CHAPTER II. ROSAMUND
CHAPTER III. THE FORGE
CHAPTER IV. THE INTERVENER
CHAPTER V. THE BUCKLER
CHAPTER VI. JASPER LEIGH
CHAPTER VII. TREPANNED
CHAPTER VIII. THE SPANIARD
Part II. SAKR-EL-BAHR
CHAPTER I. THE CAPTIVE
CHAPTER II. THE RENEGADE
CHAPTER III. HOMEWARD BOUND
CHAPTER IV. THE RAID
CHAPTER V. THE LION OF THE FAITH
CHAPTER VI. THE CONVERT
CHAPTER VII. MARZAK-BEN-ASAD
CHAPTER VIII. MOTHER AND SON
CHAPTER IX. COMPETITORS
CHAPTER X. THE SLAVE-MARKET
CHAPTER XI. THE TRUTH
CHAPTER XII. THE SUBTLETY OF FENZILEH
CHAPTER XIII. IN THE SIGHT OF ALLAH
CHAPTER XIV. THE SIGN
CHAPTER XV. THE VOYAGE
CHAPTER XVI. THE PANNIER
CHAPTER XVII. THE DUPE
CHAPTER XVIII. SHEIK MAT
CHAPTER XIX. THE MUTINEERS
CHAPTER XX. THE MESSENGER
CHAPTER XXI. MORITURUS
CHAPTER XXII. THE SURRENDER
CHAPTER XXIII. THE HEATHEN CREED
CHAPTER XXIV. THE JUDGES
CHAPTER XXV. THE ADVOCATE
CHAPTER XXVI. THE JUDGMENT
NOTE
Lord Henry Goade, who had, as we shall see, some personal acquaintance
with Sir Oliver Tressilian, tells us quite bluntly that he was
ill-favoured. But then his lordship is addicted to harsh judgments and
his perceptions are not always normal. He says, for instance, of Anne
of Cleves, that she was the “ugliest woman that ever I saw.” As far as
we can glean from his own voluminous writings it would seem to be
extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we
suspect him here of being no more than a slavish echo of the common
voice, which attributed Cromwell’s downfall to the ugliness of this
bride he procured for his Bluebeard master. To the common voice from
the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and
shows us a lady who is certainly very far from deserving his lordship’s
harsh stricture. Similarly, I like to believe that Lord Henry was wrong
in his pronouncement upon Sir Oliver, and I am encouraged in this
belief by the pen-portrait which he himself appends to it. “He was,” he
says, “a tall, powerful fellow of a good shape, if we except that his
arms were too long and that his feet and hands were of an uncomely
bigness. In face he was swarthy, with black hair and a black forked
beard; his nose was big and very high in the bridge, and his eyes sunk
deep under beetling eyebrows were very pale-coloured and very cruel and
sinister. He had—and this I have ever remarked to be the sign of great
virility in a man—a big, deep, rough voice, better suited to, and no
doubt oftener employed in, quarter-deck oaths and foulnesses than the
worship of his Maker.”
Thus my Lord Henry Goade, and you observe how he permits his lingering
disapproval of the man to intrude upon his description of him. The
truth is that—as there is ample testimony in his prolific writings—his
lordship was something of a misanthropist. It was, in fact, his
misanthropy which drove him, as it has driven many another, to
authorship. He takes up the pen, not so much that he may carry out his
professed object of writing a chronicle of his own time, but to the end
that he may vent the bitterness engendered in him by his fall from
favour. As a consequence he has little that is good to say of anyone,
and rarely mentions one of his contemporaries but to tap the sources of
a picturesque invective. After all, it is possible to make excuses for
him. He was at once a man of thought and a man of action—a combination
as rare as it is usually deplorable. The man of action in him might
have gone far had he not been ruined at the outset by the man of
thought. A magnificent seaman, he might have become Lord High Admiral
of England but for a certain proneness to intrigue. Fortunately for
him—since head where nature had placed it—he came betimes under a cloud
of suspicion. His career suffered a check; but it was necessary to
afford him some compensation since, after all, the suspicions could not
be substantiated.
Consequently he was removed from his command and appointed by the
Queen’s Grace her Lieutenant of Cornwall, a position in which it was
judged that he could do little mischief. There, soured by this
blighting of his ambitions, and living a life of comparative seclusion,
he turned, as so many other men similarly placed have turned, to seek
consolation in his pen. He wrote his singularly crabbed, narrow and
superficial _History of Lord Henry Goade:_ his own Times—which is a
miracle of injuvenations, distortions, misrepresentations, and
eccentric spelling. In the eighteen enormous folio volumes, which he
filled with his minute and gothic characters, he gives his own version
of the story of what he terms his downfall, and, having,
notwithstanding his prolixity, exhausted this subject in the first five
of the eighteen tomes, he proceeds to deal with so much of the history
of his own day as came immediately under his notice in his Cornish
retirement.
For the purposes of English history his chronicles are entirely
negligible, which is the reason why they have been allowed to remain
unpublished and in oblivion. But to the student who attempts to follow
the history of that extraordinary man, Sir Oliver Tressilian, they are
entirely invaluable. And, since I have made this history my present
task, it is fitting that I should here at the outset acknowledge my
extreme indebtedness to those chronicles. Without them, indeed, it were
impossible to reconstruct the life of that Cornish gentleman who became
a renegade and a Barbary Corsair and might have become Basha of
Algiers—or Argire, as his lordship terms it—but for certain matters
which are to be set forth.
Lord Henry wrote with knowledge and authority, and the tale he has to
tell is very complete and full of precious detail. He was, himself, an
eyewitness of much that happened; he pursued a personal acquaintance
with many of those who were connected with Sir Oliver’s affairs that he
might amplify his chronicles, and he considered no scrap of gossip that
was to be gleaned along the countryside too trivial to be recorded. I
suspect him also of having received no little assistance from Jasper
Leigh in the matter of those events that happened out of England, which
seem to me to constitute by far the most interesting portion of his
narrative.
R. S.
PART I.
SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN
CHAPTER I.
THE HUCKSTER
Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the
handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his
father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention
of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a
century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani.
This house of such a startlingly singular and Italianate grace for so
remote a corner of Cornwall deserves, together with the story of its
construction, a word in passing.
The Italian Bagnolo who combined with his salient artistic talents a
quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a brawl
in a Southwark tavern. As a result he fled the town, nor paused in his
headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until he
had all but reached the very ends of England. Under what circumstances
he became acquainted with Tressilian the elder I do not know. But
certain it is that the meeting was a very timely one for both of them.
To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilian—who appears to have been inveterately
partial to the company of rascals of all denominations—afforded
shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the
decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow. Having taken the task in hand
he went about it with all the enthusiasm of your true artist, and
achieved for his protector a residence that was a marvel of grace in
that crude age and outlandish district. There arose under the
supervision of the gifted engineer, worthy associate of Messer
Torrigiani, a noble two-storied mansion of mellow red brick, flooded
with light and sunshine by the enormously tall mullioned windows that
rose almost from base to summit of each pilastered facade. The main
doorway was set in a projecting wing and was overhung by a massive
balcony, the whole surmounted by a pillared pediment of extraordinary
grace, now partly clad in a green mantle of creepers. Above the burnt
red tiles of the roof soared massive twisted chimneys in lofty majesty.
But the glory of Penarrow—that is, of the new Penarrow begotten of the
fertile brain of Bagnolo—was the garden fashioned out of the tangled
wilderness about the old house that had crowned the heights above
Penarrow point. To the labours of Bagnolo, Time and Nature had added
their own. Bagnolo had cut those handsome esplanades, had built those
noble balustrades bordering the three terraces with their fine
connecting flights of steps; himself he had planned the fountain, and
with his own hands had carved the granite faun presiding over it and
the dozen other statues of nymphs and sylvan gods in a marble that
gleamed in white brilliance amid the dusky green. But Time and Nature
had smoothed the lawns to a velvet surface, had thickened the handsome
boxwood hedges, and thrust up those black spear-like poplars that
completed the very Italianate appearance of that Cornish demesne.
Sir Oliver took his ease in his dining-room considering all this as it
was displayed before him in the mellowing September sunshine, and found
it all very good to see, and life very good to live. Now no man has
ever been known so to find life without some immediate cause, other
than that of his environment, for his optimism. Sir Oliver had several
causes. The first of these—although it was one which he may have been
far from suspecting—was his equipment of youth, wealth, and good
digestion; the second was that he had achieved honour and renown both
upon the Spanish Main and in the late harrying of the Invincible
Armada—or, more aptly perhaps might it be said, in the harrying of the
late Invincible Armada—and that he had received in that the
twenty-fifth year of his life the honour of knighthood from the Virgin
Queen; the third and last contributor to his pleasant mood—and I have
reserved it for the end as I account this to be the proper place for
the most important factor—was Dan Cupid who for once seemed compounded
entirely of benignity and who had so contrived matters that Sir
Oliver’s wooing Of Mistress Rosamund Godolphin ran an entirely smooth
and happy course.
So, then, Sir Oliver sat at his ease in his tall, carved chair, his
doublet untrussed, his long legs stretched before him, a pensive smile
about the firm lips that as yet were darkened by no more than a small
black line of moustachios. (Lord Henry’s portrait of him was drawn at a
much later period.) It was noon, and our gentleman had just dined, as
the platters, the broken meats and the half-empty flagon on the board
beside him testified. He pulled thoughtfully at a long pipe—for he had
acquired this newly imported habit of tobacco-drinking—and dreamed of
his mistress, and was properly and gallantly grateful that fortune had
used him so handsomely as to enable him to toss a title and some
measure of renown into his Rosamund’s lap.
By nature Sir Oliver was a shrewd fellow (“cunning as twenty devils,”
is my Lord Henry’s phrase) and he was also a man of some not
inconsiderable learning. Yet neither his natural wit nor his acquired
endowments appear to have taught him that of all the gods that rule the
destinies of mankind there is none more ironic and malicious than that
same Dan Cupid in whose honour, as it were, he was now burning the
incense of that pipe of his. The ancients knew that innocent-seeming
boy for a cruel, impish knave, and they mistrusted him. Sir Oliver
either did not know or did not heed that sound piece of ancient wisdom.
It was to be borne in upon him by grim experience, and even as his
light pensive eyes smiled upon the sunshine that flooded the terrace
beyond the long mullioned window, a shadow fell athwart it which he
little dreamed to be symbolic of the shadow that was even falling
across the sunshine of his life.
After that shadow came the substance—tall and gay of raiment under a
broad black Spanish hat decked with blood-red plumes. Swinging a long
beribboned cane the figure passed the windows, stalking deliberately as
Fate.
The smile perished on Sir Oliver’s lips. His swarthy face grew
thoughtful, his black brows contracted until no more than a single deep
furrow stood between them. Then slowly the smile came forth again, but
no longer that erstwhile gentle pensive smile. It was transformed into
a smile of resolve and determination, a smile that tightened his lips
even as his brows relaxed, and invested his brooding eyes with a gleam
that was mocking, crafty and almost wicked.
Came Nicholas his servant to announce Master Peter Godolphin, and close
upon the lackey’s heels came Master Godolphin himself, leaning upon his
beribboned cane and carrying his broad Spanish hat. He was a tall,
slender gentleman, with a shaven, handsome countenance, stamped with an
air of haughtiness; like Sir Oliver, he had a high-bridged, intrepid
nose, and in age he was the younger by some two or three years. He wore
his auburn hair rather longer than was the mode just then, but in his
apparel there was no more foppishness than is tolerable in a gentleman
of his years.
Sir Oliver rose and bowed from his great height in welcome. But a wave
of tobacco-smoke took his graceful visitor in the throat and set him
coughing and grimacing.
“I see,” he choked, “that ye have acquired that filthy habit.”
“I have known filthier,” said Sir Oliver composedly.
“I nothing doubt it,” rejoined Master Godolphin, thus early giving
indications of his humour and the object of his visit.
Sir Oliver checked an answer that must have helped his visitor to his
ends, which was no part of the knight’s intent.
“Therefore,” said he ironically, “I hope you will be patient with my
shortcomings. Nick, a chair for Master Godolphin and another cup. I bid
you welcome to Penarrow.”
A sneer flickered over the younger man’s white face. “You pay me a
compliment, sir, which I fear me ’tis not mine to return to you.”
“Time enough for that when I come to seek it,” said Sir Oliver, with
easy, if assumed, good humour.
“When you come to seek it?”
“The hospitality of your house,” Sir Oliver explained.
“It is on that very matter I am come to talk with you.”
“Will you sit?” Sir Oliver invited him, and spread a hand towards the
chair which Nicholas had set. In the same gesture he waved the servant
away.
Master Godolphin ignored the invitation. “You were,” he said, “at
Godolphin Court but yesterday, I hear.” He paused, and as Sir Oliver
offered no denial, he added stiffly: “I am come, sir, to inform you
that the honour of your visits is one we shall be happy to forgo.”
In the effort he made to preserve his self-control before so direct an
affront Sir Oliver paled a little under his tan.
“You will understand, Peter,” he replied slowly, “that you have said
too much unless you add something more.” He paused, considering his
visitor a moment. “I do not know whether Rosamund has told you that
yesterday she did me the honour to consent to become my wife....”
“She is a child that does not know her mind,” broke in the other.
“Do you know of any good reason why she should come to change it?”
asked Sir Oliver, with a slight air of challenge.
Master Godolphin sat down, crossed his legs and placed his hat on his
knee.
“I know a dozen,” he answered. “But I need not urge them. Sufficient
should it be to remind you that Rosamund is but seventeen and that she
is under my guardianship and that of Sir John Killigrew. Neither Sir
John nor I can sanction this betrothal.”
“Good lack!” broke out Sir Oliver. “Who asks your sanction or Sir
John’s? By God’s grace your sister will grow to be a woman soon and
mistress of herself. I am in no desperate haste to get me wed, and by
nature—as you may be observing—I am a wondrous patient man. I’ll even
wait,” And he pulled at his pipe.
“Waiting cannot avail you in this, Sir Oliver. ’Tis best you should
understand. We are resolved, Sir John and I.”
“Are you so? God’s light. Send Sir John to me to tell me of his
resolves and I’ll tell him something of mine. Tell him from me, Master
Godolphin, that if he will trouble to come as far as Penarrow I’ll do
by him what the hangman should have done long since. I’ll crop his
pimpish ears for him, by this hand!”
“Meanwhile,” said Master Godolphin whettingly, “will you not essay your
rover’s prowess upon me?”
“You?” quoth Sir Oliver, and looked him over with good-humoured
contempt. “I’m no butcher of fledgelings, my lad. Besides, you are your
sister’s brother, and ’tis no aim of mine to increase the obstacles
already in my path.” Then his tone changed. He leaned across the table.
“Come, now, Peter. What is at the root of all this matter? Can we not
compose such differences as you conceive exist? Out with them. ’Tis no
matter for Sir John. He’s a curmudgeon who signifies not a finger’s
snap. But you, ’tis different. You are her brother. Out with your
plaints, then. Let us be frank and friendly.”
“Friendly?” The other sneered again. “Our fathers set us an example in
that.”
“Does it matter what our fathers did? More shame to them if, being
neighbours, they could not be friends. Shall we follow so deplorable an
example?”
“You’ll not impute that the fault lay with my father,” cried the other,
with a show of ready anger.
“I impute nothing, lad. I cry shame upon them both.”
“’Swounds!” swore Master Peter. “Do you malign the dead?”
“If I do, I malign them both. But I do not. I no more than condemn a
fault that both must acknowledge could they return to life.”
“Then, Sir, confine your condemnings to your own father with whom no
man of honour could have lived at peace....”
“Softly, softly, good Sir....”
“There’s no call to go softly. Ralph Tressilian was a dishonour, a
scandal to the countryside. Not a hamlet between here and Truro, or
between here and Helston, but swarms with big Tressilian noses like
your own, in memory of your debauched parent.”
Sir Oliver’s eyes grew narrower: he smiled. “I wonder how you came by
your own nose?” he wondered.
Master Godolphin got to his feet in a passion, and his chair crashed
over behind him. “Sir,” he blazed, “you insult my mother’s memory!”
Sir Oliver laughed. “I make a little free with it, perhaps, in return
for your pleasantries on the score of my father.”
Master Godolphin pondered him in speechless anger, then swayed by his
passion he leaned across the board, raised his long cane and struck Sir
Oliver sharply on the shoulder.
That done, he strode off magnificently towards the door. Half-way
thither he paused.
“I shall expect your friends and the length of your sword,” said he.
Sir Oliver laughed again. “I don’t think I shall trouble to send them,”
said he.
Master Godolphin wheeled, fully to face him again. “How? You will take
a blow?”
Sir Oliver shrugged. “None saw it given,” said he.
“But I shall publish it abroad that I have caned you.”
“You’ll publish yourself a liar if you do; for none will believe you.”
Then he changed his tone yet again. “Come, Peter, we are behaving
unworthily. As for the blow, I confess that I deserved it. A man’s
mother is more sacred than his father. So we may cry quits on that
score. Can we not cry quits on all else? What can it profit us to
perpetuate a foolish quarrel that sprang up between our fathers?”
“There is more than that between us,” answered Master Godolphin. “I’ll
not have my sister wed a pirate.”
“A pirate? God’s light! I am glad there’s none to hear you for since
her grace has knighted me for my doings upon the seas, your words go
very near to treason. Surely, lad, what the Queen approves, Master
Peter Godolphin may approve and even your mentor Sir John Killigrew.
You’ve been listening to him. ’Twas he sent you hither.”
“I am no man’s lackey,” answered the other hotly, resenting the
imputation—and resenting it the more because of the truth in it.
“To call me a pirate is to say a foolish thing. Hawkins with whom I
sailed has also received the accolade, and who dubs us pirates insults
the Queen herself. Apart from that, which, as you see, is a very empty
charge, what else have you against me? I am, I hope, as good as any
other here in Cornwall; Rosamund honours me with her affection and I am
rich and shall be richer still ere the wedding bells are heard.”
“Rich with the fruit of thieving upon the seas, rich with the treasures
of scuttled ships and the price of slaves captured in Africa and sold
to the plantations, rich as the vampire is glutted—with the blood of
dead men.”
“Does Sir John say that?” asked Sir Oliver, in a soft deadly voice.
“I say it.”
“I heard you; but I am asking where you learnt that pretty lesson. Is
Sir John your preceptor? He is, he is. No need to tell me. I’ll deal
with him. Meanwhile let me disclose to you the pure and disinterested
source of Sir John’s rancour. You shall see what an upright and honest
gentleman is Sir John, who was your father’s friend and has been your
guardian.”
“I’ll not listen to what you say of him.”
“Nay, but you shall, in return for having made me listen to what he
says of me. Sir John desires to obtain a licence to build at the mouth
of the Fal. He hopes to see a town spring up above the haven there
under the shadow of his own Manor of Arwenack. He represents himself as
nobly disinterested and all concerned for the prosperity of the
country, and he neglects to mention that the land is his own and that
it is his own prosperity and that of his family which he is concerned
to foster. We met in London by a fortunate chance whilst Sir John was
about this business at the Court. Now it happens that I, too, have
interests in Truro and Penryn; but, unlike Sir John, I am honest in the
matter, and proclaim it. If any growth should take place about Smithick
it follows from its more advantageous situation that Truro and Penryn
must suffer, and that suits me as little as the other matter would suit
Sir John. I told him so, for I can be blunt, and I told the Queen in
the form of a counter-petition to Sir John’s.” He shrugged. “The moment
was propitious to me. I was one of the seamen who had helped to conquer
the unconquerable Armada of King Philip. I was therefore not to be
denied, and Sir John was sent home as empty-handed as he went to Court.
