The pit-like dark, th’ impassioned prayers and saintly
For souls abroad, the life-boat barely inned,
The desperate sirens laboring far and faintly
To pierce the wall of wind.
Salvières was at its very best when its owners arrived there with
their little nephew--for even midsummer heat is on the Normandy coast
entirely bearable--and more so. Like Plenhöel, it stands on a lofty
cliff fronting a magnificent sea view. The Castle dates back to the
early days of the Duchy, and is built in two, and in some parts in
three, stories of singularly massive blocks of granite, with
cloisters above and below--that is, on the side facing the open
country and the Vallée de Salvières, which alone deserves quite a
separate description, so unique and beautiful it is.
Of course it is quite needless to add that the Castle and its
dependencies are of the purest and most ancient Gothic architecture.
The _Salle des Chevaliers_ is a marvelous place at the upper end of
which an equestrian silver statue of the illustrious Knight Jehan de
Salvières, first of the name, gleams in the prismatic lights of a
huge _vitraille_, whose sunset tints of rich orange, vivid scarlet,
lucent blue, and emerald green surround it with a glory of blinding
color. The walls of the _enceinte_ crown the whole promontory
and inclose the immensity of château, chapel, towers, keep,
_Cour-d’Honneur_, armory, and _place-d’armes_--not to mention an
inner garden of such extent that its measurements would only court
contradiction from those who have not seen it--which, to say the
least, is a misfortune not to be atoned for by loudly proclaimed
skepticism. At any rate, Salvières would be one of the most
remarkable show-places of France and Navarre, more so than even
St.-Michel, Josselin, Chenonceax, or Chambord, _Le Château de la
Reine Jeanne_, Couci, or Arthèze de Foix, were it not for the fact
that neither Jean nor Tatiana, since their reign there, had cared to
have a flock of Cook’s tourists clattering over its beautiful
floors, or measuring its art treasures by the length of their
umbrellas with guttural yelps of amazement and wonder--when not
exclamations of incredulity, and sometimes worse than incredulity,
where religious pictures or objects of faith are concerned.
When at Palitzinovna the Salvières certainly kept great state, but
when at Salvières they once more entered into the grandeur and
splendor that belonged to this ancestral home, and that through the
centuries had never yielded one iota to modernism except in what
concerned creature comforts. There was an army of servants in
attendance, a battalion of _gardes-chasses_ and _gardes-forèstiers_,
an almoner, a seneschal, a squad of halberdiers in antique costume.
The stables contained no less than two hundred horses at all times,
and the private harbor, in a small bay at the foot of the huge
promontory, floated a steam-yacht, several yawls, and a regular fleet
of other craft flying the ducal pennant. The village of Salvières,
strange to state, has never once showed signs of accepting as a fact
the republican form of government under which France labors. More
stubborn than Bretons even--and that is saying the uttermost one
can--the canny Normans, who according to the most ancient history can
never be tricked into expressing an opinion, nodded their
cotton-capped heads when addressed on that subject. “It might well
be.” “Perchance it was so.” “Who could tell?” “Ah! was that it?” So
far they would concede; but, as they guilelessly added, they of
Salvières knew none but their Duke (Jean might have been Sovereign
Duke of Normandy, to hear them), “their own Duke,” whose father and
grandfather and great-great-great-great-grandfather had also been
their suzerain back to times immemorial; so what did it matter
whether in that blackguard Paris (_cette gueuse de Paris_) there sat
in non-majesty a frock-coated man wearing--on state occasions--a
broad scarlet cordon across his shirt-front and, mayhap, a pair of
white spats on his plebeian feet? “They of Salvières” had naught to
do with him, which, as they gave one to understand, was a mercy of
the good God. The thriftiness of the Normans is as proverbial as
their obstinacy and craft. Had the Republic’s President prevented
them from selling their fish, their eggs, their butter or apples to
the best advantage, he might have been worth considering, but the Duc
de Salvières was their liege-lord, a splendidly generous one at
that, and so they were satisfied that all was well now and hereafter,
which praiseworthy feelings were entirely pleasing to themselves and
to him also.
Of course, Tatiana, ever since her advent there as a bride, had
made herself idolized--not so easy a task in the land of the
apple-orchards, for the people there do not wear their hearts as a
sleeve-ornament. Her frank, boyish ways interwoven with crystal-pure
high breeding, her complete fearlessness at sea and ashore, her
prowess on horseback (they are mighty horse-breeders in Normandy)
filled them with admiration; and the then mayor of the neighboring
little town--who invariably pulled off his tasseled _bonnet-de-coton_
when she met him in the exercise of his functions and apologized
for wearing a tri-colored scarf about his vast middle--had once
been heard to remark: “That Duchess isn’t a foreigner, nor a
stranger--not a bit--no, she is a thoroughbred _Normande_, born
farther north than we are, that’s all!” This, for a wonder,
perfectly straight and outspoken exposé of feeling, had won general
and popular approval. Tatiana was accepted as a _Normande_ from
farther north, _V’là tout!_ And so it had remained ever since.
