The next morning broke cloudless. As the day advanced the sun grew hot.
The land at noon seemed to gasp for breath. The sea lay glowing in the
light; the waves broke in slow rhythm on the sand and rocks, as if the
warmth had imposed even on the Atlantic a mood of luxurious laziness.
Una St. Clair and the Comtesse de Tourneville, attended by Hannah
Macaulay, walked shorewards from Dunseveric House. It appeared that
they were going to bathe, for they carried bundles of white sheets and
coloured garments, large bundles well wrapped together and strapped.
Hannah Macaulay had, besides, a little raft made of the flat corks which
fishermen use to mark the places where their lobster pots are sunk and
to float the tops of salmon nets. It seemed as if one of the party were
no great swimmer, and did not mean to venture into deep water without
something to which to cling.
A hundred yards from the gate were two yeomen on horseback. The Comtesse
greeted them cheerfully as she passed. The men followed the ladies along
the road.
“What are we to do?” said Una, “they mean to watch us.”
“Perhaps not,” said the Comtesse, “let us make sure.”
She motioned Una to stop, and sat down on the bank on the roadside. The
men halted and waited also. It became obvious that they intended to keep
the ladies in view.
“This is abominable,” said Una. “How dare they follow us when we are
going to bathe?”
“My dear,” said the Comtesse, laughing, “they very likely think that we
are not going to bathe. So far as I am concerned, their suspicions are
quite just. I am certainly not going to undress on a nasty rock which
would cut my feet, and then go into cold salt water to have my toes
nipped by crabs and lobsters. The worthy Hannah is not going to bathe
either. She has too much good sense. Even these stupid yeomen must guess
that we are carrying something else besides towels.”
“But I am going to bathe,” said Una, “and it is intolerable that I
should be spied upon and watched.”
The Comtesse rose and approached the men.
“Where is Captain Twinely this morning?” she asked, smiling.
“Here he is, coming along the road forninst you, Miss.”
The man spoke civilly enough. It was natural to be civil to the Comtesse
when she smiled. She had fine eyes, and was not too proud to use them in
a very delightful manner even when the man before her was no more than a
trooper in a company of yeomen.
“So he is!” she said. “And my good gentleman trooper, how nice your
manners are. I am, alas! no longer ‘Miss,’ though it pleases you to
flatter me. I am ‘Madam,’ a widow, quite an old woman.”
She left him and hurried forward to greet Captain Twinely.
“I am charmed to meet you, Captain Twinely. But why have you never
been up to call on us? We hear that you have been two whole days in our
neighbourhood and not even once have you come to see us. How rude and
unkind you are. I would not have believed it of you. But perhaps you
have been very busy chasing the odious rebels and had no time to visit
us poor ladies.”
“I didn’t think I was wanted at Dunseveric House, my lady,” said the
captain.
Like his trooper, he was aware that the Comtesse smiled at him, and that
she had beautiful eyes.
“I will not take that as an excuse,” she said. “Surely you must know,
Captain Twinely, that we are two lonely women, that my lord and my
nephew are away. You must have guessed that we should suffer, ah, so
terribly, from ‘ennui’. Is it not the first duty of an officer to
pay his respects to the ladies and to amuse them, especially in this
terrible country where it is only the military men who have any manners
at all?”
Captain Twinely was delighted and embarrassed. He wished that he had
brushed his uniform more carefully in the morning, and that he had not
been too lazy to shave. He would gladly have been looking his best now
that the eyes of this elegant lady of title and fashion were on him.
“I am at your ladyship’s service,” he murmured.
“Now that is really kind of you. Please get down from your horse. How
can I talk to you when you are so high above me?”
The captain dismounted and gave his horse to one of the troopers. The
Comtesse laid her hand on his arm and smiled at him.
“We have a little _fête_ planned for to-day,” she said. “We are going to
have a pic-nic by the sea. Will you not join us. It will be so kind of
you. My niece wishes also to bathe. But I--I am not very anxious to go
into the sea. Perhaps you and I might wait for her in some pleasant spot
and prepare the pic-nic while she and her maid go to the bathing-place.
What do you say, captain?”
“I shall be delighted,” he said, “quite delighted.”