D’ye marvel that he hates me? Knowing him for what he is, d’ye marvel
that he dubs me pirate and worse? ’Tis natural enough so to
misrepresent my doings upon the sea, since it is those doings have
afforded me the power to hurt his profit. He has chosen the weapons of
calumny for this combat, but those weapons are not mine, as I shall
show him this very day. If you do not credit what I say, come with me
and be present at the little talk I hope to have with that curmudgeon.”
“You forget,” said Master Godolphin, “that I, too, have interests in
the neighbourhood of Smithick, and that you are hurting those.”
“Soho!” crowed Sir Oliver. “Now at last the sun of truth peeps forth
from all this cloud of righteous indignation at my bad Tressilian blood
and pirate’s ways! You, too, are but a trafficker. Now see what a fool
I am to have believed you sincere, and to have stood here in talk with
you as with an honest man.” His voice swelled and his lip curled in a
contempt that struck the other like a blow. “I swear I had not wasted
breath with you had I known you for so mean and pitiful a fellow.”
“These words....” began Master Godolphin, drawing himself up very
stiffly.
“Are a deal less than your deserts,” cut in the other, and he raised
his voice to call—“Nick.”
“You shall answer to them,” snapped his visitor.
“I am answering now,” was the stern answer. “To come here and prate to
me of my dead father’s dissoluteness and of an ancient quarrel between
him and yours, to bleat of my trumped-up course of piracy and my own
ways of life as a just cause why I may not wed your sister whilst the
real consideration in your mind, the real spur to your hostility is not
more than the matter of some few paltry pounds a year that I hinder you
from pocketing. A God’s name get you gone.”
Nick entered at that moment.
“You shall hear from me again, Sir Oliver,” said the other, white with
anger. “You shall account to me for these words.”
“I do not fight with... with hucksters,” flashed Sir Oliver.
“D’ye dare call me that?”
“Indeed, ’tis to discredit an honourable class, I confess it. Nick, the
door for Master Godolphin.”
CHAPTER II.
ROSAMUND
Anon, after his visitor had departed, Sir Oliver grew calm again. Then
being able in his calm to consider his position, he became angry anew
at the very thought of the rage in which he had been, a rage which had
so mastered him that he had erected additional obstacles to the already
considerable ones that stood between Rosamund and himself. In full
blast, his anger swung round and took Sir John Killigrew for its
objective. He would settle with him at once. He would so, by Heaven’s
light!
He bellowed for Nick and his boots.
“Where is Master Lionel? he asked when the boots had been fetched.
“He be just ridden in, Sir Oliver.”
“Bid him hither.”
Promptly, in answer to that summons, came Sir Oliver’s half-brother—a
slender lad favouring his mother the dissolute Ralph Tressilian’s
second wife. He was as unlike Sir Oliver in body as in soul. He was
comely in a very gentle, almost womanish way; his complexion was fair
and delicate, his hair golden, and his eyes of a deep blue. He had a
very charming stripling grace—for he was but in his twenty-first
year—and he dressed with all the care of a Court-gallant.
“Has that whelp Godolphin been to visit you?” he asked as he entered.
“Aye,” growled Sir Oliver. “He came to tell me some things and to hear
some others in return.”
“Ha. I passed him just beyond the gates, and he was deaf to my
greeting. ’Tis a most cursed insufferable pup.”
“Art a judge of men, Lal.” Sir Oliver stood up booted. “I am for
Arwenack to exchange a compliment or two with Sir John.”
His tight-pressed lips and resolute air supplemented his words so well
that Lionel clutched his arm.
“You’re not... you’re not...?”
“I am.” And affectionately, as if to soothe the lad’s obvious alarm, he
patted his brother’s shoulder. “Sir John,” he explained, “talks too
much. ’Tis a fault that wants correcting. I go to teach him the virtue
of silence.”
“There will be trouble, Oliver.”
“So there will—for him. If a man must be saying of me that I am a
pirate, a slave-dealer, a murderer, and Heaven knows what else, he must
be ready for the consequences. But you are late, Lal. Where have you
been?”
“I rode as far as Malpas.”
“As far as Malpas?” Sir Oliver’s eyes narrowed, as was the trick with
him. “I hear it whispered what magnet draws you thither,” he said. “Be
wary, boy. You go too much to Malpas.”
“How?” quoth Lionel a trifle coldly.
“I mean that you are your father’s son. Remember it, and strive not to
follow in his ways lest they bring you to his own end. I have just been
reminded of these predilections of his by good Master Peter. Go not
over often to Malpas, I say. No more.” But the arm which he flung about
his younger brother’s shoulders and the warmth of his embrace made
resentment of his warning quite impossible.
When he was gone, Lionel sat him down to dine, with Nick to wait on
him. He ate but little, and never addressed the old servant in the
course of that brief repast. He was very pensive. In thought he
followed his brother on that avenging visit of his to Arwenack.
Killigrew was no babe, but man of his hands, a soldier and a seaman. If
any harm should come to Oliver...He trembled at the thought; and then
almost despite him his mind ran on to calculate the consequences to
himself. His fortune would be in a very different case, he refected. In
a sort of horror, he sought to put so detestable a reflection from his
mind; but it returned insistently. It would not be denied. It forced
him to a consideration of his own circumstances.
All that he had he owed to his brother’s bounty. That dissolute father
of theirs had died as such men commonly die, leaving behind him heavily
encumbered estates and many debts; the very house of Penarrow was
mortgaged, and the moneys raised on it had been drunk, or gambled, or
spent on one or another of Ralph Tressilian’s many lights o’ love. Then
Oliver had sold some little property near Helston, inherited from his
mother; he had sunk the money into a venture upon the Spanish Main. He
had fitted out and manned a ship, and had sailed with Hawkins upon one
of those ventures, which Sir John Killigrew was perfectly entitled to
account pirate raids. He had returned with enough plunder in specie and
gems to disencumber the Tressilian patrimony. He had sailed again and
returned still wealthier. And meanwhile, Lionel had remained at home
taking his ease. He loved his ease. His nature was inherently indolent,
and he had the wasteful extravagant tastes that usually go with
indolence. He was not born to toil and struggle, and none had sought to
correct the shortcomings of his character in that respect. Sometimes he
wondered what the future might hold for him should Oliver come to
marry. He feared his life might not be as easy as it was at present.
But he did not seriously fear. It was not in his nature—it never is in
the natures of such men—to give any excess of consideration to the
future. When his thoughts did turn to it in momentary uneasiness, he
would abruptly dismiss them with the reflection that when all was said
Oliver loved him, and Oliver would never fail to provide adequately for
all his wants.
In this undoubtedly he was fully justified. Oliver was more parent than
brother to him. When their father had been brought home to die from the
wound dealt him by an outraged husband—and a shocking spectacle that
sinner’s death had been with its hasty terrified repentance—he had
entrusted Lionel to his elder brother’s care. At the time Oliver was
seventeen and Lionel twelve. But Oliver had seemed by so many years
older than his age, that the twice-widowed Ralph Tressilian had come to
depend upon this steady, resolute, and masterful child of his first
marriage. It was into his ear that the dying man had poured the
wretched tale of his repentance for the life he had lived and the state
in which he was leaving his affairs with such scant provision for his
sons. For Oliver he had no fear. It was as if with the prescience that
comes to men in his pass he had perceived that Oliver was of those who
must prevail, a man born to make the world his oyster. His anxieties
were all for Lionel, whom he also judged with that same penetrating
insight vouchsafed a man in his last hours. Hence his piteous
recommendation of him to Oliver, and Oliver’s ready promise to be
father, mother, and brother to the youngster.
All this was in Lionel’s mind as he sat musing there, and again he
struggled with that hideous insistent thought that if things should go
ill with his brother at Arwenack, there would be great profit to
himself; that these things he now enjoyed upon another’s bounty he
would then enjoy in his own right. A devil seemed to mock him with the
whispered sneer that were Oliver to die his own grief would not be
long-lived. Then in revolt against that voice of an egoism so loathsome
that in his better moments it inspired even himself with horror, he
bethought him of Oliver’s unvarying, unwavering affection; he pondered
all the loving care and kindness that through these years past Oliver
had ever showered upon him; and he cursed the rottenness of a mind that
could even admit such thoughts as those which he had been entertaining.
So wrought upon was he by the welter of his emotions, by that fierce
strife between his conscience and his egotism, that he came abruptly to
his feet, a cry upon his lips.
“Vade retro, Sathanas!”
Old Nicholas, looking up abruptly, saw the lad’s face, waxen, his brow
bedewed with sweat.
“Master Lionel! Master Lionel!” he cried, his small bright eyes
concernedly scanning his young master’s face. “What be amiss?”
Lionel mopped his brow. “Sir Oliver has gone to Arwenack upon a
punitive business,” said he.
“An’ what be that, zur?” quoth Nicholas.
“He has gone to punish Sir John for having maligned him.”
A grin spread upon the weather-beaten countenance of Nicholas.
“Be that so? Marry, ’twere time. Sir John he be over long i’ th’
tongue.”
Lionel stood amazed at the man’s easy confidence and supreme assurance
of how his master must acquit himself.
“You... you have no fear, Nicholas....” He did not add of what. But the
servant understood, and his grin grew broader still.
“Fear? Lackaday! I bain’t afeeard for Sir Oliver, and doan’t ee be
afeeard. Sir Oliver’ll be home to sup with a sharp-set appetite—’tis
the only difference fighting ever made to he.”
The servant was justified of his confidence by the events, though
through a slight error of judgment Sir Oliver did not quite accomplish
all that promised and intended. In anger, and when he deemed that he
had been affronted, he was—as his chronicler never wearies of
insisting, and as you shall judge before the end of this tale is
reached—of a tigerish ruthlessness. He rode to Arwenack fully resolved
to kill his calumniator. Nothing less would satisfy him. Arrived at
that fine embattled castle of the Killigrews which commanded the
entrance to the estuary of the Fal, and from whose crenels the country
might be surveyed as far as the Lizard, fifteen miles away, he found
Peter Godolphin there before him; and because of Peter’s presence Sir
Oliver was more deliberate and formal in his accusation of Sir John
than he had intended. He desired, in accusing Sir John, also to clear
himself in the eyes of Rosamund’s brother, to make the latter realize
how entirely odious were the calumnies which Sir John had permitted
himself, and how basely prompted.
Sir John, however, came halfway to meet the quarrel. His rancour
against the Pirate of Penarrow—as he had come to dub Sir
Oliver—rendered him almost as eager to engage as was his visitor.
They found a secluded corner of the deer-park for their business, and
there Sir John—a slim, sallow gentleman of some thirty years of
age—made an onslaught with sword and dagger upon Sir Oliver, full
worthy of the onslaught he had made earlier with his tongue. But his
impetuosity availed him less than nothing. Sir Oliver was come there
with a certain purpose, and it was his way that he never failed to
carry through a thing to which he set his hand.
In three minutes it was all over and Sir Oliver was carefully wiping
his blade, whilst Sir John lay coughing upon the turf tended by
white-faced Peter Godolphin and a scared groom who had been bidden
thither to make up the necessary tale of witnesses.
Sir Oliver sheathed his weapons and resumed his coat, then came to
stand over his fallen foe, considering him critically.
“I think I have silenced him for a little time only,” he said. “And I
confess that I intended to do better. I hope, however, that the lesson
will suffice and that he will lie no more—at least concerning me.”
“Do you mock a fallen man?” was Master Godolphin’s angry protest.
“God forbid!” said Sir Oliver soberly. “There is no mockery in my
heart. There is, believe me, nothing but regret—regret that I should
not have done the thing more thoroughly. I will send assistance from
the house as I go. Give you good day, Master Peter.”
From Arwenack he rode round by Penryn on his homeward way. But he did
not go straight home. He paused at the Gates of Godolphin Court, which
stood above Trefusis Point commanding the view of Carrick Roads. He
turned in under the old gateway and drew up in the courtyard. Leaping
to the kidney-stones that paved it, he announced himself a visitor to
Mistress Rosamund.
He found her in her bower—a light, turreted chamber on the mansion’s
eastern side, with windows that looked out upon that lovely sheet of
water and the wooded slopes beyond. She was sitting with a book in her
lap in the deep of that tall window when he entered, preceded and
announced by Sally Pentreath, who, now her tire-woman, had once been
her nurse.
She rose with a little exclamation of gladness when he appeared under
the lintel—scarce high enough to admit him without stooping—and stood
regarding him across the room with brightened eyes and flushing cheeks.
What need is there to describe her? In the blaze of notoriety into
which she was anon to be thrust by Sir Oliver Tressilian there was
scarce a poet in England who did not sing the grace and loveliness of
Rosamund Godolphin, and in all conscience enough of those fragments
have survived. Like her brother she was tawny headed and she was
divinely tall, though as yet her figure in its girlishness was almost
too slender for her height.
“I had not looked for you so early....” she was beginning, when she
observed that his countenance was oddly stern. “Why... what has
happened?” she cried, her intuitions clamouring loudly of some
mischance.
“Naught to alarm you, sweet; yet something that may vex you.” He set an
arm about that lissom waist of hers above the swelling farthingale, and
gently led her back to her chair, then flung himself upon the
window-seat beside her. “You hold Sir John Killigrew in some
affection?” he said between statement and inquiry.
“Why, yes. He was our guardian until my brother came of full age.”
Sir Oliver made a wry face. “Aye, there’s the rub. Well, I’ve all but
killed him.”
She drew back into her chair, recoiling before him, and he saw horror
leap to her eyes and blench her face. He made haste to explain the
causes that had led to this, he told her briefly of the calumnies
concerning him that Sir John had put about to vent his spite at having
been thwarted in a matter of his coveted licence to build at Smithick.
“That mattered little,” he concluded. “I knew these tales concerning me
were abroad, and I held them in the same contempt as I hold their
utterer. But he went further, Rose: he poisoned your brother’s mind
against me, and he stirred up in him the slumbering rancour that in my
father’s time was want to lie between our houses. To-day Peter came to
me with the clear intent to make a quarrel. He affronted me as no man
has ever dared.”
She cried out at that, her already great alarm redoubled. He smiled.
“Do not suppose that I could harm him. He is your brother, and, so,
sacred to me. He came to tell me that no betrothal was possible between
us, forbade me ever again to visit Godolphin Court, dubbed me pirate
and vampire to my face and reviled my father’s memory. I tracked the
evil of all this to its source in Killigrew, and rode straight to
Arwenack to dam that source of falsehood for all time. I did not
accomplish quite so much as I intended. You see, I am frank, my Rose.
It may be that Sir John will live; if so I hope that he may profit by
this lesson. I have come straight to you,” he concluded, “that you may
hear the tale from me before another comes to malign me with false
stories of this happening.”
“You... you mean Peter?” she cried.
“Alas!” he sighed.
She sat very still and white, looking straight before her and not at
all at Sir Oliver. At length she spoke.
“I am not skilled in reading men,” she said in a sad, small voice. “How
should I be, that am but a maid who has led a cloistered life. I was
told of you that you were violent and passionate, a man of bitter
enmities, easily stirred to hatreds, cruel and ruthless in the
persecution of them.”
“You, too, have been listening to Sir John,” he muttered, and laughed
shortly.
“All this was I told,” she pursued as if he had not spoken, “and all
did I refuse to believe because my heart was given to you. Yet... yet
of what have you made proof to-day?”
“Of forbearance,” said he shortly.
“Forbearance?” she echoed, and her lips writhed in a smile of weary
irony. “Surely you mock me!”
He set himself to explain.
“I have told you what Sir John had done. I have told you that the
greater part of it—and matter all that touched my honour—I know Sir
John to have done long since. Yet I suffered it in silence and
contempt. Was that to show myself easily stirred to ruthlessness? What
was it but forbearance? When, however, he carries his petty huckster’s
rancour so far as to seek to choke for me my source of happiness in
life and sends your brother to affront me, I am still so forbearing
that I recognize your brother to be no more than a tool and go straight
to the hand that wielded him. Because I know of your affection for Sir
John I gave him such latitude as no man of honour in England would have
given him.”
Then seeing that she still avoided his regard, still sat in that frozen
attitude of horror at learning that the man she loved had imbrued his
hands with the blood of another whom she also loved, his pleading
quickened to a warmer note. He flung himself upon his knees beside her
chair, and took in his great sinewy hands the slender fingers which she
listlessly surrendered. “Rose,” he cried, and his deep voice quivered
with intercession, “dismiss all that you have heard from out your mind.
Consider only this thing that has befallen. Suppose that Lionel my
brother came to you, and that, having some measure of power and
authority to support him, he swore to you that you should never wed me,
swore to prevent this marriage because he deemed you such a woman as
could not bear my name with honour to myself; and suppose that to all
this he added insult to the memory of your dead father, what answer
would you return him? Speak, Rose! Be honest with thyself and me. Deem
yourself in my place, and say in honesty if you can still condemn me
for what I have done. Say if it differs much from what you would wish
to do in such a case as I have named.”
Her eyes scanned now his upturned face, every line of which was
pleading to her and calling for impartial judgment. Her face grew
troubled, and then almost fierce. She set her hands upon his shoulders,
and looked deep into his eyes.
“You swear to me, Noll, that all is as you have told it me—you have
added naught, you have altered naught to make the tale more favourable
to yourself?”
“You need such oaths from me?” he asked, and she saw sorrow spread upon
his countenance.
“If I did I should not love thee, Noll. But in such an hour I need your
own assurance. Will you not be generous and bear with me, strengthen me
to withstand anything that may be said hereafter?”
“As God’s my witness, I have told you true in all,” he answered
solemnly.
She sank her head to his shoulder. She was weeping softly, overwrought
by this climax to all that in silence and in secret she had suffered
since he had come a-wooing her.
“Then,” she said, “I believe you acted rightly. I believe with you that
no man of honour could have acted otherwise. I must believe you, Noll,
for did I not, then I could believe in naught and hope for naught. You
are as a fire that has seized upon the better part of me and consumed
it all to ashes that you may hold it in your heart. I am content so you
be true.”
“True I shall ever be, sweetheart,” he whispered fervently. “Could I be
less since you are sent to make me so?”
She looked at him again, and now she was smiling wistfully through her
tears.
“And you will bear with Peter?” she implored him.
“He shall have no power to anger me,” he answered. “I swear that too.
Do you know that but to-day he struck me?”
“Struck you? You did not tell me that!”
“My quarrel was not with him but with the rogue that sent him. I
laughed at the blow. Was he not sacred to me?”
“He is good at heart, Noll,” she pursued. “In time he will come to love
you as you deserve, and you will come to know that he, too, deserves
your love.”
“He deserves it now for the love he bears to you.”
“And you will think ever thus during the little while of waiting that
perforce must lie before us?”
“I shall never think otherwise, sweet. Meanwhile I shall avoid him, and
that no harm may come should he forbid me Godolphin Court I’ll even
stay away. In less than a year you will be of full age, and none may
hinder you to come and go. What is a year, with such hope as mine to
still impatience?”
She stroked his face. “Art very gentle with me ever, Noll,” she
murmured fondly. “I cannot credit you are ever harsh to any, as they
say.”
“Heed them not,” he answered her. “I may have been something of all
that, but you have purified me, Rose. What man that loved you could be
aught but gentle.” He kissed her, and stood up. “I had best be going
now,” he said. “I shall walk along the shore towards Trefusis Point
to-morrow morning. If you should chance to be similarly disposed....”
