THE END OF THE THREAD
Madeleine had appeared greatly distressed at the thought that, through
her, her sister was now in so doubtful and precarious a situation. It
was part of her punishment, she told herself for her sins of deceit
and unmaidenliness in encouraging and meeting a clandestine lover.
She had gone through some very bitter hours since her tryst at the
ruins. The process of cutting off a malignant growth that has become
part of oneself is none the less painful because the conviction is
clear that it is for one's health to do so, and the will is firm not
to falter. Not the less is the flesh mangled, do nerves throb, and
veins bleed. But Madeleine was determined that nobody should even
guess her sufferings.
Rupert had counted upon Sophia's old habit of obedience to him, and
upon her superstitious terrors not to betray to the young girl the
part he had played in the unmasking of her lover; but he had an
unexpected, and even more powerful ally in Madeleine's own pride. When
Miss Sophia had tremblingly endeavoured to falter out a few words of
sympathy and sorrow, upon the distressing subject, Madeleine quickly
interrupted her.
"Never speak even his name again, Sophia; all that is finished for
me."
There was such a cold finality in her voice, that the poor confidant's
expansiveness withered up within her beyond even the hope of
blossoming again.
When Rupert heard of Captain Jack's latest doings, and especially of
his sister-in-law's disappearance, he thought that the fates were
propitious indeed. In his wildest schemes he could not have planned
anything that would have suited his game more perfectly.
Though he thought it incumbent upon him to pull a face of desperate
length whenever the subject was touched, in his innermost soul he had
hardly ever enjoyed so delightful a joke as this denouement to his
brother's marriage and to his cousin's engagement. And, strange to
say, though he would most gravely protest against any interpretation
of his kinswoman's disappearance save the one which must most redound
to her credit, the story, started by the gossips in the village upon
the return of the revenue men, that Lady Landale had bolted with the
handsome smuggler, grew and spread apace all over the county, more
especially from such houses as Rupert was wont to visit.
That all his hints and innuendoes should fail, apparently, to make
Madeleine put upon the case the interpretation he would have liked,
was at once a matter of secret sneering and of admiration to his
curiously complicated mind.
The days went by, to all appearance placidly enough, for the trio at
Pulwick. Madeleine shunned none of the usages of life in common,
worked and talked with Sophia of a morning, rode or walked out with
Rupert of an afternoon; and passed the evening at her embroidery frame
meeting his efforts to entertain her as amiably as before.
Rupert thought he knew enough of the human heart, and more especially
the feminine, to draw satisfactory conclusions from this behaviour.
For a girl to bear no malice to the man who had taken it upon himself
to demonstrate to her the unworthiness of her lover, argued, to his
mind, that her affections could not have been very deeply engaged in
that quarter. It was clear that she felt gratitude for a timely
rescue. Nay, might he not go further, and lay the flattering unction
to his soul that she would not be unwilling to transfer these same
blighted feelings to a more suitable recipient?
A slight incident which took place a few nights later, tended still
more to increase the kindness of Madeleine's manner to him upon the
next day; but this was for a reason that he little suspected.
It had been an anniversary with Sophia--none less indeed than that of
the lamented Rector's demise. When her young cousin had retired to her
room, the desire to pursue her thither with a packet of old letters,
and other treasures exhumed from the depths of her cupboards, had
proved too strong for a soul burning for congenial sympathy; and
Sophia had spent a couple of very delightful hours pouring forth
reminiscences and lamentations into the bosom of one who, as she said,
she knew could understand her.
Madeleine a little wearied, stifling a sigh or a yawn as the minutes
ticked by, was too gentle, too kind-hearted to repel the faithful, if
loquacious mourner; so she had sat and listened, which was all that
Sophia required.
Upon the stroke of twelve, Miss Landale rose at length, collected her
relics, and mopping her swollen eyes, embraced her cousin, and bade
her good-night with much effusion, while with cordial alacrity the
latter conducted her to the door.
But here Sophia paused. Holding the flat silver candlestick with one
hand, with the other clasping to her bosom her bundle of superannuated
love letters, she glanced out into the long black chasm of corridor
with a shudder, and vowed she had not the courage to traverse it alone
at such an hour. She cast as she spoke such a meaning glance at
Madeleine's great bed, that, trembling lest her next words should be a
proposal to share it for the night, the young girl hurriedly
volunteered to re-conduct her to her own apartment.
