HOW VASHTI CAME TO THE ISLANDS
"You do not remember me, Major Vigoureux?"
The Commandant looked at her, across the lantern's ray. Something in
her voice, vibrating like the rich, full note of a bell, touched his
memory ... but only to elude it.
The face that challenged him was not girlish; the face, rather, of a
beautiful woman of thirty; its shape a short oval, with a slight
squareness at the point of the jaw to balance the broad forehead over
which her hair (damp now, but rippled with a natural wave, defying the
fog) lay parted in two heavy bands--the brow of a goddess. Her eyes,
too, would have become a goddess, though just now they condescended to
be merry.
Tall she was, for certain, and commanding. Her cloak hid the lines of
her body, whether they were thin or ample; but, where the collar
opened, her throat showed like a pillar, carrying her chin upon a truly
noble poise. It was inconceivable (the Commandant said to himself) that
he had met this woman before and forgotten her.
He came back to her eyes. They challenged him fearlessly. He could not
have described their colour; but he saw amusement lurking deep in their
glooms while she waited.
"I am sorry. It is unpardonable in me, of course----"
"And I, on the contrary, am glad," she interrupted, with a laugh that
reminded him of the liquid chuckle in a thrush's song, or of water
swirling down a deep pool; "for it tells me I have grown out of
recognition, and that is just what I wanted."
This puzzled him, and he frowned a little.
"You know the Islands?" he asked. "This is not your first visit?"
"You shall judge if in this darkness I steer you straight for St.
Lide's Quay; and I take you to witness--look over your shoulder--there
is no lamp on the quay-head to guide me, or at least none visible." She
laughed again, but on the instant grew serious. "Yes," she added, "I
can find my way among the Islands, I thank God." And this puzzled him
yet more.
"You know the Islands; you are glad to return to them?"
She nodded.
"Yet you do not wish to be recognised?"
She nodded again. "I came, you see, sooner than I intended. The _Milo_
was clean out of her course."
"That goes without saying," said he, gravely.
"She was bound for Plymouth. So, you see, this little misadventure has
shortened my journey by days." She paused. "No; I ought not to speak of
it flippantly. I shall be very thankful in my prayers to-night ... all
those women and children...."
Again she paused.
"Is my hand trembling?" she asked, lifting it and laying it again on
the tiller, where it rested firm as a rock. Only the jewels quivered on
her rings and bracelets, and their beauty, arresting the Commandant's
gaze, held him silent.
"To be frank with you," she went on, "I left the ship in a hurry,
because I was afraid of being thanked. I don't like publicity--much;
and just now it would have spoiled everything." This explanation
enlightened the Commandant not at all. "Besides," she added with a
practical air, "I left a note with my maid, to be given to the captain;
so he won't imagine that I've tumbled overboard; and she can send my
boxes ashore to-morrow, if you will be kind enough to fetch them before
the _Milo_ weighs."
"But, meanwhile?" he hazarded.
"Oh, meanwhile, I must manage somehow for the night. I slipped a few
things into my hand-bag here." She drew her fur cloak a little aside,
and displayed it--a small satchel hanging from her waist by a silver
chain. The Commandant had a glimpse at the same moment of a skirt of
rose-coloured silk, brocaded in a pattern of silver.
"And when we land," he asked, "where am I to take you?"
"I am in your hands."
He stared at her, dismayed. "But you have friends?"
"None who would remember me; not a soul, at least, in St. Lide's."
"There is the Plume of Feathers Inn, to be sure----"
"If you recommend it," she said, demurely, as he hesitated.
He almost lost his temper. "Recommend it? Of course I don't."
"Well, from what I remember of the Plume of Feathers--unless it has
altered----"
"Wouldn't it be wiser to turn back?" he suggested, desperately, staring
into the fog, in which the lights of the _Milo_ had long since
disappeared.
"What? When we have this moment opened the quay-light? There!... didn't
I promise you that I knew my way among the Islands?"
In the basin of the harbour the fog lay thicker than in the roads, and
they had scarcely made sure that this was indeed the quay-light before
their boat grated against the landing-steps of the quay itself. The
Commandant, after he had shipped his oars and checked the way on her,
pressing both hands against the dripping wall, put up one of them and
passed the back of it slowly across his forehead. He was considering;
and, while he considered, his companion stepped lightly ashore.
"Forgive me," he pleaded, recollecting himself. "At least, I should
have offered you my hand."
"Thank you, I did not need it."
"But listen, please," he protested, scrambling out upon the steps,
painter in hand, and groping for a ring-bolt. "You cannot possibly stay
the night at the Plume of Feathers----"
He heard her laugh, as he stooped, having found the ring, to make fast
the rope.