Captain Twinely had never before been so smiled on by a pretty
woman. Never before had such fine eyes looked into his with such an
unmistakable challenge to flirtation. He was almost certain that he felt
the Comtesse’s hand press his arm slightly. He grew pink in the face
with pleasure.
“We must tell my niece.”
She leaned towards Captain Twinely and whispered in his ear. Her breath
touched his cheek. The delicate, faint scent of her clothes reached him.
A confidence, entailing the close proximity of this desirable lady, was
an unlooked-for delight.
“My dear niece is very young--a mere child, you understand me, unformed,
gauche, what you call shy. You will make excuse for her want of manner.”
The apology was necessary. In Una’s face, if he had eyes for it at all,
Captain Twinely might have seen something more than shyness. There was
an expression of loathing on the girl’s lips and in her eyes when he
stepped up to her, hat in hand.
“Una,” said the Comtesse, “the dear captain will take pity on us. He
will send one of his men back to the house to fetch a cold chicken and
some wine--and all the delightful things we are to eat and drink. Give
him a note to the butler, Una, we will go on with Captain Twinely.”
Una, puzzled, but obedient to a quick glance from her aunt, wrote
the note. The troopers, leading Captain Twinely’s horse, rode back to
Dunseveric House. The Comtesse, still leaning on the captain’s arm,
picked up her bundle of bathing clothes.
“Allow me to carry that for you,” said the captain, “allow me to carry
all the bundles.”
“Oh, but no. Have we got a cavalier with such trouble and shall we turn
him into a beast of burden, a--how do you say it?--a baggage ass? The
good Hannah will carry my bundle.’”
The good Hannah became a baggage animal, but she was not an ass. She
was, indeed, struggling with suppressed mirth. She was confirmed in her
opinion that the Comtesse possessed a subtlety not unlike that of the
serpent in Eden.
The Comtesse led the way, chatting to Captain Twinely, saying things
more charmingly provocative than any which poor Twinely had ever heard
from a woman’s lips. Her eyes flashed on him, drooped before his gaze,
sought his again with shy suggestiveness. She even succeeded, when his
glance grew very bold, in blushing. They reached the little cove where
Maurice’s boat lay.
The Comtesse sat down, and then lolled back on the short grass. Her
motions and her attitudes were the most easy and natural possible, yet
her pose was charming. There was not a fold of her skirt but fell round
her gracefully. From the challenging smile on her lips to the point of
the little shoe which peeped out beneath her petticoat, there came an
invitation to Captain Twinely--a suggestion that he, too, should sit
gracefully on the grass.
“Now, Una,” she said, “go and have your bathe, if you must do anything
so foolish. We will wait for you here, the captain will amuse me till
you return. Kiss me, child, before you go.”
Una bent over her.
“I’ll keep him,” whispered the Comtesse, “I’ll keep him, even if I have
to allow the animal to embrace me. But, dear Una, do not be very long.”
Una sped away. Hannah, heavily laden, and laughing now outright,
followed her.
“I never seen the like,” she said. “Didn’t I say to Master Neal last
night that she was an early one? Eh, Miss Una, did you no take notice of
the eyes of her? She’d wile the fishes out of the sea, or a bird off a
bush, so she would, just by looking sweet at them. It’s queer manners
they have where she comes from. I’m thinking that silly gowk of a
captain’s no the first man she’s beguiled. I was counted a braw lass
myself in me day, and one that could twine a lad round my thumb as fine
as any, but I couldna have done thon, Miss Una.”
Una gave a little shudder of disgust.
“How could she bear to? How could she touch such a man?”
“Ay, I was wondering that myself, her that’s so high falutin’ in her
ways, and no like a common lassie. Not but what thon captain’s a clever
enough cut of a man for them as thinks of nothing but a clean figure and
a good leg. He’s no that ill-looking; but, eh, there’s a glint in his
eye I wouldna trust. I pity the lassie that loves him. But there’s no
fear of thon lady falling into sic a snare. She can mine herself well,
I’m thinkin’.”
They reached the cliff above the Pigeon Cave, and Una began her downward
climb. Hannah stared at her in horror.
“Mind yourself, Miss Una. You’re never going down there, are ye? And
you expect me to break my old bones going after you, do ye? Faith and
I willna avaw, I’d rather be back rolling my eyes at the captain and
letting on to him that I wanted a kiss than go down yon cliff.”
