal, and if the young ladies failed to
+appreciate the "floating island," the "golden nests," and "silver
+web," so thoughtfully provided for them, Tanty did ample justice to
+the venison.
+
+Indeed the cloud which had been visible upon her countenance at the
+beginning of dinner, and which according to that downright habit of
+mind, which rendered her so terrible or so delightful a companion, she
+made no attempt to conceal, began to lift towards the first remove,
+and altogether vanished over her final glass of port.
+
+After dinner she peremptorily ordered her grand-nieces into the
+retirement of their bedchambers, unblushingly alleging their exhausted
+condition in front of the perfect bloom of their beautiful young
+vigour.
+
+She then, over a cup of tea, luxuriously stretching her thin frame in
+the best arm-chair the drawing-room could afford, gave Rupert a brief
+code of directions as to the special attentions and care she desired
+to be bestowed upon her wards, during their residence at Pulwick,
+descanting generously upon their various perfections, gliding
+dexterously over her reasons for wishing to be rid of them herself,
+and concluding with the hint--either pregnant or barren of meaning as
+he chose to take it--that if he made their stay pleasant to them, she
+would not forget the service.
+
+Then, as Mr. Landale began, with apparent guilelessness, to put a few
+little telling questions to her anent the episodes which had made Bath
+undesirable as a residence for these young paragons, the old lady
+suddenly became overwhelmed with fatigue and sleepiness, and professed
+herself ready to be conducted to her bower immediately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, despite the _moue de circonstance_ which Molly thought it
+incumbent on her to assume, neither she nor Madeleine regretted their
+compulsory withdrawal from the social circle downstairs.
+
+Madeleine had her own thoughts to follow up, and that these were both
+engrossing and pleasant was easily evident; and Molly, bursting with a
+sense of injury arising from many causes, desired a special
+explanation with her sister, which the presence in and out upon them
+of Tanty's woman had prevented her from indulging in before dinner.
+
+"So here we are at last," cried she, indignantly, after she had walked
+round and severely inspected her quarters, pausing to "pull a lip" of
+extreme disfavour at the handsome portrait of Mr. Landale that hung
+between the windows, "we are, Madeleine, at last, kidnapped,
+imprisoned, successfully disposed of, in fact."
+
+"Yes, here we are at last," echoed Madeleine, abstractedly, warming
+her slender ankles by the fire.
+
+"Have you made out yet what particular kind of new frenzy it was that
+seized chere Tante?" asked Miss Molly, with great emphasis, as she sat
+down at her toilet-table. "You are the cause of it all, my dear, and
+so you ought to know. It is all very well for Tanty to pretend that I
+have brought it on myself by not coming home till three o'clock (as if
+that was _my_ fault). She cannot blink the fact that her Dempsey
+creature had orders to pack my boxes before bedtime. Your Smith must
+be a desperately dangerous individual. Well," she continued, looking
+round over her shoulder, "why don't you say something, you
+lackadaisical thing?"
+
+But Madeleine answered nought and continued gazing, while only the
+little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had
+heard the petulant speech.
+
+The smile put the finishing touch to Molly's righteous anger.
+Brandishing a hairbrush threateningly, she marched over to her sister
+and looked down upon the slender figure, in its clinging white dress,
+with blazing eyes.
+
+"Look here," she cried, "there must be an end of this. I can put up
+with your slyness no longer. How _dare_ you have secrets from me,
+miss?--your own twin sister! You and I, who used never to have a
+thought we did not share. How dare you have a lover, and not tell me
+all about him? What was the meaning of your weeping like a fountain
+all the way from Bath to Shrewsbury, and then, without rhyme or reason
+apparently, smiling to yourself all the way from there to Lancaster.
+You have had a letter, don't attempt to deny it, it is of no use....
+Oh, it is base of you, it is indeed! And to think that it is all
+through you that I am forced into this exile, through your _airs
+penches_, and your sighing and dreaming, and your mysterous
+_Smith_.... To think that to-night, this very night, is the ball of
+the season, and we are going to bed! Oh, and to-morrow and to-morrow,
+and to-morrow, with nothing but a knave and a fool to keep us
+company--for I don't think much of your female cousin, Madeleine, and,
+as for your male cousin, I perfectly detest him--and all the tabbies
+of the country-side for diversion, with perhaps a country buck on high
+days and holidays for a relish! Pah!"
+
+Molly had almost talked her ill-humour away. Her energetic nature
+could throw off most unpleasant emotions easily enough so long as it
+might have an outlet for them; she now laid down the threatening
+brush, and, kneeling beside her, flung both her arms round Madeleine's
+shoulders.
+
+"Ma petite Madeleine," she coaxed, in the mother tongue, "tell thy
+little sister thy secrets."
+
+A faint flush crept to Madeleine's usually creamy cheeks, a light into
+her eyes. She turned impulsively to the face near hers, then, as if
+bethinking herself, pursed her lips together and shook her head
+slightly.
+
+"Do you remember, ma cherie," she said, at last, "that French tale
+Mrs. Hambledon lent us in which it is said _'Qui fuit l'amour, l'amour
+suit.'_"
+
+"Well?" asked Molly, eagerly, her lips parted as if to drink in the
+expected confidence.
+
+"Well," replied the other, "well, perhaps things may not be so bad
+after all. Perhaps," rising from her seat, and looking at her sister
+with a little gentle malice, while she, too, began to disrobe her
+fairer beauty for the night, "some of your many lovers may come after
+you from Bath! Oh, Molly!" with a little scream, for Molly, with eyes
+flashing once more, had sprung up from her knees to inflict a vicious
+pinch upon the equivocator's arm.
+
+"Yes, miss, you shall be pinched till you confess." Then flouting her
+with a sudden change of mood, "I am sure I don't want to know your
+wonderful secret,"--seizing her comb and passing it crackling through
+her hair with quite unnecessary energy--"Mademoiselle la Cachotiere.
+Anyhow, it cannot be very interesting.... _Mrs. Smith!_ Fancy caring
+for a man called Smith! If you smile again like that, Madeleine, I
+shall beat you."
+
+The two sisters looked at each other for a second as if hesitating on
+the brink of anger, and then both laughed.
+
+"Never mind, I shall pay you out yet," quoth Molly, tugging at her
+black mane. "So our lovers are to come after us, is _that_ it? Do you
+know, Madeleine," she went on, calming down, "I almost regret now that
+I would not listen to young Lord Dereham, simpleton though he be. He
+looked such a dreadful little fright that I only laughed at him.... I
+should have laughed at him all my life. But it would perhaps have been
+better than this dependence on Tanty, with her sudden whims and
+scampers and whisking of us away into the wilderness. Then I should
+have had my own way always. Now it's too late. Tanty told me yesterday
+that she sees he is a dissolute young man, and that his dukedom is
+only a Charles II. creation, and 'We know what that means,' she added,
+and shook her head. I am sure I had not a notion, but I shook my head
+too, and said, 'Of course, that made it impossible.' I was really
+afraid she would want me to marry him. She was dreadfully pleased and
+said I was a true O'Donoghue. Oh, dear! I don't know _anything_ about
+love. I can't imagine being in love; but one thing is certain, I could
+never, never, never allow a horrid little rat like Lord Dereham to
+make love to me, to kiss me, nor, indeed, any man--oh, horror! How you
+are blushing, my dear! Come here into the light. It would be good for
+your soul, indeed it would, to confess!"
+
+But Madeleine, burying her hot cheeks in her sister's neck and
+clasping her with gentle caresses, was not to be drawn from her
+reticence. Molly pushed her off at last, and gave a hard little
+good-night kiss like a bird-peck.
+
+"Very well; but you might as well have confessed, for I shall find out
+in the long run. And who knows, perhaps you may be sorry one day that
+you did not tell me of your own accord."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A RECORD AND A PRESENTMENT.
+
+
+The gallery of family portraits at Pulwick is one of the most
+remarkable features of that ancient house.
+
+It was a custom firmly established at the Priory--ever since the first
+heralds' visitation in Lancashire, when some mooted point of claims to
+certain quarterings had been cleared in an unexpected way by the
+testimony of a well-authenticated ancestral portrait--for each
+successive representative to add to the collection. One of the first
+cares of every Landale, therefore, on succeeding to the title was to
+be painted, with his proper armorial and otherwise distinguishing
+honours jealously delineated, and thus hung in the place of honour
+over the high mantelshelf of the gallery--displacing on the occasion
+his own immediate and revered predecessor.
+
+The chain was consequently unbroken from the Elizabethan descendants
+of the first acquirers of ecclesiastical property at Pulwick, down to
+the present Light-keeper of Scarthey.
+
+But whilst the late Sir Thomas appeared in all the majesty of
+deputy-lieutenant, colonel of Militia, magistrate, and sundry other
+honourable offices, in his due place on the right of the present
+baronet, the latter figured in a character so strange and so
+incongruous that it seemed as if one day the dignified array of
+Landales--old, young, middle-aged, but fine gentlemen, all of
+them--must turn their backs upon their degenerate kinsman.
+
+Over the chimney-piece, in the huge carved-oak frame (now already two
+centuries old), a common sailor, in the striped loose trousers, the
+blue jacket with red piping of a man-of-war's man, with pigtail and
+coarse open shirt--stood boldly forth as the representative of the
+present owner of Pulwick.
+
+Proud of their long line of progenitors, it was a not unusual thing
+for the Landales to entertain their guests at breakfast in a certain
+sunny bow-window in the portrait gallery rather than in the breakfast
+parlour proper, which in winter, unmistakably harboured more damp than
+was pleasant.
+
+It was, therefore, with no surprise that Miss Landale received an
+early order from her brother to have a fire lighted in the apartment
+sacred to the family honours, and the matutinal repast served there in
+due course.
+
+Whether Mr. Landale was actuated by a regard for the rheumatism of his
+worthy relative, or merely a natural family pride, or by some other
+and less simple motive, he saw no necessity for informing his docile
+housewife on the matter.
+
+As Sophia was accustomed to no such condescension on his part even in
+circumstances more extraordinary, she merely bundled out of bed
+unquestioningly in the darkness and cold of the morning to see his
+orders executed in the proper manner; which, indeed, to her credit was
+so successfully accomplished that Tanty and her charges, when they
+made their entry upon the scene, could not fail to be impressed with
+the comfortable aspect of the majestic old room.
+
+Mr. Landale examined his two young uninvited guests with new keenness
+in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a
+lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than
+accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual
+necessity of her delicate nature, there was more than resignation in
+the blushing radiance of her look and smile.
+
+"Portraits of their mother," said Rupert, bringing his critical survey
+to a close, and stepping forward with a nice action of the legs to
+present his arm to his aunt. "Portraits of their mother both of
+them--I trust to that miniature which used to grace our collection in
+the drawing-room rather than to the treacherous memory of a school-boy
+for the impression--but portraits by different masters and in
+different moods."
+
+There was something patronising in the tone from so young a man, which
+Molly resented on the spot.
+
+"Oh, we should be as like as two peas, only that we are as different
+as day and night, as Tanty says," she retorted, tossing her white chin
+at her host, while Miss O'Donoghue laughed aloud at her favourite's
+sauciness.
+
+"And after all," said Rupert, as he bestowed his venerable relative on
+her chair, with an ineffable air of politeness, contradicted, though
+only for an instant, by the look which he shot at Molly from the light
+hazel eyes, "Tanty is not so far wrong--the only difference between
+night and day is the difference between the _brunette_ and the
+_blonde_," with a little bow to each of the sisters, "an Irish bull,
+if one comes to analyse it, is but the expression of the too rapid
+working of quick wits."
+
+"Faith, nephew," said Tanty, sitting down in high good humour to the
+innumerable good things in which her Epicurean old soul delighted,
+"that is about as true a thing as ever you said. Our Irish tongues are
+apt to get behind a thing before it is there, and they call that
+making a bull."
+
+Rupert's sense of humour was as keen as most of his other faculties,
+and at the unconscious humour of this sally his laugh rang out
+frankly, while Molly and Madeleine giggled in their plates, and Miss
+O'Donoghue chuckled quietly to herself in the intervals of eating and
+drinking, content to have been witty, without troubling to discover
+how.
+
+Sophia alone remained unmoved by mirth; indeed, as she raised her
+drooping head, amazed at the clamour, an unwary tear trickled down her
+long nose into her tea. She was given to revelling in anniversaries of
+dead and gone joys or sorrows; the one as melancholy to her to look
+back upon as the other; and upon this November day, now very many
+years ago, had the ardent, consumptive rector first hinted at his
+love.
+
+"And now," said Miss O'Donoghue, who, having disposed of the most
+serious part of the breakfast, pushed away her plate with one hand
+while she stirred her second cup of well-creamed tea lazily with the
+other, "Now, Rupert, will you tell me the arrangements you propose to
+make to enable me to see your good brother?"
+
+Rupert had anticipated being attacked upon this subject, and had fully
+prepared himself to defend the peculiar position it was his interest
+to maintain. To encourage a meeting between his brother and the old
+lady (to whom the present position of affairs was a grievous offence)
+did not, certainly, enter into his plan of action; but Tanty had put
+the question in an unexpected and slightly awkward shape, and for a
+second or two he hesitated before replying.
+
+"I fear," said he then, gliding into the subject with his usual easy
+fluency, "that you will be disappointed if you have been reckoning
+upon an interview with Adrian, my dear aunt. The hermit will not be
+drawn from his shell on any pretext."
+
+"What," cried Tanty, while her withered cheek flushed, "do you mean to
+tell me that my nephew, Sir Adrian Landale, will decline to come a few
+hundred yards to see his old aunt--his mother's own sister--who has
+come three hundred miles, at seventy years of age, to see him in his
+own house--_in his own house_?" repeated the irate old lady, rattling
+the spoon with much emphasis against her cup. "If you _mean_ this,
+Rupert, it is an insult to me which I shall never forget--_never_."
+
+She rose from her seat as she concluded, shaking with the tremulous
+anger of age.
+
+"For God's sake, Tanty," cried Rupert, throwing into his voice all the
+generous warmth he was capable of simulating, "do not hold me
+responsible for Adrian in this matter. His strange vagaries are not of
+my suggesting, heaven knows."
+
+"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, loftily, "if you will kindly
+send the letter I am about to write to your brother, by a safe
+messenger, immediately, I shall believe that it is _your_ wish to
+treat me with proper respect, whatever may be Adrian's subsequent
+behaviour."
+
+Mr. Landale's countenance assumed an expression of very genuine
+distress; this was just the one proof of dutiful attachment that he
+was loth to bestow upon his cherished aunt.
+
+"I see how it is," he exclaimed earnestly, coming up to the old lady,
+and laying his hand gently upon her arm, "you entirely misunderstand
+the situation. I am not a free agent in this matter. I cannot do what
+you ask; I am bound by pledge. Adrian is, undoubtedly, more
+than--peculiar on certain points, and, really, I dare not, if I would,
+thwart him."
+
+"Oh!" cried Tanty, shooting off the ejaculation as from a pop-gun.
+Then, shaking herself free of Rupert's touch, she sat down abruptly in
+her chair again, and began fanning herself with her handkerchief. Not
+even in her interchange of amenities with Mrs. Hambledon, had Molly
+seen her display so much indignation.
+
+"You want me to believe he is mad, I suppose?" she snapped, at last.
+
+"Dear me! No, no, no!" responded the other, in his airy way. "I did
+not mean to go so far as that; but--well, there are very painful
+matters, and hitherto I have avoided all discussion upon them, even
+with Sophia. My affection for Adrian----"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted Tanty. "You meant something, I suppose;
+either the man's mad, or he is not. And I, for one, don't believe a
+word of it. The worst sign about him, that I can see, is the blind
+confidence the poor fellow seems to put in you."
+
+Here Molly, who had been listening to the discussion "with all her
+ears"--anything connected with the mysterious personality of the
+absent head of the house was beginning to have a special fascination
+for her--gave an irrepressible little note of laughter.
+
+Rupert looked up at her quickly, and their eyes met.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Miss," cried Miss O'Donoghue, sharply; aware that
+she had gone too far in her last remark, and glad to relieve her
+oppression in another direction, "how dare you laugh? Sophia, this is
+a terrible thing your brother wants me to believe--may I ask what
+_your_ opinion is? Though I'll not deny I don't think that will be
+worth much."
+
+Sophia glanced helplessly at Rupert, but he was far too carefully
+possessed of himself to affect to perceive her embarrassment.
+
+"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you
+need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose--you
+are not absolutely a drivelling idiot--_all_ the Landales are not
+ripening for lunatic asylums--collect your wits, Sophia, I know you
+have not got any, but you have _enough_ to be able to give a plain
+answer to a plain question, I suppose. Do you think your brother mad,
+child?"
+
+"God forbid," murmured Sophia, at the very extremity of those wits of
+which Miss O'Donoghue had so poor an opinion. "Oh, no, dear aunt, not
+_mad_, of course, not in the least _mad_."
+
+Then, gathering from a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not
+upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew
+forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if
+irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity
+had really fallen upon us--and of course there _are_ symptoms, no
+doubt there are symptoms...."
+
+"What are his symptoms--has he tried to murder any of you, hey?"
+
+"Oh, my dear aunt! No, indeed, dear Adrian is gentleness itself."
+
+"Does he bite? Does he gibber? Oh, away with you, Sophia! I am sure I
+cannot wonder at the poor fellow wanting to live on a rock, between
+you and Rupert. I am sure the periwinkles and the gulls must be
+pleasant company compared to you. That alone would show, I should
+think, that he knows right well what he is about. Mad indeed! There
+never was any madness among the O'Donoghues except your poor uncle
+Michael, who got a box on the ear from a windmill--and _he_ wasn't an
+O'Donoghue at all! You will be kind enough, nephew, to have delivered
+to Sir Adrian, no later than to-day, the letter which I shall this
+moment indite to him."
+
+"Perhaps," said Rupert, "if you will only favour me with your
+attention for a few minutes first, aunt, and allow me to narrate to
+you the circumstances of my brother's return here, and of his
+subsequent self-exile, you will see fit to change your opinion, both
+as regards him and myself."
+
+A self-controlled nature will in the long run, rightly or wrongly,
+always assume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness
+of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty
+rapidly down from her pinnacle of passion.
+
+Certainly, she said, she was not only ready, but anxious to hear all
+that Rupert could have to say for himself; and, smoothing down her
+black satin apron with a shaking hand, the old lady prepared to listen
+with as much judicial dignity as her flustered state allowed her to
+assume. Rupert drew his chair opposite to hers and leant his elbow on
+the table, and fixed his bright, hard eyes upon her.
+
+"You remember, of course," he began after a moment's pause, "how at
+the time of my poor father's death, Adrian was reported to have lost
+his life in the Vendee war--though without authoritative
+confirmation--at the same time as the fair and unhappy Countesse de
+Savenaye, to whose fortune he had so chivalrously devoted himself."
+
+Tanty bowed her head in solemn assent; but Molly, watching with the
+most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of
+mockery she thought to catch upon the speaker's curling lip.
+
+"It was," continued he, "the constant strain, the long months of
+watching in vain for tidings, that told upon my father, rather than
+the actual grief of loss. When he died, the responsibilities of the
+headship of the house devolved naturally upon me, the only male
+representative left, seemingly, to undertake them. The months went by;
+to the most sanguine the belief in Adrian's death became inevitable.
+Our hopes died slowly, but they died at last; we mourned for him,"
+here Rupert cast down his eyes till the thick black lashes which were
+one of his beauties swept his cheek; his tone was perfect in its
+simple gravity. "At length, urged thereto by all the family, if I
+remember rightly by yourself as well, dear aunt, I assumed the title
+as well as the position which seemed mine by right. I was very young
+at the time, but I do not think that either then, or during the ten
+years that followed, I unworthily filled my brother's place."
+
+There was a proud ring of sincerity in the last words, and the old
+lady knew that they were true; that during the years of his absolute
+power as well as of his present more restricted mastership, Rupert's
+management of the estate was unimpeachable.
+
+"Certainly not, my dear Rupert," she said in softer tones than she had
+hitherto used to him, "no one would dream of suggesting such a
+thing--pray go on."
+
+"And so," pursued the nephew, with a short laugh, relapsing into that
+light tone of banter which was his most natural mode of expression;
+"when, one fine day, a hired coach clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's
+avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who announced
+himself, in melancholy tones that would have befitted the ghost no
+doubt many took him for, as the rightful Sir Adrian, erroneously
+supposed defunct, I confess that it required a little persuasion to
+make me recognise my long-lost brother--and yet there could be no
+doubt of it. The missing heir had come to his own again; the dead had
+come back to life. Well, we killed the fatted calf, and all the rest
+of it--but I need not inflict upon you the narrative of our
+rejoicing."
+
+"Faith, no," said Tanty, drily, "I can see it with half an eye."
+
+"You know, too, I believe, the series of extraordinary adventures, or
+misadventures, which had kept him roaming on the high seas while we at
+home set up tablets to his memory and 'wore our blacks' as people here
+call it, and cultivated a chastened resignation. There was a good deal
+of correspondence going on at the time between Pulwick and Bunratty,
+if I remember aright, and you heard all about Adrian's divers attempts
+to land in England, about his fight with the King's men, his crack on
+the head and final impressment. At least you heard as much as we could
+gather ourselves. Adrian is not what one would call a garrulous person
+at the best of times. It was really with the greatest difficulty that
+we managed to extract enough out of him to piece together a coherent
+tale."
+
+"Well, well," quoth Tanty, with impatience, "you are glib enough for
+two anyhow, my dear! All this does not tell me how Adrian came to live
+on a lighthouse, and why you put him down as a lunatic."
+
+"Not as a lunatic," corrected Rupert, gently, "merely as slightly
+eccentric on certain points. Though, indeed, if you had seen him
+during those first months after his return, I think even you with your
+optimistic spirit would have feared, as we did, that he was falling
+into melancholia. Thank heaven he is better now. But, dear me, what we
+went through! I declare I expected every morning to be informed that
+Sir Adrian's corpse had been found hanging from his bedpost or
+discovered in a jelly at the bottom of the bluffs. And, indeed, when
+at length he disappeared for three days, after he had been last
+observed mooning along the coast, there was a terrible panic lest he
+should have sought a congenial and soothing end in the embraces of
+the quicksands.... It turned out, however, that he had merely strolled
+over to Scarthey--where, as you know, my father established a beacon
+and installed a keeper to warn boats off our shoals--and, finding the
+place to his liking, had remained there, regardless of our feelings."
+
+"Tut, tut!" said Tanty; but whether in reproof of Rupert's flippant
+language or of her elder nephew's erratic behaviour, it would have
+been difficult to determine.
+
+"Of course," went on Rupert, smoothly, "I had resolved, after a decent
+period, to remove my lares and penates from a house where I was no
+longer master and to establish myself, with my small patrimony (I
+believe I ought to call it _matrimony_, as we younger children benefit
+by our O'Donoghue mother) in an independent establishment. But when I
+first broached the subject, Adrian was so vastly distressed, expressed
+himself so well satisfied with my management of the estate and begged
+me so earnestly to consider Pulwick as my home, vowing that he himself
+would never marry, and that all he looked forward to in life was to
+see me wedded and with future heirs to the name springing around me,
+that it would have been actual unkindness to resist. Moreover, as you
+can imagine, Adrian is not exactly a man of business, and his
+spasmodic interferences in the control of the property being already
+then of a very injudicious nature, I confess that, having nursed it
+myself for eleven years with some success, I dreaded to think what it
+would become under his auspices. And so I agreed to remain. But the
+position increased in difficulty. Adrian's moroseness seemed to grow
+upon him; he showed an exaggerated horror of company; either flying
+from visitors as from the pest, and shutting himself up in his own
+apartments, or (on the few disastrous occasions when my persuasions
+induced him to show himself to some old family friends) entertaining
+them with such unusual sentiments concerning social laws, the
+magistracy, the government, his Majesty the King himself, that the
+most extraordinary reports about him soon spread over the whole
+county. This was about the time--as you may remember--of my own
+marriage."
+
+Here an alteration crept into Mr. Landale's voice, and Molly looked
+at him curiously, while Miss Sophia gave vent to an audible sniff.
+
+"To be sure," said Tanty, hastily. Comfortably egotistic old ladies
+have an instinctive dislike to painful topics. And that Rupert's
+sorrow for his young wife had been, if self-centred and reserved, of
+an intense and prolonged nature was known to all the family.
+
+The widower himself had no intention of dilating upon it. His wife's
+name he never mentioned, and no one could guess, heavily as the blow
+was known to have fallen upon him, the seething bitterness that her
+loss had left in his soul, nor imagine how different a man he might
+have been if that one strong affection of his life had been spared to
+soften it.
+
+"Adrian fled from the wedding festivities, as you may remember, for
+you were our honoured guest at the time, and greatly displeased at his
+absence," he resumed, after a few seconds of darkling reflection.
+"None of us knew where he had flown to, for he did not evidently
+consider his owl's nest sufficiently remote; but we had his fraternal
+blessing to sustain us. And after that he continued to make periodical
+disappearances to his retreat, stopping away each time longer and
+longer. One fine day he sent workmen to the island with directions to
+repair certain rooms in the keep, and he began to transfer thereto
+furniture, his books and his organ. A dilapidated little French
+prisoner next appeared on the scene (whom my brother had extracted
+from the Tower of Liverpool, which was then crammed with such gentry),
+and finally we were informed that, with this worthy companion, Sir
+Adrian Landale was determined to take up his abode altogether at
+Scarthey, undertaking the duties of the recently defunct light-keeper.
+So off he went, and there he is still. He has extracted from us a
+solemn promise that his privacy is to be absolutely respected, and
+that no communications, or, above all, visits are to be made to him.
+Occasionally, when we least expect it, he descends upon us from his
+tower, upsets all my accounts, makes the most absurd concessions to
+the tenants, rides round the estate with his eyes on the ground and
+disappears again. _Et voila_, my dear aunt, how we stand."
+
+"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, "I am much obliged to you, I am
+sure, for putting me _au courant_ of the family affairs. It is all
+very sad--very sad and very deplorable; but----"
+
+But Mr. Landale was quite aware that Tanty was not yet convinced to
+the desired extent. He therefore here interrupted her to play his last
+card--that ace he had up his sleeve, in careful preparation for this
+trial of skill with his keen-witted relative, and to the suitable
+production of which he had been all along leading.
+
+Rising from his chair with slow, deliberate movement, he proceeded, as
+if following his own train of thought, without noticing that Miss
+O'Donoghue was intent on speech herself:
+
+"You have not seen him, I believe, since he was quite a lad. You would
+have some difficulty in recognising him, though he bears, like the
+rest of us, what you call the unmistakable Landale stamp. His portrait
+is here, by the way--duly installed in its correct position. That,"
+with a laugh, "was one of his freaks. It was his duty to keep up the
+family traditions, he said--and there you will approve of him, no
+doubt; but hardly, perhaps, of the manner in which he has had that
+laudable intention carried out. My own portrait was, of course,
+deposed (like the original)," added Mr. Landale, with something of a
+sneer; "and now hangs meekly in some bedroom or other--in that, if I
+mistake not, at present hallowed by my fair cousins' presence. Well,
+it is good for the soul of man to be humbled, as we are taught to
+believe from our earliest years!"
+
+Tanty was fumbling for her eye-glasses. She was glad to hear that
+Adrian had remembered some of his obligations (she observed,
+sententiously, as she hauled herself stiffly out of her chair to
+approach the chimney-piece); it was certainly a sign that he was more
+mindful of his duties as head of the house than one would expect from
+a person hardly responsible, such as Rupert had represented him to be,
+and ...
+
+Here, the glasses being adjusted and focussed upon the portrait, Miss
+O'Donoghue halted abruptly with a dropping jaw.
+
+"There is a curious inscription underneath the escutcheon," said Mr.
+Landale composedly, "which latter, by the way, you may notice is the
+only one in the line which has no room for an impaled coat (Adrian's
+way of indicating not only that he is single, but means to remain
+such); Adrian composed it himself and indeed attached a marked
+importance to it. Let me read it for you, dear Tanty, the picture
+hangs a little high and those curveting letters are hard to decipher.
+It runs thus:
+
+_Sir Adrian William Hugh Landale, Lord of Pulwick and Scarthey in the
+County Palatine of Lancaster, eighth Baronet, born March 12th, 1775.
+Succeeded to the title and estate on the 10th February 1799, whilst
+abroad. Iniquitously pressed into the King's service on the day of his
+return home, January 2nd, 1801. Twice flogged for alleged
+insubordination, and only released at last by the help of a friend
+after five years of slavery. Died_ [Here a space for the date.] It is
+a record with a vengeance, is it not? Notice my brother's
+determination to die unmarried and to retire, once for all, from all
+or any of the possible honours connected with his position!"
+
+They had all clustered in front of the picture; even Madeleine roused
+from her sweet day-dreams to some show of curiosity; Miss Landale's
+bosom, heaving with such sighs as to make the tombstone rise and fall
+like a ship upon a stormy sea; Molly with an eagerness she did not
+attempt to hide; and Miss O'Donoghue still speechless with horror and
+indignation.
+
+Mr. Landale had gauged his aunt's temperament correctly enough. To one
+whose ruling passion was pride of family, this mockery of a
+consecrated family custom, this heirloom destined to carry down a
+record of degradation into future generations, was an insult to the
+name only to be explained to her first indignation by deliberate
+malice--or insanity.
+
+And from the breezy background of blue sky and sea, contrasting as
+strangely with the dark solemnity of the other portraits as did the
+figure itself in its incongruous sailor dress, the face of the eighth
+baronet looked down in melancholy gravity upon the group gathered in
+judgment upon him.
+
+"Disgraceful! Positively disgraceful!" at length cried the last
+representative of the O'Donoghues of Bunratty, in scandalised tones.
+"My dear Rupert, you should have a curtain put up, that this
+exhibition of folly--of madness, I hardly know what to call it--be not
+exposed to every casual visitor. Dear me, dear me, that I should live
+to see any of my kin deliberately throw discredit on his family, if
+indeed the poor fellow is responsible! Rupert, my good soul, can you
+ascribe any reason for this terrible state of affairs ... that blow on
+the head?"
+
+"In part perhaps," said Mr. Landale. "And yet there have been other
+causes at work. If I could have a private word in your ear," glancing
+meaningly over his shoulder at the two young girls who were both
+listening, though with very different expressions of interest and
+favour, "I could give you my opinion more fully."
+
+"Go away now, my dear creatures," hereupon said Miss O'Donoghue,
+promptly addressing her nieces. "It is a fine morning, and you will
+lose your roses if you don't get the air. I don't care if it has begun
+to rain, miss! Go and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock then.
+Young people _must_ have exercise. Well, my dear Rupert, well!"--when
+Molly, with a pettish "battledore and shuttlecock indeed!" had taken
+her sister by the arm and left the room.
+
+"Well, my dear aunt, the fact is, I believe my unhappy brother has
+never recovered from--from his passion for Cecile de Savenaye, that
+early love affair, so suddenly and tragically terminated--well, it
+seems to have turned his brain!"
+
+"Pooh, pooh! why that was twenty years ago. Don't tell me it is in a
+man to be so constant."
+
+"In no _sane_ man perhaps; but then, you know, Tanty, that is just the
+point.... Remember the circumstances. He loved her madly; he followed
+her, lived near her for months and she was drowned before his eyes, I
+believe. I never heard, of course, any details of that strange period
+of his life, but we can imagine." This was a difficult, vague, subject
+to deal with, and Mr. Landale wisely passed on. "Moreover, his
+behaviour when in this house on his return at first has left me no
+doubt. I watched him closely. He was for ever haunting those rooms
+which she had inhabited. When he found her miniature in the
+drawing-room he went first as white as death, then he took it in his
+hand and stood gazing at it (I am not exaggerating) for a whole hour
+without moving; and, finally, he carried it off, and I know he used to
+talk to it in his room. And now, even if I had not given my poor
+brother my word of honour never to disturb his chosen solitude, I
+should have felt it a heavy responsibility to promote a meeting which
+would inevitably bring back past memories in a troublous manner upon
+him. In fact, were he to come across the children of his dead
+love--above all Molly, who must be startlingly like her mother--what
+might the result be? I hardly like to contemplate it. The human brain
+is a very delicately balanced organ, my dear aunt, and once it gets
+ever so slightly out of order one cannot be too careful to avoid
+risk."
+
+He finished his say with an expressive gesture of the hand. Miss
+O'Donoghue remained for a moment plunged in reflection, during which
+the cloud upon her countenance gradually lifted.
+
+"It is a strange thing," she said at last, "but constancy seems to run
+in the family. There is no denying that. Here is Sophia, a ridiculous
+spectacle--and you yourself, my dear Rupert.... And now poor Adrian,
+too, and his case of mere calf-love, as one would have thought."
+
+"A calf may grow into a fine bull, you know," returned Mr. Landale,
+who had winced at his aunt's allusion to himself and now spoke in the
+most unemotional tone he could assume, "especially if it is well
+fostered in its youth."
+
+"And I suppose," said Miss O'Donoghue, with a faint smile, "you think
+I ought to know all about bulls." She again put up her glasses to
+survey the portrait with critical deliberation; after which,
+recommending him once more strenuously to have a curtain erected, she
+observed, that it would break her heart to look at it one moment
+longer and requested to be conducted from the room.
+
+Mr. Landale could not draw any positive conclusion from his aunt's
+manner of receiving his confidence, nor determine whether she had
+altogether grasped the whole meaning of what he had intended
+delicately to convey to her concerning his brother's past as well as
+present position; but he had said as much as prudence counselled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE DISTANT LIGHT
+
+
+In spite of their first petulant or dolorous anticipation, and of the
+contrast between the even tenor of country life and the constant
+stream of amusement which young people of fashion can find in a place
+like Bath, the two girls discovered that time glided pleasantly enough
+over them at Pulwick.
+
+Instead of the gloomy northern stronghold their novel-fed imagination
+had pictured (the more dismally as their sudden removal from town
+gaieties savoured distantly of punishment at the hand of their irate
+aunt), they found themselves delivered over into a bright,
+admirably-ordered house, replete with things of beauty, comfortable to
+the extremity of luxury; and allowed in this place of safety to enjoy
+almost unrestricted liberty.
+
+The latter privilege was especially precious, as the sisters at that
+time had engrossing thoughts of their own they wished to pursue, and
+found more interest in solitary roamings through the wide estate than
+in the company of the hosts.
+
+On the fifth day Miss O'Donoghue took her departure. Her own
+travelling coach had rumbled down the avenue, bearing her and her
+woman away, in its polished yellow embrace, her flat trunk strapped
+behind, and the good-natured old face nodding out of the window, till
+Molly and Madeleine, standing (a little disconsolate) upon the porch
+to watch her departure, could distinguish even the hooked nose no
+longer. Mr. Landale, upon his mettled grey, a gallant figure, as Molly
+herself was forced to admit, in his boots and buckskins, had cantered
+in the dust alongside, intent upon escorting his aged relative to the
+second stage of her journey.
+
+That night, almost for the first time since their arrival, there was
+no company at dinner, and the young guests understood that the
+household would now fall back into its ordinary routine.
+
+But without the small flutter of seeing strangers, or Tanty's lively
+conversation, the social intercourse soon waned into exceeding
+dulness, and at an early hour Miss Molly rose and withdrew to her
+room, pretexting a headache, for which Mr. Landale, with his usual
+high courtesy, affected deep concern.
+
+As she was slowly ascending the great oaken staircase, she crossed
+Moggie, the gatekeeper's daughter, who in her character of
+foster-sister to one of the guests had been specially allotted to them
+as attendant, during the remainder of their visit to Pulwick.
+
+Molly thought that the girl eyed her hesitatingly, as if she wished to
+speak:
+
+"Well, Moggie?" she asked, stopping on her way.
+
+"Oh, please, miss," said the buxom lass, blushing and dropping a
+curtsey, "Renny Potter, please, miss, is up at our lodge to-night, he
+don't care to come to the 'ouse so much, miss. But when he heard about
+you, miss, you could have knocked him down with a feather he was so
+surprised and that excited, miss, we have never seen him so. And he's
+so set on being allowed to see ye both!"
+
+Molly as yet failed to connect any memories of interest with the
+possessor of the patronymic mentioned, but the next phrase mentioned
+aroused her attention.
+
+"He is Sir Adrian's servant, now, miss, and goes back yonder to the
+island, that is where the master lives, to-morrow morning. But he
+would be so happy to see the young ladies before he goes, if the
+liberty were forgiven, he says. He was servant to the Madam your
+mother, miss.
+
+"Well, Moggie," answered Miss Molly, smiling, "if that is all that is
+required to make Renny Potter happy, it is very easily done. Tell
+Renny Potter: to-morrow morning." And she proceeded on her way
+pondering, while the successful emissary pattered down to the lodge in
+high glee to gather her reward in her sweetheart's company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When later on Madeleine joined her sister, she found her standing by
+the deep recessed window, the curtains of which were drawn back,
+resting her head on her hand against the wainscot, and gazing abroad
+into the night.
+
+She approached, and passing her hand round Molly's waist looked out
+also.
+
+"Again at your window?"
+
+"It is a beautiful night, and the view very lovely," said Molly. And
+indeed the moon was riding high in a deep blue starry heaven, and
+shimmered on the strip of distant sea visible from the windows.
+
+"Yes, but yesterday the night was not fine, and nothing was to be seen
+but blackness; and it was the same the day before, and yet you stared
+out of this window, as you have every night since our coming. It is
+strange to see _you_ so. What is it, why don't you tell me?"
+
+"Madeleine," said Molly, suddenly, after a lengthy pause, "I am simply
+_haunted_ by that light over yonder, the Light of Scarthey. There is a
+mystery about those ruins, on which I keep meditating all day long. I
+want to know more. It draws me. I would give anything to be able, now,
+to set sail and land there all unknown to any one, and see what manner
+of life is led where that light is burning."
+
+But Madeleine merely gave a pout of little interest. "What do you
+think you would find? A half-witted middle-aged man, mooning among a
+litter of books, with an old woman, and a little Frenchman to look
+after him. Why, Mr. Landale himself takes no trouble to conceal that
+his poor brother is an almost hopeless lunatic."
+
+"Mr. Landale--" Molly began, with much contempt; but she interrupted
+herself, and went on simply, "Mr. Landale is a very fine gentleman,
+with very superior manners. He speaks like a printed book--but for all
+that I _would_ like to know."
+
+Madeleine laughed. "The demon of curiosity has a hold of you, Molly;
+remember the fable they made us repeat: _De loin c'est quelque chose,
+et de pres ce n'est rien._ Now you shall go straight into your bed,
+and not take cold."
+
+And Miss Madeleine, after authoritatively closing the curtains, kissed
+her sister, and was about to commence immediate disrobing, when she
+caught sight of the shagreen-covered book, lying open on the table.
+
+"So your headache was your diary--how I should like to have a peep."
+
+"I daresay!" said Molly, sarcastically, and then sat down and, pen in
+hand, began to re-read her night's entry, now and then casting a
+tantalising glance over her shoulder at her sister. The lines, in the
+flowing convent hand, ran thus:
+
+"Aunt O'Donoghue left us this morning, and so here we are, planted in
+Pulwick; and she has achieved her plan, fully. But what is odd is that
+neither Madeleine nor I seem to mind it, now. What has come over
+Madeleine is her secret, and she keeps it close; but that _I_ should
+like being here is strange indeed.
+
+"And yet, every day something happens to make me feel connected with
+Pulwick--something more, I mean, than the mere fact that we were born
+here. So many of the older people greet me, at first, as if they knew
+me--they all say I am so like 'the Madam;' they don't see the same
+likeness in Madeleine for all her _grand air_. There was Mrs. Mearson,
+the gatekeeper, was struck in amazement. And the old housekeeper,
+whenever she has an opportunity tries to entertain me about the
+beautiful foreign lady and the grand times they had at Pulwick when
+she was here, and 'Sir Tummas' was still alive.
+
+"But, though we are made to feel that we are more than ordinary
+guests, it is not on account of Mr. Landale, but _on account of Sir
+Adrian_--the Master, as they call him, whom we never see, and whom his
+brother would make out to be mad. Why is he so anxious that Sir Adrian
+should not know that Aunt Rose has brought us here? He seemed willing
+enough to please her, and yet nothing that she could say of her wish
+could induce him even to send a messenger over to the rock. And now we
+may be here all these two months and never even have caught a sight of
+the _Master_. I wonder if he is still like that portrait--whether he
+bears that face still as he now sits, all alone, brooding as his
+brother says, up in those ruined chambers, while the light burns calm
+and bright in the tower! What can this man of his have to say to me?"
+
+Molly dotted her last forgotten "i," blotted it, closed and carefully
+locked the book. Then, rising, she danced over to her sister, and
+forced her into a pirouette.
+
+"And now," she cried gaily, "our dear old Tanty is pulling on her
+nightcap and weeping over her posset in the stuffy room at Lancaster
+regretting _me_; and I should be detesting her with all my energies
+for leaving me behind her, were it not that, just at present, I
+actually find Pulwick more interesting than Bath."
+
+Madeleine lifted her heavy-lidded eyes a little wonderingly to her
+sister's face, as she paused in her gyration.
+
+"What fly stings thee now?" she inquired in French.
+
+"You do not tell me about _your_ wounds, my dear, those wounds which
+little Dan Cupid has made upon your tender heart, with his naughty
+little arrow, and which give you such sweet pain, apparently, that you
+revel in the throes all day long. And yet, I am a good child; you
+shall guess. If you guess aright, I shall tell you. So now begin."
+
+They stood before the fire, and the leaping tongues of light played
+upon their white garments, Madeleine's nightgear scarcely more
+treacherously tell-tale of her slender woman's loveliness than the
+evening robe that clung so closely to the vigorous grace of Molly's
+lithe young figure.
+
+The elder, whose face bore a blush distinct from the reflected glow of
+the embers, fell to guessing, as commanded, a little wildly:
+
+"You begin to find the _beau cousin_ Rupert a little more interesting
+than you anticipated."
+
+"Bah," cried Molly, with a stamp of her sandalled foot, "it is not
+possible to guess worse! He is more insufferable to me, hour by hour."
+
+"I think him kind and pleasant," returned Madeleine simply.
+
+"Ah, because he makes sweet eyes at you, I suppose--yet no--I express
+myself badly--he could not make anything sweet out of those hard, hard
+eyes of his, but he is very--what they call here in England--attentive
+to you. And he looks at you and ponders you over when you little think
+it--you poor innocent--lost in your dream of ... _Smith_! There, I
+will not tease you. Guess again."
+
+"You are pleased to remain here because you are a true
+weather-cock--because you like one thing one day another the
+next--because the country peace and quiet is soothing to you after the
+folly and noise of the great world of Bath and Dublin, and reminds you
+refreshingly, as it does me, of our happy convent days." The glimmer
+of a dainty malice lurked in the apparent candour of Madeleine's
+grave blue eyes, and from thence spread into her pretty smile at the
+sight of Molly's disdainful lip, "Well then, I give it up. You have
+some mischief on foot, of that at least I am sure."
+
+"No mischief--a work of righteousness rather. Sister Madeleine, you
+heard all that that gallant gentleman you think so highly of--your
+cousin Rupert, my dear" (it was a little way of Molly's to throw the
+responsibility of anything she did not like, even to an obnoxious
+relationship, upon another person's shoulders), "narrated of his
+brother Sir Adrian, and how he persuaded Tanty that he was, as you
+said just now, a hopeless madman--"
+
+"But yes--he does mad things," said the elder twin, a little
+wonderingly.
+
+"Well, Madeleine, it is a vile lie. I am convinced of it."
+
+"But, my darling----"
+
+"Look here, Madeleine, there is something behind it all. I attacked
+that creature, that rag, you cannot call her a woman, that female
+cousin of yours, Sophia, and I pressed her hard too, but she could not
+give me a single instance about Sir Adrian that is really the least
+like insanity; and last night, when the young fool who escorted me to
+dinner, Coventry his name was, told me that every one says Sir Adrian
+is shut up on the island and that his French servant is really his
+keeper, and that it was a shame Rupert was not the eldest brother, I
+quite saw the sort of story Master Rupert likes to spread--don't
+interrupt, please! When you were wool-gathering over the fire last
+night (in the lively and companionable way, permit me to remark in
+parenthesis, that you have adopted of late), and you thought I was
+with Tanty, I had marched off with my flat candlestick to the picture
+gallery to have a good look at the so-called lunatic. I dragged over a
+chair and lit the candles in the candelabra each side of the
+chimney-piece, and then standing on my perch still, I held up my own
+torch and I saw the sailor really well. I think he has a beautiful
+face and that he is no more mad than I am. But he looks so sad, so
+sad! I longed to make those closed lips part and tell me their secret.
+And, as I was looking and dreaming, my dear, just as you might, I
+heard a little noise, and there was Rupert, only a few yards off,
+surveying me with such an angry gaze--Ugh!" (with a shiver) "I hate
+such ways. He came in upon me with soft steps like some animal. Look
+at his portrait there, Madeleine!--Stay! I shall hold up the light as
+I did last night to Sir Adrian--see, it flickers and glimmers and
+makes him seem as if he were alive--oh, I wish he were not hanging in
+front of our beds, staring out at us with those eyes! You think them
+very fine, I daresay, that is because his lashes are as thick and dark
+as a woman's--but the look in them, my dear--do you know what it
+reminds me of? Of the beautiful, cruel greyhound we saw at the
+coursing at that place near Bunratty (you remember, just before they
+started the hare), when he stood for a moment motionless, looking out
+across the plain. I can never forget the expression of those
+yellow-circled eyes. And, when I see Rupert look at you as if he were
+fixing something in the far distance, it gives me just the feeling of
+horror and sickness I had then. (You remember how dreadful it was?)
+Rupert makes me think of a greyhound, altogether he is so lithe and so
+clean-cut, and so full of eagerness, a sort of trembling eagerness
+underneath his seeming quiet, and I think he could be cruel."
+
+Molly paused with an unusually grave and reflective look; Madeleine
+yawned a little, not at all impressed.
+
+"How you exaggerate!" she said. "Well what happened when he came in
+and caught you? The poor man! I suppose, he thought you were setting
+the house on fire."
+
+"My dear, I turned as red as a poppy and began blowing out all my
+illumination, feeling dreadfully guilty, and then he helped me off my
+chair with such an air of politeness that I could have struck him with
+pleasure, but I soon gathered my wits again. And, vexed with myself
+for being a ninny, I just dropped him a little curtsey and said, 'I've
+been examining my mad cousin.' 'Well, and what do you think of him?'
+he asked me, smiling (his abominable smile!). But I can keep my
+thoughts to myself as well as other people. 'I think he is very
+handsome,' I answered, and then I wagged my head and added, 'Poor
+fellow,' just as if I thought he was really mad. 'Poor fellow!' said
+cousin Rupert, still with his smile. Whereupon we interchanged
+good-nights, and he ceremoniously reconducted me to my door. What was
+he spying after me for, like that? My dear, your cousin has a bad
+conscience.--But I can spy too--I have been questioning the servants
+to-day, and some of the people on the estate."
+
+"Oh, Molly!"
+
+"Come, don't be so shocked. It was diplomatically, of course, but I am
+determined to find out the truth. Well, so far from looking upon Sir
+Adrian as a lunatic, they all adore him, it seems to me. He comes here
+periodically--once every three months or so--and it is like the King's
+Justices, you know--St. Louis of France--he redresses all wrongs, and
+listens to grievances and gives alms and counsel, and every one can
+come with his story, down to the poorest wretch on the estate, and
+they certainly gave me to understand that they would fare pretty
+hardly under Mr. Landale if it were not for that mild beneficent
+restraining influence in his tower yonder. It is very romantic, do you
+know (you like romance, Madeleine). I wonder if Sir Adrian will come
+over while we are here. Oh, I hope, I hope he will. I shall never rest
+till I have seen him."
+
+"Silly child," said Madeleine, "and so that is the reason you are glad
+to remain here?"
+
+"Even so, my dear," answered the other, skipped into the big four-post
+bed, carefully ascertained and selected the softest pillow, and then,
+smiling sweetly at her sister from under a frame of dark curls, let
+her white lids drop over the lustre of her eyes and so intimated she
+desired to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE TOWER OF LIVERPOOL: MASTER AND MAN
+
+    A prison is a house of care,
+    A place where none can thrive,
+    A Touchstone True to try a friend,
+    A Grave for man alive.
+    Sometimes a place of right,
+    Sometimes a place of wrong,
+    Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves,
+    And honest men among.
+
+    _Old Inscription._
+
+It was soon after sunrise--at that time of year an hour not
+exorbitantly early--when Molly awoke from a tangle of fantastic dreams
+in which the haunting figure of her waking thoughts, the hermit of
+Scarthey, appeared to her in varied shapes; as an awe-inspiring,
+saintly ascetic with long, white hair; as a young, beautiful,
+imprisoned prince; even as a ragged imbecile staring vacantly at a
+lantern, somewhere in a dismal sea-cave.
+
+The last vision was uppermost in her mind when she opened her eyes;
+and the girl, under the impression of so disgusting a disillusion,
+remained for a while pondering and yawning, before making up her mind
+to exchange warmth and featherbed for her appointment without.
+
+But the shafts of light growing through the chinks in the shutters
+ever brighter and more full of dancing motes, decided her.
+
+"A beautiful morning, Madeleine," she said, leaning over and pulling
+one of the long fair strands upon her neighbour's pillow with sisterly
+authority. "Get up, lazy-bones, and come and have a walk with me
+before breakfast."
+
+The sleeping sister awoke, smiled with her usual exquisite serenity of
+temper, and politely refused. Molly insisted, threatened, coaxed, but
+to no avail. Madeleine was luxuriously comfortable, and was not to be
+disturbed either mentally or bodily; and Molly, aware of the resisting
+power of will hidden under that soft exterior, at length petulantly
+desisted; and wrapped up in furs, with hands plunged deep into the
+recesses of a gigantic muff, soon sallied forth herself alone into the
+park.
+
+Half-way down the avenue she met blue-eyed Moggie with round face
+shining out of the sharp, exhilarating atmosphere like a small sun.
+The damsel was overcome with blushes and rapture at her young
+mistress's unexpected promptitude in carrying out her promise, and ran
+back to warn her sweetheart of that lady's approach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Molly drew near the keeper's lodge--a sort of Doric temple,
+quaintly standing in the middle of a hedge-enclosed garden, and
+half-buried under thickly-clustering, interlacing creepers--from the
+side of the enormous nest of evergreen foliage there emerged, in a
+state of high excitement strenuously subdued, a short, square-built
+man (none other than Rene L'Apotre), whilst between the boughs of the
+garden-hedge peeped forth the bashful, ruddy face of the lady of his
+fancy, eager to watch the interview.
+
+Rene ran forward, then stopped a few paces away, hat in hand, scraping
+and bowing in the throes of an overwhelming emotion that strove hard
+with humility.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!" he ejaculated between spells of
+amazed staring, and seemed unable to bring forth another word.
+
+"And so you have known my mother, Rene," said Miss Molly (in her
+native tongue) with a smile.
+
+At the sound of the voice and of the French words, Rene's face grew
+pale under its bronze, and the tears he had so strongly combated,
+glistened in his eyes.
+
+"If I had not heard last night," he said at length, "that these ladies
+had come back--it was Moggie Mearson who told me, who was foster
+sister to you, or was it Mademoiselle your sister? and proud she is of
+it--if I had not known that the young ladies were here again, when I
+saw Mademoiselle I would have thought that my lady herself had
+returned to us (may the good God have her soul!). Ah, to think that I
+should ever see her again in the light of the sun!"
+
+He stopped, suffocated with the sob that his respect would not allow
+him to utter.
+
+But Molly, who had had other objects in view when she rose from her
+couch this cold, windy morning, than to present an objective to a
+serving-man's emotion, now thought the situation had lasted long
+enough for her enjoyment and determined to put an end to it.
+
+"Eh bien, Rene," she said gaily, "or should I call you Monsieur
+Potter? which, by the way, is a droll name for a Frenchman, I am very
+glad to see that you are pleased to see me. If you would care to have
+some talk with me you may attend me if you like. But I freeze standing
+here," stamping her feet one after the other on the hard ground. "I
+must absolutely walk; and you may put on your hat again, please; for
+it is very cold for you too," she added, snuggling into her muff and
+under her fur tippet.
+
+The man obeyed after another of his quaint salutes, and as Molly
+started forward, followed her respectfully, a pace in rear.
+
+"I daresay you will not be sorry to have a little talk with a
+compatriot in your own tongue, all English as you may have grown,"
+said the young lady presently; "and as Moggie has told me that you
+were in my mother's service, there is a whole volume of things which,
+I believe, you alone can relate to me. You shall tell me all that, one
+day. But what seems to me the most curious, first of all, is your
+presence here. We ourselves are only at Pulwick by chance."
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Rene in an earnest voice, "if you knew the whole
+story, you would soon understand that, since it was not to be, that I
+should remain the humble servitor of Monseigneur le Comte de Savenaye,
+Mademoiselle's father, or of Madame, who followed him to heaven,
+notwithstanding all our efforts to preserve her, it is but natural
+that I should attach myself (since he would allow it) to my present
+master."
+
+"Mr. Landale?" asked Molly, affecting ignorance.
+
+"No, Mademoiselle," cried the Frenchman, hotly. "My master is Sir
+Adrian. Had Mr. Landale remained the lord of this place, I should have
+been left to die in my prison--or at least have remained there until
+this spring, for it seems there is peace again, and the Tower of
+Liverpool is empty now."
+
+"_Voyons, voyons, conte moi cela_, Rene," said Molly, turning her
+face, beautifully glowing from the caress of the keen air, eagerly to
+her companion. And he, nothing loth to let loose a naturally garrulous
+tongue in such company, and on such a theme, started off upon a long
+story illustrated by rapid gesticulation.
+
+"I will tell you," cried he, and plunged into explanation with more
+energy than coherence, "it was like this:
+
+"I had been already two years in that prison; we were some hundreds of
+prisoners, and it was a cruel place. A cruel place, Mademoiselle,
+almost as bad as that where we were shut up, my master and I together,
+years before, at La Rochelle--and that I will tell you, if you wish,
+afterwards.
+
+"I had been taken by the marine conscription, when their Republic
+became the French Empire. And a sailor I was then (just, as I heard
+later, as Sir Adrian also was at the time; but that I did not know,
+you understand), for they took all those that lived on the coast. Now
+I had only served with the ship six months, when she was taken by the
+English, and, as I say, we were sent to the prison in Liverpool, where
+we found so many others, who had been already there for years. When I
+heard it was Liverpool, I knew it was a place near Pulwick, and I at
+once thought of Mr. Landale, not him, of course, they _now_ call Mr.
+Landale, but him who had followed my mistress, Madame your mother, to
+help to fight the Republicans in the old time. And I thought I was
+saved: I knew he would get me out if it was possible to get any one
+out. For, you see, I thought his honour was home again, after we had
+been beaten, and there was no more to be done for my lady. We had
+contrived to find an English ship to take him home, and he had gone
+back, as I thought, Mademoiselle. Well, a prisoner becomes cunning,
+and besides, I had been in prison before; I managed to make up a
+letter, and as I knew already some English, I ended by persuading a
+man to carry it to Pulwick for me. It was a long way, and I had no
+money, but I made bold to assure him that Mr. Landale--oh, no! not
+_this_ one," Rene interrupted himself again with a gesture eloquent of
+resentful scorn, "but my master; I assured the man that he would
+receive recompence from him. You see, Mademoiselle, I knew his heart
+was so good, that he would not allow your mother's servant to rot in
+the tower.... But days afterwards the man came back. Oh, he was angry!
+terribly angry with me, and said he should pay me out--And so he did,
+but it is useless to tell you how. He had been to Pulwick, he said,
+and had seen Mr. Landale. Mr. Landale never knew anything of any
+French prisoner, and refused to give any money to the messenger. Ah,
+Mademoiselle, it was very sad! I had not signed my letter for fear of
+its getting into wrong hands, but I spoke of many things which I knew
+he could not have forgotten, and now I thought that he would not
+trouble his mind about such a wretch as Rene--triple brute that I was
+to conceive such thoughts, I should have deserved to remain there for
+ever!... I did remain, Mademoiselle, more than three years; many and
+many died. As for me, I am hard, but I thought I should never never
+walk free again; nor would I, Mademoiselle, these seven years, but for
+him."
+
+"He came, then?" said the girl with sympathetic enthusiasm. She was
+listening with attention, carried away by the speaker's earnestness,
+and knew instinctively to whom the "him," and the "he" referred.
+
+"He came," said Rene with much emphasis. "Of course he came--the
+moment he knew." And after a moment of half-smiling meditation he
+pursued:
+
+"It was one May-day, and there was some sun; and there was a smell of
+spring in the air which we felt even in that dirty place. Ah, how I
+remember me of it all! I was sitting against the wall in the courtyard
+with two others who were Bretons, like you and me, Mademoiselle,
+shifting with the sun now and then, for you must know a prisoner loves
+the sun above all; and there, we only had it a few hours in the day,
+even when it did shine. I was carving some stick-heads, and
+bread-plates in wood--the only thing I could do to put a little more
+than bread, into our own platters," with a grin, "and whistling,
+whistling, for if you can't be gay, it is best to play at it.... Well,
+that day into our courtyard there was shown a tall man--and I knew him
+at once, though he was different enough in his fine coat, and hat and
+boots, from the time when I had last seen him, when he was like me, in
+rags and with a woollen cap on his head, and no stockings under his
+shoes--I knew him at once! And when I saw him I stood still, with my
+mouth round, but not whistling more. My blood went phizz, phizz, all
+over my body, and suddenly something said in my head: 'Rene, he has
+come to look for you.' He was searching for some one, for he went
+round with the guardian looking into each man's face, and giving money
+to all who begged--and seeing that, they all got up, and surrounded
+him, and he gave them each a piece. But I could not get up; it was as
+if some one had cut out my knees and my elbows. And that was how he
+saw me the sooner. He noticed I remained there, looking at him like a
+dog, saying nothing. When he saw me, he stood a moment quite quiet;
+and without pretending anything he came to me and looked down
+smiling.--'But if I am not mistaken I know this man,' he said to the
+guardian, pretending to be astonished. 'Why, this is Rene L'Apotre?
+Who would have thought of seeing you here, Rene L'Apotre?' says he.
+And then he smiled again, as much as to say, 'You see I have come at
+last, Rene.' And once more, as if to explain: 'I have only lately come
+back to England,' in a gentle way, all full of meaning.... I don't
+know what took me, but I cried like an infant, in my cap. And the
+guardian and some of the others laughed, but when I looked up again,
+his eyes shone also. He looked so good, so kind, Mademoiselle, that it
+was as if I understood in words all he meant, but thought better not
+to say at the time. Then he spoke to the guardian, who shook his head
+doubtfully. And after saying, 'Have good courage, Rene L'Apotre,' and
+giving me the rest of his money, he went away--but I knew I was not
+forgotten, and I was so happy that the black, black walls were no more
+black. And I sang, not for pretence this time, ah no! and I spent all
+my money in buying a dinner for those at our end of the prison, and we
+even had wine! You may be sure we drank to his happiness."
+
+Here the man, carried away by his feelings, seized his hat and waved
+it in the air. Then, ashamed of his ebullition, halted and glanced
+diffidently at the young lady. But Molly only smiled in encouragement.
+
+"Well, and then?" she asked.
+
+"Well, Mademoiselle," he resumed, "it was long before I saw him again;
+but I kept good courage, as I was told. One day, at last, the guardian
+came to fetch me and took me to the governor's cabinet; and my master
+was there--I was told that my release had been obtained, though not
+without trouble, and that Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory, had
+gone warranty for me that I should not use my liberty to the prejudice
+of His Majesty, the King of England, and that I was to be grateful to
+Sir Adrian. I almost laughed at him, Mademoiselle. Oh! he took care to
+advise me to be grateful!" And here Rene paused ironically, but there
+was a quiver on his lips. "Ah, he little knew, Monsieur the Governor,
+that when my master had taken me to an inn, and the door was closed
+over the private room, he who had looked so grand and careless before
+the governor, took me by both hands and then, in his fine clothes,
+embraced me--me the dirty prisoner--just as he did when he left me in
+the old days, and was as poor and ragged as I was! And let me weep
+there on his breast, for I had to weep or my heart would have broken.
+But I wander, Mademoiselle, you only wanted to know how I came to be
+in his service still. That is how it was; as I tell you."
+
+Molly was moved by this artless account of fidelity and gratitude, and
+as she walked on in attentive silence, Rene went on:
+
+"It was then his honour made me know how, only by accident, and months
+after his own return, he chanced to hear of the letter that some one
+had sent to Mr. Landale from the Tower of Liverpool, and that Mr.
+Landale had said he knew nothing of any French prisoner and had
+thought it great impudence indeed. And how he--my master--had suddenly
+thought (though my letter had been destroyed) that it might be from
+me, the servant of my lady your mother, and his old companion in arms
+(for his honour will always call me so). He could not sleep, he told
+me, till he had found out. He started for Liverpool that very night.
+And, having discovered that it was me, Mademoiselle, he never rested
+till he had obtained my liberty."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Walking slowly in the winter sunshine, the one talking volubly, the
+other intently listening, the odd pair had reached a rising knoll in
+the park where, under the shelter of a cluster of firs, stood a row of
+carved stone seats that had once been sedillas in the dismantled
+Priory Church.
+
+From this secluded spot could be obtained the most superb view of the
+whole country-side. At the end of the green, gently-sloping stretch of
+pasture-land, which extended, broken only by irregular clusters of
+trees, down to the low cliffs forming the boundary of the strand, lay
+the wide expanse of brown sand, with its streamlets and salt pools
+scintillating under the morning sun.
+
+Further in the western horizon, a crescent of deep blue sea, sharply
+defined under a lighter blue sky and fringed landwards with a
+straggling border of foam, advanced slowly to the daily conquest of
+the golden bay. In the midst of that frame the eye was irresistibly
+drawn, as to the chief object in the picture, to the distant rock of
+Scarthey--a green patch, with the jagged red outline of the ruins
+clear cut against the sky.
+
+Since this point of view in the park had been made known to her, on
+the first day when she was piloted through the grounds, Molly had more
+than once found her way to the sedillas, yielding to the fascination
+of the mysterious island, and in order to indulge in the fancies
+suggested by its ever-changing aspect.
+
+At the fall of day the red glow of the sinking sun would glint through
+the dismantled windows; and against the flaming sky the ruins would
+stand out black and grim, suggesting nought but abandonment and
+desolation until suddenly, as the gloom gathered upon the bay, the
+light of the lamp springing to the beacon tower, would reverse the
+impression and bring to mind a picture of faithful and patient
+watching.
+
+When the sun was still in the ascendant, the island would be green and
+fresh to the gaze, evoking no dismal impression; and as the rays
+glanced back from the two or three glazed windows, and from the roofed
+beacon-tower, the little estate wore a look of solid security and
+privacy in spite of its crumbling walls, which was almost as
+tantalising to her romantic curiosity.
+
+It was with ulterior motives, therefore, that she had again wended her
+way to the knoll this sunny, breezy morning. She now sat down and let
+her eyes wander over the wide panorama, whilst Rene stood at a humble
+distance, looking with eyes of delight from her to the distant abode
+of his master.
+
+"And now you live with Sir Adrian, in that little isle yonder," said
+she, at length. "How came it that you never sought to go back to your
+country?"
+
+"There was the war then, Mademoiselle, and it was difficult to
+return."
+
+"But there has been peace these six months," insisted Molly.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, though I only learned it yesterday. But then, bah!
+What is that? His honour needs me. I have stopped with him seven
+years, and my faith, I shall stop with him for ever."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Does any one know," asked Molly, at length, with a vague air of
+addressing the trees, mindful, as she spoke, of the manner in which
+Mr. Landale had practically dismissed her and her sister at a certain
+point of his version of his brother's history, "_why_ Sir Adrian has
+shut himself up in that place instead of living at the Hall all this
+time?"
+
+A certain dignity seemed to come over the servant's squat figure. He
+hesitated for a moment, and then said very simply, his honest eyes
+fixed upon the girl's face: "I am only his humble servant,
+Mademoiselle, and it is enough for me that it is his pleasure to live
+alone."
+
+"You are indeed faithful," said Molly, with a little generous flush of
+shame at this peasant's delicacy compared to her own curiosity. And,
+after another pause, she added, pensively: "But tell me, does Sir
+Adrian never leave his solitude? I confess I should like to meet one
+who had known my mother, who could talk of her to me."
+
+Rene looked at the young girl with a wistful countenance, as though
+the question had embarked him on a new train of thought. But he
+answered evasively: "His honour comes rarely to Pulwick--rarely."
+
+Molly, with a little movement of pique, rose abruptly from her seat.
+But quickly changing her mood again she turned round as she was about
+to depart, and smiling: "Thank you, Rene," she said, and held out her
+dainty hand, which he, blushing, engulfed in his great paw, "I am
+going in, I am dreadfully hungry. We shall be here two months or more,
+and I shall want to see you again ... if you come back to Pulwick."
+
+She walked quickly away towards the house. Rene followed the
+retreating figure with a meditative look, so long as he could keep her
+in sight, then turned his gaze to the island and there stood lost in a
+deep muse, regardless of the fact that his sweetheart, Moggie, was
+awaiting a parting interview at the lodge, and that the tide that
+would wait for no man was swelling under his boat upon the beach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden resolution was formed in Molly's mind as the immediate result
+of this conversation, and she framed her behaviour that morning solely
+with a view to its furtherance.
+
+Breakfast was over when, glowing from her morning walk, she entered
+the dining-room; but, regardless of Mr. Landale's pointedly elaborate
+courtesy in insisting upon a fresh repast being brought to her, his
+sarcastically overacted solicitude, intended to point out what a deal
+of avoidable trouble she gave to the household, Molly remained
+perfectly gracious, and ate the good things, plaintively set before
+her by Miss Landale, with the most perfect appetite and good humour.
+
+She expatiated in terms of enthusiasm on the beauty of the estate and
+the delight of her morning exploration, and concluded this
+condescending account of her doings (in which the meeting with Rene
+did not figure) with a request that Mr. Landale should put horses at
+the disposal of herself and her sister for a riding excursion that
+very afternoon. And with determined energy she carried the point,
+declaring, despite his prognostications of coming bad weather, that
+the sunshine would last the day.
+
+In this wise was brought about the eventful ride which cost the life
+of Lucifer, and introduced such heart-stirring phantasmagories into
+the even tenor of Sir Adrian Landale's seclusion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening the news rapidly spread throughout Pulwick that the cruel
+sands of the bay had secured yet another victim.
+
+In an almost fainting condition, speechless with horror, and hardly
+able yet to realise to the full her own anguish, Madeleine was
+conducted by the terrified groom, through the howling wind and
+drenching rain, back to the Priory.
+
+And there, between the fearful outcries of Miss Landale, and the deep
+frowning gravity of her brother, the man stammered out his tale.--How
+the young lady when the rain first began, had insisted,
+notwithstanding his remonstrances, upon taking the causeway to the
+island, and how it was actually by force that he prevented the other
+lady from following so soon as she understood the danger into which
+her sister was running.
+
+There was no use, he had thought (explained the man, half
+apologetically), for two more to throw away their lives, just for no
+good, that way. And so they had sat on their horses and watched in
+terror, as well as they could through the torrents of rain. They had
+seen in the distance Lucifer break from the young lady's control, and
+swerve from the advancing sea. And then had come the great gust that
+blew the rain and the sand in their faces and set their horses
+dancing; and, when they could see again, all traces of horse and rider
+had disappeared, and there lay nothing before them but the advancing
+tide, though the island and its tower were still just visible through
+the storm.
+
+No amount of cross-examination could elicit any further information.
+The girl's impulse seemed to have been quite sudden, and she had only
+laughed back at the groom over her shoulder upon his earnest shout of
+warning, though she had probably expected them to follow her. And as
+there could be no doubt about the calamity which had ensued, and no
+possible rescue even of the body, he had returned home at once to
+bring the disastrous news.
+
+Madeleine had been carried completely unconscious to her bed, but
+presently Miss Sophia was summoned to her side as the girl showed
+signs of returning animation, and Rupert was left alone.
+
+He fell to pacing the room, lost in a labyrinth of complicated and
+far-reaching reflections.
+
+Beyond doubt he was shocked and distressed by the sudden and horrible
+disaster; and yet as an undercurrent to these first natural thoughts,
+there ran presently a distinct notion that he would have felt the
+grievousness of it more keenly had Madeleine perished in that cruel
+manner and her sister survived to bring the tale home.
+
+The antagonism which his cousin, in all the insolence of her young
+beauty and vigorous self-esteem, had shown for him had been mutual. He
+had instinctively felt that she was an enemy, and more than that--a
+danger to him. This danger was now removed from his path, and by no
+intervention or even desire of his own.
+
+The calamity which had struck the remaining sister into such
+prostration would make her rich indeed; by anticipation one of the
+great heiresses in England.
+
+"Sorrow," thought Mr. Landale, and his lip curled disdainfully, "a
+girl's sorrow, at least, is a passing thing. Wealth is an everlasting
+benefit."
+
+Madeleine was a desirable woman upon all counts, even pecuniary
+considerations apart, or would be to one who had a heart to give--and
+even if the heart was dead...?
+
+Altogether the sum of his meditations was assuming a not unpleasing
+aspect; and the undercurrent in time assumed almost the nature of
+self-congratulation. Even the ordeal which was yet to come when he
+would have to face Miss O'Donoghue and render an account of his short
+trust, could not weigh the balance down on the wrong side.
+
+And yet a terrible ordeal it would be; women are so unreasonable, and
+Aunt Rose so much more so even than the average woman. Still it had to
+be done; the sooner the better; if possible while the storm lasted and
+while roaring waters kept all ill news upon land and the interloping
+heir on his island.
+
+And thus that very evening, whilst Madeleine sobbed on her pillow and
+Molly was snugly enjoying the warm hospitality of Scarthey, a mounted
+messenger departed from the Priory to overtake Miss O'Donoghue on the
+road to Bath and acquaint her with the terrible fatality that had
+befallen her darling and favourite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+UNDER THE LIGHT
+
+
+DECEMBER 16TH.--Again I separate your green boards, my diary. No one
+has opened you; for your key, now a little rusty, still hangs upon my
+watch--my poor watch whose heart has ceased to beat, who, unlike its
+mistress, has _not_ survived the ordeal by sand and water! What is
+better, no one has attempted to force your secrets from you; which,
+since it appears that it had been agreed that Molly de Savenaye was
+dead and buried in Scarthey sands, speaks well for all concerned. But
+she is not dead. She is very much alive; and very happy to be so.
