The Sapphire Cross Part 32

"Sir Murray Gernon. There, then!" cried the young man, furiously.

"Sir Murray Gernon," said the Jew, quietly, as he tapped his teeth with his large gold pencil-case--"Sir Murray Gernon. Ah! let me see; there was a screw loose there, if I recollect right, years ago. Rich family, though--very. Young lady's mamma bolted, I think; but that don't matter to you. Yes, that will do, Viscount--that will do. I think I'll wait."

"And you will advance me what I require?" said his lords.h.i.+p, eagerly, forgetting all humiliation in his brightened prospects.

"In reason, yes," said the Jew, with a mocking smile once more overspreading his face; "but I shall not do it for nothing, my Lord Viscount Maudlaine--I shall not do it for nothing."

"No," muttered the young man, "I know that."

"It's quite possible that I may go so far as to make my own terms," said the Jew, with a grin. "But I'll leave you, now, to think over the matter; and if you want any little help, of course you'll come to my chambers, where we can renew one of the bills."

"Confound the bills!" cried the young man, angrily; "I must have a cheque for some hard cash to go on with."

"Very good. Come to me, then, my lord," said the Jew, all suavity once more. "Excuse me for hurrying away, but it is for your sake. It is not seemly to have Sheriffs' officers waiting opposite to an hotel. Good morning, my lord!"

"Good morning!" said the Viscount, sulkily.

"You shall fly a little longer, my fine bird--just a little longer!"

said Mr Joshua Braham, as he went out; "but it shall be just as long as I like, and with a string tied to your leg--a string, my fine fellow, of which I hold the end?"

Book 2, Chapter VII.

IN PERIL.

"It is of no use," said Brace Norton, one day, when he had been home about a month, "I can't fight against fate. I vowed that I'd think no more about her, and I've thought about nothing else ever since. I go out very seldom, but when I do, I always seem to meet her. I've heard a good deal of milk-and-sugar talk about love; and if this is what is called love, all I can say is that it's worse than mast-heading. I can't help it--I can't keep free of it! What in the world did I get looking at her for, as I did, that day coming home? Brace Norton--Brace Norton, I'm afraid that you are a great a.s.s!"

He sat thinking for awhile, trying to be light-hearted, and to sweep his troubles away, but he soon owned to himself that it was no laughing matter.

"Heaven help me!" he groaned, "for a miserable, unhappy wretch--one who seems fated to make those about him suffer! It seems almost as if I were to endure the same torments as my poor father, without the alleviation of some other gentle hand to heal my wounds. Wounds! Pooh!

stuff! What romantic twaddle I am talking! It is time I was off back to sea. But, there, I've fought against it, all for their sakes, till it has been enough to drive me mad. I suppose men were meant to be b.u.t.terflies, and to burn their wings in the light of some particular star; so the sooner I get mine singed off, and get on board s.h.i.+p, the better. There's no romance there. Anything's better than this state of torment. Here am I, making myself disagreeable to the best of fathers and the tenderest of mothers; and because things run in a rut different from that which suits me, I go sulking about like a spoiled child in love with a jam-pot; and after making everybody miserable at home, go sneaking and wandering about after the fas.h.i.+on of a confounded tramp poaching somebody's goslings. I expect I shall be locked up one of these days. Seriously, though, I wish I had not come back," he said, dreamily; "I wish that a reconciliation were possible; I wish I had never seen her; I wish--I wish--There, what is the good of wis.h.i.+ng?

What a wretched life this is, and how things do contrive to get in a state of tangle! I don't think I ever tried to meet her, and yet how often, day after day, we seem to encounter! Even the thought of the old past sorrows seems to bring her closer and closer. Why, then, should not this be the means of bringing old sorrows to an end, and linking together the two families?"

Brace Norton brought his ponderings to a close, as, bit by bit, he recalled the past; and then he groaned in spirit, as his reason told him how impossible was a reconciliation.