Half way down the passage they had to pass the door of the picture
gallery, which was ajar, disclosing light within. At the sight of
Rupert standing with his back to them, looking fixedly at the picture
upon the opposite wall, Sophia promptly thought better of the scream
she was preparing, and seized her cousin by the arm.
"Come away, come away," she whispered, "he will be much displeased if
he sees us."
Madeleine allowed herself to be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's
previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an
explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the
haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as
exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the
unreasonableness of her sister's dislike to Rupert.
He was gazing at his dead wife's picture. He could not bear, Sophia
said, for any one to find him there; could not bear the smallest
allusion to his grief, but at night, as she had herself discovered
quite by accident, he would often spend long spells as they had just
seen him.
There was something in Madeleine's own nature, a susceptible proud
reserve which made this trait in her cousin's character thoroughly
congenial; moreover, what woman is not drawn with pity towards the man
who can so mourn a woman.
She met him therefore, the next day, with a softness, almost a
tenderness, of look and smile which roused his highest hopes. And when
he proposed, after breakfast, that they should profit by the mild
weather to stroll in the garden while Sophia was busy in the house,
she willingly consented.
Up the gravel paths, between the gooseberry bushes, to the violet beds
they went. It was one of those balmy days that come sometimes in early
spring and encourage all sorts of false hopes in the hearts of men and
vegetables. "A growing day," the farmers call them; indeed, at such
times you may almost hear the swelling and the bursting of the buds,
the rising of the sap, the throbbing and pushing of the young green
life all around.
Madeleine grew hot with the weight of her fur tippet, the pale face
under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a
moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he
sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was
thus a maiden looked who waited to be won; and though all of true love
that he could ever give to woman lay buried with his little bride, he
felt his pulses quicken with a certain aesthetic pleasure in the
situation. Presently he rose, and, after arranging his bunch of purple
sweetness into dainty form, offered it silently to his companion.
She took it, smiling, and carried it mechanically to her face.
Oh, the scent of the violets! Upon the most delicate yet mighty
pinions she was carried back, despite all her proud resolves to that
golden hour, only five days ago, when she lay upon her lover's broad
breast, and heard the beating of his heart beneath her ear.
Again she felt his arm around her, so strong, yet so gentle; saw his
handsome face bent towards her, closer--ever closer--felt again the
tide of joy that coursed through her veins in the expectation of his
kiss.
No, no, she must not--she would not yield to this degrading folly. If
it were not yet dead, then she must kill it.
She had first grown pale, but the next moment a deep crimson flooded
her face. She turned her head away, and Rupert saw her tremble as she
dropped the hand that held the flowers close clenched by her side. He
formed his own opinion of what was passing within her, and it made
even his cold blood course hotly in his veins.
"Madeleine," he said, with low rapid utterance; "I am not mistaken, I
trust, in thinking you look on me as a good friend?"
"Indeed, yes;" answered the girl, with an effort, turning her
tremulous face towards him; "a good friend indeed."
Had he not been so five days ago? Aye, most truly, and she would have
it so, in spite of the hungry voice within her which had awaked and
cried out against the knowledge that had brought such misery.
He saw her set her little teeth and toss her head, and knew she was
thinking of the adventurer who had dared aspire to her. And he gained
warmer courage still.
"Nothing more than a friend, sweet?"
"A kind cousin; almost a brother."
"No, no; not a brother, Madeleine. Nay, hear me," taking her hands and
looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but
something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or
less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a
brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no
one to whom my coming or my going, my living or my dying makes one
pulse beat of difference--except poor Sophia. Let us join our
loneliness and make of it a beautiful and happy home. Madeleine, I
have learned to love you deeply!"
His eyes glowed between their narrowing eyelids, his voice rang
changes upon chords of most exquisite tenderness; his whole manner was
charged with a courtly reverence mingled with the subtlest hint of
passion. Rupert as a lover had not a flaw in him.
Yet fear, suspicion, disgust chased each other in Madeleine's mind in
quick succession. What did he mean? How could it be that he loved her?
Oh! if _this_ had been his purpose, what motive was prompting him
when he divided her from her deceiving lover? Was no one true then?
Was this the inconsolable widower whose grief she had been so
sympathetically considering all the morning; for whose disinterested
anxiety and solicitude on her behalf her sore heart had forced itself
to render gratitude? Oh! how terrible it all was ... what a hateful
world!