Piotr, delighted to be back on the sea edge, was daily clamoring for
his “little darling Malou”; and one fine evening Salvières, who had
spent a few days at Plenhöel to confer with Régis about that
idiotic elopement of Laurence, came home with him and the “Gamin.”
Piotr’s explosions of joy at finding her again were so exuberant as
to very nearly exhaust even Tatiana’s long-suffering stock of
patience with him. In her heart she was thinking: “It is not a
child’s enthusiasm; it is a real, _bona-fide_ passion. What a pity
Basil is not and never will be free!”
Marguerite was still wholly unchanged. “A smiling moonglade,”
Salvières once paraphrased, gazing at her as she stood with her arm
about Piotr’s neck on the wide balcony of the _Salle des
Chevaliers_, watching the stars appear one by one in the ultramarine
sky above the rocking waters of the Channel. Slim and extraordinarily
girlish in her white frock, she made a lovely silhouette against the
blue infinite, and her clear laugh at some remark of the little
boy’s held no rift of disappointment or sadness. That she had
suffered, and suffered deeply, was no longer a secret to Salvières
or Tatiana, and scarcely so even to Régis the optimist, but no
allusion from any of them had ever disturbed her quietude and
admirable self-control. It goes without saying that she had not been
told about Laurence’s escapades. The death of Captain Moray had
been discreetly announced as due to an accident, the separation of
Basil from his wife as a mere temporary convenience, since
Laurence’s dislike of long travels had prevented her from
accompanying her husband to Mongolia; but when Piotr arrived with his
aunt and uncle at Salvières, her good sense had told her that there
must be something that was purposely being kept from her. Indeed, the
little chap had at once explained to her that “mamma” had left Tverna
all of a sudden without “papa,” and that “papa”--but this she at
first did not believe--had gone away afterward, “very angry and
frowning awfully, without kissing him, Piotr.” But when challenged by
that precocious infant to ask the faithful Garrassime if this was not
the exact truth, she had forborne to do so, warned by something in
the old man’s attitude that he would not speak to her about the
matter, and by her own feelings that it was better for her, in any
case, to remain in ignorance of the real state of affairs.
All this grew to be extremely unreassuring, but the “Gamin’s”
courage was not of a common order. As a matter of fact it might,
without the least exaggeration, have been called Spartan, for her
smile was never shadowy, her bearing never languid, and soon she was
the very soul of the old castle by the sea, as she had always been
that of Plenhöel.
So did the days at Salvières slip like bright beads from a
many-colored necklace; one by one, diversified by excursions, rides,
drives to the old abbeys and shrines with which that province of
France is dotted, picnics in the forest or on the caverned shore,
sails on the amusingly choppy water, and chases after elusive
crawfish by lantern-light up the course of the cool little river that
flows across the immense estate. Piotr seemed to have lost his
regrettable propensity for sudden fits of fury, and was the happiest
little creature on earth. Jean and Tatiana, cheered by Régis’s
unfailing good-temper and rose-colored way of looking at
things--especially as they felt certain that Basil had so far heard
nothing of the latest developments--breathed more easily.
“The calm before the storm,” Garrassime, whom nothing escaped, said
to himself. He had no confidence in the future, but he wisely kept
his own counsel.
At the beginning of September a succession of squalls ended by a
regular gale of the type which churns the Channel into amazing
emotions. The North Sea and the Atlantic, hereditary enemies as they
are, never miss an occasion to dash at each other’s throats on what
they evidently consider a stretch of neutral water; and when this
warring at close range begins, both coasts had best draw in their
horns, for there is certain to occur what the Bretons and Normans
call graphically “_de la casse_.”
* * * * *
Several wrecks had been reported, and the life-saving station at
Salvières, lavishly endowed and equipped by Jean--for there are long
stretches of bare shore on either side of the Castle where no
government _bâteau de sauvetage_ is housed--was, so to speak, day
and night on the alert. On the fourth day of the gale (and according
to the weather-wise there, if a gale lasts thrice over twenty-four
hours, it is a bad business) the entire household was awakened about
four in the morning by the appalling noise of a storm such as even in
that region is something of a rarity. Mountainous waves escaladed the
cliff, slavering with rage at their incapacity to scale them
entirely; the wind raised so hoarse a voice that one could not hear
oneself talk, even in a closed room with walls all of nine feet
thick; and the air outside was so dense with spume and flying
spindrift that the night had grown old without the faintest hint of
dawn.