She laughed, and rose in her turn. “I shall be there, dear Noll.”
“’Twere best so hereafter,” he assured her, smiling, and so took his
leave.
She followed him to the stair-head, and watched him as he descended
with eyes that took pride in the fine upright carriage of that
stalwart, masterful lover.
CHAPTER III.
THE FORGE
Sir Oliver’s wisdom in being the first to bear Rosamund the story of
that day’s happenings was established anon when Master Godolphin
returned home. He went straight in quest of his sister; and in a frame
of mind oppressed by fear and sorrow, for Sir John, by his general
sense of discomfiture at the hands of Sir Oliver and by the anger
begotten of all this he was harsh in manner and disposed to hector.
“Madam,” he announced abruptly, “Sir John is like to die.”
The astounding answer she returned him—that is, astounding to him—did
not tend to soothe his sorely ruffled spirit.
“I know,” she said. “And I believe him to deserve no less. Who deals in
calumny should be prepared for the wages of it.”
He stared at her in a long, furious silence, then exploded into oaths,
and finally inveighed against her unnaturalness and pronounced her
bewitched by that foul dog Tressilian.
“It is fortunate for me,” she answered him composedly, “that he was
here before you to give me the truth of this affair.” Then her assumed
calm and the anger with which she had met his own all fell away from
her. “Oh, Peter, Peter,” she cried in anguish, “I hope that Sir John
will recover. I am distraught by this event. But be just, I implore
you. Sir Oliver has told me how hard-driven he had been.”
“He shall be driven harder yet, as God’s my life! If you think this
deed shall go unpunished....”
She flung herself upon his breast and implored him to carry this
quarrel no further. She spoke of her love for Sir Oliver and announced
her firm resolve to marry him in despite of all opposition that could
be made, all of which did not tend to soften her brother’s humour. Yet
because of the love that ever had held these two in closest bonds he
went so far in the end as to say that should Sir John recover he would
not himself pursue the matter further. But if Sir John should die—as
was very likely—honour compelled him to seek vengeance of a deed to
which he had himself so very largely contributed.
“I read that man as if he were an open book,” the boy announced, with
callow boastfulness. “He has the subtlety of Satan, yet he does not
delude me. It was at me he struck through Killigrew. Because he desires
you, Rosamund, he could not—as he bluntly told me—deal with me however
I provoked him, not even though I went the length of striking him. He
might have killed me for’t; but he knew that to do so would place a
barrier ’twixt him and you. Oh! he is calculating as all the fiends of
Hell. So, to wipe out the dishonour which I did him, he shifts the
blame of it upon Killigrew and goes out to kill him, which he further
thinks may act as a warning to me. But if Killigrew dies....” And thus
he rambled on, filling her gentle heart with anguish to see this feud
increasing between the two men she loved best in all the world. If the
outcome of it should be that either were to kill the other, she knew
that she could never again look upon the survivor.
She took heart at last in the memory of Sir Oliver’s sworn promise that
her brother’s life should be inviolate to him, betide what might. She
trusted him; she depended upon his word and that rare strength of his
which rendered possible to him a course that no weaker man would dare
pursue. And in this reflection her pride in him increased, and she
thanked God for a lover who in all things was a giant among men.
But Sir John Killigrew did not die. He hovered between this world and a
better one for some seven days, at the end of which he began to
recover. By October he was abroad again, gaunt and pale, reduced to
half the bulk that had been his before, a mere shadow of a man.
One of his first visits was to Godolphin Court. He went to remonstrate
with Rosamund upon her betrothal, and he did so at the request of her
brother. But his remonstrances were strangely lacking in the force that
she had looked for.
The odd fact is that in his near approach to death, and with his
earthly interest dwindling, Sir John had looked matters frankly in the
face, and had been driven to the conclusion—a conclusion impossible to
him in normal health—that he had got no more than he deserved. He
realized that he had acted unworthily, if unconscious at the time of
the unworthiness of what he did; that the weapons with which he had
fought Sir Oliver were not the weapons that become a Gentleman or in
which there is credit to be won. He perceived that he had permitted his
old enmity for the house of Tressilian, swollen by a sense of injury
lately suffered in the matter of the licence to build at Smithick, to
warp his judgment and to persuade him that Sir Oliver was all he had
dubbed him. He realized that jealousy, too, had taken a hand in the
matter. Sir Oliver’s exploits upon the seas had brought him wealth, and
with this wealth he was building up once more the Tressilian sway in
those parts, which Ralph Tressilian had so outrageously diminished, so
that he threatened to eclipse the importance of the Killigrews of
Arwenack.
Nevertheless, in the hour of reaction he did not go so far as to admit
that Sir Oliver Tressilian was a fit mate for Rosamund Godolphin. She
and her brother had been placed in his care by their late father, and
he had nobly discharged his tutelage until such time as Peter had come
to full age. His affection for Rosamund was tender as that of a lover,
but tempered by a feeling entirely paternal. He went very near to
worshipping her, and when all was said, when he had cleared his mind of
all dishonest bias, he still found overmuch to dislike in Oliver
Tressilian, and the notion of his becoming Rosamund’s husband was
repellent.
First of all there was that bad Tressilian blood—notoriously bad, and
never more flagrantly displayed than in the case of the late Ralph
Tressilian. It was impossible that Oliver should have escaped the taint
of it; nor could Sir John perceive any signs that he had done so. He
displayed the traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and
brutal, and the pirate’s trade to which he had now set his hand was of
all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was
harsh and overbearing, impatient of correction and prone to trample
other men’s feelings underfoot. Was this, he asked himself in all
honesty, a mate for Rosamund? Could he entrust her happiness to the
care of such a man? Assuredly he could not.
Therefore, being whole again, he went to remonstrate with her as he
accounted it his duty and as Master Peter had besought him. Yet knowing
the bias that had been his he was careful to understate rather than to
overstate his reasons.
“But, Sir John,” she protested, “if every man is to be condemned for
the sins of his forbears, but few could escape condemnation, and
wherever shall you find me a husband deserving your approval?”
“His father....” began Sir John.
“Tell me not of his father, but of himself,” she interrupted.
He frowned impatiently—they were sitting in that bower of hers above
the river.
“I was coming to ’t,” he answered, a thought testily, for these
interruptions which made him keep to the point robbed him of his best
arguments. “However, suffice it that many of his father’s vicious
qualities he has inherited, as we see in his ways of life; that he has
not inherited others only the future can assure us.”
“In other words,” she mocked him, yet very seriously, “I am to wait
until he dies of old age to make quite sure that he has no such sins as
must render him an unfitting husband?”
“No, no,” he cried. “Good lack! what a perverseness is thine!”
“The perverseness is your own, Sir John. I am but the mirror of it.”
He shifted in his chair and grunted. “Be it so, then,” he snapped. “We
will deal with the qualities that already he displays.” And Sir John
enumerated them.
“But this is no more than your judgment of him—no more than what you
think him.”
“’Tis what all the world thinks him.”
“But I shall not marry a man for what others think of him, but for what
I think of him myself. And in my view you cruelly malign him. I
discover no such qualities in Sir Oliver.”
“’Tis that you should be spared such a discovery that I am beseeching
you not to wed him.”
“Yet unless I wed him I shall never make such a discovery; and until I
make it I shall ever continue to love him and to desire to wed him. Is
all my life to be spent so?” She laughed outright, and came to stand
beside him. She put an arm about his neck as she might have put it
about the neck of her father, as she had been in the habit of doing any
day in these past ten years—and thereby made him feel himself to have
reached an unconscionable age. With her hand she rubbed his brow.
“Why, here are wicked wrinkles of ill-humour,” she cried to him. “You
are all undone, and by a woman’s wit, and you do not like it.”
“I am undone by a woman’s wilfulness, by a woman’s headstrong resolve
not to see.”
“You have naught to show me, Sir John.”
“Naught? Is all that I have said naught?”
“Words are not things; judgments are not facts. You say that he is so,
and so and so. But when I ask you upon what facts you judge him, your
only answer is that you think him to be what you say he is. Your
thoughts may be honest, Sir John, but your logic is contemptible.” And
she laughed again at his gaping discomfiture. “Come, now, deal like an
honest upright judge, and tell me one act of his—one thing that he has
ever done and of which you have sure knowledge—that will bear him out
to be what you say he is. Now, Sir John!”
He looked up at her impatiently. Then, at last he smiled.
“Rogue!” he cried—and upon a distant day he was to bethink him of those
words. “If ever he be brought to judgment I can desire him no better
advocate than thou.”
Thereupon following up her advantage swiftly, she kissed him. “Nor
could I desire him a more honest judge than you.”
What was the poor man to do thereafter? What he did. Live up to her
pronouncement, and go forthwith to visit Sir Oliver and compose their
quarrel.
The acknowledgment of his fault was handsomely made, and Sir Oliver
received it in a spirit no less handsome. But when Sir John came to the
matter of Mistress Rosamund he was, out of his sense of duty to her,
less generous. He announced that since he could not bring himself to
look upon Sir Oliver as a suitable husband for her, nothing that he had
now said must mislead Sir Oliver into supposing him a consenting party
to any such union.
“But that,” he added, “is not to say that I oppose it. I disapprove,
but I stand aside. Until she is of full age her brother will refuse his
sanction. After that, the matter will concern neither him nor myself.”
“I hope,” said Sir Oliver, “he will take as wise a view. But whatever
view he takes will be no matter. For the rest, Sir John, I thank you
for your frankness, and I rejoice to know that if I may not count you
for my friend, at least I need not reckon you among my enemies.”
But if Sir John was thus won round to a neutral attitude, Master
Peter’s rancour abated nothing; rather it increased each day, and
presently there came another matter to feed it, a matter of which Sir
Oliver had no suspicion.
He knew that his brother Lionel rode almost daily to Malpas, and he
knew the object of those daily rides. He knew of the lady who kept a
sort of court there for the rustic bucks of Truro, Penryn, and Helston,
and he knew something of the ill-repute that had attached to her in
town—a repute, in fact, which had been the cause of her withdrawal into
the country. He told his brother some frank and ugly truths, concerning
her, by way of warning him, and therein, for the first time, the twain
went very near to quarrelling.
After that he mentioned her no more. He knew that in his indolent way
Lionel could be headstrong, and he knew human nature well enough to be
convinced that interference here would but set up a breach between
himself and his brother without in the least achieving its real object.
So Oliver shrugged resignedly, and held his peace.
There he left the affair, nor ever spoke again of Malpas and the siren
who presided there. And meanwhile the autumn faded into winter, and
with the coming of stormy weather Sir Oliver and Rosamund had fewer
opportunities of meeting. To Godolphin Court he would not go since she
did not desire it; and himself he deemed it best to remain away since
otherwise he must risk a quarrel with its master, who had forbidden him
the place. In those days he saw Peter Godolphin but little, and on the
rare occasions when they did meet they passed each other with a very
meagre salute.
Sir Oliver was entirely happy, and men noticed how gentler were his
accents, how sunnier had become a countenance that they had known for
haughty and forbidding. He waited for his coming happiness with the
confidence of an immortal in the future. Patience was all the service
Fate asked of him, and he gave that service blithely, depending upon
the reward that soon now would be his own. Indeed, the year drew near
its close; and ere another winter should come round Penarrow House
would own a mistress. That to him seemed as inevitable as the season
itself. And yet for all his supreme confidence, for all his patience
and the happiness he culled from it, there were moments when he seemed
oppressed by some elusive sense of overhanging doom, by some
subconsciousness of an evil in the womb of Destiny. Did he challenge
his oppression, did he seek to translate it into terms of reason, he
found nothing upon which his wits could fasten—and he came ever to
conclude that it was his very happiness by its excessiveness that was
oppressing him, giving him at times that sense of premonitory weight
about the heart as if to check its joyous soarings.
One day, a week from Christmas, he had occasion to ride to Helston on
some trifling affair. For half a week a blizzard had whirled about the
coast, and he had been kept chafing indoors what time layer upon layer
of snow was spread upon the countryside. On the fourth day, the storm
being spent, the sun came forth, the skies were swept clear of clouds
and all the countryside lay robed in a sun-drenched, dazzling
whiteness. Sir Oliver called for his horse and rode forth alone through
the crisp snow. He turned homeward very early in the afternoon, but
when a couple of miles from Helston he found that his horse had cast a
shoe. He dismounted, and bridle over arm tramped on through the sunlit
vale between the heights of Pendennis and Arwenack, singing as he went.
He came thus to Smithick and the door of the forge. About it stood a
group of fishermen and rustics, for, in the absence of any inn just
there, this forge was ever a point of congregation. In addition to the
rustics and an itinerant merchant with his pack-horses, there were
present Sir Andrew Flack, the parson from Penryn, and Master Gregory
Baine, one of the Justices from the neighbourhood of Truro. Both were
well known to Sir Oliver, and he stood in friendly gossip with them
what time he waited for his horse.
It was all very unfortunate, from the casting of that shoe to the
meeting with those gentlemen; for as Sir Oliver stood there, down the
gentle slope from Arwenack rode Master Peter Godolphin.
It was said afterwards by Sir Andrew and Master Baine that Master Peter
appeared to have been carousing, so flushed was his face, so unnatural
the brightness of his eye, so thick his speech and so extravagant and
foolish what he said. There can be little doubt that it was so. He was
addicted to Canary, and so indeed was Sir John Killigrew, and he had
been dining with Sir John. He was of those who turn quarrelsome in
wine—which is but another way of saying that when the wine was in and
the restraint out, his natural humour came uppermost untrammelled. The
sight of Sir Oliver standing there gave the lad precisely what he
needed to indulge that evil humour of his, and he may have been
quickened in his purpose by the presence of those other gentlemen. In
his half-fuddled state of mind he may have recalled that once he had
struck Sir Oliver and Sir Oliver had laughed and told him that none
would believe it.
He drew rein suddenly as he came abreast of the group, so suddenly that
he pulled his horse until it almost sat down like a cat; yet he
retained his saddle. Then he came through the snow that was all
squelched and mudded just about the forge, and leered at Sir Oliver.
“I am from Arwenack,” he announced unnecessarily. “We have been talking
of you.”
“You could have had no better subject of discourse,” said Sir Oliver,
smiling, for all that his eyes were hard and something scared—though
his fears did not concern himself.
“Marry, you are right; you make an engrossing topic—you and your
debauched father.”
“Sir,” replied Sir Oliver, “once already have I deplored your mother’s
utter want of discretion.”
The words were out of him in a flash under the spur of the gross insult
flung at him, uttered in the momentary blind rage aroused by that
inflamed and taunting face above him. No sooner were they sped than he
repented them, the more bitterly because they were greeted by a guffaw
from the rustics. He would have given half his fortune in that moment
to have recalled them.
Master Godolphin’s face had changed as utterly as if he had removed a
mask. From flushed that it had been it was livid now and the eyes were
blazing, the mouth twitching. Thus a moment he glowered upon his enemy.
Then standing in his stirrups he swung aloft his whip.
“You dog!” he cried, in a snarling sob. “You dog!” And his lash came
down and cut a long red wheal across Sir Oliver’s dark face.
With cries of dismay and anger the others, the parson, the Justice and
the rustics got between the pair, for Sir Oliver was looking very
wicked, and all the world knew him for a man to be feared.
“Master Godolphin, I cry shame upon you,” exclaimed the parson. “If
evil comes of this I shall testify to the grossness of your aggression.
Get you gone from here!”
“Go to the devil, sir,” said Master Godolphin thickly. “Is my mother’s
name to be upon the lips of that bastard? By God, man, the matter rests
not here. He shall send his friends to me, or I will horse-whip him
every time we meet. You hear, Sir Oliver?”
Sir Oliver made him no reply.
“You hear?” he roared. “There is no Sir John Killigrew this time upon
whom you can shift the quarrel. Come you to me and get the punishment
of which that whiplash is but an earnest.” Then with a thick laugh he
drove spurs into his horse’s flanks, so furiously that he all but sent
the parson and another sprawling.
“Stay but a little while for me,” roared Sir Oliver after him. “You’ll
ride no more, my drunken fool!”
And in a rage he bellowed for his horse, flinging off the parson and
Master Baine, who endeavoured to detain and calm him. He vaulted to the
saddle when the nag was brought him, and whirled away in furious
pursuit.
The parson looked at the Justice and the Justice shrugged, his lips
tight-pressed.
“The young fool is drunk,” said Sir Andrew, shaking his white head.
“He’s in no case to meet his Maker.”
“Yet he seems very eager,” quoth Master Justice Baine. “I doubt I shall
hear more of the matter.” He turned and looked into the forge where the
bellows now stood idle, the smith himself grimy and aproned in leather
in the doorway, listening to the rustics account of the happening.
Master Baine it seems had a taste for analogies. “Faith,” he said, “the
place was excellently well chosen. They have forged here to-day a sword
which it will need blood to temper.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE INTERVENER
The parson had notions of riding after Sir Oliver, and begged Master
Baine to join him. But the Justice looked down his long nose and opined
that no good purpose was to be served; that Tressilians were ever wild
and bloody men; and that an angry Tressilian was a thing to be avoided.
Sir Andrew, who was far from valorous, thought there might be wisdom in
the Justice’s words, and remembered that he had troubles enough of his
own with a froward wife without taking up the burdens of others. Master
Godolphin and Sir Oliver between them, quoth the justice, had got up
this storm of theirs. A God’s name let them settle it, and if in the
settling they should cut each other’s throats haply the countryside
would be well rid of a brace of turbulent fellows. The pedlar deemed
them a couple of madmen, whose ways were beyond the understanding of a
sober citizen. The others—the fishermen and the rustics—had not the
means to follow even had they had the will.
They dispersed to put abroad the news of that short furious quarrel and
to prophesy that blood would be let in the adjusting of it. This
prognostication the they based entirely upon their knowledge of the
short Tressilian way. But it was a matter in which they were entirely
wrong. It is true that Sir Oliver went galloping along that road that
follows the Penryn river and that he pounded over the bridge in the
town of Penryn in Master Godolphin’s wake with murder in his heart. Men
who saw him riding wildly thus with the red wheal across his white
furious face said that he looked a very devil.
He crossed the bridge at Penryn a half-hour after sunset, as dusk was
closing into night, and it may be that the sharp, frosty air had a hand
in the cooling of his blood. For as he reached the river’s eastern bank
he slackened his breakneck pace, even as he slackened the angry
galloping of his thoughts. The memory of that oath he had sworn three
months ago to Rosamund smote him like a physical blow. It checked his
purpose, and, reflecting this, his pace fell to an amble. He shivered
to think how near he had gone to wrecking all the happiness that lay
ahead of him. What was a boy’s whiplash, that his resentment of it;
should set all his future life in jeopardy? Even though men should call
him a coward for submitting to it and leaving the insult unavenged,
what should that matter? Moreover, upon the body of him who did so
proclaim him he could brand the lie of a charge so foolish. Sir Oliver
raised his eyes to the deep sapphire dome of heaven where an odd star
was glittering frostily, and thanked God from a swelling heart that he
had not overtaken Peter Godolphin whilst his madness was upon him.
