THE LIGHT AGAIN—THE LADY AND THE CARGO
Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the spring to meet the sunshine!
Hiawatha.
"Curwen," said Captain Jack, suddenly—the two stood together at the helm on the afternoon of the same day, and the Peregrine was once more alone, a speck upon the waste of waters, "I have made up my mind to return to Scarthey."
The mate wagged his bushy eyebrows and shifted his hand on the helm. "Ay, ay, sir," he said, after just an instant's pause.
"I would not run you and the men into unnecessary danger, that you may be sure of; but the fact is, Curwen, I'm in a devil of a fix all round. There's no use hiding it from you. And, all things considered, to land the lady and the cargo at the lighthouse itself, gives me as fair a chance of getting out of it as any plan I can think of. The cargo's not all my own and it's a valuable one, I daresay you have guessed as much; and it's not the kind we want revenue men to pry into. I could not unload elsewhere that I know of, without creating suspicion. As to storing it elsewhere, it's out of the question. Scarthey's the place, though it's a damned risky one just now! But we've run many a risk together in our day, have we not?"
"Ay, sir; who's afraid?"
"Then there's the lady," lowering his voice; "she's Lady Landale, my friend's wife, the wife of the best friend ever man had. Ay, you remember him, I doubt not—the gentleman seaman of the Porcupine—I owe him more than I can ever repay, and he owes me something too. That sort of thing binds men together; and see what I have done to him—carried off his wife!"
Curwen grunted, enigmatically, and disengaged a hand to scratch his chin.
"I must have speech with him. I must, it is enough to drive me mad to think what he may be thinking of me. What I purpose is this: we'll disguise the ship as far as we can (we have the time), paint her a new streak and alter those topsails, change the set of the bowsprit and strike out her name."
"That's unlucky," said the mate.
"Unlucky, is it? Well, she's not been so lucky this run that we need fear to change the luck. Then, Curwen, we'll slip in at night at a high tide, watching for our opportunity and a dark sky; we'll unship the cargo, and then you shall take command of her and carry her off to the East Coast and wait there, till I am able to send you word or join you. It will only be a few hours danger for the men, after all."
Still keeping his seaman eye upon the compass, Curwen cleared his throat with a gruesome noise. Then in tones which seemed to issue with difficulty from some immense depth:
"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "that ain't a bargain."
"How now?" cried his captain, sharply.
"No, sir," rolling his head portentously; "that don't run to a bargain, that don't. The lads of the Peregrine 'll stick to their skipper through thick and thin. I'll warrant them, every man Jack of them; and if there was one who grumbled, I'd have my knife in him before another caught the temper from him—I would, or my name's not Curwen. If ye bid us steer to hell we'll do it for you, sir, and welcome. But for to go and leave you there—no, sir, it can't be done."
Captain Jack gave a little laugh that was as tender as a woman's tear. Curwen rolled his head again and mumbled to himself:
"It can't be done."
Then Jack Smith clapped his hand on the sailor's shoulder.
"But it's got to be done!" he cried. "It is the only thing you can do to help me, Curwen. To have our Peregrine out in the daylight on that coast would be stark madness—no disguise could avail her, and you can't change your ugly old phiz, can you? As for me, I must have a few days on shore, danger or no danger. Ah, Curwen," with a sudden, passionate outbreak, "there are times when a man's life is the least of his thoughts!"
"Couldn't I stop with you, sir?"
"I would not trust the ship to another, and you would double the risk for me."
"I could double a blow for you too," cried the fellow, hoarsely. "But if it's got to be—it must be. I'll do it, sir."
"I count on it," said the captain, briefly.
As the ring of his retreating steps died away upon his ear the mate shook his head in melancholy fashion:
"Women," he said, "is very well, I've nought to say against them in their way. And the sea's very well—as I ought to know. But women and the sea, it don't agree. They's jealous one of the other and a man gets torn between."