Assembled in the _Salle des Chevaliers_, the family and a number of
servants awaited God only knew what! There was an impression of
disaster in the all-embracing clangor which none could overlook or
disregard, used as they all were to similar manifestations, and as
the bell for matins faintly pierced the uproar, all filed laboriously
along the cloisters into the chapel where the Abbé de Kerdren, the
Duke’s cousin and chaplain, was kneeling on the altar steps.
He rose as they entered and faced round toward them, his hands still
clasped and his finely modeled features looking white and drawn in
the yellow light of the blessed candles--a tall and martial figure,
whose vestments took upon him the look of knightly coat-armor, for he
had begun life as a naval officer, and had only entered holy orders
after the death of his bride of two months, killed in a hunting
accident.
“_Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae_,” he began, raising his voice, for
here too the roar of sea and wind was deafening.
Jean and Marguerite, kneeling side by side on the purple cushions of
the last step--Tatiana and Régis with Piotr between them were close
to the draped rail--could scarcely hear the prayer, and as she
whispered it on her moonstone beads she suddenly thought of one line
in a ballad that she loved and often sang:
Father, save those at sea to-night.
_Miserere Domine!_
Was it profane to have thought of that just now? Strenuously she
tried to force herself out of that train of thought, but the words of
matins, of the morning prayer, oddly eluded her, and instead she
found herself repeating mechanically the “_recommendation_” for a
departing soul:
“Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison
Sancta-Maria, Ora pro eo....”
What ailed her, she wondered, and hastily she implored:
“Pax huic domini
Et omnibus habitantibus in ea--”
giving the response in the same breath as the “_supplication_” in her
sudden and unaccountable distress.
Sheets of rain were sluicing against the painted windows of the
little church--rain that, caught up by the frantic wind, slanted
before it and struck almost horizontally at the glass. Again without
very explainable reasons Marguerite shivered and went on praying
fervently until the blast paused, as if to take breath. And then
there happened during that sinister lull one of those phenomena that
landsmen so seldom see, for a storm-light--snatched from the sun
rising somewhere out of view beyond the cloud-roof that still closed
down the darkness upon the world--smote the great rose-window behind
the high altar with a dull orange jet of flame that for an instant
seemed to set it on fire. It sank, flared up once more for the beat
of a heart, fell, and was replaced by a flashing zigzag of intensely
brilliant green, seen and lost in the same breath while it bisected
the gold-and-white _fleur-de-lysèd_ glass of the upper window.
Marguerite felt she must be dreaming, but at her side she saw
Salvières rise quickly to his feet, and she imitated him. The abbé
was just pronouncing the last _Amen_, and with his face turned toward
the altar he had also seen, for after a rapid genuflection he joined
the others.
“A wreck somewhere!” he brusquely stated, as he almost ran down the
side-steps, his hand at the fastening of his surplice, his sea-blue
eyes wide with the passion of his first profession--a sailor from
head to foot--in a cassock!
It did not take them long to wrap themselves in oilskins and don
sou’westers: Salvières, Régis, and the abbé. The great alarm-bell
of the Castle, already sounding tocsin-wise, succeeded in
overtoning the tempest by dismal fits and starts. Marguerite ran
along the cloisters, snatched up a hooded coat, and, followed
breathlessly by Garrassime (who had left Piotr in the Duchess’s
care), made at full speed for the _chemin de ronde_ outside the
chancel. The men of the house were no longer in sight, and as soon as
she turned the corner to the cliff-path she caught the full force of
the wind and tried to battle against it; but at first she could not
succeed, and was forced to fall back under the lee of a buttress.
By then Garrassime had caught up with her. “Don’t go, Illustrious;
don’t!” he tried to shout, but a gust swooped down his throat and
he stood gasping beside her, wiping the rain from his eyes.
The wind was whooping louder, whirling in waves of swiftness and
sound now close to the ground, now high up aloft--a regular typhoon
of a storm--and it was dark as pitch, too, for even the ghastly
storm-light had disappeared, swallowed by the tempest. Twice
Marguerite attempted to peer around the angle of the buttress, her
hand shielding her eyes, and twice she was flung back; but something
impelled her forward again, some premonition she could not
understand; and all at once in the chaos beyond, as, clutching the
rough granite, she was bending half across its sharp edge, she saw a
tear in the blackness, a stripe of pulsating red--to the east of
north--a flash of blinding green, and then a tossing ball of
whiteness that might be a masthead light.