"Commandant, have you ever travelled across Wyoming--in winter, in a
waggon? Very well, then; I have."
"Surely not in the clothes you are wearing?" The Commandant, as any one
in the Council of Twelve could tell you, was no debater; yet sometimes
he had been known to triumph even in debate, by sheer simplicity. "The
only course that I can see," he continued, "is to seek some private
house, and throw ourselves upon the--er--"
"Front door?" she suggested, mischievously.
"--hospitality--upon the hospitality of the inmates. To them, of
course, I can explain the situation----"
"Can you?"
The Commandant stood for a moment peering at her, and rubbing the back
of his head--a trick of his in perplexity. "Upon my word, now you come
to mention it," he confessed, "I don't know that I can."
"Whom shall we try first? Miss Gabriel?" ("Now, how in the world,"
wondered the Commandant, "does she know anything of Miss Gabriel?")
"Very well; we go together to Alma Cottage--she still lives at Alma
Cottage?--and knock. The hour is two in the morning, or thereabouts.
Miss Gabriel, overcoming her first fear of robbery or murder, will
parley with us from her bedroom window. To her you introduce me, by the
light of your lantern; a strange female in an evening frock; a female
grossly overladen with jewels (that, I think, would be Miss Gabriel's
way of putting it), but without a portmanteau."
"We might try the Popes, next door," suggested the Commandant
flinching. "Mr. Pope is a man of the world."
"Is he?" she asked, after a pause, in which he felt that she struggled
with some inward mirth. "But we cannot so describe Mrs. Pope, can we?
Also we cannot knock up Mr. and Mrs. Pope without disturbing Miss
Gabriel next door."
"Nor, for that matter, can we knock up Miss Gabriel without disturbing
Mr. and Mrs. Pope."
"Quite so; we may reckon that all three will be listening. Therefore,
when Mr. Pope or Miss Gabriel (as the case may be) begins by demanding
my name--which, by an oversight, you have forgotten to ask----"
"Pardon me," said the Commandant, simply, "I did not forget. I waited,
supposing that if you wished me to know it, you would tell me."
"Ah!" she drew close to him, with a happy exclamation. "Then I was not
mistaken: You are the man I have counted to find.... And you are a
brave man, too. But we will not push bravery too far and disturb Miss
Gabriel."
"If you can suggest a better plan----"
"A far better plan. I suggest that you offer me a room to-night at the
garrison."
"My dear madam!" the Commandant gasped.
"It will be far better in every way," she went on composedly; that is,
if you are willing. To begin with, you have rooms and to spare. Next,
there will be no bother in introducing me, except to Mrs. Treacher."
"Ah, to be sure, there is Mrs. Treacher!" the Commandant murmured.
"But, madam, all the rooms in the Castle are unfurnished, ruinous, and
have been ruinous for fifty years. The Treachers occupy the only two in
which it were possible to swing a cat."
"Then we must borrow Mrs. Treacher and take her along to the Barracks
for chaperon. You may leave it to me to persuade her."
Without waiting for his answer she ran lightly up the steps, the heels
of her rose-coloured satin shoes twinkling in the light of the
Commandant's lantern as he blundered after her.
The pavement of the quay had not been laid for satin shoes. Much
traffic had worn the surface into depressions, and these depressions
were fast collecting water from the drenched air. But although the fog
lay almost as thick here as at the foot of the steps, she picked her
way among these pitfalls, avoiding them as though by instinct. Beyond
the quay came a cobbled causeway; and beyond the causeway a narrow
street wound up towards the garrison gate. Past rains, pouring down the
hill, had worn a deep rut along this street, ploughing it here and
there to the native rock, zig-zagging from centre to side of the
roadway and back again obedient to the trend of the slope. But over the
causeway, and up the channelled street she found her footing with the
same confidence, steering far more cleverly than the Commandant, who
followed as in a dream, amazed, oppressed with forebodings. It was all
very well for her to talk lightly of persuading Mrs. Treacher. If she
could, why then she must be possessed of a secret as yet unrevealed to
Mrs. Treacher's husband after thirty-odd years of married life. The
Commandant, too, knew something of Mrs. Treacher ... an obstinate
woman, not to say pig-headed.
Was she a witch--this stranger in silk and jewels who walked in
darkness so confidently up the tortuous unpaved street?--this
apparition who, coming out of the seas and the dumb fog, talked of the
Islands and the Islanders as though she had known them all her life?
As if to prove she was a witch, she paused before the very cottage
which once already to-night had given pause to his steps and to his
thoughts. The fog had been thinning little by little as they mounted
the hill, and at a few paces' distance he recognized the closed door,
daubed over with that same staring paint which your true Islander uses
for choice upon his boat.