+
+This will indeed be an adventure worth reading, in the days to come;
+and it must be recounted--though were I to live to a hundred years I
+do not think I could ever forget it. Tanty Rose (she has not yet
+stopped scolding everybody for the fright she has had) is in the next
+room with Madeleine, who, poor dear, has been made quite ill by this
+prank of mine; but since after the distress caused by her Molly's
+death she has had the joy of finding her Molly alive again, things are
+balanced, I take it; and all being well that ends well, the whole
+affair is pleasant to remember. It has been actually as interesting as
+I expected--now that I think it over--even more.
+
+Of all the many pictures that I fancied, not one was at all like the
+reality--and this reality I could not have rested till I had found. It
+was Rene's account decided me. I laid my plans very neatly to pay the
+recluse a little visit, and plead necessity for the intrusion. My
+machinations would have been perfect if they had not caused Madeleine
+and poor old Tanty unnecessary grief.
+
+But now that I know the truth, I cannot distinctly remember what it
+was that I _did_ expect to find on that island.
+
+If it had not been that I had already gone through more excitement
+than I bargained for to reach that mysterious rock, how exciting I
+should have found it to wander up to unknown ruins, to knock at the
+closed doors of an enchanted castle, ascend unknown stairs and engage
+in devious unknown passages--all the while on the tiptoe of
+expectation!
+
+But when I dragged myself giddy and faint from the boiling breakers
+and scrambled upon the desolate island under the rain that beat me
+like the lashes of a whip, pushing against a wind that bellowed and
+rushed as though determined to thrust me back to the waters I had
+cheated of their prey, my only thoughts were for succour and shelter.
+
+Such warm shelter, such loving welcome, it was of course impossible
+that I could for a moment have anticipated!
+
+Conceive, my dear diary, the feelings of a poor, semi-drowned
+wanderer, shivering with cold, with feet torn by cruel stones, who
+suddenly emerges from howl and turmoil into a warm, quiet room to be
+received as a long and eagerly expected guest, whose advent brings
+happiness, whose presence is a highly prized favour; in fact not as
+one who has to explain her intrusion, but as one who in the situation
+holds the upper hand herself.
+
+And _this_ was my welcome from him whose absence from Pulwick was more
+haunting than any presence I can think of!
+
+Of course I knew him at once. Even had I not expected to see him--had
+I not come to seek him in fact--I should have known him at once from
+the portrait whose melancholy, wide-open eyes had followed me about
+the gallery. But I had not dreamed to see him so little altered. Now,
+apart from the dress, if he is in any way changed from the picture, it
+is in a look of greater youth and less sombreness. The portrait is
+handsome, but the original is better.
+
+Had it not been so, I imagine I might have felt vastly different when
+I was seized and enfolded and--kissed! As it was I cannot remember
+that, even at the moment of this extraordinary proceeding, I was
+otherwise than pleased, nor that the dark hints of Mr. Landale
+concerning Sir Adrian's madness returned to disturb my mind in the
+least.
+
+And yet I found myself enveloped in great strong arms out of which I
+could not have extricated myself by the most frantic efforts--although
+the folding was soft and tender--and I loved that impression. Why? I
+cannot say.
+
+His words of love were not addressed to me; from his exclamation I
+knew that the real and present Molly was not the true object of his
+sudden ecstasy.
+
+And yet I am glad that this is the first man who has been able to kiss
+Molly de Savenaye. It is quite incomprehensible; I ought to be
+indignant.
+
+Now the whole secret of my reception is plain to see, and it is
+pathetic; Sir Adrian Landale was in love with my mother; when she was
+an unprotected widow he followed her to our own country; if she had
+not died soon after, he would have married her.
+
+What a true knight must this Sir Adrian be, to keep so fresh for
+twenty years the remembrance of his boyish love that when I came in
+upon him to look at him with _her_ eyes, it was to find him pondering
+upon her, and to fill his soul with the rapturous thought that his
+love had come back to him. Though I was aware that all this fervour
+was not addressed to me, there was something very gratifying in being
+so like one who could inspire such long-lived passion.--Yes, it was
+unexpectedly pleasant and comforting to be so received. And the tender
+care, the thoughtful solicitude next bestowed on the limp and
+dishevelled waif of the sea by my _beau tenebreux_ were unmistakably
+meant for Molly and no one else, whatever his first imaginings may
+have been, and they were quite as interesting to receive.
+
+The half-hour I spent, cosily ensconced by his hands, and waited upon
+by his queer household, was perhaps the best I have ever known. He
+stood by the fireplace, looking down from his great height, with a
+wondering smile upon me. I declare that the loving kindness of his
+eyes, which he has wide, grey, and beautiful, warmed me as much as the
+pyramid of logs he had set burning on the hearth!
+
+I took a good reckoning of the man, from under the gigantic collar, in
+which, I felt, my head rested like a little egg at the bottom of a
+warm nest. "And so," I thought, "here is the Light-keeper of Scarthey
+Island!" And I was obliged to confess that he was a more
+romantic-looking person than even in my wildest dreams I had pictured
+to myself--that in fact I had found out for the first time _the man_
+really approved of.
+
+And I congratulated myself on my own cleverness--for it was evident
+that, just as I had suspected from Rene's reticent manner, even by him
+our existence at Pulwick had not been mentioned to "the master."
+
+And as Mr. Landale was quite determined to avail himself of his
+brother's _sauvagerie_ not to let him know anything about us, on his
+side, but for me we might have remained at and departed from Pulwick
+unknown to the head of the house! And what a pity that would have
+been!
+
+Now, _why_ did not Mr. Landale wish his brother to know? Did he think
+(as indeed has happened) that the Light-keeper would take too kindly
+to the Savenaye children? Or to one of them? If so, he will be _bien
+attrappe_, for there is no doubt that my sudden and dramatic arrival
+upon his especial domain has made an impression on him that no meeting
+prepared and discussed beforehand could have produced.
+
+Adrian Landale may have been in love with our beautiful mamma in his
+boyish days, but now, Sir Adrian, the _man_ is in love with the
+beautiful Molly!
+
+That is positive.
+
+I was a long time before I could go to sleep in the tower; it was too
+perfect to be in bed in such a place, safe and happy in the midst of
+the rage I could hear outside; to have seen the unknown, to have found
+him such as he is--to be under _the Light_!
+
+What would have happened if my cousin had really been mad (and Rene
+his keeper, as that stupid country-side wit suggested in my ear the
+other night at dinner)? It would have been still more of an adventure
+of course, but not one which even "Murthering Moll the Second" can
+regret. Or if he had been a dirty, untidy hermit, as Madeleine
+thought? That would have spoilt all.
+
+Thus in the owl's nest, as Mr. Landale (spiteful creature!) called it
+to Tanty, there lives not owl any more than lunatic. A polished
+gentleman, with white, exquisite hands, who, when he is discovered by
+the most unexpected of visitors, is shaven as smooth as Rupert
+himself; has the most unexceptionable of snowy linen and
+old-fashioned, it is true, but most well-fitting clothes.
+
+As for the entertainment for the said casual visitor, not even Pulwick
+with all its resources (where housekeeping, between the fussy brother
+and the docile sister is a complicated science) could have produced
+more real comfort.
+
+In the morning, when I woke late (it was broad daylight), feeling as
+if I had been beaten and passed through a mangle, for there was not an
+inch of my poor body that was not sore, I had not turned round and so
+given sign of life, before I heard a whisper outside my door; then
+comes a sturdy knock and in walks old Margery, still dignified as a
+queen's housekeeper, bearing a bowl of warm frothy milk.
+
+And this being gratefully drunk by me, she gravely inquires, in her
+queer provincial accent, how I am this morn; and then goes to report
+to some anxious inquirer (whom?--I can easily guess) that with the
+exception of my cut foot I am very well.
+
+Presently she returns and lights a blazing fire. Then in come my dress
+and linen and my one shoe, all cleaned, dried and mended, only my poor
+habit is so torn and so stiff that I have to put up with Margery's
+best striped skirt in lieu of it, till she has time to mend and wash
+it. As it is she must have been at work all night upon these repairs
+for me.
+
+Again she goes out--for another consultation, I suppose--and comes
+back to find me half clad, hopping about the room; this time she has
+got nice white linen bandages and with them ties up my little foot,
+partly for the cuts, partly for want of a sandal, till it is twice the
+size of its companion. But I can walk on it.
+
+Then my strange handmaid--who by the way is a droll, grumbling old
+soul, and orders me about as if she were still my nurse--dresses me
+and combs my hair, which will not yet awhile be rid of all its sand.
+And so, in due course, Molly emerges from her bower, as well tended
+almost as she might have been at Bath, except that Margery's striped
+skirt is a deal too short for her and she displays a little more of
+one very nice ankle and one gouty foot than fashion warrants.
+
+And in this manner the guest goes to meet her host in the great room.
+
+He was walking up and down as if impatiently expecting me, and when I
+hobbled in, he came forward with a smile on his face which, once more,
+I thought beautiful.
+
+"God be praised!" he said, taking both my hands and kissing one of
+them, with his fine air of gallantry which was all the more delightful
+on account of his evident earnestness, "you seem none the worse for
+this terrible adventure. I dreaded this morning to hear that you were
+in a fever. You know," he added so seriously that I had to smile, "you
+might easily have had a fever from this yesterday's work; and what
+should we have done without doctor and medicines!"
+
+"You have a good surgeon, at least," said I laughing and pointing at
+my swaddled extremity. He laughed too at the _enmitouflage_. "I tried
+to explain how it was to be done," he said, "but I think I could have
+managed it more neatly myself."
+
+Then he helped me to the arm-chair, and Rene came in, and, after a
+profound bow (which did not preclude much staring and smiling at me
+afterwards), laid, on a dazzling tablecloth, a most tempting
+breakfast, explaining the while, in his odd English, "The bread is
+stale, for we bake only twice a month. But there are some cakes hot
+from the fire, some eggs, new laid last evening, some fresh milk, some
+tea. It was a happy thing I arrived yesterday for there was no more
+tea. The butter wants, but Mistress Margery will have some made
+to-morrow, so that the demoiselle will not leave without having tasted
+our Scarthey butter."
+
+All the while Sir Adrian looked on with a sort of dreamy smile--a
+happy smile!
+
+"Poor Rene!" he said, when the man had left the room, "one would think
+that you have brought to him almost as much joy as to me."
+
+I wondered what Mr. Landale would have said had he through some magic
+glass been able to see this little feast. I never enjoyed a meal more.
+As for my host, he hardly touched anything, but, I could see, was all
+absorbed in the delight of looking at me; and this he showed quite
+openly in the most child-like manner.
+
+Not one of the many fine gentlemen it has been my fate to meet in my
+six months' apprenticeship to the "great world," not cousin Rupert
+himself with all his elaborate politeness (and Rupert has de _grandes
+manieres_, as Tanty says), could have played the host with a more
+exquisite courtesy, and more true hospitality. So I thought, at least.
+Now and again, it is true, while his eyes were fixed on me, I would
+see how the soul behind them was away, far in the past, and then at a
+word, even at a movement, back it would come to me, with the tenderest
+softening I have ever seen upon a human face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was only at the end of breakfast that he suddenly adverted to the
+previous day.
+
+"Of course," he said, hesitatingly, but keeping a frank gaze on mine,
+"you must have thought me demented when--when you first entered,
+yesterday."
+
+Now, I had anticipated this apology as inevitable, and I was prepared
+to put him at his ease.
+
+"I----? Not at all," I said quite gravely; and, seeing the puzzled
+expression that came upon his face, I hastened to add in lower tones:
+"I know I am very like my mother, and it was her name you called out
+upon seeing me." And then I stopped, as if that had explained
+everything.
+
+He looked at me with a wondering air, and fell again into a muse.
+After a while he said, with his great simplicity which seems somehow
+in him the last touch of the most perfect breeding: "Yes, such an
+apparition was enough to unhinge any one's mind for the moment. You
+never knew her, child, and therefore never mourned her death. But
+we--that is, Rene and I, who tried so hard to save her--though it is
+so long ago, we have not forgotten."
+
+It was then I asked him to tell me about the mother I had never known.
+At first it was as if he could not; he fell into a great silence,
+through which I could feel the working of his old sorrow. So then I
+said to him quickly, for I feared he thought me an indiscreet
+trespasser upon sacred ground, that he must remember my right to know
+more than the vague accounts I had been given of my mother's history.
+
+"No one will tell me of her," I said. "It is hard, for I am her own
+daughter."
+
+"It is wrong," he said very gently; "you ought to know, for you are
+indeed, most verily, her own daughter."
+
+And then by fragments he tried to tell me a little of her beauty, her
+loving heart, her faithfulness and bravery. At first it was with
+great tripping sighs as if the words hurt him, but by and by it came
+easier, and with his eyes fixed wistfully on me he took me, as it
+were, by his side through all their marvellous adventures.
+
+And thus I heard the stirring story of the "Savenaye band," and I felt
+prouder of my race than I had ever been before. Hitherto, being a
+Savenaye only meant the pride our aunt tried to instil into us of
+being undeniably _biennees_ and connected with numbers of great
+families. But the tale of the deeds mine had done for the King's
+cause, and especially the achievements of my own mother in starting
+such an expedition after my father's death, and following its fortunes
+to the bitter end, made my blood tingle with a new emotion.
+
+Little wonder that Sir Adrian should have devoted his life to her
+service. How madly enthralled I should have been, being a man, and
+free and strong, by the presence of a woman such as my mother. I, too,
+would have prostrated myself to worship her image returning to
+life--and I am that living, living portrait!
+
+When he came to the story of her death, he hesitated and finally
+stopped. It must have been horrible. I could see it in his eyes, and I
+dared not press him.
+
+Now, I suppose I am the only one in the world, besides Rene, who knows
+this man as he is. And I am proud of it.
+
+And it is for this constancy, which no vulgar soul of them can
+understand, that Rupert and his class have dubbed the gallant
+gentleman a madman. It fills me with scorn of them. I do not yet know
+what love is, therefore of course I cannot fathom its grief; but this
+much I know--that if I loved and yet could not reach as high as ever
+love may reach both in joy and sorrow, I should despise myself. I,
+too, would draw the utmost from life that life can give.
+
+He never even hinted at his love for my mother; speaking of himself
+throughout as Rene might, as of her humble devoted servant merely. And
+then the question began to gnaw at me. "Did she love him?" and
+somehow, I felt as if I could not rest till I knew; and I had it on my
+lips twenty times to cry out to him: "I know you loved her: oh! tell
+me, did she love you?" And yet I dared no more have done so, and
+overstepped the barrier of his gentle, reticent dignity, than I could
+have thrust the lighthouse tower down; and I could not think, either,
+whether I should be glad to hear that she had loved him, or that she
+had not. Not even here, alone with myself, can I answer that question.
+
+But though I respect him because he is as I have found him, and
+understand how rare a personality it takes to achieve such refinement
+of faithfulness, it seems to me, that to teach this constant lover to
+forget the past in the present, would be something worth living
+for--something worthy of _me_!
+
+Molly!--What is the meaning of this? You have never before put that
+thought in words, even to yourself! But let me be frank, or else what
+is the use of this diary?
+
+Looking back to those delightful three days, did not the _thought_
+come to me, if not the words? Well, well, it is better, sometimes, I
+believe, to let oneself drift, than to try and guide the boat; and I
+must hurry back to Scarthey or I shall never have told my story....
+
+How swiftly time had flown by us! I sitting in the arm-chair, with the
+old dog's muzzle on my lap, and Sir Adrian standing by his great
+chimney; the clock struck twelve, in the midst of the long silence,
+and I had thought that barely an hour had passed.
+
+I got up, and, seeing me limp in my attempt to walk, Sir Adrian gave
+me his arm; and so we went round the great room _bras dessus_, _bras
+dessous_, and it already seemed quite natural to feel like an intimate
+friend in that queer dwelling.
+
+We paused a long time in silence by the window, the tempest wind was
+still raging, but the sky was clear, and all round us was a wonderful
+sight; the sea, as far as eyes could reach, white with foam, lashed
+and tossing in frenzy round the rock on which we stood so safely, and
+rising in long jets of spray, which now and then dashed as far as our
+window; and when I looked down nearer, I could see the little stunted
+trees, bending backwards and forwards under the blast, and an odd idea
+came to my mind:--they looked to me when they caught my sight, as
+though they were bowing deep, hurriedly and frantically greeting me
+among them.
+
+I glanced up at my silent companion, the true knight, and found his
+wide grey eyes fixed upon me with the same expression that was
+already familiar to me, which I had especially noted as he told me his
+long tale of olden times.
+
+This time I felt the look go to my heart. _And then the thought first
+came to my mind, all unformed, but still sweet._
+
+I don't know exactly why, but in answer to his sad look, I smiled at
+him, without a word, upon which he suddenly grew pale. After a while
+he gave a sigh, and, as he drew my arm again through his, I fancy his
+hand trembled a little.
+
+When he had taken me back to my chair, he walked to and fro in
+silence, looking at me ever and anon.
+
+A long time we passed thus, without speaking; but it seemed as if our
+thoughts were intermixing in harmony in the midst of our silence. And
+then the spell was broken by Rene, who never came in without making me
+his great scrape, trying hard not to beam too obtrusively in the
+delight that evidently overtakes him whenever he sets eyes on me.
+
+It was after a prolonged talk between him and the master, I fancy,
+concerning the means of attending fitly upon my noble and delicate
+person, that Sir Adrian, brought back, evidently, to the consideration
+of present affairs, began to be exercised about the best means of
+whiling away my time. When he hinted at the difficulty, I very soon
+disposed of it.
+
+I told him I had never been so happy in my life before--that the hours
+went all too quickly--I told him there was so much he and Rene had yet
+to tell me of their wonderful adventures, that I thought I should have
+to carry them back to Pulwick with me. At the mention of Pulwick his
+brow darkened, and Rene turned away to cough into his hand, and I saw
+that I had gone too fast. (N.B.--Pulwick is evidently a sore subject;
+I am sure I am not surprised. I can conceive how Rupert and Sophia
+would drive a man of Sir Adrian's sensitiveness nearly to desperation.
+Yet I _have_ brought Sir Adrian back to Pulwick, in spite of all. Is
+not that a feather in my cap?)
+
+But to return; I next made Rene laugh aloud and Sir Adrian give his
+indulgent smile--such as a father might give to his child--by adding
+that when I was bored I would soon let them know. "I always do," I
+said, "for I consider that a duty to myself."
+
+"God knows," said this strange man then, half smiling, "I would we
+could keep you here for ever."
+
+It was almost a declaration, but his eyes were far off--it was not
+addressed to me.
+
+I soon found that the recollection of all the extraordinary incidents
+Sir Adrian had lived through, is one neither of pride nor pleasure to
+him, but, all the same, never has anything in books seemed to me so
+stirring, as the tale of relentless fate, of ever-recurring battles
+and struggles and misfortunes told by the man who, still in the
+strength of life, has now chosen to forego everything that might for
+the remainder of his days have compensated him.
+
+Willing as he was to humour me, however, and disproportionately
+anxious to amuse me, it was little more than the dry bones of his
+history, I was able to obtain from him.
+
+With Rene's help, however, and my own lively imagination I have been
+able to piece together a very wonderful skeleton, from these same dry
+bones, and, moreover, endow it with flesh and blood and life.
+
+Rene was very willing to descant upon his master's exploits, as far as
+he knew them: "Whew, Mademoiselle should have seen him fight!" he
+would say, "a lion, Mademoiselle, a real lion!"
+
+And then I would contrast the reposeful, somewhat immobile
+countenance, the dreaming eye, the almost womanly softness of his
+smile, with the picture, and find the contrast piquant in the extreme.
+
+Concerning his present home Sir Adrian was more willing to speak--I
+had told him how the light on the little island had fascinated me from
+the distance, and all the surmises I had made about it.
+
+"And so, it was in order to see what sort of dungeon they kept the
+madman in," he said, laughing quietly, "that you pushed the
+reconnaissance, which nearly sent you into the jaws of death!"
+
+I was so struck, at first, by his speaking of himself as the reputed
+"madman" that I could not answer. To think of him as serenely
+contemptuous of the world's imputation--and an imputation so galling
+as this one of being irresponsible for his actions--and deliberately
+continuing his even way without taking the trouble to refute it, has
+given me an insight into his nature, that fills me with admiration,
+and yet, at the same time, with a sort of longing to see him
+reinstated in his proper place, and casting out those slandering
+interlopers.
+
+But, as he was waiting to be answered, I had to collect my thoughts
+and admit, not without a little bashfulness, that my first account of
+my exploit had contained a slight prevarication.
+
+In all he has to say about his little Scarthey domain, about the
+existence he has made for himself there, I cannot help noticing with
+what affection he speaks of Rene. Rene, according to Sir Adrian, is
+everything and everywhere; a perfect familiar genius; he is counsellor
+as well as valet, plays his master's game of chess as well as shaves
+him, can tune his organ, and manage his boat, and cast his nets, for
+he is fisherman as well as gardener; he is the steward of this
+wonderful little estate, and its stock of one pony, one cow, and
+twelve hens; he tends the light, and can cook a dinner a great deal
+better than his great rival, old Margery.
+
+Of this last accomplishment we had good proof in the shape of various
+dainties that appeared at our dinner. For when I exclaimed in
+astonishment, the master said, well pleased, and pointing to the
+attentive major-domo: "This is Rene's way of spoiling me. But now he
+has surpassed himself to celebrate so unique an occasion."
+
+And Rene's face was all one grin of rapture. I observe that on
+occasions his eyes wander quite tenderly from me to his master.
+
+Shall I ever enjoy dinners again like those in that old ruined tower!
+Or hours like those during which I listened to tales of peril and
+adventure, or to the music that pealed forth from the distant corner,
+when Sir Adrian sat down to his organ and made it speak the wordless
+language of the soul: that language that made me at times shiver with
+a mad yearning for life, more life; at times soothed my heart with a
+caress of infinite softness.
+
+How is it that our organ-songs at the convent _never_ moved me in this
+fashion?
+
+Ah! those will be days to remember; all the more for being certain
+that they will not be forgotten by him. Yes, those days have brought
+some light into his melancholy life.
+
+Even Rene knows that. "Oh, my lady," said he to me as he was leaving
+the island yesterday. "You have come like the good fairy, you have
+brought back the joy of life to his honour: I have not heard him
+really laugh--before this year passed I did not believe he knew any
+more how to laugh--what you can call laugh!"
+
+It is quite true. I had made some droll remark about Tanty and Cousin
+Sophia, and when he laughed he looked like a young man.
+
+He was quick enough in grasping at a pretext for keeping me yet
+another day. Yesterday the wind having suddenly abated in the night,
+there was quite a bevy of little fishing-boats sailing merrily away.
+And the causeway at low water was quite visible. As we looked out I
+know the same idea came to both our minds, though there was no word
+between us. At last it was I who spoke. "The crossing is quite safe,"
+said I. And I added, as he answered nothing, "I almost wish now it was
+not. How quick the time has gone by, here!"
+
+His countenance when I looked up was darker. He kept his eyes fixed in
+the distance. At last he said in a low voice:
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is high time you should go back."
+
+"I am sure I don't wish it," I said quite frankly--he is not the sort
+of man with whom one would ever think of _minauderie_, "but Madeleine
+will be miserable about me."
+
+"And so you would really care to stop here," said he, with a smile of
+wonder on his face, "if it were not for that reason?"
+
+"Naturally I would," said I. "I feel already as cosy as a tame cat
+here. And if it were not for Madeleine, poor little Madeleine, who
+must be breaking her heart!--But then how can I go back?--I have no
+wraps and only one shoe?"
+
+His face had cleared again. He was walking up and down in his usual
+way, whilst I hopped back, with more limping than was at all
+necessary, to my favourite arm-chair.
+
+"True, true," he said, as if speaking to himself, "you cannot walk,
+with one shoe and a bandaged foot. And your clothes are too thin for
+the roundabout sea journey in this cold wind. This is what we shall
+do, child," he went on, coming up to me with a sage expression that
+struggled with his evident eager desire. "Rene shall go off, as soon
+as the tide permits, carrying the good news of your safety to your
+sister, and bring back some warm things for you to wear to-morrow
+morning, and I shall write to Rupert to send a carriage, to wait for
+you on the strand."
+
+And so, pleased like two children who have found a means of securing a
+further holiday, we wrote both our letters. I wonder whether it
+occurred to Sir Adrian, as it did to me, that, if we had been so very
+anxious that I should be restored to the care of Pulwick with the
+briefest delay, I might have gone with Rene that same day, wrapped up
+in a certain cloak which had done good warming service already; and
+that, as Rene had constructed with his cunning hands a sufficient if
+not very pretty sandal for my damaged foot out of some old piece of
+felt, I might have walked from the beach to the fishing village; and
+that there, no doubt, a cart or a donkey might have conveyed me home
+in triumph.
+
+Perhaps it did _not_ occur to him; and certainly I had no desire to
+suggest it on my side.
+
+Thus, soon after mid-day, Master Rene departed alone. And Sir Adrian
+and I, both very glad of our reprieve, watched, leaning side by side
+upon the window-sill, the brave little craft glide away on the still
+ruffled waters, until, when it had grown very small in the distance,
+we saw the sail lowered and knew Rene had reached mainland.
+
+And that was perhaps the best day of the three. Rene having been
+unexpectedly despatched, we had to help to do everything ourselves
+with old Margery, who is rather feeble. The sky was clear and
+beautiful; and, followed gravely by Jem the dog, we went round the
+little outer domain. I fed the hens, and Sir Adrian carried the pail
+when Margery had milked the cow; we paid a visit in his wide paddock
+to the pony, who trotted up to his master whinnying with pleasure. We
+looked at the waters rushing past like a mill race on the further side
+of the island, as the tide was rising, and he explained to me that it
+was this rush which makes the neighbourhood of Scarthey so dangerous
+to unwary crafts; we went down into the sea-caves which penetrate deep
+under the ruins.--They say that in olden days there was a passage
+under the rocky causeway that led as far as the old Priory, but all
+traces of it have been effaced.
+
+Then, later on, Sir Adrian showed me in detail his library.
+
+"I was made to be a man of books," he said, when I wondered at the
+number he had accumulated around him--there must be thousands, "a man
+of study, not of action. And you know how fate has treated me. These
+have been my one consolation of late years."
+
+And it marvelled me to think that one who had achieved so many manly
+deeds, should love musty old tiresome things so much. He really turned
+them over quite reverentially. I myself do not think much of books as
+companions.
+
+When I made that little confession he smiled rather sadly, and said
+that one like me never would lack the suitable companions of youth and
+happiness; but that a creature of his unfortunate disposition could
+find, in these long rows of folded leaves, the society of the best and
+the loftiest minds, not of our age, but of all ages, and, what was
+more, could find them ready for intercourse and at their best humour,
+just in those hours when he himself was fit and disposed for such
+intercourse--and this without dread of inflicting his own misery and
+dulness upon them.
+
+But I could not agree with his appreciation. I felt my nose curl with
+disdain at the breath of dust and must and age these old tomes gave
+forth, and I said again it was, to my mind, but a poor and tame sort
+of fellowship.
+
+He was perched on his ladder and had some odd volume in his hand, from
+which he was about to give an example in point; on hearing, however,
+this uncongenial sentiment he pushed back the book and came down
+quickly enough to talk to me. And this was the last of our excursions
+among the bookshelves.
+
+Of this I was glad, for I confess it was there I liked Sir Adrian the
+least.
+
+When the end of the short day drew near it was time to go and attend
+to the beacon. We ascended the ladder-like wooden stairs leading to
+the platform. Then I had the _reverse_ of that view that for so many
+days had engrossed my interest.
+
+_Pulwick from Scarthey!..._ What a long time it seemed then since I
+had left those rooms the windows of which now sent us back the rays of
+the setting sun! and I had no desire to return, though return I must
+on the morrow.
+
+Rene, of course, had left everything in his usual trim order, so all
+we had to do was to see to the lamp. It pleased my fantasy to light
+the beacon of Scarthey myself, and I struck the steel and kindled the
+brimstone and set fire to the huge, ill-smelling wicks until they gave
+a flame as big as my hand; and "there is the light of Scarthey at
+close quarters," I thought. And the Light-keeper was bending over me
+with his kindly look, humouring me like a child.
+
+As we sat there silently for a while in the twilight, there came from
+the little room adjoining the turret an odd sound of flapping and
+uncanny, melancholy cries. Sir Adrian rose, and we remembered the
+seagull by which he had played the part of good Samaritan.
+
+It had happened on the second day, as the storm was at its height.
+There had come a great crash at the window, and we saw something white
+that struggled on the sill outside; Sir Adrian opened the casement
+(when we had a little tornado of our own inside, and all his papers
+began dancing a sarabande in the room), and we gathered in the poor
+creature that was hurt and battered and more than half stunned,
+opening alternately its yellow bill and its red eyes in the most
+absurd manner.
+
+With a solicitude that it amused me to watch, Sir Adrian had tended
+the helpless, goose-like thing and then handed it to Rene's further
+care.
+
+Rene, it seemed, had thought of trying to tame the wild bird, and had
+constructed a huge sort of cage with laths and barrel-hoops, and
+installed it there with various nasty, sea-fishy, weedy things, such
+as seagulls consider dainty. But the prisoner, now its vigour had
+returned, yearned for nothing but the free air, and ever and anon
+almost broke its wings in sudden frenzy to escape.
+
+"I wonder at Rene," said Sir Adrian, contemplating the animal with his
+grave look of commiseration; "Rene, who, like myself, has been a
+prisoner! He will be disappointed, but we shall make one of God's
+creatures happy this day. There is not overmuch happiness in this
+world."
+
+And, regardless of the vicious pecks aimed at his hands, he with
+firmness folded the great strong wings and legs and carried the gull
+outside on the parapet.
+
+There the bird sat a moment, astonished, turning its head round at its
+benefactor before taking wing; and then it rose flying away in great
+swoops--flap, flap--across the waves till we could see it no longer.
+Ugly and awkward as the creature looked in its cage, it was beautiful
+in its joyful, steady flight, and I was glad to see it go. I must have
+been a bird myself in another existence, for I have often that longing
+to fly upon me, and it makes my heart swell with a great impatience
+that I cannot.
+
+But I could not help remarking to Sir Adrian that the bird's last look
+round had been full of anger rather than gratitude, and his answer, as
+he watched it sweep heavily away, was too gloomy to please me:
+
+"Gratitude," said he, "is as rare as unselfishness. If it were not so
+this world would be different indeed. As it is, we have no more right
+to expect the one than the other. And, when all is said and done, if
+doing a so-called kind action gives us pleasure, it is only a special
+form of self-indulgence."
+
+There is something wrong about a reasoning of this kind, but I could
+not exactly point out where.
+
+We both stood gazing out from our platform upon the darkening waters.
+Then across our vision there crept, round the promontory, a beautiful
+ship with all sails set, looking like some gigantic white bird;
+sailing, sailing, so swiftly yet so surely by, through the dim light;
+and I cried out in admiration: for there is something in the sight of
+a ship silently gliding that always sets my heart beating. But Sir
+Adrian's face grew stern, and he said: "A ship is a whitened
+sepulchre."
+
+But for all that he looked at it long and pensively.
+
+Now it had struck me before this that Sir Adrian, with all his
+kindness of heart, takes but a dismal view of human nature and human
+destiny; that to him what spoils the face of this world is that strife
+of life--which to me is as the breath of my nostrils, the absence of
+which made my convent days so grey and hateful to look back upon.
+
+I did not like to feel out of harmony with him, and so almost angrily
+I reproached him.
+
+"Would you have every one live like a limpet on a rock?" cried I.
+"Great heavens! I would rather be dead than not be up and doing."
+
+He looked at me gravely, pityingly.
+
+"May _you_ never see what I have seen," said he. "May you never learn
+what men have made of the world. God keep your fair life from such
+ways as mine has been made to follow."
+
+The words filled me, I don't know why, with sudden misgiving. Is this
+life, I am so eager for, but horror and misery after all? Would it be
+better to leave the book unopened? They said so at the convent. But
+what can they know of life at a convent?
+
+He bent his kind face towards mine in the thickening gloom, as though
+to read my thoughts, and his lips moved, but he did not speak aloud.
+Then, above the song of the waves as they gathered, rolled in, and
+fell upon the shingle all around, there came the beat of oars.
+
+"Hark," said Sir Adrian, "our good Rene!"
+
+His tone was cheerful again, and, as he hurried me away down the
+stairs, I knew he was glad to divert me from the melancholy into which
+he had allowed himself to drift.
+
+And then "good Rene" came, bringing breezy life and cheerfulness with
+him, and a bundle and a letter for me.
+
+Poor Madeleine! It seems she has been quite ill with weeping for
+Molly; and, indeed, her dear scrawl was so illegible that I could
+hardly read it. Rene says she was nearly as much upset by the joy as
+by the grief. Mr. Landale was not at home; he had ridden to meet Tanty
+at Liverpool, for the dear old lady has been summoned back in hot
+haste with the news of my decease!
+
+He for one, I thought to myself, will survive the shock of relief at
+learning that Molly has risen from the dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ting, ting, ting.... There goes my little clock, fussily counting the
+hour to tell me that I have written so long a time that I ought to be
+tired. And so I am, though I have not told you half of all I meant to
+tell!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE RECLUSE AND THE SQUIRE
+
+
+I thought I should never get away from supper and be alone! Rupert's
+air of cool triumph--it was triumph, however he may have wished to
+hide it--and Tanty's flow of indignation, recrimination, speculation,
+and amazement were enough to drive me mad. But I held out. I pretended
+I did not mind. My cheeks were blazing, and I talked _a tort et a
+travers_. I should have _died_ rather than that Rupert should have
+guessed at the tempest in my heart. Now I am alone at last, thank God!
+and it will be a relief to confide to my faithful diary the feelings
+that have been choking me these last two hours.
+
+"Pride must have a fall." Thus Rupert at supper, with reference, it is
+true, to some trivial incident, but looking at me hard and full, and
+pointing the words with his meaning smile. The fairies who attended at
+my birth endowed me with one power, which, however doubtful a blessing
+it may prove in the long run, has nevertheless been an unspeakable
+comfort to me hitherto. This is the reverse of what I heard a French
+gentleman term _l'esprit de l'escalier_. Thanks to this fairy
+godmother of mine, the instant some one annoys or angers me there
+rises on the tip of my tongue the most galling rejoinder that can
+possibly be made in the circumstances. And I need not add: _I make
+it_.
+
+To-night, when Rupert flung his scoff at me, I was ready for him.
+
+"I trust the old adage has not been brought home to you, _Sir_
+Rupert," said I, and then pretending confusion. "I beg your pardon," I
+added, "I have been so accustomed to address the head of the house
+these last days that the word escaped me unawares." The shot told
+_well_, and I was glad--glad of the murderous rage in Rupert's eyes,
+for I knew I had hit him on the raw. Even Tanty looked perturbed, but
+Rupert let me alone for the rest of supper.
+
+He is right nevertheless, that is what stung me. I am humbled, _and I
+cannot bear it_!
+
+Sir Adrian has left.
+
+I was so triumphant to bring him back to Pulwick this morning, to have
+circumvented Rupert's plans, and (let me speak the truth,) so happy to
+have him with me that I did not attempt to conceal my exultation. And
+now he has gone, gone without a word to me; only this miserable letter
+of determined farewell. I will copy it--for in my first anger I have
+so crumpled the paper that it is scarcely readable.
+
+"My child, I must go back to my island. The world is not for me, nor
+am I for the world, nor would I cast the shadow of my gloomy life
+further upon your bright one. Let me tell you, however, that you have
+left me the better for your coming; that it will be a good thought to
+me in my loneliness to know of your mother's daughters so close to me.
+When you look across at the beacon of Scarthey, child, through the
+darkness, think that though I may not see you again I shall ever
+follow and keep guard upon your life and upon your sister's, and that,
+even when you are far from Pulwick, the light will burn and the heart
+of Adrian Landale watch so long as it may beat."
+
+I have shed more tears--hot tears of anger--since I received this than
+I have wept in all my life before. Madeleine came in to me just now,
+too full of the happiness of having me back, poor darling, to be able
+to bear me out of sight again; but I have driven her from me with such
+cross words that she too is in tears. I must be alone and I must
+collect myself and my thoughts, for I want to state exactly all that
+has happened and then perhaps I shall be able to see my way more
+clearly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning then, early after breakfast, I started across the waters
+between Rene and Sir Adrian, regretting to leave the dear hospitable
+island, yet with my heart dancing within me, as gaily as did our
+little boat upon the chopping waves, to be carrying the hermit back
+with me. I had been deadly afraid lest he should at the last moment
+have sent me alone with the servant; but when he put on his big cloak,
+when I saw Rene place a bag at the bottom of the boat, I knew he
+meant to come--perhaps remain some days at Pulwick, and my spirits
+went up, up!
+
+It was a lovely day, too; the air had a crisp, cold sparkle, and the
+waters looked so blue under the clear, frosty sky. I could have sung
+as we rowed along, and every time I met Sir Adrian's eye I smiled at
+him out of the happiness of my heart. His look hung on me--we French
+have a word for that which is not translatable, _Il me couvait des
+yeux_--and, as every day of the three we had spent together I had
+thought him younger and handsomer, so this morning out in the bright
+sunlight I said to myself, I could never wish to see a more noble man.
+
+When we landed--and it was but a little way, for the tide was
+low--there was the carriage waiting, and Rene, all grins, handed over
+our parcels to the footman. Then we got in, the wheels began slowly
+dragging across the sand to the road, the poor horses pulling and
+straining, for it was heavy work. And Rene stood watching us by his
+boat, his hand over his eyes, a black figure against the dazzling
+sunshine on the bay; but I could see his white teeth gleam in that
+broad smile of his from out of his shadowy face. As, at length, we
+reached the high road and bowled swiftly along, I would not let Sir
+Adrian have peace to think, for something at my heart told me he hated
+the going back to Pulwick, and I so chattered and fixed his attention
+that as the carriage drew up he was actually laughing.
+
+When we stopped another carriage in front moved off, and there on the
+porch stood--Rupert and Tanty!
+
+Poor Tanty, her old face all disfigured with tears and a great black
+bonnet and veil towering on her head. I popped _my_ head out of the
+window and called to them.
+
+When they caught sight of me, both seemed to grow rigid with
+amazement. And then across Rupert's face came such a look of fury, and
+such a deathly pallor! I had thought, certainly, he would not weep the
+eyes out of his head for me; but that he should be stricken with
+_anger_ to see me alive I had hardly expected, and for the instant it
+frightened me.
+
+But then I had no time to observe anything else, for Tanty collapsed
+upon the steps and went off into as fine a fit of hysterics as I have
+ever seen. But fortunately it did not last long. Suddenly in the
+middle of her screams and rockings to and fro she perceived Sir Adrian
+as he leant anxiously over her. With the utmost energy she clutched
+his arm and scrambled to her feet.
+
+"Is it you, me poor child?" she cried, "Is it you?"
+
+And then she turned from him, as he stood with his gentle, earnest
+face looking down upon her, and gave Rupert a glare that might have
+slain him. I knew at once what she was thinking: I had experienced
+myself that it was impossible to see Sir Adrian and connect his
+dignified presence for one second with the scandalous impression
+Rupert would have conveyed.
+
+As for Rupert, he looked for the first time since I knew him
+thoroughly unnerved.
+
+Then Tanty caught me by the arm and shook me:
+
+"How _dare_ you, miss, how dare you?" she cried, her face was flaming.
+
+"How dare I what?" asked I, as I hugged her.
+
+"How dare you be walking about when it is dead you are, and give us
+all such a fright--there--there, you know what I mean.--Adrian," she
+whimpered, "give me your arm, my nephew, and conduct me into your
+house. All this has upset me very much. But, oh, am I not glad to see
+you both, my children!"
+
+In they went together. And my courage having risen again to its usual
+height, I waited purposely on the porch to tease Rupert a little. I
+had a real pleasure in noticing how he trembled with agitation beneath
+his mask.
+
+"Well, are you glad to see me, Cousin Rupert?" said I.
+
+He took my hand; his fingers were damp and cold.
+
+"Can you ask, my fair cousin?" he sneered. "Do you not see me overcome
+with joy? Am I not indeed especially favoured by Providence, for is
+not this the second time that a beloved being has been restored into
+my arms like Lazarus from the grave?"
+
+I was indignant at the heartlessness of his cynicism, and so the
+answer that leaped to my lips was out before I had time to reflect
+upon its unladylikeness.
+
+"Ay," said I, "and each time you have cried in your soul, like Martha,
+'Behold, he stinketh.'"
+
+My cousin laughed aloud.
+
+"You have a sharp tongue," he said, "take care you are not cut with it
+yourself some day."
+
+Just then the footmen who had been unpacking Tanty's trunks from the
+first carriage laid a great wooden box upon the porch, and one of them
+asked Rupert which room they should bring it to.
+
+Rupert looked at it strangely, and then at me.
+
+"Take it where you will," he exclaimed at last. "There lies good
+money-value wasted--though, after all, one never knows."
+
+"What is it?" said I, struck by a sinister meaning in his accents.
+
+"Mourning, beautiful Molly--mourning for
+you--crape--gowns--weepers--wherewith to have dried your sister's
+tears--but not needed yet, you see."
+
+He bared his teeth at me over his shoulder--I could not call it a
+smile--and then paused, as he was about to brush past into the hall,
+to give me the _pas_, with a mocking bow.
+
+He does not even attempt now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw
+for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is
+always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little
+Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to
+greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had
+circumvented the plotter.
+
+Alas, how foolish I was to laugh! Rupert is a dangerous enemy, and I
+have made him mine; and in a few hours he has shuffled the cards, and
+now he holds the trumps again. For that there is _du Rupert_ in this
+sudden departure of my knight, I am convinced. Of course, _his_
+reasons are plain to see. It is the vulgarest ambition that prompts
+him to oust his brother for as long as possible--for ever, if he can.
+
+And now, _I_ am outwitted. _Je rage._
+
+I have never been so unhappy. My heart feels all crushed. I see no
+help anywhere. I cannot in common decency go and seek Sir Adrian upon
+his island again, and so I sit and cry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Immediately upon his arrival Tanty was closeted with Sir Adrian in the
+chamber allotted to her for so long a space of time that Rupert,
+watching below in an inward fever, now flung back in his chair biting
+his nails, now restlessly pacing the room from end to end, his mind
+working on the new problem, his ears strained to catch the least sound
+the while, was fain at last to ring and give orders for the immediate
+sounding of the dinner bell (a good hour before that meal might be
+expected) as the only chance of interrupting a conference which boded
+so ill to his plans. Meanwhile Madeleine sobbed out the story of her
+grief and joy on Molly's heart; and Miss Sophia, who thus
+inconsiderately arrested in the full congenial flow of a new grief,
+was thrown back upon her old sorrows for consolation, had felt
+impelled to pay a visit to the rector's grave with the watering-can,
+and an extra pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Never perhaps since that worthy clergyman had gasped out his last
+struggling breath upon her bosom had she known more unmixed
+satisfaction than during those days when she hovered round poor
+prostrate Madeleine's bed and poured into her deaf ear the tale of her
+own woes and the assurances of her thoroughly understanding sympathy.
+She had been looking forward, with a chastened eagerness, to the
+arrival of the mourning, and had already derived a good deal of
+pleasure from the donning of certain aged weeds treasured in her
+wardrobe; it was therefore a distinct though quite unconscious
+disappointment when the news came which put an untimely end to all
+these funereal revels.
+
+At the shrill clamour of the bell, as Rupert anticipated, Adrian
+emerged instantly from his aunt's room, and a simultaneous jingle of
+minor bells announced that the ladies' attention was in all haste
+being turned to toilet matters.
+
+Whatever had passed between his good old relative and his sensitive
+brother, Rupert's quick appraising glance at the latter's face, as he
+went slowly down the corridor to his own specially reserved apartment,
+was sufficient to confirm the watcher in his misgiving that matters
+were not progressing as he might wish.
+
+Sir Adrian seemed absorbed, it is true, in grave thought, but his
+countenance was neither distressed nor gloomy. With a spasm of fierce
+annoyance, and a bitter curse on the meddling of old females and
+young, Rupert had to admit that never had he seen his brother look
+more handsome, more master of the house and of himself, more _sane_.
+
+A few minutes later the guests of Pulwick assembled in the library one
+by one, with the exception of Sophia, still watering the last
+resting-place of the Rev. Herbert Lee.
+
+Adrian came first, closely followed by Tanty, who turned a marked
+shoulder upon her younger nephew and devoted all her attention to the
+elder--in which strained condition of affairs the conversation between
+the three was not likely to be lively. Next the sisters, attired alike
+in white, entered together, bringing a bright vision of youth and
+loveliness into the old room.
+
+At sight of them Adrian sprang to his feet with a sudden sharp
+ejaculation, upon which the two girls halted on the threshold, half
+shy, half smiling. For the moment, in the shadow of the doorway, they
+were surprisingly like each other, the difference of colouring being
+lost in their curious similarity of contour.
+
+My God, were there then two Ceciles?
+
+Beautiful, miraculous, consoling had been to the mourner in his
+loneliness the apparition of his dead love restored to life, every
+time his eyes had fallen upon Molly during these last few blessed
+days; but this new development was only like a troublous mocking
+dream.
+
+Tanty turned in startled amazement. She could feel the shudder that
+shook his frame, through the hand with which he still unconsciously
+grasped at the back of her chair. An irrepressible smile crept to
+Rupert's lips.
+
+The little interlude could not have lasted more than a few seconds
+when Molly, recovering her usual self-possession, came boldly forward,
+leading her sister by the tips of her fingers.
+
+"Cousin Adrian," she said, "my sister Madeleine has many things to say
+to you in thanks for your care of my valuable person, but just now she
+is too bashful to be able to utter one quarter of them."
+
+As the girls emerged into the room, and the light from the great
+windows struck upon Madeleine's fair curls and the delicate pallor of
+her cheek; as she extended her hand, and raised to Adrian's face,
+while she dropped her pretty curtsey, the gaze of two unconsciously
+plaintive blue eyes, the man dashed the sweat from his brow with a
+gesture of relief.
+
+Nothing could be more unlike the dark beauty of the ghost of his
+dreams or its dashing presentment now smiling confidently upon him
+from Tanty's side.
+
+He took the little hand with tender pressure: Cecile's daughter must
+be precious to him in any case. Madeleine, moreover, had a certain
+appealing grace that was apt to steal the favour that Molly won by
+storm.
+
+"But, indeed, I could never tell Sir Adrian how grateful I am," said
+she, with a timidity that became her as thoroughly as Molly's
+fearlessness suited her own stronger personality.
+
+At the sound of her voice, again the distressful nightmare-like
+feeling seized Sir Adrian's soul.
+
+Of all characteristics that, as the phrase is, "go in families,"
+voices are generally the most peculiarly generic.
+
+When Molly first addressed Sir Adrian, it had been to him as a voice
+from the grave; now Madeleine's gentle speech tripped forth upon that
+self-same note--Cecile's own voice!
+
+And next Molly caught up the sound, and then Madeleine answered again.
+What they said, he could not tell; these ghosts--these speaking
+ghosts--brought back the old memories too painfully. It was thus
+Cecile had spoken in the first arrogance of her dainty youth and
+loveliness; and in those softer tones when sorrow and work and failure
+had subdued her proud spirit. And now she laughs; and hark, the laugh
+is echoed! Sir Adrian turns as if to seek some escape from this
+strange form of torture, meets Rupert's eye and instinctively braces
+himself into self-control.
+
+"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, in her comfortable, commonplace,
+cheerful tone: "This dinner bell of yours, Adrian, has raised false
+hopes, which seem to tarry in their fulfilment. What are we waiting
+for, may I ask?"
+
+Adrian looked at his brother.
+
+"Rupert, you know, my dear aunt," he said, "has the ordering of these
+matters."
+
+"Sophia is yet absent," quoth Rupert drily, "but we can proceed
+without her, if my aunt wishes."
+
+"Pooh, yes. Sophia!" snorted Miss O'Donoghue, grasping Sir Adrian's
+arm to show herself quite ready for the march, "Sophia! We all know
+what she is. Why, my dear Adrian, she'll never hear the bell till it
+has stopped this half hour."
+
+"Dinner," cried Rupert sharply to the butler, whom his pull of the
+bell-rope had summoned. And dinner being served, the guests trooped
+into that dining-room which was full of such associations to Sir
+Adrian. It was a little thing, but, nevertheless, intensely galling to
+Rupert to have to play second gentleman, and give up his privileges as
+host to his brother. Usually indeed Adrian cared too little to stand
+upon his rights, and insisted upon Rupert's continuing to act in his
+presence as he did in his absence; but this afternoon Tanty had left
+him no choice.
+
+Nevertheless, as Mr. Landale sat down between the sisters, and turned
+smiling to address first one and then the other, it would have taken a
+very practised eye to discern under the extra urbanity of his
+demeanour the intensity of his inward mortification. He talked a great
+deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering
+Molly into scornful and eager retorts, and preventing Madeleine from
+relapsing into that state of dreaminess out of which the rapid
+succession of her recent sorrow and joy had somewhat shaken her.
+
+The girls were both excited, both ready to laugh and jest. Tanty,
+satisfied to see Adrian preside at the head of the table with a grave,
+courteous, and self-contained manner that completely fulfilled her
+notions of what family dignity required of him, cracked her jokes, ate
+her dinner, and quaffed her cup with full enjoyment, laughing
+indulgently at her grand-nieces' sallies, and showing as marked a
+disfavour to Rupert as she deemed consistent with good manners.
+
+The poor old lady little guessed how the workings in each brother's
+mind were all the while, silently but inevitably, tending towards the
+destruction of her newly awakened hopes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was silence between Sir Adrian and Rupert when at last they were
+left alone together. The elder's gaze wandering in space, his absent
+hand softly beating the table, his relaxed frame--all showed that his
+mind was far away from thought of the younger's presence. The relief
+to be delivered from the twin echoes of a haunting voice--once the
+dearest on earth to him--was immense. But his whole being was still
+quivering under the first acuteness of so disturbing an impression.
+
+His years of solitude, moreover, had ill prepared him for social
+intercourse; the laughter, the clash of conversation, the noise on
+every side, the length of the meal, the strain to maintain a fit and
+proper attitude as host, had tried to the utmost nerves by nature
+hypersensitive.
+
+Rupert, who had leisure to study the suddenly lined and tired
+lineaments of the abstracted countenance before him, noted with
+self-congratulation the change that a few hours seemed to have wrought
+upon it, and decided that the moment had come to strike.
+
+"So, Adrian," he said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the
+glass of wine he had been toying with--Rupert was an abstemious man.
+"So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous role of rescuer of
+distressed damsels--squire of dames and what not. The last one would
+have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing
+up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any of us would have
+thought what a blessing in disguise your freak of self-exile was
+destined to become to us!"
+
+At the sound of the incisive voice Adrian had returned with a slight
+shiver from distant musing to the consciousness of the other's
+presence.
+
+"And did you not always look upon my exile as a blessing undisguised,
+Rupert?" answered he, fixing his brother with his large grave gaze.
+
+Rupert's eyelids wavered a little beneath it, but his tone was coolly
+insolent as he made reply:
+
+"If it pleases you to make no count of our fraternal affection for
+you, my dear fellow; if by insisting upon _our_ unnatural depravity
+you contrive a more decent excuse for your own vagaries, you have my
+full permission to dub me Cain at once and have done with it."
+
+A light sigh escaped the elder man, and then he resolutely closed his
+lips. It was by behaviour such as this, by his almost diabolical
+ingenuity in the art of being uncongenial, that Rupert had so largely
+contributed to make his own house impossible to him. But where was the
+use of either argument or expostulation with one so incapable of even
+understanding the mainsprings of his actions? Moreover (_he_, above
+all, must not forget it) Rupert had suffered through him in pride and
+self-esteem. And yet, despite Sir Adrian's philosophic mind, despite
+his vast, pessimistic though benevolent tolerance for erring human
+nature, his was a very human heart; and it added not a little to the
+sadness of his lot at every return to Pulwick (dating from that first
+most bitter home-coming) to feel in every fibre of his being how
+little welcome he was where the ties of flesh and blood alone, not to
+speak of his most ceaseless yet delicate generosity, should have
+ensured him a very different reception.
+
+Again he sighed, this time more deeply, and the corners of Rupert's
+lips, the arch of his eyebrows, moved upwards in smiling
+interrogation.
+
+"It must have given you a shock," said Mr. Landale, carelessly, "to
+see the resemblance between Molly and poor Cecile; not, of course,
+that _I_ can remember her; but Tanty says it is something startling."
+
+Adrian assented briefly.
+
+"I daresay it seems quite painful to you at first," proceeded Rupert,
+much in the same deliberate manner as a surgeon may lay bare a wound,
+despite the knowledge of the suffering he is inflicting, "I noticed
+that you seemed upset during dinner. But probably the feeling will
+wear off."
+
+"Probably."
+
+"Madeleine resembles her father, I am told; but then you never saw the
+_feu Comte_, did you? Well, they are both fine handsome girls, full of
+life and spirits. It is our revered relative's intention to leave them
+here--as perhaps she has told you--for two months or so."
+
+"I have begged her," said Sir Adrian gravely, "to make them understand
+that I wish them to look upon Pulwick as their home."
+
+"Very right, very proper," cried the other; "in fact I knew that was
+what you would wish--and your wishes, of course, are my law in the
+matter. By the way, I hope you quite understand, Adrian, how it
+happened that I did _not_ notify to you the arrival of these guests
+extraordinary--knowing that you have never got over their mother's
+death, and all that--it was entirely from a wish to spare you.
+Besides, there was your general prohibition about my visitors; I did
+not dare to take the responsibility in fact. And so I told Tanty."
+
+"I do not wish to doubt the purity of your motives, though it would
+have grieved me had _these_ visitors (no ordinary ones as you yourself
+admit) come and gone without my knowledge. As it fell out, however,
+even without that child's dangerous expedition, I should have been
+informed in any case--Rene knew."
+
+"Rene knew?" cried Rupert, surprised; and "damn Rene" to himself with
+heart-felt energy.
+
+That the infernal little spy, as he deemed his brother's servant,
+should have made a visit to Pulwick without his knowledge was
+unpleasant news, and it touched him on his tenderest point.
+
+But now, replenishing his half-emptied glass to give Adrian no excuse
+for putting an end to the conference before he himself desired it, he
+plunged into the heart of the task he had set himself without further
+delay:
+
+"And what would you wish me to do, Adrian," he asked, with a pretty
+air of deference, "in the matter of entertaining these ladies? I have
+thought of several things likely to afford them amusement, but, since
+you are here, you will readily understand that I should like your
+authorisation first. I am anxious to consult you when I can," he
+added, apologetically. "So forgive my attacking you upon business
+to-night when you seem really so little fitted for it--but you know
+one cannot count upon you from one minute to another! What would you
+say if I were to issue invitations for a ball? Pulwick was noted for
+its hospitality in the days of our fathers, and the gloom that has
+hung over the old home these last eight years has been (I suppose)
+unavoidable in the circumstances--but none the less a pity. No fear
+but that our fair cousins would enjoy such a festivity, and I think I
+can promise you that the sound of our revels should not reach as far
+as your hermitage."
+
+A slow colour had mounted to Adrian's cheeks; he drew his brows
+together with an air of displeasure; Rupert, quick to read these
+symptoms, hastened to pursue the attack before response should be
+made:
+
+"The idea does not seem to please you," he cried, as if in hurt
+surprise. "'Tis true I have now no legal right to think of reviving
+the old hospitable traditions of the family; but you must remember,
+Adrian, you yourself have insisted on giving me a moral right to act
+host here in your absence--you have over and over again laid stress
+upon the freedom you wished me to feel in the matter. Hitherto I have
+not made use of these privileges; have not cared to do so, beyond an
+occasional duty dinner to our nearest neighbours. A lonely widower
+like myself, why should I? But now, with these gay young things in the
+house--so near to us in blood--I had thought it so much our duty to
+provide fitting entertainment for them that your attitude is
+incomprehensible to me. Come! does it not strike you as savouring a
+little of the unamiable dog in the fable? I know you hate company
+yourself, and all the rest of it; but how can these things here affect
+you upon your island? As for the budget, it will stand it, I assure
+you. I speak hotly; pray excuse me. I own I have looked forward to the
+thought of seeing once more young and happy faces around me."
+
+"You mistake me," said Sir Adrian with an effort; "while you are
+acting as my representative you have, as you know, all liberty to
+entertain what guests you choose, and as you see fit. It is natural,
+perhaps, that you should now believe me anxious to hurry back to the
+lighthouse, and I should have told you before that it is my intention
+this time to remain longer than my wont, in which circumstance the
+arrangements for the entertaining of our relatives will devolve upon
+myself."
+
+Rupert broke into a loud laugh.
+
+"Forgive me, but the idea is too ludicrous! What sort of funeral
+festivities do you propose to provide to the neighbourhood, with you
+and Sophia presiding, the living images of mourning and desolation?
+There, my dear fellow, I _must_ laugh. It will be the skeleton at the
+feast with a vengeance. Why, even to-night, in the bosom of your
+family, as it were, your presence lay so like a wet blanket upon us
+all that, 'pon my soul, I nearly cracked my voice trying to keep those
+girls from noticing it! Seriously, I am delighted, of course, that you
+should feel so sportive, and it is high time indeed that the
+neighbourhood should see something of you, but I fear you are
+reckoning beyond your strength. Anyhow, command me. I shall be anxious
+to help you all I can in this novel departure. What are your plans?"
+
+"I have laid no plans," answered Sir Adrian coldly, after a slight
+pause, "but you do not need me to tell you, Rupert, that to surround
+myself with such gaiety as you suggest is impossible."
+
+"You mean to make our poor little cousins lead as melancholy an
+existence as you do yourself then," cried Rupert with an angry laugh.
+Matters were not progressing as he could have wished. "I fear this
+will cause a good deal of disappointment, not only to them but to our
+revered aunt--for she is very naturally anxious to see her charges
+married and settled, and she told me that she more or less counted
+upon my aid in the matter. Now as you are here of course I have, thank
+Heaven, nothing more to say one way or another. But you will surely
+think of asking a few likely young fellows over to the house,
+occasionally? We are not badly off for eldest sons in the
+neighbourhood; Molly, who is as arrant a little flirt, they tell me,
+as she is pretty, will be grateful to you for the attention, on the
+score of amusement at least."
+
+Mr. Landale, speaking somewhat at random out of his annoyance to have
+failed in immediately disgusting the hermit of the responsibilities
+his return home might entail, here succeeded by chance in producing
+the desired impression.
+
+The idea of Molly--Cecile's double--marrying--worse still, making
+love, coquetting before his eyes, was intolerable to Adrian. To have
+to look on, and see _Cecile's_ eyes lavish glances of love; _her_
+lips, soft words and lingering smiles, upon some country fool; to have
+himself to give this duplicate of his love's sweet body to one
+unworthy perhaps--it stung him with a pain as keen as it was
+unreasonable. It was terrible to be so made, that the past was ever as
+living as the present! But he must face the situation, he must grapple
+with his own weakness. Tender memories had lured him from his retreat
+and made him for a short time almost believe that he could live with
+them, happy a little while, in his own home again; but now it was
+these very memories that were rising like avengers to drive him hence.
+
+Of course the child must marry if there her happiness lay. Ay, and
+both Cecile's children must be amused, made joyful, while they still
+could enjoy life--Rupert was right--right in all he said--but he,
+Adrian, could not be there to see. That was beyond his endurance.
+
+It was impossible of course, for one so single-minded himself, to
+follow altogether the doublings of such a mind as Rupert's; but
+through the melancholy relief of this sudden resolution, Adrian was
+distinctly conscious of the underlying duplicity, the unworthy motives
+which had prompted his brother's arguments.
+
+He rose from the table, and looked down with sad gaze at the younger's
+beautiful mask of a face.
+
+"God knows," he said, "God knows, Rupert, I do not so often inflict my
+presence upon you that you should be so anxious to show me how much
+better I should do to keep away. I admit nevertheless the justice of
+all you say. It is but right that Mesdemoiselles de Savenaye should be
+surrounded with young and cheerful society; and even were I in a state
+to act as master of the revels (here he smiled a little dreamily), my
+very presence, as you say, would cast a gloom upon their
+merrymaking--I will go. I will go back to the island to-night--I can
+rely upon you to assist me to do so quietly without unnecessary scenes
+or explanations--yes--yes--I know you will be ready to facilitate
+matters! Strange! It is only a few hours ago since Tanty almost
+persuaded me that it was my duty to remain here; now you have made me
+see that I have no choice but to leave. Have no fear, Rupert--I go. I
+shall write to Tanty. But remember only, that as you treat Cecile's
+children, so shall I shape my actions towards you in future."
+
+Slowly he moved away, leaving Rupert motionless in his seat; and long
+did the younger brother remain moodily fixing the purple bloom of the
+grapes with unseeing eyes.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+"CAPTAIN JACK," THE GOLD SMUGGLER
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE GOLD SMUGGLER AND THE PHILOSOPHER
+
+
+On the evening of the day which had seen Miss Molly's departure for
+the main land, Rene, after the usual brisk post-prandial altercation
+with old Margery by her kitchen fire, was cheerfully finding his way,
+lantern in hand, to his turret, when in the silence of the night he
+heard the door of the keep open and close, and presently recognised
+Sir Adrian's tread echoing on the flagged steps beneath him.
+
+Astonished at this premature return and full of vague dismay, he
+hurried down to receive his master.
+
+There was a cloud on Sir Adrian's face, plainly discernible in spite
+of the unaltered composure of his manner.
+
+"I did not expect your honour back so soon," said Rene, tentatively.
+
+"I myself did not anticipate to return. I had thought I might perhaps
+stay some days at Pulwick. But I find there is no home like this one
+for me, Rene."
+
+There was a long silence. But when Rene had rekindled a blaze upon the
+hearth and set the lamp upon the table, he stood a moment before
+withdrawing, almost begging by his look some further crumb of
+information.
+
+"My room is ready, I suppose?" inquired Sir Adrian.
+
+"Yes, your honour," quoth the man ruefully, "Margery and I put it back
+exactly as--as before."
+
+"Good-night then, good-night!" said the master after a pause, warming
+his hands as the flames began to leap through the network of twigs. "I
+shall go to bed, I am tired; I had to row myself across. You will take
+the boat back to-morrow morning."
+
+Rene opened his mouth to speak; caught the sound of a sigh coming from
+the hearthside, and, shaking his head, in silence obeyed the implied
+dismissal. And bitterly did he meditate in his bunk, that night, upon
+the swift crumbling of those air-castles he had built himself so
+gaily erstwhile, in the rose and blue atmosphere that _La Demoiselle_
+had seemed to bring with her to Scarthey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the morrow the old regular mode of life began again in the keep.
+
+Sir Adrian read a good deal, or at least appeared so to do; but Rene,
+who kept him more than ever under his glances of wistful sympathy,
+noted that far from being absorbed, as of old, in the pages of his
+book, the recluse's eyes wandered much off its edges into space; that
+when writing, or at least intent on writing, his pen would linger long
+in the bottle and hover listlessly over the paper; that he was more
+abstracted, even than his wont, when looking out of the eastern
+window; and that on the platform of the beacon it was the landward
+view which most drew his gaze.
+
+There was also more music in the keep than was the custom in evener
+days. Seated at his organ the light-keeper seemed to find a voice for
+such thoughts as were not to be spoken or written, and relief for the
+nameless pity of them. But never a word passed between the two men on
+the subject that filled both their hearts.
+
+It was Sir Adrian's pleasure that things at Scarthey should seem to be
+exactly the same as before, and that was enough for Rene.
+
+"And yet," mused the faithful fellow, within his disturbed mind, "the
+ruins now look like a house the day after an interment. If we were
+lonely before, my faith, now we are desolate?" and, trying to find
+something or somebody to charge with the curse of it, he invariably
+fell to upon Mr. Landale's sleek head, why, he could hardly have
+explained.
+
+Three new days had thus passed in the regularity, if not the serenity
+of the old--they seemed old already, buried far back in the past,
+those days that had lapsed so evenly before the brightness of youthful
+and beautiful life had entered the keep for one brief moment, and
+departing, again left it a ruin indeed--when the retirement of
+Scarthey was once more invaded by an unexpected visitor. It was about
+sundown of the shortest day. Sir Adrian was at his organ, almost
+unconsciously interpreting his own sadness into music. In time the
+yearning of his soul had had expression, the echo of the last sighing
+chord died away in the tranquil air, yet the musician, with head bent
+upon his breast, remained lost in far-away thoughts.
+
+A slight shuffling noise disturbed him; turning round to greet Rene as
+he supposed, he was astonished to see a man's figure lolling in his
+own arm-chair.
+
+As he peered inquiringly into the twilight, the intruder rose to his
+feet, and cried with a voice loud and clear, pleasant withal to the
+ear:
+
+"Sir Adrian, I am sorry you have stopped so soon; I never heard
+anything more beautiful! The door was ajar, and I crept in like a cat,
+not to disturb you."
+
+Still in doubt, but with his fine air of courtesy, the light-keeper
+advanced towards the uninvited guest.
+
+"Am I mistaken," he said, with some hesitation, "surely this is Hubert
+Cochrane's voice?"
+
+"Jack Smith's voice, my dear fellow; Jack Smith, at your service,
+please to remember," answered the visitor, with a genial ring of
+laughter in his words. "Not that it matters much here, I suppose! Had
+I not heard the peal of your organ I should have thought Scarthey
+deserted indeed. I could find no groom of the chambers to announce me
+in due form."
+
+As he spoke, the two had drawn near each other and clasped hands
+heartily.
+
+"Now, to think of your knowing my voice in this manner! You have a
+devilish knack of spotting your man, Sir Adrian. It is almost four
+years since I was here last, is it not?"
+
+"Four years?--so it is; and four years that have done well by you, it
+would appear. What a picture of strength and lustiness! It really
+seems to regenerate one, and put heart of grace in one, only to take
+you by the hand.--Welcome, Captain Smith!"
+
+Nothing could have more succinctly described the outer man of him who
+chose to be known by that most nondescript of patronymics. Sir Adrian
+stood for a moment, contemplating, with glances of approval such as he
+seldom bestowed on his fellow-man, the symmetrical, slender, yet
+vigorous figure of his friend, and responding with an unwonted
+cheerfulness to the smile that lit up the steel-blue eyes, and parted
+the shapely, strong, and good-humoured mouth of the privateersman.
+
+"Dear me, and what a buck we have become!" continued the baronet,
+"what splendid plumage! It is good to see you so prosperous. And so
+this is the latest fashion? No doubt it sets forth the frame of a
+goodly man, though no one could guess at the 'sea dog' beneath such a
+set of garments. I used to consider my brother Rupert the most
+especial dandy I had ever seen; but that, evidently, was my limited
+experience: even Rupert cannot display so perfect a fit in
+bottle-green coats, so faultless a silken stock, buckskins of such
+matchless drab!"
+
+Captain Jack laughed, blushed slightly under the friendly banter, and
+allowed himself to be thrust back into the seat he had just vacated.
+
+"Welcome again, on my lonely estate. I hope this is not to be a mere
+flying visit? You know my misanthropy vanishes when I have your
+company. How did you come? Not by the causeway, I should say," smiling
+again, and glancing at the unblemished top-boots.
+
+"I have two men waiting for me in the gig below; my schooner, the
+_Peregrine_, lies in the offing."
+
+The elder man turned to the window, and through the grey curtain of
+crepuscule recognised the rakish topsail schooner that had excited
+Molly's admiration some days before. He gazed forth upon it a few
+meditative moments.
+
+"Not knowing whether I would find you ready to receive me," pursued
+the captain, "I arranged that the _Peregrine_ was to wait for me if I
+had to return to-night."
+
+"Which, of course, is not to be heard of," said Sir Adrian. "Here is
+Renny; he will carry word that with me you remain to-night.... Come,
+Renny, do you recognise an old acquaintance?"
+
+Already well disposed towards any one who could call this note of
+pleasure into the loved voice, the Breton, who had just entered,
+turned to give a broad stare at the handsome stranger, then burst into
+a guffaw of pure delight. "By my faith, it is Mr. the Lieutenant!" he
+ejaculated; adding, as ingeniously as Tanty herself might have done,
+that he would never have known him again.
+
+"It is Mr. the Captain now, Renny," said that person, and held out a
+strong hand to grip that of the little Frenchman, which the latter,
+after the preliminary rubbing upon his trousers that his code of
+manners enjoined, readily extended.
+
+"Ah, it is a good wind that sent you here this day," said he, with a
+sigh of satisfaction when this ceremony had been duly gone through.
+
+"You say well," acquiesced his master, "it has ever been a good wind
+that has brought Captain Jack across my path."
+
+And then receiving directions to refresh the gig's crew and dismiss
+them back to their ship with instructions to return for orders on the
+morrow, the servant hurried forth, leaving the two friends once more
+alone.
+
+"Thanks," said Captain Jack, when the door had closed upon the
+messenger. "That will exactly suit my purpose. I have a good many
+things to talk over with you, since you so kindly give me the
+opportunity. In the first place, let me unburden myself of a debt
+which is now of old standing--and let me say at the same time," added
+the young man, rising to deposit upon the table a letter-case which he
+had taken from his breast-pocket, "that though my actual debt is now
+met, my obligation to you remains the same and will always be so. You
+said just now that I looked prosperous, and so I am--owing somewhat to
+good luck, it is true, but owing above all to you. No luck would have
+availed me much without _that_ to start upon." And he pointed to the
+contents of the case, a thick bundle of notes which his host was now
+smilingly turning over with the tip of his fingers.
+
+"I might have sent you a draft, but there is no letter-post that I
+know of to Scarthey, and, besides, it struck me that just as these
+four thousand pounds had privately passed between you and me, you
+might prefer them to be returned in the same manner."
+
+"I prefer it, since it has brought you in person," said Sir Adrian,
+thrusting the parcel into a drawer and pulling his chair closer
+towards his guest. "Dealings with a man like you give one a taste of
+an ideal world. Would that more human transactions could be carried
+out in so simple and frank a manner as this little business of ours!"
+
+Captain Jack laughed outright.
+
+"Upon my word, you are a greater marvel to me every time I see
+you--which is not by any means often enough!"
+
+The other raised his eyebrows in interrogation, and the sailor went
+on:
+
+"Is it really possible that it is to _my_ mode of dealing that you
+attribute the delightful simplicity of a transaction involving a
+little fortune from hand to hand? And where pray, in this terraqueous
+sublunary sphere--I heard that good phrase from a literary exquisite
+at Bath, and it seems to me comprehensive--where, then, on this
+terraqueous sublunary globe of ours, Sir Adrian Landale, could one
+expect to find another person ready to lend a privateersman, trading
+under an irresponsible name, the sum of four thousand pounds, without
+any other security than his volunteered promise to return it--if
+possible?"