"Well, Madeleine?" he pressed forward and slid his arm around her.
All her powers of thought and action restored by the deed, she
disengaged herself with a movement of unconscious repulsion.
"Cousin Rupert, I am sure you mean kindly by me, but it is quite
impossible--I shall never marry."
He drew back, as nonplussed as if she had struck him in the face.
"Pshaw, my dear Madeleine."
"Please, Cousin Rupert, no more."
"My dear girl, I have been precipitate."
"Nothing can make any difference. That I could never marry you, so
much you must believe; that I shall never marry at all you are free to
believe or not, as you please. I am sorry you should have spoken."
"Still hankering after that beggarly scoundrel?" muttered Rupert, a
sneer uncovering his teeth betrayed hideously the ungenerous soul
within. He was too deeply mortified, too shaken by this utter
shattering of his last ambitions to be able to grasp his usual
self-control.
Madeleine gave him one proud glance, turned abruptly away, and walked
into the house.
She went steadily up to her room, and, once there, without hesitation
proceeded to unlock a drawer in her writing-table and draw from it a
little ribbon-tied parcel of letters--Jack's letters.
Her heart had failed her, womanlike, before the little sacrifice when
she had unshrinkingly accomplished the larger one. Now, however, with
determined hand, she threw the letters into the reddest cavern of her
wood-fire and with hard dry eyes watched them burn. When the last
scrap had writhed and fluttered and flamed into grey ash, she turned
to her altar, and, extending her arm, called out aloud:
"I have done with it all for ever----"
And the next instant flinging herself upon her bed, she drew her brown
ringlets before her face, and under this veil wept for her broken
youth and her broken heart, and the hard cold life before her.
* * * * *
There is a kind of love a man can give to woman but once in his
lifetime: the love of the man in the first flush of manhood for the
woman he has chosen to be his mate, untransferable and never to be
forgotten: love of passion so exquisite, of devotion so pure, born of
the youth of the heart and belonging to an existence and personality
lost for ever. A man may wed again, and (some say) love again, but
between the boards of the coffin of his first wife--if he has loved
her--lie secrets of tenderness, and sweetness, and delight, which,
like the spring flowers, may not visit the later year.
But, notwithstanding this, a second wooing may have a charm and an
interest of its own, even the wooing which is to precede a marriage of
convenience.
So Rupert found. The thought of an alliance with Madeleine de Savenaye
was not only engrossing from the sense of its own intrinsic
advantages, but had become the actual foundation-stone of all his new
schemes of ambition.
Nay, more: such admiration and desire as he could still feel for
woman, he had gradually come to centre upon his fair and graceful
cousin, who added to her personal attractions the other indispensable
attributes, blood, breeding and fortune. Mr. Landale was as
essentially refined and fastidious in his judgment as he was
unmeasured in his ambition.
His error of precipitancy had been pardonable enough; and mere
self-reproach for an ill-considered manoeuvre would not have
sufficed to plunge him into such a depth of bitter and angry
despondency as that in which he now found himself. But the rebuff had
been too uncompromising to leave him a single hope. He was too shrewd
not to see that here was no pretty feminine nay, precursor of the
yielding yea, not to realise that Madeleine had meant what she said
and would abide by it. And, under the sting of the moment betrayed
into a degradingly ill-mannered outburst, he had shown that he
measured the full bearings of the position.
So, the wind still sat in that quarter!
Failing the mysterious smuggler, it was to be nobody with the Savenaye
heiress--and least of all Rupert Landale.
And this, though the scoundrel had been thoroughly shown up; though he
had started upon his illegal venture and was gone, never to return if
he valued his neck, after murdering four officers of the crown and
sinking a king's vessel; though he had carried away with him (ah!
there was consolation in that excellent jest which had so far
developed into Sir Adrian's wild goose chase to France and might still
hold some delicate denouement), had carried with him no less a person
than Lady Landale herself (the fellow had good taste, and either of
the sisters was a dainty morsel), he still left the baneful trail of
his influence behind him upon the girl he had deluded and beguiled!
Rupert Landale, who, for motives of his own had pleased himself by
hunting down Madeleine's lover, had felt, in the keenness of his
blood-hound work, something of the blood-hound instinct of destruction
and ferocity spring up within him before he had even set eyes on his
quarry. And the day they had stood face to face this instinctive
hatred had been intensified by some singular natural antagonism. Added
to this there was now personal injury and the prey was out of reach.
