ARIADNE'S COMPASSION.
That Sir Geoffrey Barry should be in a considerable state of
exasperation when he returned with his boarding-party from their
frustrated intention to capture the _Nederland_, and take from her as
many able-bodied men as he required, was no more than natural. For now
he scarcely knew where to turn to procure the extra men whom the
Admiralty continued to strenuously instruct him to obtain, and he
began to fear that the great fleet preparing to go to sea and attack
Conflans would not owe much more to his endeavours. Yet, exasperated
as he might be, astonishment obtained the mastery over that feeling
when Ariadne--who had refused to go to bed till he came back--informed
him of what had happened in the Marshes that night.
"Great heavens!" he cried, in his first surprise, "this is too awful.
What a vengeance! What a vengeance! And Anne in it, too. Yet," he
continued, "she could scarcely have taken a more effective way of
ridding herself of the man. The schooner will be captured beyond all
doubt by Thurot, or Boisrose, or some of those French sailors, half
corsairs and half naval officers. And then--well! then--at best it
will be months, nay, perhaps years, of detention in a French
fortress."
"And at worst?" asked Ariadne.
"At worst! Why--this," and he pointed downwards to the deck. "That,
with perhaps a broadside into them."
"I pity the others," said Ariadne; "him I cannot pity. Oh! he was
willing to undertake such a fiendish scheme to smuggle Anne and me
into that loathsome ship, and would have succeeded had not Mr.
Granger, who hoodwinked him into believing that he would help him,
found means to catch him in a trap instead."
Whereon, in answer to Geoffrey's desire to be told all, his wife
related everything that Anne had divulged on her return.
Extreme as Geoffrey's anger was--and in that anger he felt almost
inclined to go ashore and punish Granger in some way for having
dared use his wife's name as a means whereby to lure Bufton to his
doom--surprise once more took possession of him when he heard Ariadne
say--
"Poor Mr. Granger! What a sad fate has been his. Oh! Geoffrey, why did
not you tell me before that, Lady Glastonbury was--was----"
"Tell you, child! Why, how could I tell you anything I did not know?
'Lady Glastonbury!' What was she to him that you speak thus?"
"Sophy Jervis was my dearest friend once at Gosport, and--as you
know--she married Lord Glastonbury."
"Well! Ariadne."
"And Sophy Jervis was loved by, and herself loved madly, Lewis
Granger."
"My God! And sacrificed herself to save him. Is that it?"
"It is, as I know now. Though not until to-night, when Anne told me
all and enabled me to put one thing with another. And to-morrow,"
she continued, "I will show you her letters to me. Short of saying
what the name of the man whom she loved was, she has told me all."
In the morning she did as she had said she would, and put in her
husband's hands a small packet of letters which he read later, not
without a man's compassion for the wrecked love of the unhappy pair,
and with, too, much, doubt upon his part as to whether these letters
from one woman to another should not have been sacred from any man's
eyes. Yet, also, ere he had concluded the perusal, he understood that
it was well that Ariadne had shown them to him.
For in these letters the whole story was narrated, as Granger had
briefly told it to Anne overnight in the "Red Rover"; the story of the
girl's mad love for the handsome young lieutenant and of his for her;
of the delirious bliss of the earliest days of that love; days full of
softest wishes and tenderest fears and hopes of happy years to come.
Of happy years with him who, so cold to and disdainful of all others,
was to her a slave--a slave, but a loving one! Then, while Geoffrey
read on--knowing that, as he did so, the tears were in his eyes--the
tale was told of how the blow had fallen; of how the man she loved was
ruined and disgraced; and that he had committed a crime which would
drive him forth from the society of all honest men, and out of the
service he belonged to--nay! worse, might bring him to the gallows.
Yet she saved him, saved him at last, at the cost of her own happiness
in this world; by the perdition of her own soul. The man he had
robbed, or attempted to rob, was, by Fortune's favour, one who had
wooed her long and unsuccessfully; now he would spare him upon one
condition. The condition that she resigned the man she loved, and
wedded the man who loved her.
"And then," the last letter went on, "oh! my God, then, Ariadne, when
I had been Lord Glastonbury's wife for six months, we learnt that the
man I had loved was innocent, and that he was the tool of a designing
villain. We learnt it through a letter written to my husband by a
woman who had been the friend of that villain and was cognizant of the
robbery he was meditating; by a woman who, discarded and cast off, had
found means to communicate with Glastonbury, she imagining that the
theft had succeeded. And, darling," the unhappy writer concluded, "my
husband, though dissolute, is an honourable man; if he could find my
unhappy lover he would tell him all, he would send him that woman's
letter. It might yet go far to restore him to his proper place in the
world. Meanwhile, he intends to write to the Lords of the Admiralty."
Geoffrey called Ariadne to him when he had finished the perusal of the
letters, and told her that he had done so; then he said quietly--
"It was a pity Lady Glastonbury never mentioned her lover's name to
you. By chance (since I have spoken of him so much of late) we should
have been able to help him. Now, it is too late."
"Geoffrey!" she exclaimed, after a moment's meditation, "let me see
him. Perhaps--perhaps--if I let him hear those letters read it might
do much to reclaim him, low as he has fallen, and horrible as is the
calling he follows."
"Yet the calling which I profit by," her husband made answer.
"Therefore is he little worse, if any, than we who employ him. But,"
he continued, "what use in seeing him, Ariadne? What can you do?"
"If I told him all that Sophy has written; if I should plead with him
to lead a better life--now that he has exacted so horrible a vengeance
on the man who destroyed him--might I not prevail?"