+
+Sir Adrian, ignoring the tribute to his own merits, arose and placed
+his friendly hand on the speaker's shoulder: "And now, my dear Jack,"
+he said gravely, "that the war is over, you will have to turn your
+energies in another direction. I am glad you are out of that unworthy
+trade."
+
+Captain Jack bounded up: "No, no, Sir Adrian, I value your opinion too
+much to allow such a statement to pass unchallenged. Unworthy trade!
+We have not given back those French devils one half of the harm they
+have done to our own merchant service; it was war, you know, and you
+know also, or perhaps you don't--in which case let me tell you--that
+my _Cormorant_ has made her goodly name, ay, and brought her commander
+a fair share of his credit, by her energy in bringing to an incredible
+number of those d----d French sharks--beg pardon, but you know the
+pestilent breed. Well, we shall never agree upon the subject I fear.
+As for me, the smart of the salt air, the sting of the salt breeze,
+the fighting, the danger, they have got into my blood; and even now it
+sometimes comes over me that life will not be perfect life to me
+without the dancing boards under my feet and the free waves around me,
+and my jolly boys to lead to death or glory. Yet, could you but know
+it, this is the veriest treason, and I revoke the words a thousand
+times. You look amazed, and well you may: ah, I have much to tell you!
+But I take it you will not care to hear all I have been able to
+achieve on the basis of your munificent help at my--ahem, unworthy
+trade."
+
+"Well, no," said Sir Adrian smiling, "I can quite imagine it, and
+imagine it without enthusiasm, though, perhaps, as you say, such
+things have to be. But I should like to know of these present
+circumstances, these prospects which make you look so happy. No doubt
+the fruits of peace?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose in one way they may be called so. Yet without the war
+and your helping hand they would even now hang as far from me as the
+grapes from the fox.--When I arrived in England three months after the
+peace had been signed, I had accumulated in the books of certain banks
+a tolerably respectable account, to the credit of a certain person,
+whose name, oddly enough, you on one or two occasions have applied,
+absently, to Captain Jack Smith. I was, I will own, already feeling
+inclined to discuss with myself the propriety of assuming the name in
+question, when, there came something in my way of which I shall tell
+you presently; which something has made me resolve to remain Captain
+Smith for some time longer. The old _Cormorant_ lay at Bristol, and
+being too big for this new purpose, I sold her. It was like cutting
+off a limb. I loved every plank of her; knew every frisk of her! She
+served me well to the end, for she fetched her value--almost. Next,
+having time on my hands, I bethought myself of seeing again a little
+of the world; and when I tell you that I drove over to Bath, you may
+perhaps begin to see what I am coming to."
+
+Sir Adrian suddenly turned in his chair to face his friend again, with
+a look of singular attention.
+
+"Well, no, not exactly, and yet--unless--? Pshaw! impossible----!"
+upon which lucid commentary he stopped, gazing with anxious inquiry
+into Captain Jack's smiling eyes. "Ah, I believe you have just a
+glimmer of the truth with that confounded perspicacity of yours,"
+saying which the sailor laughed and blushed not unbecomingly. "This is
+how it came about: I had transactions with old John Harewood, the
+banker, in Bristol, transactions advantageous to both sides, but
+perhaps most to him--sly old dog. At any rate, the old fellow took a
+monstrous fancy to me, over his claret, and when I mentioned Bath,
+recommended me to call upon his wife (a very fine dame, who prefers
+the fashion of the Spa to the business of Bristol, and consequently
+lives as much in the former place as good John Harewood will allow).
+Well, you wonder at my looking prosperous and happy. Listen, for here
+is the _hic_: At Lady Maria Harewood's I met one who, if I mistake
+not, is of your kin. Already, then, somewhere at the back of my memory
+dwelt the name of Savenaye----Halloa, bless me! I have surely said
+nothing to----!"
+
+The young man broke off, disconcerted. Sir Adrian's face had become
+unwontedly clouded, but he waved the speaker on impatiently: "No, no,
+I am surprised, of course, only surprised; never mind me, my thoughts
+wandered--please go on. So you have met her?"
+
+"Ay, that I have! Now it is no use beating about the bush. You who
+know her--you do know her of course--will jump at once to the only
+possible conclusion. Ah, Adrian!" Captain Jack pursued, pacing
+enthusiastically about, "I have been no saint, and no doubt I have
+fancied myself as a lover once or twice ere this; but to see that
+girl, sir, means a change in a man's life: to have met the light of
+those sweet eyes is to love, to love in reality. It is to feel ashamed
+of the idiotic make-believes of former loves. To love her, even in
+vague hope, is to be glorious already; and, by George, to have her
+troth, is to be--I cannot say what ... to be what I am now!"
+
+The lover's face was illumined; he walked the room like one treading
+on air as the joy within him found its voice in words.
+
+Sir Adrian listened with an extraordinary tightness at his heart. He
+had loved one woman even so; that love was still with him, as the
+scent clings to the phial; but the sight of this young, joyful love
+made him feel old in that hour--old as he had never realised before.
+There was no room in his being for such love again. And yet...? There
+was a tremulous anxiety in the question he put, after a short pause.
+"There are _two_ Demoiselles de Savenaye, Jack; which is it?"
+
+Captain Jack halted, turned on his heels, and exclaimed
+enthusiastically: "To me there is but one--one woman in the
+world--Madeleine!" His look met that of Sir Adrian in full, and even
+in the midst of his own self-centred mood he could not fail to notice
+the transient gleam that shot in the elder's eyes, and the sudden
+relaxation of his features. He pondered for a moment or two, scanning
+the while the countenance of the recluse; then a smile lighted up his
+own bronzed face in a very sweet and winning way. "As her kinsman,
+have I your approval?" he asked and proceeded earnestly: "To tell the
+truth at once, I was looking to even more than your approval--to your
+support."
+
+Sir Adrian's mood had undergone a change: as a breeze sweeping from a
+new quarter clears in a moment a darkening mist from the face of the
+earth, Captain Jack's answer had blown away for the nonce the
+atmosphere of misgiving that enveloped him. He answered promptly, and
+with warmth: "Being your friend, I am glad to know of this; being her
+kinsman, I may add, my dear _Hubert_"--there was just a tinge of
+hesitation, followed by a certain emphasis, on the change of name--"I
+promise to support you in your hopes, in so far as I have any
+influence; for power or right over my cousin I have none."
+
+The sailor threw himself down once more in his arm-chair; and, tapping
+his shining hessians with the stem of his long clay in smiling
+abstraction, began, with all a lover's egotism, to expatiate on the
+theme that filled his heart.
+
+"It is a singular, an admirable, a never sufficiently-to-be-praised
+conjunction of affairs which has ultimately brought me near you when I
+was pursuing the Light o' my Heart, ruthlessly snatched away by a
+cunning and implacable dragon, known to you as Miss O'Donoghue. I say
+_dragon_ in courtesy; I called her by better names before I realised
+what a service she was unconsciously rendering us by this sudden
+removal."
+
+"Known to me!" laughed Sir Adrian. "My own mother's sister!"
+
+"Then I still further retract. Moreover, seeing how things have turned
+out, I must now regard her as an angel in disguise. Don't look so
+surprised! Has she not brought my love under your protection? I
+thought I was tolerably proof against the little god, but then he had
+never shot his arrows at me from between the long lashes of Madeleine
+de Savenaye. Oh, those eyes, Adrian! So unlike those southern eyes I
+have known so well, too well in other days, brilliant, hard,
+challenging battle from the first glance, and yet from the first
+promising that surrender which is ever so speedy. Pah! no more of such
+memories. Before _her_ blue eyes, on my first introduction, I
+felt--well, I felt as the novice does under the first broadside."
+
+The speaker looked dreamily into space, as if the delicious moment
+rose again panoramically before him.
+
+"Well," he pursued, "that did me no harm, after all. Lady Maria
+Harewood, who, I have learned since, deals strongly in sentiment, and,
+being unfortunately debarred by circumstances from indulgence in the
+soothing luxury on her own behalf, loves to promote matches more
+poetical--she calls it more 'harmonious'--than her own very prosaic
+one, she, dear lady, was delighted with such a rarity as a bashful
+privateersman--her 'tame corsair,' as I heard her call your humble
+servant.--I was a hero, sir, a perfect hero of romance in the course
+of a few days! On the strength of this renown thrust upon me I found
+grace before the most adorable blue eyes; had words of sympathy from
+the sweetest lips, and smiles from the most bewitching little mouth in
+all the world. So you see I owe poor Lady Maria a good thought.... You
+laugh?"
+
+Sir Adrian was smiling, but all in benevolence, at the artlessness of
+this eager youth, who in all the unconscious glory of his looks and
+strength, ascribed the credit of his entrance into a maiden's heart to
+the virtue of a few irresponsible words of recommendation.
+
+"Ah! those were days! Everything went on smoothly, and I was debating
+with myself whether I would not, at once, boldly ask her to be the
+wife of Hubert Cochrane; though the casting of Jack Smith's skin would
+have necessitated the giving up of several of his free-trading
+engagements."
+
+"Free trading! You do not mean to say, man alive, that you have turned
+smuggler now!" interrupted Sir Adrian aghast.
+
+"Smuggler," cried Jack with his frank laugh, "peace, I beg, friend!
+Miscall not a gentleman thus. Smuggler--pirate? I cut a pretty figure
+evidently in your worship's eyes. Lucky for me you never would be
+sworn as a magistrate, or where should I be ... and you too, between
+duty and friendship?--But to proceed: I was about, as I have said, to
+give that up for the reasons I mentioned, when, upon a certain fine
+evening, I crossed the path of one of the most masterful old maids I
+have ever seen, or even heard of; and, would you believe it?"--this
+with a quizzical look at his host's grave face--"this misguided old
+lady took such a violent dislike to me at first sight, and expressed
+it so thoroughly well, that, hang me if I was not completely brought
+to. And all for escorting my dear one from Lady Maria's house to her
+own! Well, the walk was worth it--though the old crocodile was on the
+watch for us, ready to snap; had got wind of the secret, somehow, a
+secret unspoken even between us two. This first and last interview
+took place on the flags, in front of No. 17 Camden Place, Bath. Oh! It
+was a very one-sided affair from the beginning, and ended abruptly in
+a door being banged in my face. Then I heard about Miss O'Donoghue's
+peculiarities in the direction of exclusiveness. And then, also, oddly
+enough, for the first time, of the great fortune going with my
+Madeleine's hand. Of course I saw it all, and, I may say, forgave the
+old lady. In short, I realised that, in Miss O'Donoghue's mind, I am
+nothing but an unprincipled fortune-seeker and adventurer. Now you,
+Adrian, can vouch that, whatever my faults, I am none such."
+
+Sir Adrian threw a quiet glance at his friend, whose eyes sparkled as
+they met it.
+
+"God knows," continued the latter, "that all I care for, concerning
+the money, is that _she_ may have it. This last venture, the biggest
+and most difficult of all, I then decided to undertake, that I might
+be the fitter mate for the heiress--bless her! Oh, Adrian, man, could
+you have seen her sweet tearful face that night, you would understand
+that I could not rest upon such a parting. In the dawn of the next
+morning I was in the street--not so much upon the chance of meeting,
+though I knew that such sweetness would have now to be all stolen--but
+to watch her door, her window; a lover's trick, rewarded by lover's
+luck! Leaning on the railings, through the cold mist (cold it was,
+though I never felt it, but I mind me now how the icicles broke under
+my hand), what should I see, before even the church-bells had set to
+chiming, or the yawning sluts to pull the kitchen curtains, but a
+bloated monster of a coach, dragging and sliding up the street to
+halt at her very door. Then out came the beldam herself, and two
+muffled-up slender things--my Madeleine one of course; but I had a
+regular turn at sight of them, for I swear I could not tell which was
+which! Off rattled the chariot at a smart pace; and there I stood,
+friend, feeling as if my heart was tied behind with the trunks."
+
+The sailor laughed, ran his fingers through his curls and stamped in
+lively recollection.
+
+"Nothing to be drawn from their landlady. But I am not the man to
+allow a prize to be snatched from under my very nose. So,
+anathematising Miss O'Donoghue's family-tree, root, stem, and
+branch--except that most lovely off-shoot I mean to transplant (you
+will forgive this heat of blood; it was clearing for action so to
+speak)--I ran out and overtook the ostler whom I had seen putting the
+finishing touch to the lashing of boxes behind! _'Gloucester!'_ says
+he. The word was worth the guinea it cost me, a hundred times
+over.--In less than an hour I was in the saddle, ready for pursuit,
+cantering boot to boot with my man--a trusty fellow who knows how to
+hold his tongue, and can sit a horse in the bargain. Neither at
+Gloucester, nor the next day, up to Worcester, could we succeed in
+doing more than keep our fugitives in view. When they had alighted at
+one inn, as ascertained by my squire, we patronised the opposition
+hostelry, and the ensuing morning cantered steadily in pursuit, on
+_our_ new post-horses half an hour after they had rumbled away with
+_their_ relays. But the evening of our arrival at Worcester, my fellow
+found out, at last, what the next stage was to be, and--clever chap,
+he lost nothing for his sharpness--that the Three Kings' Heads had
+been recommended to the old lady as the best house in Shrewsbury. This
+time we took the lead, and on to Shrewsbury, and were at the glorious
+old Kings' Heads (I in a private room, tight as wax) a good couple of
+hours before the chariot made its appearance. And there, man, there!
+my pretty one and I met again!"
+
+"That was, no doubt," put in Sir Adrian, in his gentle, indulgent way,
+"what made the Kings' Heads so glorious?"
+
+"Ay. Right! And yet it was but a few seconds, on the stair, under a
+smoky lamp, but her beauty filled the landing with radiance as her
+kindness did my soul.--It was but for a moment, all blessed moment,
+too brief, alas! Ah, Adrian, friend--old hermit in your cell--_you_
+have never known life, you who have never tasted a moment such as
+that! Then we started apart: there was a noise below, and she had only
+time to whisper that she was on her way to Pulwick to some
+relatives--had only heard it that very day--when steps came up the
+stairs, creaking. With a last promise, a last word of love, I leaped
+back into my own chamber, there to see (through the chink between door
+and post) the untimely old mischief-maker herself pass slowly, sour
+and solemn, towards her apartments, leaning upon her other niece's
+arm. How could I have thought _that_ baggage like my princess?
+Handsome, if you will; but, with her saucy eye, her raven head, her
+brown cheek, no more to be compared to my stately lily than brass to
+gold!"
+
+The host listening wonderingly, his eyes fixed with kindly gravity
+upon the speaker as he rattled on, here gave a slight start, all
+unnoticed of his friend.
+
+"The next morning, when I had seen the coach and its precious freight
+move on once more northward, I began the retreat south, hugging myself
+upon luck and success. I had business in Salcombe--perhaps you may
+have heard of the Salcombe schooners--in connection with the fitting
+out of that sailing wonder, the _Peregrine_. And so," concluded
+Captain Jack, laughing again in exuberance of joy, "you may possibly
+guess one of the reasons that has brought her and me round by your
+island."
+
+There ensued a long silence, filled with thoughts, equally pressing
+though of widely different complexion, on either side of the hearth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the meal, which was presently set forth and proclaimed ready by
+Rene, the talk, as was natural in that watchful attendant's presence,
+ran only on general topics, and was in consequence fitful and
+unspontaneous. But when the two men, for all their difference of age,
+temper, and pursuits so strongly, yet so oddly united in sympathy,
+were once more alone, they naturally fell back under the influence of
+the more engrossing strain of reflection. Again there was silence,
+while each mused, gazing into space and vaguely listening to the
+plash of high water under the window.
+
+"It must have been a strong motive," said Sir Adrian, after his dreamy
+fashion, like one thinking aloud, "to induce a man like you to abandon
+his honourable name."
+
+Captain Jack flushed at these words, drew his elbows from the table,
+and shot a keen, inquiring glance at his friend, which, however, fell
+promptly before the latter's unconscious gaze and was succeeded by one
+of reflective melancholy. Then, with a slight sigh, he raised his
+glass to the lamp, and while peering abstractedly through the ruby,
+"The story of turning my back upon my house," he said musingly,
+"shaking its very dust off my feet, so to speak, and starting life
+afresh unbeholden to my father (even for what he could not take away
+from me--my own name),--is a simple affair, although pitiful enough
+perhaps. But memories of family wrongs and family quarrels are of
+their nature painful; and, as I am a mirth-loving fellow, I hate to
+bring them upon me. But perhaps it has occurred to you that I may have
+brought some disgrace upon the name I have forsaken."
+
+"I never allowed myself to think so," said Sir Adrian, surprised.
+"Your very presence by my fireside is proof of it."
+
+Again the captain scrutinised his host; then with a little laugh:
+"Pardon me," he cried, "with another man one might accept that likely
+proof and be flattered. But with you? why, I believe I know you too
+well not to feel sure that you would have received me as kindly and
+unreservedly, no matter what my past if only you thought that I had
+repented; that you would forgive even a _crime_ regretted; and having
+forgiven, forget.... But, to resume, you will believe me when I say
+that there was nothing of the sort. No," he went on, with a musing
+air, "but I could tell you of a boy, disliked at home for his stubborn
+spirit, and one day thrashed, thrashed mercilessly--at a time when he
+had thought he had reached to the pride of man's estate, thrashed by
+his own father, and for no just cause.... Oh, Adrian, it is a terrible
+thing to have put such resentment into a lad's heart." He rose as he
+spoke, and placed himself before the hearth.
+
+"If ever I have sons," he added after a pause, and at the words his
+whole handsome face relaxed, and became suffused with a tender glow,
+"I would rather cut my right hand off than raise such a spirit in
+them. Well, I daresay you can guess the rest; I will even tell you in
+a few words, and then dismiss the subject.--I have always had a
+certain shrewdness at the bottom of my recklessness. Now there was a
+cousin of the family, who had taken to commerce in Liverpool, and who
+was therefore despised, ignored and insulted by us gentry of the
+Shaws. So when I packed my bundle, and walked out of the park gate, I
+thought of him; and two days later I presented myself at his mansion
+in Rodney Street, Liverpool. I told him my name, whereat he scowled;
+but he was promptly brought round upon hearing of my firm
+determination to renounce it and all relations with my father's house
+for ever, and of my reasons for this resolve, which he found
+excellent. I could not have lighted upon a better man. He hated my
+family as heartily as even I could wish, and readily, out of spite to
+them, undertook to aid me. He was a most enterprising scoundrel, had a
+share in half a dozen floating ventures. I expressed a desire for life
+on the ocean wave, and he started me merrily as his nephew, Jack
+Smith, to learn the business on a slaver of his. The 'ebony trade,'
+you know, was all the go then, Adrian. Many great gentlemen in
+Lancashire had shares in it. Now it is considered low. To say true, a
+year of it was more than enough for me--too much! It sickened me. My
+uncle laughed when I demurred at a second journey, but to humour me,
+as I had learned something of the sailing trade, he found me another
+berth, on board a privateer, the _St. Nicholas_. My fortune was made
+from the moment I set foot on that lucky ship, as you know."
+
+"And you have never seen your father since?"
+
+"Neither father, nor brothers, nor any of my kin, save the cousin in
+question. All I know is that my father is dead--that he disinherited
+me expressly in the event of my being still in the flesh; my eldest
+brother reigns; many of us are scattered, God knows where. And my
+mother"--the sailor's voice changed slightly--"my mother lives in her
+own house, with some of the younger ones. So much I have ascertained
+quite recently. She believes me dead, of course. Oh, it will be a good
+day, Adrian, when I can come back to her, independent, prosperous,
+bringing my beautiful bride with me!... But until I can resume my name
+in all freedom, this cannot be."
+
+"But why, my dear fellow, these further risks and adventures? Surely,
+even at your showing you have enough of this world's goods; why not
+come forward, now, at once, openly? I will introduce you, as soon as
+may be, in your real character, for the sake of your mother--of
+Madeleine herself."
+
+The sailor shook his head, tempted yet determined.
+
+"I am not free to do so. I have given my word; my honour is engaged,"
+he said. Then abruptly asked: "Have you ever heard of guinea
+smuggling?"
+
+"Guinea smuggling! No," said Sir Adrian, his amazement giving way to
+anxiety.
+
+"No? You surprise me. You who are, or were, I understand, a student of
+philosophical matters, freedom of exchange, and international
+intercourse and the rest of it--things we never shall have so long as
+governments want money, I am thinking.--However, this guinea smuggling
+is a comparatively new business. Now, _I_ don't know anything about
+the theory; but I know this much of the practice that, while our
+preventive service won't let guineas pass the Channel (as goods) this
+year, somebody on the other side is devilish anxious to have them at
+almost any cost. And the cost, you know, is heavy, for the risk of
+confiscation is great. Well, your banker or your rich man will not
+trust his bullion to your common free trader--he is not quite such a
+fool."
+
+"No," put in Sir Adrian, as the other paused on this mocking
+proposition. "In the old days, when I was busy in promoting the
+Savenaye expedition, I came across many of that gentry, and I cannot
+mind a case where they could have been trusted with such a freight.
+But perhaps," he added with a small smile, "the standard may be higher
+now."
+
+Captain Jack grinned appreciatively. "That is where the 'likes of me'
+comes in. I will confess this not to be my first attempt. It is known
+that I am one of the few whose word is warranty. What is more, as I
+have said, it is known that I have the luck. Thus, even if I could
+bring my own name into such a trade, I would not; it would be the
+height of folly to change now."
+
+For all his disapproval Sir Adrian could not repress a look of
+amusement. "I verily believe, Jack," he said, shaking his head, "that
+you are as superstitious yourself as the best of them!"
+
+"I ought to make a good thing out of it," said Jack, evasively. "And
+even with all that is lovely to keep me on shore, I would hardly give
+it up, if I could. As things stand I could not if I would. Do not
+condemn me, Adrian,--that would be fatal to my hopes--nay, I actually
+want your help."
+
+"I would you were out of it," reiterated Sir Adrian; "it takes so
+little to turn the current of a man's life when he seems to be making
+straight for happiness. As to the morals of it, I fail, I must admit,
+to perceive any wrong in smuggling, at least in the abstract, except
+that a certain kind of moral teaches that all is wrong that is against
+the law. And yet so many of our laws are so ferocious and inept, and
+as such the very cause of so much going wrong that might otherwise go
+well; so many of those who administer them are themselves so ferocious
+and inept, that the mere fact of a pursuit being unlawful is no real
+condemnation in my eyes. But, as you know, Jack, those who place
+themselves above some laws almost invariably renounce all. If you are
+hanged for stealing a horse, or breaking some fiscal law and hanged
+for killing a man, the tendency, under stress of circumstances is
+obvious. Aye, have we not a proverb about it: as well be hanged for a
+sheep as for a lamb?... There are gruesome stories about your free
+traders--and gruesome endings to them. I well remember, in my young
+days, the clanking gibbet on the sands near Preston and the three
+tarred and iron-riveted carcases hanging, each in its chains, with the
+perpetual guard of carrion crows.... Hanging in chains is still on the
+statute book, I believe. But I'll stop my croaking now. You are not
+one to be drawn into brutal ways; nor one, I fear, to be frightened
+into prudence. Nevertheless," laughing quietly, "I am curious to know
+in what way you expect help from me, in practice. Do you, seriously,
+want me to embark actually on a smuggling expedition?--I demur, my
+dear fellow."
+
+Obviously relieved of some anxiety, the other burst out laughing.
+"Never fear! I know your dislike to bilge water too well. I
+appreciate too well also your comfortable surroundings," he returned,
+seating himself once more complacently in his arm-chair, "much as I
+should love your company on board my pleasure ship--for, if you
+please, the _Peregrine_ is no smuggling lugger, but professes to be a
+yacht. Still, you can be of help for all that, and without lifting
+even a finger to promote this illicit trade. You may ignore it
+completely, and yet you will render me incalculable service, provided
+you do not debar me from paying you a few more visits in your
+solitude, and give me the range of your caves and cellars."
+
+"You are welcome enough," said the recluse. "I trust it may end as
+well as it promises." And, after a pause, "Madeleine does not know the
+nature of your present pursuit?"
+
+"Oddly enough, and happily (for our moments of interview are short, as
+you may imagine) she is not curious on the subject. I don't know what
+notions the old Lady Maria may have put into her head about me. I
+think she believes that I am engaged on some secret political intrigue
+and approves of such. At least I gathered as much from her sympathetic
+reticence; and, between ourselves, I am beginning to believe it
+myself."
+
+"How is that?" asked the listener, moved to fresh astonishment by this
+new departure.
+
+"Well, I may tell you, who not only can be as silent as the tomb, but
+really have a right to know, since you are tacitly of the conspiracy.
+This time the transaction is to be with some official of the French
+Court. They want the metal, and yet wish to have it secretly. What
+their motive may be is food for reflection if you like, but it is no
+business of mine. And, besides the fact that one journey will suffice
+for a sum which at the previous rate would have required half a score,
+all the trouble and uncertainty of landing are disposed of; at any
+rate, I am, when all is ready, to be met by a government vessel, get
+my _quid pro quo_ as will be settled, and there the matter is to end."
+
+"A curious expedition," mused Sir Adrian.
+
+"Yes," said the sailor, "my last will be the best. By the way, will
+you embark a few bags with me? I will take no commission."
+
+Sir Adrian could not help laughing.
+
+"No, thank you; I have no wish to launch any more of my patrimony on
+ventures--since it would be of no service to you. I had almost as lief
+you had made use of my old crow's nest without letting me into the ins
+and outs of your projects. But, be it as it may, it is yours, night
+and day. Your visits I shall take as being for me."
+
+"What a man you are, upon my soul, Sir Adrian!" cried Captain Jack,
+enthusiastically.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on, when the "shaking down" hour, in Captain Jack's phraseology,
+had sounded, and the two friends separated to rest, the young man
+refused the offer, dictated by hospitality, of his host's own bedroom.
+Sir Adrian did not press the point, and, leaving his guest at liberty
+to enjoy the couch arranged by Rene in a corner under the bookshelves,
+even as when Mademoiselle de Savenaye had been the guest of the peel,
+himself retired to that now hallowed apartment.
+
+"Odd fellow, that," soliloquised Captain Jack, as, slowly divesting
+himself, he paced about the long room and, in the midst of roseate
+reflections, examined his curious abode. "Withal, as good as ever
+stepped. It was a fine day's work our old _St. Nicholas_ did, about
+this time eight years ago. Rather unlike a crowded battery deck,
+this," looking from the solemn books to the glinting organ pipes, and
+conscious of the great silence. "As for me, I should go crazy by
+myself here. But it suits him. Queer fish!" again ruminated the young
+sailor. "He hates no one and yet dislikes almost everybody, except
+that funny little Frenchy and me. Whereas _I_ like every man I
+meet--unless I detest him!... My beautiful plumage!" this whilst
+carefully folding the superfine coat and thereon the endless silken
+stock. "Now there's a fellow who does not care a hang for any woman
+under the sun, and yet enters into another chap's love affairs as if
+he understood it all. I believe it will make him happy to win my cause
+with Madeleine. I wish one could do something for _his_ happiness. It
+is absurd, you know," as though apostrophising an objector, "a man
+can't be happy without a woman. And yet again, my good Jack, you never
+thought that before you met Madeleine. He has not met his Madeleine,
+that's what it means. Where ignorance is bliss.... Friend Adrian! Let
+us console ourselves and call you ignorantly happy, in your old crow's
+nest. You have not stocked it so badly either.--For all your ignorance
+in love, you have a pretty taste in liquor."
+
+So thinking, he poured himself a last glass of his host's wine, which
+he held for a moment in smiling cogitation, looking, with the mind's
+eye, through the thick walls of the keep, across the cold mist-covered
+sands of Scarthey and again through the warm and scented air of a
+certain room (imagination pictured) where Madeleine must at that hour
+lie in her slumber. After a moment of silent adoration he sent a
+rapturous kiss landwards and tossed his glass with a last toast:
+
+"Madeleine, my sweet! To your softly closed lids."
+
+And again Captain Jack fell to telling over the precious tale of that
+morning's interview, furtively secured, by that lover's luck he so
+dutifully blessed, under the cluster of Scotch firs near the grey and
+crumbling boundary walls of Pulwick Park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"LOVE GILDS THE SCENE AND WOMAN GUIDES THE PLOT"
+
+
+Tanty's wrath upon discovering Sir Adrian's departure was all the
+greater because she could extort no real explanation from Rupert, and
+because her attacks rebounded, as it were, from the polished surface
+he exposed to them on every side. Madeleine's indifference, and
+Molly's apparently reckless spirits, further discomposed her during
+supper; and upon the latter young lady's disappearance after the meal,
+it was as much as she could do to finish her nightly game of patience
+before mounting to seek her with the purpose of relieving her
+overcharged feelings, and procuring what enlightenment she might.
+
+The unwonted spectacle of the saucy damsel in tears made Miss
+O'Donoghue halt upon the threshold, the hot wind of anger upon which
+she seemed to be propelled into the room falling into sudden
+nothingness.
+
+There could be no mistake about it. Molly was weeping; so
+energetically indeed, with such a passion of tears and sobs, that the
+noise of Tanty's tumultuous entrance fell unheeded upon her ears.
+
+All her sympathies stirred within her, the old lady advanced to the
+girl with the intention of gathering her to her bosom. But as she drew
+near, the black and white of the open diary attracted her eye under
+the circle of lamplight, and being possessed of excellent long sight,
+she thought it no shame to utilise the same across her grand-niece's
+prostrate, heaving form, before making known her presence.
+
+_"And so I sit and cry."_
+
+Miss Molly was carrying out her programme with much precision, if
+indeed her attitude, prone along the table, could be described as
+sitting.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue's eyes and mouth grew round, as with the expression of
+an outraged cockatoo she read and re-read the tell-tale phrases. Here
+was a complication she had not calculated upon.
+
+"Dear, dear," she cried, clacking her tongue in disconsolate fashion,
+so soon as she could get her breath. "What is the meaning of this, my
+poor girl?"
+
+Molly leaped to her feet, and turning a blazing, disfigured
+countenance upon her relative, exclaimed with more energy than
+politeness: "Good gracious, aunt, what _do_ you want?"
+
+Then catching sight of the open diary, she looked suspiciously from it
+to her visitor, and closed it with a hasty hand. But Miss O'Donoghue's
+next words settled the doubt.
+
+"Well, to be sure, what a state you have put yourself into," she
+pursued in genuine distress. "What has happened then between you and
+that fellow, whom I declare I begin to believe as crazy as Rupert
+says, that you should be crying your eyes out over his going back to
+his island?--you that I thought could not shed a tear if you tried.
+Nothing left but to sit and cry, indeed."
+
+"So you have been reading my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly,
+stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my
+private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness,
+relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of
+rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this
+disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the
+world. I wish I were dead, I do."
+
+Again Tanty opened her arms, and this time she did draw the stormy
+creature to a bosom, as warm and motherly as if all the joys of
+womanhood had not been withheld from it.
+
+"Tell me all about it, my poor child." There was a distinct feeling of
+comfort in the grasp of the old arms, comfort in the very ring of the
+deep voice. Molly was not a secretive person by nature, and moreover
+she retained quite enough shrewdness, even in her unwonted break-down,
+to conjecture that with Tanty lay her sole hope of help. So rolling
+her dark head distractedly on the old maid's shoulder, the young maid
+narrated her tale of woe. Pressed by a pointed question here and
+there, Tanty soon collected a series of impressions of Molly's visit
+to Scarthey, that set her busy mind working upon a startlingly new
+line. It was her nature to jump at conclusions, and it was not strange
+that the girl's passionate display of grief should seem to be the
+unmistakable outcome of tenderer feelings than the wounded pride and
+disappointment which were in reality its sole motors.
+
+"I am convinced it is Rupert that is at the bottom of it," cried Molly
+at last, springing into uprightness again, and clenching her hands.
+"His one idea is to drive his brother permanently from his own
+home--and he _hates me_."
+
+Tanty sat rigid with thought.
+
+So Molly was in love with Sir Adrian Landale, and he--who knows--was
+in love with her too; or if not with her, with her likeness to her
+mother, and that was much the same thing when all was said and done.
+Could anything be more suitable, more fortunate? Could ever two birds
+be killed with one stone with more complete felicity than in this
+settling of the two people she most loved upon earth? Poor pretty
+Molly! The old lady's heart grew very tender over the girl who now
+stood half sullenly, half bashfully averting her swollen face; five
+days ago she had not known her handsome cousin, and now she was
+breaking her heart for him.
+
+It might be, indeed, as she said, that they had to thank Rupert for
+this--and off flew Tanty's mind upon another tangent. Rupert was very
+deep, there could be no doubt of that; he was anxious enough to keep
+Adrian away from them all; what would it be then when it came to a
+question of his marriage?
+
+Tanty, with the delightful optimism that seventy years' experience had
+failed to damp, here became confident of the approach of her younger
+nephew's complete discomfiture, and in the cheering contemplation of
+that event chuckled so unctuously that Molly looked at her amazed.
+
+"It is well for you, my dear," said the old lady, rising and wagging
+her head with an air of enigmatic resolution, "that you have got an
+aunt."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some two days later, Rene, sitting upon a ledge of the old Scarthey
+wall, in the spare sunshine which this still, winter's noon shone
+pearl-like through a universal mist, busy mending a net, to the tune
+of a melancholy, inward whistle, heard up above the licking of the
+waves all around him and the whimper of the seagulls overhead, the
+beat of steady oars approaching from land side.
+
+Starting to his feet, the little man, in vague expectation, ran to a
+point of vantage from which to scan the tideway; after a few seconds'
+investigation he turned tail, dashed into the ruins, up the steps, and
+burst open the door of the sitting-room, calling upon his master with
+a scared expression of astonishment.
+
+Captain Jack, poring over a map, his pipe sticking rakishly out of one
+side of his mouth, looked up amused at the Frenchman's evident
+excitement, while Adrian, who had been busy with the uppermost row of
+books upon his west wall, looked down from his ladder perch, with the
+pessimist's constitutional expectation of evil growing upon his face.
+
+"One comes in a boat," ejaculated Rene, "and I thought I ought to warn
+his honour, if his honour will give himself the trouble to look out."
+
+"It must be the devil to frighten Renny in this fashion," muttered
+Captain Jack as distinctly as the clench of his teeth upon the pipe
+would allow him. Sir Adrian paled a little, he began to descend his
+ladder, mechanically flicking the dust from his cuffs.
+
+"Your honour," said Rene, drawing to the window and looking out
+cautiously, "I have not yet seen her, but I believe it is old
+miss--the aunt of your honour and these ladies."
+
+Captain Jack's pipe fell from his dropping jaw and was broken into
+many fragments as he leaped to his feet with an elasticity of limb and
+a richness of expletive which of themselves would have betrayed his
+calling.
+
+Flinging his arm across one of Adrian's shoulders he peeped across the
+other out of the window, with an alarm half mocking, half genuine.
+
+"The devil it is, friend Renny," he cried, drawing back and running
+his hands with an exaggerated gesture of despair through his brown
+curls; "Adrian, all is lost unless you hide me."
+
+"My aunt here, and alone," exclaimed Adrian, retreating from the
+window perturbed enough himself, "I must go down to meet her. Pray God
+it is no ill news! Hurry, Renny, clear these glasses away."
+
+"In the name of all that's sacred, clear me away first!" interposed
+Captain Jack, this time with a real urgency; through the open lattice
+came the sound of the grating of the boat's keel upon the sand and a
+vigorous hail from a masculine throat--"Ahoy, Renny Potter, ahoy!"
+"Adrian, this is a matter of life and death to my hopes, hide me in
+your lowest dungeon for goodness' sake; I do not know my way about
+your ruins, and I am convinced the old lady will nose me out like a
+badger."
+
+There was no time for explanation; Sir Adrian made a sign to Rene, who
+highly enjoying the situation and grinning from ear to ear, was
+already volunteering to "well hide Mr. the Captain," and the pair
+disappeared with much celerity into the inner room, while Adrian,
+unable to afford himself further preparation, hurried down the great
+stairs to meet this unexpected guest.
+
+He emerged bareheaded into the curious mist which hung pall-like upon
+the outer world, and seemed to combine the opposite elements of glare
+and dulness, just as Tanty, aided by the stalwart arm of the boatman,
+who had rowed her across, succeeded in dragging her rheumatic limbs up
+the last bit of ascent to the door of the keep.
+
+She halted, disengaged herself, and puffing and blowing surveyed her
+nephew with a stony gaze.
+
+"My dear aunt," cried Adrian, "nothing has happened, I trust?"
+
+"Sufficient has already happened, nephew, I should _hope_," retorted
+the old lady with extreme dignity, "sufficient to make me desire to
+confer with you most seriously. I thank you, young man," turning to
+William Shearman who stood on one side, his eager gaze upon "the
+master," ready to pull his forelock so soon as he could catch his eye,
+"be here again in an hour, if you please."
+
+"But you will allow me to escort you myself," exclaimed Adrian, rising
+to the situation, "and I hope there need be no hurry so long as
+daylight lasts--Good-morning, Will, I am glad the new craft is a
+success--you need not wait. Tanty, take my arm, I beg, the steps are
+steep and rough."
+
+Gripping her nephew's arm with her bony old woman's hand, Miss
+O'Donoghue began a laborious ascent, pausing every five steps to
+breathe stertorously and reproachfully, and look round upon the
+sandstone walls with supreme disdain; but this was nothing to the air
+with which, when at last installed upon a high hard chair, in the
+sitting-room (having sternly refused the easy one Sir Adrian humbly
+proffered), she deliberately proceeded to survey the scene. In truth,
+the neatness that usually characterised Adrian's surroundings was
+conspicuously absent from them, just then.
+
+Two or three maps lay overlapping each other upon the table beside the
+tray with its flagon of amber ale, which had formed the captain's
+morning draught; and the soiled glass, the fragments of his pipe, and
+its half-burnt contents lay strewn about the prostrate chair which
+that lively individual had upset in his agitation. Adrian's ladder,
+the books he had been handling and had not replaced, the white ash of
+the dying fire, all contributed to the unwonted aspect of somewhat
+melancholy disorder; worse than all, the fumes of the strong tobacco
+which the sailor liked to smoke in his secluded moments hung rank,
+despite the open window, upon the absolute motionlessness of the
+atmosphere.
+
+Tanty snorted and sniffed, while Adrian, after picking up the chair,
+began to almost unconsciously refold the maps, his eyes fixed
+wonderingly upon his visitor's face.
+
+This latter delivered herself at length of some of the indignation
+that was choking her, in abrupt disjointed sentences, as if she were
+uncorking so many bottles.
+
+"Well I'm sure, nephew, I am not surprised at your _extraordinary_
+behaviour, and if this is the style you prefer to live in--style, did
+I say?--sty would be more appropriate. Of course it is only what I
+have been led to expect, but I must say I was ill prepared to be
+treated by you with actual disrespect. My sister's child and I your
+guest, not to speak of your aunt, and you your mother's son, and her
+host besides! It is a slap in the face, Adrian, a slap in the face
+which has been a very bitter pill to have to swallow, I assure you--I
+may say without exaggeration, in fact, that it has cut me to the
+quick."
+
+"But surely," cried the nephew, laughing with gentle indulgence at
+this complicated indictment, "surely you cannot suppose I would have
+been willingly guilty of the smallest disrespect to you. I am a most
+unfortunate man, most unfortunately situated, and if I have offended,
+it is, you must believe, unwittingly and unavoidably. But you got my
+letter--I made my motives clear to you."
+
+"Oh yes, I got your letter yesterday," responded Tanty, not at all
+softened, "and a more idiotic production from a man of your
+attainments, allow me to remark, I never read. Adrian, you are making
+a perfect fool of yourself, and _you cannot afford it_!"
+
+"I fear you will never really understand my position," murmured Adrian
+hopelessly.
+
+Tanty rattled her large green umbrella upon the floor with a violence
+that made her nephew start, then turned upon him a countenance
+inflamed with righteous anger.
+
+"It is only three days ago since I gave you fully my view of the
+situation," she remarked, "you were good enough at the time to admit
+that it was a remarkably well-balanced one. I should be glad if you
+will explain in what manner your position could have changed in the
+space of just three hours after, to lead you to rush back to your
+island, really as if you were a mole or a wild Indian, or some other
+strange animal that could not bear civilised society, without even so
+much as a good-bye to me, or to your cousins either? What is
+that?--you say you wrote--oh, ay--you wrote--to Molly as well as to
+me; rigmaroles, my dear nephew, mere absurd statements that have not a
+grain of truth in them, that do not hold water for an instant. You are
+not made for the world forsooth, nor the world for you! and if that is
+not flying in the face of your Creator, and wanting to know better
+than Providence!--And then you say, 'you cast a gloom by your mere
+presence.' Fiddle-de-dee! It was not much in the way of gloom that
+Molly brought back with her from her three days' visit to you--or if
+that is gloom--well, the more your presence casts of it the
+better--that is all I can say. Ah, but you should have seen her, poor
+child, after you went away in that heartless manner and you had
+removed yourself and your shadow, and your precious gloom--if you
+could have seen how unhappy she has been!"
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed the man with a paling face, "what are you
+saying?"
+
+"Only the truth, sir--Molly is breaking her heart because of your base
+desertion of her."
+
+"Good God," muttered Adrian again, rose up stiffly in a sort of
+horrified astonishment and then sat down again and passed his hand
+over his forehead like a man striving to awaken from a painful dream.
+
+"Oh, Adrian, don't be more of a fool than you can possibly help!"
+cried his relative, exasperated beyond all expression by his
+inarticulate distress. "You are so busy contemplating all sorts of
+absurdities miles away that I verily believe you cannot see an inch
+beyond your nose. My gracious! what is there to be so astonished at?
+How did you behave to the poor innocent from the very instant she
+crossed your threshold? Fact is, you have been a regular gay Lothario.
+Did you not"--cried Tanty, starting again upon her fine vein of
+metaphor--"did you not deliberately hold the cup of love to those
+young lips only to nip it in the bud? The girl is not a stock or a
+stone. You are a handsome man, Adrian, and the long and the short of
+it is, those who play with fire must reap as they have sown."
+
+Tanty, who had been holding forth with the rapidity of a loose
+windmill in a hurricane, here found herself forced to pause and take
+breath; which she did, fanning herself with much energy, a triumphant
+consciousness of the unimpeachability of her logic written upon her
+heated countenance. But Adrian still stared at her with the same
+incredulous dismay; looking indeed as little like a gay Lothario as it
+was possible, even for him.
+
+"Do you mean," he said at last, in slow broken sentences, as his mind
+wrestled with the strange tidings; "am I to understand that Molly,
+that bright beautiful creature, has been made unhappy through me? Oh,
+my dear Tanty," striving with a laugh, "the idea is too absurd, I am
+old enough to be her father, you know--what evidence can you have for
+a statement so distressing, so extraordinary."
+
+"I am not quite in my dotage yet," quoth Tanty, drily; "neither am I
+in the habit of making unfounded assertions, nephew. I have heard what
+the girl has said with her own lips, I have read what she has written
+in her diary; she has sobbed and cried over your cruelty in these very
+arms--I don't know what further evidence----"
+
+But Sir Adrian had started up again--"Molly crying, Molly crying for
+me--God help us all--Cecile's child, whom I would give my life to keep
+from trouble! Tanty, if this is true--it must be true since you say
+so, I hardly know myself what I am saying--then I am to blame, deeply
+to blame--and yet--I have not said one word to the child--did
+nothing...." here he paused and a deep flush overspread his face to
+the roots of his hair; "except indeed in the first moment of her
+arrival--when she came in upon me as I was lost in memories of the
+past--like the spirit of Cecile."
+
+"Humph," said Tanty, pointedly, "but then you see what you took for
+Cecile's spirit happened to be Molly in the flesh." She fixed her
+sharp eyes upon her nephew, who, struck into confusion by her words,
+seemed for the moment unable to answer. Then, as if satisfied with the
+impression produced, she folded her hands over the umbrella handle and
+observed in more placid tones than she had yet used:
+
+"And now we must see what is to be done."
+
+Adrian began to pace the room in greater perturbation.
+
+"What is to be done?" he repeated, "alas! what can be done? Tanty, you
+will believe me when I tell you that I should have cut off my right
+hand rather than brought this thing upon the child--but she is very
+young--the impression, thank heaven, cannot in the nature of things
+endure. She will meet some one worthy of her--with you, Tanty, kindest
+of hearts, I can safely trust her future. But that she should suffer
+now, and through me, that bright creature who flitted in upon my dark
+life, like some heaven-sent messenger--these are evil tidings. Tanty,
+you must take her away, you must distract her mind, you must tell her
+what a poor broken-down being I am, how little worthy of her sweet
+thoughts, and she will learn, soon learn, to forget me, to laugh at
+herself."
+
+Although addressing the old lady, he spoke like a man reasoning with
+himself, and the words dropped from his lips as if drawn from a very
+well of bitterness. Tanty listened to him in silence, but the tension
+of her whole frame betrayed that she was only gathering her forces for
+another explosion.
+
+When Adrian's voice ceased there was a moment's silence and then the
+storm burst; whisking herself out of her chair, the umbrella came
+into play once more. But though it was only to thump the table, it was
+evident Miss O'Donoghue would more willingly have laid it about the
+delinquent's shoulders.
+
+"Adrian, are you a man at all?" she ejaculated fiercely. Then with
+sudden deadly composure: "So _this_ is the reparation you propose to
+make for the mischief you have wrought?"
+
+"In God's name!" cried he, goaded at length into some sort of
+despairing anger himself, "what would you have me do?"
+
+The answer came with the promptitude of a return shot:
+
+"Do? why marry her, of course!"
+
+"_Marry her!_"
+
+There was a breathless pause. Tanty, leaning forward across the table,
+crimson, agitated, yet triumphant; Adrian's white face blasted with
+astonishment. "Marry her," he echoed at length once more, in a whisper
+this time. Then with a groan: "This is madness!"
+
+Miss O'Donoghue caught him up briskly. "Madness? My good fellow, not a
+bit of it; on the contrary, sanity, happiness, prosperity.--Adrian,
+don't stand staring at me like a stuck pig! Why, in the name of
+conscience, should not you marry? You are a young man still--pooh,
+pooh, what is forty!--you are a very fine-looking man, clever,
+romantic--hear me out, sir, please--_and you have made the child love
+you_. There you are again, as if you had a pain in your stomach; you
+would try the patience of Job! Why, I don't believe there is another
+man on earth that would not be wild with joy at the mere thought of
+having gained such a prize. A beautiful creature, with a heart of gold
+and a purse of gold to boot."
+
+"Oh, heavens, aunt!" interrupted the man, passionately, "leave that
+question out of the reckoning. The one thing, the only thing, to
+consider is _her_ happiness. You cannot make me believe it can be for
+her happiness that she should marry such as me."
+
+"And why shouldn't it be for her happiness?" answered the dauntless
+old lady. "Was not she happy enough with you here in this God-forsaken
+hole, with nothing but the tempest besides for company? Why should not
+she be happy, then, when you come back to your own good place? Would
+not you be _kind_ to her?--would not you cherish her if she were your
+wife?"
+
+"Would I not be kind to her?--would I not cherish her?--would I
+not----? My God!"
+
+"Why, Adrian," cried Tanty, charmed at this unexpected disclosure of
+feeling and the accent with which it was delivered, "I declare you are
+as much in love with the girl as she is with you. Why, now you shall
+just come back with me to Pulwick this moment, and she shall tell you
+herself if she can find happiness with you or not. Oh--I will hear no
+more--your own heart, your feelings as a gentleman, as a man of
+honour, all point, my dear nephew, in the same direction. And if you
+neglect this warning voice you will be blind indeed to the call of
+duty. Come now, come back to your home, where the sweetest wife ever a
+man had awaits you. And when I shall see the children spring up around
+you, Adrian, then God will have granted my last wish, and I shall die
+in peace.... There, there, I am an old fool, but when the heart is
+over full, then the tears fall. Come, Adrian, come, I'll say no more;
+but the sight of the poor child who loves you shall plead for her
+happiness and yours. And hark, a word in your ear: let Rupert bark and
+snarl as he will! And what sort of a devil is it your generosity has
+made of _him_? You have done a bad day's work there all these years,
+but, please God, there are better times dawning for us all.--What are
+you doing, Adrian? Oh! writing a few orders to your servant to explain
+your departure with me--quite right, quite right, I won't speak a word
+then to interrupt you. Dear me! I really feel quite in spirits. Once
+dear Molly and you settled, there will be a happy home for Madeleine:
+with you, we can look out a suitable husband for her. Well, well, I
+must not go too fast yet, I suppose: but I have not told you in what
+deep anxiety I have been on _her_ account by reason of a most
+deplorable affair--a foolish girl's fancy only, of course, with a most
+undesirable and objectionable creature called _Smith_.... Oh! you are
+ready, are you?--My dear Adrian, give me your arm then, and let us
+proceed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silence had reigned for but a few seconds in the great room of the
+keep when Captain Jack re-entered, bearing on his face an expression
+at once boyishly jubilant and mockingly astonished. He planted
+himself in front of the landward window, and gazed forth a while.
+
+"There goes my old Adrian, as dutifully escorting that walking
+sack of bones, that tar-barrel ornament--never mind, old lady,
+from this moment I shall love you for your brave deeds of this
+morning--escorting his worthy aunt as dutifully as though he were a
+penniless nephew.... Gently over the gunnel, madam! That's done! So
+you are going to take my gig? Right, Adrian. Dear me, how she holds
+forth! I fancy I hear her from here.--Give way, my lads! That's all
+right. Gad! Old Adrian's carried off on a regular journey to Cythera,
+under a proper escort!"
+
+With this odd reminiscence of early mythological reading, the sailor
+burst into a loud laugh and walked about slapping his leg.
+
+"Would ever any one have guessed anything approaching this?
+Star-gazing, book-grubbing Sir Adrian ... in love! Adrian the
+solitary, the pessimist, the I-don't-know-what superior man, in love!
+Neither more nor less! In love, like an every-day inhabitant of these
+realms, and with that black-eyed sister of mine that is to be! My
+word, it's too perfect! Adrian my brother-in-law--for if I gauge that
+fine creature properly--splendid old lady--she won't let him slide
+back this time. No, my dear Adrian, you are hooked for matrimony and a
+return to the living world. That black-eyed jade too, that Molly
+sister of my Madeleine, will wake up and lead you a life, by
+George!... Row on, my lads," once more looking at the diminishing
+black spot upon the grey waters. "Row on--you have never done a better
+day's work!"
+
+Rene, entering a few moments later, with an open note in his hand,
+found his master's friend still chuckling, and looked at him
+inquisitively.
+
+"His honour has returned to Pulwick," said he, in puzzled tones,
+handing the missive.
+
+"Ay, lad," answered the sailor, cheerily. "The fact is, my good Renny,
+that in that room of Sir Adrian's where you ensconced me for safety
+from that most wonderful specimen of her sex (I refer to your master's
+worthy aunt), it was impossible to avoid overhearing many of her
+remarks--magnificent voice for a storm at sea, eh? Never mind what it
+was all about, my good man; what I heard was good news. Ah!"
+directing his attention to the note; "his honour does not say when he
+will return, but will send back the gig immediately; and you, M.
+Potter, are to look after me for as long as I choose to stop here."
+
+Rene required no reflection to realise that anything in the shape of
+good news which took his master back to his estate must be good news
+indeed; and his broad face promptly mirrored, in the broadest of
+grins, the captain's own satisfaction.
+
+"For sure, we will try to take care of M. the captain, as well as if
+his honour himself was present. He told me you were to be master
+here."
+
+"Make it so. I should like some dinner as soon as possible, and one of
+my bro----of Sir Adrian's best bottles. It's a poor heart that never
+rejoices. Meanwhile, I want to inspect your ruins and your caves in
+detail, if you will pilot me, Renny. This is a handy sort of an old
+Robinson Crusoe place for hiding and storing, is it not?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A JUNIOR'S OPINION
+
+
+A rarely failing characteristic of very warm-hearted and strongly
+impulsive people is their inability of graduating their likes and
+dislikes; a state of mind which cannot fail to lead to frequent
+alterations of temper.
+
+On more than one occasion, since the domineering old lady had started
+upon her peregrinations, had her favour for the two brothers undergone
+reversal; but the ground Rupert gained by Adrian's offences was never
+of safe tenure. At the present hour, under the elation of her
+victorious sally upon the hermit's pessimistic entrenchments--the only
+thing in him of which she disapproved--he at once resumed the warm
+place she liked to keep for him in her heart. And as a consequence
+"Master Rupert," as she contemptuously called the "locum tenens
+Squire," who, in the genealogical order of things, should have been a
+person of small importance, fell promptly into his original state of
+disgrace.
+
+During the drive from the village (where she had ordered the carriage
+to await her return) to the gates of Pulwick, Miss O'Donoghue
+entertained her companion with an indignant account of his brother's
+ingratitude, of his hypocritical insinuating method of disparagement
+of Sir Adrian himself, winding up each indictment with a shrewd, "but
+he could not impose upon _me_," which, indeed, she firmly believed.
+
+Her object was, of course, to strengthen the baronet in his resolve to
+return to the headship of his family--little guessing what a strong
+incentive to seclusion these very tales of a state of things he
+suspected but too well would have proved, had it not been for the new
+unforeseen motive that the morning's revelation had brought.
+
+"Does Molly know of your visit to me?" he asked, as the carriage
+halted before the gate, and the enormous, red-headed Cumbrian
+gatekeeper with his rosy Moggie, proudly swung it open to stand on
+either side, the one bowing with jubilant greeting and the other
+curtseying with bashful smiles at the real master. "Does she expect my
+visit?" relapsing into gravity after returning the salutation in
+kindliness.
+
+"I have told no one of my purpose this day. Rupert walked off to the
+stables immediately after breakfast--going a-hunting he said he was,
+and offered to bear the girls to the meet. And then, feeling lonely
+without his company," added Tanty, with a wink, "I ordered the
+carriage and thought I would go and have a peep at the place where
+poor Molly was drowned, just for a little diversion. Whether the
+little rogue expects you or not, after your note of the other day, I
+am sure I could not take upon myself to say. She sits watching that
+crazy old tower of yours by day and your light by night. Well, well, I
+must not tell tales out of school, you may find out for yourself. But
+mind you, Adrian," she impressed on him, sagely, "it is not I who
+bring you back: you return of your own accord. The child would murder
+me, if she knew--with that proud heart of hers."
+
+"My dear Tanty, trust me. This incomprehensible discovery of yours,
+which I cannot yet believe in, really is, so far as my discretion is
+concerned, as if I had never heard of it. Heavens! I have been a
+blundering fool, but I could not insult her with a hint of it for the
+world. I have come to see Rupert to-day, as usual, of course--and, as
+you say ... I shall see for myself. You have opened my eyes."
+
+Miss O'Donoghue looked at her nephew with admiration. "_Voyez un
+peu_," she said, "_comme l'amour vous degourdit_ even a doleful Sir
+Adrian! Faith, here we are. This has been a pleasant ride, but my old
+bones are so tired, and you and yours have set them jogging so much of
+late, that I think I'll never want to stir a foot again once I get
+back to Bunratty ... except indeed to come and be godmother to the
+heir."
+
+Having lent a dutiful arm up the stairs to his now beaming relative,
+Sir Adrian came down pensively and entered the library.
+
+There, booted and spurred, but quietly installed at a writing table,
+sat Mr. Landale, who rose in his nonchalant manner and with cold looks
+met his brother.
+
+There was no greeting between them, but simply thus:
+
+"I understood from Aunt Rose you were out hunting."
+
+"Such was my intention, but when I found out that she had gone to see
+you--don't look so astonished, Adrian--a man must know what is going
+on in his household--I suspected you would escort her back; so I
+desisted and waited for you. It is an unexpected pleasure to see you,
+for I thought we had sufficiently discussed all business, recently.
+But doubtless you will profit of the opportunity to go into a few
+matters which want your attention. Do you mean to remain?"
+
+Speaking these words in a detached manner, Mr. Landale kept a keenly
+observant look upon his brother's countenance. In a most unwonted way
+the tone and the look irritated Sir Adrian.
+
+"I came back, Rupert, because there were some things I wished to see
+for myself here," he answered frigidly. And going to the bell, rang it
+vigorously.
+
+On the servant's appearance, without reference to his brother, he
+himself, and very shortly, gave orders:
+
+"I shall dine here to-day. Have the tapestry-room made ready for me."
+
+Then turning to Rupert, whose face betrayed some of the astonishment
+aroused by this most unusual assumption of authority, and resuming as
+it were the thread of his speech, he went on:
+
+"No, Rupert, I have no desire to talk business with you. It is a pity
+you should have given up your day. Is it yet too late?"
+
+"Upon my word, Adrian," said Mr. Landale, clenching his hand nervously
+round his fine cambric handkerchief, "there must be something of
+importance in the wind to have altered your bearing towards me to this
+extent. I have no wish to interfere. I came back and gave up good
+company for the reason I have stated. I will now only point out that,
+with your sudden whims, you render my position excessively false in a
+house where, at your own wish, I am ostensibly established as master."
+
+And without waiting for another word, the younger brother, having
+shot the arrow which hitherto never failed to reach the bull's-eye of
+the situation, left the room with much dignity.
+
+Once more alone, Sir Adrian, standing motionless in the great room,
+darkened yet more in the winter light by the heavy festoons of
+curtains that hung over the numerous empty bookshelves, the souls of
+which had migrated to the peel to keep the master company, cogitated
+upon this first unpleasant step in his new departure, and wondered
+within himself why he had felt so extraordinarily moved by anger
+to-day at the cold inquisitiveness of his brother. No doubt the sense
+of being watched thus, held away at arm's-length as it were, was cause
+sufficient. And yet that was not it; ingratitude alone, even to
+enmity, in return for benefits forgot could not rouse this bitterness.
+But had it not been for Tanty's interference he would be now exiled
+from his home until the departure of Cecile's child, just as, but for
+chance, he would have been kept in actual ignorance of her arrival. It
+was his brother's doing that he had blindly withdrawn himself when his
+presence would have caused happiness to her. Yes, that was it. Rupert
+had a scheme. That was what dwelt in his eyes,--a scheme which would
+bring, indeed did bring, unhappiness to that dear guest.... No wonder,
+now, that the unconscious realisation of it awoke all the man's blood
+in him.
+
+"No, Rupert," Sir Adrian found himself saying aloud, "I let you reign
+at Pulwick so long as you crossed not one jot of such pleasure and
+happiness that might belong to Cecile's child. But here our wills
+clash; and now, since there cannot be two masters in a house as you
+say, _I_ am the master here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Sir Adrian's mind was seething in this unusual mood, Miss
+O'Donoghue, entering her nieces' room, found Molly perched, in riding
+dress, on the window-sill, looking forth upon the outer world with
+dissatisfied countenance.
+
+Mr. Landale had sent word at the last moment that, to his intense
+regret, he could not escort the ladies to the meet, some important
+business having retained him at Pulwick.
+
+So much did Miss Molly pettishly explain in answer to the
+affectionate inquiry concerning the cloud on her brow, slashing her
+whip the while and pouting, and generally out of harmony with the
+special radiance of the old lady's eye and the more than usual
+expansiveness of the embrace which was bestowed upon her.
+
+"Tut, tut, tut, now," observed the artful person in tones of deep
+commiseration. "Ah well, Rupert's a poor creature which ever side he
+turns up. Will you go now, my child, and fetch me the letters I left
+on the drawing-room table? Isn't it like me to spend half the morning
+writing them and leave them down there after all!"
+
+Molly rose unwillingly, threw her whip on the bed, her hat on the
+floor; and mistily concerned over Tanty's air of irrepressible and
+pleasurable excitement, walked out of the room, bestowing as she
+passed her long pier glass a moody glance at her own glowering beauty.
+
+"What's the use of _you_?" she muttered to herself, "Anybody can fetch
+and carry for old aunts and look out of windows on leafless trees!"
+
+The way to the drawing-room was through the library. As Molly,
+immersed in her reflections, passed along this room, she stopped with
+a violent start on perceiving the figure of Sir Adrian, a tall
+silhouette against the cold light of the window. As she came upon him,
+her face was fully illumined, and there was a glorious tale-telling in
+the widening of her eyes and the warm flush that mounted to her cheek
+that on the instant scattered in the man's mind all wondering doubts.
+A rush of tenderness filled him at one sweep, head and heart, to the
+core.
+
+"Molly!" he cried, panting; and then with halting voice as she
+advanced a pace and stood with mouth parted and brilliant expectant
+eyes: "You took away all light and warmth with you when you left my
+lonely dwelling. I tried to take up my life there, but----"
+
+"But you have come back--for me?" And drawn by his extended hands she
+advanced, her burning gaze fixed upon his.
+
+"I dared not think of seeing you again," he murmured, clasping her
+hands; "yet my return ... pleases you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Thus was crowned this strange wooing, was clenched a life's union,
+based upon either side on fascinating unrealities.
+
+She was drawn into his arms; and against his heart she lay, shaking
+with little shivers of delight, looking into the noble face bent so
+lovingly over hers, her mind floating between unconscious exultation
+and languorous joy.
+
+For a long while without a word he held her thus on his strong arm,
+gazing with a rending conflict of rapture and anguish on the beautiful
+image of his life's love, until his eyes were dimmed with rising
+tears. Then he slowly stooped over the up-turned face, and as she
+dropped her lids with a faint smile, kissed her lips.
+
+There came a warning rattle at the door handle, and Molly, disengaging
+herself softly from her betrothed's embrace, but still retaining his
+arm, turned to witness the entrance of Miss O'Donoghue and Mr.
+Landale.
+
+On the former's face, under a feigned expression of surprise, now
+expanded itself in effulgence the plenitude of that satisfaction which
+had been dawning there ever since her return from the island.
+
+Rupert held himself well in hand. He halted, it is true, for an
+instant at the first sight of Sir Adrian and Molly, and put his
+handkerchief furtively to his forehead to wipe the sudden cold sweat
+which broke out upon it. But the hesitation was so momentary as to
+pass unperceived; and if his countenance, as he advanced again, bore
+an expression of disapproval, it was at once dignified and restrained.
+
+"So you are there, Molly," exclaimed the old lady with inimitable
+airiness. "Just imagine, my dear, I had those letters in my pocket all
+the while, after all. You did not find them, did you?"
+
+But Adrian, still retaining the little hand on his arm, came forward
+slowly and broke through the incipient flow.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said he in a voice still veiled by emotion, "I know your
+kind heart will rejoice with me, although you may not be so surprised,
+as no doubt Rupert will be, at the news we have for you, Molly and I."
+
+"You are right, Adrian," interrupted Rupert gravely, "to any who know
+your life and _your past_ as I do, the news you seem to have for us
+must seem strange indeed. So strange that you will excuse me if I
+withhold congratulations. For, if I mistake not," he added, with a
+delicately shaded change of tone to sympathetic courtesy, and slightly
+turning his handsome face towards Molly, "I assume that my fair
+cousin de Savenaye has even but now promised to be my sister, Lady
+Landale."
+
+Sir Adrian who, softened by the emotion of this wonderful hour, had
+made a movement to grasp his brother's hand, but had checked himself
+with a passionate movement of anger, instantly restrained, as the
+overt impertinence of the first words fell on his ears, here looked
+with a shadowing anxiety at the girl's face.
+
+But Molly, who could never withhold the lash of her tongue when Rupert
+gave the slightest opening, immediately acknowledged her enemy's
+courtly bow with sauciness.
+
+"What! No congratulations from the model brother? Not even a word of
+thanks to Molly de Savenaye for bringing the truant to his home at
+last? But you malign yourself, my dear Rupert. I believe 'tis but
+excess of joy that ties your tongue."
+
+With gleaming smile Mr. Landale would have opposed this direct thrust
+by some parry of polished insult; but he met his elder's commanding
+glance, remembered his parting words on two previous occasions, and
+wisely abstained, contenting himself with another slight bow and a
+contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
+
+At the same time Miss O'Donoghue, with an odd mixture of farcically
+pretended astonishment and genuine triumph, fell on the girl's neck.
+
+"It is possible, soul of my heart, my sweet child--I can't believe
+it--though I vow I knew it all along! So I am to see my two favourites
+made one by holy matrimony!" punctuating her exclamation with kisses
+on the fair young face, and wildly seeking in space with her dried-up
+old fingers to meet Adrian's hand. "I, the one barren stock of the
+O'Donoghues, shall see my sister's children re-united. Ah, Adrian,
+what a beautiful coat this will make for you to hand to your children!
+O'Donoghue, Landale, Kermelegan, Savenaye--eighteen quarters with this
+heiress alone, Adrian child, for the descendants of Landale of
+Pulwick!" And Miss O'Donoghue, overcome by this culminating vision of
+happiness and perfection, fairly burst into tears.
+
+In the midst of this scene, Mr. Landale, after listening mockingly for
+a few instants, retired with ostentatious discretion.
+
+Later in the day, as Madeleine bent her pretty ears, dutifully yet
+with wandering attention, to Molly's gay prognostications concerning
+Pulwick under her sway; whilst the servants in the hall, pantry and
+kitchen discussed the great news which, by some incomprehensible
+agency, spread with torrent-like swiftness through the whole estate;
+while Miss O'Donoghue was feverishly busy with the correspondence
+which was to disseminate far and wide the world's knowledge of the
+happy betrothal, Sir Adrian met his brother walking meditatively along
+the winding path of the garden, flicking with the loop of his crop the
+border of evergreens as he went. From their room, Molly and Madeleine,
+ensconced in the deep window-seat, could see the meeting.
+
+"How I should like to hear," said Molly. "I know this supple wretch
+will be full of Adrian's folly in marrying me--first, because, from
+the Rupertian point of view, it is a disastrous thing that his elder
+should marry at all; and secondly, because Molly, mistress at Pulwick
+Priory, means a very queer position indeed for Mr. Rupert Landale. How
+I wish my spirit could fly into Adrian's head just for a moment!
+Adrian is too indulgent. It requires a Molly to deal with such
+impertinence."
+
+"Indeed you are unjust with our cousin," said Madeleine, gently. "Why
+this hatred? I cannot understand."
+
+"No, of course not, Madeleine. Rupert is charming--with you. I am not
+blind. But take care he does not find out _your_ secret, miss. Oh, I
+don't ask you any more about it. But if he ever does--_gare, ma
+chere_."
+
+But at the present juncture, Molly's estimate of Sir Adrian's mood was
+mistaken. His love of peace, which amounted to a well-known weakness
+where he alone was concerned, weighed not a feather in the balance
+when such an interest as that now engaged was at stake.
+
+As a matter of fact, Rupert Landale was to be taken by surprise again,
+that day, and again not pleasantly. On noticing his brother's
+approach, he stopped his angry flickings, and slowly moved to meet
+him. At first they walked side by side in silence. Presently Sir
+Adrian began:
+
+"Rupert," he said gravely, "after our first interview to-day, it was
+my intention to have begged your pardon for a certain roughness in my
+manner which I should have controlled and which you resented. I would
+have done so, had you allowed me, at that moment when I announced my
+forthcoming marriage and my heart was full of good-will to all,
+especially to you. Now, on the contrary, to re-establish at least that
+outward harmony without which life in common would be impossible, I
+expect from you some expression of regret for your behaviour."
+
+The first part of his brother's say was so well in accordance with his
+more habitual mood, that Mr. Landale had already sketched his equally
+habitual deprecating smile; but the conclusion changed the entire
+standpoint of their relations.
+
+"An expression of regret--from _me_?" cried he, exaggerating his
+astonishment almost to mockery.
+
+"From any one but my brother," said Adrian, with a slight but
+perceptible hardening in his tone, "I should say an apology for an
+impertinence."
+
+Mr. Landale, now genuinely taken aback, turned a little pale and
+halted abruptly.
+
+"Adrian, Adrian!" he retorted, quickly. "This is one of your mad
+moments. I do not understand."
+
+"No, brother, I am not mad, and never have been, dearly as you would
+wish me to be so in reality--since Death would have none of me. But
+though you know this yourself but too well, you have never understood
+me really. Now listen--once for all. Try and see our positions as they
+are: perhaps then matters will go more pleasantly in the future for
+you as well as for me."
+
+Mr. Landale looked keenly at the speaker's face for a second, and then
+without a word resumed his walk, while Sir Adrian by his side pursued
+with quiet emphasis:
+
+"When I returned, from the other world so to speak, at least from your
+point of view (one which I fully understood), I found that this very
+return was nothing short of a calamity for all that remained of my
+kin. I had it in my power to reduce that misfortune to a great extent.
+You loved the position--that worldly estimation, that fortune, all
+those circumstances which, with perfect moral right, you had hitherto
+enjoyed. They presented little attraction to me. Moreover, there were
+many reasons, which I am quite aware you know, that made this very
+house of mine a dismal dwelling for me. You see I have no wish to
+give too generous a colour to my motives, too self-denying a character
+to the benefits I conferred upon you. But, as far as you are
+concerned, they were benefits. For them I received no gratitude; but
+as I did not expect gratitude it matters little. I might, however,
+have expected at least that you should be neutral, not directly
+hostile to me----Pray let me finish" (in anticipation of a rising
+interruption from his companion), "I shall soon have done, and you
+will see that I am not merely recriminating. Hostile you have been,
+and are now. So long as the position you assumed towards me only bore
+on our own relations, I acquiesced: you had so much more to lose than
+I could gain by resenting your hidden antagonism. I held you, so to
+speak, in the hollow of my hand; I could afford to pass over it all.
+Moreover, I had chosen my own path, which was nothing if not peaceful.
+I say, you always were hostile to me; you have been so, more than ever
+since the arrival of Cecile de Savenaye's children. You were, however,
+grievously mistaken if you thought--I verily believe you did--that I
+did not realise the true motives that prompted you to keep me away
+from them.--I loved them as their mother's children; I love Molly with
+a sort of love I myself do not understand, but deep enough for all its
+strangeness. Yet I submitted to your reasoning, to your plausible
+representations of the disastrous effects of my presence. I went back
+to my solitude because it never entered my mind that it could be in my
+power to help their happiness; you indeed had actually persuaded me of
+the contrary, as you know, and I myself thought it better to break the
+unfortunate spell that was cast on me. Unfortunate I thought it, but
+it has proved far otherwise."
+
+They had reached the end of the alley, and as they turned back, facing
+each other for a moment, Sir Adrian noticed the evil smile playing
+upon his brothers lips.
+
+"It has proved otherwise," he repeated. "How I came to change my
+views, I daresay you have guessed, for you have, of late, kept a good
+watch on your mad brother, Rupert. At any rate you know what has come
+to pass. Now I desire you to understand this clearly--interference
+with me as matters stand means interference with Molly: and as such I
+must, and shall, resent it."