Impotence for revenge burned into the soul of him like a corrosive
poison. Oh, let him but come within his grip again and he should not
escape so easily.
Sits the wind still in that quarter?
The burthen droned in his head, angry conclusion to each long spell of
inconclusive thought, as he still paced the garden, till the noon hour
began to wane. And it was in this mood, that, at length, returning to
his study, he crossed in one of the back passages a young woman
enveloped in a brilliant scarlet and black shawl, who started in
evident dismay on being confronted with him.
Rupert knew by sight and name every wench of kitchen and laundry, as
well as every one of the buxom lasses or dames whom business brought
periodically to the great hall. That this person was neither of the
household nor one of the usual back-door visitors, he would have seen
at a glance, even had not her own embarrassment drawn his closer
attention. He looked keenly and recognised the gatekeeper's daughter
Moggie.
Having married Sir Adrian's servant and withdrawn to take up her abode
in the camp of the enemy, so to speak, she was not one whom Mr.
Landale would have regarded with favour in any case; but now,
concentrating his thoughts from their aimless whirl of dissatisfaction
upon the present encounter, he was struck by the woman's manner.
Yes, she was most undoubtedly frightened. He examined her with a
malevolent eye which still discountenanced her. And, though he made no
inquiry, she forthwith stammered out: "I--I came, sir, to see if there
be news of her Ladyship ... or of Sir Adrian, sir--Renny can't leave
the island, you know, and he be downright anxious."
"Well, my good woman, calm yourself. Nothing wrong; nothing to hide in
this very laudable anxiety of you and your good man! No, we have no
news yet--that is quickly told, Mrs. Potter."
He kept her for a moment quailing and scared under his cruel gaze,
then went on his way, working upon the new problems she had brought
him to solve. No matter was too small for Rupert's mind, he knew how
inextricably the most minute and apparently insignificant may be
connected with the most important events of life.
The woman was singularly anxious to explain, reflected he, pausing at
his chamber door, singularly ready with her explanation--too ready.
She must have lied. No doubt she lied. Liar was written upon every
line of the terrified face of her. What was that infernal little
French husband of hers hatching now? He had been in the Smith plot, of
course. Ah, curse that smuggling fellow: he cropped up still on every
side! Pray the fates he would crop up once too often for his own
safety yet; who knew!
Meanwhile Mrs. Potter, the innocent news-gatherer, must not be allowed
to roam unwatched at her own sweet will about the place. Hark! what
clumping, creaking, steps! These could only be produced by Rene's
fairy-footed spouse: the house servants had been too well drilled by
his irritable ear to venture in such shoe leather within its range.
He closed his door, and gently walked back along the corridor.
As he passed Molly's apartment, he could hear the creaking of a
wardrobe door; and, a startling surmise springing into his brain, he
quietly slipped into an opposite room and waited, leaving the door
slightly ajar.
As he expected, a few minutes later, Moggie re-appeared loaded with a
bulky parcel, glancing anxiously right and left. She tiptoed by him;
but, after a few steps, suddenly turning her head once more, met his
eyes grimly fixed upon her through the narrow aperture. With a faint
squeal she paddled off as though a fiend were at her heels.
"Something more than anxiety for news there, Mrs. Potter," said Mr.
Landale, apostrophising the retreating figure with a malignant, inward
laugh! Then, when the last echo of her stout boots had faded away, he
entered his sister-in-law's room, looked around and meditatively began
to open various presses and drawers. "You visited this one at any
rate, my girl," thought he, as he recognised the special sound of the
hinges. "And, for a lady's maid, you have left it in singular
disorder. As for this," pulling open a linen drawer half-emptied, and
showing dainty feminine apparel, beribboned and belaced, in the most
utter disorder--"why, fie on you, Mrs. Potter! Is this the way to
treat these pretty things?"
He had seen enough. He paused a moment in the middle of the room with
his nails to his lips, smiling to himself.
"Ah, Mrs. Potter, I fancy you might have given us a little news,
yourself! Most unkind of my Lady Landale to prefer to keep us in this
unnatural anxiety--most unkind indeed! She must have singularly good
reasons for so doing.... Captain Smith, my friend, Mr. Cochrane, or
whatever may be your name, we have an account to settle. And there is
that fool of an Adrian scurrying over the seas in search of his
runaway wife! By George! my hand is not played out yet!"
