The Light of Scarthey Part 30

"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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "I verily believe, Jack," he said, shaking his head, "that you are as superst.i.tious 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.h.i.+p--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 fis.h.!.+" 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sion 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 att.i.tude, p.r.o.ne along the table, could be described as sitting.

Miss O'Donoghue's eyes and mouth grew round, as with the expression of an outraged c.o.c.katoo 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 pa.s.sionate 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."