A mile or so below Penryn, he turned up the road that ran down to the
ferry there, and took his way home over the shoulder of the hill with a
slack rein. It was not his usual way. He was wont ever to go round by
Trefusis Point that he might take a glimpse at the walls of the house
that harboured Rosamund and a glance at the window of her bower. But
to-night he thought the shorter road over the hill would be the safer
way. If he went by Godolphin Court he might chance to meet Peter again,
and his past anger warned him against courting such a meeting, warned
him to avoid it lest evil should betide. Indeed, so imperious was the
warning, and such were his fears of himself after what had just passed,
that he resolved to leave Penarrow on the next day. Whither he would go
he did not then determine. He might repair to London, and he might even
go upon another cruise—an idea which he had lately dismissed under
Rosamund’s earnest intercession. But it was imperative that he should
quit the neighbourhood, and place a distance between Peter Godolphin
and himself until such time as he might take Rosamund to wife. Eight
months or so of exile; but what matter? Better so than that he should
be driven into some deed that would compel him to spend his whole
lifetime apart from her. He would write, and she would understand and
approve when he told her what had passed that day.
The resolve was firmly implanted in him by the time he reached
Penarrow, and he felt himself uplifted by it and by the promise it
afforded him that thus his future happiness would be assured.
Himself he stabled his horse; for of the two grooms he kept, one had by
his leave set out yesterday to spend Christmas in Devon with his
parents, the other had taken a chill and had been ordered to bed that
very day by Sir Oliver, who was considerate with those that served him.
In the dining-room he found supper spread, and a great log fire blazed
in the enormous cowled fire-place, diffusing a pleasant warmth through
the vast room and flickering ruddily upon the trophies of weapons that
adorned the walls, upon the tapestries and the portraits of dead
Tressilians. Hearing his step, old Nicholas entered bearing a great
candle-branch which he set upon the table.
“You’m late, Sir Oliver,” said the servant, “and Master Lionel bain’t
home yet neither.”
Sir Oliver grunted and scowled as he crunched a log and set it sizzling
under his wet heel. He thought of Malpas and cursed Lionel’s folly, as,
without a word, he loosed his cloak and flung it on an oaken coffer by
the wall where already he had cast his hat. Then he sat down, and
Nicholas came forward to draw off his boots.
When that was done and the old servant stood up again, Sir Oliver
shortly bade him to serve supper.
“Master Lionel cannot be long now,” said he. “And give me to drink,
Nick. ’Tis what I most require.”
“I’ve brewed ee a posset o’ canary sack,” announced Nicholas; “there’m
no better supping o’ a frosty winter’s night, Sir Oliver.”
He departed to return presently with a black jack that was steaming
fragrantly. He found his master still in the same attitude, staring at
the fire, and frowning darkly. Sir Oliver’s thoughts were still of his
brother and Malpas, and so insistent were they that his own concerns
were for the moment quite neglected; he was considering whether it was
not his duty, after all, to attempt a word of remonstrance. At length
he rose with a sigh and got to table. There he bethought him of his
sick groom, and asked Nicholas for news of him. Nicholas reported the
fellow to be much as he had been, whereupon Sir Oliver took up a cup
and brimmed it with the steaming posset.
“Take him that,” he said. “There’s no better medicine for such an
ailment.”
Outside fell a clatter of hooves.
“Here be Master Lionel at last,” said the servant.
“No doubt,” agreed Sir Oliver. “No need to stay for him. Here is all he
needs. Carry that to Tom ere it cools.”
It was his object to procure the servant’s absence when Lionel should
arrive, resolved as he was to greet him with a sound rating for his
folly. Reflection had brought him the assurance that this was become
his duty in view of his projected absence from Penarrow; and in his
brother’s interest he was determined not to spare him.
He took a deep draught of the posset, and as he set it down he heard
Lionel’s step without. Then the door was flung open, and his brother
stood on the threshold a moment at gaze.
Sir Oliver looked round with a scowl, the well-considered reproof
already on his lips.
“So....” he began, and got no further. The sight that met his eyes
drove the ready words from his lips and mind; instead it was with a
sharp gasp of dismay that he came immediately to his feet. “Lionel!”
Lionel lurched in, closed the door, and shot home one of its bolts.
Then he leaned against it, facing his brother again. He was deathly
pale, with great dark stains under his eyes; his ungloved right hand
was pressed to his side, and the fingers of it were all smeared with
blood that was still oozing and dripping from between them. Over his
yellow doublet on the right side there was a spreading dark stain whose
nature did not intrigue Sir Oliver a moment.
“My God!” he cried, and ran to his brother. “What’s happened, Lal? Who
has done this?”
“Peter Godolphin,” came the answer from lips that writhed in a curious
smile.
Never a word said Sir Oliver, but he set his teeth and clenched his
hands until the nails cut into his palms. Then he put an arm about this
lad he loved above all save one in the whole world, and with anguish in
his mind he supported him forward to the fire. There Lionel dropped to
the chair that Sir Oliver had lately occupied.
“What is your hurt, lad? Has it gone deep?” he asked, in terror almost.
“’Tis naught—a flesh wound; but I have lost a mort of blood. I thought
I should have been drained or ever I got me home.”
With fearful speed Sir Oliver drew his dagger and ripped away doublet,
vest, and shirt, laying bare the lad’s white flesh. A moment’s
examination, and he breathed more freely.
“Art a very babe, Lal,” he cried in his relief. “To ride without
thought to stanch so simple a wound, and so lose all this blood—bad
Tressilian blood though it be.” He laughed in the immensity of his
reaction from that momentary terror. “Stay thou there whilst I call
Nick to help us dress this scratch.”
“No, no!” There was note of sudden fear in the lad’s voice, and his
hand clutched at his brother’s sleeve. “Nick must not know. None must
know, or I am undone else.”
Sir Oliver stared, bewildered. Lionel smiled again that curious
twisted, rather frightened smile.
“I gave better than I took, Noll,” said he. “Master Godolphin is as
cold by now as the snow on which I left him.”
His brother’s sudden start and the fixed stare from out of his slowly
paling face scared Lionel a little. He observed, almost subconsciously,
the dull red wheal that came into prominence as the colour faded out of
Sir Oliver’s face, yet never thought to ask how it came there. His own
affairs possessed him too completely.
“What’s this?” quoth Oliver at last, hoarsely.
Lionel dropped his eyes, unable longer to meet a glance that was
becoming terrible.
“He would have it,” he growled almost sullenly, answering the reproach
that was written in every line of his brother’s taut body. “I had
warned him not to cross my path. But to-night I think some madness had
seized upon him. He affronted me, Noll; he said things which it was
beyond human power to endure, and....” He shrugged to complete his
sentence.
“Well, well,” said Oliver in a small voice. “First let us tend this
wound of yours.”
“Do not call Nick,” was the other’s swift admonition. “Don’t you see,
Noll?” he explained in answer to the inquiry of his brother’s stare,
“don’t you see that we fought there almost in the dark and without
witnesses. It....” he swallowed, “it will be called murder, fair fight
though it was; and should it be discovered that it was I....” He
shivered and his glance grew wild; his lips twitched.
“I see,” said Oliver, who understood at last, and he added bitterly:
“You fool!”
“I had no choice,” protested Lionel. “He came at me with his drawn
sword. Indeed, I think he was half-drunk. I warned him of what must
happen to the other did either of us fall, but he bade me not concern
myself with the fear of any such consequences to himself. He was full
of foul words of me and you and all whoever bore our name. He struck me
with the flat of his blade and threatened to run me through as I stood
unless I drew to defend myself. What choice had I? I did not mean to
kill him—as God’s my witness, I did not, Noll.”
Without a word Oliver turned to a side-table, where stood a metal basin
and ewer. He poured water, then came in the same silence to treat his
brother’s wound. The tale that Lionel told made blame impossible, at
least from Oliver. He had but to recall the mood in which he himself
had ridden after Peter Godolphin; he had but to remember, that only the
consideration of Rosamund—only, indeed, the consideration of his
future—had set a curb upon his own bloodthirsty humour.
When he had washed the wound he fetched some table linen from a press
and ripped it into strips with his dagger; he threaded out one of these
and made a preliminary crisscross of the threads across the lips of the
wound—for the blade had gone right through the muscles of the breast,
grazing the ribs; these threads would help the formation of a clot.
Then with the infinite skill and cunning acquired in the course of his
rovings he proceeded to the bandaging.
That done, he opened the window and flung out the blood-tinted water.
The cloths with which he had mopped the wound and all other similar
evidences of the treatment he cast upon the fire. He must remove all
traces even from the eyes of Nicholas. He had the most implicit trust
in the old servant’s fidelity. But the matter was too grave to permit
of the slightest risk. He realized fully the justice of Lionel’s fears
that however fair the fight might have been, a thing done thus in
secret must be accounted murder by the law.
Bidding Lionel wrap himself in his cloak, Sir Oliver unbarred the door,
and went upstairs in quest of a fresh shirt and doublet for his
brother. On the landing he met Nicholas descending. He held him a
moment in talk of the sick man above, and outwardly at least he was now
entirely composed. He dispatched him upstairs again upon a trumped-up
errand that must keep him absent for some little time, whilst himself
he went to get the things he needed.
He returned below with them, and when he had assisted his brother into
fresh garments with as little movement as possible so as not to disturb
his dressing of the wound or set it bleeding afresh, he took the
blood-stained doublet, vest, and shirt which he had ripped and flung
them, too, into the great fire.
When some moments later Nicholas entered the vast room he found the
brothers sitting composedly at table. Had he faced Lionel he would have
observed little amiss with him beyond the deep pallor of his face. But
he did not even do so much. Lionel sat with his back to the door and
the servant’s advance into the room was checked by Sir Oliver with the
assurance that they did not require him. Nicholas withdrew again, and
the brothers were once more alone.
Lionel ate very sparingly. He thirsted and would have emptied the
measure of posset, but that Sir Oliver restrained him, and refused him
anything but water lest he should contract a fever. Such a sparing meal
as they made—for neither had much appetite—was made in silence. At last
Sir Oliver rose, and with slow, heavy steps, suggestive of his humour,
he crossed to the fire-place. He threw fresh logs on the blaze, and
took from the tall mantelshelf his pipe and a leaden jar of tobacco. He
filled the pipe pensively, then with the short iron tongs seized a
fragment of glowing wood and applied it to the herb.
He returned to the table, and standing over his brother, he broke at
last the silence that had now endured some time.
“What,” he asked gruffly, “was the cause of your quarrel?”
Lionel started and shrank a little; between finger and thumb he kneaded
a fragment of bread, his eyes upon it. “I scarce know,” he replied.
“Lal, that is not the truth.”
“How?”
“’Tis not the truth. I am not to be put off with such an answer.
Yourself you said that you had warned him not to cross your path. What
path was in your mind?”
Lionel leaned his elbows on the table and took his head in his hands.
Weak from loss of blood, overwrought mentally as well, in a state of
revulsion and reaction also from the pursuit which had been the cause
of to-night’s tragic affair, he had not strength to withhold the
confidence his brother asked. On the contrary, it seemed to him that in
making such a confidence, he would find a haven and refuge in Sir
Oliver.
“’Twas that wanton at Malpas was the cause of all,” he complained. And
Sir Oliver’s eye flashed at the words. “I deemed her quite other; I was
a fool, a fool! I”—he choked, and a sob shook him—“I thought she loved
me. I would have married her, I would so, by God.”
Sir Oliver swore softly under his breath.
“I believed her pure and good, and....” He checked. “After all, who am
I to say even now that she was not? ’Twas no fault of hers. ’Twas he,
that foul dog Godolphin, who perverted her. Until he came all was well
between us. And then....”
“I see,” said Sir Oliver quietly. “I think you have something for which
to thank him, if he revealed to you the truth of that strumpet’s
nature. I would have warned thee, lad. But... Perhaps I have been weak
in that.”
“It was not so; it was not she....”
“I say it was, and if I say so I am to be believed, Lionel. I’d smirch
no woman’s reputation without just cause. Be very sure of that.”
Lionel stared up at him. “O God!” he cried presently, “I know not what
to believe. I am a shuttle-cock flung this way and that way.”
“Believe me,” said Sir Oliver grimly. “And set all doubts to rest.”
Then he smiled. “So that was the virtuous Master Peter’s secret
pastime, eh? The hypocrisy of man! There is no plumbing the endless
depths of it!”
He laughed outright, remembering all the things that Master Peter had
said of Ralph Tressilian—delivering himself as though he were some
chaste and self-denying anchorite. Then on that laugh he caught his
breath quite suddenly. “Would she know?” he asked fearfully. “Would
that harlot know, would she suspect that ’twas your hand did this?”
“Aye—would she,” replied the other. “I told her to-night, when she
flouted me and spoke of him, that I went straight to find him and pay
the score between us. I was on my way to Godolphin Court when I came
upon him in the park.”
“Then you lied to me again, Lionel. For you said ’twas he attacked
you.”
“And so he did.” Lionel countered instantly. “He never gave me time to
speak, but flung down from his horse and came at me snarling like a
cross-grained mongrel. Oh, he was as ready for the fight as I—as
eager.”
“But the woman at Malpas knows,” said Sir Oliver gloomily. “And if she
tells....”
“She’ll not,” cried Lionel. “She dare not for her reputation’s sake.”
“Indeed, I think you are right,” agreed his brother with relief. “She
dare not for other reasons, when I come to think of it. Her reputation
is already such, and so well detested is she that were it known she had
been the cause, however indirect, of this, the countryside would
satisfy certain longings that it entertains concerning her. You are
sure none saw you either going or returning?”
“None.”
Sir Oliver strode the length of the room and back, pulling at his pipe.
“All should be well, then, I think,” said he at last. “You were best
abed. I’ll carry you thither.”
He took up his stripling brother in his powerful arms and bore him
upstairs as though he were a babe.
When he had seen him safely disposed for slumber, he returned below,
shut the door in the hall, drew up the great oaken chair to the fire,
and sat there far into the night smoking and thinking.
He had said to Lionel that all should be well. All should be well for
Lionel. But what of himself with the burden of this secret on his soul?
Were the victim another than Rosamund’s brother the matter would have
plagued him but little. The fact that Godolphin was slain, it must be
confessed, was not in itself the source of his oppression. Godolphin
had more than deserved his end, and he would have come by it months ago
at Sir Oliver’s own hand but for the fact that he was Rosamund’s
brother, as we know. There was the rub, the bitter, cruel rub. Her own
brother had fallen by the hand of his. She loved her brother more than
any living being next to himself, just as he loved Lionel above any
other but herself. The pain that must be hers he knew; he experienced
some of it in anticipation, participating it because it was hers and
because all things that were hers he must account in some measure his
own.
He rose up at last, cursing that wanton at Malpas who had come to fling
this fresh and terrible difficulty where already he had to face so
many. He stood leaning upon the overmantel, his foot upon one of the
dogs of the fender, and considered what to do. He must bear his burden
in silence, that was all. He must keep this secret even from Rosamund.
It split his heart to think that he must practise this deceit with her.
But naught else was possible short of relinquishing her, and that was
far beyond his strength.
The resolve adopted, he took up a taper and went off to bed.
CHAPTER V.
THE BUCKLER
It was old Nicholas who brought the news next morning to the brothers
as they were breaking their fast.
Lionel should have kept his bed that day, but dared not, lest the fact
should arouse suspicion. He had a little fever, the natural result both
of his wound and of his loss of blood; he was inclined to welcome
rather than deplore it, since it set a flush on cheeks that otherwise
must have looked too pale.
So leaning upon his brother’s arm he came down to a breakfast of
herrings and small ale before the tardy sun of that December morning
was well risen.
Nicholas burst in upon them with a white face and shaking limbs. He
gasped out his tale of the event in a voice of terror, and both
brothers affected to be shocked, dismayed and incredulous. But the
worst part of that old man’s news, the true cause of his terrible
agitation, was yet to be announced.
“And they do zay,” he cried with anger quivering through his fear,
“they do zay that it were you that killed he, Sir Oliver.”
“I?” quoth Sir Oliver, staring, and suddenly like a flood there burst
upon his mind a hundred reasons overlooked until this moment, that
inevitably must urge the countryside to this conclusion, and to this
conclusion only. “Where heard you that foul lie?”
In the tumult of his mind he never heeded what answer was returned by
Nicholas. What could it matter where the fellow had heard the thing; by
now it would be the accusation on the lips of every man. There was one
course to take and he must take it instantly—as he had taken it once
before in like case. He must straight to Rosamund to forestall the tale
that others would carry to her. God send he did not come too late
already.
He stayed for no more than to get his boots and hat, then to the
stables for a horse, and he was away over the short mile that divided
Penarrow from Godolphin Court, going by bridle and track meadow
straight to his goal. He met none until he fetched up in the courtyard
at Godolphin Court. Thence a babble of excited voices had reached him
as he approached. But at sight of him there fell a general silence,
ominous and staring. A dozen men or more were assembled there, and
their eyes considered him first with amazement and curiosity, then with
sullen anger.
He leapt down from his saddle, and stood a moment waiting for one of
the three Godolphin grooms he had perceived in that assembly to take
his reins. Seeing that none stirred—
“How now?” he cried. “Does no one wait here? Hither, sirrah, and hold
my horse.”
The groom addressed hesitated a moment, then, under the stare of Sir
Oliver’s hard, commanding eye, he shuffled sullenly forward to do as he
was bid. A murmur ran through the group. Sir Oliver flashed a glance
upon it, and every tongue trembled into silence.
In that silence he strode up the steps, and entered the rush-strewn
hall. As he vanished he heard the hubbub behind him break out anew,
fiercer than it had been before. But he nothing heeded it.
He found himself face to face with a servant, who shrank before him,
staring as those in the courtyard had stared. His heart sank. It was
plain that he came a little late already; that the tale had got there
ahead of him.
“Where is your mistress?” said he.
“I...I will tell her you are here, Sir Oliver,” the man replied in a
voice that faltered; and he passed through a doorway on the right. Sir
Oliver stood a moment tapping his boots with his whip, his face pale, a
deep line between his brows. Then the man reappeared, closing the door
after him.
“Mistress Rosamund bids you depart, sir. She will not see you.”
A moment Sir Oliver scanned the servant’s face—or appeared to scan it,
for it is doubtful if he saw the fellow at all. Then for only answer he
strode forward towards the door from which the man had issued. The
servant set his back to it, his face resolute.
“Sir Oliver, my mistress will not see you.”
“Out of my way!” he muttered in his angry, contemptuous fashion, and as
the man persistent in his duty stood his ground, Sir Oliver took him by
the breast of his jacket, heaved him aside and went in.
She was standing in mid-apartment, dressed by an odd irony all in
bridal white, that yet was not as white as was her face. Her eyes
looked like two black stains, solemn and haunting as they fastened up
on this intruder who would not be refused. Her lips parted, but she had
no word for him. She just stared in a horror that routed all his
audacity and checked the masterfulness of his advance. At last he
spoke.
“I see that you have heard,” said he, “the lie that runs the
countryside. That is evil enough. But I see that you have lent an ear
to it; and that is worse.”
She continued to regard him with a cold look of loathing, this child
that but two days ago had lain against his heart gazing up at him in
trust and adoration.
“Rosamund!” he cried, and approached her by another step. “Rosamund! I
am here to tell you that it is a lie.”
“You had best go,” she said, and her voice had in it a quality that
made him tremble.
“Go?” he echoed stupidly. “You bid me go? You will not hear me?”
“I consented to hear you more than once; refused to hear others who
knew better than I, and was heedless of their warnings. There is no
more to be said between us. I pray God that they may take and hang
you.”
He was white to the lips, and for the first time in his life he knew
fear and felt his great limbs trembling under him.
“They may hang me and welcome since you believe this thing. They could
not hurt me more than you are doing, nor by hanging me could they
deprive me of aught I value, since your faith in me is a thing to be
blown upon by the first rumour of the countryside.”