“Come,” said Una, “it looks worse than it is. Come, Hannah, you must
come. Would you have the poor boy starve in the cave?”
The appeal was too strong to be resisted. Hannah, with much grumbling,
climbed down. Una carried the bundles one by one to the shelf of rock
from which Neal had slipped into the dark water the night before. She
took the straps from them, and unwound the sheets and bathing clothes.
Within was store of food--parcels of oatcake, baps, cold meat, butter,
cheese, a bottle of wine, a flask of whisky and water, a package of
candles. She had determined that Neal should feast royally in his
hiding-place, and that he should not sit in the dark, though he had to
sit alone. She floated the raft of corks, and very carefully loaded it
with her good things. Then, with a piece of cord, she moored it to the
rock.
“Are ye no afeard, Miss Una?” said Hannah. “Eh, but it’s well to be
young and strong, I wouldna go in there, not for all the gold and silver
and the spices that King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba. I wouldna
go in a boat, let alone swimming. Miss Una, could you no shout, and let
him come for the food himself?”
Una looked at her with a wondering reproach in her eyes.
“Am I the only one that’s to do nothing for him? Didn’t Maurice get him
free in the town of Antrim? Didn’t you chase the yeomen from him last
night? Isn’t Aunt Estelle sitting with that Captain Twinely now? And may
I not do something, too? I think mine’s the easiest thing of the four.”
“You’re a venturesome lassie, so you are. I dinna like the looks of thon
water. It’s over green for me, so it is. I can see right down to the
bottom of it, and that’s no natural in the sea, and it so deep, too. And
thon cave, Miss Una, with the smooth, red, clampy sides to it. What call
has the rocks to be red? I’m thinking when God made the rocks black,
and maybe white, it’s black and white he meant them to be and no red. I
wouldna say but what there’s something no just canny about a cave with
red sides to it higher than a man can stretch. Eh, but you’ve the chiney
white feet, Miss Una. Mind now you dinna scrab them on the wee shells.
Bide now, bide like a good lassie, till I spread the sheet for you to
tread on. You will no be for going right intil the cave? Would it no
do you to shout when you got to the mouth of it? I dinna like that cave
with the red sides till it. I’m thinking maybe there was red sides to
the cave where the witch of Endor dweft. Are you no sure that there isna
something of that kind, something no right in the gloom beyond there?”
“Neal’s in it,” said Una, “what’s to frighten me?”
“Ay, sure enough, he’s there, the poor bairn. Lord save us, and keep
us! The lassie’s intil the water, and it up ower her head, and she’s
drownded. No, but she’s up again, and she’s swimmin’ along like as if
she was a sea maiden with hair all wet. Eh, but she swims fine, and
she’s gotten hold of the wee boatie wi’ the laddie’s dinner on it. Look
at the white arms of her moving through the water, they’re like the
salmon fish slithering along when the net is pulled in. She’s bonny, so
she is. See till her now! See till her if she hasna lighted on some kind
of a rock. She’s standing up on it, and the sea no more than up to the
knees of her. The water is running off her, and she’s shaking herself
like a wee dog. She doesna mind it. She’s waving her hand to me and her
in the very mouth of thon awful cave. Mine yourself, Miss Una, take heed
now, like a good lass. Dinna go further, you’re far enough. Bide where
you are, and shout till him. Lord save us, she’s off again, and the wee
boatie in front of her. I’ve known a wheen o’ lassies in my time that
would do queer things for the lads they had their hearts set on, but
ne’er a one as venturesome as her. I’m thinking Master Neal himself
would look twice e’er he swam into thon dark hole. Eh, poor laddie, but
there’ll be light in his eyes when he sees the white glint of her coming
till him where he’s no expecting her or the like of her.”
Indeed, Una was not so brave as she seemed. Her heart beat quicker as
she struck out into the gloom of the cave. The water was colder, or
seemed colder, than it had been outside. The splashing of drops from
the roof, and the echoing noise of the sea’s wash awed her. She felt a
tightening in her throat. She swam with faster and faster strokes. The
sides of the cave loomed huge about her. The roof seemed immensely,
remotely, high. The water was dark now. It was a solemn thing to swim
through it. She began to wonder how far it was to the end of the cave.