As Molly sat in her cabin, watching the darkening sky outside with dreaming eyes, she started on seeing Captain Jack approach, and instead of passing her with cold salute, halt and look in.
"I would speak a word with you," he said.
"On deck, then," said Molly. She felt somehow as if under the broad heaven they were nearer each other than in that narrow room. The sea was rough, the wind had risen and still blew from the north, it was cold; but her blood ran too fast these days to heed it.
She drew one of the capes of her cloak over her head and staggering a little, for the schooner, sailing close to the wind, pitched and rolled to some purpose, she made for her usual station at the bulwarks.
"Well?" she asked.
He briefly told her his purpose of returning to Scarthey direct.
Her eye dilated; she grew pale.
"Is that not dangerous?"
He made a contemptuous gesture.
"But they must be watching for you on that coast. You have sunk the boat—killed those men. To return there—My God, what folly!"
"I must land my goods, Madam. You forget that I have more contraband on board than, smuggler as I am, even I bargained for."
"If it is for me?—I would rather fling myself into the waves this instant than that you should expose yourself to danger."
"Then I should fling myself after you, and that would be more dangerous still."
He smiled a little mockingly upon her as he spoke; but the words called a transient fire into her face.
"You would risk your life to save me?" she cried.
"To save Adrian's wife, Madam."
"Bah!"
He would have gone then, but she held him with her free hand. She was again white to the lips. But her eyes—how they burned!
He would have given all his worth to avoid what he felt was coming. A woman, at such a juncture may forbid speech, or deny her ear: a man, unless he would seem the first of Josephs or the last of coxcombs, dare not even hint at his unwelcome suspicions.
"I will not have you go into this danger, I will not!" stammered Molly incoherently. The dusk was spreading, and her eyes seemed to grow larger and larger in the uncertain light.
"Lady Landale, you misunderstand. It is true that to see you safely restored to your husband's roof is an added reason for my return to Scarthey—but were you not on board, I should go all the same. I will tell you why, it is a secret, but you shall know it. I have treasures on board, vast treasures confided to me, and I must store them in safety till I can give them back to their rightful owners. This I can only do at Scarthey—for to cruise about with such a cargo indefinitely is as impossible as to land it elsewhere. And more than this, had I not that second reason, I have yet a third that urges me to Scarthey still."
"For Madeleine?" she whispered, and her teeth gleamed between her lips.
He remained silent and tried gently to disengage himself from her slender fingers, but the feeling of their frailness, the knowledge of her wound, made her feeble grasp as an iron vice to his manliness.
"Do you not remember then—what she has said to you? what she wrote to you in cold blood—the coward—in the very moment when you were staking your life for love of her? I remember, if you do not—'You have deceived me,' she wrote, and her hand never trembled, for the words ran as neatly and primly as ever they did in her convent copy books. 'You are not what you represented yourself to be—You have taken advantage of the inexperience of an ignorant girl, I have been deluded and deceived. I never wish to see you, to hear of you again.'"
"For Heaven's sake, Lady Landale——" cried the man fiercely.
Molly laughed—one of those laughs that have the ring of madness in them.
"Do I not remember? Ah, that is not all! She knows you now for what you are, knows what your 'mission' is—but you must not believe she writes in anger. No, she——"
Captain Jack's patience could bear no further strain.
"Be silent," he commanded fiercely, and wrenched his arm away to face her with menacing eyes.
"Ah, does it rouse so much anger in you even to hear repeated what she did not hesitate to write, did not hesitate to allow me to read? And yet you love her? If you had seen her, if you knew her as I do! I tell you she means it; when she wrote that she was not angry; it was the truth—she did it in cold blood. She loved you, you think, and yet she believed you a liar; she loved you, and she thinks you a traitor to all she holds dear. She believes that of you, and you ... you love her still!"
"Lady Landale!"
"Listen—she could never love you, as you should be loved. She was not born your kin. Between you and her there is nothing—nothing but your own fancy. Do not risk your life again for her—your life!"
