PAULINE.
The cold gray morning light, shining through the little window of a
small bedroom in a second-rate hotel at Lymington, made its way
through the aperture between the common dimity curtains, which had
been purposely separated overnight, and fell on the slumbering figure
of Pauline. The poor and scanty furniture of the room, with its dingy
bed-hangings, its wooden washstand, two rush-bottomed chairs, and
rickety one-sided chest of drawers, all painted a pale stone-colour,
were in strong contrast with the richness of colouring observable in
the sleeper,--observable in her jet-black hair, now taken from off her
face and gathered into one large coil at the back of her head; in her
olive complexion, sun-embrowned indeed, but yet showing distinctly the
ebb and flow of her southern blood; and in the deep orange-hued
handkerchief daintily knotted round her neck. See, now, how troubled
are her slumbers; how from between her parted lips comes a long though
scarcely audible moan; how the strong thin hand lying outside the
coverlet clutches convulsively at nothing; and how she seems in her
unrest to be struggling to free herself from the thraldom of the
troublous dream, under the influence of which part of the torture
suffered by her during the previous day is again pressing upon her!
Yes; the woman with the pale tear-blurred face is there once again.
Once again Tom Durham stands at the carriage-door, whispering to her
with evident earnestness, until the guard touches him on the shoulder,
and the whistle shrieks, and then she bends forward, and he holds her
for a moment in his outspread arms, and kisses her once, twice, thrice
on her lips, until he is pulled aside by the porter coming to shut the
door of the already-moving carriage, and she falls back in an agony of
grief. There is a moisture in his eyes too; such as she, Pauline, with
all her experience of him, has never seen there. He is the lover of
this pale-faced woman, and therefore he must die! She will kill him
herself! She will kill him with the pearl-handled knife which Gaetano,
the mate of the Italian ship, gave her, telling her that all the
Lombard girls wore such daggers in their garters, ready for the heart
of any Tedesco who might insult them, or any other girl who might
prove their rival. The dagger is upstairs, in the little bedroom at
the top of the house, overlooking the Cannebière, which she shares
with Mademoiselle Mathilde. She will fetch it at once; and after it
has served its purpose she will carry it to the chapel of Notre Dame
de la Garde, and hang it up among the votive offerings: the pictures
of shipwrecks, storms, sea-fights, and surgical operations; the models
of vessels, the ostrich-eggs, the crutches left by cripples no longer
lame, and the ends of the ropes by which men have been saved from
drowning. How clearly she can see the place, and all its contents,
before her now! She will leave the dagger there: as the weapon by
which a traitor and an Englishman has been slain, it will not be out
of place, though Père Gasselin shake his head and lift his monitory
finger. She will fetch it at once. Ah, how delicious and yet how
strange seem to her the smell of the pot-au-feu, and the warm aroma of
the chocolate! How steep the stairs seem to have become; she will
never be able to reach the top! What is this, Pierre and Jean are
saying? The sea has swept away the breakwater at La Joliette, and is
rapidly rushing into the town! It is here; it is in the street below!
Fighting madly with the boiling waters is one man--she can catch a
glimpse of his face now. Grand Dieu, it is Tom! She will save him--no,
too late, he is borne swiftly past, he is--
And with a short suppressed scream she woke.
It was probably the rapping of the chambermaid at the bedroom door
which dissipated Pauline's dream, and recalled her to herself, and it
is certain that the chambermaid, whose quick ears caught the scream,
went downstairs more than ever impressed with terror at the "foreign
person" whom she had scarcely had sufficient courage to conduct to her
room on the previous evening. Notwithstanding the bizarre shape which
they had assumed, these reminiscences of a portion of Pauline's past
life had been so vivid, that it was with great difficulty she could
clear her brain, and arrive at an idea of why she found herself in the
dingy bedroom of a country inn, and of what lay before her. Sitting
upon the edge of her bed, with her arms crossed upon her bosom, she
gradually recalled the occurrences of the previous day, and came to
comprehend what had been the key-note of her dream, and who was the
pale-faced woman whose presence had so disturbed her. There was,
however, no time for reflection at that moment; she had been aroused
in accordance with instructions given on the previous night, and there
was but little time for her to dress herself and make her way to the
station, where she was to await the arrival of her husband. Her toilet
completed, she hurried downstairs, and declining to taste any of the
substantial breakfast which the hearty Hampshire landlady was then
engaged in discussing, and to which she invited her visitor, issued
out into the broad street of the quiet old town.