He saw the pale lips twist themselves into a dreadful smile. “There is
more than rumour, I think,” said she. “There is more than all your lies
will ever serve to cloak.”
“My lies?” he cried. “Rosamund, I swear to you by my honour that I have
had no hand in the slaying of Peter. May God rot me where I stand if
this be not true!”
“It seems,” said a harsh voice behind him, “that you fear God as little
as aught else.”
He wheeled sharply to confront Sir John Killigrew, who had entered
after him.
“So,” he said slowly, and his eyes grew hard and bright as agates,
“this is your work.” And he waved a hand towards Rosamund. It was plain
to what he alluded.
“My work?” quoth Sir John. He closed the door, and advanced into the
room. “Sir, it seems your audacity, your shamelessness, transcends all
bounds. Your....”
“Have done with that,” Sir Oliver interrupted him and smote his great
fist upon the table. He was suddenly swept by a gust of passion. “Leave
words to fools, Sir John, and criticisms to those that can defend them
better.”
“Aye, you talk like a man of blood. You come hectoring it here in the
very house of the dead—in the very house upon which you have cast this
blight of sorrow and murder....”
“Have done, I say, or murder there will be!”
His voice was a roar, his mien terrific. And bold man though Sir John
was, he recoiled. Instantly Sir Oliver had conquered himself again. He
swung to Rosamund. “Ah, forgive me!” he pleaded. “I am mad—stark mad
with anguish at the thing imputed. I have not loved your brother, it is
true. But as I swore to you, so have I done. I have taken blows from
him, and smiled; but yesterday in a public place he affronted me,
lashed me across the face with his riding-whip, as I still bear the
mark. The man who says I were not justified in having killed him for it
is a liar and a hypocrite. Yet the thought of you, Rosamund, the
thought that he was your brother sufficed to quench the rage in which
he left me. And now that by some grim mischance he has met his death,
my recompense for all my patience, for all my thought for you is that I
am charged with slaying him, and that you believe this charge.”
“She has no choice,” rasped Killigrew.
“Sir John,” he cried, “I pray you do not meddle with her choice. That
you believe it, marks you for a fool, and a fool’s counsel is a rotten
staff to lean upon at any time. Why God o’ mercy! assume that I desired
to take satisfaction for the affront he had put upon me; do you know so
little of men, and of me of all men, that you suppose I should go about
my vengeance in this hole-and-corner fashion to set a hangman’s noose
about my neck. A fine vengeance that, as God lives! Was it so I dealt
with you, Sir John, when you permitted your tongue to wag too freely,
as you have yourself confessed? Heaven’s light, man; take a proper
view; consider was this matter likely. I take it you are a more
fearsome antagonist than was ever poor Peter Godolphin, yet when I
sought satisfaction of you I sought it boldly and openly, as is my way.
When we measured swords in your park at Arwenack we did so before
witnesses in proper form, that the survivor might not be troubled with
the Justices. You know me well, and what manner of man I am with my
weapons. Should I not have done the like by Peter if I had sought his
life? Should I not have sought it in the same open fashion, and so
killed him at my pleasure and leisure, and without risk or reproach
from any?”
Sir John was stricken thoughtful. Here was logic hard and clear as ice;
and the knight of Arwenack was no fool. But whilst he stood frowning
and perplexed at the end of that long tirade, it was Rosamund who gave
Sir Oliver his answer.
“You ran no risk of reproach from any, do you say?”
He turned, and was abashed. He knew the thought that was running in her
mind.
“You mean,” he said slowly, gently, his accents charged with
reproachful incredulity, “that I am so base and false that I could in
this fashion do what I dared not for your sake do openly? ’Tis what you
mean. Rosamund! I burn with shame for you that you can think such
thoughts of one whom... whom you professed to love.”
Her coldness fell from her. Under the lash of his bitter, half-scornful
accents, her anger mounted, whelming for a moment even her anguish in
her brother’s death.
“You false deceiver!” she cried. “There are those who heard you vow his
death. Your very words have been reported to me. And from where he lay
they found a trail of blood upon the snow that ran to your own door.
Will you still lie?”
They saw the colour leave his face. They saw his arms drop limply to
his sides, and his eyes dilate with obvious sudden fear.
“A... a trail of blood?” he faltered stupidly.
“Aye, answer that!” cut in Sir John, fetched suddenly from out his
doubts by that reminder.
Sir Oliver turned upon Killigrew again. The knight’s words restored to
him the courage of which Rosamund’s had bereft him. With a man he could
fight; with a man there was no need to mince his words.
“I cannot answer it,” he said, but very firmly, in a tone that brushed
aside all implications. “If you say it was so, so it must have been.
Yet when all is said, what does it prove? Does it set it beyond doubt
that it was I who killed him? Does it justify the woman who loved me to
believe me a murderer and something worse?” He paused, and looked at
her again, a world of reproach in his glance. She had sunk to a chair,
and rocked there, her fingers locking and interlocking, her face a mask
of pain unutterable.
“Can you suggest what else it proves, sir?” quoth Sir John, and there
was doubt in his voice.
Sir Oliver caught the note of it, and a sob broke from him.
“O God of pity!” he cried out. “There is doubt in your voice, and there
is none in hers. You were my enemy once, and have since been in a
mistrustful truce with me, yet you can doubt that I did this thing. But
she... she who loved me has no room for any doubt!”
“Sir Oliver,” she answered him, “the thing you have done has broken
quite my heart. Yet knowing all the taunts by which you were brought to
such a deed I could have forgiven it, I think, even though I could no
longer be your wife; I could have forgiven it, I say, but for the
baseness of your present denial.”
He looked at her, white-faced an instant, then turned on his heel and
made for the door. There he paused.
“Your meaning is quite plain,” said he. “It is your wish that I shall
take my trial for this deed.” He laughed. “Who will accuse me to the
Justices? Will you, Sir John?”
“If Mistress Rosamund so desires me,” replied the knight.
“Ha! Be it so. But do not think I am the man to suffer myself to be
sent to the gallows upon such paltry evidence as satisfies that lady.
If any accuser comes to bleat of a trail of blood reaching to my door,
and of certain words I spoke yesterday in anger, I will take my
trial—but it shall be trial by battle upon the body of my accuser. That
is my right, and I will have every ounce of it. Do you doubt how God
will pronounce? I call upon him solemnly to pronounce between me and
such an one. If I am guilty of this thing may He wither my arm when I
enter the lists.”
“Myself I will accuse you,” came Rosamund’s dull voice. “And if you
will, you may claim your rights against me and butcher me as you
butchered him.”
“God forgive you, Rosamund!” said Sir Oliver, and went out.
He returned home with hell in his heart. He knew not what the future
might hold in store for him; but such was his resentment against
Rosamund that there was no room in his bosom for despair. They should
not hang him. He would fight them tooth and claw, and yet Lionel should
not suffer. He would take care of that. And then the thought of Lionel
changed his mood a little. How easily could he have shattered their
accusation, how easily have brought her to her proud knees imploring
pardon of him! By a word he could have done it, yet he feared lest that
word must jeopardize his brother.
In the calm, still watches of that night, as he lay sleepless upon his
bed and saw things without heat, there crept a change into his mental
attitude. He reviewed all the evidence that had led her to her
conclusions, and he was forced to confess that she was in some measure
justified of them. If she had wronged him, he had wronged her yet more.
For years she had listened to all the poisonous things that were said
of him by his enemies—and his arrogance had made him not a few. She had
disregarded all because she loved him; her relations with her brother
had become strained on that account, yet now, all this returned to
crush her; repentance played its part in her cruel belief that it was
by his hand Peter Godolphin had fallen. It must almost seem to her that
in a sense she had been a party to his murder by the headstrong course
to which she had kept in loving the man her brother hated.
He saw it now, and was more merciful in judging her. She had been more
than human if she had not felt as he now saw that she must feel, and
since reactions are to be measured by the mental exaltations from which
they spring, so was it but natural that now she must hate him fiercely
whom she had loved wellnigh as fiercely.
It was a heavy cross to bear. Yet for Lionel’s sake he must bear it
with what fortitude he could. Lionel must not be sacrificed to his
egoism for a deed that in Lionel he could not account other than
justified. He were base indeed did he so much as contemplate such a way
of escape as that.
But if he did not contemplate it, Lionel did, and went in terror during
those days, a terror that kept him from sleep and so fostered the fever
in him that on the second day after that grim affair he had the look of
a ghost, hollow-eyed and gaunt. Sir Oliver remonstrated with him and in
such terms as to put heart into him anew. Moreover, there was other
news that day to allay his terrors: the Justices, at Truro had been
informed of the event and the accusation that was made; but they had
refused point-blank to take action in the matter. The reason of it was
that one of them was that same Master Anthony Baine who had witnessed
the affront offered Sir Oliver. He declared that whatever had happened
to Master Godolphin as a consequence was no more than he deserved, no
more than he had brought upon himself, and he gave it as his decision
that his conscience as a man of honour would not permit him to issue
any warrant to the constable.
Sir Oliver received this news from that other witness, the parson, who
himself had suffered such rudeness at Godolphin’s hands, and who, man
of the Gospel and of peace though he was, entirely supported the
Justice’s decision—or so he declared.
Sir Oliver thanked him, protesting that it was kind in him and in
Master Baine to take such a view, but for the rest avowing that he had
had no hand in the affair, however much appearances might point to him.
When, however, it came to his knowledge two days later that the whole
countryside was in a ferment against Master Baine as a consequence of
the attitude he had taken up, Sir Oliver summoned the parson and
straightway rode with him to the Justice’s house at Truro, there to
afford certain evidence which he had withheld from Rosamund and Sir
John Killigrew.
“Master Baine,” he said, when the three of them were closeted in that
gentleman’s library, “I have heard of the just and gallant
pronouncement you have made, and I am come to thank you and to express
my admiration of your courage.”
Master Baine bowed gravely. He was a man whom Nature had made grave.
“But since I would not that any evil consequences might attend your
action, I am come to lay proof before you that you have acted more
rightly even than you think, and that I am not the slayer.”
“You are not?” ejaculated Master Baine in amazement.
“Oh, I assure you I use no subterfuge with you, as you shall judge. I
have proof to show you, as I say; and I am come to do so now before
time might render it impossible. I do not desire it to be made public
just yet, Master Baine; but I wish you to draw up some such document as
would satisfy the courts at any future time should this matter be taken
further, as well it may.”
It was a shrewd plea. The proof that was not upon himself was upon
Lionel; but time would efface it, and if anon publication were made of
what he was now about to show, it would then be too late to look
elsewhere.
“I assure you, Sir Oliver, that had you killed him after what happened
I could not hold you guilty of having done more than punish a boorish
and arrogant offender.”
“I know sir. But it was not so. One of the pieces of evidence against
me—indeed the chief item—is that from Godolphin’s body to my door there
was a trail of blood.”
The other two grew tensely interested. The parson watched him with
unblinking eyes.
“Now it follows logically, I think, inevitably indeed, that the
murderer must have been wounded in the encounter. The blood could not
possibly have been the victim’s, therefore it must have been the
slayer’s. That the slayer was wounded indeed we know, since there was
blood upon Godolphin’s sword. Now, Master Baine, and you, Sir Andrew,
shall be witnesses that there is upon my body not so much as a scratch
of recent date. I will strip me here as naked as when first I had the
mischance to stray into this world, and you shall satisfy yourselves of
that. Thereafter I shall beg you, Master Baine, to indite the document
I have mentioned.” And he removed his doublet as he spoke. “But since I
will not give these louts who accuse me so much satisfaction, lest I
seem to go in fear of them, I must beg, sirs, that you will keep this
matter entirely private until such time as its publication may be
rendered necessary by events.”
They saw the reasonableness of his proposal, and they consented, still
entirely sceptical. But when they had made their examination they were
utterly dumbfounded to find all their notions entirely overset. Master
Baine, of course, drew up the required document, and signed and sealed
it, whilst Sir Andrew added his own signature and seal as witness
thereunto.
With this parchment that should be his buckler against any future need,
Sir Oliver rode home, uplifted. For once it were safe to do so, that
parchment should be spread before the eyes of Sir John Killigrew and
Rosamund, and all might yet be well.
CHAPTER VI.
JASPER LEIGH
If that Christmas was one of sorrow at Godolphin Court, it was nothing
less at Penarrow.
Sir Oliver was moody and silent in those days, given to sit for long
hours staring into the heart of the fire and repeating to himself again
and again every word of his interview with Rosamund, now in a mood of
bitter resentment against her for having so readily believed his guilt,
now in a gentler sorrowing humour which made full allowance for the
strength of the appearances against him.
His half-brother moved softly about the house now in a sort of
self-effacement, never daring to intrude upon Sir Oliver’s
abstractions. He was well acquainted with their cause. He knew what had
happened at Godolphin Court, knew that Rosamund had dismissed Sir
Oliver for all time, and his heart smote him to think that he should
leave his brother to bear this burden that rightly belonged to his own
shoulders.
The thing preyed so much upon his mind that in an expansive moment one
evening he gave it tongue.
“Noll,” he said, standing beside his brother’s chair in the firelit
gloom, and resting a hand upon his brother’s shoulder, “were it not
best to tell the truth?”
Sir Oliver looked up quickly, frowning. “Art mad?” quoth he. “The truth
would hang thee, Lal.”
“It might not. And in any case you are suffering something worse than
hanging. Oh, I have watched you every hour this past week, and I know
the pain that abides in you. It is not just.” And he insisted—“We had
best tell the truth.”
Sir Oliver smiled wistfully. He put out a hand and took his brother’s.
“’Tis noble in you to propose it, Lal.”
“Not half so noble as it is in you to bear all the suffering for a deed
that was my own.”
“Bah!” Sir Oliver shrugged impatiently; his glance fell away from
Lionel’s face and returned to the consideration of the fire. “After
all, I can throw off the burden when I will. Such knowledge as that
will enhearten a man through any trial.”
He had spoken in a harsh, cynical tone, and Lionel had turned cold at
his words. He stood a long while in silence there, turning them over in
his mind and considering the riddle which they presented him. He
thought of asking his brother bluntly for the key to it, for the
precise meaning of his disconcerting statement, but courage failed him.
He feared lest Sir Oliver should confirm his own dread interpretation
of it.
He drew away after a time, and soon after went to bed. For days
thereafter the phrase rankled in his mind—“I can throw off the burden
when I will.” Conviction grew upon him that Sir Oliver meant that he
was enheartened by the knowledge that by speaking if he choose he could
clear himself. That Sir Oliver would so speak he could not think.
Indeed, he was entirely assured that Sir Oliver was very far from
intending to throw off his burden. Yet he might come to change his
mind. The burden might grow too heavy, his longings for Rosamund too
clamorous, his grief at being in her eyes her brother’s murderer too
overwhelming.
Lionel’s soul shuddered to contemplate the consequences to himself. His
fears were self-revelatory. He realized how far from sincere had been
his proposal that they should tell the truth; he perceived that it had
been no more than the emotional outburst of the moment, a proposal
which if accepted he must most bitterly have repented. And then came
the reflection that if he were guilty of emotional outbursts that could
so outrageously play the traitor to his real desires, were not all men
subject to the same? Might not his brother, too, come to fall a prey to
one of those moments of mental storm when in a climax of despair he
would find his burden altogether too overwhelming and in rebellion cast
it from him?
Lionel sought to assure himself that his brother was a man of stern
fibres, a man who never lost control of himself. But against this he
would argue that what had happened in the past was no guarantee of what
might happen in the future; that a limit was set to the endurance of
every man be he never so strong, and that it was far from impossible
that the limit of Sir Oliver’s endurance might be reached in this
affair. If that happened in what case should he find himself? The
answer to this was a picture beyond his fortitude to contemplate. The
danger of his being sent to trial and made to suffer the extreme
penalty of the law would be far greater now than if he had spoken at
once. The tale he could then have told must have compelled some
attention, for he was accounted a man of unsmirched honour and his word
must carry some weight. But now none would believe him. They would
argue from his silence and from his having suffered his brother to be
unjustly accused that he was craven-hearted and dishonourable, and that
if he had acted thus it was because he had no good defence to offer for
his deed. Not only would he be irrevocably doomed, but he would be
doomed with ignominy, he would be scorned by all upright men and become
a thing of contempt over whose end not a tear would be shed.
Thus he came to the dread conclusion that in his endeavours to screen
himself he had but enmeshed himself the more inextricably. If Oliver
but spoke he was lost. And back he came to the question: What assurance
had he that Oliver would not speak?
The fear of this from occurring to him occasionally began to haunt him
day and night, and for all that the fever had left him and his wound
was entirely healed, he remained pale and thin and hollow-eyed. Indeed
the secret terror that was in his soul glared out of his eyes at every
moment. He grew nervous and would start up at the least sound, and he
went now in a perpetual mistrust of Oliver, which became manifest in a
curious petulance of which there were outbursts at odd times.
Coming one afternoon into the dining-room, which was ever Sir Oliver’s
favourite haunt in the mansion of Penarrow, Lionel found his
half-brother in that brooding attitude, elbow on knee and chin on palm,
staring into the fire. This was so habitual now in Sir Oliver that it
had begun to irritate Lionel’s tense nerves; it had come to seem to him
that in this listlessness was a studied tacit reproach aimed at
himself.
“Why do you sit ever thus over the fire like some old crone?” he
growled, voicing at last the irritability that so long had been growing
in him.
Sir Oliver looked round with mild surprise in his glance. Then from
Lionel his eyes travelled to the long windows.
“It rains,” he said.
“It was not your wont to be driven to the fireside by rain. But rain or
shine ’tis ever the same. You never go abroad.”
“To what end?” quoth Sir Oliver, with the same mildness, but a wrinkle
of bewilderment coming gradually between his dark brows. “Do you
suppose I love to meet lowering glances, to see heads approach one
another so that confidential curses of me may be muttered?”
“Ha!” cried Lionel, short and sharp, his sunken eyes blazing suddenly.
“It has come to this, then, that having voluntarily done this thing to
shield me you now reproach me with it.”
“I?” cried Sir Oliver, aghast.
“Your very words are a reproach. D’ye think I do not read the meaning
that lies under them?”
Sir Oliver rose slowly, staring at his brother. He shook his head and
smiled.
“Lal, Lal!” he said. “Your wound has left you disordered, boy. With
what have I reproached you? What was this hidden meaning of my words?
If you will read aright you will see it to be that to go abroad is to
involve myself in fresh quarrels, for my mood is become short, and I
will not brook sour looks and mutterings. That is all.”
He advanced and set his hands upon his brother’s shoulders. Holding him
so at arm’s length he considered him, what time Lionel drooped his head
and a slow flush overspread his cheeks. “Dear fool!” he said, and shook
him. “What ails you? You are pale and gaunt, and not yourself at all. I
have a notion. I’ll furnish me a ship and you shall sail with me to my
old hunting-grounds. There is life out yonder—life that will restore
your vigour and your zest, and perhaps mine as well. How say you, now?”
Lionel looked up, his eye brightening. Then a thought occurred to him;
a thought so mean that again the colour flooded into his cheeks, for he
was shamed by it. Yet it clung. If he sailed with Oliver, men would say
that he was a partner in the guilt attributed to his brother. He
knew—from more than one remark addressed him here or there, and left by
him uncontradicted—that the belief was abroad on the countryside that a
certain hostility was springing up between himself and Sir Oliver on
the score of that happening in Godolphin Park. His pale looks and
hollow eyes had contributed to the opinion that his brother’s sin was
weighing heavily upon him. He had ever been known for a gentle, kindly
lad, in all things the very opposite of the turbulent Sir Oliver, and
it was assumed that Sir Oliver in his present increasing harshness used
his brother ill because the lad would not condone his crime. A deal of
sympathy was consequently arising for Lionel and was being testified to
him on every hand. Were he to accede to such a proposal as Oliver now
made him, assuredly he must jeopardize all that.