Slowly he repaired to his study. There he sat down and wrote, without
any further reflection, an urgent letter to the chief officer of the
newly established Preventive Service Station. Then he rang the bell.
"One of the grooms will ride at once to Lancaster with this," he said
to the servant, looking at the missive in his hand. But instead of
delivering it he paused: a new idea had occurred. How many of these
servants might not be leagued in favour of that interloper, bribed, or
knowing him, perhaps, to have been a friend of Sir Adrian, or yet
again out of sheer spite to himself? No; he would leave no loop-hole
for treachery now.
"Send the groom to me as soon as he is ready," he continued, and when
the footman had withdrawn, enclosed the letter, with its tale-telling
superscription, in another directed to a local firm of attorneys, with
a covering note instructing them to see that the communication, on His
Majesty's Service, should reach the proper hands without delay.
When the messenger had set forth, Mr. Landale, on his side, had his
horse saddled and sallied out in the direction of Scarthey sands.
As from the top of the bluff he took a survey of the great bay, a
couple of figures crossing the strand in the distance arrested his
attention; he reined in his horse behind a clump of bushes and
watched.
"So ho! Mrs. Potter, your careful husband could not leave the island?"
muttered he, as he marked the unmistakable squat figure of the one, a
man carrying a burden upon his shoulder, whilst, enveloping the woman
who walked briskly by his side, flared the brilliant-hued shawl of
Moggie. "That lie alone would have been sufficient to arouse
suspicion. Hallo, what is the damned _crapaud_ up to?"
The question was suggested by the man's movements, as, after returning
the parcel to his consort at the beginning of the now bare causeway,
he turned tail, while she trudged forward alone.
"The Shearman's house! I thought as much. Out he comes again, and not
by himself. I have made acquaintance with those small bare legs
before. I should have been astonished indeed if none of the Shearman
fellows had been mixed up with the affair. I shall be even yet with
those creditable friends of yours, brother Adrian. So, it's you again,
Johnny, my lad; the pretty Mercury.... Can it be possible that Captain
Smith is at his old games once more?"
Mr. Landale's eyes shone with a curious eager light; he laughed a
little mirthless laugh, which was neither pleasant to hear nor to
give. "Dear me," he said aloud, as he watched the pair tramp together
towards Scarthey, "for plotters in the dark, you are particularly easy
to detect, my good friends!"
Then he checked himself, realising what a mere chance it had been,
after all--a fortuitous meeting in the passage--that had first aroused
his suspicions, and placed between his fingers the end of the thread
he now thought it so simple to follow up. But he did hold the thread,
and depended no longer upon chance or guess-work, but on his own
relentless purpose to lay the plotters by the heels, whatever their
plot might be.
In the course of an hour and a half, Johnny Shearman, whistling,
light-hearted, and alone, was nearing his native house once more, when
the sight of a horseman, rapidly advancing across the sands, brought
him to a standstill, to stare with a boy's curiosity. Presently,
however, recognising Mr. Landale--a person for whom he had more dread
than admiration--he was starting off homeward again at a brisk canter,
when a stern hail from the rider arrested him.
"Johnny!" The boy debated a moment, measured the distance between the
cottage and himself, and shrewdly recognised the advisability of
obeying. "Johnny, my boy, I want you at the Hall; take hold of my
stirrup, and come along with me."
The boy, with every symptom of reluctance, demurred, pleading a
promise to return to his mother. Then he suddenly perceived a look in
the gentleman's eye, which gave him a frantic, unreasoned desire to
bolt at once, and at any cost. But the horseman anticipated the
thought; bending in the saddle, he reached out his arm and seized the
urchin by the collar.
"Why, you little devil, what is the matter with you?" he asked,
grinning ominously into the chubby, terrified face. "It strikes me it
is time you and I should come to a little understanding. Any more
letters from the smuggler to-day, eh? Ah, would you, you young idiot!"
and Mr. Landale's fingers gave a sudden twist to the collar, which
strangled the rising yell. "Listen, Johnny," tightening his grasp
gradually until the brown face grew scarlet, then purple, and the
goggling eyes seemed to start out of their sockets; "that is what it
feels like to be hanged. They squeeze your neck so; and they leave you
dangling at the end of a rope till you are dead, dead, dead, and the
crows come and eat you. Do you want to be hanged?"
For some moments more he kept the writhing lad under the torture; then
loosening his grip, without however relinquishing his hold, allowed
him to taste once more the living air.