Past the low-windowed shops, where the sleepy 'prentice-boys were
taking down the shutters, and indulging in such fragmentary
conversation as could be carried on under the eyes of their masters,
which they knew were bent upon them from the upper rooms; past the
neat little post-office, where the click of the telegraph-needles was
already audible, and whence were issuing the sturdy country post-men,
each with his huge well-filled leathern wallet on his back; past the
yacht-builder's yard, where the air was redolent of pitch and tar, and
newly-chipped wood, where through the half-opened gates could be seen
the slender, tapering masts of many yachts already laid up for the
season in the creek, and where a vast amount of hammering and sawing
and planing was, as the neighbours thought interminably, going on. Not
but what the yacht-building yard is one of the great features of the
place; for, were it not for the yacht-owners, who first come down to
give orders about the building of their vessels; then pay a visit to
see how their instructions are being carried out; and finally, finding
the place comfortable, tolerably accessible, and not too dear, bring
their wives and families, and make it their head-quarters for the
yachting season, what stranger would ever come to Lymington? what
occupants would be found for its lodging-houses and hotels?
The clock struck seven as Pauline passed through the booking-office at
the railway station, and stepped out on to the platform. She looked
hastily round her in search for Tom Durham, but did not see him. A
sudden chill fell upon her as the remembrance of her dream flashed
across her mind. The next instant she was chiding herself for
imagining that he would be there. There was yet half an hour before
the arrival of the train by which they were to proceed to Weymouth; he
would be tired by his long swim from the ship to the shore, his
clothes would of course be saturated, and he would have to dry them;
he would doubtless rest as long as he could in the place where he had
found shelter, and only join her just in time to start. There was no
doubt about his finding shelter somewhere; he was too clever not to do
that; he was the cleverest man in all the world; it was for his talent
she had chosen him from all the others years ago; it was for--and then
Pauline's face fell, remembering that Tom Durham was as unscrupulous
as he was clever, and that if this pale-faced woman were really
anything to him, he would occupy his talent in arranging how and when
to meet her in secret, in planning how to obtain farther sums of money
from the old man whose messenger she had been.
How the thought of that woman haunted her! How her whole life seemed
to have changed since she had witnessed that parting at the railway
station yesterday! She felt that it would be impossible for her to
hide from Tom the fact that she was labouring under doubt and
depression of some kind or other. She knew his tact and determination
in learning whatever he thought it behoved him to find out; and she
thought it would be better to speak openly to him, to tell him what
she had seen, and to ask him for some explanation. Yes, she would do
that. The train was then in sight; he would no longer delay putting in
an appearance on the platform, and in a few minutes they would be
travelling away to soft air and lovely scenery, with more than
sufficient money for their present wants, and for a time at least with
rest and peace before them. Then she would tell him all; and he would
doubtless reassure her, showing her how silly and jealous she had
been, but forgiving her because she had suffered solely through her
love for him.
By this time a number of passengers had gathered together on the
platform, awaiting the arrival of the train, and Pauline passed
hastily among them looking eagerly to the right and left, and,
retracing her steps through the booking-office, opened the door and
glanced up the street leading to the station. No sign of Tom Durham
anywhere! Perhaps he had found a nearer station to a point at which he
had swum ashore, and would be in the train now rapidly approaching.
The train stopped; two or three passengers alighted, and were
so soon mixed up with the crowd of sailors, ship-carpenters, and
farm-labourers rushing to take their seats, that Pauline could not
distinguish them, but she knew Tom was not amongst them; and when she
walked quickly down the line of carriages, throwing a rapid but
comprehensive glance round each, she saw him not; and the train passed
on, and she was left once more alone upon the platform.
Then, with frowning brows and set rigid lips, Pauline commenced
walking up and down, covering with her long striding footsteps, so
different from her usual easy, swimming gait, exactly the same amount
of space at every turn, wheeling, apparently unconsciously, at the
same point, treading almost in the same prints which she had
previously made, keeping her eyes steadfastly fixed on the ground, and
being totally unaware of all that was passing around her. She was a
clear-headed as well as a strong-willed woman, accustomed to look life
and its realities boldly in the face, and, unlike the majority of her
countrymen and women, swift to detect the shallowness of sophistry
when propounded by others, and careful never even to attempt to impose
upon herself. Throughout her life, so long as she could remember, she
had been in the habit of thinking-out any project of importance which
had arisen in her career while walking to and fro, just as she was
doing then. It was perhaps the sameness of the action, perhaps some
reminiscence of her dream still lingering in her mind, that turned her
memory to the last occasion when she had taken such thoughtful
exercise; and the scene exactly as it occurred rose before her.