He realized to the full the contemptible quality of his thought and
hated himself for conceiving it. But he could not shake off its
dominion. It was stronger than his will.
His brother observing this hesitation, and misreading it drew him to
the fireside and made him sit.
“Listen,” he said, as he dropped into the chair opposite. “There is a
fine ship standing in the road below, off Smithick. You’ll have seen
her. Her master is a desperate adventurer named Jasper Leigh, who is to
be found any afternoon in the alehouse at Penycumwick. I know him of
old, and he and his ship are to be acquired. He is ripe for any
venture, from scuttling Spaniards to trading in slaves, and so that the
price be high enough we may buy him body and soul. His is a stomach
that refuses nothing, so there be money in the venture. So here is ship
and master ready found; the rest I will provide—the crew, the
munitions, the armament, and by the end of March we shall see the
Lizard dropping astern. What do you say, Lal? ’Tis surely better than
to sit, moping here in this place of gloom.”
“I’ll...I’ll think of it,” said Lionel, but so listlessly that all Sir
Oliver’s quickening enthusiasm perished again at once and no more was
said of the venture.
But Lionel did not altogether reject the notion. If on the one hand he
was repelled by it, on the other he was attracted almost despite
himself. He went so far as to acquire the habit of riding daily over to
Penycumwick, and there he made the acquaintance of that hardy and
scarred adventurer of whom Sir Oliver had spoken, and listened to the
marvels the fellow had to tell—many of them too marvellous to be
true—of hazards upon distant seas.
But one day in early March Master Jasper Leigh had a tale of another
kind for him, news that dispelled from Lionel’s mind all interest in
the captain’s ventures on the Spanish Main. The seaman had followed the
departing Lionel to the door of the little inn and stood by his stirrup
after he had got to horse.
“A word in your ear, good Master Tressilian,” said he. “D’ye know what
is being concerted here against our brother?”
“Against my brother?”
“Ay—in the matter of the killing of Master Peter Godolphin last
Christmas. Seeing that the Justices would not move of theirselves, some
folk ha’ petitioned the Lieutenant of Cornwall to command them to grant
a warrant for Sir Oliver’s arrest on a charge o’ murder. But the
Justices ha’ refused to be driven by his lordship, answering that they
hold their office direct from the Queen and that in such a matter they
are answerable to none but her grace. And now I hear that a petition be
gone to London to the Queen herself, begging her to command her
Justices to perform their duty or quit their office.”
Lionel drew a sharp breath, and with dilating eyes regarded the
mariner, but made him no answer.
Jasper laid a long finger against his nose and his eyes grew cunning.
“I thought I’d warn you, sir, so as you may bid Sir Oliver look to
hisself. ’Tis a fine seaman and fine seamen be none so plentiful.”
Lionel drew his purse from his pocket and without so much as looking
into its contents dropped it into the seaman’s ready hand, with a
muttered word of thanks.
He rode home in terror almost. It was come. The blow was about to fall,
and his brother would at last be forced to speak. At Penarrow a fresh
shock awaited him. He learnt from old Nicholas that Sir Oliver was from
home, that he had ridden over to Godolphin Court.
The instant conclusion prompted by Lionel’s terror was that already the
news had reached Sir Oliver and that he had instantly taken action; for
he could not conceive that his brother should go to Godolphin Court
upon any other business.
But his fears on that score were very idle. Sir Oliver, unable longer
to endure the present state of things, had ridden over to lay before
Rosamund that proof with which he had taken care to furnish himself. He
could do so at last without any fear of hurting Lionel. His journey,
however, had been entirely fruitless. She had refused point-blank to
receive him, and for all that with a humility entirely foreign to him
he had induced a servant to return to her with a most urgent message,
yet he had been denied. He returned stricken to Penarrow, there to find
his brother awaiting him in a passion of impatience.
“Well?” Lionel greeted him. “What will you do now?”
Sir Oliver looked at him from under brows that scowled darkly in
reflection of his thoughts.
“Do now? Of what do you talk?” quoth he.
“Have you not heard?” And Lionel told him the news.
Sir Oliver stared long at him when he had done, then his lips tightened
and he smote his brow.
“So!” he cried. “Would that be why she refused to see me? Did she
conceive that I went perhaps to plead? Could she think that? Could
she?”
He crossed to the fireplace and stirred the logs with his boot angrily.
“Oh! ’Twere too unworthy. Yet of a certainty ’tis her doing, this.”
“What shall you do?” insisted Lionel, unable to repress the question
that was uppermost in his mind; and his voice shook.
“Do?” Sir Oliver looked at him over his shoulder. “Prick this bubble,
by heaven! Make an end of it for them, confound them and cover them
with shame.”
He said it roughly, angrily, and Lionel recoiled, deeming that
roughness and anger aimed at himself. He sank into a chair, his knees
loosened by his sudden fear. So it seemed that he had had more than
cause for his apprehensions. This brother of his who boasted such
affection for him was not equal to bearing this matter through. And yet
the thing was so unlike Oliver that a doubt still lingered with him.
“You... you will tell them the truth?” he said, in small, quavering
voice.
Sir Oliver turned and considered him more attentively.
“A God’s name, Lal, what’s in thy mind now?” he asked, almost roughly.
“Tell them the truth? Why, of course—but only as it concerns myself.
You’re not supposing that I shall tell them it was you? You’ll not be
accounting me capable of that?”
“What other way is there?”
Sir Oliver explained the matter. The explanation brought Lionel relief.
But this relief was ephemeral. Further reflection presented a new fear
to him. It came to him that if Sir Oliver cleared himself, of necessity
his own implication must follow. His terrors very swiftly magnified a
risk that in itself was so slender as to be entirely negligible. In his
eyes it ceased to be a risk; it became a certain and inevitable danger.
If Sir Oliver put forward this proof that the trail of blood had not
proceeded from himself, it must, thought Lionel, inevitably be
concluded that it was his own. As well might Sir Oliver tell them the
whole truth, for surely they could not fail to infer it. Thus he
reasoned in his terror, accounting himself lost irrevocably.
Had he but gone with those fears of his to his brother, or had he but
been able to abate them sufficiently to allow reason to prevail, he
must have been brought to understand how much further they carried him
than was at all justified by probability. Oliver would have shown him
this, would have told him that with the collapsing of the charge
against himself no fresh charge could be levelled against any there,
that no scrap of suspicion had ever attached to Lionel, or ever could.
But Lionel dared not seek his brother in this matter. In his heart he
was ashamed of his fears; in his heart he knew himself for a craven. He
realized to the full the hideousness of his selfishness, and yet, as
before, he was not strong enough to conquer it. In short, his love of
himself was greater than his love of his brother, or of twenty
brothers.
The morrow—a blustering day of late March found him again at that
alehouse at Penycumwick in the company of Jasper Leigh. A course had
occurred to him, as the only course now possible. Last night his
brother had muttered something of going to Killigrew with his proofs
since Rosamund refused to receive him. Through Killigrew he would reach
her, he had said; and he would yet see her on her knees craving his
pardon for the wrong she had done him, for the cruelty she had shown
him.
Lionel knew that Killigrew was absent from home just then; but he was
expected to return by Easter, and to Easter there was but a week.
Therefore he had little time in which to act, little time in which to
execute the project that had come into his mind. He cursed himself for
conceiving it, but held to it with all the strength of a weak nature.
Yet when he came to sit face to face with Jasper Leigh in that little
inn-parlour with the scrubbed table of plain deal between them, he
lacked the courage to set his proposal forth. They drank sherry sack
stiffly laced with brandy by Lionel’s suggestion, instead of the more
customary mulled ale. Yet not until he had consumed the best part of a
pint of it did Lionel feel himself heartened to broaching his loathsome
business. Through his head hummed the words his brother had said some
time ago when first the name of Jasper Leigh had passed between them—“a
desperate adventurer ripe for anything. So the price be high enough you
may buy him body and soul.” Money enough to buy Jasper Leigh was ready
to Lionel’s hand; but it was Sir Oliver’s money—the money that was
placed at Lionel’s disposal by his half-brother’s open-handed bounty.
And this money he was to employ for Oliver’s utter ruin! He cursed
himself for a filthy, contemptible hound; he cursed the foul fiend that
whispered such suggestions into his mind; he knew himself, despised
himself and reviled himself until he came to swear to be strong and to
go through with whatever might await him sooner than be guilty of such
a baseness; the next moment that same resolve would set him shuddering
again as he viewed the inevitable consequences that must attend it.
Suddenly the captain set him a question, very softly, that fired the
train and blew all his lingering self-resistance into shreds.
“You’ll ha’ borne my warning to Sir Oliver?” he asked, lowering his
voice so as not to be overheard by the vintner who was stirring beyond
the thin wooden partition.
Master Lionel nodded, nervously fingering the jewel in his ear, his
eyes shifting from their consideration of the seaman’s coarse,
weather-tanned and hairy countenance.
“I did,” he said. “But Sir Oliver is headstrong. He will not stir.”
“Will he not?” The captain stroked his bushy red beard and cursed
profusely and horribly after the fashion of the sea. “Od’s wounds! He’s
very like to swing if he bides him here.”
“Ay,” said Lionel, “if he bides.” He felt his mouth turn dry as he
spoke; his heart thudded, but its thuds were softened by a slight
insensibility which the liquor had produced in him.
He uttered the words in so curious a tone that the sailor’s dark eyes
peered at him from under his heavy sandy eyebrows. There was alert
inquiry in that glance. Master Lionel got up suddenly.
“Let us take a turn outside, captain,” said he.
The captain’s eyes narrowed. He scented business. There was something
plaguily odd about this young gentleman’s manner. He tossed off the
remains of his sack, slapped down the pot and rose.
“Your servant, Master Tressilian,” said he.
Outside our gentleman untethered his horse from the iron ring to which
he had attached the bridle; leading his horse he turned seaward and
strode down the road that wound along the estuary towards Smithick.
A sharp breeze from the north was whipping the water into white peaks
of foam; the sky was of a hard brightness and the sun shone
brilliantly. The tide was running out, and the rock in the very neck of
the haven was thrusting its black crest above the water. A cable’s
length this side of it rode the black hull and naked spars of the
Swallow—Captain Leigh’s ship.
Lionel stepped along in silence, very gloomy and pensive, hesitating
even now. And the crafty mariner reading this hesitation, and anxious
to conquer it for the sake of such profit as he conceived might lie in
the proposal which he scented, paved the way for him at last.
“I think that ye’ll have some matter to propose to me.” said he slyly.
“Out with it, sir, for there never was a man more ready to serve you.”
“The fact is,” said Lionel, watching the other’s face with a sidelong
glance, “I am in a difficult position, Master Leigh.”
“I’ve been in a many,” laughed the captain, “but never yet in one
through which I could not win. Strip forth your own, and haply I can do
as much for you as I am wont to do for myself.”
“Why, it is this wise,” said the other. “My brother will assuredly hang
as you have said if he bides him here. He is lost if they bring him to
trial. And in that case, faith, I am lost too. It dishonours a man’s
family to have a member of it hanged. ’Tis a horrible thing to have
happen.”
“Indeed, indeed!” the sailor agreed encouragingly.
“I would abstract him from this,” pursued Lionel, and at the same time
cursed the foul fiend that prompted him such specious words to cloak
his villainy. “I would abstract him from it, and yet ’tis against my
conscience that he should go unpunished for I swear to you, Master
Leigh, that I abhor the deed—a cowardly, murderous deed!”
“Ah!” said the captain. And lest that grim ejaculation should check his
gentleman he made haste to add—“To be sure! To be sure!”
Master Lionel stopped and faced the other squarely, his shoulders to
his horse. They were quite alone in as lonely a spot as any conspirator
could desire. Behind him stretched the empty beach, ahead of him the
ruddy cliffs that rise gently to the wooded heights of Arwenack.
“I’ll be quite plain and open with you, Master Leigh. Peter Godolphin
was my friend. Sir Oliver is no more than my half-brother. I would give
a deal to the man who would abstract Sir Oliver secretly from the doom
that hangs over him, and yet do the thing in such a way that Sir Oliver
should not thereby escape the punishment he deserves.”
It was strange, he thought, even as he said it, that he could bring his
lips so glibly to utter words that his heart detested.
The captain looked grim. He laid a finger upon Master Lionel’s velvet
doublet in line with that false heart of his.
“I am your man,” said he. “But the risk is great. Yet ye say that ye’ld
give a deal....”
“Yourself shall name the price,” said Lionel quickly, his eyes burning
feverishly, his cheeks white.
“Oh I can contrive it, never fear,” said the captain. “I know to a
nicety what you require. How say you now: if I was to carry him
overseas to the plantations where they lack toilers of just such thews
as his?” He lowered his voice and spoke with some slight hesitation,
fearing that he proposed perhaps more than his prospective employer
might desire.
“He might return,” was the answer that dispelled all doubts on that
score.
“Ah!” said the skipper. “What o’ the Barbary rovers, then! They lack
slaves and are ever ready to trade, though they be niggardly payers. I
never heard of none that returned once they had him safe aboard their
galleys. I ha’ done some trading with them, bartering human freights
for spices and eastern carpets and the like.”
Master Lionel breathed hard. “’Tis a horrible fate, is’t not?”
The captain stroked his beard. “Yet ’tis the only really safe bestowal,
and when all is said ’tis not so horrible as hanging, and certainly
less dishonouring to a man’s kin. Ye’ld be serving Sir Oliver and
yourself.”
“’Tis so, tis so,” cried Master Lionel almost fiercely. “And the
price?”
The seaman shifted on his short, sturdy legs, and his face grew
pensive. “A hundred pound?” he suggested tentatively.
“Done with you for a hundred pounds,” was the prompt answer—so prompt
that Captain Leigh realized he had driven a fool’s bargain which it was
incumbent upon him to amend.
“That is, a hundred pound for myself,” he corrected slowly. “Then there
be the crew to reckon for—to keep their counsel and lend a hand; ’twill
mean another hundred at the least.”
Master Lionel considered a moment. “It is more than I can lay my hands
on at short notice. But, look you, you shall have a hundred and fifty
pounds in coin and the balance in jewels. You shall not be the loser in
that, I promise you. And when you come again, and bring me word that
all is done as you now undertake there shall be the like again.”
Upon that the bargain was settled. And when Lionel came to talk of ways
and means he found that he had allied himself to a man who understood
his business thoroughly. All the assistance that the skipper asked was
that Master Lionel should lure his gentleman to some concerted spot
conveniently near the waterside. There Leigh would have a boat and his
men in readiness, and the rest might very safely be left to him.
In a flash Lionel bethought him of the proper place for this. He swung
round, and pointed across the water to Trefusis Point and the grey pile
of Godolphin Court all bathed in sunshine now.
“Yonder, at Trefusis Point in the shadow of Godolphin Court at eight
to-morrow night, when there will be no moon. I’ll see that he is there.
But on your life do not miss him.”
“Trust me,” said Master Leigh. “And the money?”
“When you have him safely aboard come to me at Penarrow,” he replied,
which showed that after all he did not trust Master Leigh any further
than he was compelled.
The captain was quite satisfied. For should his gentleman fail to
disburse he could always return Sir Oliver to shore.
On that they parted. Lionel mounted and rode away, whilst Master Leigh
made a trumpet of his hands and hallooed to the ship.
As he stood waiting for the boat that came off to fetch him, a smile
slowly overspread the adventurer’s rugged face. Had Master Lionel seen
it he might have asked himself how far it was safe to drive such
bargains with a rogue who kept faith only in so far as it was
profitable. And in this matter Master Leigh saw a way to break faith
with profit. He had no conscience, but he loved as all rogues love to
turn the tables upon a superior rogue. He would play Master Lionel most
finely, most poetically false; and he found a deal to chuckle over in
the contemplation of it.
CHAPTER VII.
TREPANNED
Master Lionel was absent most of the following day from Penarrow, upon
a pretext of making certain purchases in Truro. It would be half-past
seven when he returned; and as he entered he met Sir Oliver in the
hall.
“I have a message for you from Godolphin Court,” he announced, and saw
his brother stiffen and his face change colour. “A boy met me at the
gates and bade me tell you that Mistress Rosamund desires a word with
you forthwith.”
Sir Oliver’s heart almost stopped, then went off at a gallop. She asked
for him! She had softened perhaps from her yesterday’s relentlessness.
She would consent at last to see him!
“Be thou blessed for these good tidings!” he answered on a note of high
excitement. “I go at once.” And on the instant he departed. Such was
his eagerness, indeed, that under the hot spur of it he did not even
stay to fetch that parchment which was to be his unanswerable advocate.
The omission was momentous.
Master Lionel said no word as his brother swept out. He shrank back a
little into the shadows. He was white to the lips and felt as he would
stifle. As the door closed he moved suddenly. He sprang to follow Sir
Oliver. Conscience cried out to him that he could not do this thing.
But Fear was swift to answer that outcry. Unless he permitted what was
planned to take its course, his life might pay the penalty.
He turned, and lurched into the dining-room upon legs that trembled.
He found the table set for supper as on that other night when he had
staggered in with a wound in his side to be cared for and sheltered by
Sir Oliver. He did not approach the table; he crossed to the fire, and
sat down there holding out his hands to the blaze. He was very cold and
could not still his trembling. His very teeth chattered.
Nicholas came in to know if he would sup. He answered unsteadily that
despite the lateness of the hour he would await Sir Oliver’s return.
“Is Sir Oliver abroad?” quoth the servant in surprise.
“He went out a moment since, I know not whither,” replied Lionel. “But
since he has not supped he is not like to be long absent.”
Upon that he dismissed the servant, and sat huddled there, a prey to
mental tortures which were not to be repressed. His mind would turn
upon naught but the steadfast, unwavering affection of which Sir Oliver
ever had been prodigal towards him. In this very matter of Peter
Godolphin’s death, what sacrifices had not Sir Oliver made to shield
him? From so much love and self-sacrifice in the past he inclined to
argue now that not even in extreme peril would his brother betray him.
And then that bad streak of fear which made a villain of him reminded
him that to argue thus was to argue upon supposition, that it would be
perilous to trust such an assumption; that if, after all, Sir Oliver
should fail him in the crucial test, then was he lost indeed.
When all is said, a man’s final judgment of his fellows must be based
upon his knowledge of himself; and Lionel, knowing himself incapable of
any such sacrifice for Sir Oliver, could not believe Sir Oliver capable
of persisting in such a sacrifice as future events might impose. He
reverted to those words Sir Oliver had uttered in that very room two
nights ago, and more firmly than ever he concluded that they could have
but one meaning.
Then came doubt, and, finally, assurance of another sort, assurance
that this was not so and that he knew it; assurance that he lied to
himself, seeking to condone the thing he did. He took his head in his
hands and groaned loud. He was a villain, a black-hearted, soulless
villain! He reviled himself again. There came a moment when he rose
shuddering, resolved even in this eleventh hour to go after his brother
and save him from the doom that awaited him out yonder in the night.
But again that resolve was withered by the breath of selfish fear.
