XXV
Anthony examined the schooner's position, while the boat pulled toward her; her nose was wedged into a mud flat, but as her stern had moved around toward the north he knew the tide was working up the river.
"In an hour," he said, "there will be water enough to float her off." He turned toward the girl; she had her cloak drawn about her, and her eyes were still on Le Mousquet. She seemed to have no regret at leaving the vessel; but the manner of her leaving had left her furious.
"The next thing," said Anthony, "is to procure a conveyance and get you back to your father."
"You need not trouble yourself," she said.
"As I am the cause of your being here," said Anthony, "I owe it to you to see you safe."
"I cancel all obligations," she said. "You owe me nothing."
Anthony looked at her stubbornly.
"Very well," said he. "Then I owe it to myself. And in debts owing to myself I always demand payment in full." He looked inshore, over the fields, green with the freshness of April; on a knoll, about a mile away, were the white walls of a house amid a screen of trees. "There's a farmstead," said Anthony; "we can find some means there of getting back to the city."
"I shall not stir," said Mademoiselle Lafargue.
"It's plain enough," said Anthony, "that you do not greatly favor my company. There are certain things which you believe of me; you've been told of plottings, of guilt, of treachery; and the shadow that I stand in is, no doubt, a dark one to your eyes. But why distrust me while you have confidences in certain others? For I, at least, have never tried to shoot a man as he slept, and I have never struck one who was helpless."
"I shall not stir from where I am," said the girl.
"It's a full mile across the fields to the house," said Anthony, "but I have no doubt I can carry you."
"You would not dare!" said she, startled.
"I think you used those very words on board the schooner," said he. There was a pause; and then he added quietly. "Will you go willingly, or must I do as I've said?"
She looked at him with level gaze; the fire in her eye was quieted, though her head was as high as ever.
"I will go," she said, "for there is nothing else for me to do. But I do not go willingly. You are compelling me, and I hate you for it."
He said nothing in reply; and so they set off toward the distant farmstead. Here they encountered a human enough man and a woman who stared and listened but who never ventured a word.
"I have need of my horses and men at this season," said the farmer; "but as you are hurt and the lady must needs have some way of reaching the city you may have a pair and a wagon."
An oldish sort of man, who diligently chewed a straw, was called; in a short space he had a span of farm horses harnessed to a two-seated wagon, with a body swinging on heavy leather bands. Anthony handed Mademoiselle Lafargue to the rear seat; then he took his place beside the driver, and they started. Chester was passed in the first half hour. The girl spoke never a word; now and then Anthony looked back at her to assure himself that she was as comfortable as the pitching wagon permitted, and he was also silent. It was afternoon when the heavy-footed horses crossed the lower ford and began to draw toward the city; the clock in the tower of the state-house, seen across a huddle of painted roofs, told four as they crossed Chestnut Street; and in a little while they drew up before Christopher Dent's door.
Anthony helped the girl out, mounted the white marble steps with her, and knocked. And while they waited he said:
"In a night or two I shall call upon your father; there are things that press for discussion between us. And, if you are so disposed, I should be glad if you were present to listen." She made no reply, standing with her head averted. And he went on: "If any one, no matter who, tells you of danger to yourself in remaining in the city, give no heed to him. Remain with your father; do not be separated from him; for, I warn you, that any possible danger is not with you but with him."
Here the quadroon maid opened the door, and the girl went in; and Anthony made his way to Dr. King's in Front Street. The physician opened the door himself, for he was in the hall, bidding good-bye to Mr. Sparhawk. In the room where the doctor saw to such things, the bandages were taken from Anthony's head.
"A care-free blackguard had you in hand here," said Dr. King, as he looked at the wounds.
Mr. Sparhawk, who had volunteered his services at the sight of Anthony's condition, held a basin of hot water ready, while he also inspected the hurts.
"He did not hold his hand at any rate," said he. "A thief, no doubt," he added. "There are a deal of them lurking about of a night."
