MARIE LAMBERT
"When you go to England and become a great Lord," said she, "you will
forget poor Marie."
"Yes," agreed Willie, as one stating the most unchallengeable of truths.
Marie Lambert frowned. It was not the reply for which she had angled.
A few more days had passed. Every afternoon, when released from
attendance upon Madame Gilbert, the French girl would climb up to an
appointed place on the hillside above the camp and there meet Willatopy.
They were, she judged, safe from observation. Madame, when not afloat on
the sea, stuck to the sea shore, or read books in the shady entrance to
her tent. Never gratuitously active on foot, Madame rarely ascended the
hill which formed the backbone of Tops Island. She was enjoying a spell
of real physical laziness after her unremitting labours in the war.
The bright blue eyes and dark brown skin of Willatopy seemed to the
depraved taste of Marie to be the most fascinating masculine combination
in colour that she had ever enjoyed; when to them was added the glamour
of Willie's succession to an historic peerage, Marie felt that for once
in her lurid career she really loved. Willie, she assured him, occupied
the whole of her capacious heart. There was no room, no room at all, for
junior deck and engine-room officers. Marie knew her mistress. She was
well aware that a threat from Madame was no vain play with words. She
was convinced that the discovery of her intrigue with Willatopy would
mean: first, confinement in the ever-rolling yacht at anchor--a
nauseating prospect--and finally, her return to France with Madame as an
accuser and relentless enemy. Yet she risked all to sport with Willatopy
in the woods.
"That is unkind," said she. "You do not love Marie any more." Willatopy,
who was lying at her feet, raised his face lazily. He permitted her, if
she pleased, to bend over and kiss him. She did bend over, though
conscious of some slight humiliation.
"What do you want?" asked Willatopy, rather crossly. "I have left my
brown girls for you. When I was in Thursday Island, I would not look at
them. I rejected one whom I used to love, and she wept bitterly. When I
offered her a white man, John Clifford, she smacked his face. None of
the brown girls would put up with John. All scorned him. He is a filthy
little beast. For you, Marie, my white woman, I have turned my back on
the brown girls. What more do you want?"
"I do not wish that you should go to England and leave me. If you go,
Madame Gilbert will take me away."
"I have told you many times that I do not go to England."
"But you are a lord, the Lord of Topsham."
"I can be a Lord here on my Tops Island."
"I should like, Willie, to be the Lady of Tops Island."
"Well," said Willatopy, knitting his brows, "that is easy. When Madame
and the yacht have sailed away, you shall stay here, and be my white
Lady. My boys shall build you a fine hut thatched with sago palm."
"I don't think, Willie, that I care much for a hut. You are rich. You
have the money of your father, and of your uncle, the late Lord. You can
send for men, skilful men, and build a house on this island fit for a
white woman and her--her--husband."
"I did not say anything about a husband," observed Willatopy drily.
"But Willie," urged Marie, "you are a grown man. Very soon you will want
a home of your own and a wife who loves you. An English Lord must have a
white wife, and here am I. You will never find a wife fonder or more
beautiful than I would be."
"I do very well as I am," said Willie, philosophically.
Marie Lambert ground her teeth. She had thought to fascinate the brown
Heir, and to twist him about her fingers. A marriage, at Murray or
Thursday Island, would be as legal as a marriage at St. George's,
Hanover Square. If she could prevail upon Willie to marry her now,
before he learned the value of his peerage, she would become an English
Lady, the Lady of Topsham. After that, there would be no more talk about
a fine house on Tops Island. England, and English society, would be her
new sphere of campaign.
She had not, I fancy, thought of this scheme at the beginning, or
perhaps she would have been less complaisant. A discreet aloofness might
have proved a more potent inducement to matrimony than the free love
which she had offered. Marie, sitting there grinding her teeth, felt
that she could hate Willatopy as savagely as a day or two ago she had
loved him. If she had not also feared him, almost as much as she feared
Madame Gilbert, she would have let loose her vixenish rage. It was
perhaps a little late, but, as a new weapon, she affected a judicious
propriety.
"I should not have met you--like this, Willie, if I had doubted your
intention to marry me. White women, especially French women, are not
like brown girls. They regard their--reputation. If you have been
playing with me, I shall not meet you again--much though I love you."
Willatopy thoughtfully considered this new development. To him, her
speech was just foolishness, but in his tolerant way he tried to
understand it. In his own small world, wives were models of virtue, but
girls--and widows--were not. Marie was making a fuss about something,
though quite what it was he had no idea.