"You remember this door?" she asked, pointing to it as he overtook her.
Witch she might be, but why should he give away to her this innocent
small secret?
"Of course I remember it," he answered; "passing it as I do,
half-a-dozen times a day."
"Yes," she said, almost as if speaking to herself; but her voice, for
the first time since their meeting, seemed to be touched with a faint
shade of dejection. "Naturally you would not remember it for any other
reason."
He was silent.
"Yet," she went on, "you really ought to remember that door, Major
Vigoureux, if only for old sake's sake; for it was, I believe, the
first you entered when you came to the Islands. That was in the
year----"
"Never mind the year," interrupted the Commandant, hastily. "I remember
it well. I almost never pass the door without remembering it."
"Ah!" she cried, putting her jewelled hands together, and the
Commandant took it for an exclamation of triumph at her cleverness.
"But other tenants have the house. The man who was master of it is
dead."
"You know everything, it seems to me. Yes; he was a widower, and late
that evening at the fishing. It was an evening when he should not have
been late; for the door stood open for him, and his daughters--he had
two daughters--sat expecting him. It was the open door that drew me to
ask my way." Here he paused.
"Go on, please."
"One of the girls was to leave the Islands next morning for the
mainland, which she had never seen. She told me this. And she sat
reading aloud to her sister, there by the fire."
"Go on."
"That is all. Yes, that is all--except that the book was Shakespeare,
and the girl--" He paused again, staring at her between sudden
enlightenment and stark incredulity. "You--you don't mean to tell me
_you_ were that girl!"
She nodded; and as, forgetting politeness, he held the lantern close to
her face, he saw two large tears brim up, tremble, and hang for a
second before they fell.
"You?" he murmured.
She nodded again. "I am Vashti--Vazzy Cara, they called me, Philip
Cara's daughter. I daresay, though, you never heard my name? No, there
is no reason why you should. And my sister, Ruth----"
"She is married and lives on Saaron Island. But you know this, of
course? You who seem to know everything about us."
"My sister writes me all the news.... So now," she added smiling, "it
is all explained, and there is no mystery about me after all. Are you
so very much disappointed?"
But the Commandant continued to stare. No mystery? That the fisherman's
daughter with the Island lilt in her voice--well he recalled
it!--should have turned into this apparition of furs and jewels?... And
yet the metamorphosis lay not in the furs and jewels, but in her
careless air of command, of reliance upon her power, beauty,
charm--whatever her woman's secret might be; an air of one accustomed
to move in courts, maybe, or to control great audiences, or to live
habitually with lofty thoughts; an air of one, above all, sure of
herself. The poor Commandant had lived the better part of his life in
exile, but by instinct of breeding he recognised this air at once.
Vashti, however, seemed to mistake his astonishment, for she frowned.
"Well?" she asked, a trifle impatiently.
"Your sister never told us," he stammered. "At least--that is to
say----"
"Do you suppose she was ashamed of me?"
"Ashamed?" he echoed, for indeed no such thought had occurred to him.
If ever a man could have taken _honi soit qui mal y pense_ for his
motto, it was our Commandant.
"Ah, to be sure!" she said slowly, but less in indignation (it seemed)
than in disappointment with him. "Naturally that would be the
explanation to occur to you, living so long in such a place."
She turned on her heel, half contemptuously, and resumed her way,
walking with a yet quicker step than before. The Commandant, aware that
he had offended, but not in the least understanding how, toiled after
her up the steep incline to the garrison gate.
They reached the door of the Barracks. To his surprise it was standing
open, and from behind the ragged blind of his sitting-room--to the left
of the entrance hall--a light shone feebly out upon the fog. He could
not remember that he had lit the lamp there, nor that he had left the
front door open.
Vashti paused upon the doorstep and turned to him:
"My good sir," she said curtly, "run and fetch Mrs. Treacher to me, for
goodness' sake."
He hesitated, on the point of stepping past her to open the door of the
lighted room. Her manner forbade him, and he stood still, there by the
doorstep, gazing after her a moment as she disappeared into the dark
hall. Then, as he heard the door latch rattle gently, he turned to
hurry in search of Mrs. Treacher.
He had taken but a dozen steps, however, when her light footfall
sounded again close behind him. She, too, had turned and was following
him almost at a run.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she gasped.
He swung up his lantern. Her eyes were wide with a kind of horror; and
yet she seemed to be laughing, or ready to laugh.
"Tell you?" he echoed.
"Oh, but it was unkind!"
"But--but, excuse me--what on earth----"
"Why, that you were entertaining ladies!"
"Ladies!"
She nodded, still round-eyed, reproachful. "Two of them--sitting on
your sofa! And, I think--I rather think--one of them is Miss Gabriel!"