PRISONER AND CAPTOR
When the heels of the _Sally_ had put so great a distance between
herself and her pursuers that there was nothing to fear of their
overhauling her, Bras-de-Fer went below to the cabin. Exhausted by
the events of the night, leaning listlessly against the sill of the
stern-port, was Mistress Clerke, her lids drooping with weariness as
she struggled against tired nature to keep her lone vigil. Her eyes
started wide at the sound of his footsteps. She struggled to her feet
and stood, her face pallid and drawn, in the cold, garish light of the
morning. She scanned him eagerly, peering fearfully into his face for
any portentous sign. The dust of battle was still streaked upon it, and
the shadows under the brows which had made his countenance forbidding
in the mad flush of war upon the _San Isidro_ now only gave the
shadows a darker depth of settled melancholy. There was a fierceness
and wildness, too, but it was distant, hidden, and self-contained; at
bay, only with nothing of aggressiveness for immediate apprehension or
alarm. Instead, there was a reserved dignity and aloofness which spoke
of a nice sense of a delicate situation. He made no move to draw near
her, but stood in the narrow cabin door, hat in hand.
“Madame is weary?” he said. “If you will permit--” And then he searched
the cabin, a question in his eyes.
“The señorita, madame?” he asked.
Mistress Clerke sighed wearily. “I am alone, monsieur. She came frozen
with terror--and fled again--”
“You alone!”
“I can only crave your pity.”
He peered around at the dingy surroundings. “I am bereaved, madame.
This cabin is not the _San Isidro_. ’Twere better, more cleanly. I am
sorry. I had come to order it to your comfort. See. I have brought your
bedding and belongings from the _San Isidro_. In a moment, if you will
permit, I can do very much to better your condition.”
A spark of gratitude at this evidence of his kindly disposition gleamed
in her eyes a moment and she signed an acquiescence. The Frenchman
conducted her to the half-deck, while two negroes set busily about the
place, removing his and Cornbury’s effects and making it sweet and
clean for its gentle tenant.
The Frenchman would have left her, but Mistress Barbara stopped him at
the cabin door.
“I cannot thank you, monsieur. To do so pays no jot of my great
obligation, which every moment becomes greater.”
He bowed and would have passed out. “You owe me nothing but silence,
madame,” he said, coldly.
“And that I cannot pay,” she cried. “Oh, why will you not listen to me,
monsieur? Have you no kindness?”
“I have done what small service I could, madame. If I owe you more--”
She clenched her small hands together, as though in pain. “Ah, you do
not understand. Why will you not see? It is not that. I wish you to do
me justice.”
“Madame, justice and I are many miles asunder. I have no indulgent
memory. It is best that there should be no talk of what has been. Only
what _is_ and what is _to be_ has any power to open my ears or my lips.
And so, if you will permit me,” and once more he made the motion to
withdraw.
“It _is_ the present and the future, Monsieur le Chevalier,” she began.
But at the sound of that name he turned abruptly towards her, frowning
darkly.
“It cannot be, madame,” he cried, with a brusqueness which frightened
her. “I have no name but Bras-de-Fer aboard this ship. Please address
your needs to him.”
She recoiled in dismay in the corner of the bulkhead to listen to
the tramp of his heavy sea-boots down the passage. For the first
time she feared him. She could not know that it was the sight of her
face and of something new he saw there which raised a doubt that had
entered, a canker, into his mind. She could not know what a struggle
it was costing him and at what pains he took refuge in the silence
he demanded. His brutality was but the sudden outward manifestation
of this battle, which, should it not take one side, must assuredly
take the other. He had decided. Nothing should turn the iron helm of
his will. But as he sought the deck, hot memory poured over him in
a flood. He recalled the times she had tossed her head at him, even
before the incident of the coach. That, too, he remembered, even with
a sense of amusement. The coranto! and how he had sought to patch
and mend his wounded pride by fruitlessly assailing hers, battering
abortively at the citadel of the heart he could never hope to win.
Ferrers! The precious papers he had had for a sweet half-hour in his
bosom and had thrown away! Where had Ferrers hidden them from her? The
priceless heritage with which he could have daunted this woman-enemy of
his whom he had loved and hated at the same time and from whom he had
received only scorn and misprision. Could he refuse her now that she
was a helpless captive, weak, frail, and unfriended among a crew of
rascals who stood at nothing and from whom only himself could preserve
her? Had he not secretly welcomed her wish last night to be carried
aboard the _Saucy Sally_, and the contingency which made it impossible
for her to be returned to the _San Isidro_? Was he not conscious of a
sense of guilt that he had not found an opportunity to send her back
to safety? She was completely in his power. His heart sang high; but
the cord was frayed, and the note rang false. It was impossible; no
matter how deeply he had seared his soul, no man born as he had been
born could refuse the mute appeal of a woman in distress. He thought of
his dishonor the night he had come upon the _Saucy Sally_, when in a
fury against the fortune which still denied him he had railed, madly,
impotently, against all virtue, and in a passion of vengefulness sunk
so low that he had loudly threatened, like a common street ruffian and
card-room bully, this woman, whom--God help him!--he loved and would
love throughout all time. The depth of his degradation cumbered him
about, remorse fell upon him, and anguish wrung his heart from his
body as nothing--not even the loss of the papers--had done.