A wreck? Yes, a wreck, and what could live in such a sea? If there
was a sinking boat out there in the darkness, with men clinging
desperately to the rigging, they had best not pray for human
help--that she knew--and she sent a glance heavenward where no heaven
was to be seen. A dreadful fear for her paladin of a father, for Jean
de Salvières, for the sailor-abbé whom she revered and loved with
all her heart, shot through her to add to her wretchedness. She was
aware that, peril or no peril, they would not hesitate a second to do
much more than their duty: and at last, detaching herself from the
protection of the huge wall, she battled on, half creeping, leaning
against the gusts, fighting every inch of the way to the cliff edge.
Down the sheer face of the rock to the narrow beach of pebbles below,
where in half an hour the breakers would be thundering, ran an iron
cable--a short cut on ordinary occasions for sailors and coastguards;
but just now a mere vibrating thread stretched downward to the Pit.
She had stumbled many times and fallen twice, for the path was
slippery as ice, and as her hand came in contact with the stanchion
she paused to listen; Garrassime at her shoulder, braced and rigid
like a tree, holding her with both arms for fear she would be carried
over the ghastly brink.
Another rocket, then another, and another. A little sob choked
Marguerite, straining her eyes in the slowly, slowly dragging dawn
that now was beginning to make the gloom more visible. She was at
home in storms--a child of the tempest, Régis often said--and for
herself she was not caring; but when gradually she began to discern
away down there on the foam-flecked shingle two darker masses,
evidently the life-boats and a throng of men fighting forward to the
launching, all possible difficulty was wiped out of her mind, and,
tearing herself free from Garrassime, she started forward.
“Mother of God!” roared the Russian, his gray hair fairly bristling
on his head. “You are not going to try that!” But Marguerite, holding
to the cable-head, was peering downward for the first of the unequal
footholds cut in the rock, and his voice was lost in those of wind
and sea. Under her long coat she wore a woolen gown made in a single
piece, a handy garment she had hastily put on when she had been
roused by the storm, so, merely kicking off her little sodden
slippers, and before he could more effectually interpose himself, she
was over and already descending, her face to the cliff, her back to
the unseen void. Garrassime was a strong man, but no sailor; besides,
he was so tall and heavy that to follow her would mean sure
destruction for both of them; but he suddenly remembered a fissure
that slanted down the cliff-side some two hundred yards further on,
and, praying with all his might that she might be spared, he ran for
it--bent nearly double beneath the terrible weight of the wind, his
heart beating with anguish against his ribs--anguish for her whom he
had learned to worship, the dear, sweet, daring, foolhardy little
lady of Plenhöel.
Through wildly tossing clouds the eastern sky was now showing faintly
gray, and the “Gamin” began to see the notches that she touched one
after another with her silk-shod feet. She must be half-way now, and,
sparing her breath, clinging hard, flattening her little body to the
dripping crag, she doggedly continued to crawl down, hearing dully
the clang of the tocsin far, far above her head.
“Ah,” she suddenly cried, aloud, “I am in the water! The tide must be
coming fast!”
She let go the cable from her torn and bleeding palms, turned around,
leaning against the base of the rock, and searched the maddened
sea--white as a _tourmente_ of snow. No! there was no sign of a ship
on the tossing froth, save two black spots appearing and disappearing
convulsively in the spouting water--the life-boats she knew--but
whether they were coming shoreward or going out toward some invisible
point she could not tell. Determined to see better, she climbed half
a dozen of the wet steps again and gazed fixedly seaward. At last
something flecked with white and red, she thought, caught her eye; it
was rolling in and out among the breakers, and behind it there were
other objects lugubriously bobbing up and down. She jumped, and ran
plungingly toward the thing nearest to the beach, finally wading
thigh-deep in the broken back-wash of the flooding tide; snatched
desperately at the queer bundle, and dragged it ashore, pulling it up
after her with all her strength. Gasping for breath, she stopped at
the shingle-top, and before investigating what she held she set her
teeth. A white serge skirt, two narrow stockinged feet, a torrent of
drenched hair! She turned it over, trembling violently, and, falling
on her knees, saw the beautiful features--unspoiled, unscarred even,
and strangely sculptural--of Laurence Palitzin. On her breast,
embroidered across the white jersey, the words _Wild Rose_--the name
of her yacht--made Marguerite cry out with a new horror. For a moment
she crouched there, seeking mechanically for the heart, the wrist, of
this first victim recovered; but she could find no sign of life; and,
tears running down her face mingling with the rain and brine, she
asked herself how she could at least save the body before the
galloping flood claimed it again. Of herself she had no time to
think, and at that minute, clambering out of the fissure, Garrassime
stumbled toward her with reckless haste. Before she had either heard
or seen him he was at her side, had caught up the body of his lost
mistress--which a life-belt still encircled in futile mockery--and,
drawing Marguerite by the hand, was hastening to the higher beach
near the life-station’s weed-grown stairs.