+
+"Well, Adrian, and what have I done _now_?" was Mr. Landale's quiet
+reply. He turned a gravely attentive, innocently injured countenance
+to the paling light.
+
+"When I said you did not understand me," returned Sir Adrian with
+undiminished firmness; "when I said you owed me some expression of
+regret, it was to warn you never again to assume the tone of
+insinuation and sarcasm to me, which you permitted yourself to-day in
+the presence of Molly. You could not restrain this long habit of
+censuring, of unwarrantable and impertinent criticism, of your elder,
+and when you referred to my past, Molly could not but be offended by
+the mockery of your tones. Moreover, you took upon yourself, if I have
+heard aright, to disapprove openly of our marriage. Upon what ground
+that would bear announcing I know not, but let this be enough: try and
+realise that our respective positions are totally changed by this
+unforeseen event, and that, as Molly is now to be mistress at Pulwick,
+I must of course revoke my tacit abdication. Nevertheless, if you
+think you can put up with the new state of things, there need be
+little alteration in your present mode of life, my dear Rupert; if you
+will only make a generous effort to alter your line of conduct."
+
+And here, Sir Adrian, succumbing for a moment to the fault, so common
+to kindly minds, of discounting the virtue of occasional firmness by a
+sudden return to geniality, offered his hand in token of peace.
+
+Mr. Landale took it; his grasp, however, was limp and cold.
+
+"I am quite ready to express regret," he said in a toneless voice,
+"since that would seem to be gratification to you, and moreover seems
+to be the tacit condition on which you will refrain from turning me
+out. I ought indeed to have abstained from referring, however vaguely,
+to past events, for the plain reason that anything I could say would
+already have come too late to prevent the grievous deed you have now
+pledged yourself to commit."
+
+"Rupert--!" exclaimed Sir Adrian stepping back a pace, too amazed, at
+the instant, for indignation.
+
+"Now, in your turn, hear me, Adrian," continued Mr. Landale with his
+blackest look. "I have listened to your summing up of our respective
+cases with perfect patience, notwithstanding a certain assumption of
+superiority which--allow me to insist on this--is somewhat ridiculous
+from you to me. You complain of my misunderstanding you. Briefly, this
+is absurd. As a matter of fact I understand you better than you do
+yourself. On the other hand it is you that do not understand me. I
+have no wish to paraphrase your little homily of two minutes ago, but
+the heads of my refutation are inevitably suggested by the points of
+your indictment. To use your own manner of speech, my dear Adrian, I
+have no wish to assume injured disinterestedness, when speaking of my
+doings with regard to you and your belongings and especially to this
+old place of yours, of our family. You have only to look and see for
+yourself...."
+
+Mr. Landale made a wide comprehensive gesture which seemed to embrace
+the whole of the noble estate, the admirably kept mansion with walls
+now flushed in the light of the sinking sun, the orderly maintenance
+of the vast grounds, the prosperousness of its dependencies--all in
+fact that the brothers could see with the eyes of the body from where
+they stood, and all that they could see with the eyes of the mind
+alone: "Go and verify whether I fulfilled my duty with respect to the
+trust which was yours, but which you have allowed to devolve upon my
+shoulders, and ask yourself whether you would have fulfilled it
+better--if as well. I claim no more than this recognition; for, as you
+pointed out, the position carried its advantages, if it entailed
+arduous responsibility too. It was my hope that heirs of my body would
+live to perpetuate this pride--this work of mine. It was not to be.
+Now that you step in again and that possibly your flesh will reap the
+benefits I have laboured to produce, ask yourself, Adrian, whether
+you, who shirked your own natural duties, would have buckled to the
+task, under _my_ circumstances--distrusted by your brother, disliked
+and secretly despised by all your dependants, who reserved all their
+love and admiration for the 'real master' (oh, I know the cant
+phrase), although he chose to abandon his position and yield himself
+to the stream of his own inertness, the real master who in the end can
+find no better description for these years of faithful service than
+'hostility' and 'ingratitude.'"
+
+Sir Adrian halted a pace, a little moved by the speciousness of the
+pleading. The incidental reference to that one grief of his brother's
+life was of a kind which could never fail to arouse generous sympathy
+in his heart. But Mr. Landale had not come to the critical point of
+his say, and he did not choose to allow the chapter of emotion to
+begin just yet.
+
+"But," he continued, pursuing his restless walk, "again to use your
+own phraseology, I am not merely recriminating. I, too, wish you to
+understand me. It would be useless to discuss now, what you elect to
+call my hostility in past days. I had to keep up the position demanded
+by our ancient name; to keep it up amid a society, against whose every
+tenet almost--every prejudice, you may call them--you chose to run
+counter. My antagonism to your mode of acting and thinking was
+precisely measured by your own against the world in which the
+Landales, as a family, hold a stake. Let that, therefore, be
+dismissed; and let us come at once to the special hostility you
+complain of in me, since the troublesome arrival of Aunt Rose and her
+wards. As the very thing which I was most anxious to prevent, if
+possible, has, after all, come to pass, the present argument may seem
+useless; but you have courted it yourself."
+
+"Most anxious to prevent--if possible...!" repeated Sir Adrian,
+slowly. "This, from a younger brother, is almost cynical, Rupert!"
+
+"Cynical!" retorted Mr. Landale, with a furious laugh. "Why, you have
+given sound to the very word I would, in anybody else's case, have
+applied to a behaviour such as yours. Is it possible, Adrian," said
+Rupert, turning to look his brother in the eyes with a look of
+profound malice, "that it has not occurred to you yet, that _cynical_
+will be the verdict the world will pass on the question of your
+marriage with that young girl?"
+
+Sir Adrian flushed darkly, and remained silent for a pace or two;
+then, with a puzzled look:
+
+"I fail to understand you," he said simply. "I am no longer young, of
+course; yet, in years, I am not preposterously old. As for the other
+points--name and fortune----"
+
+But Rupert interrupted him with a sharp exclamation, which betrayed
+the utmost nervous exasperation.
+
+"Pshaw! If I did not know you so well, I would say you were playing at
+candour. This--this unconventionality of yours would have led you
+into curious pitfalls, Adrian, had you been obliged to live in the
+world. My 'hostility' has saved you from some already, I know--more is
+the pity it could not save you from this--for it passes all bounds
+that you should meditate such an unnatural act, upon my soul, in the
+most natural manner in the world. One must be an Adrian Landale, and
+live on a tower for the best part of one's life, to reach such a pitch
+of--unconventionality, let us call it."
+
+"For God's sake," exclaimed Sir Adrian, suddenly losing patience,
+"what are you driving at, man? In what way can my marriage with a
+young lady, who, inconceivable as it may be, has found something to
+love in me; in what way, I say, can it be accounted cynical? I am not
+subtle enough to perceive it."
+
+"To any one but you," sneered the other, coming to his climax with a
+sort of cruel deliberation, "it would hardly require special
+subtleness to perceive that for the man of mature age to marry the
+_daughter_, after having, in the days of his youth, been the lover of
+the _mother_, is a proceeding, the very idea of which is somewhat
+revolting in the average individual.... There are many roues in St.
+James' who would shrink before it; yet you, the enlightened
+philosopher, the moralist----"
+
+But Sir Adrian, breathing quickly, laid his hand heavily on his
+brother's shoulder.
+
+"When you say the mother's lover, Rupert," he said, in a contained
+voice, which was as ominous of storm as the first mutters of thunder,
+"you mean that I loved her--you do not mean to insinuate that that
+noble woman, widowed but a few weeks, whose whole soul was filled with
+but one lofty idea, that of duty, was the mistress--the mistress of a
+boy, barely out of his teens?"
+
+Rupert shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I insinuate nothing, my dear Adrian; I think nothing. All this is
+ancient history which after all has long concerned only you. You know
+best what occurred in the old days, and of course a man of honour is
+bound to deny all tales affecting a lady's virtue! Even you, I fancy,
+would condescend so far. But nevertheless, reflect how this marriage
+will rake up the old story. It will be remembered how you, for the
+sake of remaining by Cecile de Savenaye's side, abandoned your home to
+fight in a cause that did not concern you; nay, more, turned your
+back for the time upon those advanced social theories which even at
+your present season of life you have not all shaken off. You travelled
+with her from one end of England to the other, in the closest
+intimacy, and finally departed over seas, her acknowledged escort. She
+on her side, under pretext of securing the best help on her political
+mission that England can afford her, selected a young man notoriously
+in love with her, at the very age when the passions are hottest, and
+wisdom the least consideration--as her influential agent, of course.
+Men are men, Adrian--especially young men--small blame to you, young
+that you were, if then ... but you cannot expect, in sober earnest,
+the world to believe that you went on such a wild pilgrimage for
+nothing! Women are women--especially young women, of the French
+court--who have never had the reputation of admiring bashfulness in
+stalwart young lovers...."
+
+Sir Adrian's hand, pressing upon his brother's shoulder, as if
+weighted by all his anger, here forced the speaker into silence.
+
+"Shame! Shame, Rupert!" he cried first, his eyes aflame with a
+generous passion; then fiercely: "Silence, fellow, or I will take you
+by that brazen throat of yours and strangle the venomous lie once for
+all." And then, with keen reproach, "That you, of my blood, of hers
+too, should be the one to cast such a stigma on her memory--that you
+should be unable even to understand the nature of our intercourse....
+Oh, shame, on you for your baseness, for your vulgar, low
+suspiciousness!... But, no, I waste my breath upon you, you do not
+believe this thing. You have outwitted yourself this time. Hear me
+now: If anything could have suggested to me this alliance with the
+child of one I loved so madly and so hopelessly, the thought that such
+dastardly slander could ever have been current would have done so. The
+world, having nothing to gain by the belief, will never credit that
+Sir Adrian Landale would marry the daughter of his paramour--however
+his own brother may deem to his advantage to seem to think so! The
+fact of Molly de Savenaye becoming Lady Landale would alone, had such
+ill rumours indeed been current in the past, dispel the ungenerous
+legend for ever."
+
+There were a few moments of silence while Sir Adrian battled, in the
+tumult of his indignation, for self-control again; while Rupert,
+realising that he had outwitted himself indeed, bestowed inward curses
+upon most of his relations and his own fate.
+
+The elder brother resumed at length, with a faint smile:
+
+"And so, you see, even if you had spoken out in time, it would have
+been of little avail." Then he added, bitterly. "I have received a
+wound from an unforeseen quarter. You have dealt it, to no purpose,
+Rupert, as you see ... though it may be some compensation to such a
+nature as yours to know that you have left in it a subtle venom."
+
+The sun had already sunk away, and its glow behind the waters had
+faded to the merest tinge. In the cold shadow of rising night the two
+men advanced silently homewards. Sir Adrian's soul, guided by the
+invidious words, had flown back to that dead year, the central point
+of his existence--It was true: men will be men--in that very house,
+yonder, he had betrayed his love to her; on board the ship that took
+them away and by the camp fire on the eve of fight, he had pleaded the
+cause of his passion, not ignobly indeed, with no thought of the
+baseness which Rupert assigned to him, yet with a selfish disregard of
+her position, of his own grave trust. And it was with a glow of pride,
+in the ever living object of his life's devotion--of gratitude
+almost--that he recalled the noble simplicity with which the woman,
+whom he had just heard classed among the every-day sinners of society,
+had, without one grandiloquent word, without even losing her womanly
+softness, kept her lover as well as herself in the path of her lofty
+ideal--till the end. And yet she did love him: at the last awful
+moment, sinking into the very jaws of death, the secret of her heart
+had escaped her. And now--now her beauty, and something of her own
+life and soul was left to him in her child, as the one fit object on
+which to devote that tenderness which time could not change.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a while, from the darkness by his side came the voice of his
+brother again, in altered, hardly recognisable accents.
+
+"Adrian, those last words of yours were severe--unjust. I do not
+deserve such interpretation of my motives. Is it my fault that you are
+not as other men? Am I to be blamed for judging you by the ordinary
+standard? But you have convinced me: you were as chivalrous as Cecile
+was pure, and if needs be, believe me, Adrian, I will maintain it so
+in the face of the world. Yes, I misunderstood you--and wounded you,
+as you say, but such was not my intention. Forgive me."
+
+They had come to the door. Sir Adrian paused. There was a rapid
+revulsion in his kindly mind at the extraordinary sound of humble
+words from his brother; and with a new emotion, he replied, taking the
+hand that with well-acted diffidence seemed to seek his grasp:
+
+"Perhaps we have both something to forgive each other. I fear you did
+not misjudge me so much as you misjudged her who left me that precious
+legacy. But believe that, believe it as you have just now said,
+Rupert, the mother of those children never stooped to human
+frailty--her course in her short and noble life was as bright and pure
+as the light of day."
+
+Without another word the two brothers shook hands and re-entered their
+home.
+
+Sir Adrian sought Miss O'Donoghue whom he now found in converse with
+Molly, and with a grave eagerness, that put the culminating touch to
+the old lady's triumph, urged the early celebration of his nuptials.
+
+Mr. Landale repaired to his own study where in solitude he could give
+loose rein to his fury of disappointment, and consider as carefully as
+he might in the circumstances how best to work the new situation to
+his own advantage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even on that day that had been filled with so many varied and poignant
+emotions for him; through the dream in which his whole being seemed to
+float, Sir Adrian found a moment to think of the humble followers whom
+he had left so abruptly on the island, and of the pleasure the
+auspicious news would bring to them.
+
+It was late at night, and just before parting with the guest who was
+so soon to be mistress under his roof, he paused on the stairs before
+a window that commanded a view of the bay. Molly drew closer and leant
+against his shoulder; and thus both gazed forth silently for some
+time at the clear distant light, the luminous eye calmly watching over
+the treacherous sands.
+
+That light of Scarthey--it was the image of the solitary placid life
+to which he had bidden adieu for ever; which even now, at this brief
+interval of half a day, seemed as far distant as the years of despair
+and vicissitude and disgust to which it had succeeded. A man can feel
+the suddenly revealed charm of things that have ceased to be, without
+regretting them.
+
+With the dear young head that he loved, with a love already as old as
+her very years, pressing his cheek; with that slender hand in his
+grasp, the same, for his love was all miracle, that he had held in the
+hot-pulsed days of old--he yet felt his mind wander back to his nest
+of dreams. He thought with gratitude of Rene, the single-minded,
+faithful familiar; of old Margery, the nurse who had tended Cecile's
+children, as well as her young master; thought of their joy when they
+should hear of the marvellous knitting together into the web of his
+fate, of all those far-off ties.
+
+In full harmony with such fleeting thoughts, came Molly's words at
+length breaking the silence.
+
+"Will you take me back to that strange old place of yours, Adrian,
+when we are married?"
+
+Sir Adrian kissed her forehead.
+
+"And would you not fear the rough wild place, child," he murmured.
+
+"Not for ever, I mean," laughed the girl, "for then my mission would
+not be fulfilled--which was to make of Adrian, Sir Adrian, indeed. But
+now and again, to recall those lovely days, when--when you were so
+distracted for the love of Murthering Moll and the fear lest she
+should see it. You will not dismantle those queer rooms that received
+so hospitably the limping, draggled-tailed guest--they must again
+shelter her when she comes as proud Lady Landale! How delicious it
+would be if the tempest would only rage again, and the sea-mew shriek,
+and the caverns roar and thunder, and I knew you were as happy as I am
+sure to be!"
+
+"All shall be kept up even as you left it," answered Sir Adrian moved
+by tender emotion; "to be made glorious again by the light of your
+youth and fairness. And Renny shall be cook again, and maid of all
+work. My poor Renny, what joy when he hears of his master's happiness,
+and all through the child of his beloved mistress! But he will have to
+spend a sobering time of solitude out there, till I can find a
+substitute for his duties."
+
+"You are very much attached to that funny little retainer, Adrian!"
+said Molly after a pause.
+
+"To no man alive do I owe so much. With no one have I had, through
+life, so much in common," came the grave reply.
+
+"Then," returned the girl, "you would thank me for telling you of the
+means of making the good man's exile less heavy, until you take him
+back with you."
+
+"No doubt." There was a tone of surprise and inquiry in his voice.
+
+"Why, it is simple enough. Have you never heard of his admiration for
+Moggie Mearson, our maid? Let them marry. They will make a good pair,
+though funny. What, you never knew it? Of course not, or you would not
+have had the heart to keep the patient lovers apart so long. Let them
+marry, my Lord of Pulwick: it will complete the romance of the
+persecuted Savenayes of Brittany and their helpful friends of the
+distant North."
+
+Musing, Sir Adrian fell into silence. The faithful, foolish heart that
+never even told its secret desire, for very fear of being helped to
+win it; by whom happiness and love were held to be too dearly bought
+at the price of separation from the lonely exile!
+
+"_Eh bien_, dreamer?" cried the girl gaily.
+
+"Thank you, Molly," said Sir Adrian, turning to her with shining eyes.
+"This is a pretty thought, a good thought. Renny will indeed doubly
+bless the day when Providence sent you to Pulwick."
+
+And so, the following morn, Mr. Renny Potter was summoned to hear the
+tidings, and informed of the benevolent prospects more privately
+concerning his own life; was bidden to thank the future Lady Landale
+for her service; was gently rebuked for his long reticence, and
+finally dismissed in company of the glowing Moggie with a promise that
+his nuptials should be celebrated at the same time as those of the
+lord of the land. The good fellow, however, required first of all an
+assurance that these very fine plans would not entail any
+interference with his duties to his master before he would allow
+himself to be pleased at his fortunes. Great and complex, then, was
+his joy; but it would have been hard to say, as Moggie confessed to
+her inquiring mistress that night, when he had returned to his post,
+whether the pride and delight in his master's own betrothal was not
+uppermost in his bubbling spirits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+TWO MONTHS LATER: THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
+
+    Neighbour, what doth thy husband when he cometh home from work?
+    He thinks of her he loved before he knew me
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+_February 18th._ Upon the 18th of January, 1815, did I commit that
+most irreparable of all follies; then by my own hand I killed fair
+Molly de Savenaye, who was so happy, so free, so much in love with
+life, and whom I loved so dearly, and in her stead called into
+existence Molly Landale, a poor-spirited miserable creature who has
+not given me one moment's amusement. How could I have been so stupid?
+
+Let me examine.
+
+It is only a month ago, only a month, 4 weeks, 31 days, millions of
+horrible dreary minutes, Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly! since you stood,
+that snowy day, in the great drawing-room (_my_ drawing-room now, I
+hate it), and vowed twice over, once before the Jesuit father from
+Stonyhurst, once before jolly, hunting heretical parson Cochrane to
+cleave to Adrian Landale till death bid you part! Brr--what ghastly
+words and with what a light heart I said them, tripped them out, _ma
+foi_, as gaily as "good-morning" or "good-night!" They were to be the
+_open sesame_ to joys untold, to lands flowing with milk and honey, to
+romance, adventure, splendour--and what have they brought me?
+
+It is a cold day, sleeting, snowing, blowing, all that is abominable.
+My lord and master has ridden off, despite it, to some distant farm
+where there has been a fire. The "Good Sir Adrian," as they call him
+now--he is _that_; but, oh dear me--there! I must yawn, and I'll say
+no more on this head, at present, for I want to think and work my
+wretched problem out in earnest, and not go to sleep.
+
+It is the first time I have taken heart to write since yonder day of
+doom, and God knows when I shall have heart again! Upon such an
+afternoon there is nothing better to do, since Sir Adrian would have
+none of my company--he is so precious of me that he fears I should
+melt like sugar in the wet--he never guessed that it was just because
+of the storm I wished the ride! Were we to live a hundred years
+together--which, God forfend--he would never understand me.
+
+Ah, lack-a-day, oh, misery me! (My lady, you are wandering; come back
+to business.)
+
+What, then, has marriage brought me? First of all a husband. That is
+to say, another person, a man who has the right to me--to whom I
+myself have given that right--to have me, to hold me, as it runs in
+the terrible service, the thunders of which were twice rolled out upon
+my head, and which have been ringing there ever since. And I, Molly,
+gave of my own free will, that best and most blessed of all gifts, my
+own free will, away. I am surrounded, as it were, by barriers; hemmed
+in, bound up, kept in leading strings. I mind me of the seagull on the
+island. 'Tis all in the most loving care in the world, of course, but
+oh! the oppression of it! I must hide my feelings as well as I can,
+for in my heart I would not grieve that good man, that _excellent_
+man, that pattern of kind gentleman--oh, oh, oh--it will out--that
+_dreary_ man, that dull man, that most melancholy of all men! Who
+sighs more than he smiles, and, I warrant, of the two, his sighs are
+the more cheerful; who looks at his beautiful wife as if he saw a
+ghost, and kisses her as if he kissed a corpse!
+
+There is a mate for Molly! the mate she chose for herself!
+
+So much for the husband. What else has marriage brought her?
+
+Briefly I will capitulate.
+
+A title--I am _my lady_. For three days it sounded prettily in my
+ears. But to the girl who refused a duchess' coronet, who was born
+comtesse--to be the baronet's lady--Tanty may say what she likes of
+the age of creation, and all the rest of it--that advantage cannot
+weigh heavy in the balance. Again then, I have a splendid
+house--which is my prison, and in which, like all prisoners, I have
+not the right to choose my company--else would Sophia and Rupert still
+be here? They are going, I am told occasionally; but my intimate
+conviction is, however often they may be going, _they will never go_.
+_Item four:_ I have money, and nothing to spend it on--but the poor.
+
+What next? What next?--alas, I look and I find nothing! This is all
+that marriage has brought me; and what has it not taken from me?
+
+My delight in existence, my independence, my hopes, my belief in the
+future, my belief in _love_. Faith, hope, and charity, in fact,
+destroyed at one fell sweep. And all, to gratify my curiosity as to a
+romantic mystery, my vanity as to my own powers of fascination! Well,
+I have solved the mystery, and behold it was nothing. I have eaten of
+the fruit of knowledge, and it is tasteless in my mouth.
+
+I have made my capture with my little bow and spear, and I am as
+embarrassed of my captive as he of me. We pull at the chain that binds
+us together; nay, such being the law of this world between men and
+women, the positions are reversed, my captive is now my master, and
+Molly is the slave.
+
+Tanty, I could curse thee for thy officiousness, from the tip of thy
+coal black wig to the sole of thy platter shoe--but that I am too good
+to curse thee at all!
+
+Poor book of my life that I was so eager to fill in, that was to have
+held a narrative all thrilling, and all varied, now will I set forth
+in thee, my failure, my hopelessness, and after that close thee for
+ever.
+
+Of what use indeed to chronicle, when there is nought to tell but
+flatness, chill monotony, on every side; when even the workings of my
+soul cannot interest me to follow, since they can now foreshadow
+nothing, lead to nothing but fruitless struggle or tame resignation!
+
+I discovered my mistake--not the whole of it, but enough to give me a
+dreadful foreboding of its hideousness, not two hours after the
+nuptial ceremony.
+
+Adrian had borne himself up to that with the romantic, mysterious
+dignity of presence that first caught my silly fancy; behind which I
+had pictured such fascinating depths of passion--of fire--Alas! When
+he looked at me it was with that air of wondering, almost timid,
+affection battling with I know not what flame of rapture, with which
+look I have become so fatally familiar since--without the flame of
+rapture, be it understood, which seems to have rapidly burnt away to a
+very ash of grey despondency and self-reproach. I could have sworn
+even as he gave me his arm to meet and receive the congratulations of
+our guests, that the glow upon his cheek, the poise of his head
+denoted the pride any man, were he not an idiot nor a brute, must feel
+in presenting his bride--such a bride!--to the world. Then we went in
+to the great dining hall where the wedding feast, a very splendid one,
+was spread. All the gentlemen looked with admiration at me; many with
+envy at Adrian. I knew that I was beautiful in my fine white satin
+with my veil thrown back, without the flattering whispers that reached
+me now and again; but these were sweet to hear nevertheless. I knew
+myself the centre of all eyes, and it elated me. So too did the
+tingling flavour of the one glass of sparkling wine I drank to my
+fortunes. Immediately upon this silent toast of Lady Landale to
+herself, Rupert rose and in choice words and silver-ringing voice
+proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom. There was a merry
+bustling pause while the glasses were filled; then rising to their
+feet as with one man, all the gentlemen stood with brimming goblets
+one instant extended, the next emptied to the last drop; and then the
+cheers rang out, swelling up the rafters, three times three, seeming
+to carry my soul along with them. I felt my heart expand and throb
+with an emotion I never knew in it before, which seemed to promise
+vast future capacities of pain and delight. I turned to my husband
+instinctively; looking for, expecting, I could not explain why, an
+answering fire in his eyes. This was the last moment of my illusions.
+From thence they began to shrivel away with a terrifying rapidity.
+
+Adrian sat with a face that looked old and lined and grey; with
+haggard unseeing eyes gazing forth into space as though fixing some
+invisible and spectre show. He seemed as if wrapt in a world of his
+own, to which none of us had entrance; least of all, I, his wife.
+
+The shouts around us died away, there were cries upon him for
+"Speech--speech," then playful queries--"How is this, Sir Adrian? So
+bashful, egad!" next nudges were exchanged, looks of wonder, and an
+old voice speaking broadly:
+
+_"Yes, by George,"_ it was saying, _"I remember it well, by George, in
+this very room, now twenty years ago, 'Here, gentlemen,' says old Sir
+Tummas, 'Here's to Madam de Savenaye,' and gad, ma'am, we all
+yelled,--she was a lovely creature--Eh--Eh?"_
+
+"Hush," said some one, and there was a running circle of frowns and
+the old voice ceased as abruptly as if its owner had been seized by
+the weasand. In the heavy embarrassed silence, I caught Tanty's red
+perturbed look and Rupert's smile.
+
+But Adrian sat on--like a ghost among the living, or a live man among
+the dead. And this was my gallant bridegroom! I seized him by the
+hand--"Are you ill, Adrian?"
+
+He started and looked round at me--Oh that look! It seemed to burn
+into my soul, I shall never forget the hopelessness, the dull sadness
+of it, and then--I don't know what he read in my answering glance--the
+mute agonised question, followed by a terror.
+
+"They want you to speak," I whispered, and shook the cold hand I held
+in a fury of impatience.
+
+His lips trembled: he stared at me blankly. "My God, my God, what have
+I done?" he muttered to himself, "Cecile's child--Cecile's child!"
+
+I could have burst out sobbing. But seeing Rupert's face bent down
+towards his plate, demure and solemn, yet stamped, for all his
+cleverness, with an almost devilish triumph, my pride rose and my
+courage. Every one else seemed to be looking towards us: I stood up.
+
+"Good friends," I said, "I see that my husband is so much touched by
+the welcome that you are giving his bride, the welcome that you are
+giving him after his long exile from his house, that he is quite
+unable to answer you as he would wish. But lest you should
+misunderstand this silence of his, I am bold enough to answer you in
+his name, and--since it is but a few moments ago that you have seen us
+made one, I think I have the right to do so.... We thank you."
+
+My heart was beating to suffocation--but I carried bravely on till I
+was drowned in a storm of acclamations to which the first cheers were
+as nothing.
+
+They drank my health again, and again I heard the old gentleman of the
+indiscreet voice--I have learned since he is stone deaf, and I daresay
+he flattered himself he spoke in a whisper--proclaim that I was _my
+mother all over again: begad--so had she spoken to them twenty years
+ago in this very room!_
+
+Here Tanty came to the rescue and carried me off.
+
+I dared not trust myself to look at Adrian as I left, but I knew that
+he followed me to the door, from which I presumed that he had
+recovered his presence of mind in some degree.
+
+Since that day we have been like two who walk along on opposite banks
+of a widening stream--ever more and more divided.
+
+I have told no one of my despair. It is curious, but, little wifely as
+I feel towards him, there is something in me that keeps me back from
+the disloyalty of discussing my husband with other people.
+
+And it is not even as it might have been--this is what maddens me. _We
+are always at cross purposes._ Some wilful spirit wakes in me, at the
+very sound of his voice (always gentle and restrained, and echoing of
+past sadness); under his mild, tender look; at the every fresh sign of
+his perpetual watchful anxiety--I give him wayward answers, frowning
+greetings, sighs, pouts; I feel at times a savage desire to wound, to
+anger him, and as far as I dare venture I have ventured, yet could not
+rouse in him one spark, even of proper indignation.
+
+The word of the riddle lay in that broken exclamation of his at our
+wedding feast.
+
+"Cecile's child!"
+
+His wife, then, is only Cecile's child to him. I have failed when I
+thought to have conquered--and with the consciousness of failure have
+lost my power, even to the desire of regaining it. My dead mother is
+my rival; her shade rises between me and my husband's love. Could he
+have loved me, I might perhaps have loved him--and now--now I,
+_Molly_, I, shall perhaps go down to my grave without having known
+_love_.
+
+I thought I had found it on that day when he took me in his arms in
+that odious library--my heart melted when he so tenderly kissed my
+lips. And now the very remembrance of that moment angers me.
+Tenderness! Am I only a weak, helpless child that I can arouse no
+more from the man to whom I have given myself! I thought the gates of
+life had been opened to me--behold, they led me to a warm comfortable
+prison! And this is Molly's end!
+
+There is a light in Madeleine's eyes, a ring in her voice, a smile
+upon her lip. She has bloomed into a beauty that I could hardly have
+imagined, and this is because of this unknown whom she _loves_. She
+breathes the fulness of the flower; and by-and-by, no doubt, she will
+taste the fulness of the fruit; she will be complete; she will be fed
+and I am to starve. What is coming to me? I do not know myself. I feel
+that I could grudge her these favours, that I _do_ grudge them to her.
+I am sick at heart.
+
+And she--even she has proved false to me. I know that she meets this
+man. Adrian too knows it, and more of him than he will tell me; and he
+approves. I am treated like a child. The situation is strange upon
+every side; Madeleine loving a plebeian--a sailor, not a king's
+officer--stooping to stolen interviews! Adrian the punctilious, in
+whose charge Tanty solemnly left her, pretending ignorance, virtually
+condoning my sister's behaviour! For though he has distinctly refused
+to enlighten me or help me to enlighten myself, he could not, upon my
+taxing him with it, deny that he was in possession of facts ignored by
+me.
+
+Then there is Rupert paying now open court to this sly damsel--for the
+sake of her beautiful eyes, or for the beautiful eyes of her casket?
+And last and strangest, the incongruous friendship struck up this week
+between her and that most irritating of melancholy fools, Sophia. The
+latter bursts with suppressed importance, she launches glances of
+understanding at my sister; sighs, smiles (when Rupert's eye is not on
+her), starts mysteriously. One would say that Madeleine had made a
+confidant of her--only that it would be too silly. What? Make a
+confidant of that funereal mute and deny _me_ the truth! If I had the
+spirit for it I would set myself to discovering this grand mystery;
+and then let them beware! They would have none of Molly as a friend:
+perhaps she will yet prove one too many upon the other side.
+
+If I have grown bitter to Madeleine, it is her own fault; I would have
+been as true as steel to her if she had but trusted me. Now and
+again, when a hard word and look escape me, she gives me a great
+surprised, reproachful glance, as of a petted child that has been
+hurt; but mostly she scarcely seems to notice the change in
+me--Moonlike in dreamy serenity she sails along, wrapt in her own
+thoughts, and troubles no more over Molly's breaking her heart than
+over Rupert's determined suit. To me when she remembers me, she gives
+the old caresses, the old loving words; to him smiles and pretty
+courtesy. Oh, she keeps her secret well! But I came upon her in the
+woods alone, last Friday, fresh, no doubt, from her lover's arms;
+tremulous, smiling, yet tearful, with face dyed rose. And when to my
+last effort to attain the right of sisterhood she would only stammer
+the tell-tale words: _she had promised!_ and press her hot cheeks
+against mine, I thrust her from me, indignant, and from my affections
+for ever. Yet I hold her in my power, I could write to Tanty, put
+Rupert on the track.... Nay, I have not fallen so low as to become
+Rupert's accomplice yet!
+
+And so the days go on. Between my husband's increasing melancholy, my
+own mad regrets, Rupert's watchfulness, Madeleine's absorption and
+Sophia's twaddle, my brain reels. I feel sometimes as if I could
+scream aloud, as we all sit round the table, and I know that _this_ is
+the life that I am doomed to, and that the days may go on, go on thus,
+till I am old. Poor Murthering Moll the second! Why even the convent,
+where at least I knew nothing, would have been better! No, it is not
+possible! Something is still to come to me. Like a bird, my heart
+rises within me. I have the right to my life, the right to my
+happiness, say what they may.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE DAWN OF AN EVENTFUL DAY
+
+
+Rupert's behaviour at home, since his brother's wedding, had been, as
+even Molly was bound to admit to herself, beyond reproach in
+tactfulness, quiet dignity, and seeming cheerfulness.
+
+He abdicated from his position of trust at once and without the
+smallest reservation; wooed Madeleine with so great a discretion that
+her dreamy eyes saw in him only a kind relative; and he treated his
+sister-in-law, for all her freaks of bearing to him, with a perfect
+gentleness and gentility.
+
+At times Sir Adrian would watch him with great eyes. What meant this
+change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he
+had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his
+plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their
+true light to him, and awakened some innate generosity of feeling; or
+yet if--this with misgiving--it was love for pretty Madeleine that was
+working the marvel. If so, how would this proud rebellious nature bear
+another failure?
+
+Rupert spoke with unaffected regret about leaving Pulwick, at the same
+time, in spite of Molly's curling lip, giving it to be understood that
+his removal was only a matter of time.
+
+For the ostensible purpose, indeed, of finding himself another home he
+made, in the beginning of March, the second month after his brother's
+marriage, several absences which lasted a couple of days or more, and
+from which he would return with an eager sparkle in his eye, almost a
+brightness on his olive cheek, to sit beside Madeleine's embroidery
+frame, pulling her silks and snipping with her scissors, and talking
+gaily, persistently, with such humour and colour as at last to draw
+that young lady's attention from far off musings to his words with
+smiles and laughter.
+
+Meanwhile, Molly would sit unoccupied, brooding, watching them, now
+fiercely, from under her black brows, now scornfully, now
+abstractedly; the while she nibbled at her delicate finger-nails, or
+ruthlessly dragged them along the velvet arms of her chair with the
+gesture of a charming, yet distracted, cat.
+
+Sir Adrian would first tramp the rooms with unwitting restlessness,
+halting, it might be, beside his wife to strive to engage her into
+speech with him; and, failing, would betake himself at length with a
+heavy sigh to solitude; or, yet, he would sit down to his organ--the
+new one in the great hall which had been put up since his marriage, at
+Molly's own gay suggestion, during their brief betrothal--and music
+would peal out upon them till Lady Landale's stormy heart could bear
+it no longer, and she would rise in her turn, fly to the shelter of
+her room and roll her head in the pillows to stifle the sound of sobs,
+crying from the depths of her soul against heaven's injustice; anon
+railing in a frenzy of impotent anger against the musician, who had
+such passion in him and gave it to his music alone.
+
+During Rupert's absences that curious intimacy which Molly had
+contemptuously noted between her sister and sister-in-law displayed
+itself in more conspicuous manner.
+
+Miss Landale's long sallow visage sported its airs of mystery and
+importance, its languishing leers undisguisedly, so long as her
+brother Rupert's place was empty; and though her visits to the
+rector's grave were now almost quotidian, she departed upon them with
+looks of wrapt importance, and, returning, sought Madeleine's chamber
+(when that maiden did not herself stroll out to meet her in the
+woods), her countenance invariably wreathed with suppressed, yet
+triumphant smiles, instead of the old self-assertive dejection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The 15th of March of that year was to be a memorable day in the lives
+of so many of those who then either dwelt in Pulwick, or had dealings
+on that wide estate.
+
+Miss Landale, who had passed the midnight hour in poring over the
+delightful wickedness of Lara, and, upon at length retiring to her
+pillow, had had a sentimental objection to shutting out the romantic
+light of the moon by curtain or shutter, was roused into wakefulness
+soon after dawn by a glorious white burst of early sunshine. As a
+rule, the excellent soul liked to lie abed till the last available
+moment; but that morning she was up with the sun. When dressed she
+drew a letter from a secret casket with manifold precautions as though
+she were surrounded with prying eyes, and, placing it in her reticule,
+hastened forth to seek the little lonely disused churchyard by the
+shore. She afterwards remarked that she could never forget in what
+agitation of spirits and with what strange presentiment of evil she
+was led to this activity at so unwonted an hour. The truth was,
+however, that Miss Landale tripped along through the damp wooded path
+as gaily as if she were going to visit her living lover instead of his
+granite tomb; and that in lieu of evil omens a hundred fantastically
+sentimental thoughts floated through her brain, as merrily and
+irresponsibly as the motes in the long shafts of brilliancy that
+cleaved, sword-like through the mists, upon her from out the east.
+Visions of Madeleine's face when she would learn before breakfast that
+Sophia had actually been to the churchyard already; visions of whom
+she might meet there; rehearsals of a romantic scene upon that
+hallowed spot, of her own blushes, her knowing looks, her playful
+remonstrances, with touching allusions to one who had loved and lost,
+herself, and who thus, &c. &c.
+
+Miss Landale tossed her long faded ringlets quite coquettishly, turned
+one slim bony hand with coy gesture before her approving eyes. Then
+she patted her reticule and hurried on with fresh zest, enjoying the
+tart whisper of the wind against her well bonneted face, the exquisite
+virginal beauty of the earth in the early spring of the day and of the
+year.
+
+As she stepped out of the shadow of the trees, her heart leaped and
+then almost stood still as she perceived in the churchyard lying below
+her, beside the great slab of granite which lay over the remains of
+her long-departed beloved one, the figure of a man, whose back was
+turned towards her, and whose erect outline was darkly silhouetted
+against the low, dazzling light.
+
+Then a simper of exceeding archness crept upon Miss Landale's lips;
+and with as genteel an amble as the somewhat precipitate nature of the
+small piece of ground that yet divided her from the graveyard would
+allow, she proceeded on her way.
+
+At the click of the lych-gate under her hand the man turned sharply
+round and looked at her without moving further. An open letter
+fluttered in his hand.
+
+His face was still against the light, and Miss Landale's eyes had wept
+so many tears by day and night that her sight was none of the best.
+She dropped a very elegant curtsey, simpered, drew nearer, and threw a
+fetching glance upwards. Then her shrill scream rang through the still
+morning air and frightened the birds in the ruined church.
+
+"You are early this morning, Sophia," said Mr. Landale.
+
+Sophia sank upon the tombstone. To say that she was green or yellow
+would ill describe the ghastliness of the tint that suffused her
+naturally bilious countenance; still speechless, she made a frantic
+plunge towards the great urn that adorned the head of the grave. Mr.
+Landale looked up from his reading again with a quiet smile.
+
+"I shall have done in one minute," he remarked, "It is a fine
+production, egad! full of noble protestations and really high-sounding
+words. And then, my dear Sophia, you can take charge of it, and I
+shall be quite ready for the other, which I presume you have as usual
+with you--ah, in your bag! Thanks."
+
+"Rupert?" ejaculated the unfortunate lady, first in agonised query,
+and next in agonised reproach, clasping her hands over the precious
+reticule--"Rupert!"
+
+Mr. Landale neatly folded the sheet he had been reading, moistened
+with his tongue a fresh wafer which he drew from his waistcoat pocket,
+and, deftly placing it upon the exact spot from which the original one
+had been removed, handed the letter to his sister with a little bow.
+But, as with a gesture of horror the latter refused to take it, he
+shrugged his shoulders and tossed it carelessly into the urn.
+
+"Now give me Madeleine's," he said, peremptorily.
+
+Rolling upwards eyes of appeal the unhappy Iris called upon heaven to
+witness that she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her
+solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fictitious flame of courage
+withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her
+brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight of his face
+bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between
+his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of insolent determination, she
+allowed him, unresisting, to take the bag from her side; protesting
+against the breach of faith only by her moans and the inept wringing
+of her hands.
+
+Mr. Landale opened the bag, tossed with cynical contempt upon the flat
+tombstone, sundry precious relics of the mouldering bones within, and
+discovered at length in an inner pocket a dainty flower-scented note.
+Then he flung down the bag and proceeded with the same deliberation to
+open the letter and peruse its delicate flowing handwriting.
+
+"Upon my word," he vowed, "I think this is the prettiest she has
+written yet! What a sweet soul it is! Listen, Sophia: 'You praise me
+for my trust in you--but, Jack, dear love, my trust is so much a part
+of my love that the one would not exist without the other. Therefore,
+do not give me any credit, for you know I could not help loving you.'
+Poor heart! poor confiding child! Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Landale as if to
+himself, carefully proceeding the while with his former manoeuvres
+to end by placing the violated missive, to all appearance intact,
+beside its fellow, "we have here a rank fellow, a foul traitor to deal
+with!"
+
+Then, wheeling round to his sister, and fixing her with piercing eyes:
+"Sophia," he exclaimed, in tones of sternest rebuke, "I am surprised
+at you. I am, indeed!"
+
+Miss Landale raised mesmerised, horror-stricken eyes upon him; his
+dark utterances had already filled her foolish soul with blind dread.
+He sat down beside her, and once more enclosed the thin arm in his
+light but warning grasp.
+
+"Sophia," he said solemnly, "you little guess the magnitude of the
+harm you have been doing; the frightful fate you have been preparing
+for an innocent and trusting girl; the depth of the villainy you are
+aiding and abetting. You have been acting, as I say, in ignorance,
+without realising the awful consequences of your folly and duplicity.
+But that you should have chosen _this_ sacred place for such illicit
+and reprehensible behaviour; that by the grave of this worthy man who
+loved you, by the stones chosen and paid for by my fraternal
+affection, you should plot and scheme to deceive your family, and
+help to lead a confiding and beautiful creature to ruin, I should
+never have expected from _you_, Sophia--Sophia!"
+
+Miss Landale collapsed into copious weeping.
+
+"I am sure, brother," she sobbed, "I never meant any harm. I am sure
+nobody loves the dear girl better than I do. I am sure I never wished
+to hide anything from you!--Only--they told me--they trusted me--they
+made me promise--Oh brother, what terrible things you have been
+saying! I cannot believe that so handsome a young gentleman can mean
+anything wrong--I only wish you could have seen him with her, he is so
+devoted--it is quite beautiful."
+
+"Alas--the tempter always makes himself beautiful in the eyes of the
+tempted! Sophia, we can yet save this unhappy child, but who knows how
+soon it may be too late!--You can still repair some of the wrong you
+have done, but you can only do so by the most absolute obedience to
+me.... Believe me, I know the truth about this vile adventurer, this
+Captain Jack Smith."
+
+"Good Heavens!" cried Sophia, "Rupert, do not tell me, lest I swoon
+away, that he is married already?"
+
+"The man, my dear, whose plots to compromise and entangle a lovely
+girl you have favoured, is a villain of the deepest dye--a pirate."
+
+"Oh!" shivered Sophia with fascinated misery--thrilling recollections
+of last night's reading shooting through her frame.
+
+"A smuggler, a criminal, an outlaw in point of fact," pursued Mr.
+Landale. "He merely seeks Madeleine for her money--has a wife in every
+port, no doubt--"
+
+Miss Landale did not swoon; but her brother's watchful eye was
+satisfied with the effect produced, and he went on in a well modulated
+tone of suppressed emotion:
+
+"And after breaking her heart, ruining her body and soul, dragging her
+to the foulest depths he would have cast her away like a dead
+weed--perhaps murdered her! Sophia, what would your feelings be then?"
+
+A hard red spot had risen to each of Miss Landale's cheek bones; her
+tears had dried up under the fevered glow.
+
+"We believed," she said trembling in every limb, "that he was working
+on a mission to the French court--"
+
+"Faugh--" cried Mr. Landale, contemptuously, "smuggling French brandy
+for our English drunkards and traitorous intelligence for our French
+enemies!"
+
+"Such a handsome young man, so gentlemanly, such an air!" maundered
+the miserable woman between her chattering teeth. "It was quite
+accidental that we met, Rupert, quite accidental, I assure you.
+Madeleine--poor dear girl--came down with me here, I wanted to show
+her the g-grave----" here Sophia gurgled convulsively, remembering her
+brother's cruel reproaches.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She came here with me, and as I was kneeling down, planting crocuses
+just here, Rupert, and she was standing _there_, a young man suddenly
+leaped over the wall, and fell at her feet. He had not seen
+_me_--Alas, it reminded me of my own happiness! And he was so
+well-dressed, so courteous--and seemed such a perfect gentleman--and
+he took off his hat so gracefully I am sure I never could have
+believed it of him. And they confided in me and I promised
+by--by--those sacred ashes to keep their secret. I remembered of
+course what Tanty had said in her letter, and quite understood he was
+the young gentleman in question--but they explained to me how she was
+under a wrong impression altogether. He said that the instant he laid
+eyes upon me, he saw I had a feeling heart, and he knew they could
+trust me. He spoke so nobly, Rupert, and said: What better place could
+they have for their meetings than one consecrated to such faithful
+love as this? It was so beautiful--and oh dear! I can't but think
+there is some mistake." And Miss Landale again wrung her hands.
+
+"But I have proof!" thundered her brother, "convincing proof, of what
+I have told you. At this very moment the man who would marry
+Madeleine, forsooth, runs the risk of imprisonment--nay, of the
+gallows! You may have thought it strange that I should have opened and
+read letters not addressed to me, but with misfortune hanging over a
+beloved object I did not pause to consider myself. My only thought was
+to save her."
+
+Here Mr. Landale looked very magnanimous, and thrust his fingers as he
+spoke through the upper buttons of his waistcoat with the gesture
+which traditionally accompanies such sentiments: these cheap effects
+proved generally irresistible with Sophia. But his personality had
+paled before the tremendous drama into which the poor romance-loving
+soul was so suddenly plunged, and in which in spite of all her woe she
+found an awful kind of fascination. Failing to read any depth of
+admiration in her roving eye, Rupert promptly abandoned
+grandiloquence, and resuming his usual voice and manner, he dropped
+his orders upon her heat of agitation like a cool relentless stream
+under which her last protest fizzed, sputtered, and went out.
+
+"I mean to unmask the gay lover at my own time and in my own way;
+never fear, I shall deal gently with _her_. You will now take this
+letter of his and put it in your bag, leaving hers in that curious
+post-office of yours."
+
+"Yes, Rupert."
+
+"And you will give his letter to her at once when you go in without
+one word of having met me."
+
+"Y ... yes, Rupert."
+
+"As you are too great a fool to be trusted if you once begin to talk,
+you will have a headache for the rest of the day and go to bed in a
+dark room."
+
+"Y ... yes, Rupert."
+
+"You will moreover swear to me, now, that you will not speak of our
+interview here till I give you leave; say I swear I will not."
+
+"I swear I will not."
+
+"So help me God!"
+
+"Oh, Rupert."
+
+"_So help me God_, you fool!"
+
+Sophia's lips murmured an inaudible something; but there was such
+complete submission in every line and curve of her figure, in the very
+droop of her ringlets and the helpless appeal of her gaze that Rupert
+was satisfied. He assisted her to arise from her tombstone, bundled
+the clerical love-tokens back into the bag, duly placed Captain Jack's
+letter in the inner pocket, and was about to present her with his arm
+to conduct her homewards, when he caught sight of a little ragged
+urchin peeping through the bars of the gate, and seemingly in the very
+act of making a mysterious signal in the direction of Miss Landale's
+unconscious figure.
+
+Rupert stared hard at the ruddy, impudent face, which instantly
+assumed an appearance of the most defiant unconcern, while its owner
+began to devote his energies to shying stones at an invisible rook
+upon the old church tower with great nicety of aim.
+
+"Sophia," said her brother in a low tone, "go to the gate: that boy
+wants to speak to you. Go and see what he wants and return to me."
+
+Miss Landale gasped, gazed at her brother as if she thought him mad,
+looked round at the little boy, coloured violently, then meeting
+Rupert's eye again staggered off without a word of protest.
+
+Rupert, shaken with silent laughter, humming a little song to himself,
+stooped to pick a couple of tender spring flowers from the border
+beside the grave, and after slipping them into a button-hole of his
+many caped overcoat, stood looking out over the stretch of land and
+sea, where Scarthey rose like a dream against the sparkle of the water
+and the exquisite blue of the sky.
+
+Presently rapid panting breaths and a shuffling rustle of petticoats
+behind him informed him of his sister's return.
+
+"So you are there, my dear," he said loudly. "One of your little
+fishing friends from the village, I suppose--a Shearman, unless I am
+mistaken. Yes, a Shearman; I thought so. Well, shall we return home
+now? They will be wondering what has become of us. Pray take my arm."
+Then beneath his breath, seeing that words were struggling to Sophia's
+lips, "Hold your tongue."
+
+The small ragged boy watched their departure with a derisive grin, and
+set off at a brisk canter down to the shore, jingling some silver coin
+in his pocket with relish as he went.
+
+When Rupert and Sophia had reached the wood the former paused.
+
+"Letter or message?"
+
+"Oh, Rupert, it was a letter; had I not better destroy it?"
+
+"Give it to me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A hasty scrawl, it seemed, folded anyhow. Only two or three lines, yet
+Rupert conned them for a curiously long time.
+
+"My darling," it ran, "meet me to-day in the ruins at noon. A
+misfortune has happened to me, but if you trust me, all will still be
+well.--Your Jack." Mr. Landale at length handed it back to Sophia.
+
+"You will give it to Madeleine with the other," he said briefly.
+"Mention the fact of the messenger having brought it." And then in a
+terrible bass he added, "And remember your oath!"
+
+She trembled; but as he walked onwards through the wood, his lips were
+smiling, and his eyes were alight with triumph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE DAY: MORNING
+
+
+The appointment of a regular light-keeper at Scarthey, intended to
+release Rene and old Margery from their exile, had been delayed so as
+to suit the arrangement which was to leave for a time the island
+domain of Sir Adrian at the disposal of Captain Jack. Meanwhile
+Moggie's presence greatly mitigated the severity of her husband's
+separation from his master.
+
+On his side the sailor was in radiant spirits. All worked as he could
+wish, and Sir Adrian's marriage, besides being a source of unselfish
+satisfaction, was, with regard to his own prospects, an unexpected
+help; for, his expedition concluded, he would now be able in the most
+natural manner to make his appearance at Pulwick, an honoured guest of
+the master, under the pride of his own name. And for the rest, hope
+unfolded warm-coloured visions indeed.
+
+During the weeks which had elapsed since Sir Adrian's departure,
+Captain Jack's visits to the island had been fitful and more or less
+secret--He always came and left at night. But as it was understood
+that the place was his to be used and enjoyed as he thought best,
+neither his sudden appearances with the usual heavy travelling-bag,
+nor his long absences excited any disturbance in the arcadian life led
+by Rene between his buxom young wife and the old mother--as the
+good-humoured husband now termed the scolding dame.
+
+A little sleeping closet had been prepared and allotted to the use of
+the peripatetic guest in one of the disused rooms when Rene's own
+accommodation under the light tower had been enlarged for the new
+requirements of his matrimonial status. And so Monsieur the Captain
+(in Rene's inveterate outlandish phraseology) found his liberty of
+action complete. Both the women's curiosity was allayed, and all
+tendency to prying into the young stranger's mysterious purposes amid
+their seclusion condemned beforehand, by Rene's statement: that
+Monsieur the Captain was a trusted friend of the master--one indeed
+(and here the informant thought fit to stretch a point, if but
+slightly) to whom the Lord of Pulwick was indebted, in bygone days,
+for life and freedom.
+
+Except when weather-bound, a state of things which at that time of
+year occurred not unfrequently, Rene journeyed daily as far as the
+Hall, ostensibly to report progress and take possible orders, but
+really to gratify himself with the knowledge that all was well with
+the master.
+
+About the breakfast hour, upon this 15th of March, as Sir Adrian was
+discussing with the bailiff sundry matters of importance to the
+estate, a tap came to the door, which he recognised at once as the
+Frenchman's own long accustomed mode of self-announcement.
+
+Since he had assumed the reins of government, the whilom recluse had
+discovered that the management of such a wide property was indeed no
+sinecure; and moreover--as his brother, who certainly understood such
+matters in a thoroughly practical manner, had warned him--that a
+person of his own philosophical, over-benevolent and abstracted turn
+of mind, was singularly ill-fitted for the task. But a strong sense of
+duty and a determination to act by it will carry a man a long way. He
+had little time for dreaming and this was perhaps a providential
+dispensation, for Sir Adrian's musings had now lost much of the grave
+placidity born of his long, peaceful residence in his Thelema of
+Scarthey. The task was long and arduous; on sundry occasions he was
+forced to consult his predecessor on the arcana of landed estate
+government, which he did with much simplicity, thereby giving Mr.
+Landale, not only inwardly mocking satisfaction, but several
+opportunities for the display of his self-effacing loyalty and
+superior capacities.
+
+The business of this day was of sufficiently grave moment to make
+interruption unwelcome--being nothing less than requests from a number
+of tenants to the "Good Sir Adrian," "the real master come to his own
+again"--for a substantial reduction of rent; a step towards which the
+master's heart inclined, but which his sober reason condemned as
+preposterous. But Rene's countenance, as he entered, betrayed news of
+such import that Sir Adrian instantly adjourned the matter on hand,
+and, when the bailiff had retired, anxiously turned to the new-comer,
+who stood in the doorway mopping his steaming brow.
+
+"Well, Renny," said he, "what is wrong? Nothing about your wife--?"
+
+"No, your honour," answered the man, "your honour is very good.
+Nothing wrong with our Moggie. But the captain.... I ran all the way
+from the Shearmans."
+
+"No accident there, I hope."
+
+"I fear there is, your honour. The captain--he has been attacked this
+morning."
+
+"Not wounded--!" exclaimed Sir Adrian. "Not dead, Renny?"
+
+"Oh no, your honour, well. But he has, I fear, killed one of the
+men ... the revenue men--"
+
+Then, seeing his master start aghast, he went on rapidly;
+
+"At least he is very bad--but what for did he come to make the spy
+upon our island? We have left him at the Shearmans--the mother
+Shearman will nurse him. But the captain, your honour"--the speaker
+lowered his voice to a whisper and advanced a step, looking
+round--"that is the worst of all, the captain has turned mad, I
+believe--Instead of going off with his ship and his crew, (they are
+safe out to sea, as they should be) he remains at Scarthey. Yes--in
+your honour's rooms. He is walking up and down and clutching his hair
+and talking to himself, like a possessed. And when I respectfully
+begged him to consider that it was of the last folly his having rested
+instead of saving himself, I might as well have tried to reason a
+mule. And so, knowing that your honour would never forgive me if
+misfortune arrived, I never drew breath till I reached here to tell
+you. If his honour would come himself he might be able to make Mr. his
+friend hear reason--Your honour will run no risk, for it is only
+natural that you should go to the peel after what has occurred--but if
+you cannot get Mr. the captain to depart this night, there will arrive
+to us misfortune--it is I who tell you so."
+
+"I will go back with you, at once," said Sir Adrian, rising much
+perturbed. "Wait here while I speak to Lady Landale."
+
+Molly was standing by the great log fire in the hall, yawning fit to
+dislocate her pretty jaws, and teasing the inert form of old Jim, as
+he basked before the flame, with the tip of her pretty foot. She
+allowed her eyes to rest vaguely upon her husband as he approached,
+but neither interrupted her idle occupation nor endeavoured to
+suppress the yawn that again distended her rosy lips.
+
+He looked at her for a moment in silence; then laying a hand upon her
+shoulder, said gently: "My child, I am called back to Scarthey and
+must leave instantly. You--you will be careful of yourself--amuse
+yourself during my absence--it may be for two or three days."
+
+Lady Landale raised her black brows with a fine air of interrogation,
+and then gazed down at the old dog till the lashes swept her cheek,
+while a mocking dimple just peeped from the corner of her mouth and
+was gone again. "Oh yes," she answered drily, "I shall take endless
+care of myself and amuse myself wildly. You need have no fear of
+that."
+
+Sir Adrian sighed, and his hand fell listless from her shoulder.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said, and stooped it seemed hesitatingly to lay
+his lips between the little dark tendrils of hair that danced upon her
+forehead. But with a sudden movement she twitched her face away.
+"Despite all the varied delights which bind me to Pulwick," she
+remarked carelessly, "the charms of Sophia and Rupert's company, and
+all the other _amusements_--I have a fancy to visit your old owl's
+nest again--so we need not waste sentiment upon a tender parting, need
+we?"
+
+Sir Adrian's cheek flushed, and with a sudden light in his eyes he
+glanced at her quickly; but his countenance faded into instant
+melancholy again, at sight of her curling lip and cold amused gaze.
+
+"Will you not have me?" she asked.
+
+"If you will come--you will be welcome--as welcome," his voice shook a
+little, "as my wife must always be wherever I am."
+
+"Ah--oh," yawned Lady Landale, "(excuse me pray--it's becoming quite
+an infirmity) so that is settled. I hope it will storm to-night, that
+the wind will blow and howl--and then I snuggle in the feather bed in
+that queer old room and try and fancy I am happy Molly de Savenaye
+again."
+
+Adrian's lip quivered; yet in a second or two he spoke lightly. "I do
+not want to hurry you, but I have to leave at once." Then struck by a
+sudden thought, by that longing to bring pleasure to others which was
+always working in him, "Why not let Madeleine come with you too?" he
+asked, "she could share your room, and--it would be a pleasure to her
+I think." He sighed as he thought of the trouble in store for the
+lovers.
+
+Lady Landale grew red to the roots of her hair and shot a look of
+withering scorn at her husband's unconscious face. "It would be
+charming," she said, sarcastically, "but after all I don't know that I
+care to go so much--oh, don't stare at me like that, for goodness'
+sake! A woman may change her mind, I suppose--at least, in a trifle
+here and there if she can't as regards the whole comfort of her
+life.--Well, well, perhaps I shall go--this afternoon--later--you can
+start now. I shall follow--I can always get a boat at the Shearmans.
+And I shall bring Madeleine, of course--it is most kind and thoughtful
+of you to suggest it. _Mon Dieu_, I have a husband in a thousand!"
+
+She swept him a splendid curtsey, kissed her hand at him, and then
+burst out laughing at the pale bewilderment of his face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Sir Adrian returned to the morning-room, he found Rene, half
+hidden behind the curtain folds, peering curiously out of the window
+which overlooked the avenue. On his master's entrance, the man turned
+his head, placed his finger on his lip, and beckoned him to approach.
+"If I may take the liberty," said he with subdued voice, "will his
+honour come and look out, without showing himself?"
+
+And he pointed to a group, consisting of Mr. Landale and two men in
+blue jackets and cockaded hats of semi-naval appearance, now slowly
+approaching the house. Mr. Landale was listening with bent head,
+slightly averted, to the smaller of his two companions--a stout
+square-looking fellow, who spoke with evident volubility, whilst the
+other followed defferentially one pace in rear. Presently the trio
+halted, a few yards from the entrance, and Mr. Landale, cutting
+designs upon the sand with the end of his stick in a meditative way,
+appeared to be giving directions at some length, on the conclusion of
+which the two men, touching their hats with much respect, departed
+together, while the magistrate pensively proceeded on his way to the
+house.
+
+"Those, your honour," said Rene, "were with him that was struck in the
+fight this morning. It was I rowed them over, together with the
+wounded. I left them at the Shearmans, and slipped away myself to
+carry the news. If I might take upon myself to advise, it would be
+better if your honour would come with me now, at once, for fear Mr.
+Landale should delay us by questioning me--Mr. Landale being a
+magistrate, as I heard these men say; and Moggie has assured me that
+he always arranges himself for knowing when I arrive from the
+island--ever since the day when the demoiselles had just come, and I
+found it out. Ever since then he has not liked me, Mr. Landale. Come
+away, your honour, before he finds out I have been here to-day."
+
+Following upon this advice, which he found to the point, Sir Adrian
+left his house by a back passage; and, through a side garden, found
+his way to the coast and to the fishing village.
+
+The wounded man who had not recovered consciousness, lay in the
+brother Shearman's hut, as Rene had said, surrounded by such uncouth
+attendance as the rude fisherfolk could dispense. After giving
+directions for the summoning of medical aid and the removal, if it
+should prove advisable, of the patient to the Hall, but without a
+single comment upon the unfortunate occurrence, Sir Adrian then took
+the road of the peel.
+
+During the transit, walking rapidly by his master's side, across the
+now bare causeway, Rene gave his account of events.
+
+The captain (he related) after three days' absence had re-appeared the
+night before the last, and requested him to warn the womankind not to
+be alarmed if they heard, as no doubt they would, strange noises on
+the beach at night. He was, said he, storing provisions and water for
+the forthcoming journey, and the water in the well was so excellent
+that he had determined to take in his store. Of course his honour
+understood well that Rene did not concern himself in these matters;
+but that was the explanation he conveyed to his wife, lest she should
+be alarmed and wonder. As for the old mother, she was too deaf to be
+awakened out of sleep by anything short of the trumpet of the last
+judgment.
+
+As announced, there had been during the night the noise of a party of
+men landing, of the hoisting and rolling of barrels--a great
+_remue-menage_ altogether--and the next morning, that was yesterday,
+the captain had slept sound in his bunk till late.
+
+During several hours of the following day, he had some secret work to
+do in the caves of which Rene had shown the ins and outs, and whilst
+so engaged had requested that watch should be kept from the
+light-tower, and message sent by some arranged signal should any one
+approach the island. But no one had come near. Whilst at his post, the
+watcher had heard at different times the sound of hammering; and when
+the captain had come to relieve him, the good gentleman was much
+begrimed with dust and hot with work, but appeared in excellent
+humour. In the castle, he sang and whistled for joyfulness, and made
+jokes with Moggie, all in his kind way, saying that if he were not to
+be married himself soon, he would feel quite indignant and jealous at
+the happiness of such a rascal as her husband.
+
+Oh! he was happy--Monsieur the Captain--he had brought Moggie a
+beautiful shawl; and to Rene, he had given a splendid watch, telling
+him to keep count of the hours of his unmerited bliss. Alas, this
+morning all had been different indeed! The captain looked another man;
+his face was as white as linen. The very look of him would have told
+any one that a misfortune had occurred. Rene did not quite understand
+it himself, but this is what had taken place:
+
+The captain had left Scarthey on foot late in the evening, and when he
+returned (he was not long away) he bade Rene again not to mind what he
+heard during the night; and, in faith, once more there had been a real
+noise of the devil; men coming to and fro, a deal of rowing on the
+water, away and back again, in the early night and then once more
+before dawn.
+
+"But I was not unquiet," said Rene, "I knew they had come for the
+remainder of what Mr. Smith was pleased to call his provisions. From
+our room I could see by the light on the stairs that the lamp was
+burning well, and Moggie slept like a child, so sound, she never
+moved. Just before the rising sun, I had got up and put out the lamp,
+and was going to bed again, when there came thumps of the devil at the
+lower door. Well knowing that the captain had his own way of
+entering--for he had spent many days in finding out all sorts of droll
+passages in the ruins--I was quite seized; and as I hurried down, the
+thumps came again and great cries for the lighthouse-keeper. And, your
+honour, when I unbarred the door, there was a man in uniform whom I
+did not know, and he asked me, grumbling, if I knew of the pretty
+doings on the beach, whilst I slept like pig, he said--Of course I
+made the astonished as his honour may imagine: I knew nothing, had
+heard nothing, though my heart was beating like to burst not knowing
+what was coming. Then he ordered me to lend a hand and bring a ladder
+to carry away one of his men who had been murdered by the smugglers,
+he said. And there, on the sands, in front of the small cave was
+another man, in a blue coat too, watching over the body of one who was
+stretched out, quite tranquil, his face covered with blood and his
+eyes closed. They are gone, says the gross man. And I was glad, as
+your honour may well think, to see the chaloupe full of the captain's
+men rowing hard towards the vessel. She had just come out of the river
+mouth and was doubling round the banks. We carried the man on his
+ladder to the kitchen and we and the women did all we could, but he
+remained like a log. So after a time the two men (who said they had
+come along the dyke soon after midnight, on foot, as they thought it
+would be more secret, and had watched all night in the bent) wanted to
+eat and drink and rest. They had missed their game, the big man said;
+they had been sent to find out what sort of devil's tricks were being
+played on in the island unbeknown to Sir Adrian;--but it was the
+devil's luck altogether, for the smugglers had slipped away and would
+not be seen in this part of the world again. That is the way the fat
+man spoke. The other had nothing to say, but swallowed our bacon and
+our beer as if he did not care. And then, your honour, they told me I
+should have to lend them the yawl to go on land, and go myself to
+help, and take the body with us. And as he was speaking, I saw Moggie
+the wife, who had been backwards and forwards serving them, looking at
+me very straight but without blowing a word, as if she had fear. And
+all at once I felt there was something on foot. So I drew the men more
+beer and said I would see after the yawl. Outside the door the wife
+whispered: 'Upstairs, quick! Renny,' and she herself whisked back into
+the kitchen so that she should not cause suspicion to those
+others--Ah, your honour, that is a woman!"
+
+"Well, well," interrupted his master, anxiously.
+
+"Well, I went upstairs, four by four; and there, in your honour's
+room, without an attempt to conceal himself (when any moment it might
+have entered into those brigands' heads downstairs to search the
+place), there was Monsieur the Captain, raging up and down, like a
+wolf in cage, as I had the honour to describe before. No wonder Moggie
+was afraid for him. A woman is quick to feel danger ahead. He looked
+at me as if he did not know me, his face all unmade. 'You know what
+has happened;' he says. 'Am I not the most unfortunate...? All is
+lost.' 'With respect,' says I; 'nothing is lost so long as life is
+safe, but it is not a good thing Monsieur the Captain that you are
+here, like this, when you should be on your good ship as many miles
+away as she can make. Are you mad?' to him I say, and he to me, 'I
+think I am.' 'At least let me hide you,' I beg of him, 'I know of many
+beautiful places,' and so for the matter of that does he. But it was
+all lost trouble. At length he sits down at the table and begins to
+write, and his look brightens: 'You _can_ help me, my good friend,' he
+says; 'I have a hope left--who knows--who knows,'--and he writes a few
+lines like an enraged and folds them and kisses the billet. 'Find
+means,' says he, 'Rene, to get Johnny, the Shearman boy, to take this
+to the old churchyard and place it in the place he knows of; or,
+better still, should he chance upon Miss Landale to give it to her. He
+is a sharp rogue,' says he, 'and I can trust his wits; but should you
+not find him, dear Rene, you must do the commission for me yourself.
+Now go--go,' he cries, and pushes me to the stairs. And, as I dared
+remain no more, I had to leave him. Of course Monsieur the Captain has
+not been here all this time without telling me of his hopes, and it is
+clear that it is to bid farewell to Mademoiselle Madeleine that he is
+playing with his life. It is as ill reasoning with a lover as a
+lunatic: they are the same thing, _Ma foi_, but I trust to your honour
+to bring him to his senses if any one can. And so, to continue, I went
+down and I told the men in blue the boat was ready, we carried the
+body; I left them at the Shearmans, as your honour knows. I found
+Johnny and gave him the letter; he knew all about what to do, it
+seemed. And then I came straight to the Hall."
+
+"It is indeed a miserable business!" said Sir Adrian.
+
+Rene heaved a great sigh of sympathy, as he noticed the increasing
+concern on his master's face.
+
+"You heard them mention my brother's name?" inquired the latter, after
+following the train of his misgivings for a few moments. "You have
+reason to think that Mr. Landale knew of these men's errand; other
+reason, I mean, than having seen them with him just now?"
+
+Rene's quick mind leaped at the meaning of the question:
+
+"Yes, your honour. 'Mr. Landale will want to know of this,' says the
+fat one; 'though it is too late,' he says." And Rene added ruefully:
+"I have great fear. The captain is not at the end of his pains, if Mr.
+Landale is ranged against him!"
+
+Such was also Sir Adrian's thought. But he walked on for a time in
+silence; and, having reached Scarthey, rapidly made his way into the
+peel.
+
+Captain Jack was still pacing the room much as Rene had described when
+Sir Adrian entered upon him. The young man turned with a transient
+look of surprise to the new-comer, then waved away the proffered hand
+with a bitter smile.
+
+"You do not know," he said, "who it is you would shake hands with--an
+outlaw--a criminal. Ah, you have heard? Then Renny, I suppose, has
+told you."
+
+"Yes," groaned the other, holding his friend by both shoulders and
+gazing sorrowfully into the haggard face, "the man may die--oh, Jack,
+Jack, how could you be so rash?"
+
+"I can't say how it all happened," answered Captain Jack, falling to
+his walk to and fro again in the extremity of his distress, and ever
+and anon mopping his brow. "I felt such security in this place. All
+was loaded but the last barrel, when, all of a sudden, from God knows
+where, the man sprang on me and thrust his dark lantern in my face.
+'It is Smith,' I heard him say. I do believe now that he only wanted
+to identify me. No man in his senses could have dared to try and
+arrest me surrounded by my six men. But I had no time to think then,
+Adrian. I imagined the fellow was leading a general attack.... If that
+last barrel was seized the whole secret was out; and that meant ruin.
+Wholesale failure seemed to menace me suddenly in the midst of my
+success. I had a handspike in my hand with which I had been helping to
+roll the kegs. I struck with it, on the spur of the moment; the man
+went down on the spot, with a groan. As he fell I leaped back, ready
+for the next. I called out, 'Stretchers, lads; they want to take your
+captain?' My lads gathered round me at once. But there was silence;
+not another creature to be seen or heard. They set to work to get that
+last blessed bit of cargo, the cause of all the misery, on board with
+the rest; while I stood in the growing dawn, looking down at the
+motionless figure and at the blood trickling into the sand, trying to
+think, to settle what to do, and only conscious of one thing: the
+intense wish that I could change places with my victim. Can you
+wonder, Adrian, that my brain was reeling? You who know all, all this
+means to me, can you wonder that I could not leave this shore--even
+though my life depended on it--without seeing her again! Curwen, my
+mate, came up to me at last, and I woke up to some sort of reason at
+the idea that they, the crew and the ship, must be removed from the
+immediate danger. But the orders I gave must have seemed those of a
+madman: I told him to sail right away but to double back in time to
+have the schooner round again at twelve noon to-day, and then to send
+the gig's crew to pick me up on Pulwick sand. 'Life and death,' said I
+to him, and he, brave fellow, 'Ay, ay, sir,' as if it was the most
+simple thing in the world, and off with him without another word."
+
+"What imprudence, what imprudence!" murmured Sir Adrian.
+
+"Who knows? None will believe that I have not seized the opportunity
+of making my escape with the others. The height of imprudence may
+become the height of security. I have as yet no plan--but it will
+come. My luck shall not fail me now! who knows: nothing perhaps is
+damaged but an excise man's crown. Thank heaven, the wind cannot fail
+us to-day."