A sudden terror seized her. Suppose, after all, that Neal was not in
the cave, suppose that she was swimming in this awful place alone. She
shouted aloud--
“Neal, Neal, Neal Ward, are you there?”
The cave echoed her cries. A thousand repetitions of the name she had
shouted came to her from above, from behind, from right, from left. The
rocks flung her words to each other, bandied them to and fro, turned
them into ridicule, turned them into thundering sounds of terror, turned
them into shrill shrieks. The frightened pigeons flew from their rocky
perches; their wings set new echoes going. Una swam forward, and,
reckless with fright now, shouted again. She heard some one rushing down
to meet her from the remote depths of the cave. The great stones rolled
and crashed under his feet with a noise like the firing of guns. Then,
amid a babel of echoes, came a shout answering her’s.
“I’m coming to you, Una.”
She felt the bottom with her feet. She stood upright. At the sound
of Neal’s voice all her fears vanished. She could see him now. He was
stumbling down over the slippery stones which the ebb tide left bare. He
reached the water and splashed in.
“Stay where you are, you must not come any further.”
“Una,” he said, “dear Una, you have come to me.”
She laughed merrily.
“Don’t think I’ve come to live with you here, Neal, like a seal or a
mermaid. No, no. I’ve brought you something to eat. Here, now, don’t
upset my little boat.” She pushed the raft towards him. “Isn’t it just
like the boats we used to make long ago when we were little? Oh! do you
remember how angry the salmon men were when you and Maurice stole all
the corks off their net? But I can’t stay talking here, I’m getting
cold, and you, Neal, go back to dry land. What’s the use of standing
there up to your knees in water? There’s no sun in here to dry your
clothes afterwards. No, you must not come to me, I won’t have it. You’d
get wet up to your neck. Keep quiet, now. I’ve something to say to you.
Maurice has gone to Glasgow to see that funny Captain Getty, who made
you both so angry the day we took your uncle from the brig. He is
arranging for the brig to lie off here and pick you up. Maurice and I
will take you out in the boat. We will come in to the mouth of the cave
and shout to you unless it’s rough. If it’s rough, Neal, you must swim
out and hide somewhere among the rocks. But I hope it will stay calm.
Maurice may be back to-morrow or next day. I’ve given you enough to eat
for two days. I may not be able to come to-morrow.”
“Do come again, Una, it’s very lonely here.”
“I will if I can, Neal. Good-bye. Keep a good heart. Good-bye. Oh, but
it’s hard to be leaving you in this dark place, but I think it’s safe,
and the country is full of yeomen. Good-bye, Neal. God bless you.”
When Una and Hannah reached the little cove again, they found luncheon
spread out on the grass ready for them. The troopers who had brought
the baskets from Dunseveric House sat on their horses at the end of the
rough track which led to the strand. The Comtesse reclined on a cloak
spread for her on the grass. Captain Twinely, a worshipper with bold
eyes and stupid tongue, sat at her feet and gazed at her. He had ceased
even to wonder at his own good fortune in captivating so fair a lady. He
had forgotten all about the angular daughter of a neighbouring squire,
who was waiting for him to marry her. He was hopelessly, helplessly,
fascinated by the woman in front of him. Estelle de Tourneville had
never made an easier conquest. And she was already exceedingly weary of
the flirtation. The man bored her because he was dull. He disgusted her
because he was amorous.
“Oh, Una,” she cried, “how quick you’ve been! It hardly seems a moment
since you left. Captain Twinely and I have had such a delightful talk. I
was telling him about the Jacobins in Paris, and how they wanted to cut
my head off in the Terror. My dear, your hair is all wet. You look just
like a seal with your sleek head and your brown eyes. Just fancy, Una,
Captain Twinely thought that we were in sympathy with the rebels here.
He had actually told his men to watch us in case we should try to help
some horrid _sans-culotte_ who is hiding somewhere. Just think of his
suspecting me--me, of all people.”
She cast a glance at Captain Twinely. Her eyes were full of half serious
reproach, of laughter and enticement.
“I’m very hungry after my swim,” said Una, “let us have our lunch.”