"Prevail! What is there for him to do?"
"God knows! Yet something better than that which he does now. Surely!
surely!"
For a moment Geoffrey stood reflecting. He was profoundly impressed by
all that he had learnt, as it was most natural he should be. Had not
he himself sat upon the very court-martial which condemned Lewis
Granger to ignominy; had not all upon that awful tribunal regarded him
as a common knave; had not all refused to listen to his protestations
of innocence? Yet now--now!--he was innocent. Everything proved it.
Not only the letters of his lost love, but surely, also, the terrible
retribution he had exacted from him who had so ruined him. If--if by a
pure, good woman's pleading he could be induced to lead a better and
more honourable calling, should he stand in the way of helping him to
do so, even though that woman was his own wife?
Later that day, as Geoffrey inspected some men who had been brought
off from the shore--they having been taken by a press-gang overnight
after a hard fight--a boat came away from the stairs with, seated in
it, Lewis Granger. He had come in answer to a summons from Geoffrey,
in which the latter simply said that he wished to speak to him in
connection with something in his past life in which they had both
played a part. But he had added at the foot another line: "I wish to
make you acquainted with Lady Barry."
And now the unhappy man was close at hand, his mind filled with wonder
at the strange summons.
"To make me acquainted with his wife," he had whispered to himself a
dozen times--nay! a hundred times, since receiving the message. "I!
the exposed forger--the man driven out of the Navy for an ignoble
crime--the crimp of to-day. And this in connection with something in my
past, of which her husband knows as well as I! What does it mean?"
Yet, soon, he was himself to know. At once! The boat had reached the
side of the ship, the manropes were in his hands; above stood Sir
Geoffrey Barry, watching him coming on board, with, upon his face, a
pleasant glance.
"My God!" Lewis Granger thought to himself, "he looks as once he might
have looked at a comrade across the mess-cabin table; as he has never
looked yet at me before. And--and--I am to be made acquainted with his
wife!"
Geoffrey held out his hand to Granger when he reached the deck, noting
as he did that the man had come as a gentleman to visit a lady. He was
clad now in a quiet but good black costume; he was also clean-shaven
and neat, which he had not been before. His wig was new and freshly
powdered, and his lace was faultless. A different person this from the
one who sat day by day in Jamaica Court, consigning drunkards and
kidnapped men to their fate.
"Granger, I sent for you to tell you some news that has come to me.
Through my wife, who has heard it from a lady--from----"
"Sophy!" the other whispered, divining all--or, perhaps it was not a
whisper, his lips alone forming the word, though uttering no sound.
While as they did so, he turned white as death.
"Yes. She has heard--her husband has heard--strange news. Nay,
Granger, be steady," he said, breaking off as he saw the other put out
his hand and touch a gun-carriage as though he feared to fall.
"What has--she--heard?" the latter asked a moment later, his voice
almost inaudible.
"That--that--we who sat in judgment on you--that--that--all were
wrong. I think it can be proved."
"It is too late," Granger said. "Too late. I have fallen too low. Do
you know that since it all happened I--God help me!--have been
drinking myself to death? That, now I have avenged myself on the man
who ruined me, I shall do so even more furiously? To end all."
"No! No! Think! Think still on what may be. If--if their Lordships are
but satisfied that you were misjudged--I do not know--but--perhaps--it
might be possible in these times of war to reinstate you. I do not
know, I repeat. But it may be."
"Could that restore to me the woman I loved--the woman whom, Heaven
help me, I love madly still? Can anything do that?"
"No," Geoffrey answered, his tone low yet full of sympathy. "No.
Nothing can do that. But it might make her happy, might ease some of
her pain. If she could know that you were righted in the world's
eyes, if she knew that the shame which has covered you was swept away
for ever--could not that make her happy?"
"It would perhaps make our lot easier to bear," Granger answered. Then
in a clearer voice, he said, "I knew that Lady Barry and Sophy--had
been friends from girlhood. That was one, though but one reason why I
helped Anne to ensnare that scheming scoundrel."
"For that at least I thank you--for punishing him for his vile and
wicked insolence. Now, tell me, did he in truth design to put
her--great heavens! to think of it--on board the _Nederland?_"
"He swallowed the bait I held out to him; jumped at it. He was so
eager to see the plan carried out that, thus, he fell into my power.
Yes, even at the last, and meditating further a double treachery, he
fell into my power. You have heard that?"
"Yes. I have heard all. But--how can I pity him? Now come and see my
wife," and Geoffrey made a step towards the cabin aft.
"Not yet. Not yet. Give me one moment to recover myself. To meet
her--Sophy's friend--will be an ordeal to me. Let me collect myself."
Geoffrey busied himself about the deck, giving orders for the bestowal
of raffle and other things until he thought Granger might feel
sufficiently calm to meet Ariadne, then, turning to where the latter
still stood with his eyes fixed on the river, he said again--
"Come. She desires so much to see you."
"Go on. Lead me to her."
Whereon, conducting Granger past the sentry and through the outer
cabin, or office, he tapped gently on the door of the saloon, and
opening it, said--
"Ariadne, Mr. Granger is here," while, motioning the other to enter,
he closed the door, not going in himself.
"'Tis best that they should be alone," he thought, his mind delicate
and manly as ever. "Far better. It is indeed an ordeal for him."
And Granger, entering that saloon--while thinking how long it was
since he had been admitted as a visitor to such a place--how long
since he had stood face to face and on terms of equality with a
gentle, refined woman!--knew that before him, and gazing pityingly at
him, was Ariadne Barry, the dearest friend of the woman whom he had
loved and lost.