+
+"But, meanwhile," urged Sir Adrian, quite unconvinced, highly
+disturbed, "that treasure on board.... I know what has been your
+motive, Jack, but indeed it is all nothing short of insanity, positive
+insanity. Can you trust your men?"
+
+"I would trust them with my own secrets, willingly enough; but not
+with those of other people. So they do not know what I have in those
+barrels. Four thousand golden guineas in each...! No, the temptation
+would be too terrible for the poor lads. Not a soul knows that, beyond
+you and me. Curwen has charge of the cargo, such as it is. But I can
+answer for it none of them will dream of tampering with the casks.
+They are picked men, sober, trusty; who have fought side by side with
+me. I am their best friend. They are mine, body and soul, I believe.
+They do know there is some risk in the business, but they trust me.
+They are sure of treble pay, and besides, are not troubled with
+squeamishness. As for Curwen, he would go to hell for me, and never
+ask a question. No, Adrian, the scheme was perfect, but for this
+cursed blow of mine this morning. And now it is a terrible
+responsibility," continued the young man, again wiping his forehead;
+"every ounce of it weighs on my shoulders. But it is not that that
+distracts me. Oh, Adrian ... Madeleine!"
+
+The elder man felt his heart contract at the utter despairing of that
+cry.
+
+"When my handspike crashed on that damned interferer's skull," the
+sailor went on, "I felt as if the blow had opened an unfathomable
+chasm between her and me. Now I am felon--yes, in law, a felon! And
+yet I am the same man as yesterday. I shall have to fly to-night, and
+may never be able to return openly to England again. All my golden
+dreams of happiness, of honour, vanished at the sound of that cursed
+blow. But I must see her, Adrian, I _must_ see her before I go. I am
+going to meet her at noon, in the ruins of Pulwick."
+
+"Impossible!" ejaculated the other aghast. "Listen, Jack, unfortunate
+man! When I heard of the--the misfortune, and of your folly in
+remaining, I instantly planned a last meeting for you. As it fell
+out, my wife has a fancy to spend the night here: I have asked her to
+bring her sister with her. But this inconceivably desperate plan of
+leaving in your ship, in broad light of day, frustrates all I would
+have done for you. For God's sake let us contrive some way of warning
+the _Peregrine_ off till midnight; keep hidden, yourself; do not
+wilfully run your head into the noose!"
+
+But the young man had stopped short in his tramping, and stood looking
+at his friend, with a light of hope flaming in his eye.
+
+"You have done that, Adrian! You have thought of that!" he repeated,
+as if mechanically. A new whirlwind of schemes rushed through his
+mind. For a while he remained motionless, with his gaze fixed on Sir
+Adrian, putting order in his own thoughts with that genius of
+precision and swiftness which, in strong natures, rises to meet a
+crisis. Then advancing, and seizing him by both hands:
+
+"Adrian," he cried, in something more like his own voice, again, "I
+shall yet owe my happiness to you, to this thought, this sublime
+thought of your heart!"
+
+And, as Sir Adrian, astounded, unable to understand this extremity of
+hopefulness, following upon the previous depth of misery, stared back
+at him, speechless, the latter proceeded in still more surprising
+fashion.
+
+"Now, you listen to me, this time. I have been selfish in running the
+risk of having you mixed up in my dangerous affairs. But, God is my
+witness, I acted under the belief that all was absolutely secure. Now,
+however, you must do nothing more that might implicate you. Remember,
+do nothing to let people suspect that you have seen me to-day. Renny,
+too, must keep close counsel. You know nothing of my future movements.
+Remain here for a while, do not even look out of the window.... I fear
+we shall not meet for a long time. Meanwhile, God bless you--God bless
+you!"
+
+After another wrench of the hands he held in his, the sailor released
+them and fairly ran out of the room, without heeding his friend's
+bewildered expostulations. At the door of the keep he met Rene again.
+And after a brief but earnest colloquy, the man whose life was now
+forfeit to the community and upon whose head there would soon be a
+price, was quietly walking along the causeway, making for the shore,
+with the greatest apparent unconcern and deliberation.
+
+And whilst Sir Adrian, alone in his chamber, with his head resting
+upon his hand, anxiously pondered upon the possible issues of this
+nefarious day's doings, the sailor advanced, in broad daylight towards
+the land to keep his appointment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A solitary speck of life upon the great waste, with the consciousness
+of the precarious thread of chance upon which it hung! What wonder
+that, for all his daring, the traveller felt, as he deliberately
+regulated his pace to the most nonchalant gait, a frantic desire to
+run forward, or to lie down! How many approach glasses might now be
+laid, like so many guns, upon him from secret points of the coast
+until he came within range of recognition; what ambushes those clumps
+of gorse and juniper, those plantations of alders and young firs on
+the bluffs yonder, might conceal? The eye could reach far and wide
+upon the immense stretch of sand, along the desert coast; and his
+solitary figure, moving upon the yellow strand was a mark for miles
+around. Steadily, nevertheless did he advance; the very daring, the
+unpardonable foolhardiness of the deed his safety. And yet the strain
+was high. Were they watching the island? Among the eager crew, to each
+of whom the capture might mean a splendid prize and chance of
+promotion, was there one would have the genius of suddenly suspecting
+that this foolhardy wayfarer might be the man they wanted and not
+merely Sir Adrian returning on foot towards his home?... And then came
+the answer of hopeful youth and hardy courage----.
+
+No. The preventive are a lubberly lot--It will require something
+better than a water-guard to track and take Lucky Jack Smith!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But for all his assurance Lucky Jack Smith drew a long breath of
+relief when he felt the shadow of Pulwick woods closing around him at
+last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE DAY: NOON
+
+    There stood two men and they did point their fingers at that house.
+    And on his finger one had blood; the other's finger shook.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+Broken lengths of wall, a crumbling indication of the spring of once
+exquisite arches, windows gaping darkly like the eye sockets of a
+skull--this was all that was left of the old priory of Pulwick, whilom
+proud seat of clerical power and learning. But the image of decay was
+robbed of all melancholy by the luxuriance of climbing vegetation, by
+the living screen of noble firs and larches arranged in serried ranks
+upon the slopes immediately behind it, with here and there a rugged
+sentinel within the ruinous yards and rooms themselves; by wild bushes
+of juniper and gorse and brambles. And, with the bright noon sun
+pouring down upon the worn red sandstone, and gilding the delicate
+tassels of the larches' green needles; with the light of young love,
+spreading glamour upon every leaf and stone, in the eyes of the
+lovers, the scene, witness of so many sweet meetings, bore that day a
+beautiful and home-like aspect.
+
+Captain Jack was standing upon the grass-grown floor of what had been
+the departed monks' refectory, with ears eagerly bent to listen.
+
+Three ragged walls, a clump of fir trees, and a bank of brambles
+screened him from any chance passer-by, and he now and again peered
+through a crevice on to a path through the woods, cautiously, as if
+fearful to venture forth. His face was pale beneath its tan, and had
+none of its usual brightness; his attire for him was disordered; his
+whole appearance that of a man under the pressure of doubt and
+anxiety. Yet, when the sound of a light footfall struck among the
+thousand whispering noises of wind and leaf that went to make up the
+silence of the ruins, the glory of joy that lit up eye and lip left no
+room for any other impression.
+
+Madeleine stood in the old doorway: a vision of beautiful life amid
+emblems of decay and death.
+
+"I come alone to-day," she said, with her half-shy smile. And then,
+before she could utter a further word of explanation, she was gathered
+into her lover's strong arms with a passion he had never as yet shown
+in his chivalrous relations with her. But it was not because they met
+without the sympathetic rapture of Miss Landale's eye upon them; not
+because there was no other witnesses but the dangling ivy wreath, the
+stern old walls, the fine dome of spring sky faintly blue; not because
+of lover's audacious joy. This Madeleine, feeling the stormy throbbing
+of his heart against hers, knew with sure instinct. She pushed him
+gently from her as soon as she could, the blushes chased from her
+cheeks by pale misgivings, and looked at him with eyes full of
+troubled questioning.
+
+Then he spoke, from his full heart:
+
+"Madeleine, something has happened--a misfortune, as I wrote to you. I
+must now start upon my venture sooner than I thought--at once. I shall
+have to _fly_ in fact, to-day. There have been spies upon me, and my
+secret trust is in danger. How they have tracked me, how suspicion has
+been aroused, I cannot guess. But I have been tracked. A fellow came
+at dawn. I had to defend my secret--the secret not my own, the charge
+entrusted to me. The man was hurt. I cannot explain, dear love, there
+is no time; even now I run the risk of my life by being here, and life
+is so dear to me now, my Madeleine! Hush! No, do not be afraid! I am
+afraid of nothing, so long as you trust me. Will you trust me? I
+cannot leave you here behind; and now, with this cursed stroke of
+ill-luck, this suspicion upon me, it may be long before I can return
+to England. I cannot leave you behind, I cannot! Will you trust me,
+Madeleine, will you come with me? We shall be married in France, my
+darling. You should be as a queen in the guard of her most humble
+slave. I am half mad to think I must go. Ah, kiss me, love, and say
+yes! Listen! I must sail away and make believe that I have gone. My
+_Peregrine_ is a bird that none can overtake, but I shall come back
+to-night. Listen: If you will be on the island to-night--Sir Adrian is
+there already, and I hear your sister is coming--a freak of fancy--and
+he, God bless him, has told her to bring you too (it shows my luck has
+not deserted me yet). I shall be there, unknown to all except Renny. I
+cannot meet you nearer home, but you will be my own brave bride and
+keep your own counsel. You will not be frightened, will you, my
+beautiful love? All you have to do is to follow Renny's instructions.
+My ship will be back, waiting, an hour after dark, ready, when you set
+foot on it, to spread its wings with its treasures--treasures, indeed!
+And then we shall have the world before us--riches, love, such love!
+And once safe, I shall be free to prove to you that it is no common
+blood I would mate with that dear and pure stream that courses in your
+veins. You shall soon know all; will you trust me?"
+
+She hung upon his hot words, looking at him with loving, frightened
+eyes. Now he gathered her to his arms again, again his bursting heart
+throbbed its stormy passion to her ear. She was as one carried away by
+a torrent against which resistance is useless. He bent his head over
+her face; the scent of the bunch of violets in her breast rose
+deliciously to his nostrils. Alas! Hubert Cochrane was not to reach
+that kiss of acquiescence, that kiss from which it seemed that but so
+small a fraction of space and time divided him! Some one, who had
+stepped along in the shadow as silently as a cat coming upon a bird,
+clapped here a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Who are you, sir, and what do you want?" exclaimed Captain Jack,
+wrenching himself free, falling back a pace and measuring the
+new-comer from head to foot with furious glances, while, with burning
+blushes Madeleine faltered:
+
+"Rupert!"
+
+Nothing awakens anger in hot blood sooner than an unsanctioned touch.
+In certain moods the merest contact is as infuriating as a blow. Such
+an insult, added to the irreparable injury of interrupting their
+meeting at the most exquisite and crucial moment, drove Captain Jack
+beside himself with rage.
+
+But Madeleine's hand was still on his arm. She felt it suddenly harden
+and twitch with murderous anger. But, by an effort that made the
+veins of his temple swell like whipcord, he refrained from striking
+the double offender.
+
+Mr. Landale surveyed the pair for a moment in silence with his grave
+look; then coldly he answered the sailor's irate speech.
+
+"My name, fellow, is Rupert Landale. I am here to protect my cousin
+from an unprincipled and criminal adventurer."
+
+"You take a sharp tone sir," cried Captain Jack, the flush on his face
+deepening yet a shade, his nostrils ominously dilated, yet speaking
+without further loss of self-control. "You probably count upon the
+presence of this lady to prevent my resenting it; but as my time with
+her is short and I have still much to say, I shall be forced promptly
+to eject you from the ruins here, unless you will be good enough to
+immediately remove yourself. I shall hope for another meeting with you
+to discuss the question as to your right of interference; but
+to-day--I cannot spare the time."
+
+Rupert smiled without moving; then the sailor gently disengaging
+himself from Madeleine would have put her behind him but that she
+pressed forward and laid a hand upon an arm of each of the men.
+
+"Stay, Jack," she pleaded, "let me speak. There is some mistake here.
+Cousin Rupert, you cannot know that I am engaged to this gentleman and
+that he is a friend of your brother's as well as of other good friends
+of mine."
+
+"My poor child," answered Rupert, closing a cold hand gently over hers
+and speaking with a most delicate tenderness of accent, "you have been
+grossly imposed upon, and so have others. As for my poor brother
+Adrian, he is, if anything, easier to deceive than you, innocent
+convent-bred girl! I would have you to go home, my dear, and leave me
+to deal with this--gentleman. You have bitter truths to learn; would
+it not be better to wait and learn them quietly without further
+scandal?"
+
+This was too much for Captain Jack, who fairly ground his teeth.
+Rupert's honeyed tones, his grasp of Madeleine's hand were more
+unbearable even than the words. He advanced upon the elder man and
+seizing him by the collar whirled him away from the girl as easily as
+a straw puppet.
+
+The fine gentleman of sensitive nerves and unworked sinews had no
+chance against the iron strength of the man who had passed all the
+years of virility fighting against sea and storm. The two faced each
+other; Jack Smith, red and panting with honest rage, only the sense of
+his lady's proximity keeping him from carrying his high-handed
+measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly
+black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered
+from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst
+enemy could have attributed it to fear.
+
+An unequal match it would seem, yet unequal in a way that the young
+man, in the conscious glory of his strength could not have conceived.
+Madeleine neither screamed nor fainted; she had grown white, in
+natural apprehension, but her eyes fixed upon her lover's face shone
+with admiration. Mr. Landale turned slowly towards her.
+
+"Madeleine," he said, readjusting his stock and smoothing the folds of
+his collar with a steadfast striving after coolness, "you have been
+grossly deceived. The man you would trust with your life and honour is
+a mere smuggler. He has no doubt told you fine stories, but if he has
+given himself out for aught else he lied, take my word for it--he
+lied. He is a common smuggler, and the vessel he would carry you away
+in is packed with smuggled goods. To-day he has attacked and wounded
+an officer, who, in the discharge of his duty, endeavoured to find out
+the nature of his suspicious purpose. Your would-be lover's neck is in
+danger. A felon, he runs the risk of his life every moment he remains
+on land--but he would make a last effort to secure the heiress! Look
+at him," his voice raising in spite of himself to a shriller
+pitch--"he cannot deny it!"
+
+Madeleine gazed from one to the other. Her mind, never a very quick
+one at decision, was too bewildered to act with clearness; moreover
+with her education and ignorance of the world the indictment conveyed
+no special meaning to her.
+
+But there was an agony of suspense and beseeching in the glance that
+her lover cast upon her; and to that appeal she smiled proudly. Hers
+were no true love, she felt, were its confidence shaken by the
+slandering of anger. Then the thought of his danger, danger admitted
+by his own lips, flashed upon her with terror. She rushed to him,
+
+"Oh go, Jack, go!--As you love me, go!"
+
+Mr. Landale, who had already once or twice cast impatient looks of
+expectation through a window of the east wall, taken by surprise at
+this unforeseen result of his speech, suddenly climbed up upon a
+broken piece of stone-work, from which there was an abrupt descent
+towards the shore, and began to signal in eager gesticulation. There
+was a sound of heavy running footfalls without. Captain Jack raised
+his head, every nerve on the alert.
+
+"Go, go," again cried Madeleine, dreading she knew not what.--A fat
+panting red face looked over the wall; Mr. Landale turned for a second
+to throw at the lovers a glance of elation.
+
+But it seemed as if the sailor's spirits rose at the breath of danger.
+He rapidly looked round upon the ruins from which there were no other
+outlets than the window guarded by Mr. Landale, and the doorway in
+which the red-faced new-comer now stood, framed in red stone; then,
+like a cat he darted on to the ledge of the wall at the opposite end,
+where some invading boughs of larch dropped over the jagged crest,
+before the burly figure in the blue coat of the preventive service had
+recovered from the surprise of finding a lady in his way, or gathered
+his wits and his breath sufficiently to interfere.
+
+There the nimble climber stood a moment balancing himself lightly,
+though the ivied stones rocked beneath him.
+
+"I go, love," he cried in ringing voice, "but one word from you and I
+go----"
+
+"Oh, I trust you! I will trust you!" screamed the girl in despair,
+while her fascinated gaze clung to the erect figure silhouetted
+against the sky and the stout man looked up, open-mouthed. Mr. Landale
+snarled at him:
+
+"Shoot, fool--shoot!" And straining forward, himself drew a pistol
+from the man's belt, cocked it and thrust it into his grasp.
+
+Captain Jack kissed his hand to Madeleine with a joyful gesture, then
+waved his hat defiantly in Rupert's direction, and with a spring
+disappeared, just as the pistol cracked, drawing a shriek of terror
+from the girl, and its bullet flattened itself against the upper stone
+of the wall--considerably wide of the mark.
+
+"Come, this way----!" screamed Mr. Landale from his window sill, "you
+have another!"
+
+But the preventive shook his head, and thrust his smoking barrel back
+through his belt, with an air of philosophical resignation; and slowly
+approaching the window, through which the fugitive could now be seen
+steadily bowling down the seaward slope, observed in slow, fat tones:
+
+"Give you a hand, sir?"
+
+Rupert, thrusting his extended arm aside jumped down beside him as if
+he would have sprung at his throat.
+
+"Why are you so late?--why have you brought no one with you? I gave
+you notice enough. You fool! You have let him slip through your
+fingers, now, after all! Couldn't you even shoot straight? Such a mark
+as he made against the sky--Pah! well may the sailors say, lubberly as
+a land preventive----!"
+
+"Why, there you are, Mr. Landale!" answered the man with
+imperturbable, greasy good-humour. "The way you shoved that there
+pistol into my hand was enough to put off anybody. But you country
+magistrate gentlemen, as I have always said, you are the real sort to
+make one do illegal actions with your flurry and your hurry over
+everything. 'Shoot!' says you, and damme, sir, if I didn't shoot
+straight off before I knew if I were on my head or on my heels. It's a
+mercy I didn't hit the sweet young lady--it is indeed. And as for the
+young gentleman, though to be sure he did show a clean pair of heels
+at the sight of me, I had no proper time for i-dentification--no time
+for i-den-ti-fi-cation, Mr. Landale, sir. So I say, sir, it's a mercy
+I did not hit him either, now I can think of it. Ah, slow and sure,
+that's my motter! I takes my man on his boat, in the very middle of
+his laces and his brandy and his silk--I takes him, sir, in the very
+act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows
+fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why
+it's a good job too--but none of this promiscuous work for Augustus
+Hobson. Slow and sure, that's my motter."
+
+The speaker who had been rolling a quid of tobacco in his mouth during
+this exposition of policy, here spat emphatically upon the grass, and
+catching Madeleine's abstracted eye, begged pardon for the liberty
+with a gallant air.
+
+"Aye, so slow, man, that you are pretty sure to fail," muttered Mr.
+Landale.
+
+"I knows my business, sir, meaning no offence," retorted Mr. Hobson
+serenely. "When I has no orders I acts on regulation. I brought no one
+with me because I had no one to bring, having sent, as per regulation,
+my one remaining man to give notice to the water service, seeing that
+that there schooner has had the impudence to come back, and is at this
+very moment cruising quite happy-like just the other side of the bank;
+though if ever their cutter overhauls her--well, I'm a Dutchman! You
+might have done wiser, perhaps (if I may make so bold as to remark),
+to leave the management of this business to them as understands such
+things. As to being late, sir, you told me to be in the ruins at
+twelve noon, and I beg to insinuate that it's only just past the hour
+now."
+
+At this point the preventive man drew from his capacious breeches a
+brass time-piece, of congenial stoutness, the face of which he turned
+towards the magistrate.
+
+The latter, however, waved the proffered witness impatiently aside.
+Furtively watching his cousin, who, leaning against the door-post, her
+pale head thrown out in strong relief by the dark stones, stood as if
+absolutely detached from her surroundings, communing over troubled
+thoughts with her own soul, he said with deliberate distinctness:
+
+"But have I been misled, then, in understanding that you were with the
+unfortunate officer who was so ferociously assaulted this morning?
+that you and he did come upon this Captain Smith, red-handed as you
+call it, loading or unloading his vessel on Scarthey Island?"
+
+"Aye, sir," rolled out the other, unctuously, "there you are again,
+you see. Poor Nat Beavor, he was one of your hot-headed ones, and see
+what it has brought _him_ to--a crack in his skull, sir, so that it
+will be days before he'll know himself again, the doctor says, if ever
+he does in this world, which I don't think. Ah, I says to him, when
+we started in the dawn this morning agreeable to our arrangement with
+you: 'For peeping and prying on the quiet without any running risks
+and provoking others to break the law more than they're doing, I'm
+your man,' says I; 'but as for attacking desperate individles without
+proper warrant and authority, not to speak of being one to ten, I tell
+you fair, Nat Beavor, I'll have nothing to do with it.' But Nat, he
+went off his head, clean, at the sight of Captain Jack and his men a
+trundling the little kegs down the sands, as neat and tidy as could
+be; and so he cut out from behind the rocks, and I knew there was
+mischief ahead! Ah, poor fellow, if he would only have listened to me!
+I did my best for him, sir; started off to call up the other man, who
+was on the other side of the ruins, as soon as I saw his danger, but
+when I came back----"
+
+"The birds were flown, of course," interrupted Rupert with a sneer,
+"and you found the body of your comrade who had been dastardly
+wounded, and who, I hear, is dead now. So the villain has twice
+escaped you. Cousin Madeleine," hastily breaking off to advance to the
+girl, who now awakening from her reflective mood seemed about to leave
+the ruins, "Cousin Madeleine, are you going? Let me escort you back."
+
+She slowly turned her blue eyes, burning upon him from her white face.
+"Cousin Rupert, I do not want your company." Then she added in a
+whisper, yet with a passion for which Rupert would never have given
+her credit and which took him vastly by surprise, "I shall never
+forgive you."
+
+"My God, Madeleine," cried he, with genuine emotion, "have I deserved
+this? I have had no thought but to befriend you, I have opened your
+eyes to your own danger----"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir," she broke in, with the same repressed anger.
+"Cease vilifying the man I love. All your aspersions, your wordy
+accusations will not shake my faith in him. _Mon Dieu_," she cried,
+with an unsteady attempt at laughter, looking under her lashes and
+tilting her little white round chin at Mr. Hobson, who, now seated
+upon a large stone, and with an obtrusive quid of tobacco bulging in
+an imperfectly shorn cheek, was mopping his forehead with a doubtful
+handkerchief. "_That_ is the person, I suppose, whose testimony I am
+to believe against my Jack!"
+
+"Your Jack was prompt enough in running away from him, such as he is,"
+retorted her cousin bitterly. He could not have struck, for his
+purpose, upon a weaker joint in her poor woman's armour of pride and
+trust.
+
+She caught her breath sharply, as if indeed she had received a blow.
+"Well, say your say," she exclaimed, coming to a standstill and facing
+him; "I will hear all that you and your--your friend have to say,
+lest," with a magnificent toss of her head, "you fancy I am afraid, or
+that I believe one word of it all. I know that Jack--that Captain
+Smith, as he is called--is engaged upon a secret and important
+mission; but it is one, Rupert, which all English gentlemen should
+wish to help, not impede."
+
+"Do you know what the mission is--do you know to whom? And if, my fair
+cousin, it is such that all English gentlemen would help, why then
+this secrecy?"
+
+She bit her lip; but it trembled. "What is it you accuse him of?" she
+asked, with a stamp of her foot.
+
+"Listen to me," said Rupert gently, "it is the kinder thing that you
+should know the truth, and believe me, every word I say I can
+substantiate. This Captain Jack Smith, whatever his real name may be,
+was picked up when a mere boy by an old Liverpool merchant, starving
+in the streets of that town. This merchant, by name Cochrane, an
+absurd person who gave himself out to be a relative of Cochrane of
+Shaws, adopted the boy and started him upon a slaver, that is a ship
+which does trade in negro slaves, my dear--a pretty trade. He next
+entered a privateer's ship as lieutenant. You know what these
+are--ocean freebooters, tolerated by government for the sake of the
+harm they wreck upon the ships of whatever nation we may happen to be
+at war with--a sort of pirate ship--hardly a much more reputable
+business than the slaver's; but Captain Smith made himself a name in
+it. Now that the war is over, he has taken to a lower traffic
+still--that of smuggling."
+
+"But _what_ is smuggling?" cried the girl, tears brimming up at last
+into her pretty eyes, and all her heat of valiance suddenly gone.
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"What is smuggling? Bless your innocence! I beg your pardon, my
+dear--miss I should say--but if you'll allow _me_ I think I'm the man
+to explain that 'ere to you." The husky mellifluous tones of the
+preventive-service man, who had crept up unnoticed to listen to the
+conversation, here murmured insinuatingly in her ear.
+
+Rupert hesitated; then reading shrinking aversion upon Madeleine's
+face, shrewdly conjectured that the exposition of her lover's doings
+might come with more force from Mr. Hobson's lips than from his own,
+and allowed the latter to proceed unmolested.
+
+"Smuggling, my pretty," wheezed the genial representative of the
+custom laws, "again asking pardon, but it slipped out, smuggling is,
+so to say, a kind of stealing, a kind of cheating and that of a most
+rank and heinous kind. For, mind you, it ain't stealing from a common
+man, nor from the likes of you and me, nor from a nobleman either:
+it's cheating and stealing from his most gracious Majesty himself. For
+see you, how 'tis, his Majesty he says, 'Every keg of brandy,' says
+he, 'and every yard of lace and every pipe o' tobacco as is brought
+into this here country shall be paid for, so much on, to me, and
+that's called a tax, miss, and for that there are the custom houses
+and custom officers--which is me--to see his Majesty paid right and
+proper his lawful dues. But what does your smuggler do, miss--your
+rollicking, dare-devil chap of a smuggler? Why he lands his lace and
+his brandy and his 'baccy unbeknownst and sells 'em on the sly--and
+pockets the profit! D'ye see?--and so he cheats his Majesty, which is
+a very grievous breaking of the law; so much so that he might as well
+murder at once--Kind o' treason, you may say--and that's what makes
+'em such desperate chaps. They knows if they're caught at it, with
+arms about them, and two or three together--it's--clank."
+
+Mr. Hobson grasped his own bull neck with an unpleasantly significant
+gesture and winked knowingly at the girl, who turned white as death
+and remained gazing at him with a sort of horrified fascination which
+he presently noted with an indulgent smile.
+
+"Don't take on now, my lass--no offence, miss--but I can't bear to see
+a fine young 'oman like you upset-like--I'm a damned, hem, hem, a real
+soft hearted fellow. Your sweetheart's heels have saved his gullet
+this time--and though he did crack poor Nat upon the skull (as I can
+testify for I as good as saw him do it--which makes it a hanging
+matter twice over I won't deny), yet there's a good few such as him
+escapes the law and settles down arter, quite respectable-like. A bit
+o' smuggling now is a thing many a pretty fellow has taken to in his
+day, and has made a pretty penny out of too, and is none the worse
+looked to arter, as I said. Aye, and there's many a gentleman and a
+magistrate to boot as drinks his glass of smuggled brandy and smokes
+his smuggled baccy and finds them none the worse, oh dear no! Human
+nature it is and human nature is a queer thing. Even the ladies, miss,
+are well-known to be soft upon the smuggled lace: it's twice as cheap
+you see as t'other, and they can get double as handsome for the money.
+Begging your pardon--if I may make so bold--" stretching out a great,
+coarse, tobacco-stained finger and thumb to close them appreciatively
+upon the hanging lace of Madeleine's neck handkerchief, "may be your
+spark brought you that there, miss, now? He, he, he--as pretty a bit
+of French point it is as has ever been my fate to lay hands on--Never
+fear," as the girl drew back with a gesture of loathing from the
+contact. "I ain't agoing to seize it off you or take you up,
+he--he--he--eh, Mr. Landale? I'm a man o' my duty, I hope, but our
+orders don't run as far as that."
+
+"Rupert!" cried Madeleine, piteously turning a dark gaze of anguish at
+him--it seemed as if she were going to faint.
+
+He hastened up to her, shouldering the clumsy form of Mr. Augustus
+Hobson unceremoniously out of the way: the fellow had done his work
+for the time being, and this last piece of it so efficaciously indeed
+that his present employer felt, if not remorse, at least a certain
+pity stir within him at the stricken hopelessness of the girl's
+aspect. He passed his arm round her waist as she shivered and swayed.
+"Lean on me," he said, his fine eyes troubled with an unwonted
+softness and anxiety.
+
+"Rupert," she whispered, clutching at his sleeve, eagerly fixing him
+with a look eloquent of unconscious pleading, "all these things
+this--this man talks of are things which are brought into England--are
+they not? I know that--_he_ was bringing nothing into the country,
+but he was going to another country upon some important trust, the
+nature of which he had promised not to reveal. Therefore he cannot be
+cheating the King, if that is smuggling--Oh Rupert, is there not some
+grievous mistake?"
+
+"My poor child," said Rupert, holding her close and tenderly, and
+speaking with a gentle gravity in which there was this time less
+hypocrisy, "there is one thing which is smuggled out of England, and
+it is as dishonest and illegal work as the other, the most daring and
+dangerous smuggling of all in fact; one in which none but a desperate
+man would engage--that of gold."
+
+"Yes, gold," exclaimed the girl sharply, withdrawing herself from her
+cousin's arms, while a ray of intelligence and hope lit up her face.
+"Gold for the French King's service."
+
+Rupert betrayed no emotion; he drew from the inner pocket of his coat
+a crushed news-sheet.
+
+"Deceived there, as well as everywhere else, poor little cousin," he
+said. "And did the scoundrel say so? Nay, he is a damnable scoundrel
+who could betray your trustfulness to your own sweet face. Gold
+indeed--but not for the King--gold for the usurper, for the tyrant who
+was supplied already, no doubt, by the same or similar traitor hands
+with enough to enable him to escape from the island where he was so
+justly imprisoned. See here, Madeleine, Bonaparte is actually landed
+in France: it has all been managed with the most devilish ingenuity
+and takes the whole world by surprise. And your lover, doubtless, is
+engaged upon bringing him fresh supplies to enable him to begin again
+and rack humanity with hideous wars. Oh, he never told you of the
+Corsican's escape, yet this news is three days old. See you, my dear,
+this explains the whole mystery, the necessity for absolute secrecy;
+all England is friendly to the French monarch; no need to smuggle gold
+for his aid--but the other...! It is treason, the blackest treason on
+every side of it, treason to his King, to his country, to _your_ King,
+to you. And he would have cozened you with tales of his loyalty to the
+rightful cause!"
+
+"Give me the paper," said Madeleine. A tide of blood had swept into
+her face; she was no longer white and shaken, but erect and beautiful
+in strong indignation. Rupert examined her, as if a little doubtful
+how to take the sudden change; but he handed her the printed sheet in
+silence. She read with lips and nostrils expanded by her quick
+breathing; then crumpled up the sheet and cast it at his feet. And
+after a pause, with her princess air of dignity, "I thank you, cousin
+Rupert," she said; then, passing him with stately steps, moved towards
+the house.
+
+He pressed forward to keep up with her; and upon the other side,
+smiling, irrepressible, jocose, Mr. Hobson did the same.
+
+"You are not fit to go alone," urged the former, while the latter
+engagingly protruding an elbow, announced that he'd be proud to give
+her an arm as far as the Hall.
+
+She drew away from this well-meaning squire of dames with such
+shuddering distaste, and looked once more so white and worn and
+sickened after her sudden blaze of passion, that Mr. Landale, seeing
+that the only kindness was to let her have her will, arrested his
+companion roughly enough, and allowed her to proceed as she wished.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so, with bent head, Madeleine hurried forth. And the same glorious
+sun smiled down upon her in her anguish that had greeted her when she
+hastened an hour before glowing and light-hearted--if, indeed, a heart
+so full of love could be termed light--to meet her lover; the same
+brambles caught her dress, the same bird trilled his song. But
+Madeleine thought neither of ray nor leaf, nor yet of mating
+songsters: all the spring world, as she went, was to her strewn with
+the wreck of her broken hopes, and encompassed by the darkness of her
+lonely future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Landale and the preventive service man stood some time watching
+her retreating figure through the wood, and then walked slowly on for
+a while, in silent company.
+
+Presently the latter, who during the last part of the interview, had
+begun to feel a little ruffled by the magistrate's persistently
+overbearing manner, inquired with something of dudgeon in his voice:
+"Begging your pardon, sir, what was that I heard the young lady call
+out just now? 'Gold!' she cries. Is it guineas that nipping young man
+is a taking over seas, if I may make so bold? Now you see, sir, we
+haven't had no orders about no gold on this station--that sort of
+thing is mostly done down south. But what I wants to know is: Why, if
+you knew all about the fellow's little games, you sent us to spy on
+him? Ah, poor Nat would want a word or two with you on that score, I
+fancy! Now it's as plain as Salisbury...."
+
+"But I know nothing certain," impatiently interrupted Mr. Landale. "I
+know no more than you do yourself. Only not being a perfect idiot, I
+can put two and two together. What in the name of goodness can a man
+smuggle _out_ of England but gold? But I wanted the proofs. And your
+business, it was agreed with the Chief Officer, was to follow my
+instructions."
+
+"And so we did," grumbled Mr. Hobson; "and a pretty business it's
+turned out! Nat's to pocket his bludgeoning, I suppose, and I am to
+bear the blame and lose my share. A cargo of guineas, by God! I might
+have nosed it, down south, but here.... Blast it! But since you was so
+clever over it, sir, why in blazes--if I may speak so to a gentleman
+and a magistrate," pursued the man with a rueful explosion of disgust,
+"didn't you give _me_ the hint? Why, guineas is contraband of
+war--it's treason, sir--and guineas is a cargo that's _fought_ for,
+sir! I shouldn't have moved with two men in a boat patrol, d'ye think?
+I should have had the riding officers, and the water-guard, and a
+revenue cruiser in the offing, and all tight and regular. But you
+_would_ have all the credit, and where are you? and _where's_ my
+share? and where is Nat?--Bah!"
+
+"You are forgetting yourself, officer," said Mr. Landale, looking
+severely into the eyes of the disappointed preventive man, whose
+rising ebullition became on the instant reduced.
+
+"So I am, sir, so I am--and beg your pardon. But you must admit, it's
+almost enough to make ... but never mind, sir, the trick is done.
+Whatever it may be that that there schooner carries in her bottom, she
+is free now to take it, barring accident, wherever she pleases. I'll
+trouble you to look this way, sir."
+
+They had emerged from the wooded part of the park, and the rising
+ground on which they stood commanded a wide sea-view, west of the
+great bay.
+
+"There she is again, sir," said Mr. Hobson, waving his broad paw, like a
+showman displaying his goods, with a sort of enraged self-satisfaction.
+"There is the schooner, ready to hoist sail as soon as he comes
+alongside. And that there black point which you may see, if your eyes
+are good enough, is a six-oared galley with as ship-shaped a crew--if
+it's the same as I saw making off this morning--as ever pulled. Your
+Captain Smith, you may take your oath, is at the tiller, and making
+fun of us two to the lads. In five minutes he will be on board, and
+then the revenue cutter from the station may give chase if she
+likes!... And there she is, due to the time--about a mile astern.
+But bless you, that's all my eye, you may take your oath! They know
+well enough that in an open sea they can't run down a Salcombe
+schooner. But to earn their pay they will hang on till they lose
+her, and then sail home, all cosy.--I'm thinking," he added slily,
+with a side glance at the magistrate: "we won't hang him _this_ time."
+
+Mr. Landale made no answer; during the last few minutes his
+reflections had enabled him to take a new view of the situation. After
+all the future fate of Captain Jack was of little moment. He had been
+successfully exposed before Madeleine, whose love for the young man
+was, as had just been sufficiently proved, chiefly composed of those
+youthful illusions which dispelled once, never can return.
+
+Rupert fell gradually into a reverie in which he found curious
+satisfaction. His work had not been unsuccessful, whatever Mr.
+Hobson's opinion might be. But, as matters stood between Madeleine and
+her lover, the girl's eyes had been opened in time, and that without
+scandal.... And even the escape of Captain Jack was, upon reflection,
+the best thing that could have happened.
+
+And so it was with a return to his usual polite bearing, that he
+listened to the officer's relapse into expostulation.
+
+"Now if you had only given me the hint first of all," the man was
+grumblingly saying, "and then let me act--for who would have suspected
+a boat, yacht-rigged like that?--A friend of Sir Adrian's, too! If
+you'd only left it to me! Why that six-oared galley alone is agin the
+law unless you can prove good reason for it ... as for the vessel
+herself...."
+
+"Yes, my dear Mr. Hobson," interrupted Mr. Landale, smiling
+propitiously. "I have no doubt you would have secured him. I have made
+a mess of it. But now you understand, least said, soonest mended, both
+for me and (between ourselves, Mr. Hobson) for the young lady."
+
+The man, in surprise at this sudden alteration of manner, stopped
+short and gaped; and presently a broad smile, combined with a knowing
+wink, appeared on his face. He received the guineas that Mr. Landale
+dropped in his palm with an air of great candour, and, without further
+parley, acted on the kind advice to repair to the Priory and talk with
+one Mrs. Puckett the housekeeper, on the subject of corporeal
+refreshment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," said Molly, bursting in upon her sister, who sat by her
+writing-table, pen in hand, and did not even raise her head at the
+unceremonious entrance. "This is evidently the day for mysterious
+disappearances. First Rupert and Sophia; then my lord and master who
+is fetched hurriedly to his island (that isle of misfortune!) God
+knows for what--though _I_ mean to know presently; then you,
+Mademoiselle, and Rupert again. It is, faith, quite a comedy. But the
+result has been that I have had my meals alone, which is not so gay.
+Sophia is in bed, it turns out; Rupert out a-riding, on important
+business, of course! all he does is desperately important. And there
+you are--alone in your room, moping. God, child, how pale you are!
+What ails you then?"
+
+"Molly," cried Madeleine, ignoring Lady Landale's question and
+feverishly folding the written sheet which lay under her hand, "if you
+love me, if ever you loved me, will you have this letter conveyed by a
+safe messenger to Scarthey, and given to Rene--to none but Rene, at
+once? Oh, Molly, it will be a service to me, you little guess of what
+moment!"
+
+"_Voyez un peu!_" said Lady Landale coolly. "What trust in Molly, all
+at once! Aha, I thought it would come. If I love you? Hum, I'm not so
+sure about that. If ever I loved you?--a droll sort of plea, in truth,
+considering how you have requited my love!"
+
+Madeleine turned a dazed look upon her sister, who stood surveying
+her, glowing like a jewel of dazzling radiance, from her setting of
+black mantle and black plumed hat. "So you will not!" she answered
+hopelessly, and let her forehead fall upon her hand without further
+protest.
+
+"But I did not say I would not--as it happens I am going to the island
+myself. How you stare--oh you remember now do you? Who told you I
+wonder?--of course, such a couple as we are, Adrian and I, could not
+be divided from each other for over half a day, could we? By the way,
+I was to convey a gracious invitation to you too. Will you come with
+me?--No?--strange girl. So even give me the letter, I will take it
+to--no, not to Rene, 'tis addressed to Captain Smith, I see. Dear
+me--you don't mean to say, Madeleine, that you are corresponding with
+that person; that he is near us? What would Tanty say?"
+
+"Oh, Molly, cease your scoffs," implored poor Madeleine, wearily. "You
+are angry with me, well, now rejoice, for I am punished--well
+punished. Oh, I would tell you all but I cannot! my heart is too sick.
+See, you may read the letter, and then you will understand--but for
+pity's sake go--Do not fail to go; he will be there on the island at
+dark--he expects _me_--Oh, Molly! I cannot explain--indeed I cannot,
+and there is no time, it will soon be dusk; but there is terrible
+danger in his being there at all."
+
+Molly took the letter, turned it over with scornful fingers and then
+popped it in her pocket. "If he expects you," she asked, fixing cold,
+curious eyes on her sister's distress, "and he is in danger, why
+_don't_ you go?"
+
+A flush rose painfully to Madeleine's face, a sob to her throat.
+"Don't ask me," she murmured, turning away to hide her humiliation. "I
+have been deceived, he is not what I thought."
+
+Lady Landale gazed at the shrinking figure for a little while in
+silence. Then remarking contemptuously: "Well you are a poor
+creature," turned upon her heel to leave her. As she passed the little
+altar, she paused to whisk a bunch of violets out of a vase and dry
+the stems upon her sister's quilt.
+
+"Molly," cried Madeleine, in a frenzy, "give me back my letter, or
+go."
+
+"I go, I go," said Lady Landale with a mocking laugh. "How sweet your
+violets smell!--There, do not agitate yourself: I'm going to meet your
+lover, my dear. I vow I am curious to see the famous man, at last."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE NIGHT
+
+    So the blood burned within her,
+    And thus it cried to her:
+    And there, beside the maize field
+    The other one was waiting--
+      He, the mysterious one.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+The mantle of night had already fallen upon the land when Lady
+Landale, closely wrapped in her warmest furs, with face well ensconced
+under her close bonnet, and arms buried to the elbow in her muff,
+sallied from her room on the announcement that the carriage was
+waiting. As, with her leisurely daintiness, she tripped it down the
+stairs, she crossed Mr. Landale, and paused a moment, ready for the
+skirmish, as she noticed the cynical curiosity with which he examined
+her.
+
+"Whither, my fair sister," said he, ranging himself with his best
+courtesy against the bannisters, "so late in the day?"
+
+"To my lord and master's side, of course," said Molly.
+
+"Why--is not Adrian coming back to-night?"
+
+"Apparently not, since he has graciously permitted me to join him upon
+his rock. I trust you will not find it too unhappy in our absence:
+that would be the crowning misfortune of a day when everything seems
+to have gone wrong. Sophia invisible with her vapours; Madeleine with
+the megrim; and you in and out of the house as excited and secret as
+the cat when she has licked all the cream. I suppose I shall end by
+knowing what it is all about. Meanwhile I think I shall enjoy the
+tranquillity of the island--although I have actually to tear myself
+away from the prospect of a tete-a-tete evening with you."
+
+But as Rupert's serenity was not to be moved, her ladyship hereupon
+allowed herself to be escorted to the carriage without further parley.
+
+As she drove away through the dark night, first down the level,
+well-metalled avenue, then along the uneven country road, and finally
+through the sand of the beach in which hoofs and tyres sank
+noiselessly, inches deep, Molly gave herself up, with almost childish
+zest to the leaven of imagination.... Here, in this dark carriage, was
+reclining, not Lady Landale (whose fate deed had already been signed,
+sealed and delivered to bring her nothing but disappointment), but her
+happier sister, still confronted with the fascinating unknown,
+hurrying under cover of night, within sound of the sea, to that
+enthralling lure, a lover--a real lover, ardent, daring, _young_,
+ready to risk all, waiting to spread the wings of his boat, and carry
+her to the undiscovered country.
+
+Glowing were these fleeting images of the "might have been," angry the
+sudden relapses into the prose of reality.
+
+No, Madeleine, the coward, who thought she had loved her lover, was
+now in her room, weak and weeping, whilst he, no doubt, paced the deck
+in mad impatience (as a lover should), now tortured by the throes of
+anxiety, now hugging himself with the thought of his coming bliss ...
+that bliss that never was to be his. And in the carriage there was
+only Molly, the strong-hearted but the fettered by tie and vow, the
+slave for ever of a first girlish fancy but too successfully
+compassed; only Lady Landale rejoining her husband in his melancholy
+solitude; Lady Landale who never--never! awful word! would know the
+joys which yonder poor fool had had within her grasp and yet had not
+clutched at.
+
+Molly had read, as permitted, her sister's letter, and to some
+purpose; and scorn of the girl who from some paltry quibble could
+abandon in danger the man she professed to love, filled her soul to
+the exclusion of any sisterly or ever womanly pity.
+
+At the end of half an hour the carriage was stopped by the black
+shadow of a man, who seemed to spring up from the earth, and who,
+after a few rapid words interchanged with the coachman, extinguished
+both the lights, and then opened the door.
+
+Leaning on the offered elbow Molly jumped down upon the yielding
+sand.
+
+"Rene?" she asked; for the darkness even on the open beach was too
+thick to allow of recognition.
+
+"Rene, your ladyship--or Mademoiselle is it?" answered the man in his
+unmistakable accent. "I must ask; for, by the voice no one can tell,
+as your ladyship, or Mademoiselle knows--and the sky is black like a
+chimney."
+
+"Lady Landale, Rene," and as he paused, she added, "My sister would
+not come."
+
+"Ah, _mon Dieu_! She would not come," repeated the man in tones of
+dismay; and the black shadow was struck into a moment of stillness.
+Then with an audible sigh Mr. Potter roused himself, and saying with
+melancholy resignation, "The boat is there, I shall be of return in a
+minute, My Lady," took the traveller's bag on his shoulder and
+disappeared.
+
+The carriage began to crunch its way back in the darkness and Molly
+was left alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In front of her was a faint white line, where the rollers spread their
+foam with mournful restless fugue of long drawn roar and hissing sigh.
+
+In the distance, now and then glancing on the crest of the dancing
+billows, shone the steady light of Scarthey. The rising wind whistled
+in the prickly star-grass and sea-holly. Beyond these, not a sight,
+not a sound--the earth was all mystery.
+
+Molly looked at the light--marking the calm spot where her husband
+waited for her; its very calm, its familiar placidity, monotony,
+enraged her; she hearkened to the splashing, living waves, to the
+swift flying gusts of the storm wind, and her soul yearned to their
+life, and their mysteriousness.
+
+What she longed for, she herself could not tell. No words can
+encompass the desire of pent-up young vitality for the unknown, for
+the ideal, for the impossible. But one thing was overpoweringly real:
+that was the dread of leaving just then the wide, the open world whose
+darkness was filled to her with living scenes of freedom and space,
+and blood-stirring emotions; of re-entering the silent room under the
+light; of consorting with the shadowy personality, her husband; of
+feeling the web of his melancholy, his dreaminess, imprison as it were
+the wings of her imagination and the thoughtful kindness of his gaze,
+paralyse the course of her hot blood through her veins.
+
+And yet, thither she was going, must be going! Ah Madeleine, fool--you
+may well weep, yonder on your pillow, for the happiness that was yours
+and that you have dropped from your feeble hands!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a few minutes the black shadow re-appeared close to her.
+
+"If My Lady will lean on my shoulder, I shall lead her to the boat."
+And after a few steps, the voice out of the darkness proceeded in
+explanation: "I have not taken a lantern, I have put out those of the
+carriage, for I must tell My Lady, that since what arrived this
+morning, there may be _gabelous_--they call them the preventive
+here--in every corner, and the light might bring them, as it does the
+night papilions, and ... as I thought Mademoiselle was to accompany
+you--they might have frightened her. These people want to know so
+much!"
+
+"I know nothing of what has happened this morning, that you speak of
+as if the whole world must know," retorted Lady Landale coolly. "You
+are all hatching plots and sitting on secrets, but nobody confides in
+me. It seems then, that you expected Mademoiselle, my sister, here for
+some purpose and that you regret she did not come; may I ask for an
+explanation?"
+
+A few moments elapsed before the man replied, and then it was with
+embarrassment and diffidence: "For sure, I am sorry, My Lady ... there
+have been misfortunes on the island this morning--nothing though to
+concern her ladyship--and, as for Mademoiselle, mother Margery would
+have liked to see her, no doubt ... and Maggie the wife also--and--and
+no doubt also Mademoiselle would have liked to come.... What do I
+know?"
+
+"Oh, of course!" said Molly with her little note of mocking laughter.
+
+Then again they walked a while in silence. As Rene lifted his mistress
+in his arms to carry her over the licking hissing foam, she resumed:
+"It is well, Rene, you are discreet, but I am not such a fool as
+people seem to think. As for her, you were right in thinking that she
+might easily be frightened. She was afraid even to come out!"
+
+Rene shoved his boat off, and falling to his sculls, suddenly relapsed
+into the old vernacular: "_Ah Madame_," he sighed, "_c'est bien
+triste--un gentilhomme si beau--si brave!_"
+
+During the crossing no further words passed between them.
+
+"So brave--so handsome?" The echo of the words came back to the woman
+in every lap of the water on the sides of the boat, in every strain of
+the oars.
+
+The keel ground against the beach, and Rene leaped out to drag the
+boat free of the surf. As he did so, two blacker outlines segregated
+themselves from the darkness and a rough voice called out, subdued but
+distinct: "Savenaye, St. Malo!"
+
+"Savenaye, St. Malo!" repeated Rene, and helped Lady Landale to
+alight. Then one of the figures darted forward and whispered a rapid
+sentence in the Frenchman's ear. Rene uttered an exclamation, but his
+mistress intervened with scant patience:
+
+"My good Rene," said she, "take the bag into the peel, and come back
+for me. I have a message for these gentlemen."
+
+Rene hesitated. As he did so a rustle of anger shook the lady in her
+silks and furs. "Do you hear me?" she repeated, and he could guess how
+her little foot stamped the yielding sand.
+
+"_Oui, Madame_," said he, hesitating no longer. Immediately the other
+two drew near. Molly could just see that they stood in all deference,
+cap in hand.
+
+"Madam," began one of these in hurried words, "there is not a moment
+to be lost: the captain had to remain on board."
+
+"What!" interrupted Lady Landale with much asperity, "not come in
+person!" She had been straining her eyes to make out something of her
+interlocutor's form, unable to reconcile her mind's picture with the
+coarse voice that addressed her--And now all her high expectations
+fell from her in an angry rush. "Have I come all this way to be met by
+a messenger! Who are you?"
+
+"Madam," entreated the husky voice, "I am the mate of the _Peregrine_.
+The captain has directed me to beg and pray you not to be afraid, but
+to have good courage and confidence in us--the schooner is there; in
+five minutes you can be safe on board. You see, madam," continued the
+man with an earnestness that spoke well of his devotion, "the captain
+found he couldn't, he dared not leave the ship--he is the only one who
+knows the bearings of these waters here--any one of us might run her
+on the bank, and where would we be then, madam, and you, if we were
+found in daylight still in these parts?--'For God's sake, Curwen,'
+says he, 'implore the lady not to be afraid and tell her to trust, as
+she has promised,' so he says. And for God's sake, say I, madam, trust
+us. In five minutes you will be with him? Say the word, madam, am I to
+make the signal? There he is, eating his heart out. There are all the
+lads ready waiting for your foot on the ladder, to hoist sail. No time
+to lose, we are already behind. Shall I signal?"
+
+Molly's heart beat violently; under the sudden impulse, the
+fascination of the black chasm, of the peril, the adventure, the
+unfathomed, took possession of her, and whirled her on.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+On the very utterance of the word the man, who had not yet spoken,
+uncovered a lantern, held it aloft, as rapidly replaced it under his
+coat, and moved away.
+
+Almost immediately, against the black pall, behind the dim line of
+grey that marked the shore, suddenly sprang up three bright points in
+the form of a triangle.
+
+It was as if all the darkness around had been filled with life; as if
+the first fulfilment of those promises with which it had been drawing
+this woman's soul was now held out to her to lure her further still.
+
+"See, madam, how they watch!--By your leave."
+
+And with no further warning, Molly felt herself seized with
+uncompromising, but deferential, energy, by a pair of powerful arms;
+lifted like a child, and carried away at a bear-like trot. By the
+splashing she judged it was through the first line of breakers. Then
+she was handed into another irresistible grasp. The boat lurched as
+the mate jumped in. Then:
+
+"Now give way, lads," he said, "and let her have it. Those lights must
+not be burning longer than we can help. Tain't wholesome for any of
+us."
+
+And under the pulse of four willing pairs of arms the skiff, like a
+thing of life, clove the black waters and rose to the billows.
+
+"You see, madam," explained the mate, "we could not do without the
+lights, to show us where she lay, and give us a straight course. We
+are all right so long as we keep that top 'un in the middle--but he
+won't be sorry, I reckon, when he can drop them overboard. They can't
+be seen from the offing yet, but it's astounding how far a light will
+reach on a night like this. Cheerily, lads, let her have it!"
+
+But Molly heeded him not. She had abandoned herself to the thrilling
+delight of the excitement. The die was cast--not by her own hand, no
+one should be able to hold her responsible--she had been kidnapped.
+Come what might she must now see the adventure out.
+
+The lights grew larger; presently a black mass, surmounted by a kind
+of greyish cloud, loomed through the pitch of the night; and next it
+was evident that the beacon was hanging over the side of a ship,
+illuminating its jagged leaping water line.
+
+A voice, not too loud, yet, even through the distance, ringing clear
+in its earnestness sounded from above. "Boat ahoy! what boat is that?"
+
+And promptly the helmsman by Molly's side returned: "Savenaye, St.
+Malo."
+
+On the instant the lights went out. There was a creaking of block and
+cordage, and new ghostly clouds rose over the ship--sails loosened to
+the wind. As the skiff rowers came alongside, boat-hooks leaped into
+action and gripped the vessel; an arm, strong as steel, was held out
+for the passenger as she fearlessly put her foot on the ladder;
+another, a moment later, with masterful tenderness bent round her
+waist, and she was fairly lifted on board the _Peregrine_. But before
+her foot touched the deck, she felt upon her lips, laid like a burning
+seal, a passionate kiss; and her soul leaped up to it, as if called
+into sudden life from slumber, like the princess of fairy lore. She
+heard Madeleine's mysterious lover whisper in her ear: "At last! Oh,
+what I have suffered, thinking you would not come!"
+
+From the warm shelter of her loosened cloak the violets in her bosom
+sent forth a wave of sweetness.
+
+For a moment these two were in all creation alone to each other,
+while in a circle the _Peregrine's_ crew stood apart in respectful
+silence: a broad grin of sympathy upon the mouth of every mother's
+son.
+
+Released at last, Lady Landale took a trembling step on the deck. Into
+what strange world had she come this night?
+
+The schooner, like a mettled steed whose head is suddenly set free,
+was already in motion, and with gentle forward swaying leaps rising to
+the wave and gathering speed under her swelling sails.
+
+Captain Jack had seized Molly's hand, and the strong clasp trembled
+round the little fingers; he said no more to her; but, in tones
+vibrating with emotion which all the men, now silently seeking their
+posts in the darkness, could hear:
+
+"My lads," he cried, "the lady is safe with us after all. Who shall
+say that your skipper is not still Lucky Smith? Thank you, my good
+fellows! Now we have yet to bring her safe the other side.
+Meanwhile--no cheering, lads, you know why--there is a hundred guineas
+more among you the hour we make St. Malo. Stand to, every man. Up with
+those topsails!"
+
+Scarcely had the last words been spoken when, from the offing, on the
+wings of the wind, came a long-drawn hail, faint through the distance,
+but yet fatally distinct: "Ahoy, what schooner is that?"
+
+Molly, who had not withdrawn her hand, felt a shock pass over Captain
+Jack's frame. He turned abruptly, and she could see him lean and
+strain in the direction of the voice.
+
+The call, after an interval, was repeated. But the outlook was
+impenetrable, and it was weird indeed to feel that they were seen yet
+could not see.
+
+Molly, standing close by his side, knew in every fibre of her own body
+that this man, to whom she seemed in some inexplicable fashion already
+linked, was strongly moved. Nevertheless she could hardly guess the
+extremity of the passion that shook him. It was the frenzy of the
+rider who feels his horse about to fail him within a span of the
+winning post; of the leader whose men waver at the actual point of
+victory. But the weakness of dismay was only momentary. Calm and
+clearness of mind returned with the sense of emergency. He raised his
+night-glass, with a steady hand this time, and scanned the depth of
+blackness in front of him: out of it after a moment, there seemed to
+shape itself the dim outline of a sail, and he knew that he had waited
+too long and had fallen in again with the preventive cutter. Then
+glancing aloft, he understood how it was that the _Peregrine_ had been
+recognised.
+
+The overcast sky had partly cleared to windward during the last
+minutes; a few stars glinted where hitherto nothing but the most
+impenetrable pall had hung. In the east, the rays of a yet invisible
+moon, edging with faint silver the banks of clouds just above the
+horizon, had made for the schooner a tell-tale background indeed.
+
+On board no sound was heard now save the struggle of rope and canvas,
+the creaking of timber and the swift plashing rush of water against
+her rounded sides as she sped her course.
+
+"Madeleine," he said, forcibly controlling his voice, and bringing, as
+he spoke, his face close to Molly's to peer anxiously at its
+indistinct white oval, "we are not free yet; but in a short time, with
+God's help, we shall have left those intermeddling fools yonder who
+would bar our way, miles out of the running. But I cannot remain with
+you a moment longer; I must take the helm myself. Oh, forgive me for
+having brought you to this! And, should you hear firing, for Heaven's
+sake do not lose courage. See now, I will bring you to your cabin;
+there you will find warmth and shelter. And in a little while, a very
+little while, I will return to you to tell you all is well. Come, my
+dearest love."
+
+Gently he would have drawn her towards the little deck-cabin, guiding
+her steps, as yet untutored to the motion of the ship, when out of the
+black chasm, upon the weather bow of the _Peregrine_, leaped forth a
+yellow tongue of light fringed with red and encircled by a ruddy
+cloud; and three seconds later the boom of a gun broke with a dull,
+ominous clangour above the wrangling of sea and wind. Molly
+straightened herself. "What is that?" she asked.
+
+"The warning gun," he answered, hurriedly, "to say that they mean to
+see who we are and that if we do not stop the next will be shotted.
+Time presses, Madeleine, go in--fear nothing! We shall soon be on
+their other side, out of sight in darkness again."
+
+"I shall stop with you. Let no thought of me hinder you. I am not
+afraid. I want to see."
+
+At these words the lover was struck with a surprise that melted into a
+proud and new joy. He had loved Madeleine for her woman's grace and
+her woman's heart; now, he told himself, he must worship her also for
+her brave soul. But this was no time for useless words. It was not
+more unsafe for her on deck than in the cabin, and at the thought of
+her beside him during the coming struggle the strength of a god rose
+within him. "Come," he answered, briefly, and moved with her to the
+helm which a sailor silently surrendered to him whilst she steadied
+herself by holding to the binnacle--the only place on board at that
+time where (from sheer necessity) any light had been allowed to
+remain. It was faint enough, but the reflection from the
+compass-board, as he bent to examine it, was sufficient to make just
+visible, with a dim fantastic glow, the strong beauty of his face, and
+put a flash into each wide dilated eye.
+
+And thus did Molly, for the first time, see Captain Jack.
+
+She sank down at the foot of the binnacle, her hands clasped round her
+knees, as if hugging the new rapture as closely to her as she could.
+And looking up at the alert figure before her which she now began to
+discern more clearly under the lightening sky; at the face which she
+divined, although she could only see the watchful gleam of the eyes as
+now and again they sought her down in the shadow at his feet, she felt
+herself kindle in answer to the glow of his glorious life-energy. They
+were going, side by side, this young hero of romance and she, to fight
+their way through some unknown peril!
+
+"Madeleine, my sweet bride, my brave love, they are about to fire
+again, and this time you will hear the shot burring; but be not
+afraid, it will strike ahead of us."
+
+Another flash sprang out of the night, much nearer this time, and
+louder, for it belched forth a shot which ploughed its way in the
+water across the schooner's bow.
+
+"I am not afraid," said Molly again; and she laughed a little fierce,
+nervous laugh.
+
+"They are between us and the open sea. Thus far the luck is on their
+side. Had you come but half an hour sooner, Madeleine, we should be
+running as free as any king's ship. Now they think, no doubt, they
+will drive me on to the sand; but," he tossed back his head with a
+superb gesture; "there is no power from heaven or hell that can keep
+me out of my course to-night."
+
+By this time the preventive cutter was faintly discernible two cables
+length on the larboard bow. There came another hail--a loud, husky
+bellow from over the water, "Schooner ahoy! Heave to, or we'll sink
+you!"
+
+"Madeleine," said Captain Jack; "come closer to me, lie down, behind
+me, quick--The next shot will be in my rigging. Heave to?--with my
+treasures, my bride on board and a ten knot breeze...!" And he looked
+down at Molly, laughing in his contempt. Then he shouted some order
+which brought the _Peregrine_ some points more off the wind, and she
+bounded forward with renewed zest. "Sink us! Why don't you fire now,
+you lubbers?" He glanced back over his shoulder to see the beacon of
+Scarthey straight over the stern. "You have got us in line with the
+light, and that's your last chance. In another minute I shall be past
+you. Ah, I can see you now, my fine fellows!--Courage, Madeleine."
+
+To Molly, of course, his words conveyed no meaning, except that the
+critical moment had come, that the ship which carried her flying upon
+the water like a living thing, eager, yet obedient in all its motions
+to the guiding will of the man beside her, was rushing to the fray.
+The thought fired her soul, and she sprang up to look over the side.
+
+"What," she exclaimed, for the little cutter on close quarters looked
+insignificant indeed by the side of the noble vessel that so
+scornfully bore down on her. "Is that all!"
+
+"They have a gun, and we have none," answered Captain Jack. "Down,
+Madeleine! down behind, in the name of God!"
+
+"Why should I crouch if you stand up?"
+
+The man's heart swelled within him; but as he looked with proud
+admiration at the cloaked and hooded figure by his side, the cutter's
+gun fired for the third time. With roar and hiss the shot came over
+the bow of the schooner, as she dipped into the trough, and raking the
+deck, crashed through her side on the quarter. Molly gave a shriek and
+staggered.
+
+A fearful malediction burst from Captain Jack's lips: he left the
+tiller and sprang to her.
+
+One of the hands, believing his skipper to have been struck, ran to
+the helm, and again put the vessel on her proper course which a few
+moments later was to make her shoot past the revenue cutter.
+
+"Wounded, Madeleine! Wounded through my fault! By the living God, they
+shall pay for this!"
+
+"Oh," groaned Molly, "something has cut me in the arm and shoulder."
+Then rapidly gathering composure, "But it's not much, I can move it."
+
+At one glance the sailor saw from the position of the shot hole in the
+vessel's side that the wound could only have been made by a splinter.
+But the possibility of exposing his beloved to such another risk was
+not to be borne--a murderous rush of blood flew to his brain.
+
+The cutter, perceiving the tactics of the swifter schooner, was now
+tacking about with the intention of bringing the gun to bear upon her
+once more as she attempted to slip by. But Captain Jack in his
+new-fanned fury had made up his mind to a desperate cast of the die.
+
+"Starboard, hard a starboard," he called out in a voice that his men
+had known well in old fighting days and which was heard as far as the
+cutter itself. "They shall not fire that gun again!"
+
+With a brief, "Starboard it is, sir," the man who had taken the helm
+brought the ship round, and the silent, active crew in a trice were
+ready to go about. Majestically the schooner changed her course, and
+as the meaning of the manoeuvre became fearfully apparent, shouts
+and oaths arose in confusion from the cutter.
+
+"What are you going to do?" eagerly asked Molly, enthralled by the
+superb motion of the vessel under her foot as it swept round and
+increased speed upon the new tack.
+
+He held her in his arms. His hand had sought her wounded shoulder and
+pressed the lacerated spot in his effort to staunch the precious blood
+that rose warm through the cloth, torturing his cold fingers.
+
+"I am going to clear those men from our way to freedom and to love! I
+am going to sink that boat: they shall pay with their lives for this!
+Come to the other side, Madeleine, and watch how my stout _Peregrine_
+sweeps our course--and then I may see how these scoundrels have
+mangled you, my love. But, nay, this is no sight for you. Hold on
+close to me, sweet, and hide your eyes while they go."
+
+He steadied himself firmly with one hand on the rigging.
+
+Now musket shots flashed on board the cutter in quick succession, and
+sundry balls whizzed over the poop, intended for the helmsman by their
+side. Captain Jack gnashed his teeth, as the menacing drone of one of
+them came perilously close to the beloved head by his cheek.
+
+"Look out, every man. We'll run her down!" he called. His voice was
+like the blast of bugles. Cheers broke out from every part of the
+ship, drowning the yells of execration and the shouts of fear from
+below. And now, with irresistible sway, the rushing _Peregrine_ heavy
+and powerful was closing and bearing down upon her frailer enemy.
+
+There was a spell of suspense when all was silence, save the rush and
+turmoil of the waters, and the flapping of the cutter's sails,
+helpless for the moment in the teeth of the breeze. Like a charging
+steed the schooner seemed to leap at her foe. Then came the shock.
+There was a brief check in her career, she rose by the head; the
+rigging strained and sighed, the masts swayed groaning, but stood.
+Over the bows, in the darkness was heard a long-drawn crash, was seen
+a white wall of foaming water rising silently to break the next moment
+with a great roar.
+
+The cutter, struck obliquely amidships, was thrown straightway on her
+beam ends: the _Peregrine_, with every sail spread and swollen, held
+her as the preying bird with outstretched wings holds its quarry, and
+pressed her down until she began to fill and settle. It was with
+wide-open eyes, with eager, throbbing heart that Molly watched it all.
+
+"Lights, my lads," cried Captain Jack, with a shout of exultation,
+when the anxious instant had passed. "Take in every man you can save
+but handspike is the word for the first who shows fight! Curwen, do
+you get her clear again."
+
+All around upon the deck, sprang rumour and turmoil, came shouts and
+sounds of scuffling and the rushing of feet; from the blank waters
+came piteous calls for help. But paying little heed to aught but
+Molly, Captain Jack seized a lighted lantern from the hands of a
+passing sailor and drew her aside.
+
+Fevered with pain and fascinated by the horror of fight and death's
+doings, yet instinctively remembering to pull her hood over her face,
+she allowed herself to be taken into the little deck cabin.
+
+He placed the lantern upon the table:
+
+"Rest here," he said quickly, once more striving to see her beneath
+the jealous shade. "I must find out if anything is amiss on board the
+ship and attend to these drowning men--even before you, my darling!
+But I shall be back instantly. You are not faint?"
+
+The light shone full on his features which Molly eagerly scanned from
+her safe recess. When she met his eyes, full of the triumph of love
+and hope, her soul broke into fierce revolt--again she felt upon her
+lips that kiss of young passionate love that had been the first her
+life had ever known ... and might be the last, for the disclosure was
+approaching apace.
+
+She was glad of the respite.
+
+"Go," she said with as much firmness as she could muster. "Let me not
+stand between you and your duty. I am strong."
+
+Strong indeed--Captain Jack might have wondered whence had come to
+this gentle Madeleine this lioness-strength of soul and body, had he
+had time to wonder, time for aught but his love thoughts and his fury,
+as he dashed back again panting for the moment when he could have her
+to himself.
+
+"Any damage, Curwen?"
+
+"Bowsprit broken, and larboard bulwark stove in, otherwise everything
+has stood."
+
+"Casualties?"
+
+"No, sir. We have three of the cutter's men on board already. They
+swarmed over the bows. One had his cutlass out and had the devil's
+impudence to claim the schooner, but a boat-hook soon brought him to
+reason. There they be, sir," pointing to a darker group huddled round
+the mast. "I have lowered the gig to see if we can pick up the others,
+damn them!"
+
+"As soon as they are all on board bring them aft, I will speak to
+them."
+
+When, with a master's eye, he had rapidly inspected his vessel from
+the hold to the rigging, without finding aught to cause anxiety for
+its safety, Captain Jack returned to the poop, and there found the
+party of prisoners arranged under the strong guard of his own crew.
+Molly stood, wrapped up in her cloak, at the door of the cabin,
+watching.
+
+One of the revenue men came forward and attempted to speak--but the
+captain impatiently cut him short.
+
+"I have no time to waste in talk, my man," he said commandingly. "How
+many were you on board the cutter?"
+
+"Nine," answered the man sullenly.
+
+"How many have we got here?"
+
+"Six, sir," interposed Curwen. "Those three," pointing to three
+disconsolate and dripping figures, "were all we could pick up."
+
+"Hark ye, fellows," said the captain. "You barred my road, I had to
+clear you away. You tried to sink me, I had to sink you. You have lost
+three of your ship-mates, you have yourselves to blame for it; your
+shot has drawn blood from one for whom I would have cut down forty
+times your number. I will send you back to shore. Away with you! No, I
+will hear nothing. Let them have the gig, Curwen, and four oars."
+
+"And now God speed the _Peregrine_," cried Jack Smith, as the revenue
+men pushed off in the direction of the light and the wind was again
+swelling every sail of his gallant ship. "We are well out of our
+scrape. Shape her course for St. Malo, Curwen. If this wind holds we
+should be there by the nineteenth in the morning, at latest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE FIGHT FOR THE OPEN
+
+    As o'er the grass, beneath the larches there
+    We gaily stepped, the high noon overhead,
+    Then Love was born--was born so strong and fair.
+    Knowest thou! Love is dead.
+
+    _Gipsy Song._
+
+
+At last he was free. He had wrested his bride and the treasure trusted
+to his honour from the snares so unexpectedly laid on his path;
+whatever troubles might remain stored against him in the dim distance
+of time, he would not reck them now. The present and the immediate
+future were full of splendour and triumph.
+
+All those golden schemes worked out under yonder light of
+Scarthey--God bless it--now receding in the gloom behind his swift
+running ship, whether in the long watches of the night, or in the
+recent fevered resolves of imminent danger, they had come to pass
+after all! And she, the light of his life, was with him. She had
+trusted her happiness, her honour, herself, to his love. The thought
+illumined his brain with glory as he rushed back to the silent muffled
+figure that still stood awaiting his coming.
+
+"At last!" he said, panting in the excess of his joy; "At last,
+Madeleine ... I can hardly believe it! But selfish brute that I am,
+you must be crushed with fatigue. My brave darling, you would make me
+forget your tender woman's frame, and you are wounded!"
+
+Supporting her--for the ship, reaching the open sea, had begun to roll
+more wildly--he led her back into the little room now lighted by the
+fitful rays of a swinging lamp. With head averted, she suffered
+herself to be seated on a kind of sofa couch.
+
+When he had closed the door, he seized her hand, on which ran streaks
+of half-dried blood, and covered it with kisses.
+
+"Ah, Madeleine! here in the sanctuary I had prepared for you, where I
+thought you would be so safe, so guarded, tell me that you forgive me
+for having brought this injury to you. Wounded, torn, bleeding.... I
+who would give all my blood, my life, if life were not so precious to
+me now that you have come into it, to save you from the slightest
+pain! At least here you are secure, here you can rest, but--but there
+is no one to wait on you, Madeleine." He fell on his knees beside her.
+"Madeleine, my wife, you must let me tend you." Then, as she shivered
+slightly, but did not turn to him, he went on in tones of the most
+restrained tenderness mingled with humblest pleading:
+
+"Had it not been for your accident, I had not ventured even to cross
+the threshold of this room. But your wound must be dressed; darling,
+darling, allow me, forgive me; the risk is too great."