Just then, riding a tremendous wave, the first life-boat--the one
that bore Tatiana’s name--toppled half-over as it took the shore,
and Marguerite vaguely saw her father and her uncle Jean leap into
the whirling water, and receive from the abbé’s arms another limp
and apparently lifeless body that somehow seemed all dislocated; but
by this time the girl was past all emotion and listlessly looked on
as they plunged forward with their burden.
It was as full daylight by now as it would be that morning, and the
dimness that fell from the sky and rose from the sea showed with
astonishing precision the helpless form in soaked white flannels, the
head thrown back and rolling horribly from side to side. Who it was
she did not care. She watched the grim procession of _sauveteurs_
carrying more bodies, saw the other life-boat rush up almost atop of
its companion, and the abbé turn again to the swirling tide to see
if yet more derelicts were floating up with it. Then she found
herself, somehow or other, in the round room of the “Station,”
staring at something upon an already dripping truckle-bed, and Régis
and Jean bending over a placid white face with closed, dark-fringed
lids, and a relaxed mouth into which some one was attempting to pour
brandy.
It was all so much like a nightmare that once or twice Marguerite
shook herself as if to waken her palsied faculties. Surely she had
seen that face before. Where? When? Ah! at Lady Seton’s in the
Meurice apartment a night some few centuries ago....
Malgré les brisants--et l’orage
Il atteint la côte....
Had she not sung that herself?
Pauvre P’tit Gas!
Pauvre P’tit Gas!
She roused with a shiver. “Preston Wynne!” she muttered, her teeth
chattering. “What is he doing here?”
The Salvières doctor, who had been there all the time, it appeared,
had taken possession of Preston Wynne, and Garrassime was pulling her
gently away. He was not dead then? “_Pauvre P’tit Gas!_”
The others, for whom there was no hope, were being piled like
cord-wood in the other room of the “Station,” where the life-savers
on duty watched all night; but she passed this new horror with scarce
a glance--quite passive now, leaning a little against Garrassime as
he led her away; while Régis and Jean, the doctor and the abbé,
tirelessly pursued their energetic ministrations.
At last a faint tinge of color began to underly the lividity of
Preston’s face, his eyelids moved ever so slightly; in a short
while he feebly tried to resist the ordeal of resuscitation he was
passing through--the agonies of rebirth--under those skilled fingers.
Then the young doctor, sweat dripping from his forehead, paused in
his exhausting work just long enough to murmur, hoarsely: “He will
live, I think, but I fear he is badly hurt.”
They did not question him--standing ready to help when the medical
man should take up his task again. Salvières was watching intently
the spasmodic changes of expression upon Preston’s drawn white
features.
“A little more brandy, please,” the doctor said; and the abbé held
out the flask and raised the patient’s head with deft precaution.
This time he swallowed a few drops voluntarily, it seemed, and the
doctor, bending his ear to the blue lips until it almost touched
them, heard the words, “Is it you?”
“Who do you want?” he asked, slowly and very distinctly; but
Preston’s mouth closed tight with a queer, distressed droop.
All at once his eyes opened and he fell to staring at the heavy oaken
beams crisscrossing the ceiling. Presently they closed again, and he
fell to whispering softly in that brainless self-absorption that
characterizes the sayings of unconsciousness:
“I’ll catch you--jump! A fool-- Yes! God--I’ve not lived
according to the Pure Food Law lately. Laurence, where are you? Get
busy ... there’s no time!”
The four men around the bed glanced at one another. To two of them,
Régis and Salvières, who had known Preston in other days, this
persistent and purely mechanical survival of originality in speech
verged on the sinister, and they turned about with a simultaneous
motion. They felt like running away.
The abbé had knelt down by the bed and was whispering something that
the others could not hear, so they drew back farther yet.
“You say he will live?” Salvières asked of the young doctor.
“Yes--that is, I think so, Monsieur le Duc,” was the guarded answer.
“But I am almost certain that there is some grave injury to the
spine; the lower part of the body seems--inert.”
“Struck on a rock or on a bit of wreckage, you think?”