She stopped, drew her breath with a long gasp, the spray from a turbulent wave came dashing across the bows into her face, and as once the blood of Cécile de Savenaye had been roused by the call of the wild waters to leave safety and children and seek her doom, so now the blood she had transmitted to her child, leaped to the same impulse and bore her onwards with irresistible force.
"When," she pursued, "in the darkness you took me in your arms and kissed me; what did the touch of my lips bring to you? My lips, not Madeleine's.... Were you not happy then? Oh, you were, do not deny it, I felt, I knew our souls met! My soul and yours, not yours and Madeleine's. And I knew then that we were made for each other. The sea and the wide free life upon it: it draws me as it draws you; it was that drew me to you before I had ever seen you. Listen, listen. Do not go to Scarthey—you have your beautiful ship, your faithful crew—there are rich and wonderful worlds, warm seas that beckon. You can have life, money, adventure—and love, love if you will. Take it, take me with you! What should I care if you were an adventurer, a smuggler, a traitor? What does anything matter if we are only together? Let us go, we have but one life, let us go!"
Bereft of the power of movement he stood before her, and the sweat that had gathered upon his brow ran down his face. But, as the meaning of her proposition was borne in upon him, a shudder of fury shook him from head to foot. No man should have offered dishonour to Jack Smith and not have been struck the next instant at his feet. But a woman—a woman, and Adrian's wife!
"Lady Landale," he said, after a silence during which the beating of her heart turned her sick and cold, and all her fever heat fell from her, leaving nothing but the knowledge of her shame, her misery, her hopeless love. "Lady Landale, let me bring you back to your cabin—it is late."
She went with him as one half-conscious. At the door she paused. The light from within fell upon his face, deeply troubled and white, but upon the lips and brows, what scorn! He was a god among men.... How she loved him, and he scorned her! Poor Murthering Moll!
She looked up.
"Have you no word for me?" she cried passionately.
"Only this, Lady Landale: I will forget."
Back towards the distant northern light the schooner clove her valiant way in spite of adverse winds and high seas.
The return journey was slower than the outward, and since the second day of it the lady kept much to her cabin, while the captain would pace the deck till far into the night, with unwonted uneasiness. To him the white wings of his Peregrine were bearing him all too slowly for endurance, while to the stormy woman's heart that beat through the night watches in passionate echo to his restless tread, every instant that passed but brought nearer the prospect of a future so intolerable that she could not bring herself to face it.
A gloom seemed to have come over the tight little craft, and to have spread even to the crew, who missed the ring of their captain's jolly laugh and the sound of his song.
When, within a day's sail of the goal, the planned disguise was finally carried out upon the schooner's fair sides and rigging, her beautiful stretch of sail curtailed, and her name (final disgrace), superseded by the unmeaning title of The Pretty Jane, open murmurs broke out which it required all Curwen's severity—and if the old martinet did not execute the summary justice he had threatened he was quite equal to the occasion nevertheless—and all Jack's personal influence to quell.
The dawn of the next day crept gloomily upon a world of rain; with long faces the men paddled about the deck, doing their duty in silence; Curwen's old countenance, set into grimmer lines than ever, looked as if it had just been detached from the prow of some vessel after hard experience of stress and storm. The spirits of the captain alone seemed to rise in proportion as they drew nearer land.
"The moon sets at half-past eleven," he said to Curwen, "but we need not fear her to-night. By half-past twelve I reckon on your having those twenty-five damned casks safe in the cave you took them from; it is a matter of three journeys. And then the nose of the Pretty Jane must be pointed for the Orkneys. All's going well."
Night had fallen. "The gaudy bubbling and remorseful day" had "crept into the bosom of the sea." From the cross-trees the look-out man had already been able to distinguish through the glass the faint distant glimmer of Scarthey beacon, when Captain Jack knocked for admittance at Lady Landale's cabin for the last time, as he thought, with a sigh of relief.