"Do you want to be hanged, Johnny Shearman?" he asked again gravely.
The lad burst into gasping sobs, and looked up at his captor with an
agony of fear in his bloodshot eyes. "No," continued Mr. Landale, "I
am sure you don't, eh?" with a renewed ominous contraction of the
hand. "It's a fearful thing, is hanging. And yet many a lad, hardly
older than you, has been hanged for less than you are doing.
Magistrates can get people hanged, and I am a magistrate, you know.
_Stop that noise!_"
"Now," continued the gentleman, "there are one or two little things I
want to know myself, Johnny, and it's just possible I might let you
off for this time if by chance you were able to tell them to me. So,
for your sake, I hope you may be."
He could see that the boy's mind was now completely turned with
fright.
"If you were to try to run away again I should know you had secrets to
keep from me, and then, Johnny Shearman, it would go hard with you
indeed! Now come along beside me, up to the Hall."
Quite certain of his prey, he released him, and, setting his horse to
a trot, smiled to note the desperate clutch of the lad upon his
stirrup leather, as, with the perspiration dripping from his face, and
panting breath, he struggled to keep up the pace alongside.
Marched with tremendous ceremony into the magistrate's study and
directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale
installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of
judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a
pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and
physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was
comparatively little that he had to say, and no doubt he wished most
fervently he had greater revelations to make, and could thus
propitiate the arbiter of the appalling fate he firmly believed might
lie in store for him. Meagre as his narrative was, however, it quite
sufficed for Mr. Landale.
"I think, Johnny," he said more pleasantly, well knowing the
inducement that a sudden relaxation from fear offers to a witness's
garrulity, "I think I may say you will not hang this time--that is,"
with a sudden hardening of his voice, and making a great show of
checking the answers with pen and ink in his most magisterial manner,
"that is if you have really told me _all_ you know and it be all
_true_. Now let us see, and take care. You saw no one at the peel
to-day but Renny Potter, Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Crackenshaw?"
"No, sir."
"But you heard other voices in the next room--a man's voice--whilst
you were waiting?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then Renny Potter came back and gave you a message for your brothers.
This message they made you repeat, over and over again. How did it
go?" And as Mr. Landale frowningly looked at his paper, the boy
tremblingly repeated:
"I mun tell brothers Will an' Rob, that one or t'other mun watchen the
light o' nights, to-night, to-morrow night, an' ontil woord coom
again. If light go out they mun setten forth in they ketch thot
moment, fettled op for a two-three days' sailing. If wind is contrairy
like, they mun take sweeps. This for the master's service--for Sir
Adrian's service!"--amending the phrase with a sharp reading of the
blackness of Mr. Landale's swift upward look.
"Yes," murmured the latter after a pause. "And you were to tell no one
else. You were to keep it above all from getting to my ears. Very
good, Johnny. If you have spoken the truth, you are safe."
There was a special cell, off the official study, with high windows,
bolts and bars, and a wooden bench, for the temporary housing of such
desperate criminals as might be brought to the judgment of Rupert
Landale, Esquire, J.P. There he now disposed of the young offender who
snivelled piteously once more; and having locked the door and
pocketed the key, returned to his capacious arm-chair, where, as the
twilight waned over the land, he fell to co-ordinating his scheme and
gloating upon this unexpected turn of Fortune's wheel.
* * * * *
At that hour Madeleine, alone in her chamber, knelt before her little
altar, wrestling with the rebellion of her soul and besieging the
heavens with a cry for peace.
* * * * *
Sir Adrian having failed to hear aught of the _Peregrine_ at St. Malo,
filled with harassing doubt about its fate but clutching still at
hope--as men will, even such pessimists as he--stood on the deck of
his homeward bound ship, straining his eyes in the dusk for the coast
line.
* * * * *
In the peel, the beacon had just been lighted by Rene, in whose
company, up in his secluded turret, sat Captain Jack, smoking a pipe,
but so unusually silent as to have reduced even the loquacious
Frenchman to silence too. Below them Lady Landale, torn between the
dread of a final separation from the loadstar of her existence and the
gnawing anxiety roused in her bosom by Moggie's account of Mr.
Landale's watchfulness, was pacing the long book-lined room with the
restlessness of a caged panther.
* * * * *
On the road from Lancaster to Pulwick a posse of riding officers and a
carriage full of hastily gathered preventive men were trotting on
their way to the Priory.