Limply he resumed his seat, and his thoughts took a fresh turn. They
considered now those matters which had engaged them on that day when
Sir Oliver had ridden to Arwenack to claim satisfaction of Sir John
Killigrew. He realized again that Oliver being removed, what he now
enjoyed by his brother’s bounty he would enjoy henceforth in his own
unquestioned right. The reflection brought him a certain consolation.
If he must suffer for his villainy, at least there would be
compensations.
The clock over the stables chimed the hour of eight. Master Lionel
shrank back in his chair at the sound. The thing would be doing even
now. In his mind he saw it all—saw his brother come running in his
eagerness to the gates of Godolphin Court, and then dark forms resolve
themselves from the surrounding darkness and fall silently upon him. He
saw him struggling a moment on the ground, then, bound hand and foot, a
gag thrust into his mouth, he beheld him in fancy borne swiftly down
the slope to the beach and so to the waiting boat.
Another half-hour sat he there. The thing was done by now, and this
assurance seemed to quiet him a little.
Then came Nicholas again to babble of some possible mischance having
overtaken his master.
“What mischance should have overtaken him?” growled Lionel, as if in
scorn of the idea.
“I pray none indeed,” replied the servant. “But Sir Oliver lacks not
for enemies nowadays, and ’tis scarce zafe for he to be abroad after
dark.”
Master Lionel dismissed the notion contemptuously. For pretence’s sake
he announced that he would wait no longer, whereupon Nicholas brought
in his supper, and left him again to go and linger about the door,
looking out into the night and listening for his master’s return. He
paid a visit to the stables, and knew that Sir Oliver had gone forth
afoot.
Meanwhile Master Lionel must make pretence of eating though actual
eating must have choked him. He smeared his platter, broke food, and
avidly drank a bumper of claret. Then he, too, feigned a growing
anxiety and went to join Nicholas. Thus they spent the weary night,
watching for the return of one who Master Lionel knew would return no
more.
At dawn they roused the servants and sent them to scour the countryside
and put the news of Sir Oliver’s disappearance abroad. Lionel himself
rode out to Arwenack to ask Sir John Killigrew bluntly if he knew aught
of this matter.
Sir John showed a startled face, but swore readily enough that he had
not so much as seen Sir Oliver for days. He was gentle with Lionel,
whom he liked, as everybody liked him. The lad was so mild and kindly
in his ways, so vastly different from his arrogant overbearing brother,
that his virtues shone the more brightly by that contrast.
“I confess it is natural you should come to me,” said Sir John. “But,
my word on it, I have no knowledge of him. It is not my way to beset my
enemies in the dark.”
“Indeed, indeed, Sir John, I had not supposed it in my heart,” replied
the afflicted Lionel. “Forgive me that I should have come to ask a
question so unworthy. Set it down to my distracted state. I have not
been the same man these months, I think, since that happening in
Godolphin Park. The thing has preyed upon my mind. It is a fearsome
burden to know your own brother—though I thank God he is no more than
my half-brother—guilty of so foul a deed.”
“How?” cried Killigrew, amazed. “You say that? You believed it
yourself?”
Master Lionel looked confused, a look which Sir John entirely
misunderstood and interpreted entirely in the young man’s favour. And
it was thus and in that moment that was sown the generous seed of the
friendship that was to spring up between these two men, its roots
fertilized by Sir John’s pity that one so gentle-natured, so honest,
and so upright should be cursed with so villainous a brother.
“I see, I see,” he said. And he sighed. “You know that we are daily
expecting an order from the Queen to her Justices to take the action
which hitherto they have refused against your... against Sir Oliver.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “D’ye think Sir Oliver had news of this?”
At once Master Lionel saw the drift of what was in the other’s mind.
“I know it,” he replied. “Myself I bore it him. But why do you ask?”
“Does it not help us perhaps to understand and explain Sir Oliver’s
disappearance? God lack! Surely, knowing that, he were a fool to have
tarried here, for he would hang beyond all doubt did he stay for the
coming of her grace’s messenger.”
“My God!” said Lionel, staring. “You... you think he is fled, then?”
Sir John shrugged. “What else is to be thought?”
Lionel hung his head. “What else, indeed?” said he, and took his leave
like a man overwrought, as indeed he was. He had never considered that
so obvious a conclusion must follow upon his work so fully to explain
the happening and to set at rest any doubt concerning it.
He returned to Penarrow, and bluntly told Nicholas what Sir John
suspected and what he feared himself must be the true reason of Sir
Oliver’s disappearance. The servant, however, was none so easy to
convince.
“But do ee believe that he done it?” cried Nicholas. “Do ee believe it,
Master Lionel?” There was reproach amounting to horror in the servant’s
voice.
“God help me, what else can I believe now that he is fled.”
Nicholas sidled up to him with tightened lips. He set two gnarled
fingers on the young man’s arm.
“He’m not fled, Master Lionel,” he announced with grim impressiveness.
“He’m never a turntail. Sir Oliver he don’t fear neither man nor devil,
and if so be him had killed Master Godolphin, he’d never ha’ denied it.
Don’t ee believe Sir John Killigrew. Sir John ever hated he.”
But in all that countryside the servant was the only one to hold this
view. If a doubt had lingered anywhere of Sir Oliver’s guilt, that
doubt was now dispelled by this flight of his before the approach of
the expected orders from the Queen.
Later that day came Captain Leigh to Penarrow inquiring for Sir Oliver.
Nicholas brought word of his presence and his inquiry to Master Lionel,
who bade him be admitted.
The thick-set little seaman rolled in on his bowed legs, and leered at
his employer when they were alone.
“He’s snug and safe aboard,” he announced. “The thing were done as
clean as peeling an apple, and as quiet.”
“Why did you ask for him?” quoth Master Lionel.
“Why?” Jasper leered again. “My business was with him. There was some
talk between us of him going a voyage with me. I’ve heard the gossip
over at Smithick. This will fit in with it.” He laid that finger of his
to his nose. “Trust me to help a sound tale along. ’T were a clumsy
business to come here asking for you, sir. Ye’ll know now how to
account for my visit.”
Lionel paid him the price agreed and dismissed him upon receiving the
assurance that the Swallow would put to sea upon the next tide.
When it became known that Sir Oliver had been in treaty with Master
Leigh for a passage overseas, and that it was but on that account that
Master Leigh had tarried in that haven, even Nicholas began to doubt.
Gradually Lionel recovered his tranquillity as the days flowed on. What
was done was done, and, in any case, being now beyond recall, there was
no profit in repining. He never knew how fortune aided him, as fortune
will sometimes aid a villain. The royal pour-suivants arrived some six
days later, and Master Baine was the recipient of a curt summons to
render himself to London, there to account for his breach of trust in
having refused to perform his sworn duty. Had Sir Andrew Flack but
survived the chill that had carried him off a month ago, Master Justice
Baine would have made short work of the accusation lodged against him.
As it was, when he urged the positive knowledge he possessed, and told
them how he had made the examination to which Sir Oliver had
voluntarily submitted, his single word carried no slightest conviction.
Not for a moment was it supposed that this was aught but the subterfuge
of one who had been lax in his duty and who sought to save himself from
the consequences of that laxity. And the fact that he cited as his
fellow-witness a gentleman now deceased but served to confirm his
judges in this opinion. He was deposed from his office and subjected to
a heavy fine, and there the matter ended, for the hue-and-cry that was
afoot entirely failed to discover any trace of the missing Sir Oliver.
For Master Lionel a new existence set in from that day. Looked upon as
one in danger of suffering for his brother’s sins, the countryside
determined to help him as far as possible to bear his burden. Great
stress was laid upon the fact that after all he was no more than Sir
Oliver’s half-brother; some there were who would have carried their
kindness to the lengths of suggesting that perhaps he was not even
that, and that it was but natural that Ralph Tressilian’s second wife
should have repaid her husband in kind for his outrageous infidelities.
This movement of sympathy was led by Sir John Killigrew, and it spread
in so rapid and marked a manner that very soon Master Lionel was almost
persuaded that it was no more than he deserved, and he began to sun
himself in the favour of a countryside that hitherto had shown little
but hostility for men of the Tressilian blood.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPANIARD
The Swallow, having passed through a gale in the Bay of Biscay—a gale
which she weathered like the surprisingly steady old tub she
was—rounded Cape Finisterre and so emerged from tempest into peace,
from leaden skies and mountainous seas into a sunny azure calm. It was
like a sudden transition from winter into spring, and she ran along
now, close hauled to the soft easterly breeze, with a gentle list to
port.
It had never been Master Leigh’s intent to have got so far as this
without coming to an understanding with his prisoner. But the wind had
been stronger than his intentions, and he had been compelled to run
before it and to head to southward until its fury should abate. Thus it
fell out—and all marvellously to Master Lionel’s advantage, as you
shall see—that the skipper was forced to wait until they stood along
the coast of Portugal—but well out to sea, for the coast of Portugal
was none too healthy just then to English seamen—before commanding Sir
Oliver to be haled into his presence.
In the cramped quarters of the cabin in the poop of the little vessel
sat her captain at a greasy table, over which a lamp was swinging
faintly to the gentle heave of the ship. He was smoking a foul pipe,
whose fumes hung heavily upon the air of that little chamber, and there
was a bottle of Nantes at his elbow.
To him, sitting thus in state, was Sir Oliver introduced—his wrists
still pinioned behind him. He was haggard and hollow-eyed, and he
carried a week’s growth of beard on his chin. Also his garments were
still in disorder from the struggle he had made when taken, and from
the fact that he had been compelled to lie in them ever since.
Since his height was such that it was impossible for him to stand
upright in that low-ceilinged cabin, a stool was thrust forward for him
by one of the ruffians of Leigh’s crew who had haled him from his
confinement beneath the hatchway.
He sat down quite listlessly, and stared vacantly at the skipper.
Master Leigh was somewhat discomposed by this odd calm when he had
looked for angry outbursts. He dismissed the two seamen who fetched Sir
Oliver, and when they had departed and closed the cabin door he
addressed his captive.
“Sir Oliver,” said he, stroking his red beard, “ye’ve been most foully
abused.”
The sunshine filtered through one of the horn windows and beat full
upon Sir Oliver’s expressionless face.
“It was not necessary, you knave, to bring me hither to tell me so
much.” he answered.
“Quite so,” said Master Leigh. “But I have something more to add. Ye’ll
be thinking that I ha’ done you a disservice. There ye wrong me.
Through me you are brought to know true friends from secret enemies;
henceforward ye’ll know which to trust and which to mistrust.”
Sir Oliver seemed to rouse himself a little from his passivity,
stimulated despite himself by the impudence of this rogue. He stretched
a leg and smiled sourly.
“You’ll end by telling me that I am in your debt,” said he.
“You’ll end by saying so yourself,” the captain assured him. “D’ye know
what I was bidden do with you?”
“Faith, I neither know nor care,” was the surprising answer, wearily
delivered. “If it is for my entertainment that you propose to tell me,
I beg you’ll spare yourself the trouble.”
It was not an answer that helped the captain. He pulled at his pipe a
moment.
“I was bidden,” said he presently, “to carry you to Barbary and sell
you there into the service of the Moors. That I might serve you, I made
believe to accept this task.”
“God’s death!” swore Sir Oliver. “You carry make-believe to an odd
length.”
“The weather has been against me. It were no intention o’ mine to ha’
come so far south with you. But we’ve been driven by the gale. That is
overpast, and so that ye’ll promise to bear no plaint against me, and
to make good some of the loss I’ll make by going out of my course, and
missing a cargo that I wot of, I’ll put about and fetch you home again
within a week.”
Sir Oliver looked at him and smiled grimly. “Now what a rogue are you
that can keep faith with none!” he cried. “First you take money to
carry me off; and then you bid me pay you to carry me back again.”
“Ye wrong me, sir, I vow ye do! I can keep faith when honest men employ
me, and ye should know it, Sir Oliver. But who keeps faith with rogues
is a fool—and that I am not, as ye should also know. I ha’ done this
thing that a rogue might be revealed to you and thwarted, as well as
that I might make some little profit out of this ship o’ mine. I am
frank with ye, Sir Oliver. I ha’ had some two hundred pounds in money
and trinkets from your brother. Give me the like and....”
But now of a sudden Sir Oliver’s listlessness was all dispelled. It
fell from him like a cloak, and he sat forward, wide awake and with
some show of anger even.
“How do you say?” he cried, on a sharp, high note.
The captain stared at him, his pipe neglected. “I say that if so be as
ye’ll pay me the same sum which your brother paid me to carry you
off....”
“My brother?” roared the knight. “Do you say my brother?”
“I said your brother.”
“Master Lionel?” the other demanded still.
“What other brothers have you?” quoth Master Leigh.
There fell a pause and Sir Oliver looked straight before him, his head
sunken a little between his shoulders. “Let me understand,” he said at
length. “Do you say that my brother Lionel paid you money to carry me
off—in short, that my presence aboard this foul hulk of yours is due to
him?”
“Whom else had ye suspected? Or did ye think that I did it for my own
personal diversion?”
“Answer me,” bellowed Sir Oliver, writhing in his bonds.
“I ha’ answered you more than once already. Still, I tell you once
again, since ye are slow to understand it, that I was paid a matter of
two hundred pound by your brother, Master Lionel Tressilian, to carry
you off to Barbary and there sell you for a slave. Is that plain to
you?”
“As plain as it is false. You lie, you dog!”
“Softly, softly!” quoth Master Leigh, good-humouredly.
“I say you lie!”
Master Leigh considered him a moment. “Sets the wind so!” said he at
length, and without another word he rose and went to a sea-chest ranged
against the wooden wall of the cabin. He opened it and took thence a
leather bag. From this he produced a handful of jewels. He thrust them
under Sir Oliver’s nose. “Haply,” said he, “ye’ll be acquainted with
some of them. They was given me to make up the sum since your brother
had not the whole two hundred pound in coin. Take a look at them.”
Sir Oliver recognized a ring and a long pear-shaped pearl earring that
had been his brother’s; he recognized a medallion that he himself had
given Lionel two years ago; and so, one by one, he recognized every
trinket placed before him.
His head drooped to his breast, and he sat thus awhile like a man
stunned. “My God!” he groaned miserably, at last. “Who, then, is left
to me! Lionel too! Lionel!” A sob shook the great frame. Two tears
slowly trickled down that haggard face and were lost in the stubble of
beard upon his chin. “I am accursed!” he said.
Never without such evidence could he have believed this thing. From the
moment that he was beset outside the gates of Godolphin Court he had
conceived it to be the work of Rosamund, and his listlessness was
begotten of the thought that she could have suffered conviction of his
guilt and her hatred of him to urge her to such lengths as these. Never
for an instant had he doubted the message delivered him by Lionel that
it was Mistress Rosamund who summoned him. And just as he believed
himself to be going to Godolphin Court in answer to her summons, so did
he conclude that the happening there was the real matter to which she
had bidden him, a thing done by her contriving, her answer to his
attempt on the previous day to gain speech with her, her manner of
ensuring that such an impertinence should never be repeated.
This conviction had been gall and wormwood to him; it had drugged his
very senses, reducing him to a listless indifference to any fate that
might be reserved him. Yet it had not been so bitter a draught as this
present revelation. After all, in her case there were some grounds for
the hatred that had come to take the place of her erstwhile love. But
in Lionel’s what grounds were possible? What motives could exist for
such an action as this, other than a monstrous, a loathly egoism which
desired perhaps to ensure that the blame for the death of Peter
Godolphin should not be shifted from the shoulders that were unjustly
bearing it, and the accursed desire to profit by the removal of the man
who had been brother, father and all else to him? He shuddered in sheer
horror. It was incredible, and yet beyond a doubt it was true. For all
the love which he had showered upon Lionel, for all the sacrifices of
self which he had made to shield him, this was Lionel’s return. Were
all the world against him he still must have believed Lionel true to
him, and in that belief must have been enheartened a little. And
now...His sense of loneliness, of utter destitution overwhelmed him.
Then slowly of his sorrow resentment was begotten, and being begotten
it grew rapidly until it filled his mind and whelmed in its turn all
else. He threw back his great head, and his bloodshot, gleaming eyes
fastened upon Captain Leigh, who seated now upon the sea-chest was
quietly observing him and waiting patiently until he should recover the
wits which this revelation had scattered.
“Master Leigh,” said he, “what is your price to carry me home again to
England?”
“Why, Sir Oliver,” said he, “I think the price I was paid to carry you
off would be a fair one. The one would wipe out t’other as it were.”
“You shall have twice the sum when you land me on Trefusis Point
again,” was the instant answer.
The captain’s little eyes blinked and his shaggy red eyebrows came
together in a frown. Here was too speedy an acquiescence. There must be
guile behind it, or he knew naught of the ways of men.
“What mischief are ye brooding?” he sneered.
“Mischief, man? To you?” Sir Oliver laughed hoarsely. “God’s light,
knave, d’ye think I consider you in this matter, or d’ye think I’ve
room in my mind for such petty resentments together with that other?”
It was the truth. So absolute was the bitter sway of his anger against
Lionel that he could give no thought to this rascally seaman’s share in
the adventure.
“Will ye give me your word for that?”
“My word? Pshaw, man! I have given it already. I swear that you shall
be paid the sum I’ve named the moment you set me ashore again in
England. Is that enough for you? Then cut me these bonds, and let us
make an end of my present condition.”
“Faith, I am glad to deal with so sensible a man! Ye take it in the
proper spirit. Ye see that what I ha’ done I ha’ but done in the way of
my calling, that I am but a tool, and that what blame there be belongs
to them which hired me to this deed.”
“Aye, ye’re but a tool—a dirty tool, whetted with gold; no more. ’Tis
admitted. Cut me these bonds, a God’s name! I’m weary o’ being trussed
like a capon.”
The captain drew his knife, crossed to Sir Oliver’s side and slashed
his bonds away without further word. Sir Oliver stood up so suddenly
that he smote his head against the low ceiling of the cabin, and so sat
down again at once. And in that moment from without and above there
came a cry which sent the skipper to the cabin door. He flung it open,
and so let out the smoke and let in the sunshine. He passed out on to
the poop-deck, and Sir Oliver—conceiving himself at liberty to do
so—followed him.
In the waist below a little knot of shaggy seamen were crowding to the
larboard bulwarks, looking out to sea; on the forecastle there was
another similar assembly, all staring intently ahead and towards the
land. They were off Cape Roca at the time, and when Captain Leigh saw
by how much they had lessened their distance from shore since last he
had conned the ship, he swore ferociously at his mate who had charge of
the wheel. Ahead of them away on their larboard bow and in line with
the mouth of the Tagus from which she had issued—and where not a doubt
but she had been lying in wait for such stray craft as this—came a
great tall-masted ship, equipped with top-gallants, running wellnigh
before the wind with every foot of canvas spread.
Close-hauled as was the Swallow and with her top-sails and mizzen
reefed she was not making more than one knot to the Spaniard’s five—for
that she was a Spaniard was beyond all doubt judging by the haven
whence she issued.
“Luff alee!” bawled the skipper, and he sprang to the wheel, thrusting
the mate aside with a blow of his elbow that almost sent him sprawling.
“’Twas yourself set the course,” the fellow protested.
“Thou lubberly fool,” roared the skipper. “I bade thee keep the same
distance from shore. If the land comes jutting out to meet us, are we
to keep straight on until we pile her up?” He spun the wheel round in
his hands, and turned her down the wind. Then he relinquished the helm
to the mate again. “Hold her thus,” he commanded, and bellowing orders
as he went, he heaved himself down the companion to see them executed.