The time, early morning, not much after six o'clock; the place, the
Prado at Marseilles; the persons, a few belated blue-bloused workmen
hurrying to their work, a few soldiers lounging about as only soldiers
always seem to lounge when they are not on duty, a limonadière with
her temple deposited on the ground by her side, while she washes the
sparkling tin cups in a sparkling tin cups in a drinking-fountain;
two or three water-carts pounding along and refreshingly sprinkling
the white dusty road, two or three English grooms exercising horses,
and she, Pauline Lunelle, dame du comptoir at the Restaurant du Midi,
in the Cannebière, pacing up and down the Prado, and turning over in
her mind a proposition on the acceptance or rejection of which
depended her future happiness or misery. That proposition was a
proposition of marriage, not by any means the first she had received.
The handsome, black-eyed, black-haired, olive-skinned dame du comptoir
was one of the reigning belles of the town, and the Restaurant du Midi
was such a popular place of resort, that she never lacked admirers.
All the breakfast-eaters, the smokers, the billiard-players, even the
decorated old gentlemen who dropped in as regularly as clockwork every
evening for a game of dominoes or tric-trac, paid their court to her,
and in several cases this court was something more than the mere
conventional hat-doffing or the few words of empty politeness
whispered to her as she attended to the settlement of their accounts.
Adolphe de Noailles--only a sous-lieutenant of artillery, to be sure,
but a man of good family, and who, it was said, was looked upon with
favour by Mademoiselle Krebs, daughter Of old Monsieur Krebs, the
German banker, who was so rich and who gave such splendid parties--had
asked Pauline Lunelle to become his wife, had "ah-bah-d" when she
talked about the difference in their positions, and had insisted that
in appearance and manner she was equal to any lady in the south of
France. So had Henrich Wetter, head clerk and cashier in the bank of
Monsieur Krebs aforesaid--a tall, fair, lymphatic young man, who until
his acquaintance with Pauline, had thought of nothing but Vaterland
and the first of exchange, but who professed himself ready to become
naturalised as a Frenchman, and to take up his abode for life in
Marseilles, if she would only listen to his suit. So had Frank
Jenkins, attached to the British post-office, and in that capacity
bringing the Indian mails from London to Marseilles, embarking them on
board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, and waiting the arrival of
the return mail which carried them back to England--a big, jolly,
massive creature, well known to everybody in the town as Monsieur
Jenkins, or the "courrier anglais," who had a bedroom at the Hôtel de
Paradis, but who spent the whole of his time at the Restaurant du
Midi, drinking beer or brandy or absinthe--it was all the same to
him--to keep the landlord "square," as he phrased it, but never taking
his eyes off the dame du comptoir, and never losing an opportunity of
paying her the most outrageous compliments in the most outrageous
French ever heard even in that city of polyglot speech.
If Pauline Lunelle had a tenderness for any of them, it was for the
sous-lieutenant; at the Englishman, and indeed at a great many
others--Frenchmen, commis-voyageurs, tradesmen in the city, or clerks
in the merchants' offices on the Quai--she laughed unmercifully; not
to their faces, indeed--that would have been bad for business, and
Pauline throughout her life had the keenest eye to her own benefit.
Her worth as a decoy-duck was so fully appreciated by Monsieur
Etienne, the proprietor of the restaurant, that she had insisted upon
receiving a commission on all moneys paid by those whose visits
thither were unquestionably due to her attraction. But when they had
retired for the night, the little top bedroom which she occupied in
conjunction with Mademoiselle Mathilde would ring with laughter,
caused by her repetition of the sweet things which had been said to
her during the evening by her admirers, and her imitations of the
manner and accents in which they had been delivered. So Adolphe de
Noailles had it all his own way, and Pauline had seriously debated
within herself whether she should not let him run the risk of
offending his family and marrying him out of hand (the disappointment
to be occasioned thereby to Mademoiselle Krebs, a haughty and
purse-proud young lady, being one of her keenest incentives to the
act), when another character appeared upon the scene.