+
+Rising to his feet again he gently pulled at her cloak. Molly spoke
+not a word, but untied it at the neck and let it fall away from her
+fair young body; and keeping her hooded face still rigidly averted,
+she surrendered her wounded arm.
+
+He muttered words of distress at the sight of the broad blood stains;
+stepped hurriedly to a little cupboard where such surgical stores as
+might be required on board were hoarded, and having selected scissors,
+lint, and bandages, came back and again knelt down by her side to cut
+off, with eager, compassionate hands, the torn and maculated sleeve.
+
+The wound was but a surface laceration, and a man would not have given
+a thought to it in the circumstances. But to see this soft, white
+woman's skin, bruised black in parts, torn with a horrid red gap in
+others; to see the beauty of this round arm thus brutally marred, thus
+twitching with pain--it was monstrous, hideously unnatural in the
+lover's eyes!
+
+With tenderness, but unflinchingly, he laved the mangled skin with
+cool, fresh water; pulled out, with far greater torture to himself
+than to her, some remaining splinters embedded in the flesh; covered
+the wound with lint, and finished the operation by a bandage as neat
+as his neat sailor's touch, coupled with some knowledge of surgery,
+gained in the experiences of his privateering days, could accomplish
+it. He spoke little: only a word of encouragement, of admiration for
+her fortitude now and then; and she spoke not at all during the
+ministration. She had raised her other hand to her eyes, with a
+gesture natural to one bracing herself to endurance, and had kept it
+there until, his task completed, her silence, the manner in which she
+hid her face from him awoke in him all that was best and loftiest in
+his generous heart.
+
+As he rose to his feet and stood before her, he too dared not speak
+for fear of bruising what he deemed an exquisite maidenliness, before
+which his manhood was abashed at itself. For some moments there was no
+sound in the cabin save that of the swift rushing waters behind the
+wooden walls and of the labour and life of the ship under full sail;
+then he saw the tumultuous rising of her bosom, and thought she was
+weeping.
+
+"Madeleine," he cried with passionate anxiety, "speak! Let me see your
+face--are you faint? Lie upon this couch. Let me get you wine--oh that
+these days were passed and I could call you wife and never leave you!
+Madeleine, my love, speak!"
+
+Molly rose to her feet, and with a gesture of anger threw off her hood
+and turned round upon him. And there in the light of the lamp, he
+glared like one distraught at the raven locks, the burning eyes of a
+strange woman.
+
+She was very pale.
+
+"No," said Molly, defiantly, when twice or thrice his laboured breath
+had marked the passing of the horrible moment, "I am not Madeleine."
+Then she tried to smile; but unconsciously she was frightened, and the
+smile died unformed as she pursued at random:
+
+"You know me--perhaps by hearsay--as I know you, Captain Smith."
+
+But he, shivering under the coldness of his disappointment, answered
+in a kind of weary whisper:
+
+"Who are you--you who speak with her voice, who stand at her height
+and move and walk as she does? I have seen you surely--Ah, I know....
+Madam, what a cruel mockery! And she, where is she?"
+
+Still staring at her with widely dilated eyes, he seized his forehead
+between his hands. The gesture was one of utter despair. Before this
+weakness Molly promptly resumed the superiority of self-possession.
+
+"Yes," she said, and this time the smile came back to her face, "I am
+Lady Landale, and my sister Madeleine--I grieve to have to say so--has
+not had that courage for which you gave her credit to-night."
+
+Little was required at a moment like this to transmute such thoughts
+as seethed in the man's head to a burst of fury. Fury is action, and
+action a relief to the strained heart. There was a half-concealed,
+unintended mockery in her tones which brought a sudden fire of anger
+to his eyes. He raised both hands and shook them fiercely above his
+head:
+
+"But why--why in the name of heaven--has such a trick been played on
+me ... at such a time?"
+
+He paused, and trembling with the effort, restrained himself to a more
+decent bearing before the woman, the lady, the friend's wife. His arms
+fell by his side, and he repeated in lower tones, though the flame of
+his gaze could not be subdued:
+
+"Why this deception, this playing with the blindness of my love? Why
+this comedy, which has already had one act so tragic?--Yes, think of
+it, madam, think of the tragedy this is now in my life, since she is
+left behind and I never now, with these men's lives to account for,
+may go back and claim her who has given me her troth! Already I staked
+the fortune of my trust, on the bare chance that she would come. What
+though her heart failed her at the eleventh hour?--God forgive her for
+it!--surely she never sanctioned this masquerade?... Oh no! she would
+not stoop to such an act, and human life is not a thing to jest upon.
+She never played this trick, the thought is too odious. What have you
+done! Had I known, had I had word sooner--but half an hour
+sooner--those corpses now rolling under the wave with their sunken
+ship would still be live men and warm.... And I--I should not be the
+hopeless outlaw, the actual murderer that this night's work has made
+of me!"
+
+His voice by degrees rose once more to the utmost ring of bitterness
+and anger. Molly, who had restored her cloak to her shoulders and sat
+down, ensconced in it as closely as her swaddled arm would allow her,
+contemplated him with a curious mixture of delight and terror; delight
+in his vigour, his beauty, above everything in his mastery and
+strength; and delight again at the new thrill of the fear it imposed
+upon her daring soul. Then she flared into rage at the thought of the
+coward of her blood who had broken faith with such a man as this, and
+she melted all into sympathy with his anger--A right proper man most
+cruelly used and most justifiably wrathful!
+
+And she, being a woman whose face was at most times as a book on which
+to read the working of her soul, there was something in her look, as
+in silence she listened and gazed upon him, which struck him suddenly
+dumb. Such a look on a face so like, yet so unlike, that of his love
+was startling in the extreme--horrible.
+
+He stepped back, and made as if he would have rushed from the room.
+Then bethinking himself that he was a madman, he drew a chair near her
+in a contrary mood, sat down, and fixed his eyes upon her very
+steadily.
+
+She dropped her long lids, and demurely composed her features by some
+instinct that women have, rather than from any sense of the impression
+she had produced.
+
+A little while they sat thus again in silence. In the silence, the
+rolling of the ship and the manner in which, as she raced on her way,
+she seemed to breathe and strain, worked in with the mood of each; in
+his, with the storm and stress of his soul; in hers, as the very
+expression of her new freedom and reckless pleasure.
+
+Then he spoke; the strong emotion that had warmed her had now left his
+voice. It was cold and scornful.
+
+"Madam, I await your explanation. So far, I find myself only the
+victim of a trick as unworthy and cruel as it is purposeless."
+
+She had delayed carrying out her mission with the most definite
+perverseness. She could not but acknowledge the justice of his
+reproof, realise the sorry part she must play in his eyes, the
+inexcusable folly of the whole proceeding, and yet she was strung to a
+very lively indignation by the tone he had assumed, and suddenly saw
+herself in the light of a most disinterested and injured virtue.
+
+"Captain Smith," she exclaimed, flashing a hot glance at him, "you
+assume strangely the right to be angry with me! Be angry if you will
+with things as they are; rail against fate if you will, but be
+grateful to me.--I have risked much to serve you."
+
+The whole expression of his face changed abruptly to one of eager,
+almost entreating, inquiry.
+
+"Do me the favour," she continued, "to look into the pocket of my
+cloak--my arm hurts me if I move--you will find there a letter
+addressed to you. I was adjured to see that it should reach you in
+safety. I promised to place it in your own hands. This could hardly
+have been done sooner, as you know."
+
+The words all at once seemed to alter the whole situation. He sprang
+up and came to her quickly.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, make allowances for me, Lady Landale, I am quite
+distracted!" There had returned a tinge of hope into his voice. "Where
+is it?" he eagerly asked, seeking, as directed, for the pocket. "Ah!"
+and mechanically repeating, "Forgive me!" he drew out the letter at
+last and retreated, feverishly opening it under the light of the lamp.
+
+Molly had turned round to watch. Up to this she had felt no regret for
+his disillusion, only an irritable heat of temper that he should waste
+so much love upon so poor an object. But now all her heart went to him
+as she saw the sudden greyness that fell on his face from the reading
+of the very first line; there was no indignation, no blood-stirring
+emotion; it was as if a cold pall had fallen upon his generous spirit.
+The very room looked darker when the fire within the brave soul was
+thus all of a sudden extinguished.
+
+He read on slowly, with a kind of dull obstinacy, and when he came to
+the miserable end continued looking at the paper for the moment. Then
+his hand fell; slowly the letter fluttered to the floor, and he let
+his eyes rest unseeingly, wonderingly upon the messenger.
+
+After a little while words broke from him, toneless, the mere echo of
+dazed thoughts: "It is over, all over. She has lost her trust. She
+does not love me any more."
+
+He picked up the letter again, and sitting down placed it in front of
+him on the table. "'Tis a cruel letter, madam, that you have brought
+me," he said then, looking up at Molly with the most extraordinary
+pain in his eyes. "A cruel letter! Yet I am the same man now that I
+was this morning when she swore she would trust me to the end--and she
+could not trust me a few hours longer! Why did you not speak? One word
+from you as you stepped upon the ship would have saved my soul from
+the guilt of these men's death!" Then with a sharper uplifting of his
+voice, as a new aspect of his misfortune struck him: "And you--you,
+too! What have I to do with you, Adrian's wife? He does not know?"
+
+She did not reply, and he cried out, clapping his hands together:
+
+"It only wanted this. My God, it is I--I, his friend, who owes him so
+much, who am to cause him such fear, such misery! Do you know, madam,
+that it is impossible that I should restore you to him for days yet.
+And then when, and where, and how? God knows! Nothing must now come
+between me and my trust. I have already dishonourably endangered it.
+To attempt to return with you to-night, as perhaps you fancy I
+will--as, of course, I would instantly do had I alone myself and you
+to consider, would be little short of madness. It would mean utter
+ruin to many whom I have pledged myself to serve. And yet Adrian--my
+honour pulls me two ways--poor Adrian! What dumb devil possessed you
+that you did not speak before. Had you no thought for your woman's
+good name? Ill-fated venture, ill-fated venture, indeed! Would God
+that shot had met me in its way--had only my task been accomplished!"
+
+He buried his head in his hands.
+
+Lady Landale flushed and paled alternately, parted her lips to speak,
+and closed them once more. What could she say, and how excuse herself?
+She did not repent what she had done, though it had been sin all
+round; she had little reck of her woman's good name, as he called it;
+the death of the excise men weighed but lightly, if at all, upon her
+conscience; the thought of Adrian was only then a distasteful memory
+to be thrust away; nay--even this man's grief could not temper the
+wild joy that was in her soul to-night. Fevered with fatigue, with
+excitement, by her wound, her blood ran burning in her veins, and beat
+faster in every pulse.
+
+And as she felt the ship rise and fall, and knew that each motion was
+an onward leap that separated her further and ever further from dull
+home and dull husband, and isolated her ever more completely with her
+sister's lover, she exulted in her heart.
+
+Presently he lifted his head.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "I believe that you meant most kindly, and as
+you say, I should be grateful. Your service is ill-requited by my
+reproaches, and you have run risk indeed--merciful Heaven, had my old
+friend's wife been killed upon my ship through my doings! But you see
+I cannot command myself; you see how I am situated. You must forgive
+me. All that can be done to restore you to your home as soon as
+possible shall be done, and all, meanwhile, to mitigate the discomfort
+you must suffer here--And for your good intention to her and me, I
+thank you."
+
+He had risen, and now bowed with a dignity that sat on his sailor
+freedom in no wise awkwardly. She, too, with an effort, stood up as if
+to arrest his imminent departure. A tall woman, and he but of average
+height, their eyes were nearly on a level. For a second or two her
+dark gaze sought his with a strange hesitation, and then, as if the
+truth in him awoke all the truth in her, the natural daring of her
+spirit rose proudly to meet this kindred soul. She would let no
+falsehood, no craven feminine subterfuge intervene between them.
+
+"Do not thank me," she exclaimed, glowing with a brilliant scorn in
+which the greatness of her beauty, all worn as she was, struck him
+into surprise, yet evoked no spark of admiration. "What I did I did,
+to gratify myself. Oh, aye, if I were as other women I should smile
+and take your compliments, and pose as the martyr and as the
+self-sacrificing devoted sister. But I will not. It was nothing to me
+how Madeleine got in or out of her love scrapes. I would not have gone
+one step to help her break her promise to you, or even to save your
+life, but that it pleased me so to do. Madeleine has never chosen to
+make me her confidant. I would have let her manage her own affairs
+gaily, had I had better things to occupy my mind--but I had not,
+Captain Smith. Life at Pulwick is monotonous. I have roaming blood in
+my veins: the adventure tempted, amused me, fascinated me--and there
+you have the truth! Of course I could have given the letter to the men
+and sent them back to you with it--it was not because of my promise
+that I did not do it. Of course I could have spoken the instant I got
+on board, perhaps----" here a flood of colour dyed her face with a
+gorgeous conscious crimson, and a dimple faintly came and went at the
+corner of her mouth, "perhaps I would have spoken. But then, you must
+remember, you closed my lips!"
+
+"My God!" said Captain Jack, and looked at her with a sort of horror.
+
+But this she could not see for her eyes were downcast. "And now that I
+have come," she went on, and would have added, "I am glad I did," but
+that all of a sudden a new bashfulness came upon her, and she
+stammered instead, incoherently: "As for Adrian--Rene knew I had a
+message for you, and Rene will tell him--he is not stupid--you
+know--Rene, I mean."
+
+"I am glad," answered the man gravely, after a pause, "if you have
+reasonable grounds for believing that your husband knows you to be on
+my ship. He will then be the less anxious at your disappearance: for
+he knows too, madam, that his wife will be as honoured and as guarded
+in my charge as she would be in her mother's house."
+
+He bowed again in a stately way and then immediately left her.
+
+Molly sank back upon her couch, and she could not have said why, burst
+into tears. She felt cold now, and broken, and her stiffening wound
+pained her. But nevertheless, as she lay upon the little velvet
+pillow, and wept her rare tears were strangling sobs, the very ache of
+her wound had a strange savour that she would not have exchanged for
+any past content.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rene, having obeyed his mistress's orders, and left her alone with the
+sailors on the beach, withdrew within the shelter of the door, but
+remained waiting, near enough to be at hand in case he should be
+called.
+
+It was still pitch dark and the rollers growled under a rough wind; he
+could catch the sound of a man's voice, now and again, between the
+clamour of the sea and the wuthering of the air, but could not
+distinguish a word. Presently, however, this ceased, and there came to
+him the unmistakable regular beat of oars retreating. The interview
+was over, and breathing a sigh of relief at the thought that, at last,
+his master's friend would soon be setting on his way to safety, the
+servant emerged to seek her ladyship.
+
+A few minutes later he dashed into Sir Adrian's room with a livid
+face, and poured forth a confused tale:
+
+Milady had landed without Mademoiselle; had stopped to speak to two of
+the _Peregrine_, whilst he waited apart. The men had departed in their
+boat.
+
+"The _Peregrine_ men! But the ship has been out of sight these eight
+hours!" ejaculated Sir Adrian, bewildered. Then, catching fear from
+his servant's distraught countenance:
+
+"My wife," he exclaimed, bounding up; and added, "you left her,
+Renny?"
+
+The man struck his breast: he had searched and called.... My Lady was
+nowhere to be found. "As God is my witness," he repeated, "I was
+within call. My Lady ordered me to leave her. Your honour knows My
+Lady has to be obeyed."
+
+"Get lanterns!" said Sir Adrian, the anguish of a greater dread
+driving the blood to his heart. Even to one who knew the ground well,
+the isle of Scarthey, on a black, stormy night, with the tide high,
+was no safe wandering ground. For a moment, the two--comrades of so
+many miserable hours--faced each other with white and haggard faces.
+Then with the same deadly fear in their hearts, they hurried out into
+the soughing wind, down to the beach, baited on all sides by the
+swift-darting hissing surf. Running their lanterns close to the
+ground, they soon found, by the trampled marks upon the sand, where
+the conclave had been held. From thence a double row of heavy
+footprints led to the shelving bit of beach where it was the custom
+for boats to land from seawards.
+
+"See, your honour, see," cried Rene, in deepest agitation, "the print
+of this little shoe, here--and there, and here again, right down to
+the water's edge. Thank God--thank God! My Lady has had no accident.
+She has gone with the sailors to the boat. Ah! here the tide has
+come--we can see no farther."
+
+"But why should she have gone with them?" came, after a moment, Sir
+Adrian's voice out of the darkness. "Surely that is strange--and
+yet ... Yes, that is indeed her foot-print in the sand."
+
+"And if your honour will look to sea, he will perceive the ship's
+lights yonder, upon the water. That is the captain's ship.... Your
+honour, I must avow to you that I have concealed something from
+you--it was wrong, indeed, and now I am punished--but that poor
+Monsieur the Captain, I was so sorry for him, and he so enamoured. He
+had made a plan to lift off Mademoiselle Madeleine with him to-night,
+marry her in France; and that was why he came back again, at the risk
+of his life. He supplicated me not to tell you, for fear you would
+wish to prevent it, or think it your duty to. Mademoiselle had
+promised, it seemed, and he was mad with her joy, the poor gentleman!
+and as sure of her faith as if she had been a saint in Heaven. But My
+Lady came alone, your honour, as I said. The courage had failed to
+Mademoiselle, I suppose, at the last moment, and Madame bore a message
+to the captain. But the captain was not able to leave his ship, it
+seems; and, my faith," cried Mr. Potter; his spirits rising, as the
+first ghastly dread left him, "the mystery explains itself! It is
+quite simple, your honour will see. As the captain did not come to the
+island, according to his promise to Mademoiselle--he had good reasons,
+no doubt--Madame went herself to his ship with her message. She had
+the spirit for it--Ah! if Mademoiselle had had but a little of it
+to-night, we should not be where we are!"
+
+Sir Adrian caught at the suggestion out of the depths of his despair.
+"You are right, Renny, you must be right. Yet, on this rough sea, in
+this black night--what madness! The boat, instantly; and let us row
+for those lights as we never rowed before!"
+
+Even as the words were uttered the treble glimmer vanished. In vain
+they strained their eyes: save for the luminous streak cast by their
+own beacon lamp, the gloom was unbroken.
+
+"His honour will see, a boat will be landing instantly with My Lady
+safe and sound," said Rene at last. But his voice lacked confidence,
+and Sir Adrian groaned aloud.
+
+And so they stood alone in silence, forced into inaction, that most
+cruel addition to suspense, by the darkness and the waters which
+hemmed them in upon every side. The vision of twenty dangerous places
+where one impetuous footfall might have hurled his darling into the
+cruel beating waves painted themselves--a hideous phantasmagory--upon
+Sir Adrian's brain. Had the merciless waters of the earth that had
+murdered the mother, grasped at the child's life also? He raised his
+voice in a wild cry, it seemed as if the wind caught it from him and
+tore it into shreds.
+
+"Hark!" whispered Rene, and clasped his master's icy hand. Like an
+echo of Sir Adrian's cry, the far-off ring of a human voice had risen
+from the sea.
+
+Again it came.
+
+"_C'est de la mer, Monseigneur!_" panted the man; even as he spoke the
+darkness began to lift. Above their heads, unnoticed, the clouds had
+been rifted apart beneath the breath of the north wind; the horizon
+widened, a misty wing-like shape was suddenly visible against the
+receding gloom.
+
+The captain's ship! The _Peregrine_!
+
+As master and man peered outward as if awaiting unconsciously some
+imminent solution from the gliding spectre, it seemed as if the night
+suddenly opened on the left to shoot forth a burst of red fire. A few
+seconds later, the hollow boom of cannon shook the air around them.
+Sir Adrian's nails were driven into Rene's hands.
+
+The flaming messenger had carried to both minds an instant knowledge
+of the new danger.
+
+"Great Heavens!" muttered Adrian. "He will surrender; he must
+surrender! He could not be so base, so wicked, as to fight and
+endanger _her_!"
+
+But the servant's keener sight, trained by long stormy nights of
+watching, was following in its dwindling, mysterious course that misty
+vision in which he thought to recognize the _Peregrine_.
+
+"_Elle file, elle file joliment la goelette!_ Mother of Heaven, there
+goes the gun again! I never thought my blood would turn to water only
+to hear the sound of one like this. But your honour must not be
+discouraged; he can surely trust the captain. Ah, the clouds--I can
+see no more."
+
+The wild blast gathering fresh droves of vapour from the huddled
+masses on the horizon was now, in truth, herding them fiercely across
+the spaces it had cleared a few moments before. Confused shouts,
+strange clamour seemed to ring out across the waves to the listeners:
+or it might have been only the triumphant howlings of the rising
+storm.
+
+"Will not your honour come in? The rain is falling."
+
+"No, Renny, no, give me my lantern again, friend, and let us examine
+anew."
+
+Both knew it to be of no avail, but physically and mentally to move
+about was, at least, better than to stand still. Step by step they
+scanned afresh the sand, the shingle, the rocks, the walls, to return
+once more to the trace of the slender feet, leading beside the great
+double track of heavy sea boots to the water's edge.
+
+Sir Adrian knelt down and gazed at the last little imprint that seemed
+to mock him with the same elusive daintiness as Molly herself, as if
+he could draw from it the answer to the riddle.
+
+Rene endeavouring to stand between his master and the driving blast
+laid down his lantern too, and strove by thumping his breast
+vigorously to infuse a little warmth into his numbed limbs and at the
+same time to relieve his overcharged feelings.
+
+As he paused at length, out of breath, the noise of a methodical thud
+and splash of oars arose, above the tumult of the elements, very near
+to them, upon their left.
+
+Sir Adrian sprang to his feet.
+
+"She returns, she returns," shouted Rene, capering, in the excess of
+the sudden joy, and waving his lantern; then he sent forth a vigorous
+hail which was instantly answered close by the shore.
+
+"Hold up your light, your honour--ah, your honour, did I not say
+it?--while I go to help Madame. Now then, you others down there,"
+running to the landing spot, "make for the light!"
+
+The keel ground upon the shingle.
+
+"My Lady first," shouted Rene.
+
+Some one leaped up in the boat and flung him a rope with a curse.
+
+"The lady, ay, ay, my lad, you'd better go and catch her yourself.
+There she goes," pointing enigmatically behind him with his thumb.
+
+Sir Adrian, unable to restrain his impatience, ran forward too, and
+threw the light of his lantern upon the dark figures now rising one by
+one and pressing forward. Five or six men, drenched from head to foot,
+swearing and grumbling; with faces pinched with cold, all lowering
+with the same expression of anger and resentment and shining whitely
+at him out of the confusion. He saw the emptying seats, the shipped
+oars, the name _Peregrine_ in black letters upon the white paint of
+the dingey; and she?... she was not there!
+
+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 God may damn 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 ashore 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 asserted 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 spaces 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 encumbrance. Adrian's wife and Madeleine's sister,
+as such entitled 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 eyeballs, "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 classified as sheepish.
+
+"And what'll be to do now?"
+
+"By the God 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, nobody 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
+ejaculation 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 passionate 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 pass at last, as all time passes. 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, embarrassed.
+
+"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 God'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!
+
+She had seen but little of Captain Jack these last two days;
+interchanged but few and formal words with him, now and then, as they
+met morning and evening or came across each other during the day. She
+felt that he avoided her. But she had seen him, she had heard his
+voice, they had been close to each other upon the great seas, however
+divided, and this had been something to feed upon. Now what prospect
+before her hungry heart but--starvation?
+
+At least the last precious moments should not be lost to her. She rose
+and dressed in haste; a difficult operation in her maimed state.
+Before leaving her narrow quarters, she peered into the looking-glass
+with an eagerness she had never displayed in the days of her vain
+girlhood.
+
+"What a fright!" she said to the anxious face that looked back at her
+with yearning eyes and dark burning lips. And she thought of
+Madeleine's placid fairness as Cain might of Abel's modest altar.
+
+When she emerged upon deck, a strange and beautiful scene was spread
+to her gaze. A golden haze enveloped the water and the coast, but out
+of it, in brown jagged outline, against the blazing background of
+glowing sunlight rose the towers, the pointed roofs and spires of that
+old corsair's hive, St. Malo. The waters were bright green, frothed
+with oily foam around the ship. The masts cast strange long black
+shadows, and Molly saw one spring from her own feet as she moved into
+the morning glow. The _Peregrine_, she noticed, was cruising parallel
+with the coast, instead of making for the harbour, and just now all
+was very still on board. Two men, conspicuous against the yellow sky,
+stood apart, a little forward, with their backs turned to her.
+
+One of these was Captain Jack, gazing steadily at the town through a
+telescope; the other the mate. Both were silent. Silently herself and
+unnoticed Molly went up and stood beside them; observing her sister's
+lover as intently as he that unknown distant point, she presently saw
+the lean hand nearest her tremble ever so slightly as it held the
+glass; then he turned and handed it to his companion, saying briefly,
+"See what you make of it."
+
+The man lifted the glass, set it, looked, dropped his hand and faced
+his captain. Their eyes met, but neither spoke for a second or two.
+
+"It is so, then?" said the captain at last.
+
+"Aye, sir, no mistake about that. There's the tricolour up again--and
+be damned to it--as large as life, to be sure!"
+
+The healthy tan of the captain's face had not altered by one shade;
+his mouth was set in its usual firm line, but, by the intuition of her
+fiery soul, the woman beside him knew that he had received a blow.
+
+"A strange thing," went on Curwen in a grumbling guttural bass, "and
+it's only a year ago since they set up the old white napkin again. You
+did not look for this, sir?" He too had his intuitions.
+
+"No, Curwen, it is the last thing I looked for. And it spells failure
+to me--failure once more!"
+
+As he spoke he turned his head slightly and perceiving Molly standing
+close behind him glanced up sharply and frowned, then strove to smooth
+his brow into conventional serenity and greeted her civilly.
+
+Curwen, clenching his hard hands together round the telescope, retired
+a step and stood apart, still hanging on his captain's every gesture
+like a faithful dog.
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Molly, disregarding the morning salutation.
+
+"It means strange things to France," responded Captain Jack slowly,
+with a bitter smile; "and to me, Madam, it means that I have come on a
+wild goose chase----"
+
+He stretched out his hand for the glass once more as he
+spoke--although even by the naked eye the flag, minute as it was,
+could be seen to flash red in the breeze--and sought the far-off
+flutter again; and then closing the instrument with an angry snap,
+tossed it back.
+
+"But what does it mean?" reiterated Molly, a wild impatience, a wild
+hope trembling in her breast.
+
+"It means, Madam, that I have brought my pigs to the wrong market,"
+cried Captain Jack, still with the smile that sat so strangely upon
+his frank lips; "that the goods I have to deliver, I cannot deliver.
+For if there is any meaning in symbols, by the wave of that tricolour
+yonder the country has changed rulers again. My dealings were to be
+with the king's men, and as they are not here, at least, no longer in
+power--how could they be under that rag?--I must even trot the cargo
+home again. Not a word to the men, Curwen, but give the order to sheer
+off! We have lowered the blue, white and red too often, have not we?
+to risk a good English ship, unarmed, under the nozzles of those
+Republican or Imperial guns."
+
+The man grinned. The two could trust each other. Molly turned away and
+moved seawards, for she knew that the joy upon her face was not to be
+hidden. Captain Jack fell to pacing the deck with bent head, and long,
+slow steps.
+
+Absorbed in dovetailing the last secret arrangements of his venture,
+and more intent still, during his very few hours of idleness, on the
+engrossing thought of love, he had had no knowledge of the
+extraordinary challenge to fate cast by Bonaparte, of that challenge
+which was to end in the last and decisive clash of French and English
+hosts. He had not even heard of the Corsican's return to France with
+his handful of grenadiers, for newspapers were scarce at Scarthey. But
+even had he heard, like the rest of the world, he would no doubt have
+thought no more of it than as a mad freak born of the vanquished
+usurper's foolhardy restlessness.
+
+But the conclave of plenipotentiaries assembled at Vienna were not
+more thunderstruck when, on that very 19th of March, the semaphore
+brought them news of the legitimate King of France once more fled, and
+of his country once more abandoned to the hated usurper, than was
+Captain Jack as he watched the distant flagstaff in the sunrise, and
+saw, when the morning port gun had vomited forth its white cloud on
+the ramparts of St. Malo, the fatal stripes run up the slender line in
+lieu of the white standard.
+
+But Jack Smith's mind, like his body, was quick in action. The sun had
+travelled but a degree or two over the wide undulating land, the mists
+were yet rising, when suddenly he halted, and called the mate in those
+commanding tones that had, from the first time she had heard them,
+echoed in Molly's heart:
+
+"Bring her alongside one of those smacks yonder, the furthest out to
+sea."
+
+Thereupon followed Curwen's hoarse bellow, an ordered stampede upon
+the deck, and gracefully, with no more seeming effort than a swan upon
+a garden pond, the _Peregrine_ veered and glided towards the rough
+skiff with its single ochre sail and its couple of brown-faced
+fishermen, who had left their nets to watch her advance. Captain Jack
+leant over the side, his hands over his mouth, and hailed them in his
+British-French--correct enough, but stiff to his tongue, as Molly
+heard and smiled at, and loved him for, in woman's way, when she loves
+at all.
+
+"Ahoy, the friend! A golden piece for him who will come on board and
+tell the news of the town."
+
+A brief consultation between the fisher pair.
+
+"_Un ecu d'or_," repeated Captain Jack. Then there was a flash of
+white teeth on the two weather-beaten faces.
+
+"_On y va, patron_," cried one of the fellows, cheerfully, and jumped
+into his dinghey, while his comrade still stared and grinned, and the
+stalwart lads of the _Peregrine_ grinned back at the queer foreign
+figure with the brown cap and the big gold earrings.
+
+Soon the fisherman's bare feet were thudding on the deck, and he stood
+before the English captain, cap in hand, his little, quick black eyes
+roaming in all directions, over the wonders of the beautiful white
+ship, with innocent curiosity. But before Captain Jack could get his
+tongue round another French phrase, Molly, detaching herself from her
+post of observation, came forward, smiling.
+
+"Let me speak to him," she said, "he will understand me better, and it
+will go quicker. What is it you want to know?"
+
+Captain Jack hesitated a moment, saw the advantage of the suggestion,
+and then accepted the offer with the queer embarrassment that always
+came over him in his relations with her.
+
+"You are very good," he said.
+
+"Oh, I like to talk the father and mother tongue," she said, gaily and
+sweetly. Her eyes danced; he had never seen her in this mood, and, as
+before, grudgingly had to admit her beauty.
+
+"And if you will allow it," she went on, "I am glad to be of use too."
+
+The fisherman, twirling his cap in his knotted fingers, stared at her
+open mouthed. _Une si belle dame!_ like a queen and speaking his
+tongue that it was a music to listen to. This was in truth a ship of
+marvels. _Ah, bon Dieu, oui, Madame_, there were news at St. Malo, but
+it depended upon one's feelings whether they were to be regarded as
+good or bad--_Dame_, every one has one's opinions--but for
+him--_pourvu qu'on lui fiche la paix_--what did it matter who sat on
+the throne--His Majesty the King--His Majesty the Emperor, or Citizen
+Bonaparte. Oh, a poor fisherman, what was it to him? He occupied
+himself with his little fishes, not with great folk. (Another
+white-teethed grin.) What had happened? _Parbleu_, it began by the
+military, those accursed military (this with a cautious look around,
+and gathering courage by seeing no signs of disapproval, proceeding
+with greater volubility). The poor town was full of them, infantry
+and artillery; regiments of young devils--and a band of old ones too.
+The veterans of _celui la_ (spitting on the deck contemptuously) they
+were the worst; that went without saying. A week ago there came a
+rumour that he had escaped--was in France--and then the ferment
+began--duels every day--rows in the cafes, fights in the ports. At
+night one would hear shouts in the streets--_Vive l'Empereur!_ and it
+spread, it spread. _Ma foi_--one regiment mutinied, then another--and
+then it was known that the Emperor had reached Paris. Oh, then it was
+warm! All those gentlemen, the officers who were for the King, were
+arrested. Then there was a grand parade on the _place d'armes_--Yes,
+he went there too, though he did not care much about soldiers. All the
+garrison was there. The colonel of the veterans came out with a flag
+in its case. _Portez armes!_ Good. They pull out the flag from the
+case: it's the old tricolour with the eagle on the top! _Presentez
+armes!_ And this time it was all over. Ah, one should have seen that,
+heard the houras, seen the bonfires! _Monsieur le Maire_ and the rest,
+appointed by the King, they were in a great fright, they had to give
+way--what does Madame say? Traitors? Oh, _bedame_ (scratching his
+head), it was no joke with the military just now--the whole place was
+under military law and, _saperlotte_, when the strong commands it is
+best for the weak to obey. As for him, he was only a poor fisherman.
+What did he know? he was not a politician: every one to his trade. So
+long as they let one have the peace--He thanked the gentleman, thanked
+him much; thanked the lady, desired to wish her the good-morning and
+_Monsieur_ too. Did they like no little fresh soles this morning? He
+had some leaping then below in his boat. No? well the good-morning
+then.
+
+They had heard enough. The fisherman paddled back to his skiff, and
+Molly stood watching from a little distance the motionless figure of
+the captain of the _Peregrine_ as with one hand clenching the
+hand-rail he gazed towards St. Malo with troubled eyes.
+
+After a few minutes Curwen advanced and touched him lightly on the
+arm.
+
+Captain Jack turned slowly to look at him: his face was a little pale
+and his jaw set. But the mate, who had served under him since the day
+he first stepped upon the old _St. Nicholas_, a gallant, fair-faced
+lad (and who knew "every turn of him," as he would have expressed it
+himself), saw that he had taken his decision; and he stepped back
+satisfied, ready to shape his course for the near harbour, or for the
+Pacific Ocean, or back to Scarthey itself at his master's bidding.
+
+"Call the men up," said the captain, "they have earned their bounty
+and they shall have it. Though their skipper is a poorer man than he
+thought to be, by this fool's work yonder, his good lads shall not
+suffer. Tush, man, that's the order--not a word. And after that,
+Curwen, let her make for the sea again, northwards."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE LIGHT AGAIN--THE LADY AND THE CARGO
+
+    Does not all the blood within me
+    Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
+    As the spring to meet the sunshine!
+
+    _Hiawatha._
+
+
+"Curwen," said Captain Jack, suddenly--the two stood together at the
+helm on the afternoon of the same day, and the _Peregrine_ was once
+more alone, a speck upon the waste of waters, "I have made up my mind
+to return to Scarthey."
+
+The mate wagged his bushy eyebrows and shifted his hand on the helm.
+"Ay, ay, sir," he said, after just an instant's pause.
+
+"I would not run you and the men into unnecessary danger, that you may
+be sure of; but the fact is, Curwen, I'm in a devil of a fix all
+round. There's no use hiding it from you. And, all things considered,
+to land the lady and the cargo at the lighthouse itself, gives me as
+fair a chance of getting out of it as any plan I can think of. The
+cargo's not all my own and it's a valuable one, I daresay you have
+guessed as much; and it's not the kind we want revenue men to pry
+into. I could not unload elsewhere that I know of, without creating
+suspicion. As to storing it elsewhere, it's out of the question.
+Scarthey's the place, though it's a damned risky one just now! But
+we've run many a risk together in our day, have we not?"
+
+"Ay, sir; who's afraid?"
+
+"Then there's the lady," lowering his voice; "she's Lady Landale, my
+friend's wife, the wife of the best friend ever man had. Ay, you
+remember him, I doubt not--the gentleman seaman of the _Porcupine_--I
+owe him more than I can ever repay, and he owes me something too.
+That sort of thing binds men together; and see what I have done to
+him--carried off his wife!"
+
+Curwen grunted, enigmatically, and disengaged a hand to scratch his
+chin.
+
+"I must have speech with him. I must, it is enough to drive me mad to
+think what he may be thinking of me. What I purpose is this: we'll
+disguise the ship as far as we can (we have the time), paint her a new
+streak and alter those topsails, change the set of the bowsprit and
+strike out her name."
+
+"That's unlucky," said the mate.
+
+"Unlucky, is it? Well, she's not been so lucky this run that we need
+fear to change the luck. Then, Curwen, we'll slip in at night at a
+high tide, watching for our opportunity and a dark sky; we'll unship
+the cargo, and then you shall take command of her and carry her off to
+the East Coast and wait there, till I am able to send you word or join
+you. It will only be a few hours danger for the men, after all."
+
+Still keeping his seaman eye upon the compass, Curwen cleared his
+throat with a gruesome noise. Then in tones which seemed to issue with
+difficulty from some immense depth:
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "that ain't a bargain."
+
+"How now?" cried his captain, sharply.
+
+"No, sir," rolling his head portentously; "that don't run to a
+bargain, that don't. The lads of the _Peregrine_ 'll stick to their
+skipper through thick and thin. I'll warrant them, every man Jack of
+them; and if there was one who grumbled, I'd have my knife in him
+before another caught the temper from him--I would, or my name's not
+Curwen. If ye bid us steer to hell we'll do it for you, sir, and
+welcome. But for to go and leave you there--no, sir, it can't be
+done."
+
+Captain Jack gave a little laugh that was as tender as a woman's tear.
+Curwen rolled his head again and mumbled to himself:
+
+"It can't be done."
+
+Then Jack Smith clapped his hand on the sailor's shoulder.
+
+"But it's got to be done!" he cried. "It is the only thing you can do
+to help me, Curwen. To have our _Peregrine_ out in the daylight on
+that coast would be stark madness--no disguise could avail her, and
+you can't change your ugly old phiz, can you? As for me, I must have a
+few days on shore, danger or no danger. Ah, Curwen," with a sudden,
+passionate outbreak, "there are times when a man's life is the least
+of his thoughts!"
+
+"Couldn't I stop with you, sir?"
+
+"I would not trust the ship to another, and you would double the risk
+for me."
+
+"I could double a blow for you too," cried the fellow, hoarsely. "But
+if it's got to be--it must be. I'll do it, sir."
+
+"I count on it," said the captain, briefly.
+
+As the ring of his retreating steps died away upon his ear the mate
+shook his head in melancholy fashion:
+
+"Women," he said, "is very well, I've nought to say against them in
+their way. And the sea's very well--as I ought to know. But women and
+the sea, it don't agree. They's jealous one of the other and a man
+gets torn between."
+
+As Molly sat in her cabin, watching the darkening sky outside with
+dreaming eyes, she started on seeing Captain Jack approach, and
+instead of passing her with cold salute, halt and look in.
+
+"I would speak a word with you," he said.
+
+"On deck, then," said Molly. She felt somehow as if under the broad
+heaven they were nearer each other than in that narrow room. The sea
+was rough, the wind had risen and still blew from the north, it was
+cold; but her blood ran too fast these days to heed it.
+
+She drew one of the capes of her cloak over her head and staggering a
+little, for the schooner, sailing close to the wind, pitched and
+rolled to some purpose, she made for her usual station at the
+bulwarks.
+
+"Well?" she asked.
+
+He briefly told her his purpose of returning to Scarthey direct.
+
+Her eye dilated; she grew pale.
+
+"Is that not dangerous?"
+
+He made a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"But they must be watching for you on that coast. You have sunk the
+boat--killed those men. To return there--My God, what folly!"
+
+"I must land my goods, Madam. You forget that I have more contraband
+on board than, smuggler as I am, even I bargained for."
+
+"If it is for me?--I would rather fling myself into the waves this
+instant than that you should expose yourself to danger."
+
+"Then I should fling myself after you, and that would be more
+dangerous still."
+
+He smiled a little mockingly upon her as he spoke; but the words
+called a transient fire into her face.
+
+"You would risk your life to save me?" she cried.
+
+"To save Adrian's wife, Madam."
+
+"_Bah!_"
+
+He would have gone then, but she held him with her free hand. She was
+again white to the lips. But her eyes--how they burned!
+
+He would have given all his worth to avoid what he felt was coming. A
+woman, at such a juncture may forbid speech, or deny her ear: a man,
+unless he would seem the first of Josephs or the last of coxcombs,
+dare not even hint at his unwelcome suspicions.
+
+"I will not have you go into this danger, I will not!" stammered Molly
+incoherently. The dusk was spreading, and her eyes seemed to grow
+larger and larger in the uncertain light.
+
+"Lady Landale, you misunderstand. It is true that to see you safely
+restored to your husband's roof is an added reason for my return to
+Scarthey--but were you not on board, I should go all the same. I will
+tell you why, it is a secret, but you shall know it. I have treasures
+on board, vast treasures confided to me, and I must store them in
+safety till I can give them back to their rightful owners. This I can
+only do at Scarthey--for to cruise about with such a cargo
+indefinitely is as impossible as to land it elsewhere. And more than
+this, had I not that second reason, I have yet a third that urges me
+to Scarthey still."
+
+"For Madeleine?" she whispered, and her teeth gleamed between her
+lips.
+
+He remained silent and tried gently to disengage himself from her
+slender fingers, but the feeling of their frailness, the knowledge of
+her wound, made her feeble grasp as an iron vice to his manliness.
+
+She came closer to him.
+
+"Do you not remember then--what she has said to you? what she wrote to
+you in cold blood--the coward--in the very moment when you were
+staking your life for love of her? I remember, if you do not--'You
+have deceived me,' she wrote, and her hand never trembled, for the
+words ran as neatly and primly as ever they did in her convent copy
+books. 'You are not what you represented yourself to be--You have
+taken advantage of the inexperience of an ignorant girl, I have been
+deluded and deceived. I never wish to see you, to hear of you again.'"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Lady Landale----" cried the man fiercely.
+
+Molly laughed--one of those laughs that have the ring of madness in
+them.
+
+"Do I not remember? Ah, that is not all! She knows you now for what
+you are, knows what your 'mission' is--but you must not believe she
+writes in anger. No, she----"
+
+Captain Jack's patience could bear no further strain.
+
+"Be silent," he commanded fiercely, and wrenched his arm away to face
+her with menacing eyes.
+
+"Ah, does it rouse so much anger in you even to hear repeated what she
+did not hesitate to write, did not hesitate to allow me to read? And
+yet you love her? If you had seen her, if you knew her as I do! I tell
+you she means it; when she wrote that she was not angry; it was the
+truth--she did it in cold blood. She loved you, you think, and yet she
+believed you a liar; she loved you, and she thinks you a traitor to
+all she holds dear. She believes that of _you_, and you ... you love
+her still!"
+
+"Lady Landale!"
+
+"Listen--she could never love you, as you should be loved. She was not
+born your kin. Between you and her there is nothing--nothing but your
+own fancy. Do not risk your life again for her--your life!"
+
+She stopped, drew her breath with a long gasp, the spray from a
+turbulent wave came dashing across the bows into her face, and as once
+the blood of Cecile de Savenaye had been roused by the call of the
+wild waters to leave safety and children and seek her doom, so now the
+blood she had transmitted to her child, leaped to the same impulse
+and bore her onwards with irresistible force.
+
+"When," she pursued, "in the darkness you took me in your arms and
+kissed me; what did the touch of my lips bring to you? My lips, not
+Madeleine's.... Were you not happy then? Oh, you were, do not deny it,
+I felt, I knew our souls met! My soul and yours, not yours and
+Madeleine's. And I knew then that we were made for each other. The sea
+and the wide free life upon it: it draws me as it draws you; it was
+that drew me to you before I had ever seen you. Listen, listen. Do not
+go to Scarthey--you have your beautiful ship, your faithful
+crew--there are rich and wonderful worlds, warm seas that beckon. You
+can have life, money, adventure--and love, love if you will. Take it,
+take me with you! What should I care if you were an adventurer, a
+smuggler, a traitor? What does anything matter if we are only
+together? Let us go, we have but one life, let us go!"
+
+Bereft of the power of movement he stood before her, and the sweat
+that had gathered upon his brow ran down his face. But, as the meaning
+of her proposition was borne in upon him, a shudder of fury shook him
+from head to foot. No man should have offered dishonour to Jack Smith
+and not have been struck the next instant at his feet. But a woman--a
+woman, and Adrian's wife!
+
+"Lady Landale," he said, after a silence during which the beating of
+her heart turned her sick and cold, and all her fever heat fell from
+her, leaving nothing but the knowledge of her shame, her misery, her
+hopeless love. "Lady Landale, let me bring you back to your cabin--it
+is late."
+
+She went with him as one half-conscious. At the door she paused. The
+light from within fell upon his face, deeply troubled and white, but
+upon the lips and brows, what scorn! He was a god among men.... How
+she loved him, and he scorned her! Poor Murthering Moll!
+
+She looked up.
+
+"Have you no word for me?" she cried passionately.
+
+"Only this, Lady Landale: I will forget."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back towards the distant northern light the schooner clove her
+valiant way in spite of adverse winds and high seas.
+
+The return journey was slower than the outward, and since the second
+day of it the lady kept much to her cabin, while the captain would
+pace the deck till far into the night, with unwonted uneasiness. To
+him the white wings of his _Peregrine_ were bearing him all too slowly
+for endurance, while to the stormy woman's heart that beat through the
+night watches in passionate echo to his restless tread, every instant
+that passed but brought nearer the prospect of a future so intolerable
+that she could not bring herself to face it.
+
+A gloom seemed to have come over the tight little craft, and to have
+spread even to the crew, who missed the ring of their captain's jolly
+laugh and the sound of his song.
+
+When, within a day's sail of the goal, the planned disguise was
+finally carried out upon the schooner's fair sides and rigging, her
+beautiful stretch of sail curtailed, and her name (final disgrace),
+superseded by the unmeaning title of _The Pretty Jane_, open murmurs
+broke out which it required all Curwen's severity--and if the old
+martinet did not execute the summary justice he had threatened he was
+quite equal to the occasion nevertheless--and all Jack's personal
+influence to quell.
+
+The dawn of the next day crept gloomily upon a world of rain; with
+long faces the men paddled about the deck, doing their duty in
+silence; Curwen's old countenance, set into grimmer lines than ever,
+looked as if it had just been detached from the prow of some vessel
+after hard experience of stress and storm. The spirits of the captain
+alone seemed to rise in proportion as they drew nearer land.
+
+"The moon sets at half-past eleven," he said to Curwen, "but we need
+not fear her to-night. By half-past twelve I reckon on your having
+those twenty-five damned casks safe in the cave you took them from; it
+is a matter of three journeys. And then the nose of the _Pretty Jane_
+must be pointed for the Orkneys. All's going well."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night had fallen. "The gaudy bubbling and remorseful day" had "crept
+into the bosom of the sea." From the cross-trees the look-out man had
+already been able to distinguish through the glass the faint distant
+glimmer of Scarthey beacon, when Captain Jack knocked for admittance
+at Lady Landale's cabin for the last time, as he thought, with a sigh
+of relief.
+
+"In the course of an hour, Madam," he said in a grave tone, "I hope to
+restore you to land. As for me, I shall have again to hide in the
+peel, though I hope it will not be for long. My fate--and by my fate I
+mean not only my safety, but my honour, which, as you know, is now
+bound up in the safety of the treasures--will be in your hands. For I
+must wait at Scarthey till I can see Adrian again, and upon your
+return to Pulwick I must beg you to be the bearer of a message to ask
+him to come and see me."
+
+She replied in a voice that trembled a little:
+
+"I will not fail you."
+
+But her great eyes, dark circled, fixed upon him with a meek,
+sorrowful look, spoke dumbly the troublous tale of her mind. In her
+subdued mood the likeness to Madeleine was more obtrusive than it had
+ever yet been. He contemplated her with melancholy, and drew a heavy
+sigh.
+
+Molly groaned in the depths of her soul, though her lips tight set
+betrayed no sound. Oh, miserable chaos of the human world, that such
+pent up love should be wasted--wasted; that they, too, young and
+strong and beautiful, alone together, so near, with such glorious
+happiness within their reach, should yet be so perversely far asunder!
+
+There was a long silence. They looked into each other's eyes; but he
+was unseeing; his mind was far away, dwelling upon the memory of that
+last meeting with his love under the fir trees of Pulwick only ten
+days ago, but now as irrevocably far as things seem that may never
+again be. At length, she made a movement which brought him back to
+present reality--a movement of her wounded arm as if of pain. And he
+came back to Lady Landale, worn with the fatigue of these long days in
+the cramped discomfort of a schooner cabin, thinned by pain and
+fevered thinkings, shorn of all that daintiness of appearance which
+can only be maintained in the midst of luxury, and yet, by the light
+of the flickering lamp, more triumphantly beautiful than ever.
+
+His thoughts leaped to his friend with a pang of remorse.
+
+"You are suffering--you are ill," he said. "Thus do I bring you back
+to him who last saw you so full of strength.... But you will recover
+at Pulwick."
+
+"Suffering, ill! Ah, my God!" As if suffocating, she pressed her hand
+upon her heart, and bowed her head till it rested on the table. And
+then he heard her murmur in a weary voice:
+
+"Recover at Pulwick! My God, my God! The air at Pulwick will stifle
+me, I think."
+
+He waited a moment in silence and saw that she was weeping. Then he
+went out and closed the door behind him with gentle hand.
+
+Nearly all the lights of the ship were now extinguished, and in a
+gloom as great as that in which they had started upon their
+unsuccessful venture, the _Peregrine_ and her crew returned to the
+little island which had already been so fateful to them.
+
+Captain Jack had taken the helm himself, and Curwen stood upon his
+right hand waiting patiently for his commands. For an hour or so they
+hung off the shore. The rain fell close and fine around them; it was
+as if sea and sky were merging by slow imperceptible degrees into one.
+The beacon light looming, halo encircled, through the mist, seemed,
+like a monster eye, to watch with unmoved contempt the restlessness of
+these pigmies in the grand solitude of the night.
+
+Who shall say with what conflict of soul Molly, in her narrow
+seclusion, saw the light of Scarthey grow out of the dimness till its
+rays fell across the darkened cabin and glimmered on her wedding ring?
+
+At last the captain drew his watch, and by the faint rays upon the
+binnacle saw the hour had come.
+
+"Boat loaded, Curwen?" he asked in a low voice.
+
+"This hour, sir."
+
+"Ready to cast?"
+
+"Right, sir."
+
+"Now, Curwen."
+
+Low, from man to man, the order ran through the ship, and the anchor
+was dropped, almost within a musket shot of the peel. It was high
+tide, but no hand but Captain Jack's would have dared risk the vessel
+so close. She swung round, ready to slip at a moment's notice.
+
+He left the helm; and in the wet darkness cannoned against the burly
+figure of his mate.
+
+"You, Curwen? Remember we have not a moment to lose. Remain here--as
+soon as the men are back from the last run, sheer off."
+
+He grasped the horny hand.
+
+Curwen made an inarticulate noise in his big throat, but the grip of
+his fingers upon his master's was of eloquence sufficient.
+
+"Let some one call the lady."
+
+A couple of men ran forward with dark lanterns. The rest gathered
+round.
+
+"Now, my lads, brisk and silent is the word."
+
+The cabin door opened, and Molly came forth, the darkness hid the
+pallor of her face, but it could not hide the faltering of her steps.
+Captain Jack sprang forward and gave her his arm, and she leant upon
+it without speaking, heavily. For one moment she stopped as if she
+could not tear her feet from the beloved planks, but Curwen caught her
+by the other arm; and then she was on the swinging ladder. And so she
+left the _Peregrine_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gig was almost filled with barrels; there was only room for the
+four oarsmen selected, besides the captain and herself. The boat
+shoved off. She looked back and saw, as once before, the great wall of
+the ship's side rise sheer above the sea, saw the triangle of light
+again slide down to lie a span above the water-line. With what a
+leaping heart she had set forth, that black night, away from the
+hateful lighthouse beam to that glimmer of promise and mystery! And
+now! She felt herself grow sick at the thought of that home-coming; at
+the vision of the close warm rooms, of her husband's melancholy eyes.
+Yet, as she sat, the sleeve of the captain's rough sailor coat touched
+her shoulder, and she remembered she was still with him. It was not
+all death yet.
+
+In less than three minutes they touched ground. He jumped into the
+water, and stretched out his arms for Molly. She rose giddily, and his
+embrace folded her round. The waves rolled in with surge and thud and
+dashed their spray upon them; and still the rain fell and beat upon
+her head, from which she had impatiently pushed her hood. But her
+spirit had no heed for things of the body this night.
+
+Oh, if the sea would open sudden deeps before them! if even the
+quicksand would seize them in its murderous jaws, what ecstasy the
+hideous lingering death might hold for her, so that only she lay,
+thus, in his arms to the end!
+
+It was over now; his arms had clasped her for the last time. She stood
+alone upon the dry sand, and her heart was in hell.
+
+He was speaking; asking her pardon for not going at once with her to
+see her into the keep, but he dared not leave the beach till his cargo
+was landed, and he must show the men the way to the caves. Would she
+forgive him, would she go with him?
+
+Forgive him! Go with him! She almost laughed aloud. A few poor moments
+more beside him; they would be as the drops of water to the burning
+tongue of Dives.
+
+Yes, she would go with him.
+
+One by one the precious caskets were carried between a couple of men,
+who stumbled in the darkness, close on their captain's heels. And the
+lady walked beside him and stood beside him without a word, in the
+falling rain. The boat went backwards and forwards twice; before the
+hour had run out, the luckless cargo was all once more landed, and the
+captain heard with infinite relief the last oar-strokes dwindling away
+in the distance, and saw the lights suddenly disappear.
+
+"You have been very patient," he said to Molly then, with a gentle
+note in his voice.
+
+But she did not answer. Are the souls of the damned patient?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My Lady and Mr. the Captain! My God--my God! so wet--so tired!
+Enter--enter in the name of heaven. It is good, in verity, to have My
+Lady back, but, Mr. the Captain, is it well for _him_ to be here? And
+Madam is ill? She goes pale and red by turns. Madam has the fever for
+sure! And her arm is hurt, and she is as wet as the first time she
+came here. Ah, Lord God, what are we coming to? Fire we must have. I
+shall send the wife."
+
+"Ay, do so, man," cried Captain Jack, looking with concern at Lady
+Landale, who in truth seemed scarcely able to stand, and whose
+fluctuating colour and cracked fevered lips gave painful corroboration
+to Rene's surmise, "your mistress must be instantly attended to."
+
+But Molly arrested the servant as he would have hurried past upon his
+errand.
+
+"Your master?" she said in a dry whisper, "is he at Pulwick?"
+
+"His honour! My faith, I must be but half-awake yet. Imbecile that I
+am, his honour--where is he? Is he not with you? No, indeed, he is not
+at Pulwick, My Lady; he has gone to St. Malo to seek you. Nothing
+would serve him but that he must go. And so he did not reach in time
+to meet you? Ah, the poor master--what anxiety for him!"
+
+Captain Jack glanced in dismay at his friend's wife, met her suddenly
+illumined gaze and turned abruptly on his heel, with a grinding noise.
+
+"See to your mistress," he said harshly, "I hear your women folk are
+roused overhead; hurry them, and when Lady Landale no longer requires
+you, I must speak with you on an urgent business of my own. You will
+find me in my old room."
+
+"Go with the captain at once, Rene, since he wants you," interposed
+Molly quickly, "here comes Moggie. She will take care of me. Leave me,
+leave me. I feel strong again. Good-night, Captain Smith, I shall see
+you to-morrow?"
+
+There was a wistful query in her voice and look.
+
+Captain Smith bowed distantly and coldly, and hastened from the room,
+accompanied by Rene, while open-mouthed and blinking, rosy, blowsy,
+and amazed, Mrs. Potter made her entry on the scene and stared at her
+mistress with the roundest of blue eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My good Renny," said the captain, "I have no time to lose. I have a
+hard hour's work to do, before I can even think of talking. I want
+your help. Your light will burn all safe for the time, will it not?
+Hark ye, man, you have been so faithful a fellow to my one friend that
+I am going to trust to you matters which concern my own honour and my
+own life. Ask no question, but do what I tell you, if you would help
+one who has helped your master long ago; one whom your master would
+wish you to help."
+
+Thus adjured, Rene repressed his growing astonishment at the
+incomprehensible development of events. And having, under direction,
+provided the sailor with a lantern, and himself with a wide tarpaulin
+and sundry carpenter's tools, he followed his leader readily enough
+through the ruinous passages, half choked up with sand, which led from
+the interior of the ruins to one of the sea caves.
+
+Before reaching the open-mouthed rocky chamber, the captain obscured
+the light, and Rene promptly barked his shins against a barrel.
+
+"_Sacrebleu_," he cried, feeling with quick hands the nature of the
+obstruction, "more kegs?"
+
+"The same, my friend! Now hang that tarpaulin against the mouth of the
+cave and be sure it is close; then we may again have some light upon
+the matter. What we must do will not bear interference, and moving
+glimmers on a dark night have told tales before this."
+
+As soon as the beach entrance was made secure, the captain uncovered
+his lantern; and as the double row of kegs stood revealed, his eyes
+rapidly scanned their number. Yes, they were all there: five and
+twenty.
+
+"Now, to work, man! We have to crack every one of these nuts, and take
+the kernels out."
+
+Even as he spoke, he turned the nearest cask on end, with a blow of
+chisel and mallet stove in the head and began dragging out quantities
+of loose tow. In the centre of the barrel, secured in position on to a
+stout middle batten, was a bag of sailcloth closely bound with cord.
+This he lifted with an effort, for it was over a hundred-weight, and
+flung upon the sand in a corner.
+
+"That's the kernel you see," he said to Rene, who had watched the
+operation with keen interest. "And when we have shelled them all I
+will show you where to put them in safety. Now carry on--the quicker
+the better. The sooner we have it all upstairs, the freer I shall
+breathe."
+
+Without another word, entering into the spirit of haste which seemed
+to fill his companion, and nobly controlling his seething curiosity,
+Rene set to work on his side, with his usual dexterousness.
+
+Half an hour of speechless destructive labour completed the first part
+of the task. Then the two men carried the weighty bags into the room
+which had been Captain Jack's in the keep. And when they had travelled
+to and fro a dozen times with each heavy load, and the whole treasure
+was at length accumulated upstairs, Rene, with fresh surprise and
+admiration, saw the captain lift the hearthstone and disclose a recess
+in the heavy masonry--presumably a flue, in the living days of
+Scarthey peel--which, although much blocked with stony rubbish, had
+been evidently improved by the last lodger during his period of
+solitary residence into a convenient and very secure hiding-place.
+
+Here was the precious pyramid now heaped up; the stone was returned to
+its place, and the two stood in front of each other mopping their
+faces.
+
+"Thank goodness, it is done," said Jack Smith. "And thank you too,
+Renny. To-morrow, break up these casks and add the staves to your
+firewood stack; then nobody but you, in this part of the world, need
+be any the wiser about our night's work.--A smart piece of running,
+eh?--Phew, I am tired! Bring me some food, and some brandy, like a
+good fellow. Then you can back to your pillow and flatter yourself
+that you have helped Jack Smith out of a famous quandary."
+
+Rene grinned and rushed to execute the order. He had less desire for
+his pillow than for the gratification of his hyper-excited curiosity.
+
+But although pressed to quaff one cup of good fellowship and yet
+another, he was not destined to get his information, that night, from
+the captain, who had much ado to strangle his yawns sufficiently to
+swallow a mouthful or two of food.
+
+"No one must know, Renny," was all he said, at last, between two
+gapes, kicking the hearthstone significantly, and stretching his arms,
+"not even the wife." Then he flung himself all dressed upon his bed.
+
+"And my faith," said Rene, when he sought his wife a moment later, "he
+was fast asleep before I had closed the door."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE END OF THE THREAD
+
+
+Madeleine had appeared greatly distressed at the thought that, through
+her, her sister was now in so doubtful and precarious a situation. It
+was part of her punishment, she told herself for her sins of deceit
+and unmaidenliness in encouraging and meeting a clandestine lover.
+
+She had gone through some very bitter hours since her tryst at the
+ruins. The process of cutting off a malignant growth that has become
+part of oneself is none the less painful because the conviction is
+clear that it is for one's health to do so, and the will is firm not
+to falter. Not the less is the flesh mangled, do nerves throb, and
+veins bleed. But Madeleine was determined that nobody should even
+guess her sufferings.
+
+Rupert had counted upon Sophia's old habit of obedience to him, and
+upon her superstitious terrors not to betray to the young girl the
+part he had played in the unmasking of her lover; but he had an
+unexpected, and even more powerful ally in Madeleine's own pride. When
+Miss Sophia had tremblingly endeavoured to falter out a few words of
+sympathy and sorrow, upon the distressing subject, Madeleine quickly
+interrupted her.
+
+"Never speak even his name again, Sophia; all that is finished for
+me."
+
+There was such a cold finality in her voice, that the poor confidant's
+expansiveness withered up within her beyond even the hope of
+blossoming again.
+
+When Rupert heard of Captain Jack's latest doings, and especially of
+his sister-in-law's disappearance, he thought that the fates were
+propitious indeed. In his wildest schemes he could not have planned
+anything that would have suited his game more perfectly.
+
+Though he thought it incumbent upon him to pull a face of desperate
+length whenever the subject was touched, in his innermost soul he had
+hardly ever enjoyed so delightful a joke as this denouement to his
+brother's marriage and to his cousin's engagement. And, strange to
+say, though he would most gravely protest against any interpretation
+of his kinswoman's disappearance save the one which must most redound
+to her credit, the story, started by the gossips in the village upon
+the return of the revenue men, that Lady Landale had bolted with the
+handsome smuggler, grew and spread apace all over the county, more
+especially from such houses as Rupert was wont to visit.
+
+That all his hints and innuendoes should fail, apparently, to make
+Madeleine put upon the case the interpretation he would have liked,
+was at once a matter of secret sneering and of admiration to his
+curiously complicated mind.
+
+The days went by, to all appearance placidly enough, for the trio at
+Pulwick. Madeleine shunned none of the usages of life in common,
+worked and talked with Sophia of a morning, rode or walked out with
+Rupert of an afternoon; and passed the evening at her embroidery frame
+meeting his efforts to entertain her as amiably as before.
+
+Rupert thought he knew enough of the human heart, and more especially
+the feminine, to draw satisfactory conclusions from this behaviour.
+For a girl to bear no malice to the man who had taken it upon himself
+to demonstrate to her the unworthiness of her lover, argued, to his
+mind, that her affections could not have been very deeply engaged in
+that quarter. It was clear that she felt gratitude for a timely
+rescue. Nay, might he not go further, and lay the flattering unction
+to his soul that she would not be unwilling to transfer these same
+blighted feelings to a more suitable recipient?
+
+A slight incident which took place a few nights later, tended still
+more to increase the kindness of Madeleine's manner to him upon the
+next day; but this was for a reason that he little suspected.
+
+It had been an anniversary with Sophia--none less indeed than that of
+the lamented Rector's demise. When her young cousin had retired to her
+room, the desire to pursue her thither with a packet of old letters,
+and other treasures exhumed from the depths of her cupboards, had
+proved too strong for a soul burning for congenial sympathy; and
+Sophia had spent a couple of very delightful hours pouring forth
+reminiscences and lamentations into the bosom of one who, as she said,
+she knew could understand her.
+
+Madeleine a little wearied, stifling a sigh or a yawn as the minutes
+ticked by, was too gentle, too kind-hearted to repel the faithful, if
+loquacious mourner; so she had sat and listened, which was all that
+Sophia required.
+
+Upon the stroke of twelve, Miss Landale rose at length, collected her
+relics, and mopping her swollen eyes, embraced her cousin, and bade
+her good-night with much effusion, while with cordial alacrity the
+latter conducted her to the door.
+
+But here Sophia paused. Holding the flat silver candlestick with one
+hand, with the other clasping to her bosom her bundle of superannuated
+love letters, she glanced out into the long black chasm of corridor
+with a shudder, and vowed she had not the courage to traverse it alone
+at such an hour. She cast as she spoke such a meaning glance at
+Madeleine's great bed, that, trembling lest her next words should be a
+proposal to share it for the night, the young girl hurriedly
+volunteered to re-conduct her to her own apartment.
+
+Half way down the passage they had to pass the door of the picture
+gallery, which was ajar, disclosing light within. At the sight of
+Rupert standing with his back to them, looking fixedly at the picture
+upon the opposite wall, Sophia promptly thought better of the scream
+she was preparing, and seized her cousin by the arm.
+
+"Come away, come away," she whispered, "he will be much displeased if
+he sees us."
+
+Madeleine allowed herself to be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's
+previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an
+explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the
+haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as
+exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the
+unreasonableness of her sister's dislike to Rupert.
+
+He was gazing at his dead wife's picture. He could not bear, Sophia
+said, for any one to find him there; could not bear the smallest
+allusion to his grief, but at night, as she had herself discovered
+quite by accident, he would often spend long spells as they had just
+seen him.
+
+There was something in Madeleine's own nature, a susceptible proud
+reserve which made this trait in her cousin's character thoroughly
+congenial; moreover, what woman is not drawn with pity towards the man
+who can so mourn a woman.
+
+She met him therefore, the next day, with a softness, almost a
+tenderness, of look and smile which roused his highest hopes. And when
+he proposed, after breakfast, that they should profit by the mild
+weather to stroll in the garden while Sophia was busy in the house,
+she willingly consented.
+
+Up the gravel paths, between the gooseberry bushes, to the violet beds
+they went. It was one of those balmy days that come sometimes in early
+spring and encourage all sorts of false hopes in the hearts of men and
+vegetables. "A growing day," the farmers call them; indeed, at such
+times you may almost hear the swelling and the bursting of the buds,
+the rising of the sap, the throbbing and pushing of the young green
+life all around.
+
+Madeleine grew hot with the weight of her fur tippet, the pale face
+under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a
+moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he
+sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was
+thus a maiden looked who waited to be won; and though all of true love
+that he could ever give to woman lay buried with his little bride, he
+felt his pulses quicken with a certain aesthetic pleasure in the
+situation. Presently he rose, and, after arranging his bunch of purple
+sweetness into dainty form, offered it silently to his companion.
+
+She took it, smiling, and carried it mechanically to her face.
+
+Oh, the scent of the violets! Upon the most delicate yet mighty
+pinions she was carried back, despite all her proud resolves to that
+golden hour, only five days ago, when she lay upon her lover's broad
+breast, and heard the beating of his heart beneath her ear.
+
+Again she felt his arm around her, so strong, yet so gentle; saw his
+handsome face bent towards her, closer--ever closer--felt again the
+tide of joy that coursed through her veins in the expectation of his
+kiss.
+
+No, no, she must not--she would not yield to this degrading folly. If
+it were not yet dead, then she must kill it.
+
+She had first grown pale, but the next moment a deep crimson flooded
+her face. She turned her head away, and Rupert saw her tremble as she
+dropped the hand that held the flowers close clenched by her side. He
+formed his own opinion of what was passing within her, and it made
+even his cold blood course hotly in his veins.
+
+"Madeleine," he said, with low rapid utterance; "I am not mistaken, I
+trust, in thinking you look on me as a good friend?"
+
+"Indeed, yes;" answered the girl, with an effort, turning her
+tremulous face towards him; "a good friend indeed."
+
+Had he not been so five days ago? Aye, most truly, and she would have
+it so, in spite of the hungry voice within her which had awaked and
+cried out against the knowledge that had brought such misery.
+
+He saw her set her little teeth and toss her head, and knew she was
+thinking of the adventurer who had dared aspire to her. And he gained
+warmer courage still.
+
+"Nothing more than a friend, sweet?"
+
+"A kind cousin; almost a brother."
+
+"No, no; not a brother, Madeleine. Nay, hear me," taking her hands and
+looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but
+something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or
+less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a
+brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no
+one to whom my coming or my going, my living or my dying makes one
+pulse beat of difference--except poor Sophia. Let us join our
+loneliness and make of it a beautiful and happy home. Madeleine, I
+have learned to love you deeply!"
+
+His eyes glowed between their narrowing eyelids, his voice rang
+changes upon chords of most exquisite tenderness; his whole manner was
+charged with a courtly reverence mingled with the subtlest hint of
+passion. Rupert as a lover had not a flaw in him.
+
+Yet fear, suspicion, disgust chased each other in Madeleine's mind in
+quick succession. What did he mean? How could it be that he loved her?
+Oh! if _this_ had been his purpose, what motive was prompting him
+when he divided her from her deceiving lover? Was no one true then?
+Was this the inconsolable widower whose grief she had been so
+sympathetically considering all the morning; for whose disinterested
+anxiety and solicitude on her behalf her sore heart had forced itself
+to render gratitude? Oh! how terrible it all was ... what a hateful
+world!
+
+"Well, Madeleine?" he pressed forward and slid his arm around her.
+
+All her powers of thought and action restored by the deed, she
+disengaged herself with a movement of unconscious repulsion.
+
+"Cousin Rupert, I am sure you mean kindly by me, but it is quite
+impossible--I shall never marry."
+
+He drew back, as nonplussed as if she had struck him in the face.
+
+"Pshaw, my dear Madeleine."
+
+"Please, Cousin Rupert, no more."
+
+"My dear girl, I have been precipitate."
+
+"Nothing can make any difference. That I could never marry you, so
+much you must believe; that I shall never marry at all you are free to
+believe or not, as you please. I am sorry you should have spoken."
+
+"Still hankering after that beggarly scoundrel?" muttered Rupert, a
+sneer uncovering his teeth betrayed hideously the ungenerous soul
+within. He was too deeply mortified, too shaken by this utter
+shattering of his last ambitions to be able to grasp his usual
+self-control.
+
+Madeleine gave him one proud glance, turned abruptly away, and walked
+into the house.
+
+She went steadily up to her room, and, once there, without hesitation
+proceeded to unlock a drawer in her writing-table and draw from it a
+little ribbon-tied parcel of letters--Jack's letters.
+
+Her heart had failed her, womanlike, before the little sacrifice when
+she had unshrinkingly accomplished the larger one. Now, however, with
+determined hand, she threw the letters into the reddest cavern of her
+wood-fire and with hard dry eyes watched them burn. When the last
+scrap had writhed and fluttered and flamed into grey ash, she turned
+to her altar, and, extending her arm, called out aloud:
+
+"I have done with it all for ever----"
+
+And the next instant flinging herself upon her bed, she drew her brown
+ringlets before her face, and under this veil wept for her broken
+youth and her broken heart, and the hard cold life before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a kind of love a man can give to woman but once in his
+lifetime: the love of the man in the first flush of manhood for the
+woman he has chosen to be his mate, untransferable and never to be
+forgotten: love of passion so exquisite, of devotion so pure, born of
+the youth of the heart and belonging to an existence and personality
+lost for ever. A man may wed again, and (some say) love again, but
+between the boards of the coffin of his first wife--if he has loved
+her--lie secrets of tenderness, and sweetness, and delight, which,
+like the spring flowers, may not visit the later year.
+
+But, notwithstanding this, a second wooing may have a charm and an
+interest of its own, even the wooing which is to precede a marriage of
+convenience.