“Very likely. But one can’t tell yet without a more thorough
examination. Where did you find him, Monsieur le Marquis?” the young
medico asked of Régis.
“Caught him on the rebound, as it were,” the latter replied, “from
the heart of a wave. I saw an arm dark against the foam by the light
of our lanterns, and grabbed at it. It was not so difficult, though
the force of the pull nearly wrenched my own arm out of its socket.”
The doctor nodded. “I dare not move him until I can find out what is
really the matter. He must be kept here for the present.”
He was interrupted by the opening of the door. On the sill stood the
captain of the life-savers, one rough hand to the dripping brim of
his sou’wester.
“_Pardon, Monsieur le Duc_,” he said, “another live un with a broken
arm brought ashore. He is here outside. He says he’s the first mate
of the _Wild Rose_.”
“Ah,” muttered Salvières, “perhaps now we can hear how all this came
to pass.” And with a quick caution to Régis he hurried into the
passage.
The man standing outside the door, one arm hanging limply at his
side, was white under his tan and glistening with wet. He was a
handsome chap above the middle height, with a trim blond beard cut to
a point in naval style, clear gray eyes, and--even in this crisis--a
rather proud way of carrying his head.
Salvières looked sharply at him. The horrors of that terrible summer
night, the long swim ashore, and the pain of his hurt had left their
mark quite unmistakably on the second-in-command of the big
steam-yacht that had just foundered; but this did not affect the
impassiveness so well in keeping with the square jaw and firm lips of
the man.
“When the doctor has set your arm I wish to have a talk with you,”
Salvières said. “Sit down. I’ll fetch you some brandy”; and he
pointed to the stone bench running along the wall.
“Sit down”; he repeated, but there was no answer. Through the thick
panes of one of the round windows, the mate was staring across the
lashed waters at the foot of the promontory whereon the “Station”
stood, his square chin thrust forward, his resolute lips compressed.
“Keeping the Penvan light east-southeast, and having the South Bay
Rock west by north, we should have found the gullet even in such
weather,” he said, slowly, without looking again at Salvières.
“Yes,” the latter assented. “Who was master?” He had sent a message
to the doctor to come as soon as he could, and now stood motionless
beside the sailor.
“Captain Braines--an Englishman, who had never made a mistake in
seamanship--stainless record.” The tone was monotonous but
convincing.
“Yes,” Salvières said again, “but don’t speak now; wait till you
feel better.” And he handed him the tumbler the captain of the
life-station had just brought.
“I can answer your questions now, sir.”
“Better not till a bit later. Ah, here’s the doctor”; and, pulling
off his coat, Salvières prepared to assist him.
An hour after, as Salvières and his cousin were stepping upon the
Castle esplanade, a footman--fighting the wind, his powdered head
bent to the blast and much the worse for wear--met them at a run,
clutching a telegram tightly in his fist.
“What now!” grumbled Salvières, taking refuge in a mullioned doorway
and tearing the envelope open with his damp fingers.
Am coming to you at once. Received infamous news in Shanghai from my
agent. Send wireless as soon as feasible P.O.S.S. _Mondoria_, giving
latest facts and destination of _Wild Rose_ in cipher. Make all
possible inquiries meanwhile.
Basil.
Salvières stared for a full minute at the paper trembling in his
hand, and then passed it silently to Régis.
His sou’wester pushed back, his blond mustache falling on both
sides of his mouth _à la Vercingetorix_, the Marquis de Plenhöel
said nothing at all, very emphatically.
“Right you are!” assented Salvières, just as if he had spoken.
“Come, we have work to do.” As, indeed, they had, and, following the
line of least resistance, they finally found themselves engulfed by a
side entrance.
In the central hall they were met by Tatiana and Marguerite. Both
were very pale and very collected, and their voices were perfectly
calm. Piotr, they explained, was asleep, with Garrassime on watch.
“The--Laurence”--here Tatiana faltered a little--“has been placed in
a _chapelle-ardente_. She--she is very beautiful; the sea has been
merciful.” And now her heroes--she dwelt tenderly upon that
word--must change into dry clothes and eat something warm and
comforting. She glanced anxiously at her husband, then at Régis, and
felt, with her marvelous instinct, that there was some new and
startling development; but this wise woman asked no questions, and
was satisfied to busy herself with what she specified as “first aid
to the deserving.” They needed it by this time, of that there could
be no doubt, and it was only when completely revived and limbered up
by hot bath and cold shower, and steaming coffee with a gracious
accompaniment of more substantial viands, followed by a refreshing
smoke, that they felt quite equal to assembling the necessarily
narrow _conseil-de-famille_ that should decide upon immediate steps.
