The Light of Scarthey Part 29

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 circ.u.mstances, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 a.s.suming 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.d, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 wors.h.i.+p's eyes. Lucky for me you never would be sworn as a magistrate, or where should I be ... and you too, between duty and friends.h.i.+p?--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.

"G.o.d 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 s.l.u.ts 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 m.u.f.fled-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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 finis.h.i.+ng touch to the las.h.i.+ng 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 c.h.i.n.k between door and post) the untimely old mischief-maker herself pa.s.s 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 bra.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 gla.s.s 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 Lancas.h.i.+re 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 s.h.i.+p, 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, G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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."