While Dr. King dressed his head, Anthony related the circumstances of the attack. At mention of the Le Mousquet, Mr. Sparhawk exclaimed, sharply.
"What?" said he. "Will they stop at nothing? Do they dare such things as this? Is a citizen not safe in the streets of his own city? Must we be constantly on guard against a parcel of ruffians?"
"Yesterday I heard you speaking with Mr. Stroude concerning the ship Eclipse," said Anthony. "When does she sail?"
"She sailed with the tide, some hours ago," said Mr. Sparhawk. "And so Le Mousquet dropped down last night!" The little man shook his head. "There will be devilment enough off the capes to-morrow," he said; "and more than one honest person's money will be put in jeopardy."
After the young man's wounds had been attended to, Dr. King said:
"You should have a rest for a day or two; I would advise your going home and to bed."
"I shall do so," said Anthony, "for my legs are not over-strong under me; and they are telling me of it, more and more plainly every step I take."
Mr. Sparhawk walked with him up Front Street.
"The cunning of these villains," said the little man; "the cunning of them is past all belief. They have managed it so that pillage is becoming a recognized thing; rapine has public approval; loot is so common we think nothing of it."
Anthony smiled.
"I would not go so far as that," he said; "but I agree that there is a deal of guile round about us."
"We boast of our open trade and commercial candor," said Mr. Sparhawk. "We set ourselves up as superior to the Spaniards who hold every port and river they control under private tribute. But, if the truth were known, we have our share of mercantile malpractice here. There are places," said he warmly, "that are regarded as above reproach, but which are charnel-houses of business honor; there are men who sit in the full light of public confidence, weaving plots as shameless as any in the art of the spider."
"Where is the law?" asked Anthony.
"The law is inadequate, and I sometimes think, shrewdly kept so."
Mr. Sparhawk held to this strain until they reached Anthony's lodgings in Sassafras Street. The walk had done the young man no good, and his face was white as he said good-by to the little man at the door. Mr. Sparhawk noted this.
"No," said he, "I will help you to your room. These hurts of yours have taken a deal more of your vitality than you think."
Anthony was glad enough to put some of his weight upon Mr. Sparhawk in going up the steep stairs; and the little gentleman also aided him in getting off his clothes and into bed. And then he brewed him an excellent drink.
"And now sleep," said he. "It will help you more than anything else." He lifted the window so that the air might blow in and do its share of the healing; he nodded in a most friendly and obliging fashion as he was about to go, and then his eyes chanced upon one of the bulky old ledgers lying upon a table. "What?" said he, "a ledger? Do you still use your spare time of an evening, so?"
Said Anthony:
"Open the door there." Mr. Sparhawk did so; he saw in the inner room piles of books of a similar kind, and his face changed expression; his eyes met those of Anthony quickly. "They are those which have gone before, and come after, the one on the table," said the young man.
Mr. Sparhawk stroked his chin.
"It is odd how the history of Rufus Stevens' Sons attracts you," said he.
"Not all of it," said Anthony. "But those things which I find of sharp importance I set down in a little book of my own."
The greedy look in Mr. Sparhawk's face increased.
"That, too, is here, I suppose," said he, and he looked about.
Anthony's coat lay upon a chair beside his bed; he reached out and thrust a hand into the breast pocket; but it came out empty. Mr. Sparhawk saw his expression change.
"You carried it there?" said he.
"Yes," said Anthony, "and it's gone!"
Mr. Sparhawk smiled, and nodded.
"Are you surprised?" he asked. "What else was there to expect? Have you not been on board Le Mousquet?"
Anthony lay looking at the ceiling; Mr. Sparhawk stood with his hand on the door-latch.
"However," said the little man consolingly, "your loss is not, as the insurers of ships say, complete. You still have the ledgers; and what they've yielded once they'll yield again."