"In the course of an hour, Madam," he said in a grave tone, "I hope to restore you to land. As for me, I shall have again to hide in the peel, though I hope it will not be for long. My fate—and by my fate I mean not only my safety, but my honour, which, as you know, is now bound up in the safety of the treasures—will be in your hands. For I must wait at Scarthey till I can see Adrian again, and upon your return to Pulwick I must beg you to be the bearer of a message to ask him to come and see me."
She replied in a voice that trembled a little:
"I will not fail you."
But her great eyes, dark circled, fixed upon him with a meek, sorrowful look, spoke dumbly the troublous tale of her mind. In her subdued mood the likeness to Madeleine was more obtrusive than it had ever yet been. He contemplated her with melancholy, and drew a heavy sigh.
Molly groaned in the depths of her soul, though her lips tight set betrayed no sound. Oh, miserable chaos of the human world, that such pent up love should be wasted—wasted; that they, too, young and strong and beautiful, alone together, so near, with such glorious happiness within their reach, should yet be so perversely far asunder!
There was a long silence. They looked into each other's eyes; but he was unseeing; his mind was far away, dwelling upon the memory of that last meeting with his love under the fir trees of Pulwick only ten days ago, but now as irrevocably far as things seem that may never again be. At length, she made a movement which brought him back to present reality—a movement of her wounded arm as if of pain. And he came back to Lady Landale, worn with the fatigue of these long days in the cramped discomfort of a schooner cabin, thinned by pain and fevered thinkings, shorn of all that daintiness of appearance which can only be maintained in the midst of luxury, and yet, by the light of the flickering lamp, more triumphantly beautiful than ever.
His thoughts leaped to his friend with a pang of remorse.
"You are suffering—you are ill," he said. "Thus do I bring you back to him who last saw you so full of strength.... But you will recover at Pulwick."
"Suffering, ill! Ah, my God!" As if suffocating, she pressed her hand upon her heart, and bowed her head till it rested on the table. And then he heard her murmur in a weary voice:
"Recover at Pulwick! My God, my God! The air at Pulwick will stifle me, I think."
He waited a moment in silence and saw that she was weeping. Then he went out and closed the door behind him with gentle hand.
Nearly all the lights of the ship were now extinguished, and in a gloom as great as that in which they had started upon their unsuccessful venture, the Peregrine and her crew returned to the little island which had already been so fateful to them.
Captain Jack had taken the helm himself, and Curwen stood upon his right hand waiting patiently for his commands. For an hour or so they hung off the shore. The rain fell close and fine around them; it was as if sea and sky were merging by slow imperceptible degrees into one. The beacon light looming, halo encircled, through the mist, seemed, like a monster eye, to watch with unmoved contempt the restlessness of these pigmies in the grand solitude of the night.
Who shall say with what conflict of soul Molly, in her narrow seclusion, saw the light of Scarthey grow out of the dimness till its rays fell across the darkened cabin and glimmered on her wedding ring?
At last the captain drew his watch, and by the faint rays upon the binnacle saw the hour had come.
"Boat loaded, Curwen?" he asked in a low voice.
"This hour, sir."
"Ready to cast?"
"Right, sir."
"Now, Curwen."
Low, from man to man, the order ran through the ship, and the anchor was dropped, almost within a musket shot of the peel. It was high tide, but no hand but Captain Jack's would have dared risk the vessel so close. She swung round, ready to slip at a moment's notice.
He left the helm; and in the wet darkness cannoned against the burly figure of his mate.
"You, Curwen? Remember we have not a moment to lose. Remain here—as soon as the men are back from the last run, sheer off."
He grasped the horny hand.
Curwen made an inarticulate noise in his big throat, but the grip of his fingers upon his master's was of eloquence sufficient.
"Let some one call the lady."
A couple of men ran forward with dark lanterns. The rest gathered round.
"Now, my lads, brisk and silent is the word."