"One does not marry everybody," he said at last. He could think of no
sentence more illuminating.
"I am not--everybody--or anybody," replied Marie with dignity. "I am a
French lady, as good a lady as Madame Gilbert. When a man makes love, as
you have done, to a French lady, she naturally thinks that he intends to
marry her."
This was far over Willatopy's head. It is the woman who proposes
marriage in the Straits, and the man who, after fall consideration,
gives or withholds his assent. An amour, such as this one of his with
Marie, had nothing to do with marriage as he understood it. A man
married so that his wife might work for him. He could not picture the
white Marie, in her pretty French clothes, working for him or anyone
else. She was altogether charming to sport with, but as a wife quite
inconceivable. He tried to explain his simple code to Marie. It was not
easy, for neither of them had a full command of the English language.
Their vocabularies were sufficient for everyday speech, or for
love-making, but were incapable of expressing the deeper mysteries of
social philosophy.
Marie gathered that Willatopy would not marry her because she could not
work in his hut or in his plantation, and that he had no use for a wife
who couldn't. If that was all----
"That is nothing," exclaimed she brightly. "That only means that we must
not live in Tops Island. After we are married we will go to England
where you will be a great Lord and I shall be a great Lady. I shall be
Lady Topsham, and I will make Madame Gilbert _crever_ with jealousy."
"But I am not going to England," observed Willatopy, stolidly. He had
fully made up his mind not to marry Marie, and was quite capable of
continuing his refusal indefinitely. If she turned from him in
consequence, he would be grieved, but marry her he would not.
Rather bluntly, perhaps, he conveyed this determination to the
perceptions of Marie Lambert.
Furious, she sprang up. Willatopy rose with her. She was about to rate
him in voluble French when she remembered that he did not understand a
dozen words of that beautiful language. And since she could not do
justice to her emotions in English, she stood there gasping,
tongue-tied.
Willie smiled, and took both her hands. She strained from him, but in
his grip she was helpless. Slowly he drew her close, and bent his bright
eyes upon hers. Thus he held her.
"Let me go," she muttered. "Your eyes shine. They make me faint."
"They shine like the sky at dawn," said Willatopy. "Go back to your
tent, Marie, and meet me here to-morrow." He kissed her farewell, and,
half dazed, she went without another word.
At the appointed hour next day she came again. Willie was late, and when
at length, gracefully debonair, he strolled into the clearing, Marie
raged furiously.
"I had not intended to come again," cried she, "and now I am sorry that
I did."
"You could not keep away," replied the brown Sultan of Tops Island.
"_Bête_," roared Marie, and burst into a passion of French, which broke
uncomprehended about Willie's ears. She then tried English, but the
language would not flow. It is a terrible thing for an angry woman to
possess no vehicle of speech. Willatopy, quite unmoved, drew out a
packet of cigarettes and lighted one. Since his definite recognition by
Madame and the _Humming Top_ as the new Lord Topsham, he had adopted his
white holiday clothes as a regular island wear. Clifford and Marie had
convinced him that it was improper for a great white lord to go about
looking like a Hula savage. His suddenly acquired taste for cigarettes
was satisfied by plundering the scanty store of the white slave John.
Marie Lambert plucked the cigarette from his mouth, and flung it down.
His eyes lighted up, and he grappled her, crushing the thin white dress
into her soft arms. Frightened, she struggled feebly. He kissed her, and
she hung helpless in his arms.
"Don't be a fool, Marie," said Willatopy.
He put her down on the ground and lighted another cigarette. Marie,
conquered, no longer attempted to suppress this mark of his
indifference.
It was not until the time drew near when they must part that Marie
returned to the topic of the previous day. Her tenure of Willatopy's
affections was so insecure that no moment must be wasted if she were to
rivet him to her by the bonds of matrimony.
"It shall be to-morrow," said she softly, patting the brown cheek, which
was not far from her own.
"What will be to-morrow?" asked he lazily.
"We will start for Thursday Island in the yawl--and be married there."
"No," said he.
"Yes. Englishmen love French girls, and all of them will envy the Lord
Topsham with his wife Marie."
"You could not work in my hut or in my garden. I am very rich, and do
not work. But my wife must work very hard indeed."
Marie had been thinking over this aspect of Hula matrimony, and had her
answer pat.
"You may take a brown girl as your working wife, if you please. She
shall labour for both of us, you the Lord and me the white Lady."