"I must dismiss it all," he at last said, bitterly. "They have had their sufferings; I will not be so cowardly as to shrink from mine.

I'll take an interest in the governor's pursuits; and here goes to begin. I'll run over to the Marsh, and see where they are pegging out the drain; but I may as well take a gun, and see if I cannot bag a couple or two of ducks."

Brace Norton's reverie had been in his own room; and with this determination fresh upon him, he walked, cheery of aspect, into the room where Captain and Mrs Norton had been discussing the unsatisfactory turn matters had taken, when the young man's bright look, and apparently buoyant spirits, came upon them like a burst of suns.h.i.+ne.

"Gun? Yes, my dear boy!" exclaimed the Captain, delighted at the change that seemed to have come over his son. "Here you are," he said, opening a case--"everything to your hand. You'll be back to dinner?"

"Ay, ay, sir!" cried Brace, strengthened in his resolve, on seeing the pleasure his high spirits seemed to impart to his elders. "I am going to see where they are marking out the drain."

"To be sure. Quite right, Brace--quite right. I should like, above all things, to go with you."

"Well, why not?" said Brace, heartily.

Captain Norton smiled, and shook his head, as he pointed to his writing-table, covered with correspondence.

"Too much engaged, my boy--too many letters to write. I'll go over with you one day, though, if you will."

"To be sure," said Brace.

And then he saluted his mother, who held his hands tightly, as if unwilling to part from him, as she gazed fondly in his face. Then having secured the gun and ammunition, he started off, with a bold, elastic step, apparently as free from care as if no cloud had crossed his young career.

He had not gone far before again and again came the longing desire to sit down beneath some shady tree, and picture the soft sweet face that his heart whispered him he loved--the face that seemed to be so impressed upon his brain, that, sleeping or waking, asked for or uncalled, it was always there vividly before his gaze; though, beyond a distant salute and its response, since the day of the accident, he had never held the slightest intercourse with Isa Gernon. He might have laughed at another for being so impressionable; but, none the less, he felt himself to be greatly moved, and hour by hour he felt that the task he had imposed upon himself was greater than he could ever expect to master.

But that day Brace would not yield to the sweet temptation, striving manfully and trying hard to tire himself out. He visited the portions of the great marsh where arrangements were being made for forming the drain; he tramped to and fro over the boggy land with his gun, hour after hour; and at last, utterly weary, he entered the pine-wood on the marsh edge, having unwittingly wandered to the spot where, years before, his father had, in his wild despair, so nearly cast away his life.

It was with a sigh of satisfaction that he leaned his gun against a tree, and seated himself upon the fallen trunk of a large fir; for there was something soothing to his feelings in the solemn silence of this vast nature-temple. There was a soft, warm glow cast aslant amidst the tall smooth pillars by the descending sun, and but for the soft sigh of a gentle gale, and the sharply-repeated tap of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r sounded at intervals, there was nothing to break the stillness, which to another might have seemed oppressive.

And now, with a fierce rush, the dammed-back thoughts made at him. Now was the time for reverie--here in this solitary place. But no--he would not weakly succ.u.mb. It was not to be: he had made a resolution, and he would keep it. He boldly set himself to fight with a power stronger than himself, blindly thinking that he might succeed.

How had he succeeded with his gun?

He smiled as he looked at the result of his many hours' tramp--one solitary teal; and then for a few moments he was dwelling musingly upon the great subject that had filled his mind during the past month, but only to dismiss it angrily. He sighed, though, the next moment, and the soft breeze bore away the word "Isa"; and then romance faded as Brace sought solace in the small case he drew from his pocket, from which he selected a very foreign-looking cigar, lit it, and leaning back, began to emit cloud after cloud of thin blue vapour, till the tobacco roll was smoked to the very end, when Brace rose, calm and refreshed, ready to journey homeward.

"A sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow," said Brace, as he moved over the pine-needles. "Not so bad as that, though, after all."