The old life in London, with its gaming, its carousing and gallantry--he
could see it all through new eyes, washed clean and clear by the purging
winds and storms of heaven. Himself he marked from a great moral
distance, almost as though from another planet--the silly, spoiled child
of folly that he had been. And it was this impotent creature who had
cried out against his fate, which, with a rare honesty, had only lowered
him from the high estate to which he had won, in accordance with the
same inexorable regulations of the human law which had raised him there.
The figures in that London life passed before him like a row of tawdry
puppets, serving the same martyrdom to folly as himself, at the
expense of love, charity, and all true virtue. Soft thinking for a
powder-blackened, bearded _flibustier_, with hands even yet red from his
last depredation! He smiled supinely to himself, that he could think
thus of the things that so recently had been his very existence. In that
London life, amid that throng of tinsel goddesses, one figure stood
eminent and conspicuous. It was that of the woman who in all companies
of men and women held her fame so fair that, whatever their reputations
for high deeds or ignoble vices, none was so great as she. In that great
court where virtue was a gem of so little worth that it was kept hid and
secret, Mistress Barbara had worn it openly, broadly, high upon her
brow, with a rare pride, as the most priceless of her inestimable
jewels.
He loved her. Flaunted, scorned, despised, he loved her the more. The
past was engulfed and vanquished. He only saw her an actuality of the
flesh here aboard his very ship--the dove in the eagle’s nest, whom
every law and impulse, human and divine, impelled him to succor and
protect. The vibrant voice, the gentle touch, the soft perfume of her
presence provoked the covetous senses and stole away his will. It was
with mingled feelings of apprehension and alarm that he discovered to
himself the persistency of his attachment. He acknowledged it only
when he learned that nothing else was possible. And when that was done
he planned and resolved again, with a new fervency of determination.
The future should atone. She had thought him a wild, reckless gallant,
who had won his way and continued to win--by his wits--a worthless
creature who consorted with the worst men of the court and presented in
the world the characteristics she most despised. How he hated the thing
that he had been, the mask that he had worn! If she had cared, she
could have seen, she would have learned that he was not all that she
had thought him. The reckless gallant was become a rough _boucanier_
and _pirato_. She had seen him in the red fever of battle. _Eh bien._
He would not undeceive her. Red-handed _pirato_ he would remain. No
glimpse should she have of the struggle beneath. He would set her safe
ashore at Port Royal. He would sail away from her forever, and she
should enjoy her fortune. That was the price that he would pay.
None the less, he found the occasion to wash away the stains of battle,
and in fresh linen and hose became less offensive to the sight.
When he sought the deck there was no sign of a vessel upon any side.
Cornbury he found at the after-hatch, puffing upon a pipe.
“Ochone, dear Iron Arm,” the Irishman began, “ye’re the anomalous
figure of a _pirato_, to be sure. One minute your form is painted broad
upon the horizon with a cutlass in your teeth, an’ glistenin’ pikes in
both your fists. I’ the next ye’re playin’ the hero part of ‘Vartue in
Distress.’”
Bras-de-Fer smiled.
“Oh, ye may laugh. But in truth ’tis all most irregular. Ye violate
every tradition of the thrade. By the laws, ye’re no dacent figure of a
swashbuckler at all at all.”
“What would ye have then, _mon ami_?”
“Ah, he’s clean daffy! What would I have? Bah! ye know my misliking for
the sex, and ye ask me what would I have? Egad! a walk on the plank,
and a little dance on nothing would not be amiss for _her_. ’Tis the
simplest thing in the world. The least bit of a rope, three ten-pound
shot, a shove of the arm, and _spsh!_ your troubles are sunk in a
mile of sea. To England, a treaty of peace with Captain Ferrers, and,
_voilà!_ ye’re a French viscount, with a fortune beyond the dreams of
avarice, and an out-at-the-knees-and-elbows of an Irishman to help ye
spend it. Man, ’tis a squanderin’ waste of opportunity.” He growled,
and puffed upon his pipe, sending crabbed, sour glances at his captain.
“Oh, ye may laugh. Instead of this, what do ye do? Ye have my lady
aboard the ship to the pervarsion of all dacent piratical society, give
her _my_ bed and board, and _my_ particular niggar for waiting-man.
Ye’re sowin’ the seeds of ripe mutiny, me handsome picaroon, an’ a
red-headed Irishman will be there to aid in the blossomin’.”
“Nay, Cornbury,” said Bras-de-Fer. “We do but go a short cruise to Port
Royal. I’ve set my mind on seeing my lady safe in English hands.”
“There ye are,” fumed the Irishman. “_There ye are!_ Ye’ll kill the
golden goose. Ye’ll jeopardize your callin’ again, all for that same
finical bundle of superficialities. Slapped once in the face, ye turn
your cheek with new avidity for more. Zoons! I’ve no patience with such
shilly-shallyin’.” And, as Bras-de-Fer was silent, he sent forth a
quick succession of smoke puffs which chased madly down the wind.
“Ask Jacquard,” he growled again; “he likes it no more than I. There’s
a mutterin’ forward. ’Tis discipline--the lack of drink and an unequal
partitionin’ of the spoils--”
“_Pardieu!_” interrupted the Frenchman at last, his eyes flashing in a
fury. “Do they growl? Let them do it in the forecastle. No man, no, not
even you, shall beard me on my quarter-deck!”
Cornbury did not arise or show the least sign of a changed countenance.
“Ask Jacquard,” he repeated again.
Bras-de-Fer swung hotly on his heel and went below.