+
+So Rupert found. The thought of an alliance with Madeleine de Savenaye
+was not only engrossing from the sense of its own intrinsic
+advantages, but had become the actual foundation-stone of all his new
+schemes of ambition.
+
+Nay, more: such admiration and desire as he could still feel for
+woman, he had gradually come to centre upon his fair and graceful
+cousin, who added to her personal attractions the other indispensable
+attributes, blood, breeding and fortune. Mr. Landale was as
+essentially refined and fastidious in his judgment as he was
+unmeasured in his ambition.
+
+His error of precipitancy had been pardonable enough; and mere
+self-reproach for an ill-considered manoeuvre would not have
+sufficed to plunge him into such a depth of bitter and angry
+despondency as that in which he now found himself. But the rebuff had
+been too uncompromising to leave him a single hope. He was too shrewd
+not to see that here was no pretty feminine nay, precursor of the
+yielding yea, not to realise that Madeleine had meant what she said
+and would abide by it. And, under the sting of the moment betrayed
+into a degradingly ill-mannered outburst, he had shown that he
+measured the full bearings of the position.
+
+So, the wind still sat in that quarter!
+
+Failing the mysterious smuggler, it was to be nobody with the Savenaye
+heiress--and least of all Rupert Landale.
+
+And this, though the scoundrel had been thoroughly shown up; though he
+had started upon his illegal venture and was gone, never to return if
+he valued his neck, after murdering four officers of the crown and
+sinking a king's vessel; though he had carried away with him (ah!
+there was consolation in that excellent jest which had so far
+developed into Sir Adrian's wild goose chase to France and might still
+hold some delicate denouement), had carried with him no less a person
+than Lady Landale herself (the fellow had good taste, and either of
+the sisters was a dainty morsel), he still left the baneful trail of
+his influence behind him upon the girl he had deluded and beguiled!
+
+Rupert Landale, who, for motives of his own had pleased himself by
+hunting down Madeleine's lover, had felt, in the keenness of his
+blood-hound work, something of the blood-hound instinct of destruction
+and ferocity spring up within him before he had even set eyes on his
+quarry. And the day they had stood face to face this instinctive
+hatred had been intensified by some singular natural antagonism. Added
+to this there was now personal injury and the prey was out of reach.
+Impotence for revenge burned into the soul of him like a corrosive
+poison. Oh, let him but come within his grip again and he should not
+escape so easily.
+
+Sits the wind still in that quarter?
+
+The burthen droned in his head, angry conclusion to each long spell of
+inconclusive thought, as he still paced the garden, till the noon hour
+began to wane. And it was in this mood, that, at length, returning to
+his study, he crossed in one of the back passages a young woman
+enveloped in a brilliant scarlet and black shawl, who started in
+evident dismay on being confronted with him.
+
+Rupert knew by sight and name every wench of kitchen and laundry, as
+well as every one of the buxom lasses or dames whom business brought
+periodically to the great hall. That this person was neither of the
+household nor one of the usual back-door visitors, he would have seen
+at a glance, even had not her own embarrassment drawn his closer
+attention. He looked keenly and recognised the gatekeeper's daughter
+Moggie.
+
+Having married Sir Adrian's servant and withdrawn to take up her abode
+in the camp of the enemy, so to speak, she was not one whom Mr.
+Landale would have regarded with favour in any case; but now,
+concentrating his thoughts from their aimless whirl of dissatisfaction
+upon the present encounter, he was struck by the woman's manner.
+
+Yes, she was most undoubtedly frightened. He examined her with a
+malevolent eye which still discountenanced her. And, though he made no
+inquiry, she forthwith stammered out: "I--I came, sir, to see if there
+be news of her Ladyship ... or of Sir Adrian, sir--Renny can't leave
+the island, you know, and he be downright anxious."
+
+"Well, my good woman, calm yourself. Nothing wrong; nothing to hide in
+this very laudable anxiety of you and your good man! No, we have no
+news yet--that is quickly told, Mrs. Potter."
+
+He kept her for a moment quailing and scared under his cruel gaze,
+then went on his way, working upon the new problems she had brought
+him to solve. No matter was too small for Rupert's mind, he knew how
+inextricably the most minute and apparently insignificant may be
+connected with the most important events of life.
+
+The woman was singularly anxious to explain, reflected he, pausing at
+his chamber door, singularly ready with her explanation--too ready.
+She must have lied. No doubt she lied. Liar was written upon every
+line of the terrified face of her. What was that infernal little
+French husband of hers hatching now? He had been in the Smith plot, of
+course. Ah, curse that smuggling fellow: he cropped up still on every
+side! Pray the fates he would crop up once too often for his own
+safety yet; who knew!
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Potter, the innocent news-gatherer, must not be allowed
+to roam unwatched at her own sweet will about the place. Hark! what
+clumping, creaking, steps! These could only be produced by Rene's
+fairy-footed spouse: the house servants had been too well drilled by
+his irritable ear to venture in such shoe leather within its range.
+He closed his door, and gently walked back along the corridor.
+
+As he passed Molly's apartment, he could hear the creaking of a
+wardrobe door; and, a startling surmise springing into his brain, he
+quietly slipped into an opposite room and waited, leaving the door
+slightly ajar.
+
+As he expected, a few minutes later, Moggie re-appeared loaded with a
+bulky parcel, glancing anxiously right and left. She tiptoed by him;
+but, after a few steps, suddenly turning her head once more, met his
+eyes grimly fixed upon her through the narrow aperture. With a faint
+squeal she paddled off as though a fiend were at her heels.
+
+"Something more than anxiety for news there, Mrs. Potter," said Mr.
+Landale, apostrophising the retreating figure with a malignant, inward
+laugh! Then, when the last echo of her stout boots had faded away, he
+entered his sister-in-law's room, looked around and meditatively began
+to open various presses and drawers. "You visited this one at any
+rate, my girl," thought he, as he recognised the special sound of the
+hinges. "And, for a lady's maid, you have left it in singular
+disorder. As for this," pulling open a linen drawer half-emptied, and
+showing dainty feminine apparel, beribboned and belaced, in the most
+utter disorder--"why, fie on you, Mrs. Potter! Is this the way to
+treat these pretty things?"
+
+He had seen enough. He paused a moment in the middle of the room with
+his nails to his lips, smiling to himself.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Potter, I fancy you might have given us a little news,
+yourself! Most unkind of my Lady Landale to prefer to keep us in this
+unnatural anxiety--most unkind indeed! She must have singularly good
+reasons for so doing.... Captain Smith, my friend, Mr. Cochrane, or
+whatever may be your name, we have an account to settle. And there is
+that fool of an Adrian scurrying over the seas in search of his
+runaway wife! By George! my hand is not played out yet!"
+
+Slowly he repaired to his study. There he sat down and wrote, without
+any further reflection, an urgent letter to the chief officer of the
+newly established Preventive Service Station. Then he rang the bell.
+
+"One of the grooms will ride at once to Lancaster with this," he said
+to the servant, looking at the missive in his hand. But instead of
+delivering it he paused: a new idea had occurred. How many of these
+servants might not be leagued in favour of that interloper, bribed, or
+knowing him, perhaps, to have been a friend of Sir Adrian, or yet
+again out of sheer spite to himself? No; he would leave no loop-hole
+for treachery now.
+
+"Send the groom to me as soon as he is ready," he continued, and when
+the footman had withdrawn, enclosed the letter, with its tale-telling
+superscription, in another directed to a local firm of attorneys, with
+a covering note instructing them to see that the communication, on His
+Majesty's Service, should reach the proper hands without delay.
+
+When the messenger had set forth, Mr. Landale, on his side, had his
+horse saddled and sallied out in the direction of Scarthey sands.
+
+As from the top of the bluff he took a survey of the great bay, a
+couple of figures crossing the strand in the distance arrested his
+attention; he reined in his horse behind a clump of bushes and
+watched.
+
+"So ho! Mrs. Potter, your careful husband could not leave the island?"
+muttered he, as he marked the unmistakable squat figure of the one, a
+man carrying a burden upon his shoulder, whilst, enveloping the woman
+who walked briskly by his side, flared the brilliant-hued shawl of
+Moggie. "That lie alone would have been sufficient to arouse
+suspicion. Hallo, what is the damned _crapaud_ up to?"
+
+The question was suggested by the man's movements, as, after returning
+the parcel to his consort at the beginning of the now bare causeway,
+he turned tail, while she trudged forward alone.
+
+"The Shearman's house! I thought as much. Out he comes again, and not
+by himself. I have made acquaintance with those small bare legs
+before. I should have been astonished indeed if none of the Shearman
+fellows had been mixed up with the affair. I shall be even yet with
+those creditable friends of yours, brother Adrian. So, it's you again,
+Johnny, my lad; the pretty Mercury.... Can it be possible that Captain
+Smith is at his old games once more?"
+
+Mr. Landale's eyes shone with a curious eager light; he laughed a
+little mirthless laugh, which was neither pleasant to hear nor to
+give. "Dear me," he said aloud, as he watched the pair tramp together
+towards Scarthey, "for plotters in the dark, you are particularly easy
+to detect, my good friends!"
+
+Then he checked himself, realising what a mere chance it had been,
+after all--a fortuitous meeting in the passage--that had first aroused
+his suspicions, and placed between his fingers the end of the thread
+he now thought it so simple to follow up. But he did hold the thread,
+and depended no longer upon chance or guess-work, but on his own
+relentless purpose to lay the plotters by the heels, whatever their
+plot might be.
+
+In the course of an hour and a half, Johnny Shearman, whistling,
+light-hearted, and alone, was nearing his native house once more, when
+the sight of a horseman, rapidly advancing across the sands, brought
+him to a standstill, to stare with a boy's curiosity. Presently,
+however, recognising Mr. Landale--a person for whom he had more dread
+than admiration--he was starting off homeward again at a brisk canter,
+when a stern hail from the rider arrested him.
+
+"Johnny!" The boy debated a moment, measured the distance between the
+cottage and himself, and shrewdly recognised the advisability of
+obeying. "Johnny, my boy, I want you at the Hall; take hold of my
+stirrup, and come along with me."
+
+The boy, with every symptom of reluctance, demurred, pleading a
+promise to return to his mother. Then he suddenly perceived a look in
+the gentleman's eye, which gave him a frantic, unreasoned desire to
+bolt at once, and at any cost. But the horseman anticipated the
+thought; bending in the saddle, he reached out his arm and seized the
+urchin by the collar.
+
+"Why, you little devil, what is the matter with you?" he asked,
+grinning ominously into the chubby, terrified face. "It strikes me it
+is time you and I should come to a little understanding. Any more
+letters from the smuggler to-day, eh? Ah, would you, you young idiot!"
+and Mr. Landale's fingers gave a sudden twist to the collar, which
+strangled the rising yell. "Listen, Johnny," tightening his grasp
+gradually until the brown face grew scarlet, then purple, and the
+goggling eyes seemed to start out of their sockets; "that is what it
+feels like to be hanged. They squeeze your neck so; and they leave you
+dangling at the end of a rope till you are dead, dead, dead, and the
+crows come and eat you. Do you want to be hanged?"
+
+For some moments more he kept the writhing lad under the torture; then
+loosening his grip, without however relinquishing his hold, allowed
+him to taste once more the living air.
+
+"Do you want to be hanged, Johnny Shearman?" he asked again gravely.
+The lad burst into gasping sobs, and looked up at his captor with an
+agony of fear in his bloodshot eyes. "No," continued Mr. Landale, "I
+am sure you don't, eh?" with a renewed ominous contraction of the
+hand. "It's a fearful thing, is hanging. And yet many a lad, hardly
+older than you, has been hanged for less than you are doing.
+Magistrates can get people hanged, and I am a magistrate, you know.
+_Stop that noise!_"
+
+"Now," continued the gentleman, "there are one or two little things I
+want to know myself, Johnny, and it's just possible I might let you
+off for this time if by chance you were able to tell them to me. So,
+for your sake, I hope you may be."
+
+He could see that the boy's mind was now completely turned with
+fright.
+
+"If you were to try to run away again I should know you had secrets to
+keep from me, and then, Johnny Shearman, it would go hard with you
+indeed! Now come along beside me, up to the Hall."
+
+Quite certain of his prey, he released him, and, setting his horse to
+a trot, smiled to note the desperate clutch of the lad upon his
+stirrup leather, as, with the perspiration dripping from his face, and
+panting breath, he struggled to keep up the pace alongside.
+
+Marched with tremendous ceremony into the magistrate's study and
+directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale
+installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of
+judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a
+pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and
+physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was
+comparatively little that he had to say, and no doubt he wished most
+fervently he had greater revelations to make, and could thus
+propitiate the arbiter of the appalling fate he firmly believed might
+lie in store for him. Meagre as his narrative was, however, it quite
+sufficed for Mr. Landale.
+
+"I think, Johnny," he said more pleasantly, well knowing the
+inducement that a sudden relaxation from fear offers to a witness's
+garrulity, "I think I may say you will not hang this time--that is,"
+with a sudden hardening of his voice, and making a great show of
+checking the answers with pen and ink in his most magisterial manner,
+"that is if you have really told me _all_ you know and it be all
+_true_. Now let us see, and take care. You saw no one at the peel
+to-day but Renny Potter, Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Crackenshaw?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But you heard other voices in the next room--a man's voice--whilst
+you were waiting?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then Renny Potter came back and gave you a message for your brothers.
+This message they made you repeat, over and over again. How did it
+go?" And as Mr. Landale frowningly looked at his paper, the boy
+tremblingly repeated:
+
+"I mun tell brothers Will an' Rob, that one or t'other mun watchen the
+light o' nights, to-night, to-morrow night, an' ontil woord coom
+again. If light go out they mun setten forth in they ketch thot
+moment, fettled op for a two-three days' sailing. If wind is contrairy
+like, they mun take sweeps. This for the master's service--for Sir
+Adrian's service!"--amending the phrase with a sharp reading of the
+blackness of Mr. Landale's swift upward look.
+
+"Yes," murmured the latter after a pause. "And you were to tell no one
+else. You were to keep it above all from getting to my ears. Very
+good, Johnny. If you have spoken the truth, you are safe."
+
+There was a special cell, off the official study, with high windows,
+bolts and bars, and a wooden bench, for the temporary housing of such
+desperate criminals as might be brought to the judgment of Rupert
+Landale, Esquire, J.P. There he now disposed of the young offender who
+snivelled piteously once more; and having locked the door and
+pocketed the key, returned to his capacious arm-chair, where, as the
+twilight waned over the land, he fell to co-ordinating his scheme and
+gloating upon this unexpected turn of Fortune's wheel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that hour Madeleine, alone in her chamber, knelt before her little
+altar, wrestling with the rebellion of her soul and besieging the
+heavens with a cry for peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Adrian having failed to hear aught of the _Peregrine_ at St. Malo,
+filled with harassing doubt about its fate but clutching still at
+hope--as men will, even such pessimists as he--stood on the deck of
+his homeward bound ship, straining his eyes in the dusk for the coast
+line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the peel, the beacon had just been lighted by Rene, in whose
+company, up in his secluded turret, sat Captain Jack, smoking a pipe,
+but so unusually silent as to have reduced even the loquacious
+Frenchman to silence too. Below them Lady Landale, torn between the
+dread of a final separation from the loadstar of her existence and the
+gnawing anxiety roused in her bosom by Moggie's account of Mr.
+Landale's watchfulness, was pacing the long book-lined room with the
+restlessness of a caged panther.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the road from Lancaster to Pulwick a posse of riding officers and a
+carriage full of hastily gathered preventive men were trotting on
+their way to the Priory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE LIGHT GOES OUT
+
+
+The light of Scarthey had not been shining for quite an hour over the
+wilderness, when Lady Landale, suddenly breaking the chain of her
+restless tramp, ran to the door and called for Moggie.
+
+There was so shrill a tone of anguish in the summons that the young
+woman rushed into the room in trembling expectancy: yet it was to find
+her mistress alone and the place undisturbed.
+
+"Moggie," said Lady Landale, panting and pressing her hands upon her
+side as if in the endeavour to control the beating of her heart,
+"something is going to happen; I know it, I feel it! Tell Captain
+Smith that I must speak to him, here, at once."
+
+Infected by the terror upon her mistress's face, Madame Lapotre flew
+upon her errand; a moment later, Captain Jack entered the room and
+stood before Lady Landale with a look of impatient inquiry.
+
+"Oh, it is wicked, it is mad!" cried she passionately; "it is tempting
+God to remain here!"
+
+"Of whom are you speaking?" he asked, with an involuntary glance of
+contempt at the distracted figure. "If it is of yourself, I entirely
+concur. How often these last days, and how earnestly have I not begged
+of you to return to Pulwick? Was not the situation you placed me in
+with regard to Adrian already odious enough that it needed this added
+folly? Oh, I know--I know what you would say: spare it me. My safety?
+You fear for me? Ah, Lady Landale, that you could have but left me in
+peace!"
+
+He had waxed hot with anger from his first would-be calmness, as he
+spoke. This dismal life of close but inharmonious proximity, started
+upon the seas and continued under his absent friend's own roof had
+tried his impetuous temper to the utmost. Upon the morrow of their
+return he had, indeed, exercised all his powers of persuasion to
+induce Lady Landale to proceed to the Priory; but, impelled by her
+frantic dread of the separation, and entrenching herself behind the
+argument that her mysterious re-appearance would awaken suspicion
+where people would otherwise believe the _Peregrine_ still in foreign
+parts, she had declared her irrevocable determination not to quit the
+island until she knew him to be safe. And he had remained, actuated by
+the dual desire, first to exonerate himself personally in her
+husband's eyes from any possible suspicion of complicity in Molly's
+flight--the bare thought of which had become a horrible torment to
+him--then to encompass through that good friend's means an interview
+and full explanation with Madeleine, which not only the most ordinary
+precaution for his life, but likewise every instinct of pride forbade
+him now to seek himself.
+
+Thus began a state of affairs which, as the days succeeded each other
+without news of Sir Adrian, became every moment more intolerable to
+his loyalty. The inaction, the solitary hours of reflection; the
+maddening feeling of unavailing proximity to his heart's dearest, of
+impotency against the involving meshes of the present false and
+hateful position; all this had brought into the young man's soul a
+fever of anger, which, as fevers will, consumed him the more fiercely
+because of his vigour and strength.
+
+It was with undisguised hatred and with scorn immeasurable that he now
+surveyed the woman who had degraded him in his own eyes. At another
+time Molly might have yielded before his resentment, but at this hour
+her whole being was encompassed by a single thought.
+
+"It is for you--for you!" she repeated with ashen lips; "you must go
+before it is too late."
+
+"And is it not too late?" stormed he. "Too late, indeed, do I see my
+treachery to Adrian, my more than brother! Upon my ship I could not
+avoid your company, but here--Oh, I should have thought of him and not
+of myself, and done as my honour bade me! You are right; since you
+would not go, I should have done so. It was weak; it was mad; worse,
+worse--dishonourable!"
+
+But she had no ears for his reproaches, no power to feel the wounds
+he dealt her woman's heart with such relentless hand.
+
+"Then you will go," she cried. "Tell Rene, the signal."
+
+He started and looked at her with a different expression.
+
+"Have you heard anything; has anything happened?" he asked, recovering
+self-restraint at the thought of danger.
+
+"Not yet," she replied, "not yet, but it is coming."
+
+Her look and voice were so charged with tragic force that for the
+moment he was impressed, and, brave man though he was, felt a little
+cold thrill run down his spine. She continued, in accents of the most
+piercing misery:
+
+"And it will have been through me--it will have been through me! Oh,
+in mercy let me make the signal! Say you will go to-night."
+
+"I will go."
+
+There followed a little pause of breathless silence between them. Then
+as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory
+knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed
+with lugubrious reverberation through the old stone passages around
+them.
+
+At first, terror-stricken, her tongue clave to her palate, her feet
+were rooted to the ground; then with a scream she flung herself upon
+him and would have dragged him towards the door.
+
+"They have come--hide--hide!"
+
+He threw up his head to listen, while he strove to disengage himself.
+The blood had leaped to his cheek, and fire to his eye. "And if it be
+Adrian?" he cried.
+
+Another knock thundered through the still air.
+
+"It is but one man," cried Rene from his tower down the stairs. "You
+may open, Moggie."
+
+"No--no," screamed Molly beside herself, and tighter clasped her arms
+round Captain Jack's neck.
+
+"Adrian, it is Adrian!" said he. "Hush, Madam, let me go! Would you
+make the breach between me and my friend irreparable?"
+
+Both his hands were on her wrists in the vain endeavour to disengage
+himself from her frenzied grip; the door was flung open and Rupert
+Landale stood in the opening, and looked in upon them.
+
+"Damnation!" muttered Jack between his teeth and flung her from him,
+stamping his foot.
+
+Rupert gazed from one to the other; from the woman, who, haggard and
+dishevelled, now turned like a fury upon him, to the sailor's fierce
+erect figure. Then he closed the door with an air of grave
+deliberation.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded Molly--"you have come here for no good
+purpose. What do you want?"
+
+As she spoke she strove to place herself between the two men.
+
+"I came, my dear sister-in-law," said Rupert in his coldest, most
+incisive voice, "to learn why, since you have come back from your
+little trip, you choose to remain in the ruins rather than return to
+your own house and family. The reason is clear to see now. My poor
+brother!"
+
+The revulsion of disappointment had added to the wrath which the very
+sight of Rupert Landale aroused in Jack Smith's blood; this
+insinuation was the culminating injury. He took a step forward.
+
+"Have a care, sir," he exclaimed, "how you outrage in my presence the
+wife of my best friend! Have a care--I am not in such a hurry to leave
+you as when last we met!"
+
+Mr. Landale raised his eyebrows, and again sent a look from Molly back
+to the sailor, the insolence of which lashed beyond all control the
+devils in the sailor's soul.
+
+"We have an account to settle, it seems to me, Mr. Landale," said he,
+taking another step forward and slightly stooping his head to look the
+other in the eye. Crimson fury was in his own. "I doubt much whether
+it was quite wise of you, assuming that you expected to find me here,
+to have come without that pistolling retinue with which you provided
+yourself last time."
+
+Rupert smiled and crossed his arms. Cowardice was no part of his
+character. He had come in advance of his blood-hounds, in part to
+assure himself of the correctness of his surmises, but also to feast
+upon the discomfiture of this man and this woman whom he hated. To
+have found them together, and thus, had been an unforeseen and
+delicious addition to his dish of vengeance, and he would linger over
+it while he could.
+
+"Well, Captain Smith, and about this account? Lady Landale, I beg of
+you, be silent. You have brought sufficient disgrace upon our name as
+it is. Nay, sir," raising his voice, "it is useless to shake your head
+at me in this furious style; nothing can alter facts. _I saw._ Who has
+an account to demand then--you, whose life is already forfeit for an
+accumulation of crimes; you, screened by a conspiracy of bribed
+servants and ... your best friend's wife, as you dare call your
+paramour; or I, in my brother's absence the natural guardian of his
+family, of his honour? But I am too late. One sister I saved from the
+ignominy you would have brought upon her. The other I could not save."
+
+With a roar Jack Smith would have sprung at the speaker; but, once
+more, his friend's wife rushed between.
+
+"Let him speak," she cried, "what matter what he says? But
+you--remember your promise. I will make the signal."
+
+The signal! The mask of Rupert's face, sternly and sadly rebuking, was
+not proof against the exquisite aptness of this proposal. His men
+outside were waiting for the signal, surrounding the island from land
+and seaward, (for the prey was not to be allowed to escape them
+again); but how to make it without creating suspicion had not yet
+suggested itself to his fertile brain. Now, while he held her lover in
+play, Molly would herself deliver him to justice. Excellent,
+excellent! Truly life held some delightful jokes for the man of
+humour!
+
+The light of triumph came and went upon his countenance like a flash,
+but when the life hangs upon the decision of a moment the wits become
+abnormally sharp. Jack Smith saw it, halted upon his second headlong
+onslaught, and turned round.--Too late: Molly was gone. He brought his
+gaze back upon his enemy and saw he had been trapped.
+
+Their gleams met like duelling blades, divining each other's purpose
+with the rapidity of thrust answering thrust. Both made a leap for the
+door. But Rupert was nearest; he first had his hand on the key and
+turned it, and, with newly-born genius of fight, suddenly begotten of
+his hatred, quickly stooped, eluded the advancing grasp, was free for
+one second, and sent the key crashing through the window into the
+darkness of the night.
+
+Baffled by the astounding swiftness of the act, the sailor, wheeling
+round, had already raised his fist to crush his feebler foe, when, in
+the midst of his fury, a glimmer of the all-importance of every second
+of time stayed his hand. He threw himself upon the heavy ladder that
+rested against Sir Adrian's rows of books, and, clasping it by the
+middle, swung it above his head. The battering blow would, no doubt,
+have burst panel, lock, and hinges the next instant, but again Rupert
+forestalled him, and charged him before the door could be reached.
+
+Overbalanced by the weight he held aloft, Captain Jack was hurled down
+headlong beneath the ladder, and lay for a moment stunned by the
+violence of the fall.
+
+When the clouds cleared away it was to let him see Rupert's face
+bending over him, his pale lips wreathed into a smile of malignant
+exultation.
+
+"Caught!" said Mr. Landale, slowly, pausing over each word as though
+to prolong the savour of it in his mouth, "caught this time! And it is
+your mistress's hand that puts the noose round your neck. That is what
+I call poetical justice."
+
+The prostrate man, collecting his scattered wits and his vast
+strength, made a violent effort to spring to his feet. But Rupert's
+whole weight was upon him, his long thin fingers were gripping him by
+each shoulder, his face grinned at him, close, detested, infuriating.
+The grasp that held him seemed to belong to no flesh and blood, it was
+as the grasp of skeleton hands, the grinning face became like a
+death's head.
+
+"I shall come to your hanging, Captain Jack Smith, or rather, Mr.
+Hubert Cochrane of the Shaws."
+
+These were the last words of Rupert Landale. A red whirl passed
+through the sailor's brain, his hands fell like lashes round the
+other's neck and drew it down. _If Hubert Cochrane dies so does Rupert
+Landale: that throat shall never give sound to that name again._
+
+Over and over they roll like savage beasts, but yet in deathly
+silence. For the pressure of the fingers on his gullet, fingers that
+seem to gain fresh strength every moment and pierce into his very
+flesh, will not allow even a sigh to pass Rupert's lips, and Jack can
+spare no atom of his energy from the fury of fight: not one to spare
+even for the hearing of the frantic knocks at the door, the calls,
+the hammering at the lock, the desperate efforts without to prise it
+open.
+
+_But if Rupert Landale must die so shall Hubert Cochrane, and by the
+hangman's hand, treble doomed by this._ The same thought fills both
+these men's heads; the devil of murder has possession of both their
+souls. But, true to himself to the last, it is with Rupert a
+calculating devil. The officers must soon be here: he will hold the
+scoundrel yet with the grasp of death, and his enemy shall be found
+red-handed--red-handed!
+
+His hatred, his determination of vengeance, the very agony of the
+unequal struggle for life gave him a power that is almost a match for
+the young athlete in his frenzy.
+
+The dying efforts of his victim tax Jack's strength more than the
+living fight; but his hands are still locked in their fatal clutch
+when at last, with one fearful and spasmodic jerk, Rupert Landale
+falls motionless. Then exhaustion enwraps the conqueror also, like a
+mantle. He, too, lies motionless with his cheek on the floor, face to
+face with the corpse, dimly conscious of the voluptuousness of
+victory. But the dead grasp still holds him by the wrists, and it
+grows cold now, and rigid upon them. It is as if they were fettered
+with iron.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady Landale's dread of her once despised kinsman, now that she knew
+what a powerful weapon he held in his hands, this night, was almost
+fantastic.
+
+As she darted from the room, she fell against Rene, who, with a white
+face and bent ear, stood at the door, eavesdropping, ready to rush to
+the help of Sir Adrian's friend upon the first hint of necessity. But
+he had heard more than he bargained for.
+
+The scared, well-nigh agonised look of inquiry with which he turned to
+his mistress was lost upon her. In her whirlwind exit, she seized upon
+him and dragged him with her to the ladder that led to the tower.
+
+"Quick, Rene, the signal!"
+
+And with the birdlike swiftness of a dream flight she was up the steps
+before him.
+
+Panting in her wake, ran the sturdy fellow, his brain seething in a
+chaos of conflicting thought. Mr. the Captain must be helped, must be
+saved: this one thing was clear at any rate. His honour would wish it
+so--no matter what had happened. Yes, he would obey My Lady and make
+the signal. But, what if Mr. Landale were right? Not indeed in his
+accusation of Mr. the Captain, Rene knew, Rene had seen enough to
+trust him: he was no false friend; but as regarded My Lady? Alas! My
+Lady had indeed been strange in her manner these days; and even
+Moggie, as he minded him now, even Moggie had noticed, had hinted, and
+he had not understood.
+
+The man's fingers fumbled over the catch of the great lantern, he
+shook as if he had the palsy. Goodness divine, if his master were to
+come home to this!
+
+Impatiently Lady Landale pushed him upon one side. What ailed the
+fellow, when every second was crucial, life or death bringing?
+Medusa-like for one second her face hung, white-illumined, set into
+terrible fixity, above the great flame, the next instant all was
+blackness to their dazzled eyes. The light of Scarthey was out!
+
+She groped for Rene; her hot fingers burnt upon his cold rough hand
+for a second.
+
+"I will go down to the sands," she said, whispering as if she feared,
+even here, the keenness of Rupert's ear, "and you--hurry to him, stop
+with him, defend him, your master's friend!"
+
+She flitted from him like a shadow, the ladder creaked faintly beneath
+her light footfall, and then louder beneath his weighty tread.
+
+His master's friend!
+
+Ay, he would stand by him, for his master's sake and for his own sake
+too--the good gentleman!--And they would get him safe out of the way
+before his honour's return.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out upon the beach ran Molly.
+
+It was a mild still night; through veils of light mist the moon shone
+with a tranquil bride-like grace upon the heaving palpitating waters
+and the mystery of the silent land.
+
+A very night for lovers, it seemed; for sweet meetings and sweeter
+partings; a night that mocked with its great passionless calm at the
+wild anguish of this woman's impatience. Yet a night upon which sound
+travelled far. She bent her ear--was there nothing to hear yet,
+nothing but the lap of the restless waters? Were those men false?
+
+She rushed to and fro, from one point to another along the sands in a
+delirium of impotent desire.
+
+Oh, hurry, hurry, hurry!
+
+And as she turned again, there, upon the waters out in the offing,
+glimmered a light, curtseying with the swell of the waves; the sails
+of a ship caught the moonbeams. She could see the vessel plainly and
+that it was bearing full for the island. Alas! This might scarcely be
+the little Shearman boat manned by two fishermen only; even she,
+unversed in sea knowledge could tell that. It was as large as the
+_Peregrine_ itself--certainly as large as the cutter.
+
+The _cutter_!
+
+She caught her breath, and clapped her hands to her lips to choke down
+the wild scream of fear that rose to them.
+
+At the same instant, a dull thud of oars, a subdued murmur of a deep
+voice rose from the other side of the island.
+
+They were coming, coming from the landward, these rescuers of her
+beloved. And yonder, with swelling canvas, came the hell ship from out
+the open sea, sent by Rupert's infernal malice and cleverness, to make
+their help of no avail; to seize him, in the very act of flight.
+
+She ran in the direction of the sound, and with all her strength
+called upon the new-comers to speed.
+
+"Here--here, for God's sake! Hasten or it will be too late!"
+
+Her voice seemed to her, in the midst of the endless space, weak as a
+child's; but it was heard.
+
+"Coming!" answered a gruff shout from afar. And the oar beat came
+closer, and fell with swifter rhythm. Stumbling, catching in her
+skirts, careless of pool or stone beneath her little slippered feet,
+Lady Landale came flying round the ruins: a couple of boats crashed in
+upon the shingle, and the whole night seemed suddenly to become alive
+with dark figures--men in uniform, with gleams upon them of brass
+badges and shining belts, and in their hands the gleam of arms.
+
+For the moment she could not move. It was as if her knees were giving
+way, and she must fall.
+
+None of them saw her in the shadow; but as they passed, she heard them
+talking to each other about the signal, the signal which they had been
+told to look for, which had been brought to them ... the signal _she_
+had made. Then with a wave of rage, the power of life returned to her.
+This was Rupert's work! But all was not lost yet. The other boat was
+coming, the other boat must be the rescue after all; the Shearman's
+boat, or--who knows?--if there was mercy in Heaven, the _Peregrine_,
+whose crew might have heard of their captain's risk.
+
+Back she raced to the seaward beach, hurling--unknowing that she spoke
+at all--invectives upon her husband's brother.
+
+"Serpent, blood-hound, devil, devil, you shall not have him!"
+
+As she reached the landing-place, breathless, a boat was landing in
+very truth. Even as she came up a tall figure jumped out upon the
+sand, and crunched towards her with great strides.
+
+She made a leap forward, halted, and cried out shrilly:
+
+"Adrian!"
+
+"Molly--wife! Thank God!" His arms were stretched out to her, but he
+saw her waver and shudder from him, and wring her hands. "My God, what
+has happened? The light out, too! What is it?"
+
+She fastened on him with a sudden fierceness, the spring of a wild
+cat.
+
+"Come," she said, drawing him towards the peel, "if you would save
+him, lose not a second."
+
+He hesitated a moment, still; she tugged at him like one demented,
+panting her abjurations at him, though her voice was failing her.
+Then, without a word, he fell to running with her towards the keep,
+supporting her as they went.
+
+The great door had swung back on its hinges, and the men were
+pressing, in a dark body, into the dim-lit recesses, when Sir Adrian
+and his wife reached the entrance.
+
+The sight of the uniforms only confirmed the homecomer in his own
+forebodings anent the first act of the drama that was being enacted
+upon his peaceful island. He needed no further pushing from the
+frantic woman at his side. Lost in bringing her back, perhaps, his
+only friend! Lost by his loyalty and his true friendship!
+
+They dashed up the stone stairs just as the locked door of the
+living-room burst with a crash, under the efforts of many stalwart
+shoulders; they saw the men crush forwards, and fall back, and herd on
+again, with a hoarse murmur that leaped from mouth to mouth.
+
+And Rene came running out from the throng with the face of one that
+has seen Death. And he caught his mistress by the arm, and held her by
+main force against the wall. He showed no surprise at the sight of his
+master--there are moments in life that are beyond surprise--but cried
+wildly:
+
+"She must not see!"
+
+She fought like a tigress against the faithful arms, but still they
+held her, and Sir Adrian went in alone.
+
+A couple of men were dragging Captain Jack to his feet, forcing his
+hands from the dead man's throat; it seemed as if they had grown as
+rigid and paralysed in their clasp like the corpse hands that had now,
+likewise, to be wrenched from their clutch of him.
+
+He glanced around, as though dazed, then down at the disfigured purple
+face of his dead enemy, smiled and held out his hands stiffly for the
+gyves that were snapped upon them.
+
+And then one of the fellows, with some instinctive feeling of decency,
+flung a coat over the slain man, and Captain Jack threw up his head
+and met Adrian's horror-stricken, sorrowful eyes.
+
+At the unexpected sight he grew scarlet; he waved his fettered hands
+at him as they hustled him forth.
+
+"I have killed your brother, Adrian," he called out in a loud voice,
+"but I brought back your wife!"
+
+Some of the men were speaking to Sir Adrian, but drew back
+respectfully before the spectacle of his wordless agony.
+
+But, as Molly, with a shriek, would have flung herself after the
+prisoner, her husband awoke to action, and, pushing Rene aside, caught
+her round the waist with an unyielding grip: his eyes sought her face.
+And, as the light fell on it, he understood. Aye, she had been brought
+back to him. But how?
+
+And Rene, watching his master's countenance, suddenly burst out
+blubbering, like a child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+HUSBAND AND WIFE
+
+    Tout comprendre--
+      c'est tout pardonner.
+
+
+Staring straight before her with haggard, unseeing eyes, her hands
+clasped till the delicate bones protruded, her young face lined into
+sudden agedness, grey with unnatural pallor, framed by the black
+masses of her dishevelled hair, it was thus Sir Adrian found his wife,
+when at length he was free to seek her.
+
+He and Rene had laid the dead man upon the bed that had been occupied
+by his murderer, and composed as decently as might be the hideous
+corpse of him who had been the handsomest of his race. Rene had given
+his master the tale of all he knew himself, and Sir Adrian had ordered
+the boat to be prepared, determined to convey Lady Landale at once
+from the scene of so much horror. His own return to Pulwick, moreover,
+to break the news to Sophia, to attend to the removal of the body and
+the preparation for the funeral was of immediate necessity.
+
+As he approached his wife she raised her eyes.
+
+"What do you want with me?" she asked, with a stony look that arrested
+him, as he would gently have taken her hand.
+
+"I would bring you home."
+
+"Home!" the pale lips writhed in withering derision.
+
+"Yes, home, Molly," he spoke as one might to a much-loved and
+unreasonable sick child--with infinite tenderness and compassion--"your
+own warm home, with your sister. You would like to go to Madeleine,
+would not you?"
+
+She unclasped her hands and threw them out before her with a savage
+gesture of repulsion.
+
+"To Madeleine?" she echoed, with an angry cry; and then wheeling
+round upon him fiercely: "Do you want to kill me?" she said, between
+her set teeth.
+
+Sir Adrian's weary brow contracted. He paused and looked at her with
+profoundest sorrow.
+
+Then she asked, hoarsely:
+
+"Where have they taken him to?"
+
+"To Lancaster, I believe."
+
+"Will they hang him?"
+
+"I pray God not."
+
+"There is no use of praying to God, God is merciless. What will they
+do to him?"
+
+"He will be tried, Molly, in due course, and then, according to the
+sentence of the judges.... My poor child, control yourself, he shall
+be defended by the best lawyers that money can get. All a man can do
+for another I shall do for him."
+
+She shot the sombre fire of her glance at him.
+
+"You know that I love him," she said, with a terrible composure.
+
+A sudden whiteness spread round Sir Adrian's lips.
+
+"Poor child!" he said again beneath his breath.
+
+"Yes, I love him. I always wanted to see him. I was sick and tired of
+life at Pulwick, and that was why I went on board his ship. I went
+deliberately because I could not bear the dulness of it all. He
+mistook me for Madeleine in the dark--he kissed me. Afterwards I told
+him that I loved him. I begged him to take me away with him, for ever.
+I love him still, I would go with him still--it is as well that you
+should know. Nothing can alter it now. But he did not want me. He
+loves Madeleine."
+
+The words fell from her lips with a steady, cruel, deliberateness. She
+kept her eyes upon him as she spoke, unpityingly, uncaring what
+anguish she inflicted; nay, it seemed from some strange perversity,
+glad to make him suffer.
+
+But hard upon a man as it must be to hear such a confession from his
+wife's lips, doubly hard to such a one as Adrian, whose heart bled for
+her pain as well as for his own, he held himself without departing for
+a second from his wonted quiet dignity. Only in his earnest gaze upon
+her there was perhaps, if possible, an added tenderness.
+
+But she, to see him so unmoved, was moved herself to a sudden scorn.
+
+What manner of man was this, that not love, nor jealousy, nor anger
+had power to stir?
+
+"And now what will you do with me?" she asked him again, with superb
+contempt on eye and lip. "For a guilty wife I am to you, as far as the
+will could make me, and I have no claim upon you any more."
+
+"No claim upon me!" he repeated, with a wonder of grief in his voice.
+"Ah, Molly, hush child! You are my wife. The child of the woman I
+loved--the woman I love for her own sake. You can no more put yourself
+out of my life now than you can out of my heart; had you been as
+guilty in deed as you may have been in purpose my words would be the
+same. Your husband's home is your home, my only wish to cherish and
+shelter you. You cannot escape my care, poor child, and some day you
+may be glad of it. My protection, my countenance you will always have.
+God! who am I that I should judge you? Is there any sin of human
+frailty that a human being dare condemn? Guilty? What is your guilt
+compared to mine for bringing you to this, allying my melancholy age
+with your bright youth?"
+
+He fell into the chair opposite to her and covered his face with his
+hands. As, for a minute's space, his self-control wavered, she watched
+him, wearily. Her heat of temper had fallen from her very quickly; she
+broke into a moan.
+
+"Oh, what does it matter? What does anything matter now? I love him
+and I have ruined him--had it not been for me he would be safe!"
+
+After a little silence Sir Adrian rose. "I must leave you now, I must
+go to Pulwick," he said. His heart was yearning to her, he would have
+gathered her to his arms as a father his erring child, but he
+refrained from even touching her. "And you--what would you do? It
+shall be as you like."
+
+"I would go to Lancaster," she said.
+
+"The carriage shall be sent for you in the morning and Renny and his
+wife shall go with you. I will see to it. After Rupert's funeral--my
+God, what a night this has been!--I will join you, and together we
+shall work to save his life."
+
+He paused, hesitated, and was about to turn away when suddenly she
+caught his hand and kissed it.
+
+He knew she would as readily have kissed Rene's hand for a like
+promise; that her gratitude was a pitiable thing for him, her husband,
+to bear; and yet, all the way, on his sad and solitary journey to
+Pulwick, the touch of her lips went with him, bringing a strange
+sweetness to his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a vast deal of wonder in the county generally, and among the
+old friends of his father's house in particular, when it became known
+that Sir Adrian Landale had engaged a noted counsel to defend his
+brother's murderer and was doing all he could to avert his probable
+doom. In lowered tones were whispered strange tales of Lady Landale's
+escapade. People wagged wise and virtuous heads and breathed
+scandalous hints of her power upon her infatuated husband; and then
+they would tap their foreheads significantly. Indeed it needed all the
+master of Pulwick's wide-spread reputation for mental unsoundness to
+enable him to carry through such proceedings without rousing more
+violent feelings. As it was, it is to be doubted whether his
+interference had any other effect than that of helping to inflame the
+public mind against the prisoner.
+
+The jury's verdict was a foregone conclusion; and though the learned
+lawyer duly prepared a very fine speech and pocketed some monstrous
+fees with a great deal of complaisance, he was honest enough not to
+hold out the smallest hope of being able to save his client.
+
+The conviction was too clear, the "crimes" the prisoner had committed
+were of "too horrible and bloody a character, threatening the very
+foundations of society," to admit of a merciful view of the case.
+
+As the trial drew near, Sir Adrian's despondency increased; each day
+seemed to bring a heavier furrow to his brow, an added weight to his
+lagging steps. He avoided as much as possible all meetings with his
+wife, who, on the contrary, recovered stronger courage with the flight
+of time, but whose feverish interest in his exertions was now
+transferred to some secret plans that she was for ever discussing with
+Rene. The prisoner himself showed great calmness.
+
+"They will sentence me of course," he said quietly to Adrian, "but
+whether they will hang me is another question. I don't think that my
+hour has come yet or that the cord is twisted which will hang Jack
+Smith."
+
+In other moods, he would ridicule Sir Adrian's labours in his cause
+with the most gentle note of affectionate mockery. But, from the
+desire doubtless to save one so disinterested and unworldly from any
+accusation of complicity, he was silent upon the schemes on which he
+pinned his hopes of escape.
+
+The first meeting of the friends after the scene at Scarthey had been,
+of course, painful to both.
+
+When he entered the cell, Adrian had stretched out his hand in
+silence, but Captain Jack held his own pressed to his side.
+
+"It is like you to come," he said gloomily, "but you cannot shake the
+hand that stifled your brother's life out of him. And I should do it
+again, Adrian! Mark you, I am not repentant!"
+
+"Give me your hand, Jack," said Adrian steadfastly. "I am not of those
+who shift responsibility from the dead to the living. You were
+grievously treated. Oh, give me your hand, friend, can I think of
+anything now but your peril and your truth to me?"
+
+For an instant still the younger man hesitated and inquiringly raised
+his eyes laden with anxious trouble, to the elder man's face.
+
+"My wife has told me all," said Sir Adrian, turning his head to hide
+his twitching lip.
+
+And then Jack Smith's hand leaped out to meet his friend's upon an
+impulse of warm sympathy, and the two faced each other, looking the
+words they could not utter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year eighteen hundred and fifteen which delivered England at last
+from the strain of outlandish conflict saw a revival of official
+activity concerning matters of more homely interest. The powers that
+were awoke to the necessity, among other things, of putting a stop by
+the most stringent means to the constant and extensive leakage in the
+national revenue proceeding from the organisation of free traders or
+smugglers.
+
+After twenty years of almost complete supineness on the part of the
+authorities, the first efforts made towards a systematic "Preventive"
+coast service, composed of customs, excise and naval officials in
+proportion varied according to the localities, remained singularly
+futile. And to the notorious inability of these latter to cope with
+the experience and the devilish daring of the old established free
+traders, was due no doubt to the ferocity of the inquisitional laws
+presently levelled against smuggling and smugglers--laws which
+ruthlessly trenched upon almost every element of the British subjects'
+vaunted personal freedom, and which added, for the time, several new
+"hanging cases" to the sixty odd already in existence.
+
+That part of the indictment against Captain Jack Smith and the other
+criminals still at large, which dealt with their offences against the
+smuggling act, would in later times have broken down infallibly from
+want of proper evidence: not a tittle of information was forthcoming
+which could support examination. But a judge of assizes and a jury in
+1815, were not to be baulked of the necessary victim by mere
+circumstantiality when certain offences against society and against
+His Majesty had to be avenged; and the dispensers of justice were less
+concerned with strict evidence than with the desirability of making
+examples. Strong presumption was all that was required to them to hang
+their man; and indeed the hanging of Captain Jack upon the other and
+more serious counts than that of unlawful occupation, was, as has been
+said, a foregone conclusion. The triple charge of murder being but too
+fully corroborated.
+
+Every specious argument that could be mooted was of course put forward
+by counsel for the defence, to show that the death of the preventive
+men and of Mr. Landale on Scarthey Island and the sinking of the
+revenue cutter must be looked upon, on the one hand, as simple
+manslaughter in self-defence, and as the result of accidental
+collision, on the other. But, as every one anticipated, the charge of
+the judge and the finding of the jury demanded strenuously the extreme
+penalty of the law. Besides this the judge deemed it advisable to
+introduce into the sentence one of those already obsolete penalties of
+posthumous degradation, devised in coarser ages for the purpose of
+making an awful impression upon the living.
+
+"Prisoner at the bar," said his lordship at the conclusion of the last
+day's proceedings, "the sentence of the law which I am about to pass
+upon you and which the court awards is that you now be taken to the
+place whence you came, and from thence, on the day appointed, to the
+place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck until you be dead,
+dead, dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!"
+
+Captain Jack, standing bolt upright, with his eyes fixed upon the
+speaker, calm as he ever had been when awaiting the enemy's broadside,
+hearkened without stirring a muscle. But when the judge, after
+pronouncing the last words with a lingering fulness and
+impressiveness, continued through the heavy silence: "And that, at a
+subsequent time, your body, bound in irons, shall be suspended upon a
+gibbet erected as near as possible to the scenes of your successive
+crimes, and shall there remain as a lasting warning to wrong-doers of
+the inevitable ultimate end of such an evil life as yours," a wave of
+crimson flew to the prisoner's forehead, upon which every vein swelled
+ominously.
+
+He shot a glance of fury at the large flabby countenance of the
+righteous arbiter of his doom, whilst his hands closed themselves with
+an involuntary gesture of menace. Then the tide of anger ebbed; a
+contemptuous smile parted his lips. And, bowing with an air of light
+mockery to the court, he turned, erect and easy, to follow his turnkey
+out of the hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+IN LANCASTER CASTLE
+
+
+All that his friendship for the condemned man, all that his love and
+pity for his almost distracted wife, could suggest, Sir Adrian Landale
+had done in London to try and avert Captain Jack's doom. But it was in
+vain. There also old stories of his peculiar tenets and of his
+well-known disaffection to the established order of things, had been
+raked up against him. Unfavourable comparisons had been drawn between
+him and Rupert; surprise and disapproval had been expressed at the
+unnatural brother, who was displaying such energy to obtain mercy for
+his brother's murderer. Finally an influential personage, whom Sir
+Adrian had contrived to interest in the case, in memory of an old
+friendship with his father, informed the baronet that his persistence
+was viewed with extreme disfavour in the most exalted quarter, and
+that His Royal Highness himself had pronounced that Captain Jack was a
+damned rascal and richly deserved his fate.
+
+From the beginning, indeed, the suppliant had been without hope.
+Though he was resolved to leave no stone unturned, no possibility
+untried in the effort to save his friend, well-nigh the saddest part
+of the whole business to him was the realisation that the prisoner had
+not only broken those custom laws (of which Sir Adrian himself
+disapproved as arbitrary) but also, as he had been warned, those other
+laws upon which depend all social order and security; broken them so
+grievously that, whatever excuses the philosopher might find in heat
+of blood and stress of circumstances, given laws at all, the sentence
+could not be pronounced otherwise than just.
+
+And so, with an aching heart and a wider horror than ever of the cruel
+world of men, and of the injustices to which legal justice leads, Sir
+Adrian left London to hurry back to Lancaster with all the speed that
+post-horses could muster. The time was now drawing short. As the
+traveller rattled along the stony streets of the old Palatine town,
+and saw the dawn breaking, exquisite, primrose tinted, faintly
+beautiful as some dream vision over the distant hills, his soul was
+gripped with an iron clutch. In three more days the gallant heart,
+breaking in the confinement of the prison yonder, would have throbbed
+its last! And he longed, with a desire futile but none the less
+intense, that, according to that doctrine of Vicarious Atonement
+preached to humanity by the greatest of all examples, he could lay
+down his own weary and disappointed life for his friend.
+
+Having breakfasted at the hotel, less for the necessity of food than
+for the sake of passing the time till the morning should have worn to
+sufficient maturity, he sought on foot the quiet lodgings where he had
+installed his wife under Rene's guard before starting on his futile
+quest. Early as the hour still was--seven had but just rung merrily
+from some chiming church clock--the faithful fellow was already astir
+and prompt to answer his master's summons.
+
+One look at the latter's countenance was sufficient to confirm the
+servant's own worst forebodings.
+
+"Ah, your honour, and is it indeed so. _Ces gredins!_ and will they
+hang so good a gentleman?"
+
+"Hush, Renny, not so loud," cried the other with an anxious look at
+the folding-doors, that divided the little sitting-room from the inner
+apartment.
+
+"Oh, his honour need have no fear. My Lady is gone, gone to Pulwick.
+His honour need not disquiet himself; he can well imagine that I would
+not allow her to go alone--when I had been given a trust so precious.
+No, no, the old lady, Miss O'Donoghue, your honour's aunt and her
+ladyship's, she has heard of all these terrible doings, and came to
+Lancaster to be with My Lady. _Ma foi_, I know not if she be just the
+person one would have chosen, for she has scolded a great deal, and is
+as agitated--as agitated as a young rabbit. But, after all, she loves
+the poor young lady with all her heart, and I think she has roused her
+a little. His honour knows," said the man, flushing to the roots of
+his hair, whilst he shifted nervously from one foot to another, "that
+My Lady has been much upset about the poor captain. After his honour
+went, she would sit, staring out of the window there, just where the
+street turns up to the castle, and neither ate nor slept, nor talked
+to speak of. Of course, as I told the old Demoiselle, I knew it was
+because My Lady had taken it to heart about the signal that she
+made--thinking to save him--and which only brought the gabelous on
+him, that his honour's infernal brother (God forgive me, and have
+mercy on his soul) had set to watch. And My Lady liked to see me
+coming and going, for she sent me every day to the prison; she did not
+once go herself."
+
+Sir Adrian drew a long breath. With the most delicate intuition of his
+master's thoughts, Rene avoided even a glance at him while he
+continued in as natural a tone as he could assume:
+
+"But the day after the old miss came, she, My Lady, told me to find
+out if he would see her. He said no; but that the only kindness any
+one could do him now would be to bring him Mademoiselle Madeleine, and
+let him speak to her once more. And My Lady, when she heard this, she
+started off that day with the old one to fetch Mademoiselle herself at
+Pulwick. And she left me behind, your honour, for I had a little plan
+there."
+
+Rene faltered and a crestfallen look crept upon his face.
+
+Sir Adrian remembered how before his departure for London his servant
+had cheerily assured him that Mr. the Captain would be safe out of the
+country long before he returned, "faith of him, Rene, who had already
+been in two prisons, and knew their ways, and how to contrive an
+escape, as his honour well knew." A sad smile parted his lips.
+
+"And so you failed, Renny," he said.
+
+"Ah, your honour, those satanic English turnkeys! With a Frenchman,
+the job had been done; but it is a bad thing to be in prison in
+England. His honour can vouch I have some brains. I had made plans--a
+hundred plans, but there was ever something that did not work. The
+captain, he too, was eager, as your honour can imagine. My faith, we
+thought and we thought, and we schemed and contrived, and in the end,
+there was only one thing to complete our plot--to bribe the jailer.
+Would your honour believe--it was only that one little difficulty. My
+Lady had given me a hundred guineas, I had enough money, your honour
+sees. But the man--I had smoked with him, drunk with him, ay, and made
+him drunk too, and I thought all was going well, but when I hinted to
+him what we wanted--Ah! he was a brute--I tell you I had hard work to
+escape the prison myself, and only for my leaving him with some of the
+money, I should now be pinched there too. I hardly dare show my face
+in the place any more. And my poor Lady builds on the hope, and Mr.
+the Captain--I had to tell him, he took it like an angel. Ah, the poor
+gentleman! He looked at me so brave and kind! 'I am as grateful, my
+poor friend, as if you had done it,' said he, 'and perhaps it is all
+for the best.' All for the best--ah, your honour!"
+
+Rene fairly broke down here, and wept on his sleeve. But Sir Adrian's
+eyes, circled and worn with watching and thought, shone dry with a far
+deeper grief, as, a few moments later, he passed along the street
+towards the walls of the castle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was in those days little difficulty in obtaining admission to a
+condemned prisoner; and, in the rear of the red-headed, good-tempered
+looking jailer--the same, he surmised, whose sternness in duty had
+baffled the Breton's simple wiles--he stepped out of the sweet morning
+sunshine into the long stone passages. The first tainted breath of the
+prison brought a chill to his blood and oppression to his lungs, and
+the gloom of the place enveloped him like a pall.
+
+With a rattle of keys a door dismally creaking on its hinges was swung
+back at last, and the visitor was ushered into the narrow cell, dark
+for all its whitewashed walls, where Captain Jack was spending his
+last hours upon earth. The hinges groaned again, the door slammed, and
+the key once more grated in the lock. Sir Adrian was alone with his
+friend.
+
+For a moment there was silence; the contraction of the elder man's
+heart had brought a giddiness to his brain, a dimness of his eyes,
+through which he was ill able to distinguish anything.
+
+But then there was a clank of fetters--ah, what a sound to connect
+with lucky Jack Smith, the gayest, freest, and most buoyant of men!
+And a voice cried:
+
+"Adrian!"
+
+It had a joyful ring, well-nigh the old hearty tones. It struck Adrian
+to the soul.
+
+He could have borne, he thought, to find his friend a broken man,
+changed out of all recognition, crushed by his misfortunes; but to
+find him the same, a little pale, indeed, and thinner, with a steady
+earnestness in the sea-blue eyes instead of the old dancing-light, but
+still gallant and undaunted, still radiating vigorous life and breezy
+energy by his very presence, this was a cruelty of fate which seemed
+unendurable.
+
+"I declare," the prisoner had continued, "I declare I thought you were
+only the incorruptible jailer taking his morning survey. They are
+desperately careful of me, Adrian, and watch me with maternal
+solicitude lest I should strangle myself with my chains, these pretty
+bracelets which I have had to wear ever since poor Renny was found
+out, or swallow my pillow--dash me! it's small enough--and spoil the
+pretty show for Saturday! Why, why, Adrian, old friend?"
+
+There was a sudden change of tone to the warmest concern, for Sir
+Adrian had staggered and would have fallen had not Jack, as nimbly as
+his fetters would allow him, sprung to support him and conduct him to
+the bed.
+
+A shaft of light struck through the tiny barred window on to the elder
+man's face, and showed it against the surrounding darkness deathly
+white and wet with anguish.
+
+"I have done all I could, Hubert," he murmured, in an extinguished
+voice, "but to no avail."
+
+"Ay, man, I guessed as much. But never fret for me, Adrian: I have
+looked death too often in the face to play the poltroon, now. I don't
+say it's the end I should have chosen for myself; but it is
+inevitable, and there is nothing, as you know, my friend, that a man
+cannot face if he knows it must be faced."
+
+The grasp of his strong warm hands, all manacled as they were, upon
+the other's nerveless clammy fingers, sent, more than the words,
+something of the speaker's own courage to his friend's wrung heart.
+And yet that very courage was an added torment.
+
+That from a community, so full of evil, feeble, harmful wretches, this
+noble soul, no matter how it had sinned, should be banished at the
+bidding of justice--what mockery of right was this? The world was out
+of joint indeed. He groaned aloud.
+
+"Nay, I'll have none of it," cried Jack. "Our last talk, Adrian, must
+not be spoiled by futile regrets. Yes, our last talk it is to be,
+for"--the prisoner's face became transfigured with a tenderness so
+exquisite that Adrian stared at its beauty, amazed--"I have begged
+her, Madeleine, to come and see me once more. I think she can be here
+to-day, at latest to-morrow. And after that I would not see any of
+those I love again, that I may fit myself to meet my God."
+
+He spoke with the utmost simplicity. Adrian bowed his head silently.
+Then averting his eyes, he said: "My wife has gone to Pulwick to fetch
+her."
+
+Captain Jack crimsoned. "That is kind," he answered, in a low voice;
+and, after a pause, pursued: "I hope you do not think it wrong of me
+to wish to see her. But you may trust me. I shall distress her as
+little as is possible in the circumstances. It is not, as you can
+fancy"--his face flushed again as he spoke--"to indulge in a pathetic
+parting scene, or beg from her sweet lips one last kiss--that would be
+too grossly selfish, and however this poor body of mine, so soon to be
+carrion, may yearn to hold her once more closely, these lips, so soon
+to touch death, shall touch hers no more. I have risen so far above
+this earthliness, that in so many hours I am to shake off for ever,
+that I can trust myself to meet her soul to soul. She must believe me
+now, and I would tell her, Adrian, that my deceit was not
+premeditated, and that the man she once honoured with her love is not
+the base wretch she deems. I think it may comfort her. If she does
+mourn for me at all--she has so proud a spirit, my princess, as I used
+to call her--it may comfort her to know that I was not all unworthy of
+the love she once gave me, of the tears she may yet give to its memory
+and mine."
+
+Sir Adrian pressed his hand, but again could not speak, and Captain
+Jack went on:
+
+"You will give her a happy home, will you not, till she has one of her
+own? You and your old dragon of an aunt, whose bark is so much worse
+than her bite, will watch and guard her. Ah, poor old lady! she is one
+of those that will not weep for Jack Smith, eh, Adrian? Well, well, I
+have had a happy life, barring one or two hard raps of fate, and when
+only I have seen Madeleine once more, I'll feel all taut for the port,
+though the passage there be a rough one."
+
+Sir Adrian turned his gaze with astonishment upon him. The sailor read
+his thoughts:
+
+"Don't think," he said, while a sudden shadow crossed his face, "don't
+think that I don't realise my position, that I have not had to fight
+my battle. In the beginning I had hopes; never in the success of
+your mission, but, absurd as it was, in Renny's scheme. The good
+fellow's own hopefulness was infectious, I believe. And when that
+fell through--well then, man, I just had to make up my mind to what
+was to be. It was a battle, as I told you. I have been in danger
+of death many a time upon the brave old _St. Nicholas_, and my
+_Cormorant_--death from the salt sea, from musket ball and cannon
+shot, fearful deaths of mangling and hacking. But death on the
+gallows, the shameful death of the criminal; to be hung; to be
+executed--Pah! Ay! it was a battle--two nights and one day I fought
+it. And I tell you, 'tis a hard thing to bring the living flesh and
+the leaping blood to submit to such as that. At first I thought
+indeed, it could not be borne, and I must reckon upon your or Renny's
+friendship for a secret speed. I should have had the pluck to starve
+myself if need be, only I am so damned strong and healthy, I feared it
+could not have been managed in the time. At any rate, I could have
+dashed my brains out against the wall--but I see it otherwise now. The
+prison chaplain, a good man, Adrian, has made me realise that it would
+be cowardly, that I should accept my sentence as atonement, as
+deserved--I _have_ deserved to die."
+
+It had been Sir Adrian's own thought; but he broke out now in
+inarticulate protest. It seemed too gross, too monstrous.
+
+"Yes, Adrian, I have. You warned me, good friend, in your peaceful
+room--ah, how long ago it seems now! that night, when all that could
+make life beautiful lay to my hand for the taking. Oh, man, why did I
+not heed you! You warned me: he who breaks one law will end by
+breaking many. You were right. See the harm I wreaked--those poor
+fellows, who were but doing their duty bravely, whose lives I
+sacrificed without remorse! Your brother, too, whose soul, with the
+most deliberate vindictiveness, I sent before its Maker, without an
+instant's preparation! A guilty soul it was; for he hounded me down,
+one would almost think for the sport of it.... God! when I think that,
+but for him, for his wanton interference--but there, the devils are
+loose again! I must not think on him. Do I not deserve my fate, if the
+Bible law be right? 'He who sheds blood, his blood shall be shed.'
+Never was sentence more just. I have sinned, I have repented; I am now
+ready to atone. I believe the sacrifice will be accepted."
+
+He laid his hand, for a minute, upon the Bible on the table, with a
+significant gesture.
+
+But Sir Adrian, the philosopher, though he could find no words to
+impeach the logic of his friend's reasoning, and was all astir with
+admiration for a resignation as perfect as either Christian or Stoic
+could desire, found his soul rising in tumultuous rebellion against
+the hideous decree. The longing that had beset him in the dawn, now
+seized upon him with a new passion, and the cry escaped his lips
+almost unwittingly:
+
+"Oh, if I could die for you!"
+
+"No, no," said Jack, with his sweet smile, "your life is too valuable,
+too precious to the world. Adrian, believe me, you can still do much
+good with it. And I know you will be happy yet."
+
+It was the only allusion he had made to his friend's more personal
+sorrows. Before the latter had time to reply, he hastened to proceed:
+
+"And now to business. All the gold entrusted to me lies at Scarthey
+and, faith, I believe it lies as weightily on my mind as if it was all
+stored there instead! Renny knows the secret hiding-place. Will you
+engage to restore it to its owners, in all privacy? This is a terribly
+arduous undertaking, Adrian, and it is asking much of your friendship;
+but if I know you, not too much. And it will enable my poor bones to
+lie at rest, or rather," with a rueful laugh, "hang at rest on their
+gibbet; for you know I am to be set up as a warning to other fools,
+like a rat on a barn door. I have, by the kindness of the chaplain,
+been able to write out a full schedule of the different sums, and to
+whom they are due. He has taken charge of the closed packet directed
+to you, and will give it to you intact, I feel sure. He is a man of
+honour, and I trust him to respect the confidence I have placed in
+him.... Egad! the poor old boys will be right glad to get their coin
+back in safety. A couple of them have been up here already, to
+interview me, in fear and trembling. They were hard set to credit me
+when I assured them that they would be no losers in the end, after
+all--barring the waiting. You see, I counted upon you."
+
+"I shall never rest until it is done," said Sir Adrian, simply. And
+Captain Jack as simply answered: "Thank you. Among the treasure there
+is also L10,000 of my own; the rest of my laboriously acquired fortune
+is forfeit to the Crown, as you know--much good may it do it! But this
+little hoard I give to you. You do not want it, of course, and
+therefore it is only to be yours that you may administrate it in
+accordance to my wishes. Another charge--but I make no apology. I wish
+you to divide it in three equal shares: two to be employed as you see
+best, for the widows and families of those poor fellows of the
+preventive service, victims of my venture; the third, as well as my
+beautiful _Peregrine_, I leave to the mate and men who served me so
+faithfully. They have fled with her, and must avoid England for some
+time. But Renny will contrive to hear of them; they are bound to
+return in secret for tidings, and I should like to feel that the
+misery I have left behind me may be mitigated.... And now, dear
+Adrian, that is all. The man outside grows impatient. I hear him
+shuffling his keys. Hark! there he knocks; the fellow has a certain
+rude feeling for me. An honest fellow. Dear Adrian, good-bye."
+
+"My God! this is hard--is there nothing else--nothing--can indeed all
+my friendship be of no further help?--Hubert!"
+
+"Hush, hush," cried Jack Smith hastily, "Adrian, you alone of all
+living beings now know me by that name. Never let it cross your lips
+again. I could not die in peace were it not for the thought that I
+bring no discredit upon it. My mother believes me dead--God in His
+mercy has spared me the crowning misery of bringing shame to her white
+hairs--shame to the old race. Hubert Cochrane died ten years ago.
+Jack Smith alone it is that dies by the hangman's hand. One other,"
+his voice softened and the hard look of pain left his face, "one other
+shall hear the secret besides you--but I know she will never speak of
+it, even to you--and such is my wish."
+
+It was the pride of race at its last and highest expression.
+
+There was the sound, without, of the key in the lock.
+
+"One last word--if you love me, nay, as you love me--do not be there
+on Saturday! This parting with you--the good-bye to her--that is my
+death. Afterwards what happens to this flesh," he struck at himself
+with his chained hands, "matters no more than what will happen to the
+soulless corpse. I know you would come to help me with the feeling of
+your love, your presence--but do not--do not--and now good-bye!"
+
+Adrian seized his friend by the hands with a despairing grip, the door
+rolled back with its dismal screech.
+
+The prisoner smiled at him with tender eyes. This man whom, all
+unwillingly he had robbed of his wife's heart, was broken with grief
+that he could not save the life that had brought him misery. Here was
+a friend to be proud of, even at the gate of death!
+
+"God be with you, dear Adrian! God bless you and your household, and
+your children, and your children's children! Hear my last words: _From
+my death will be born your happiness, and if its growth be slow, yet
+it will wax strong and sure as the years go by_."
+
+The words broke from him with prophetic solemnity; their hands fell
+apart, and Adrian, led by the jailer, stumbled forth blindly. Jack
+Smith stood erect, still smiling, watching them: were Adrian to turn
+he should find no weakness, no faltering for the final remembrance.
+
+But Adrian did not turn. And the door closed, closed upon hope and
+happiness and life, shut in shame and death. Out yonder, with Adrian,
+was the fresh bright world, the sea, the sunshine, the dear ones; here
+the prison smells, the gloom, the constraint, the inflicted dreadful
+death. All his hard-won calm fled from him; all his youth, his immense
+vitality woke up and cried out in him again. He raised his hands and
+pulled fiercely at his collar as if already the rope were round his
+neck strangling him. His blood hammered in his brain. God--God--it
+was impossible--it could not be--it was a dream!
+
+Beyond, from far distant in the street came the cry of a little child:
+
+"Da-da--daddy."
+
+The prisoner threw up his arms and then fell upon his face upon the
+bed, torn by sobs.
+
+Yes, Adrian would have children; but Hubert Cochrane, who, from the
+beautiful young brood that was to have sprung from his loins would
+have grafted on the old stock a fresh and noble tree, he was to pass
+barren out of life and leave no trace behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE ONE HE LOVED AND THE ONE WHO LOVED HIM
+
+
+On the evening of the previous day Lady Landale and her Aunt had
+arrived at Pulwick. The drive had been a dismal one to poor Miss
+O'Donoghue. Neither her angry expostulations, nor her tender
+remonstrances, nor her attempts at consolation could succeed in
+drawing a connected sentence from Molly, who, with a fever spot of red
+upon each cheek only roused herself from the depth of thought in which
+she seemed plunged to urge the coachman to greater speed. Miss
+O'Donoghue tried the whole gamut of her art in vain, and was obliged
+at last to desist from sheer weariness and in much anxiety.
+
+Madeleine and Sophia were seated by the fireside in the library when
+the unexpected travellers came in upon them. Sophia, in the blackest
+of black weeds, started guiltily up from the volume of "The Corsair,"
+in which she had been plunged, while Madeleine, without manifesting
+any surprise, rose placidly, laid aside her needlework--a coarse
+flannel frock, evidently destined for charity--and bestowed upon her
+sister and aunt an affectionate though unexpansive embrace.
+
+She had grown somewhat thinner and more thoughtful-looking since Molly
+and she had last met, on that fatal 15th of March, but otherwise was
+unchanged in her serene beauty. Molly clutched her wrist with a
+burning hand, and, paying not the slightest attention to the other
+two, nor condescending to any preamble, began at once, in hurried
+words to explain her mission.
+
+"He has asked for you, Madeleine," she cried, her eyes flaming with
+unnatural brilliance as they sought her sister's mild gaze. "He has
+asked for you, I will take you back with me, to-morrow, not later than
+to-morrow. Don't you understand?" shaking her impatiently as she held
+her, "he is in prison, condemned to death, he has asked for you, he
+wants to see you. On Saturday--on Saturday----" Something clicked in
+her throat, and she raised her hand to it with an uneasy gesture, one
+that those who surrounded her had grown curiously familiar with of
+late.
+
+Madeleine drew away from her at this address, the whole fair calm of
+her countenance troubled like a placid pool by the casting of a stone.
+Clasping her hands and looking down: "I saw that the unfortunate man
+was condemned," she said. "I have prayed for him daily, I trust he
+repents. I am truly sorry for him. From my heart I forgive him the
+deception he practised upon me. But----" a slight shudder shook her,
+"I could not see him again--surely you could not wish it of me."
+
+She spoke with such extreme gentleness that for a minute the woman
+before her, in the seething turmoil of her soul, failed to grasp the
+meaning of her words.
+
+"You could not go!" she repeated in a bewildered way, "I could not
+wish it of you--!" then with a sort of shriek which drew Tanty and
+Miss Sophia hurriedly towards her, "Don't you understand--on
+Saturday--if it all fails, they will hang him?"
+
+"A-ah!" exclaimed Madeleine with a movement as if to ward off the
+sound--the cry, the gesture expressive, not of grief, but of shrinking
+repugnance. But after a second, controlling herself:
+
+"And what should that be now, sister, to you or to me?" she said
+haughtily.
+
+Lady Landale clapped her hands together.
+
+"And this is the woman he loves!" she cried with a shrill laugh. And
+she staggered, and sank back upon a chair in an attitude of utter
+prostration.
+
+"Molly, Molly," exclaimed her sister reprovingly, while she glanced in
+much distress at Miss O'Donoghue, "you are not yourself; you do not
+know what you are saying."