Naturally Marguerite was excluded, for the questions under discussion
were not of the sort one can bring to maidenly ears, but the Abbé de
Kerdren was called in, and those four--Tatiana, Jean, Régis, and the
sailor-priest--sat down before a glorious driftwood-fire in the
library to attain some conclusion.
Basil was coming back as fast as steam could bring him, his brain
afire with wrath and humiliation, determined beyond a doubt to punish
the guilty betrayed to him by his faithful and indiscreet agent. The
guilty? Tatiana thought of the still, white form in the chapel--that
sculptured beauty on the silver brocades of her last couch, between
the tall candlesticks burning their pale-yellow flames amid sheaves
of snowy flowers. The abbé, Régis, and Jean remembered the quietly
delirious man in his strange sick-room at the foot of the cliffs,
awaiting unknowingly the verdict of the great physicians telegraphed
for to Paris--and there was a silence pregnant with pain and
wretchedness. Ah, surely the punishment had already been dealt by
stronger hands than Basil’s!
Up-stairs little Piotr, ignorant of what new complications Fate
was weaving around his baby existence, was playing now with
Garrassime--Garrassime moving as in a dream, his honest heart
well-nigh broken by so many repeated blows.
Salvières explained that during the second interview he had just had
with the _Wild Rose’s_ first mate in the Castle infirmary, he had
discovered that after a cruise in the Mediterranean, among the Ionian
Islands, and back to Gibraltar, Princess Laurence had crossed the
straits to Tangier, where she had hired a Moorish house inclosed by
an impenetrable rampart of cactus, and set upon the flank of a
fortress-like hillock beyond the Sôk, and outside the city gates,
beyond the spot where the East and the West rub shoulders. The _Wild
Rose_ lay at anchor on the still bosom of the bay, at the least
conspicuous moorings that could be found--this by the special command
of the Princess. Every evening Captain Braines or the first mate went
up to the house for orders, more often than once walking out of town
by the Mazàn and the dusky lanes shadowed by sweeping cedars and
hedged by prickly-pear. The mate had a natural picturesqueness of
expression which Salvières faithfully reproduced as he retold the
tale. To hear him it was difficult to realize that Laurence’s
hiding-place was but a few short miles away from Europe as the
swallow flies across that sunlit strait. The house, it seemed, had
been luxurious. The Princess, served by her own confidential servants
brought with her on the yacht, had never left its seclusion, but
spent her time in the queer, fragrant old garden, with its
ever-splashing fountains and irregular bosquets of palms and
flowering trees, where roses and camellias made a blaze of color in
the day, and the big Oriental moon cast its triumphant glamour at
night. There she had lain in a hammock, apparently wasting her beauty
upon the almost awesome solitude of the place, until one evening when
the captain, walking up the path of crushed shells between the high
thickets, had seen a man rise hastily and disappear behind a clump of
ilexes. The bluff Englishman had told the mate of this incident on
coming aboard, in shocked and very strong language, but, contrary to
expectation, the days had passed without further developments. Two
weeks later, however, the Princess had bidden the captain be ready to
take to sea again, and twenty-four hours afterward the _Wild Rose_
had steamed out of Tangier, bound for the Azores, carrying, besides
its former contingent, a very good-looking young man, who was, so it
was said, her Serene-Highness’s newly engaged secretary, an
Englishman; by name Preston Harrington.
Throughout the trip the Princess, who had evidently taken a sudden
turn toward literature, had been closeted in her own suite with “Mr.
Harrington” for many hours a day, dictating, doubtless, the novel to
which she freely referred when talking to the captain, whom she daily
honored with a visit on the bridge. It was to be--she claimed--the
work of her life, a great-lady way of avoiding _ennui_ in this weary,
weary existence of plenitude.
It had leaked out, however, as such things are over-apt to do, that
the Azores were but a pretext, a port of call on the way to the
States; that “Mr. Harrington” was in reality an American, and that
his post of secretary had not been adopted for the sake of obtaining
a remunerative position, since his pockets were royally filled, as
was testified by the munificence of his tips to every man-jack of the
crew and engine-room. He had made himself well liked, too, and had
gained the brevet title of a “real gentleman” among them. Also he was
a splendid sailor, visibly used to a pleasing existence on a yacht of
extreme luxuriousness.
Once or twice the mate himself had heard voices raised to the pitch
of anger in the saloon, when keeping his midnight watch on deck, and
had greatly wondered, but reported nothing of what he had discovered.