The cabin door opened, and Molly came forth, the darkness hid the pallor of her face, but it could not hide the faltering of her steps. Captain Jack sprang forward and gave her his arm, and she leant upon it without speaking, heavily. For one moment she stopped as if she could not tear her feet from the beloved planks, but Curwen caught her by the other arm; and then she was on the swinging ladder. And so she left the Peregrine.
The gig was almost filled with barrels; there was only room for the four oarsmen selected, besides the captain and herself. The boat shoved off. She looked back and saw, as once before, the great wall of the ship's side rise sheer above the sea, saw the triangle of light again slide down to lie a span above the water-line. With what a leaping heart she had set forth, that black night, away from the hateful lighthouse beam to that glimmer of promise and mystery! And now! She felt herself grow sick at the thought of that home-coming; at the vision of the close warm rooms, of her husband's melancholy eyes. Yet, as she sat, the sleeve of the captain's rough sailor coat touched her shoulder, and she remembered she was still with him. It was not all death yet.
In less than three minutes they touched ground. He jumped into the water, and stretched out his arms for Molly. She rose giddily, and his embrace folded her round. The waves rolled in with surge and thud and dashed their spray upon them; and still the rain fell and beat upon her head, from which she had impatiently pushed her hood. But her spirit had no heed for things of the body this night.
Oh, if the sea would open sudden deeps before them! if even the quicksand would seize them in its murderous jaws, what ecstasy the hideous lingering death might hold for her, so that only she lay, thus, in his arms to the end!
It was over now; his arms had clasped her for the last time. She stood alone upon the dry sand, and her heart was in hell.
He was speaking; asking her pardon for not going at once with her to see her into the keep, but he dared not leave the beach till his cargo was landed, and he must show the men the way to the caves. Would she forgive him, would she go with him?
Forgive him! Go with him! She almost laughed aloud. A few poor moments more beside him; they would be as the drops of water to the burning tongue of Dives.
Yes, she would go with him.
One by one the precious caskets were carried between a couple of men, who stumbled in the darkness, close on their captain's heels. And the lady walked beside him and stood beside him without a word, in the falling rain. The boat went backwards and forwards twice; before the hour had run out, the luckless cargo was all once more landed, and the captain heard with infinite relief the last oar-strokes dwindling away in the distance, and saw the lights suddenly disappear.
"You have been very patient," he said to Molly then, with a gentle note in his voice.
But she did not answer. Are the souls of the damned patient?
"My Lady and Mr. the Captain! My God—my God! so wet—so tired! Enter—enter in the name of heaven. It is good, in verity, to have My Lady back, but, Mr. the Captain, is it well for him to be here? And Madam is ill? She goes pale and red by turns. Madam has the fever for sure! And her arm is hurt, and she is as wet as the first time she came here. Ah, Lord God, what are we coming to? Fire we must have. I shall send the wife."
"Ay, do so, man," cried Captain Jack, looking with concern at Lady Landale, who in truth seemed scarcely able to stand, and whose fluctuating colour and cracked fevered lips gave painful corroboration to René's surmise, "your mistress must be instantly attended to."
But Molly arrested the servant as he would have hurried past upon his errand.
"Your master?" she said in a dry whisper, "is he at Pulwick?"
"His honour! My faith, I must be but half-awake yet. Imbecile that I am, his honour—where is he? Is he not with you? No, indeed, he is not at Pulwick, My Lady; he has gone to St. Malo to seek you. Nothing would serve him but that he must go. And so he did not reach in time to meet you? Ah, the poor master—what anxiety for him!"
Captain Jack glanced in dismay at his friend's wife, met her suddenly illumined gaze and turned abruptly on his heel, with a grinding noise.
"See to your mistress," he said harshly, "I hear your women folk are roused overhead; hurry them, and when Lady Landale no longer requires you, I must speak with you on an urgent business of my own. You will find me in my old room."
"Go with the captain at once, René, since he wants you," interposed Molly quickly, "here comes Moggie. She will take care of me. Leave me, leave me. I feel strong again. Good-night, Captain Smith, I shall see you to-morrow?"