He had not proceeded a dozen yards, though, before he remembered that he had left his gun behind, leaning against a tree; and hurrying back, he was in the act of taking it, when a distant cry came floating through the trees.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Brace, as he caught up his gun. "Curlew? No, it was not a curlew; but I've grown so used to the wail of the sea birds, that I don't know those of my native place. Ha! there it is again."

For once more the cry came ringing faintly by--a long, low, prolonged scream, as of some one in peril; when, roused by the exciting promise of adventure, he ran swiftly in the direction from whence the cry seemed to have come.

In a few minutes he was at the edge of the grove, gazing over the open marsh, to see nothing; when, fancying that he must have come in the wrong direction, he stood listening intently for another cry.

A full minute elapsed--a minute during which he could hear his heart beating heavily--and then once more came the loud wail, plainly enough now, and forming the appealing word that goes home to every heart:

"Help!"

The next moment Brace Norton was das.h.i.+ng over the treacherous bog, leaping from tuft to tuft of the silky cotton rush, avoiding verdant patches of moss, which concealed watery, muddy pools, and finding foothold where the heather grew thickly. Twice he sank in to his knees, but he dashed on to where, at the distance of some three or four hundred yards from the pine-wood, he had made out a figure struggling in one of the profound holes filled with deep amber-coloured water, while, as he rushed on, at times floundering and splas.h.i.+ng in the soft peat, it seemed to him that his aid would arrive too late.

A light muslin dress, a portion of which, still undrenched, buoyed up its wearer; a little straw hat, fallen off to float on the dark waters; a pale, upturned, agonised face; long cl.u.s.ters of hair rippling with the troubled element; and two dark, wild, appealing eyes, seeming to ask his aid. Brace Norton saw all this in the few moments ere he reached the side of the pit; but as he recognised the features, a cry of anguish tore from his heart, as, falling heavily, it was some little time before he could regain his feet. Then, with a rush and a plunge, he sent the water foaming in great waves to the green and deceptive sides of the moor-pit, still trembling with the weight that had lately pa.s.sed over them. Another minute, and with the energy of a stout swimmer he had forced himself through the dozen yards of water that intervened, to reach at and grasp an arm, just as the water was bubbling up above a fair, white forehead, and playing amidst the long tresses floating around. Another instant, and Brace's arm was supporting the drowning girl, as he swam stoutly towards the side.

The distance was short, but unfortunately the side he reached was but a semi-fluid collection of bog vegetation, half floating upon the water, and which broke away from the arm he threw over it again and again.

He swam off after two or three essays, laboriously now, with his burden, to another part of the pool, but that was worse; the moss breaking away at a touch. He looked towards the other side, some forty yards away, but with his precious load he dared not try to swim the distance.

To make matters worse, the sides of the pool were not perpendicular, but the loose vegetation grew out a couple of feet or so over the water, as if, in the course of years, to cover it with the treacherous green carpet, spread in so many other places over deep black pits; and thus any attempt to gain foothold and climb out was vain; while, for aught he could tell, the pool might have been fifty feet deep beneath his feet.

To stay where he was seemed impossible, so, swimming a few yards, he made to where--partly to rest, partly to think upon the best plan of procedure--he could tightly grasp a tuft of rushes with his disengaged hand. But even this was no safeguard, for he could feel that a very slight effort would be required to draw the tuft from its hold. And now, for the first time, he turned to gaze earnestly in the pallid face so close to his, to find the eyes dilate and horror-stricken, while two little hands were tightly clasped round his neck.

"Do not be alarmed, Miss Gernon," he whispered, his heart throbbing almost painfully the while. "Give me a few moments to recover breath, and then I will draw you ash.o.r.e--or rather," he said, with an encouraging smile, "on to this treacherous moss."

The smile was intended to chase away the dread of there being imminent danger, and it had its effect.

"I am not very--very much frightened," she half sobbed, though, unable to conceal her agitation, she clung to him tightly. "I was picking marsh flowers when the rushes suddenly gave way beneath my feet."