Men sprang to the ratlines to obey him, and went swarming aloft to let
out the reefs of the topsails; others ran astern to do the like by the
mizzen and soon they had her leaping and plunging through the green
water with every sheet unfurled, racing straight out to sea.
From the poop Sir Oliver watched the Spaniard. He saw her veer a point
or so to starboard, heading straight to intercept them, and he observed
that although this manceuvre brought her fully a point nearer to the
wind than the Swallow, yet, equipped as she was with half as much
canvas again as Captain Leigh’s piratical craft, she was gaining
steadily upon them none the less.
The skipper came back to the poop, and stood there moodily watching
that other ship’s approach, cursing himself for having sailed into such
a trap, and cursing his mate more fervently still.
Sir Oliver meanwhile took stock of so much of the Swallow’s armament as
was visible and wondered what like were those on the main-deck below.
He dropped a question on that score to the captain, dispassionately, as
though he were no more than an indifferently interested spectator, and
with never a thought to his position aboard.
“Should I be racing her afore the Wind if I as properly equipped?”
growled Leigh. “Am I the man to run before a Spaniard? As it is I do no
more than lure her well away from land.”
Sir Oliver understood, and was silent thereafter. He observed a bo’sun
and his mates staggering in the waist under loads of cutlasses and
small arms which they stacked in a rack about the mainmast. Then the
gunner, a swarthy, massive fellow, stark to the waist with a faded
scarf tied turban-wise about his head, leapt up the companion to the
brass carronade on the larboard quarter, followed by a couple of his
men.
Master Leigh called up the bo’sun, bade him take the wheel, and
dispatched the mate forward to the forecastle, where another gun was
being prepared for action.
Thereafter followed a spell of racing, the Spaniard ever lessening the
distance between them, and the land dropping astern until it was no
more than a hazy line above the shimmering sea. Suddenly from the
Spaniard appeared a little cloud of white smoke, and the boom of a gun
followed, and after it came a splash a cable’s length ahead of the
Swallow’s bows.
Linstock in hand the brawny gunner on the poop stood ready to answer
them when the word should be given. From below came the gunner’s mate
to report himself ready for action on the main-deck and to receive his
orders.
Came another shot from the Spaniard, again across the bows of the
Swallow.
“’Tis a clear invitation to heave to,” said Sir Oliver.
The skipper snarled in his fiery beard. “She has a longer range than
most Spaniards,” said he. “But I’ll not waste powder yet for all that.
We’ve none to spare.”
Scarcely had he spoken when a third shot boomed. There was a
splintering crash overhead followed by a sough and a thud as the
maintopmast came hurtling to the deck and in its fall stretched a
couple of men in death. Battle was joined, it seemed. Yet Captain Leigh
did nothing in a hurry.
“Hold there!” he roared to the gunner who swung his linstock at that
moment in preparation.
She was losing way as a result of that curtailment of her mainmast, and
the Spaniard came on swiftly now. At last the skipper accounted her
near enough, and gave the word with an oath. The Swallow fired her
first and last shot in that encounter. After the deafening thunder of
it and through the cloud of suffocating smoke, Sir Oliver saw the high
forecastle of the Spaniard rent open.
Master Leigh was cursing his gunner for having aimed too high. Then he
signalled to the mate to fire the culverin of which he had charge. That
second shot was to be the signal for the whole broadside from the
main-deck below. But the Spaniard anticipated them. Even as the skipper
of the Swallow signalled the whole side of the Spaniard burst into
flame and smoke.
The Swallow staggered under the blow, recovered an instant, then listed
ominously to larboard.
“Hell!” roared Leigh. “She’s bilging!” and Sir Oliver saw the Spaniard
standing off again, as if satisfied with what she had done. The mate’s
gun was never fired, nor was the broadside from below. Indeed that
sudden list had set the muzzles pointing to the sea; within three
minutes of it they were on a level with the water. The Swallow had
received her death-blow, and she was settling down.
Satisfied that she could do no further harm, the Spaniard luffed and
hove to, awaiting the obvious result and intent upon picking up what
slaves she could to man the galleys of his Catholic Majesty on the
Mediterranean.
Thus the fate intended Sir Oliver by Lionel was to be fulfilled; and it
was to be shared by Master Leigh himself, which had not been at all in
that venal fellow’s reckoning.
PART II.
SAKR-EL-BAHR
CHAPTER I.
THE CAPTIVE
Sakr-el-Bahr, the hawk of the sea, the scourge of the Mediterranean and
the terror of Christian Spain, lay prone on the heights of Cape
Spartel.
Above him on the crest of the cliff ran the dark green line of the
orange groves of Araish—the reputed Garden of the Hesperides of the
ancients, where the golden apples grew. A mile or so to eastward were
dotted the huts and tents of a Bedouin encampment on the fertile
emerald pasture-land that spread away, as far as eye could range,
towards Ceuta. Nearer, astride of a grey rock an almost naked goatherd,
a lithe brown stripling with a cord of camel-hair about his shaven
head, intermittently made melancholy and unmelodious sounds upon a reed
pipe. From somewhere in the blue vault of heaven overhead came the
joyous trilling of a lark, from below the silken rustling of the
tideless sea.
Sakr-el-Bahr lay prone upon a cloak of woven camel-hair amid
luxuriating fern and samphire, on the very edge of the shelf of cliff
to which he had climbed. On either side of him squatted a negro from
the Sus both naked of all save white loin-cloths, their muscular bodies
glistening like ebony in the dazzling sunshine of mid-May. They wielded
crude fans fashioned from the yellowing leaves of date palms, and their
duty was to wave these gently to and fro above their lord’s head, to
give him air and to drive off the flies.
Sakr-el-Bahr was in the very prime of life, a man of a great length of
body, with a deep Herculean torso and limbs that advertised a giant
strength. His hawk-nosed face ending in a black forked beard was of a
swarthiness accentuated to exaggeration by the snowy white turban wound
about his brow. His eyes, by contrast, were singularly light. He wore
over his white shirt a long green tunic of very light silk, woven along
its edges with arabesques in gold; a pair of loose calico breeches
reached to his knees; his brown muscular calves were naked, and his
feet were shod in a pair of Moorish shoes of crimson leather, with
up-curling and very pointed toes. He had no weapons other than the
heavy-bladed knife with a jewelled hilt that was thrust into his girdle
of plaited leather.
A yard or two away on his left lay another supine figure, elbows on the
ground, and hands arched above his brow to shade his eyes, gazing out
to sea. He, too, was a tall and powerful man, and when he moved there
was a glint of armour from the chain mail in which his body was cased,
and from the steel casque about which he had swathed his green turban.
Beside him lay an enormous curved scimitar in a sheath of brown leather
that was heavy with steel ornaments. His face was handsome, and
bearded, but swarthier far than his companion’s, and the backs of his
long fine hands were almost black.
Sakr-el-Bahr paid little heed to him. Lying there he looked down the
slope, clad with stunted cork-trees and evergreen oaks; here and there
was the golden gleam of broom; yonder over a spur of whitish rock
sprawled the green and living scarlet of a cactus. Below him about the
caves of Hercules was a space of sea whose clear depths shifted with
its slow movement from the deep green of emerald to all the colours of
the opal. A little farther off behind a projecting screen of rock that
formed a little haven two enormous masted galleys, each of fifty oars,
and a smaller galliot of thirty rode gently on the slight heave of the
water, the vast yellow oars standing out almost horizontally from the
sides of each vessel like the pinions of some gigantic bird. That they
lurked there either in concealment or in ambush was very plain. Above
them circled a flock of seagulls noisy and insolent.
Sakr-el-Bahr looked out to sea across the straits towards Tarifa and
the faint distant European coastline just visible through the limpid
summer air. But his glance was not concerned with that hazy horizon; it
went no further than a fine white-sailed ship that, close-hauled, was
beating up the straits some four miles off. A gentle breeze was blowing
from the east, and with every foot of canvas spread to catch it she
stood as close to it as was possible. Nearer she came on her larboard
tack, and not a doubt but her master would be scanning the hostile
African littoral for a sight of those desperate rovers who haunted it
and who took toll of every Christian ship that ventured over-near.
Sakr-el-Bahr smiled to think how little the presence of his galleys
could be suspected, how innocent must look the sun-bathed shore of
Africa to the Christian skipper’s diligently searching spy-glass. And
there from his height, like the hawk they had dubbed him, poised in the
cobalt heavens to plumb down upon his prey, he watched the great white
ship and waited until she should come within striking distance.
A promontory to eastward made something of a lee that reached out
almost a mile from shore. From the watcher’s eyrie the line of
demarcation was sharply drawn; they could see the point at which the
white crests of the wind-whipped wavelets ceased and the water became
smoother. Did she but venture as far southward on her present tack, she
would be slow to go about again, and that should be their opportunity.
And all unconscious of the lurking peril she held steadily to her
course, until not half a mile remained between her and that
inauspicious lee.
Excitement stirred the mail-clad corsair; he kicked his heels in the
air, then swung round to the impassive and watchful Sakr-el-Bahr.
“She will come! She will come!” he cried in the Frankish jargon—the
lingua franca of the African littoral.
“Insh’ Allah!” was the laconic answer—“If God will.”
A tense silence fell between them again as the ship drew nearer so that
now with each forward heave of her they caught a glint of the white
belly under her black hull. Sakr-el-Bahr shaded his eyes, and
concentrated his vision upon the square ensign flying from, her
mainmast. He could make out not only the red and yellow quarterings,
but the devices of the castle and the lion.
“A Spanish ship, Biskaine,” he growled to his companion. “It is very
well. The praise to the One!”
“Will she venture in?” wondered the other.
“Be sure she will venture,” was the confident answer. “She suspects no
danger, and it is not often that our galleys are to be found so far
westward. Aye, there she comes in all her Spanish pride.”
Even as he spoke she reached that line of demarcation. She crossed it,
for there was still a moderate breeze on the leeward side of it, intent
no doubt upon making the utmost of that southward run.
“Now!” cried Biskaine—Biskaine-el-Borak was he called from the
lightning-like impetuousness in which he was wont to strike. He
quivered with impatience, like a leashed hound.
“Not yet,” was the calm, restraining answer. “Every inch nearer shore
she creeps the more certain is her doom. Time enough to sound the
charge when she goes about. Give me to drink, Abiad,” he said to one of
his negroes, whom in irony he had dubbed “the White.”
The slave turned aside, swept away a litter of ferns and produced an
amphora of porous red clay; he removed the palm-leaves from the mouth
of it and poured water into a cup. Sakr-el-Bahr drank slowly, his eyes
never leaving the vessel, whose every ratline was clearly defined by
now in the pellucid air. They could see men moving on her decks, and
the watchman stationed in the foremast fighting-top. She was not more
than half a mile away when suddenly came the manceuvre to go about.
Sakr-el-Bahr leapt instantly to his great height and waved a long green
scarf. From one of the galleys behind the screen of rocks a trumpet
rang out in immediate answer to that signal; it was followed by the
shrill whistles of the bo’suns, and that again by the splash and creak
of oars, as the two larger galleys swept out from their ambush. The
long armoured poops were a-swarm with turbaned corsairs, their weapons
gleaming in the sunshine; a dozen at least were astride of the
crosstree of each mainmast, all armed with bows and arrows, and the
ratlines on each side of the galleys were black with men who swarmed
there like locusts ready to envelop and smother their prey.
The suddenness of the attack flung the Spaniard into confusion. There
was a frantic stir aboard her, trumpet blasts and shootings and wild
scurryings of men hither and thither to the posts to which they were
ordered by their too reckless captain. In that confusion her manceuvre
to go about went all awry, and precious moments were lost during which
she stood floundering, with idly flapping sails. In his desperate haste
the captain headed her straight to leeward, thinking that by running
thus before the wind he stood the best chance of avoiding the trap. But
there was not wind enough in that sheltered spot to make the attempt
successful. The galleys sped straight on at an angle to the direction
in which the Spaniard was moving, their yellow dripping oars flashing
furiously, as the bo’suns plied their whips to urge every ounce of
sinew in the slaves.
Of all this Sakr-el-Bahr gathered an impression as, followed by
Biskaine and the negroes, he swiftly made his way down from that eyrie
that had served him so well. He sprang from red oak to cork-tree and
from cork-tree to red oak; he leapt from rock to rock, or lowered
himself from ledge to ledge, gripping a handful of heath or a
projecting stone, but all with the speed and nimbleness of an ape. He
dropped at last to the beach, then sped across it at a run, and went
bounding along a black reef until he stood alongside of the galliot
which had been left behind by the other Corsair vessels. She awaited
him in deep water, the length of her oars from the rock, and as he came
alongside, these oars were brought to the horizontal, and held there
firmly. He leapt down upon them, his companions following him, and
using them as a gangway, reached the bulwarks. He threw a leg over the
side, and alighted on a decked space between two oars and the two rows
of six slaves that were manning each of them.
Biskaine followed him and the negroes came last. They were still
astride of the bulwarks when Sakr-el-Bahr gave the word. Up the middle
gangway ran a bo’sun and two of his mates cracking their long whips of
bullock-hide. Down went the oars, there was a heave, and they shot out
in the wake of the other two to join the fight.
Sakr-el-Bahr, scimitar in hand, stood on the prow, a little in advance
of the mob of eager babbling corsairs who surrounded him, quivering in
their impatience to be let loose upon the Christian foe. Above, along
the yardarm and up the ratlines swarmed his bowmen. From the mast-head
floated out his standard, of crimson charged with a green crescent.
The naked Christian slaves groaned, strained and sweated under the
Moslem lash that drove them to the destruction of their Christian
brethren.
Ahead the battle was already joined. The Spaniard had fired one single
hasty shot which had gone wide, and now one of the corsair’s
grappling-irons had seized her on the larboard quarter, a withering
hail of arrows was pouring down upon her decks from the Muslim
crosstrees; up her sides crowded the eager Moors, ever most eager when
it was a question of tackling the Spanish dogs who had driven them from
their Andalusian Caliphate. Under her quarter sped the other galley to
take her on the starboard side, and even as she went her archers and
stingers hurled death aboard the galleon.
It was a short, sharp fight. The Spaniards in confusion from the
beginning, having been taken utterly by surprise, had never been able
to order themselves in a proper manner to receive the onslaught. Still,
what could be done they did. They made a gallant stand against this
pitiless assailant. But the corsairs charged home as gallantly, utterly
reckless of life, eager to slay in the name of Allah and His Prophet
and scarcely less eager to die if it should please the All-pitiful that
their destinies should be here fulfilled. Up they went, and back fell
the Castilians, outnumbered by at least ten to one.
When Sakr-el-Bahr’s galliot came alongside, that brief encounter was at
an end, and one of his corsairs was aloft, hacking from the mainmast
the standard of Spain and the wooden crucifix that was nailed below it.
A moment later and to a thundering roar of “Al-hamdolliah!” the green
crescent floated out upon the breeze.
Sakr-el-Bahr thrust his way through the press in the galleon’s waist;
his corsairs fell back before him, making way, and as he advanced they
roared his name deliriously and waved their scimitars to acclaim him
this hawk of the sea, as he was named, this most valiant of all the
servants of Islam. True he had taken no actual part in the engagement.
It had been too brief and he had arrived too late for that. But his had
been the daring to conceive an ambush at so remote a western point, and
his the brain that had guided them to this swift sweet victory in the
name of Allah the One.
The decks were slippery with blood, and strewn with wounded and dying
men, whom already the Muslimeen were heaving overboard—dead and wounded
alike when they were Christians, for to what end should they be
troubled with maimed slaves?
About the mainmast were huddled the surviving Spaniards, weaponless and
broken in courage, a herd of timid, bewildered sheep.
Sakr-el-Bahr stood forward, his light eyes considering them grimly.
They must number close upon a hundred, adventurers in the main who had
set out from Cadiz in high hope of finding fortune in the Indies. Their
voyage had been a very brief one; their fate they knew—to toil at the
oars of the Muslim galleys, or at best, to be taken to Algiers or Tunis
and sold there into the slavery of some wealthy Moor.
Sakr-el-Bahr’s glance scanned them appraisingly, and rested finally on
the captain, who stood slightly in advance, his face livid with rage
and grief. He was richly dressed in the Castilian black, and his velvet
thimble-shaped hat was heavily plumed and decked by a gold cross.
Sakr-el-Bahr salaamed ceremoniously to him. “Fortuna de guerra, senor
capitan,” said he in fluent Spanish. “What is your name?”
“I am Don Paulo de Guzman,” the man answered, drawing himself erect,
and speaking with conscious pride in himself and manifest contempt of
his interlocutor.
“So! A gentleman of family! And well-nourished and sturdy, I should
judge. In the sôk at Algiers you might fetch two hundred philips. You
shall ransom yourself for five hundred.”
“Por las Entranas de Dios!” swore Don Paulo who, like all pious Spanish
Catholics, favoured the oath anatomical. What else he would have added
in his fury is not known, for Sakr-el-Bahr waved him contemptuously
away.
“For your profanity and want of courtesy we will make the ransom a
thousand philips, then,” said he. And to his followers—“Away with him!
Let him have courteous entertainment against the coming of his ransom.”
He was borne away cursing.
Of the others Sakr-el-Bahr made short work. He offered the privilege of
ransoming himself to any who might claim it, and the privilege was
claimed by three. The rest he consigned to the care of Biskaine, who
acted as his Kayia, or lieutenant. But before doing so he bade the
ship’s bo’sun stand forward, and demanded to know what slaves there
might be on board. There were, he learnt, but a dozen, employed upon
menial duties on the ship—three Jews, seven Muslimeen and two
heretics—and they had been driven under the hatches when the peril
threatened.
By Sakr-el-Bahr’s orders these were dragged forth from the blackness
into which they had been flung. The Muslimeen upon discovering that
they had fallen into the hands of their own people and that their
slavery was at an end, broke into cries of delight, and fervent praise
of Allah than whom they swore there was no other God. The three Jews,
lithe, stalwart young men in black tunics that fell to their knees and
black skull-caps upon their curly black locks, smiled ingratiatingly,
hoping for the best since they were fallen into the hands of people who
were nearer akin to them than Christians and allied to them, at least,
by the bond of common enmity to Spain and common suffering at the hands
of Spaniards. The two heretics stood in stolid apathy, realizing that
with them it was but a case of passing from Charybdis to Scylla, and
that they had as little to hope for from heathen as from Christian. One
of these was a sturdy bowlegged fellow, whose garments were little
better than rags; his weather-beaten face was of the colour of mahogany
and his eyes of a dark blue under tufted eyebrows that once had been
red—like his hair and beard—but were now thickly intermingled with
grey. He was spotted like a leopard on the hands by enormous dark brown
freckles.
Of the entire dozen he was the only one that drew the attention of
Sakr-el-Bahr. He stood despondently before the corsair, with bowed head
and his eyes upon the deck, a weary, dejected, spiritless slave who
would as soon die as live. Thus some few moments during which the
stalwart Muslim stood regarding him; then as if drawn by that
persistent scrutiny he raised his dull, weary eyes. At once they
quickened, the dulness passed out of them; they were bright and keen as
of old. He thrust his head forward, staring in his turn; then, in a
bewildered way he looked about him at the ocean of swarthy faces under
turbans of all colours, and back again at Sakr-el-Bahr.
“God’s light!” he said at last, in English, to vent his infinite
amazement. Then reverting to the cynical manner that he had ever
affected, and effacing all surprise—
“Good day to you, Sir Oliver,” said he. “I suppose ye’ll give yourself
the pleasure of hanging me.”
“Allah is great!” said Sakr-el-Bahr impassively.