"One time, one wife," replied Willatopy stolidly. "I would not take a
brown girl to wife until after I had put you away from me."
"She need not be a real wife," explained Marie eagerly. "Just one who
worked. I should be the real wife, of course."
Willatopy considered this proposal gravely. It had certain advantages,
for, in his careless savage fashion, he loved the white Marie and her
novel attractions. He was exceedingly reluctant to part with her. All
this matrimonial fuss worried him, for he had some glimmering of the
truth that an English marriage in Thursday Island--the kind of marriage
which had bound his parents, and had made him the legitimate heir of
Topsham--was something much more serious than the simple native ceremony
of the Islands. It might not be easy to put away a Marie wedded to him
in Thursday Island.
"My boys will build a hut here," said he at last, "and we will hold a
marriage feast. I will take you then. That will be better than the
English way."
"No," declared Marie positively, "that would be no more than--this. You
could cast me off and go to England, and I should be left here alone on
this hateful island."
"My mother and my sisters would be with you," said Willatopy haughtily.
"No. I must marry William, Lord Topsham, in Thursday Island, or--we must
part, Willie. I was weak to-day, but I shall not come any more if you
will not marry me."
Willatopy gritted his teeth, and Marie was nearer to receiving a hearty
whipping than she had been since her nursery days. Nothing protected her
except the vague stirrings of Willie's English blood. He would chastise
his white slave, John, with unction, but his hand unaccountably shrank
from striking this white woman who irritated him so grievously.
He began to speak in a halting fashion, and revealed to the anxiously
listening woman the strange new thoughts which were struggling for
expression in his awakening mind.
"John says that I must go to England. He says that if I send him away,
others will come later. He says that an English Lord cannot live on an
Island in the Straits; it is against the law, the English Law, and the
Government will come for me. If I try to stay here they will put me in
prison. He says that the English Lords are sent for by the King to go to
London and help him to rule, and they can't refuse, unless they want to
go to prison as rebels. That would be to disobey the King. I love the
King, and would not disobey him. If he sends for me, then I must go....
I love you, Marie, but love has nothing to do with making you my wife. I
don't want a wife. When the King sends for me he will send for William,
Lord Topsham, not for my wife. You and Madame Gilbert are the only white
women I have known, close. I want to see other white women, lots of
them, before I marry a wife. John says that they will all be my slaves
in England, and that I can take my pick among them. I should like that.
Of course I could not pick great ladies like Madame Gilbert to be my
slaves, at my pleasure, but there will be many others. Like you, Marie."
Marie raged, but that unlucky language difficulty hampered her freedom
of speech.
"Madame Gilbert is not so very great," she got out at length. "She is my
mistress, because she is rich, and because she saved me when I was in
trouble in France. She is just an ordinary widow, not a real lady like I
should be if you married me, Willie."
"What is that?" cried Willatopy, starting up. "Madame Gilbert a widow?
She told me she had a big handsome husband who loved her very much. She
told me so when I said that I would like to marry her. I was a boy then,
and had not become Lord Topsham."
"Madame Gilbert is not truthful--like me. She says any old thing which
suits her at the moment. Sometimes she tells men that she has a husband,
sometimes that she is a widow. She is really a widow, I swear it to you.
Her husband was killed in the war."
"How do you know?" asked Willatopy suspiciously. "I would believe Madame
before you. She is a Queen, not a common thing like you. She cannot be a
widow."
"She is," stated Marie positively, and left the assertion to sink into
Willatopy's mind. She was horribly jealous of the boy's honest devotion
to Madame Gilbert, and knew that widows were held in scant respect in
the Torres Straits. Willie ranked his mother, once the wife of a white
god, as altogether different from the ordinary run of brown widows, but
she had been, so far, the one exception permitted by his social code.
The simple savage mind does not like exceptions.
"No," said he at last. "I am sure that Madame has a big, handsome
husband as she declared to me."
"No," shouted Marie.
"Marie," growled Willatopy, "I don't want to smack you, but if you say
anything against Madame, I shall, hard."
"You love Madame better than you do me," grumbled Marie.
Willie had never analysed the various mental and physical emotions which
are vaguely called love, and reflected upon this charge.
"I expect that I do," said he, arriving at a judgment.
Marie sprang to her feet.
"_Que tu es bête_," she roared, "_bête comme un sauvage_. You are
the--the--limit. I go." She dashed away through the woods in a fury.
