The Light of Scarthey Part 40

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 sh.o.r.e, 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, c.o.c.ked 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 gra.s.s, 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 bra.s.s 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 a.s.saulted 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 pa.s.sion for which Rupert would never have given her credit and which took him vastly by surprise, "I shall never forgive you."

"My G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+p which does trade in negro slaves, my dear--a pretty trade. He next entered a privateer's s.h.i.+p as lieutenant. You know what these are--ocean freebooters, tolerated by government for the sake of the harm they wreck upon the s.h.i.+ps of whatever nation we may happen to be at war with--a sort of pirate s.h.i.+p--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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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.