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."