Willatopy grinned as he watched her disappear. His first rapture in the
conquest of Marie Lambert was quickly wearing thin, and though he did
not wish to part with his white mistress, a little of her society went a
long way.
"I wonder," he murmured, "if the she-devil speaks truth, and that Madame
is a widow. I will ask her."
* * * * * * *
Madame was lying in a rest chair at the entrance to her tent when Marie
arrived. She calmly surveyed the girl who came to a halt before her and
awaited orders. She allowed Marie a reasonable amount of time off every
afternoon, but on this occasion the maid had outstayed her leave.
"Where have you been?" asked Madame.
"I met the Misses Toppys," explained Marie, "and they detained me. I
thought that you would wish me to show the young ladies every respect. I
did not like to leave them before they desired to return."
"Quite so," said Madame drily. "I hope that you also show Lord Topsham
every--respect."
Marie started; never before had Madame used Willatopy's title when
speaking of him to her.
"Certainly, Madame. Whenever I meet his lordship, which is but seldom."
"In the future, it will be even less seldom," serenely observed Madame
Gilbert. "The motor boat is waiting for the water to deepen upon the
bar. When she leaves for the yacht you will take passage in her. And
after that, my dear, it will be _la belle France_. With what pleasure
you will revisit France after so long an exile!"
Marie howled, and grovelled at Madame's feet. "Not France," screamed
she. "Any punishment except France."
"Marie," said Madame, unmoved. "You should have learned in these years
of our association that I am not wholly a fool. My arm is long, and my
eyes can penetrate the thickets--of Tops Island, for example. Yesterday
I learned of the clearing in the woods where you have been meeting Lord
Topsham. To-day I had you watched--when going and returning. Before, I
suspected. Last time in France it was a German officer in hiding. Now it
is the brown heir to an English peerage. Your tastes are catholic. They
must be restrained, my dear, or they will get you into trouble. When
early in the war I found you in Amiens with that German officer I had
him haled forth and shot, but I concealed the identity of his associate.
I believed your tearful story of innocence. You thought him a loyal
Alsatian, didn't you? His accent, I remember, called for some little
explanation. You have been a useful maid. I have given you every chance.
I warned you, when first Lord Topsham--then the boy, Willatopy, our
Pilot--came to us, what would happen if you played tricks with him. It
is going to happen now. I shall accompany you to France and inform the
civil authorities of the circumstances under which you were found by me
four years ago at Amiens close to the fighting lines. The French are
very hard upon those of their women who give shelter and comfort to
enemy officers in hiding. The French are a susceptible race, yet much
prettier women than you have been shot or hanged for smaller crimes than
you committed. You will not find the _Humming Top_ very comfortable. She
rolls damnably at anchor. After two or three weeks of her you will
become quite a hardened sailor. Then you will have leisure to reflect
upon your sins and upon their punishment."
Marie sobbed out confessions and appeals at Madame's chair, but the
heart of her mistress was harder than its oaken frame. Madame listened
politely to the story of Marie's intrigue with Willatopy, and
incredulously to her voluble promises of amendment.
"In any case," ended Marie, "I had done with him. He refuses to marry
me."
"I thought that was the game," observed Madame. "It is ended, anyhow.
And even if I had not tumbled to your carryings on, you would have
failed. You could not have been legally married here, and Captain Ching
has my orders to blockade the bay. The yawl, with the happy bride and
bridegroom, would have been stopped on the way to the wedding. I have
not come to the ends of the earth to be foiled by a Marie Lambert. And
now, if you will put up your things, the boat will convey you to the
_Humming Top_. For the rest of my stay here I shall dispense with the
services of my maid."
At the last Marie showed the courage of her race. She rose, packed up
her clothes, and went forth in the motor boat without another word.
France was a long way off, and much might happen before she was carried
thither to her doom. But the yacht was a very present horror, and Marie
needed all her courage to face confinement within its heaving frames.
Still she went quietly without another word of wasted appeal. At the
boat's side she turned and bowed deferentially to her mistress.
"Au revoir, Marie," said Madame.
"Au 'voir, Madame," said the maid.
Madame Gilbert watched the boat buzz away, and nodded approvingly.
"She has pluck," she murmured. "That is much. We will reconsider the
second part of the programme. But for the present it shall hang like a
sharp sword over Marie's head."
Marie watched Madame standing there on the shore, and smiled grimly.
"At least," thought she, "I have told Willie that his goddess is a
widow. That will take a bit of the gilt and wings off her." From which
it would appear that Marie, though subdued and humbled, was not in the
least repentant.