+
+"Remember," interposed Sophia in tragic tones, "that you are speaking
+of the murderer of my beloved brother." Then she dissolved in tears,
+and was obliged to hide her countenance in the folds of a vast
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Killing vermin is not murder!" cried Molly fiercely, awakening from
+her torpor.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue, who in the most unwonted silence had been watching
+the scene with her shrewd eyes, here seized the horrified Sophia by
+the elbow and trundled her, with a great deal of energy and
+determination, to the door.
+
+"Get out of this, you foolish creature," she said in a stern whisper,
+"and don't attempt to show your nose here again till I give it leave
+to walk in!" Then returning to the sisters, and looking from Molly's
+haggard, distracted face to Madeleine's pale one: "If you take my
+advice, my dear," she said, a little drily, to the latter, "you will
+not make so many bones about going to see that poor lad in the prison,
+and you'll stop wrangling with your sister, for she is just not able
+to bear it. We shall start to-morrow, Molly," turning to Lady Landale,
+and speaking in the tone of one addressing a sick child, "and
+Madeleine will be quite ready as early as you wish."
+
+"My dear aunt," said Madeleine, growing white to the lips, "I am very
+sorry if Molly is ill, but you are quite mistaken if you think I can
+yield to her wishes in this matter. I could not go; I could not; it is
+impossible!"
+
+"Hear her," cried the other, starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you
+made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"--her
+voice broke into a wail--"you who ought to be so proud to know he
+loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him,
+refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing
+the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never loved
+him. You don't even understand what it is to love.... But what could
+one expect from you, who abandoned him in the moment of danger. You
+are afraid; afraid of the painful scene, the discomfort, the sight of
+the prison, of his beautiful face worn and changed--afraid of the
+discredit. Oh! I know you, I know you. But mind you, Madeleine de
+Savenaye, he wishes to see you, and I swore you would go to him, and
+you shall go, if I have to drag you with these hands of mine."
+
+Her grip was so fierce, her eyes so savage, the words so strange, that
+Madeleine screamed faintly, "She is mad!" and was amazed that Miss
+O'Donoghue did not rush to the rescue!
+
+But Miss O'Donoghue, peering at her from the depths of her arm-chair,
+merely said snappishly: "Ah, child, can't you say you will go, and
+have done! Oughtn't you to be ashamed to be so hard-hearted?" and
+mopped her perspiring and agitated countenance with her kerchief. Then
+upon the girl's bewildered mind dawned a glimmer of the truth; and,
+blushing to the roots of her hair, she looked at her sister with a
+growing horror.
+
+"Oh, Molly, Molly!" she said again, with a sort of groan.
+
+"Will you go?" cried Molly from between her set teeth.
+
+Again the girl shuddered.
+
+"Less than ever--now," she murmured. And as Molly threw her from her,
+almost with violence, she covered her face with her hands and fell,
+weeping bitter tears, upon the couch behind her.
+
+Lady Landale, with great steps, stormed up and down the room, her eyes
+fixed on space, her lips moving; now and again a word escaped her
+then, sometimes hurled at her sister, sometimes only in desperate
+communing with herself.
+
+"Base, cowardly, mean! Oh, my God, cruel--cruel! To go back without
+her."
+
+After a little, with a sudden change of mood, she halted and stood a
+while, as if in deep reflection, holding her hand to her head, then
+crossing the room hurriedly, she knelt down, and flung her arms round
+the weeping figure.
+
+"_Ma petite Madeleine_," she said in a voice of the most piteous
+pleading, "thou and I, we were always good friends; thou canst not
+have the heart to be so cruel to me now. See, my darling, he must die,
+they say--oh, Madeleine, Madeleine! And he asked for you. The one
+thing, he told Rene, the only thing we could do for him on earth was
+to let him see you once more. My little sister, you cannot refuse: he
+loves you. What has he done to offend you? Your pride cannot forgive
+him for being what he is, I suppose; yet such as he is you should be
+proud of him. He is too noble, too straightforward to have
+intentionally deceived you. If he did wrong, it was for love of you.
+Madeleine, Madeleine!"
+
+Her tones trailed away into a moan.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue sobbed loudly from her corner. Madeleine, who had
+looked at her sister at first with repulsion, seemed moved; she
+placed her hands upon her shoulders, and gazed sadly into the flushed
+face.
+
+"My poor Molly," she said hesitatingly, "this is dreadful! But I
+too--I too was led into deceit, into folly." She blushed painfully. "I
+would not blame you; it was not your fault that you were carried away
+in his ship. You went only for my sake: I cannot forget that. Yet that
+he should have this unhappy power over you too, you with your good
+husband, you a married woman, oh, my poor sister, it is terrible! He
+is a wicked man; I pray that he may yet repent."
+
+"Heavens," interrupted Molly, her passion up in arms again, loosening
+as she spoke her clasp upon her sister, and rising to her feet to look
+down on her with withering scorn, "have I not made myself clear? Are
+you deaf, stupid, as well as heartless? It is you--you--_you_ he
+loves, _you_ he wants. What am I to him?" with a curious sob, half of
+laughter, half of anguish. "Your pious fears are quite unfounded as
+far as he is concerned--the wicked man, as you call him! Oh, he spurns
+my love with as much horror as even you could wish!"
+
+"Molly!"
+
+"Ay--Molly, and Molly--how shocked you are! Yes, I love him, I don't
+care who hears it. I love him--Adrian knows--he is not as virtuous as
+you, evidently, for Adrian pities me. He is doing all he can, though
+they say it is in vain, to get a reprieve for him--though I _do_ love
+him! While you--you are too good, too immaculate even to soil your
+dainty foot upon the floor of his prison, that floor that I could kiss
+because his shoe has trod it. But it is impossible! no human being
+could be so hard, least of all you, whom I have seen turn sick at the
+sight of a dead worm--Madeleine----!"
+
+Crouching down in the former imploring manner, while her breast heaved
+with dry tearless sobs: "It cannot hurt you, you who loved him." And
+then with the old pitiful cry, "it is the only thing he wants, and he
+loves you."
+
+Madeleine disengaged herself from the clinging hands with a gesture
+almost of disgust.
+
+"Listen to me," she said, after a pause, "try and compose yourself and
+understand. All this month I have had time to think, to realise, to
+pray. I have seen what the world is worth, that it is full of horror,
+of sin, of trouble, of dreadful dissensions--that its sorrow far
+outweighs its happiness. I _have_ suffered," her pretty lips quivered
+an instant, but she hardened herself and went on, "but it is better
+so--it was God's will, it was to show me where to find real comfort,
+the true peace. I have quite made up my mind. I was only waiting to
+see you again and tell you--next week I am going back to the convent
+for ever. Oh, why did we leave it, Molly, why did we leave it!" She
+broke down, and the tears gushed from her eyes.
+
+Lady Landale had listened in silence.
+
+"Well--is that all?" she said impatiently, when her sister ceased
+speaking, while in the background Tanty groaned out a protest, and
+bewailed that she was alive to see the day. "What does it matter what
+you do afterwards--you can go to the convent--go where you will then;
+but what has that to say to your visit to _him_ now?"
+
+"I have done with all human love," said Madeleine solemnly, crossing
+her hands on her breast, and looking upward with inspired eyes. "I did
+love this man once," she answered, hardening herself to speak firmly,
+though again her lips quivered--"he himself killed that love by his
+own doing. I trusted him; he betrayed that trust; he would have
+betrayed me, but that I have forgiven, it is past and done with. But
+to go and see him now, to stir up in my heart, not the old love, it
+could not be, but agitation, sorrow--to disturb this quietness of
+soul, this calm which God has given me at last after so much prayer
+and struggle--no, no--it would not be right, it cannot be! Moreover,
+if I would, I could not, indeed I could not. The very thought of it
+all, the disgrace, that place of sin and shame, of him in chains,
+condemned--a criminal--a murderer!..."
+
+A nervous shudder shook her from head to foot, she seemed in truth to
+sicken and grow faint, like one forced to face some hideous nauseating
+spectacle. "As for him," she went on in low, feeble tones, "it will be
+the best too. God knows I forgive him, that I am sorry for him, that I
+regret his terrible fate. But I feel it would be worse for him to see
+me--if he must die, it would be wrong to distract him from his last
+preparations. And it would only be a useless pain to him, for I could
+not pretend--he would see that I despise him. I thought I loved a
+noble gentleman, not one who was even then playing with crime and
+cheating."
+
+The faint passionless voice had hardly ceased before, with a loud cry,
+Molly sprang at her sister as if she would have strangled her.
+
+"Oh, unnatural wretch," she exclaimed, "you are not fit to live!"
+
+Tanty rushed forward and dragged the infuriated woman away.
+
+Madeleine rose up stiffly--swayed a moment as she stood--and then fell
+unconscious to the ground.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next day in the dawn Lady Landale came into her sister's bedroom. Her
+circled eyes, her drawn face bespeaking a sleepless night.
+
+Madeleine was lying, beautiful and white, like a broken lily, in the
+dim light of the lamp; Sophia, an unlovely spectacle in curl papers,
+wizened and red-eyed from her night's watch, looked up warningly from
+the arm-chair beside her. But Molly went unhesitatingly to the window,
+pulled the curtains, unbarred the shutters, and then walked over to
+the bed.
+
+As she approached, Madeleine opened her blue eyes and gazed at her
+beseechingly.
+
+"There is yet time," said Molly in a hollow voice. "Get up and come
+with me."
+
+The wan face upon the pillow grew whiter still, the old horror grew in
+the uplifted eyes, the wan lips murmured, "I cannot."
+
+There was an immense strength of resistance in the girl's very
+feebleness.
+
+Molly turned away abruptly, then back again once more.
+
+"At least you will send him a message?"
+
+Madeleine drew a deep breath, closed her eyes a moment and seemed to
+whisper a prayer; then aloud she said, while, like a shadow so faint
+was it, a flush rose to her cheeks:
+
+"Tell him that I forgive him, that I forgive him freely--that I shall
+always pray for him." The flush grew deeper. "Tell him too that I
+shall never be any man's bride, now."
+
+She closed her eyes again and the colour slowly ebbed away. Molly
+stood, her black brows drawn, gazing down upon her in silence.--Did
+she love him after all? Who can fathom the mystery of another's heart?
+
+"I will tell him," she answered at last. "Good-bye, Madeleine--I shall
+never see you or speak to you again as long as I live."
+
+She left the room with a slow, heavy step.
+
+Madeleine shivered, and with both hands clasped the silver crucifix
+that hung around her neck; two great tears escaped from her black
+lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Miss Sophia moaned. She, poor soul,
+had had tragedy enough, at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the jailer brought in the mid-day meal after Adrian's departure,
+he found the prisoner seated very quietly at his table, his open Bible
+before him, but his eyes fixed dreamily upon the space of dim
+whitewashed wall, and his mind evidently far away.
+
+Upon his guardian's entrance he roused himself, however, and begged
+him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the
+bed and to assist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to
+be spick and span.
+
+"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.
+
+When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the
+surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.
+
+The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to
+deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street
+noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled,
+all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day
+struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor
+delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess
+his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell
+after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she
+did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of
+this.
+
+The afternoon had waned--golden without, full of grey shadows in the
+prison room--when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy
+tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing passage.
+
+There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and
+the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and
+closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before,
+the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.
+
+His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was
+impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with
+outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall
+by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.
+
+The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's
+brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out
+of the black frame.
+
+An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.
+
+"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern
+demand, "_Madeleine!_"
+
+"I went for her, I went for her myself--I did all I could--she would
+not come."
+
+_She would not come!_
+
+It is a sort of unwritten law that the supremely afflicted have the
+right, where possible, to the gratification of the least of their
+wishes. That Madeleine could refuse to come to him in his last
+extremity, had never once crossed her lover's brain. He stood
+bewildered.
+
+"She is not ill?"
+
+"Ill!" Lady Landale's red lips curved in scorn, "No--not ill--but a
+coward!" She spat the word fiercely as if at the offender's face.
+
+There fell a minute's silence, broken only by a few labouring
+deep-drawn breaths from the prisoner's oppressed lungs. Then he stood
+as if turned to stone, not a muscle moving, his eyes fixed, his jaw
+set.
+
+Molly trembled before this composure, beneath which she divined a
+suffering so intense that her own frail barriers of self-restraint
+were well-nigh broken down by a torrent of passionate pity.
+
+But she braced herself with the feeling of the moment's urgency. She
+had no time to lose.
+
+"Hear me," she cried in low hurried tones, laying a hand upon his
+folded arm and then drawing it away again as if frightened by the
+rigid tension she felt there. "Waste no more thought on one so
+unworthy--all is not lost--I bring you hope, life. Oh, for God's
+sake, wake up and listen to me--I can save you still. Captain Smith,
+Jack--_Jack!_"
+
+Her voice rose as high as she dare lift it, but no statue could be
+more unhearing.
+
+The woman cast a desperate look around her; hearkened fearfully, all
+was silent within the prison; then with tremulous haste she cast off
+her immense cloak, pulled her bonnet from her head, divested herself
+of her long full skirt and stood, a strange vision, lithe,
+unconscious, unashamed, her slender woman's figure clad in complete
+man's raiment, with the exception of the coat. Her dark head cropped
+and curly, her face, with its fever-bloom, rising flower-like above
+the folds of her white shirt.
+
+With anxious haste she compared herself with the prisoner.
+
+"Rene told me well," she said; "with your coat upon me none would tell
+the difference in this dark room. I am nearly as tall as you too.
+Thanks be to God that he made me so. _Jack_," calling in his ear,
+"don't you see? Don't you understand? It is all quite easy. You have
+only to put on these clothes of mine, this cloak, the bonnet comes
+quite over the face; stoop a little as you go out and hold this
+handkerchief to your face as if in tears. The carriage waits outside
+and Rene. The rest is planned. I shall sit on the bed with your coat
+on. It is a chance--a certainty. When I found Rene had failed, I swore
+that I would save you yet. Ever since I came from Pulwick this morning
+he and I have worked together upon this last plan. There is not a
+flaw; it must succeed. Oh, God, he does not hear me! Jack--Jack!"
+
+She shook him with a sort of fury, then, falling at his feet, clasped
+his knees.
+
+"For God's sake--for God's sake!"
+
+He sighed, and again came the murmur:
+
+"She would not come----" He lifted his hand to his forehead and looked
+round, then down at her, as if from a great height.
+
+She saw that he was aroused at last, sprang to her feet, and poured
+out the details of the scheme again.
+
+"I run no risk, you see. They would not dare to punish me, a
+woman--Lady Landale--even if they could. Be quick, the precious
+moments are going by. I gave the man some gold to leave us as long as
+he could, but any moment he may be upon us."
+
+"Poor woman," said Jack, and his voice seemed as far off as his gaze;
+"see these chains."
+
+She staggered back an instant, but the next, crying:
+
+"The file--the file--that was why Rene gave it to me." She seized the
+skirt as it lay at her feet, and, striving with agonised endeavours to
+control the trembling of her hands, drew forth from its pocket a file
+and would have taken his wrist. But he held his hands above his head,
+out of her reach, while a strange smile, almost of triumph, parted his
+lips.
+
+"The bitterness of death is past," he said.
+
+She tore at him in a frenzy, but, repulsed by his immobility, fell
+again broken at his feet.
+
+In a torrent of words she besought him, for Adrian's sake, for the
+sake of the beautiful world, of his youth, of the sweetness of
+life--in her madness, at last, for her own sake! She had ruined him,
+but she would atone, she would make him happy yet. If he died it was
+death to her....
+
+When at length her voice sank away from sheer exhaustion, he helped
+her to rise, and seated her on the chair; then told her quietly that
+he was quite determined.
+
+"Go home," said he, "and leave me in peace. I thank you for what you
+would have done, thank you for trying to bring Madeleine," he paused a
+moment. How purely he had loved her--and twice, twice she had failed
+him. "Yet, I do not blame her," he went on as if to himself; "I did
+not deserve to see her, and it has made all the rest easy. Remember,"
+again addressing the woman whom hopelessness seemed for a moment to
+have benumbed, "that if you would yet do me a kindness, be kind to
+her. If you would atone--atone to Adrian."
+
+"To Adrian?" echoed Molly, stung to the quick, with a pale smile of
+exceeding bitterness. And with a rush of pride, strength returned to
+her.
+
+"I leave you resolved to die then?" she asked him, fiercely.
+
+"You leave me glad to die," he replied, unhesitatingly.
+
+She spoke no more, but got up to replace her garments. He assisted her
+in silence, but as his awkward bound hands touched her she shuddered
+away from him.
+
+As she gathered the cloak round her shoulders again, there was a noise
+of heavy feet at the door.
+
+The jailer thrust in his rusty head and looked furtively from the
+prisoner to his visitor as they stood silently apart from each other;
+then, making a sign to some one whose dark figure was shadowed behind
+him without, entered with a hesitating sidelong step, and, drawing
+Captain Jack on one side, whispered in his ear.
+
+"The blacksmith's yonder. He's come to measure you, captain, for them
+there irons you know of--best get the lady quietly away, for he wunnut
+wait no longer."
+
+The prisoner smiled sternly.
+
+"I am ready," he said, aloud.
+
+"I'll keep him outside a minute or two," added the man, wiping his
+brow, evidently much relieved by his charge's calmness. "I kep' him
+back as long as I could--but happen it's allus best to hurry the
+parting after all."
+
+He moved away upon tiptoe, in instinctive tribute to the lady's
+sorrow, and drew the door to.
+
+Molly threw back her veil which she had lowered upon his entrance, her
+face was livid.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, articulating with difficulty.
+
+"Nothing--a fellow to see to my irons."
+
+He moved his hands as he spoke, and she understood him, as he had
+hoped, to refer only to his manacles.
+
+She drew a gasping breath. How they watched him! Yet all was not lost
+after all.
+
+"I will leave the file," she said, in a quick whisper; "you will
+reflect; there is yet to-morrow," and rushed to hide it in his bed.
+But he caught her by the arm, his patience worn out at length.
+
+"Useless," he answered, harshly. "I shall not use it. Moreover, it
+would be found, and I am sure it is not your wish to bring unnecessary
+hardship upon my last moments. I should lose the only thing that is
+left to me, the comfort of being alone. And to-morrow I shall see no
+one."
+
+The door groaned apart:
+
+"Very sorry, mum," came the husky voice in the opening, "Time's up."
+
+She turned a look of agony upon Captain Jack's determined figure. Was
+this to be the end? Was she to leave him so, without even one kind
+word?
+
+Alas, poor soul! All her hopes had fallen to this--a parting word.
+
+He was unpitying; his arms were folded; he made no sign.
+
+She took a step away and swayed; the turnkey came forward
+compassionately to lead her out. But the next instant she wheeled
+round and stood alone and erect, braced up by the extremity of her
+anguish.
+
+"I _have_ a message," she cried, as if the words were forced from her.
+"I could not make her come, but I made her send you a message. She
+told me to say that she forgave you, freely; that she would always
+pray for you. She bade me tell you too that she would never be any
+man's bride now."
+
+It had been like the rending of body and soul to tell him this. As she
+saw the condemned man's face quiver and flush at last out of its
+impassiveness, she thought hell itself could hold no more hideous
+torment.
+
+He extended his arms:
+
+"Now welcome death!" he exclaimed.
+
+And she turned and fled down the passage as though driven upon this
+last cry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"E-h, he be a strange one!" said the jailer afterwards to his mate.
+"If ye'd heard that poor lady sob as she went by! I've seen many a one
+in the same case, but I was sore for her, I was that. And he--as
+cool--joking with Robert over the hanging irons the next minute. 'New
+sort of tailor I've got,' says he. 'Make them smart,' he says, 'since
+I'm to wear them in so exalted a position.' So exalted a position,
+that's what he says. 'And they've got to last me some long time, you
+know,' says he."
+
+"He'll be something worth looking at on Saturday. I could almost wish
+he could ha' got off, only that it's a fine sight to see a real
+gentleman go through it. Ah, it's they desperate villains has the
+proper pluck!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+LAUNCHED ON THE GREAT WAVE
+
+
+Sir Adrian made, at first personally, then through Miss O'Donoghue,
+two attempts to induce his wife to return to Pulwick, or at any rate
+to leave Lancaster on the next day. But the contempt, then the fury,
+which she opposed to their reasoning rendered it worse than useless.
+
+The very sight of her husband, indeed, seemed to exasperate the
+unfortunate woman to such a degree that, in spite of his anxiety
+concerning her, he resolved to spare her even to the consciousness of
+his presence, and absented himself altogether from the house.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue, unable to cope with a state of affairs at once so
+distressing and so unbecoming, finally retired to her own apartment
+with a book of piety and some gruel, and abandoned all further
+endeavour to guide her unruly relations. So that Molly found herself
+left to her own resources, in the guardianship of Rene, the only
+company her misery could tolerate.
+
+Three times she went to the castle, to be met each time with the
+announcement that, by the express wish of the prisoner, no visitors
+were to be admitted to him again. Then in restless wandering about the
+streets--once entering the little chapel where the silent tabernacle
+seemed, with its closed door, to offer no relenting to the stormy cry
+of her soul, and sent her forth uncomforted in the very midst of
+Rene's humble bead-telling, to pace the flags anew--so the terrible
+day wore to a close for her; and so that night came, precursor of the
+most terrible day of all.
+
+The exhaustion of Lady Landale's body produced at last a fortunate
+torpor of mind. Flung upon her bed she fell into a heavy sleep, and
+Tanty who announced her intention of watching her, when Rene's
+guardianship had of necessity to cease, had the satisfaction of
+informing Adrian, as he crept into the house, like one who had no
+business there, of this consoling fact before retiring herself to the
+capacious arm-chair in which she heroically purposed to spend the
+night.
+
+The sun was bright in the heavens, there was a clatter and bustle in
+the street, when Molly woke with a great start out of this sleep of
+exhaustion. Her heart beating with heavy strokes, she sat up in bed
+and gazed upon her surroundings with startled eyes. What was this
+strange feeling of oppression, of terror? Why was she in this sordid
+little room? Why was her hair cut short? Ah, my God! memory returned
+upon her all too swiftly. It was for to-day--_to-day_; and she was
+perhaps too late. She might never see him again!
+
+The throbbing of her heart was suffocating, sickening, as she slipped
+out of bed. For a moment she hardly dared consult the little watch
+that lay ticking upon her dressing table. It was only a few minutes
+past seven; there was yet time.
+
+The energy of her desire conquered the weakness of her overwrought
+nerves.
+
+Noiselessly, so as to avoid awakening the slumbering watcher in the
+arm-chair, but steadily, she clothed herself, wrapt the dark mantle
+round her; and then, pausing for a moment to gaze with a fierce
+disdain at the unconscious face of Miss O'Donoghue, which, with snores
+emerging energetically and regularly from the great hooked nose,
+presented a weird and witchlike vision in the frame of a nightcap,
+fearfully and wonderfully befrilled, crept from the room and down the
+stairs.
+
+At Rene's door she paused and knocked.
+
+He opened on the instant. From his worn face she guessed that he had
+been up all night. He put his finger to his lips as he saw her, and
+glanced meaningly towards the bed.
+
+The words she would have spoken expired in a quick-drawn breath. Her
+husband, with face of deathlike pallor and silvered hair abroad upon
+the pillow, lay upon the poor couch, still in his yesterday attire,
+but covered carefully with a cloak. His breast rose and fell
+peacefully with his regular breath.
+
+The scorn with which she had looked at Miss O'Donoghue now shot forth
+a thousand times intensified from Molly's circled eyes upon the
+prostrate figure.
+
+"Asleep!" she cried.
+
+And then with that incongruity with which things trivial and
+irrelevant come upon us, even in the supremest moments of life, the
+thought struck her sharply how old a man he was. Her lip curved.
+
+"Yes, My Lady--asleep," answered Rene steadily--it seemed as if the
+faithful peasant had read her to her soul. "Thank God, asleep. It is
+enough to have to lose one good gentleman from the world this day. If
+his honour were not sleeping at last, I should not answer for him--I
+who speak to you. I took upon myself to put some of the medicine, that
+he has had to take now and again, when his sorrows come upon him and
+he cannot rest, into his soup last night. It has had a good effect.
+His honour will sleep three or four hours still, and that, My Lady,
+must be. His honour has suffered enough these last days, God knows!"
+
+The wife turned away with an impatient gesture.
+
+"Look, Madame, at his white hairs. All white now--they that were of a
+brown so beautiful, all but a few locks, only a few months past! Well
+may he look old. When was ever any one made to suffer as he has been,
+in only forty years of life? Ah, My Lady, we were at least tranquil
+upon our island!"
+
+There was a volume of reproach in the quiet simplicity of the words,
+though Lady Landale was too bent on her own purpose to heed them. But
+she felt that they lodged in her mind, that she would find them there
+later; but not now--not now.
+
+"It is to be for nine o'clock, you know," she said, with desperate
+calmness. "I must see him again. I must see him well. Alone I shall
+not be able to get a good place in the crowd. Oh, I would see all!"
+she added, with a terrible laugh.
+
+Rene cast a glance at his master's placid face.
+
+"I am ready to come with My Lady," he said then, and took his hat.
+
+A turbulent, tender April day it was. Gusts of west wind, balmy and
+sweet with all the sweet budding life of the fields beyond, came
+eddying up the dusty streets and blowing merrily into the faces of the
+holiday crowd that already pressed in a steady stream towards the
+castle courtyard to see the hanging. In those days there were hangings
+so many after assizes that an execution could hardly be said to
+possess the interest of novelty. But there were circumstances enough
+attending the forthcoming show to give it quite a piquancy of its own
+in the eyes of the worthy Lancastrian burghers, who hurried with wives
+and children to the place of doom, anxious to secure sitting or
+standing room with a good view of the gallows-tree.
+
+It was not every day, indeed, that a _gentleman_ was hanged. So
+handsome a man, too, as the rumours went, and so dare-devil a fellow;
+friend of the noble family of Landale, and a murderer of its most
+respected member. Could justice ever have served up a spicier dish
+whereon to regale the multitude?
+
+First the courtyard, then, the walls, the roofs of the adjoining
+houses, swarmed with an eager crowd. Every space of ground and slate
+and tile, every ledge and window, was occupied. As thick as bees they
+hung--men, women, and children; a sea of white faces pressed together,
+each still, yet all as instinct with tremulous movement as a field of
+corn in the wind; while the hoarse, indescribable murmur that seizes
+one with so strange and fearsome an impression, the voice of the
+multitude, rose and fell with a mighty pulsation, broken here and
+there by the shriller cry of a child.
+
+Overhead the sky, a delicious spring blue sky, flecked with tiny white
+clouds, looked down like a great smile upon the crowd that laughed and
+joked beneath.
+
+No pity in heaven or on earth.
+
+But as the felon came out into the air, which, warm and fickle, puffed
+against his cheek, he cast one steady glance around upon the black
+human hive and then looked up into the white flecked ether, without
+the quiver of a nerve.
+
+He drew the spring breath into his lungs with a grateful expansion of
+his deep chest. How fresh it was! And the sky, how fair and blue!
+
+As the eagerly expected group emerged from the prison door and was
+greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart
+there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her
+knees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws,
+ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her attention upon the
+condemned man.
+
+The creature was well known for miles around as a constant attendant
+at such spectacles, and had become in the course of time a privileged
+spectator. No one would have dreamt of disputing the first place to
+old Judy. Since the day when, still a young woman, she had seen her
+two sons, mere lads, hanged, the one for sheep-stealing, the other for
+harbouring the booty, she had, by a strange freak of nature, taken a
+taste for the spectacle of justice at work, and what had been the
+cause of her greatest sorrow became the only solace of her life. Judy
+and her pipe had become as familiar a figure at the periodical
+entertainment as the executioner himself--more so, indeed, for she had
+seen many generations of these latter, and could compare their styles
+with the judgment of a connoisseur.
+
+But as Captain Jack advanced, the pallor of his clean shorn, handsome
+face illumined not so much by the morning sun without it seemed as by
+the shining of the bright spirit within; as gallantly clad as he had
+ever been, even in the old Bath days when he had been courting fair
+Madeleine de Savenaye; his head proudly uplifted, his tread firm,
+strong of soul, strong of body--some chord was struck in the perverted
+old heart that had so long revelled in unholy and gruesome pleasure.
+She drew the pipe from her lips, and broke out into screeching
+lamentations.
+
+"Oh, me boy, me boy, me beautiful boy! Is it hang him they will, and
+he so beautiful and brave? The murthering villains, my curse on
+them--a mother's curse--God's curse on them--the black murtherers!"
+
+She scrambled to her feet, and shook her fist wildly in the face of
+one of the sheriff's men.
+
+A woman in the crowd, standing rigid and motionless, enveloped in
+mourning robes, here suddenly caught up the words with a muttering
+lip.
+
+"Murderers, who said murderers? Don't they know who murdered him?
+Murdering Moll, Murdering Moll!"
+
+"For heaven's love, Madam," cried a man beside her, who seemed in such
+anxiety concerning her as to pay little heed to the solemn procession
+which was now attracting universal attention, "let me take you away!"
+
+But she looked at him with a distraught, unseeing eye, and pulled at
+the collar of her dress as if she were choking.
+
+Old Judy's sudden expression of opinion created a small disturbance.
+The procession had to halt; a couple of officials good-naturedly
+elbowed her on one side.
+
+But she thrust a withered hand expanded in protest over their
+shoulders, as the prisoner came forward again.
+
+"God bless ye, honey, God bless ye: it's a wicked world."
+
+He turned towards her; for the last time the old sweet smile sprang to
+lip and eye.
+
+"Thank you, mother," he said, and raised his hand to his bare head
+with courteous gesture.
+
+The crowd howled and swayed. He passed on.
+
+And now the end! There is the cart; the officers draw back to make way
+for the man who is to help him with his final toilet. The chaplain,
+too, falls away after wringing his hand again and again. Good man, he
+weeps and cannot speak the sacred words he would. Why weep? We must
+all die! How blue the sky is: he will look once more before drawing
+down the cap upon his eyes. His hands are free, for he is to die as
+like a gentleman as may be. Just the old blue that used to smile down
+at him upon his merry _Peregrine_, and up at him from the dancing
+waves. He had always thought he would have liked to die upon the sea,
+in the cool fresh water ... a clean, brave death.
+
+It is hard to die in a crowd. Even the very beasts would creep into
+cave or bush to die decently--unwatched.
+
+A last puff of sweeping wind in his face; then darkness, blind,
+suffocating....
+
+Ah, God is good! Here is the old ship giving and rising under his feet
+like the living creature he always thought her, and here is dazzling
+brilliant sunshine all around, so bright he scarce can see the free
+white-crested waves that are dashing down upon him; but he is upon the
+sea indeed, upon the sea alone, and the waves are coming. Hark how
+they roar, see how they gather! The brave _Peregrine_ she dips and
+springs, she will weather the breakers with him at the helm no matter
+how they rear. On, on they come, mountain high, overwhelming, bitter
+drenching.
+
+A great wave in very truth, it gathers and breaks and onward rolls,
+and carries the soul of Hubert Cochrane with it.
+
+The woman in the black cloak falls as if she had been struck, and as
+those around her draw apart to let her companion and another man lift
+her and carry her away, they note with horror that her face is dark
+and swollen, as if the cord that had just done its evil work yonder
+had been tightened also round her slender throat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE GIBBET ON THE SANDS
+
+    Woman! take up thy life once more
+    Where thou hast left it;
+    Nothing is changed for thee, thou art the same,
+    Thou who didst think that all things
+    Would be wholly changed for thee.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+Pulwick again. The whirlwind of disaster that upon that fatal
+fifteenth of March had burst upon the house of Landale has passed and
+swept away. But it has left deep trace of its passage.
+
+The restless head, the busy hand, the scheming brain of Rupert Landale
+lie now mouldering under the sod of the little churchyard where first
+they started the mischief that was to have such far reaching effects.
+Low, too, lies the proud head of the mistress of Pulwick, so stricken,
+indeed, so fever-tortured, that those who love her best scarce dare
+hope more for her than rest at last under the same earth that presses
+thus lightly above her enemy's eternal sleep.
+
+There is a great stillness in the house. People go to and fro with
+muffled steps, the master with bent white head; Miss O'Donoghue,
+indefatigable sick nurse; Madeleine, who may not venture as far as the
+threshold of her sister's room, and awaits in prayer and tears the
+hour of that final bereavement which will free her to take wing
+towards the cloister for which her soul longs; Sophia, crushed finally
+by the sorrows she has played at all her days. Seemingly there is
+peace once more upon them all, but it is the peace of exhaustion
+rather than that of repose. And yet--could they but know it, as the
+sands run down in the hour-glass of time there are golden grains
+gathering still to drop into the lives of each.
+
+But meanwhile none may read the future, and Molly fights for her life
+in the darkened room, the gloom of which, to the souls of the dwellers
+at Pulwick, seems to spread even to the sunny skies without.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Lady Landale was brought back to her home from Lancaster, it was
+held by every one who saw her that Death had laid his cold finger on
+her forehead, and that her surrender to his call could only be a
+matter of hours.
+
+The physician in attendance could point out no reasonable ground for
+hope. Such a case had never come within his experience or knowledge,
+and he was with difficulty induced to believe that it was not the
+result of actual violence.
+
+"In every particular," said he, "the patient's symptoms are those of
+coma resulting from prolonged strangulation or asphyxia. These
+spectacles are very dangerous to highly sensitive organisations. Lady
+Landale no doubt felt for the miserable wretch in the benevolence of
+her heart. Imagination aiding her, she realised suddenly the horror of
+his death throes, and this vivid realisation was followed by the
+actual simulacrum of the torture. We have seen hysterical subjects
+simulate in the same manner diverse diseases of which they themselves
+are organically free, such as epilepsy, or the like. But Lady
+Landale's condition is otherwise serious. She is alive; more I cannot
+say."
+
+According to his lights, he had bled the patient, as he would have
+bled, by rote, to recall to life one actually cut down from the beam.
+But, although the young blood did flow, bearing testimony to the fact
+that the heart still beat in that deathlike frame, the vitality left
+seemed so faint as to defy the power of human ministration.
+
+The flame of life barely flickered; but the powers of youth were of
+greater strength in the unconscious body than could have been
+suspected, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, they asserted
+themselves.
+
+With the return of animation, however, came a new danger: fever,
+burning, devastating, more terrible even than the almost mortal
+syncope; that fever of the brain which wastes like the rack, before
+which science stands helpless, and the watcher sinks into despair at
+his impotence to screen a beloved sufferer from the horrible,
+ever-recurring phantoms of delirium.
+
+Had not Sir Adrian intuitively known well-nigh every act of the drama
+which had already been so fatal to his house, Molly's frenzied
+utterances would have told him all. Every secret incident of that
+storm of passion which had desolated her life was laid bare to his
+sorrowing heart:--her aspirations for an ideal, centred suddenly upon
+one man; her love rapture cruelly baulked at every step; the consuming
+of that love fire, resisting all frustration of hope, all efforts of
+conscience, of honour; how her whole being became merged into that of
+the man she loved and whom she had ruined, her life in his life, her
+very breath in his breath. And then the lamentable, inevitable end:
+the fearful confrontation with his death. Again and again, in never
+ceasing repetition, was that fair, most dear body, that harrowed soul,
+dragged step by step through every iota of the past torture, always to
+fall at last into the same stillness of exhaustion--appalling image of
+final death that wrung Adrian with untold agonies of despair.
+
+For many days this condition of things lasted unaltered. In the
+physician's own words it was impossible that life could much longer
+resist such fierce onslaughts. But one evening a change came over the
+spirit of the sufferer's vision.
+
+There had been a somewhat longer interval between the paroxysms; Sir
+Adrian seated as usual by the bed, waiting now with a sinking heart
+for the wonted return of the frenzy, clamouring in his soul to heaven
+for pity on one whom seemingly no human aid could succour, dared yet
+draw no shadow of hope from the more prolonged stillness of the
+patient. Presently indeed, she grew restless, tossed her arms,
+muttered with parched lips. Then she suddenly sat up and listened as
+if to some deeply annoying and disquieting sound, fell back again
+under his gentle hands, rolling her little black head wearily from
+side to side, only however to start again, and again listen. Thus it
+went on for a while until the haunted, weary eyes grew suddenly
+distraught with terror and loathing. Straining them into space as if
+seeking something she ought to see but could not, she began to speak
+in a quick yet distinct whisper:
+
+"How it creaks, creaks--creaks! Will no one stop that creaking! What
+is it that creaks so? Will no one stop that creaking!" And again she
+placed her cheek on the pillow, covering her ear with her little,
+wasted hand, and for a while remained motionless, moaning like a
+child. But it was only to spring up again, this time with a cry which
+brought the physician from the adjacent sleeping room in alarm to her
+bedside.
+
+"Ah, God," she shrieked, her eyes distended and staring as if into the
+far distance through walls and outlying darkness. "I see it! They have
+done it, they have done it! It is hanging on the sands--how it creaks
+and sways in the wind! It will creak for ever, for ever.... Now it
+spins round, it looks this way--the black face! It looks at _me_!" She
+gave another piercing cry, then her frame grew rigid. With mouth open
+and fixed eyeballs she seemed lost in the frightful fascination of the
+image before her brain.
+
+As, distracted by the sight of her torments, Adrian hung over her,
+racking his mind in the endeavour to soothe her, her words struck a
+chill into his very soul. He cast a terrified glance at the doctor who
+was ominously feeling her pulse.
+
+"There is a change," he faltered.
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I have told you before," he retorted irritably, "that you should
+attach no more importance to the substance of these delirious
+wanderings than you would to the ravings of madness. It is the fact of
+the delirium itself which must alarm us. She is less and less able to
+bear it."
+
+The patient moaned and shuddered, resisting the gentle force that
+would have pressed her down on her pillow.
+
+"Oh the creaking, the creaking! Will no one stop that creaking! Must I
+hear it go on creak, creak, creak for ever, and see it sway and
+sway.... Will no one ever stop it!"
+
+Sir Adrian took a sudden resolution. "I will," he said, low and clear
+into her ear. She sank down on the instant and looked at him, back
+from her far distance, almost as if she understood him and the pitiful
+cry for the help he would have given his heart's blood to procure for
+her, was silent for the moment upon her lips.
+
+"I will prepare an opiate," said the physician in a whisper.
+
+"And I," said Sir Adrian to him, with a strange expression upon his
+pale face, "am going to stop that creaking."
+
+The man of medicine gazed after him with a look of intense
+astonishment which rapidly changed to one of professional interest.
+
+"It is evident that I shall soon have another mentally deranged
+patient to see to," he remarked to himself as he rose to seek the
+drugs he meant to administer.
+
+Downstairs, Sir Adrian immediately called for Rene, and being informed
+that he had left for the island early in the afternoon and had
+announced his return before night, cast a cloak over his shoulders and
+hurried forth in the hope of meeting him upon his homeward way. His
+pulses were beating well-nigh as wildly as those of the fever stricken
+woman upstairs in the house. He dared not pause to reflect on his
+purpose, or seek to disentangle the confusion of his thoughts, for
+fear of being confronted with the hopelessness of their folly. But the
+exquisite serenity of the night sky, where swam the moon, "a silver
+splendour;" the freshness of the sweeping breeze that dashed, keen
+from the east, over the sea against his face; all the glorious
+distance, the unconsciousness and detachment of nature from the fume
+and misery of life, brought him unwittingly to a calmer mood.
+
+He had reached the extreme confine of the pine wood, when, across the
+sands that stretched unbroken to the lips of the sea, a figure
+advanced towards him.
+
+"Renny!" called Sir Adrian.
+
+"Your honour!" cried the man, breaking into a run to meet him. O God!
+how ghostly white looked the master's face in the moon-flood!
+
+"My Lady----?"
+
+"Not worse; yet not better--and that means worse now. But there is a
+change. Renny," sinking his voice and clasping the man's sturdy arm
+with clammy hand, "is it true they have placed him on the sands
+to-day?"
+
+The man stared.
+
+"How did your honour know? Yes--they have done so. It is true: the
+swine! not more than an hour, in verity. How could it have come so
+soon to your honour's ears? This morning, indeed, they came from the
+town in a cart, and planted the great gibbet on Scarthey Point, at low
+water. And to-night they brought the body, all bound in irons, and
+from a boat, for it was high tide, they riveted it on the chain. And
+it is to remain for ever, your honour--so they say."
+
+"Strange," murmured Sir Adrian to himself, gazing seaward with
+awestruck eyes. "And did you," he asked, "hear its creaking, Renny, as
+it swayed in the wind?"
+
+Again Rene cast a quick glance of alarm at his master. The master had
+a singular manner with him to-night! Then edging closer to him he
+whispered in his ear:
+
+"They say it is to hang for ever. There is a warning to those who
+would interfere with this justice of theirs. But, your honour, there
+came one to the island to-day, I do not know if your honour knows him,
+the captain's second on that vessel of misfortune. And I believe, your
+honour, the dawn will never see that poor, black body hanging over
+yonder like a scarecrow, to spoil our view. This man, this brave
+mariner, Curwen is his name, he is mad furious with us all! He has
+just but come from hearing of his captain's fate, and he is ready to
+kill us, that we let him be murdered without breaking some heads for
+him. Faith, if it could have done any good, it is not I that would
+have balanced about it! But, as I told him, there was no use running
+one's own head into a loop of rope when that would please nobody but
+Mr. the Judge. But he is not to be reasoned with. He is like a wild
+animal. When I left him," said Rene, dropping his voice still lower,
+"he was knocking a coffin together out of the old sea wood on
+Scarthey. He said his captain would rest better in those boards that
+were seasoned with salt water. And when I went away, your honour, and
+left him hammering there--faith, I thought that the coffin was like to
+be seasoned by another kind of salt water too."
+
+His face twitched and the ready tears sprang to his own eyes which,
+unashamed, he now wiped with his sleeve after his custom. But Sir
+Adrian's mind was still drifting in distant ghastly companionship.
+
+"How the wind blows!" he said, and shuddered a little. "How the poor
+body must sway in the wind, and the chains creak."
+
+"If it can make any difference to the poor captain he will lie in
+peace to-night, please God," said Rene.
+
+"Ay," said Sir Adrian, "and you and I, friend, will go too, and help
+this good fellow in his task. I hope, I believe, that I should have
+done this thing of my own thought, had I had time to think at all. But
+now, more hangs upon those creaking chains than you can dream of. This
+is a strange world--and it is full of ghosts to-night. But we must
+hurry, Renny."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bound even to the tips of her burning little fingers by the spell of
+the opiate, Lady Landale lay in the shadowed room as one dead, yet in
+her sick brain fearfully awake, keenly alive.
+
+At first it was as if she too was manacled in chains till she could
+not move a muscle, could not breathe or cry because of the ring round
+her breast; and she was hanging with the black figure, swaying, while
+the rusty iron links went creak, creak, creak, with every swing to and
+fro. Then suddenly she seemed to stand, as it were, out of herself and
+to be seeing with the naked soul alone. And what she saw was the great
+stretch of beach and sea, white, white, white, in the moonlight and
+spreading, it seemed, for leagues and leagues, spreading till all the
+world was only beach and sea.
+
+But close to her in the whitest moonlight rose the great gibbet, gaunt
+and black, cutting the pale sky in two and athwart; and hanging from
+it was the black figure that swayed and swung. And though the winds
+muttered and the waves growled, she could not hear them with the ears
+of the soul, for that the whole of this great world of sea and sand
+was filled with the creaking of the chains.
+
+But now, across the bleak and pallid spaces came three black figures.
+And, as she looked and watched and they drew nearer, the dreadful
+burthen of the gibbet swung round as if to greet them, and she too,
+felt in her soul that she knew them all three, though not by names, as
+creatures of earth know each other, but by the kinship of the soul.
+This man with hair as white as the white beach, hair that seemed to
+shine silver as he came; and him yonder who followed him as a dog his
+master; and yonder again the third, in the seaman's dress, with hard
+face hewn into such rugged lines of grief and fury--she knew them all.
+And next they reached the gibbet: and one swarmed up the black post,
+and hammered and filed and prised, and then, oh merciful God! the
+creaking stopped at last!
+
+Now she could hear the wash of the waves, the rush of the wholesome
+wind!
+
+A mist came across her vision; faintly she saw the stiffened
+disfigured corpse which yet she felt had once been something she had
+loved with passion, laid reverently upon a stretcher, its irons
+loosened and cast away, and then covered with a great cloak. Then the
+sea, the beach, the white moon faded and waved and receded. Molly's
+soul went back to her body again, while blessed tears fell one by one
+from her hot eyes. She breathed; her limbs relaxed; round the tired
+brain came, with a soft hush like that of gentle wings, dark oblivion.
+
+Bending over her, for he was aware that for good or evil the crisis
+was at hand, the physician saw moisture bead upon the suddenly
+smoothed brow, heard a deep sigh escape the parted lips. And then with
+a movement like a weary child's she drew her arms close and fell
+asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having laid his friend to his secret rest, deep in the rock of
+Scarthey, where the free waves that his soul had revelled in would
+beat till the world's end, Sir Adrian returned to Pulwick in the early
+morning, spent with the long and heavy night's toil--for it had taxed
+the strength of even three men to hollow out a grave in such a soil.
+On the threshold he was greeted by the physician.
+
+"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messengers of
+glad tidings!" From afar, by the man's demeanour, he knew that the
+tidings were glad. And most blessed they were indeed to his ears, but
+to them alone not strange. Throughout every detail of his errand his
+mind had dwelt rather with the living than the dead. What he had done,
+he had done for her; and now, the task achieved, it seemed but natural
+that the object for which it had been undertaken should have been
+achieved likewise.
+
+But, left once more with her, seeing her once more wrapt in placid
+sleep, whom he had thought he would never behold at rest again save in
+the last sleep of all, the revulsion was overpowering. He sat down by
+her side, and through his tears gazed long at the lovely head, now in
+its pallor and emaciation so sadly like that of his dead love in the
+sorrowful days of youth; and he thanked heaven that he was still of
+the earth to shield her with his devotion, to cherish her who was now
+so helpless and bereft.
+
+And with such tears and such thoughts came a forgetfulness of that
+anguish which in him, as well as in her, had for so long been part of
+actual existence.
+
+When Tanty entered on tiptoe some hours later, she saw her niece
+motionless upon her pillow, sleeping as easily and reposefully as a
+child. And close to her head, Sir Adrian, reclining in the arm-chair,
+asleep likewise. His arm was stretched limply over the bed and, on its
+sleeve still stained with the red mud of the grave in Scarthey, rested
+Lady Landale's little, thin, ivory-white fingers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus ended Molly's brief but terrible madness.
+
+"Then you have hope, real hope?" asked Sir Adrian, of the physician as
+they met again that day in the gallery.
+
+"Every hope," replied the man of science with the proud consciousness
+of having, by his wisdom, pulled his patient out of the very jaws of
+death. "Recovery is now but a question of a time; of a long time, of
+course, for this crisis has left her weaker than the new-born babe.
+Repose, complete repose, sleep: that is almost everything. And she
+will sleep. Happily, as usual in such cases, Lady Landale seems to
+have lost all memory. But I must impress upon you, Sir Adrian, that
+the longer we can keep her in this state, the better. If you have
+reason to believe that even the sight of _you_ might recall
+distressing impressions, you must let me request of you to keep away
+from the sick room till your wife's strength be sufficiently restored
+to be able to face emotions."
+
+This was said with a certain significance which called the colour to
+Sir Adrian's cheek. He acquiesced, however, without hesitation; and,
+banished from the place where his treasure lay, fell to haunting the
+passages for the rest of the day and to waylaying the privileged
+attendants with a humble resignation which would have been sorrowful
+but for the savour of his recent relief from anguish.
+
+But the next morning, Lady Landale, though too weak of body to lift a
+finger, too weak of mind to connect a single coherent phrase,
+nevertheless took the matter into her own hands, and proved that it is
+as easy to err upon the side of prudence as upon its reverse.
+
+Miss O'Donoghue, emerging silently from the room after her night's
+vigil, came upon her nephew at his post, and, struck to her kind heart
+by his wistful countenance, bade him with many winks and nods enter
+and have a look at his wife.
+
+"Don't make a sound," she whispered to him, "and then she won't hear
+you. But, faith she's sleeping so well, it's my belief if you danced a
+jig she would not stir a limb. Go in, child, go in. It's beautiful to
+see her!"
+
+And Adrian, pressed by his own longing, was unable to resist the
+offer. Noiselessly he stepped across the forbidden threshold and stood
+for a long time contemplating the sleeper in the dim light. As he was
+about to creep out at length, she suddenly opened her eyes and fixed
+them wonderingly upon him. Fearful of having done the cruel deed
+against which he had been warned, he felt his heart contract and would
+have rushed away, in an agony of self-accusation, when there occurred
+what seemed to him a miracle.
+
+A faint smile came upon the pale lips, and narrowed ever so little the
+large sunken eyes. Yes; by all that was beautiful, it was a
+smile--transient and piteous, but a smile. And for him!
+
+As he bent forward, almost incapable of believing, the lips relaxed
+again and the lids drooped, but she shifted her hands upon the bed,
+uneasily, as if seeking something. He knelt, trembling, by her side,
+and as with diffident fingers he clasped the wandering hands he felt
+them faintly cling to his. And his heart melted all in joy. The man of
+science had reasoned astray; there need be no separation between the
+husband who would so dearly console, and the wife who needed help so
+sorely.
+
+For a long while he remained thus kneeling and holding her hands. It
+seemed as though some of the life strength he longed to be able to
+pour from himself to her, actually passed into her frame: as though
+there were indeed a healing virtue in his all encompassing tenderness;
+for, after a while, a faint colour came to the sunken cheeks. And
+presently, still holding his hand, she fell once more into that
+slumber which was now her healing.
+
+After this it was found that the patient actually became fretful and
+fevered again when her husband was too long absent from her side; and
+thus it came to pass that he began to supersede all other watchers in
+her room. Tanty in highest good humour, declared that her services
+were no longer necessary, and volunteered to conduct Madeleine to the
+Jersey convent, whither (her decision being irrevocable) it was
+generally felt that it would be well for the latter to proceed before
+her sister's memory with returning strength should have returned
+likewise.
+
+This memory, without which the being he loved would remain afflicted
+and incomplete, yet upon the working of which so much that was still
+uncertain must hinge--Sir Adrian at once yearned for, and dreaded it.
+
+Many a time as he met the sweet and joyful greeting in those eyes
+where he had grown accustomed to find nought but either mockery or
+disdain, did he recall his friend's prophetic words: "Out of my death
+will grow your happiness." Was there happiness indeed yet in store in
+the future? Alas, happiness for them dwelt in oblivion; and, some day,
+"remembrance would wake with all her busy train, and swell at _her_
+breast," and then----
+
+Meanwhile, however, the present had a sweetness of its own. There was
+now free scope for the passion of devotedness which almost made up the
+sum of this man's character--a character which, to the Molly of
+wayward days, to the hot-pulsed, eager, impatient "Murthering Moll,"
+had been utterly incomprehensible and uncongenial. And to the Molly
+crushed in the direst battle of life, whom one more harshness of fate,
+even the slightest, would have straightaway hurled back into the grave
+that had barely been baulked of its prey, it gave the very food and
+breath of her new existence.
+
+Week after week passed in this guise, during which her natural
+healthiness slowly but surely re-established itself; weeks that were
+happy to him, in later life, to look back upon, though now full of an
+anxiousness which waxed stronger as recovery drew nearer.
+
+There was little talking between them, and that kept by him studiously
+on subjects of purely ephemeral, childish interest. Her mind, by the
+happy dispensation of nature which facilitates healing by all means
+when once healing has begun, was blank to any impressions save the
+luxury of rest, of passive enjoyment, indifferent to ought but the
+passing present. She took pleasure in flowers, in the gambols of pet
+animals, in long listless spells of cloud-gazing when the heavens were
+bright, in the presence of her husband in whom she only saw a being
+whose eyes were always beautiful with the light of kindness, whose
+touch invariably soothed her when fatigue or irritation marred the
+even course of her feelings.
+
+She had ever a smile for him, which entered his soul like the radiance
+of sunshine through a stormy sky.
+
+Thus the days went by. Like a child she ate and slept and
+chattered--irresponsible chatter that was music to his ear. She
+laughed and teased him too, as a child would; till sad, as it was, he
+hugged the incomplete happiness to his heart with a dire foreboding
+that it might be all he was to know in life.
+
+But one evening, in sudden freak, she bade him open the shutters, pull
+the curtains, and raise the window that she might, from her pillow,
+look forth upon the night, and smell the sweet night air.
+
+She had been unusually well that day, and on her face now filling out
+once more into its old soft oval, bloomed again a look of warm life
+and youth. Unsuspecting, unthinking Sir Adrian obeyed. It was a dim,
+close night, and the blush-roses nodded palely into the room from the
+outer darkness as he raised the sash. There was no moon, no stars
+shone in the mist hung sky; there was no light to be seen anywhere
+except one faint glimmer in the distance--the light upon Scarthey
+Island.
+
+"Is that a star?" said Molly, after a moment's dreamy silence.
+
+Sir Adrian started. A vision of all that might hang upon his answer
+flashed through his brain. With a trembling hand he pulled the
+curtain. It was too late.
+
+Molly sat up in bed, with a contracted brow and hands outstretched as
+one who would seize a tantalising escaping memory.
+
+"I used to watch it then, at night, from this window," she whispered.
+"What was it? The light of Scarthey?" Then suddenly, with a scream;
+"The light of Scarthey!"
+
+Adrian sprang to her side but she turned from him, shrank from him,
+with a look of dread which seared him to the soul.
+
+"Do not come near me, do not touch me," she cried.
+
+And then he left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss O'Donoghue was gone upon her journey with Madeleine. There was
+none in whom he might confide, with whom seek counsel. But presently,
+listening outside the door in an agony of suspense, he heard a storm
+of sobs. In time these gradually subsided; and later he learnt from
+Moggie, whom he had hurriedly ordered to her mistress's side, that his
+wife was quiet and seemed inclined to rest.
+
+On the next day, she expressed no desire to see him and he dared not
+go to her unsought. He gathered a great dewy bunch of roses and had
+them brought to her upon her breakfast tray instead of bringing them
+himself as had been his wont.
+
+She had taken the roses, Moggie told him, and laid them to her cheek.
+"The master sent them, said I," continued the sturdy little matron,
+who was far from possessing the instinctive tact of her spouse; "an'
+she get agate o'crying quiet like and let the flowers fall out of her
+hands on the bed--Eh, what ever's coom to her, sin yesterday? Wannut
+you go in, sir?"
+
+"Not unless she sends for me," said Sir Adrian hastily. "And remember,
+Moggie, do not speak my name to her. She must not be worried or
+distressed. But if she sends for me, come at once. You will find me in
+the library."
+
+And in the library he sat the long, long day, waiting for the summons
+that did not come. She never sent for him.
+
+She had wept a good deal during the day, the faithful reporter told
+him in the evening, but always "quiet like;" had spoken little, and
+though of unwonted gentleness of manner had persistently declined to
+be carried to the garden as usual, or even to leave her room. Now she
+had gone back to bed, and was sleeping peacefully.
+
+An hour later Sir Adrian left his home for Scarthey once again. It is
+to be doubted whether, through all the vicissitudes of his existence
+he ever carried into the sheltering ruins a heart more full of cruel
+pain.
+
+When Tanty returned to Pulwick from her travels again, it was to find
+in Miss Landale the only member of the family waiting to greet her.
+The old lady's displeasure on learning the reason of this defection,
+was at first too intense to find relief in words. But presently the
+strings of her tongue were loosened under the influence of the usual
+feminine restorative; and, failing a better listener, she began to
+dilate upon the situation with her wonted garrulity.
+
+"Yes, my good Sophia, I will thank you for another cup of tea. What
+should we do without tea in this weary world? I declare it's the only
+pleasure left to me now--for, of all the ungrateful things in life,
+working for your posterity is the most ungrateful. Posterity is born
+to trample on one.... And now, sit down and tell me exactly how
+matters stand. My niece is greatly better, I hear. The doctor
+considers her quite convalescent? At least this is very satisfactory.
+Very satisfactory indeed! Just now she is resting. Quite so. I should
+not dream of disturbing her; more especially as the sight of me would
+probably revive painful memories, and we must not risk her having a
+bad night--of course not. Ah, my dear, memory, like one's teeth, is a
+very doubtful blessing. Far more trouble than pleasure when you have
+it, and yet a dreadful nuisance when you have not--But what's this I
+hear about Adrian? Gone back to that detestable island of his again! I
+left him and Molly smiling into each other's eyes, clasping each
+other's hands like two turtle-doves. Why, she could not as much as
+swallow a mouthful of soup, unless he was beside her to feed her--And
+now I am told he has not been near her for four days. What is the
+meaning of this? Oh, don't talk to me, Sophia! It's more than flesh
+and blood can bear. Here am I, having been backward and forward over
+nine hundred miles, looking after you all, at my age, till I don't
+know which it is, Lancashire or Somerset I'm in, or whether I'm on my
+head or my heels, though I'm sure I can count every bone of my body by
+the aching of them;--and I did think I was coming back to a little
+peace and comfort at length. That island of his, Sophia, will be the
+death of me! I wish it was at the bottom of the sea: that is the only
+thing that will bring your brother to his senses, I believe. Now he
+might as well be in his grave at once, like Rupert, for all the good
+he is; though, for that matter it's more harm than good poor Rupert
+ever did while he was alive----"
+
+"Excuse me, Aunt Rose," here exclaimed Sophia, heroically, her
+corkscrew ringlets trembling with agitation, "but I must beg you to
+refrain from such remarks--I cannot hear my dear brother...."
+
+But Miss O'Donoghue waved the interruption peremptorily away.
+
+"Now it's no use your going on, Sophia. _We_ don't think a man flies
+straight to heaven just because he's dead. And nothing will ever make
+me approve of Rupert's conduct in all this dreadful business. Of
+course one must not speak evil of those who can't defend themselves,
+but for all that he is dead and buried, Rupert might argue with me
+from now till doomsday, and he never would convince me that it is the
+part of a gentleman to act like a Bow Street runner. I _hope_, my
+dear, he has found more mercy than he gave. I _hope_ so. But only for
+him my poor dear grand-niece Molly would never have gone off on that
+mad journey, and my poor grand-niece Madeleine would not be buried
+alive on that other island at the back of God's speed. Ah, yes, my
+dear, it has been a very sad time! I declare I felt all the while as
+if I were conducting a corpse to be buried; and now I feel as if I had
+come back from the dear girl's funeral. We had a dreadful passage, and
+she was _so_ sick that I'm afraid even if she wanted to come out of
+that place again she'd never have the courage to face the crossing.
+She was a wreck--a perfect wreck, when she reached the convent. Many a
+time I thought she would only land to find herself dead. _I_ wanted
+her to come to the hotel with me, where I should have popped her into
+bed with a hot bottle; but nothing would serve her but that she must
+go to the convent at once. 'I shall not be able to rest till I am
+there,' she said. 'And it's precious little rest you will get there,'
+said I, 'if it's rest you want?--What with the hard beds, and all the
+prayers you have to say, and the popping out of bed, as soon as you
+are asleep, to sing in the middle of the night, and those blessed
+little bells going every three minutes and a half. There is no rest in
+a convent, my dear.' But I might as well have talked to the wall.
+
+"When I went to see her the next day, true enough, she declared that
+she was more content already, and that her soul had found what it
+yearned for--peace. She was quite calm, and sent you all messages to
+say how she would pray for you and for the repose of the souls of
+those you loved--Rupert, your rector and all--that they may reach
+eternal bliss."
+
+"God forbid!" exclaimed the pious Protestant, in horrified tones.
+
+"God forbid?--You're a regular heathen, Sophia. Oh, I know what you
+mean quite well. But would it not have been better for you to have
+been praying for that poor fellow who never lived to marry you, all
+these years, than to have been wasting your time weeping over spilt
+milk? Tell me _that_, miss. Please to remember, too, that you could
+not have come to be the heretic you are, if your great grandfather had
+not been the time-server he was. Any how, you need not distress
+yourself. I don't think Madeleine's prayers will do any one any harm,
+even Rupert; though, honestly, I don't think they are likely to be of
+much good in _that_ quarter. However, there, there, we won't discuss
+the subject any more. Poor darling; so I left her. I declare I never
+liked her so much as when I said good-bye, for I felt I'd never see
+her again. And the Reverend Mother--oh! she is a very good, holy
+woman--a Jerningham, and thus, you know, a connection of mine. She was
+an heiress but chose the cloister. And I saw the buckles sable on a
+memorial window in the chapel erected to another sister--also a
+nun--they are a terribly pious family. I knew them at once, for they
+are charges I also am entitled to bear, as you know, or, rather, don't
+know, I presume; for you have all the haziest notion of what sort of
+blood it is that runs in your veins. Well, as I said, she is a holy
+woman! She tried to console me in her pious way. Oh, it was very
+beautiful, of course:--bride of heaven and the rest of it. But I had
+rather seen her the bride of a nice young man. Many is the time I have
+wished I had not been so hasty about that poor young Smith. I don't
+believe he _was_ purely Smith after all. He must have had some good
+blood in his veins! Oh, of course, of course, he was dreadfully
+wicked, I know; but he was a fine fellow, and all these complications
+would have been avoided. But, after all, it was Rupert's fault if
+everything ended in tragedy ... there, there, we won't speak another
+word about your brother; we must leave him to the Lord--and," added
+Miss O'Donoghue, piously under her breath, "if it's not the devil, He
+is playing with him, it's a poor kind of justice up there!--Alas, my
+poor Sophia, such is life. One only sees things in their true light
+when they're gone into the darkness of the past. And now we must make
+the best of the present, which, I regret to find, seems disposed to be
+peculiarly uncomfortable. But I have done what I could, and now I owe
+it myself to wash my hands of you and look after my own soul.--I'll
+take no more journeys, at any rate, except to lay my bones at
+Bunratty; if I live to reach it alive."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE LIGHT REKINDLED
+
+    Look not upon the sky at eventide,
+    For that makes sorrowful the heart of man;
+    Look rather here into my heart,
+    And joyful shalt thou always be.
+
+    _Luteplayer's Song._
+
+
+It was on the fifth day after Sir Adrian's return to his island home.
+Outwardly the place was the same. A man had been engaged to attend to
+the lighthouse duties, but he and his wife lived apart in their own
+corner of the building and never intruded into the master's apartments
+or into the turret-room which had been Captain Jack's.
+
+From the moment that Sir Adrian, attended by Rene, had re-entered the
+old rooms, the peel had resumed its wonted aspect. But the peace, the
+serenity which belonged to it for so many years, had fled--fled, it
+seemed to Sir Adrian, for ever. Still there was solitude and, in so
+far, repose. It was something to have such a haven of refuge for his
+bruised spirit.
+
+The whole morning of this day had been spent in counting out and
+securing, in separate lots, duly docketted and distinguished, a
+portion of that unwieldy accumulation of wealth, the charge of which
+he had accepted, against the time when it should be called for and
+claimed by its depositors.
+
+The task was by no means simple, and required all his attention; but
+there is a blessing even in mere mechanical labour, that soothes the
+torment of the mind. In the particular occupation upon which he had
+been engaged there was, moreover, a hidden touching element. It was
+work for the helpless dead, work for that erring man but noble soul
+who had been his loyal friend. As Sir Adrian tied up each bag of gold
+and labelled it with the name of some unknown creditor who had trusted
+Jack, dimly the thought occurred that it would stand material proof,
+call for recognition that this Captain Smith, who had died the death
+of a felon, had been a true man even in his own chosen lawless path.
+
+On the table, amid the papers and books, a heap of gold pieces yet
+untold, remainder of his allotted day's task, awaited still his
+ministering hand. But he was tired. It was the dreamy hour of the day
+when the shadows grow long, the shafts of light level; and Sir Adrian
+sat at his open window, gazing at the distant view of Pulwick, while
+his thoughts wandered into the future, immediate and distant. With the
+self-detachment of his nature these thoughts all bore upon the future
+of the woman whom he pictured to himself lying behind those sunlit
+windows yonder, framed by the verdure of leafy June, gathering slowly
+back her broken strength for the long life stretching before her.
+
+Unlike the musings which in the lonely days of old had ever drifted
+irresistibly towards the past and gathered round the image of the
+dead, all the power of his mind was now fixed upon what was to come,
+upon the child, still dearer than the mother, who had all her life to
+live. What would she do? What could _he_ do for her, now that she
+required his helping hand no more? Life was full of sorrow past and
+present; and in the future there lurked no promise of better things.
+The mind of man is always fain, even in its darkest hour, to take
+flight into some distant realm of hope. To those whom life has utterly
+betrayed there is always the hope of approaching death--but this,
+even, reason denied to him. He was so strong; illness had never taken
+hold of him; he came from such long-lived stock! He might almost
+outlive her, might for ever stand as the one ineluctable check upon
+her peace of mind. And his melancholy reflections came circling back
+to their first starting-point--that barren rock of misery in a vast
+sea of despondency--there was nothing to be done.
+
+The barriers raised between them, on his side partly by the poisonous
+words of his brother, partly by the phantom of that old love of which
+the new had at first been but an eluding reflex, and on hers, by the
+chilly disillusion which had fallen so soon upon her ardent nature;
+these sank into insignificance, contrasted to the whirl of baulked
+passion which had passed over her life, to leave it utterly blasted,
+to turn her indifference to hate.
+
+Yes, that was the burden of his thoughts: she hated and dreaded him.
+His love, his forbearance, his chivalrousness had been in vain. All he
+had now to live upon was the memory of those few days when, under the
+spell of oblivion the beloved child had smiled on him in the
+unconscious love born of her helplessness and his care. But even this
+most precious remembrance of the present was now, like that of the
+past, to be obscured by its abrupt and terrible end.
+
+Death had given birth to the first and last avowal of love in her who
+had perished between his arms under the swirling waters of the
+Vilaine--but it was Life itself, returning life and health of mind,
+which had changed looks of trust and affection into the chilly stare
+of dread in the eyes of her whom with all the strength of his hoarded
+manhood he now loved alone. The past for all its sorrows had held
+sweetness: the present, the future, nothing but torment. And now, even
+the past, with its love and its sorrow was gone from him, merged in
+the greater love and sorrow of the present. How long could he bear
+it?--Useless clamour of the soul! He must bear it. Life must be
+accepted.
+
+Sir Adrian rose and, standing, paused a moment to let his sight,
+wandering beyond the immense sands, seek repose for a moment in the
+blue haze marking the horizon of the hills. The day was pure,
+exquisite in its waning beauty; the breeze as light and soft as a
+caress. In the great stillness of the bay the sisters sea and land
+talked in gentle intermittent murmurs. Now and then the cries of
+circling sea-fowl brought a note of uncanny joy into the harmony that
+seemed like silence in its unity.
+
+A beautiful harmonious world! But to him the very sense of the outer
+peace gave a fresh emphasis to the discordance of his own life. He
+brought his gaze from afar and slowly turned to resume his work. But
+even as he turned a black speck upon the nearer arm of sea challenged
+his fleeting attention. He stood and watched--and, as he watched, a
+sensation, the most poignant and yet eerie he had ever known clutched
+him by the heart.
+
+A boat was approaching: a small row-boat in which the oars were plyed
+by a woman. By the multi-coloured, glaring shawl (poor Jack's
+appreciated gift) he knew her, but without attaching name or
+personality to his recognition; for all his being was drawn to the
+something that lay huddled, black and motionless, in the stern. He
+felt to the innermost fibre of him that this something was a woman
+too--this woman Molly. But the conviction seized him with a force that
+was beyond surprise. And all the vital heat in him fled to his heart,
+leaving him deadly cold.
+
+As her face grew out of the distance towards him, a minute white patch
+amid the dark cloud of silk and lace that enwrapt it, it seemed as
+though he had known for centuries that she was thus to come to him.
+And the glow of his heart spread to his brain.
+
+When the boat was about to land, he began, like one walking in his
+sleep, to move away; and, slowly descending the stairs of the keep, he
+advanced towards the margin of the sea. He walked slowly, for the body
+was heavy whilst the soul trembled within its earthly bounds.
+
+Molly had alighted and was toiling, with her new born and yet but
+feeble strength upon the yielding sand, supported between Rene and
+Moggie. She halted as she saw him approach, and, when he came close,
+looked up into his face. Her frail figure wavered and bent, and she
+would have fallen on her knees before him, but that he opened his arms
+wide and caught her to him.
+
+An exclamation rose to Moggie's lips, to die unformed under an
+imperious glance from Rene who, with shining eyes and set mouth, had
+stood apart to watch the momentous issue.
+
+Adrian felt his wife nestle to him as he held her. And then the tide
+of his long-bound love overflowed. And gathering her up in his arms as
+if she were a child, he turned to carry the broken woman with him into
+the shelter, the silence of the ruins.
+
+At the foot of the outer wall, just out of reach of high water, yet
+within reach of its salt spray, a little mound of red stony soil rose
+very slightly above the green turf; at its head, a small stone cross,
+roughly hewn, was let into the masonry itself. The grave of Hubert
+Cochrane was not obtrusive: in a few months it would have merged again
+into the greensward, and its humble memorial symbol would be covered
+with moss and lichen like the matrix of stone which encompassed it.
+
+Involuntarily as he passed it, the man, with his all too light burden,
+halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too:
+he shook with a brief agony of jealousy--jealousy of the dead! The
+next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him
+again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by
+those loyal lips--now clay beneath that clay--were coming true, that,
+out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise a new and stately
+mansion.
+
+Grasping her closer he hurried into the sanctuary of the old room,
+where he had first seen her bright young beauty.
+
+At the door he gently suffered her to stand, still supporting her with
+one arm about her waist. As they entered, she cast a rapid glance
+around: her eyes, bedewed with rising tears, fell upon the heap of
+gold glinting under the rays of the sinking sun, and she understood
+the nature of the task her coming had interrupted. Her tears gushed
+forth; catching his hand between hers, and looking up at him with a
+strange, wonderful humility, she pressed it to her lips.
+
+What need for words between them, then?
+
+He stood a little while motionless in front of her, entranced yet
+still almost incredulous, as one suddenly freed from long intolerable
+pain, when there rose once more, for the last time, before his mind's
+eye the ideal image that had been the companion of twenty years of his
+existence. It was vivid almost as life. He saw Cecile de Savenaye bend
+over her child with grave and tender look, then turn and smile upon
+him with the old exquisite sweetness that he had adored so madly in
+that far off past. And then, it was as if she had merged into Molly.
+Behold, she was gone! there was no Cecile, only Molly the woman he
+loved. Molly, whom now he seized to his heart, who smiled at him
+through her tears as he bent to kiss her lips.
+
+Twilight was waning and the light of Scarthey beamed peacefully over
+the yellow sands; and the waves receded dragging away sand and shingle
+from the foot of the hidden grave.
+
+
+
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