This was another Englishman, but in every way as different as possible
to poor Mr. Jenkins--not merely speaking French like a Parisian, but
salting his conversation with a vast amount of Parisian idiomatic
slang, full of fun and wild practical jokes, impervious to ridicule,
impossible to be put down, and spending his money in the most lavish
and free-handed manner possible. This was Tom Durham, who had suddenly
turned up in Marseilles, no one knew why. He had been to Malta, he
said, on a "venture," and the venture had turned out favourably, and
he was going back to England, and had determined to enjoy himself by
the way. He was constantly at the Restaurant du Midi, paid immense
attention to the dame du comptoir, and she in her turn was fascinated
by his good temper, his generous ways, his strange eccentric
goings-on. But Tom Durham, laughing, drinking, and spending his money,
was the same cool observant creature that he had been ever since he
shipped as 'prentice on board the Gloucestershire, when he was fifteen
years of age. All the time of his sojourn at the Restaurant du Midi he
was carefully "taking stock," as he called it, of Pauline Lunelle. In
his various schemes he had long felt the want of a female accomplice,
and he thought he had at last found the person whom he had for some
time been seeking. That she was worldly-wise he knew, or she would
never have achieved the position which she held in Monsieur Etienne's
establishment; that there was far more in her than she had ever yet
given proof of he believed; for Mr. Tom Durham was a strong believer
in physiognomy, and had more than once found the study of some use to
him. Sipping his lemonade-and-cognac and puffing at his cigar, he sat
night after night talking pleasantly with any chance acquaintance, but
inwardly studying Pauline Lunelle; and when his studies were
completed, he had made up his mind that he saw in her a wonderful
mixture of headstrong passion and calm common sense, unscrupulous,
fearless, devoted, and capable of carrying out anything, no matter
what, which she had once made up her mind to perform. "A tameable
tiger, in point of fact," said Tom Durham to himself as he stepped out
into the street and picked his way across the filthy gutters towards
his home; "and if only kept in proper subjection, capable of being
made anything of." He knew there was only one way by which Pauline
could be secured, and he made up his mind to propose to her the next
night.
He proposed accordingly; but Pauline begged for four-and-twenty hours
to consider her decision, and in the early morning went out into the
Prado to think it all through, and deliberately to weigh the merits of
the propositions made respectively by Adolphe de Noailles and Tom
Durham; the result being that the sous-lieutenant's hopes were crushed
for ever--or for fully a fortnight, when they blossomed in another
direction--and that Pauline, dame du comptoir no longer, linked her
fate with that of Tom Durham. Thenceforward they were all in all to
each other. She had no relatives, nor, as he told her, had he. "I have
not seen Alice for five years," he said to himself; "and from what I
recollect of her, she was a stuck-up, straitlaced little minx, likely
to look down upon my young friend the tiger here, and give herself
airs which the tiger certainly would not understand; so, as they are
not likely to come together, it will be better to ignore her existence
altogether." In all his crooked schemes, and they were many and
various, Pauline took her share, unflagging, indefatigable, clear in
council, prompt in action, jealous of every word, of every look he
gave to any other woman; at the same time the slave of his love and
the prop and mainstay of his affairs. Tom Durham himself had not that
quality which he imputed to his half-sister; he certainly was not
strait-laced; but his escapades, if he had any, were carefully kept in
the background, and Pauline, suspicious as she was, had never felt any
real ground for jealousy until she had witnessed the scene at parting
at the Southampton station.
The Prado and its associations had faded out of her mind, and she was
trying to picture to herself the various chances which could possibly
have detained her husband, when a porter halted before her, and
civilly touching his cap, asked for what train she was waiting.
"The train for Weymouth," she replied.
"For Weymouth!" echoed the porter; "the train for Weymouth has just
gone."
"Yes, I know that," said Pauline; "but I was expecting some
one--a gentleman--to meet me. He will probably come in time for the
next."
"You will have a longish waiting bout," said the man; "next train
don't come till two-forty-five, nigh upon three o'clock."
"That is long," said Pauline. "And the next?"
"Only one more after that," said the porter--"eight forty--gets into
Weymouth somewhere between ten and eleven at night. You'll never think
of waiting here, ma'am, for either of them. Better go into the town to
one of the hotels, or have a row on the river, or something to pass
the time."
"Thank you," said Pauline, to whom a sudden idea had occurred. "How far
is it from here to--how do you call the place--Hurstcastle?"