There was a wistful query in her voice and look.
Captain Smith bowed distantly and coldly, and hastened from the room, accompanied by René, while open-mouthed and blinking, rosy, blowsy, and amazed, Mrs. Potter made her entry on the scene and stared at her mistress with the roundest of blue eyes.
"My good Renny," said the captain, "I have no time to lose. I have a hard hour's work to do, before I can even think of talking. I want your help. Your light will burn all safe for the time, will it not? Hark ye, man, you have been so faithful a fellow to my one friend that I am going to trust to you matters which concern my own honour and my own life. Ask no question, but do what I tell you, if you would help one who has helped your master long ago; one whom your master would wish you to help."
Thus adjured, René repressed his growing astonishment at the incomprehensible development of events. And having, under direction, provided the sailor with a lantern, and himself with a wide tarpaulin and sundry carpenter's tools, he followed his leader readily enough through the ruinous passages, half choked up with sand, which led from the interior of the ruins to one of the sea caves.
Before reaching the open-mouthed rocky chamber, the captain obscured the light, and René promptly barked his shins against a barrel.
"Sacrebleu," he cried, feeling with quick hands the nature of the obstruction, "more kegs?"
"The same, my friend! Now hang that tarpaulin against the mouth of the cave and be sure it is close; then we may again have some light upon the matter. What we must do will not bear interference, and moving glimmers on a dark night have told tales before this."
As soon as the beach entrance was made secure, the captain uncovered his lantern; and as the double row of kegs stood revealed, his eyes rapidly scanned their number. Yes, they were all there: five and twenty.
"Now, to work, man! We have to crack every one of these nuts, and take the kernels out."
Even as he spoke, he turned the nearest cask on end, with a blow of chisel and mallet stove in the head and began dragging out quantities of loose tow. In the centre of the barrel, secured in position on to a stout middle batten, was a bag of sailcloth closely bound with cord. This he lifted with an effort, for it was over a hundred-weight, and flung upon the sand in a corner.
"That's the kernel you see," he said to René, who had watched the operation with keen interest. "And when we have shelled them all I will show you where to put them in safety. Now carry on—the quicker the better. The sooner we have it all upstairs, the freer I shall breathe."
Without another word, entering into the spirit of haste which seemed to fill his companion, and nobly controlling his seething curiosity, René set to work on his side, with his usual dexterousness.
Half an hour of speechless destructive labour completed the first part of the task. Then the two men carried the weighty bags into the room which had been Captain Jack's in the keep. And when they had travelled to and fro a dozen times with each heavy load, and the whole treasure was at length accumulated upstairs, René, with fresh surprise and admiration, saw the captain lift the hearthstone and disclose a recess in the heavy masonry—presumably a flue, in the living days of Scarthey peel—which, although much blocked with stony rubbish, had been evidently improved by the last lodger during his period of solitary residence into a convenient and very secure hiding-place.
Here was the precious pyramid now heaped up; the stone was returned to its place, and the two stood in front of each other mopping their faces.
"Thank goodness, it is done," said Jack Smith. "And thank you too, Renny. To-morrow, break up these casks and add the staves to your firewood stack; then nobody but you, in this part of the world, need be any the wiser about our night's work.—A smart piece of running, eh?—Phew, I am tired! Bring me some food, and some brandy, like a good fellow. Then you can back to your pillow and flatter yourself that you have helped Jack Smith out of a famous quandary."
René grinned and rushed to execute the order. He had less desire for his pillow than for the gratification of his hyper-excited curiosity.
But although pressed to quaff one cup of good fellowship and yet another, he was not destined to get his information, that night, from the captain, who had much ado to strangle his yawns sufficiently to swallow a mouthful or two of food.
"No one must know, Renny," was all he said, at last, between two gapes, kicking the hearthstone significantly, and stretching his arms, "not even the wife." Then he flung himself all dressed upon his bed.
"And my faith," said René, when he sought his wife a moment later, "he was fast asleep before I had closed the door."