Captain Twinely, awkward but anxious to please, was on his feet in
an instant. He waited on the ladies, waited even on Hannah, whom he
supposed to be Una’s maid. He did not notice that Una shrank from him.
He probably would not have cared even if he had seen that she avoided
touching his hand as she might have avoided some loathsome reptile. His
thoughts and his eyes were all for the Comtesse. She did not shrink from
him. Her wonderful eyes thrilled him again and again. He touched her
hand, her hair, her clothes, as he handed her this or that to eat
or drink. He grew hot and cold in turns with the excitement of her
nearness. He was ecstatically, ridiculously happy.
He walked back to Dunseveric House with her. He promised to call on her
the next day. He promised to leave troopers on guard round the house all
night in case a fugitive rebel, wandering in the demesne, might frighten
the Comtesse. He suggested another pic-nic. At last, reluctantly,
lingeringly, he bade her farewell.
“Adieu, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said the Comtesse, “we shall expect you
to-morrow then.”
She stretched out her hand to him. He stooped and kissed it. Then she
turned from him and ran up the avenue after Una and Hannah. The captain
watched her. He pulled himself together, reassumed his habitual swagger,
tried to persuade himself that he looked on the Comtesse as he had long
been accustomed to look on other women.
“A damned fine woman,” he said, “and a bit smitten with me. Begad, these
French women have a great deal to recommend them. Thy catch fire at
once. A man does not have to spend a month dilly-dallying with them,
dancing attendance and looking like a fool while they are as cold as ice
all the time. Give me a good full-blooded filly like this one.”
“Una,” said the Comtesse, when she overtook her niece. “Una, I
positively can’t stand another day of that man. He’s odious. You’ll
have to do him yourself to-morrow, and let me go to the young man in the
cave.”
“But, Aunt Estelle, I thought you--you liked it. You looked as if you
liked it.”
“_Mon dieu!_” said the Comtesse, laughing, “of course I looked as if I
liked it. If I had looked as if I disliked it I could not have kept
him for ten minutes, and then what would have happened to you,
mademoiselle?”
“It was very, very good of you,” said Una, penitently. “I can never
thank you enough.”
“Oh, it wasn’t so very good of me, and I don’t want to be thanked at
all. I’ll tell you a secret, Una, and Hannah shall hear it too. I did
like it. Now, what do you think?”
“You would, my lady,” said Hannah. “I know that finely, I’d have liked
it myself when I was young and frisky like you.”
“What would you have liked, Hannah?” asked the Comtesse.
“Eh! just what you liked yourself, my lady; just seeing a man making
himself a bigger fool nor the Lord meant him to be for the sake of my
bonny face. I’m thinking you’re the same as another for a’ you’re a
countess and have a braw foreign name. You just like what I’d have
liked, and what all women ever I heard tell on liked in their hearts,
though maybe they wouldna own up till it, from thon wench, that might
have been a gran’ lady, too, for a’ I ken, who made the great silly gaby
of a Samson lie still while she clipped the seven locks off of his head.
She liked fine to see him sleeping there like the tap he was for all the
strongness of him.”
“You are right, Hannah, you are right. Oh, Una dear, if you could have
seen him--but you wouldn’t understand. What’s the good of telling you?
Hannah, if you’d seen him sitting there like a great woolly sheep, with
the silliest expression in his eyes; if you’d seen him putting out his
hand to touch me, pretending he did it by accident, and then pulling it
away again like one of those snails that crawl about in the sandhills
when you touch his horns with the end of a blade of grass. If you’d seen
him. Oh, I wish you’d seen him!”
“Faith, I seen plenty.”
“You did not, Hannah; you didn’t see half. He was far, far better before
you came back.”
She burst into a peal of half hysterical laughter. She may have enjoyed
the captain’s company, but he had evidently tried her nerves.
“But, Una dear,” she said, when she grew calm again, “I hope Maurice
will come soon, or that American ship, or something. I won’t be able to
go on very long.”
“There’s been an easterly breeze since noon,” said Una, “and there’s a
haze out at sea.”
“Do talk sense, Una. Here I’ve been sacrificing myself for you all day,
and when I ask you for a little sympathy you talk to me about an east
wind.”
“But the east wind will bring the brig, aunt. How could she get here
from Glasgow without the wind?”