"To where, ma'am? O, Hurst Castle. I didn't understand you, you see,
at first--you didn't make two words of it. It is Hurst Castle, where
the king was kept a prisoner--him as had his head cut off--and where
there's a barracks and a telegraph station for the ships now."
"Yes," she said, "exactly; that's the place. How far is it from here?"
"Well, it's about seven mile, take it altogether; but you can't drive
all the way. You could have a fly to take you four miles, and he'd
bring you to a boat, and he'd take you in and out down a little river
through the marshes, until you came to a beach, on the other side of
which the castle stands. But, lor' bless me, miss, what's the use o'
going at all, there's nothing to see when you get there?"
"I wish to go," said Pauline, smiling. "You see, I am a foreigner, and
I want to see where your British king was kept a prisoner. Can I get a
fly here?"
The porter said he would find her one at once, and speedily redeemed
his promise.
Through neat villages and wooded lanes Pauline was driven, until she
came to a large, bare, open tract of country, on the borders of which
the fly stopped, and the flyman descending, handed her down some steps
cut in the steep bank, and into an old broad-bottomed boat, where a
grizzled elderly man, with his son, were busy mending an old duck-gun.
They looked up with astonishment when the flyman said, "Lady wants to
go down to have a look at the castle, Jack. I'll wait here, ma'am,
until they bring you back."
They spread an old jacket for her in the stern of the boat, and when
she was seated, took to their oars and pulled away with a will. It was
a narrow, intricate, winding course, a mere thread of shallow sluggish
water, twisting in and out among the great gray marshes fringed with
tall flapping weeds; and Pauline, already over-excited and
overwrought, was horribly depressed by the scene.
"Are you always plying in this boat?" she asked the old man.
"Most days, ma'am, in case we should be wanted up at the steps there,"
he replied; "but night's our best time, we reckon."
"Night!" she echoed. "Surely there are no passengers at night-time?"
"No, ma'am, not passengers, but officers and sportsmen: gentlemen
coming out gunning after the ducks and the wild-fowl," he added,
seeing she looked puzzled, and pointing to a flock of birds feeding at
some distance from them.
"And are you out every night?" she asked eagerly.
"Well, not every, but most nights, ma'am."
"Last night, for example?"
"Yes, miss, we was out, me and Harry here, not with any customers, but
by ourselves; a main dark night it was too; but we hadn't bad sport,
considering."
"Did you--did you meet any one else between this and Hurst Castle?"
"Well, no, ma'am," said the old man with a low chuckle. "It ain't a
place where one meets many people, I reckon. Besides the ducks, a
heron or two was about the strangest visitors we saw last night. Now,
miss, here we are at the beach; you go straight up there, and you'll
find the castle just the other side. When you come back, please shape
your course for that black stump you see sticking up there; tide's
falling, and we sha'n't be able to bide where we are now, but we will
meet you there."
Lightly touching the old man's arm, Pauline jumped from the boat, and
rapidly ascending the sloping head, found herself, on gaining the top,
close by a one-storied, whitewashed cottage, in a little bit of
reclaimed land, half garden, half yard, in which was a man in his
shirt-sleeves washing vegetables, with a big black retriever dog lying
at his feet. Accosting him, Pauline learned that the house was the
telegraph station, whence the names of the outgoing and incoming ships
are telegraphed to Lloyd's for the information of their owners. In the
course of farther conversation the man said that the Masilia had
anchored there during the night, had got her steam up and was off by
daybreak; he took watch and watch with his comrade, and he turned out
just in time to see her start.
Pauline thanked him and returned to the boat; but she did not speak to
the old man on her return passage; and when she reached the fly which
was waiting for her, she threw herself into a corner and remained
buried in thought until she was deposited at the station.
A few minutes after, the train bound for Weymouth arrived. Through
confusion similar to that of the morning she hurried along,
criticising the passengers on the platform and in the carriage, and
with the same vain result. The train proceeded on its way, and Pauline
walked towards the hotel with the intention of getting some
refreshment, which she needed. Suddenly she paused, reeled, and would
have fallen, had she not leant against a wall for support. A thought
like an arrow had passed through her brain--a thought which found its
utterance in these words:
"It is a trick, a vile trick from first to last! He has deceived
me--he never intended to meet me, to take me to Weymouth or to
Guernsey! It was merely a trick to keep me occupied and to put me off
while he rejoined that woman!"