Once, as a matter of fact, he had unwillingly caught a sentence of
the Princess: “I will not go with you to America! We must find some
other place!” And the answer in “Harrington’s” lower tones: “I
don’t care where we go. _You_ must decide. You know very well that
now I am utterly in your hands.”
A short sojourn at the Azores, spent mostly on the yacht, and then
orders to steam back again to Europe. Célèste, her Highness’s
French maid, had chatted about Norway to one of the quartermasters
who was a Norwegian, and had let fall that her mistress, already
sickened of sub-tropical landscapes, would spend the end of the
summer in the Fjords. There was no longer peace on board, however.
Laurence scowled savagely during meal-times, as was asserted by the
head steward and his under-strappers. “Mr. Harrington” looked grim
and worried by turns, and the admirably trained, carefully selected
crew gossiped between themselves, just as if they had been the most
ordinary passenger-steamer lot; only their faces remained
aristocratically wooden, and their tongues reduced to pianissimo
expressions.
On nearing Europe the _Wild Rose_ had encountered dirty weather of
the midsummer kind, the most trying for seafarers to bear, and the
Princess had signified to her captain that her next point of
destination would be Trondhjem. Then suddenly he had been summoned to
her “study” and had received orders not to go by way of the English
Channel.
Greatly surprised, Captain Braines had respectfully pointed out to
her that any other route would be a roundabout one, if Norway was
really her Highness’s destination; but evidently apprehensive of
meeting other yachts in those much-traveled waters, she had objected
with her usual stubbornness, and only by protesting the lateness of
the season had the captain finally succeeded in gaining his point.
Beaten by contrary winds, the _Wild Rose_ had entered the Channel,
and had attempted to seek shelter from the final tempest in some
French port. Fog-banks of impenetrable thickness and terrible
cross-seas had been her portion, and then--the end! The first mate
confessed that the unreasonableness of the Princess, her
incomprehensible behavior in the teeth of imminent peril, had
unmanned the crew and shaken even the captain himself, though “Mr.
Harrington’s” cool courage and resourcefulness in a desperate
situation might have still saved her had she but listened to him. The
rest of the recital was mere maritime detail--a welter of raging
waters, the gnashing teeth of breakers--and of no present interest,
so Salvières leaned back in his chair and took the cigarette his
wife silently handed to him.
And what could they all do now? That was the grievous point. What
would be the dictum of the “Princes of Science” summoned to
Salvières? How conceal the true identity of Preston Wynne, granted
that the Ducal doctor was correct in his fears of permanent
disablement? There was Basil, too, to reckon with. Perhaps he would
hear or read of the disaster to the _Wild Rose_ before reaching
France, whither he was journeying, knowing that the de Salvières
were in Normandy. They looked sadly at one another, these people who
a few short months before had all been so happy.
The afternoon was far advanced, and the weather had sensibly
moderated, when the carriage departed to fetch the medical men from
the nearest railway station. They were coming on a special train, for
no time was to be lost in mercy to Preston, who, still wandering in
his mind, was in charge of two nursing sisters on the narrow
truckle-bed that the life-savers used, turn and turn about, to snatch
a wink or so of sleep during their nights on duty.
Marguerite had devoted herself to the amusement of Piotr; a difficult
Piotr to-day, rendered peevish by his disturbed night’s rest,
impossible to please, restive as the unbroken colt he was. At last
she came down, very pale in her white dinner-dress, and a trifle
ghostly as she glided along the inner gallery to the glassed-in
terrace where all were waiting. “Moonglade?” yes, but a very faint
presentment of her usual “crystal and silver” self, to quote Tatiana.
Her father, who had been pacing restlessly up and down between the
two arched, creeper-garlanded entrances of this sublimized
conservatory, went forward and threw his arm about her shoulders. He
said nothing, but suddenly bent his tall form and kissed her above
the eyebrow, his eyes full of pity as he noticed the small hands,
gloved to the elbow, so as to hide the thin bandages beneath. She had
been cruelly torn by that rusty cable in sliding down the cliff, and
he was far from reassured.
Everybody spoke to her that night, and for days to follow, in a
tender, careful manner, as though afraid to touch upon too sensitive
a point, of hurting her in some way; and it was in an almost
hesitating tone that Tatiana asked her just then whether she felt
able to take her place for an hour or so, later on, while she herself
went down with the doctors, Jean, the abbé, and Régis, to be
present at their examination of the wounded man.
“Why, of course, ‘Aunt’ Tatiana!” she replied, smiling nearly as
usual. “I’ll be only too glad to be of use.”
Tatiana glanced curiously at her. “Of use? What was the ‘Gamin’
ever else but useful to all those she loved, and to many others
besides?”