And so, with a nod and a smile and a good-by he was gone. Anthony lay with the coverlet drawn up under his chin, and propped high with pillows; his head throbbed and swam; he drowsed between wakefulness and sleep, and strange pictures lit up his mind. There was a vessel that crossed his sleep—a slim, swift vessel, her sails filled with mist, and driving away over a darkened sea. She was fleeing from him, and he was following, making slow head against winds and storms. Though the ship was a great way off, he could see into her cabin; there was a light there, a yellow light with a spot of red at its heart—and beside this sat a man who wore a patch over one eye, and he smirked over Anthony's note-book, which he held in his hand.
There were strange things in that book; there were matters that opposed each other fancifully, and told of ships and men and cargoes, and places; and there were other things, like shouted lies. Anthony had studied them and knew them well. And now, as he drowsed, the cabin was gone, the ship had disappeared, the sea had changed to land; but his thought still had to do with books. He sat before a great many of them; they were heavy, sober, and clean; they were the ledgers of Rufus Stevens' Sons, the solid books of a solid house; surely in them no wrong could thrive. But there were flaming lightnings in the sky; the world was full of pain and weariness, and the books held knowledge which he must have; so he began to open them. They seemed countless; each was like the other in its dull leather, and their rows stretched across plains and streams, and through cities, away among vague spaces, and disappeared in the rising of mists, the booming of waters, and the dashing of spray.
And now, under his hand, were the books of Lucas, and the books of Carberry. These he especially desired. They were thick and seemed to promise pleasant things; but they opened evilly; the mind sprang back from their pages, repelled. But, for all that, they were well and carefully written, just as he had been told they would be. Lucas had set down his statements in a useful hand, clear and with excellent spacing. Carberry's way was well ordered; he had a confident, clerkly smoothness, which all but covered astonishments that caught the breath from one's lips. But Anthony found himself held among the pages of Lucas much oftener, for Lucas's day, so it seemed, had been one of rare daring; there had been courage and devilment in his time, and no great care. The waters had been awash with costly stuffs; ships were sucked to their doom, and dead men had floated down the byways of the sea.
Now he saw a river sealed with ice, and through the ice countless bowsprits poked forlornly; many eyes looked through a thickening mist, eyes with black patches over them; then a ship loomed through it, a ship with sides as wide as the world; a man in a bo'sun's-chair was let down; he held a pen and ink-pot and along the water-line of the ship he wrote unreadable things in a practiced hand. Anthony strove to understand the words, but could not. He fought with the mists to see the man's face. Once he fancied it was a clean-cut, handsome one with cold eyes and a sneer about the lips; but as he pronounced Tarrant's name the face changed. It was now a bright one, full of inspiration and eager purpose. Anthony looked to find how the man sat in the chair and saw he was nursing a lame foot. But it could not be Charles! For the man was of splendid bulk; as he wrote he laughed, and the mist whirled at the sound, and the waters leaped and threw it back.
And then the books came again,—the weary, weary books,—greater than before and bursting with threats. The pages were hard to turn; it took all the strength he had to come to the smallest thing, and, oddly enough, between the leaves he found those muskets and pistols which he had thought at the bottom of the river. And, as he took up each, the touch of the iron told him he'd best put them carefully by for need in a future time. And this he did, for the menace in the books made his heart feel cold.
Here there was a blank: and then he found himself traveling an endless road, through a waste place, and carrying a burden, a torturing, breaking burden, the essence of which could be nothing but despair. When he felt he must sink under it, it suddenly became light and desirable; he wanted passionately to go on with it. And then he saw it was a girl, and that she hated him; so he put her down, and talked with her. All the air about her was filled with words, each with wings like a bat; they whispered in her ear as they flitted by, and it was the evil of these words that made her hate him.
He looked along the endless road, through the waste places; a bleak sky lowered over it, the air that stirred its dust was mournful, and the soul in him grew fearful that he must travel it alone! Where was her father? He would speak to him, for her father was wise with years and must know the venom of false words. And then she was no longer there; her father stood in her place, an old, old man, with a white, high-held head; and to him Anthony began eagerly to pour out his thoughts. But he stopped, for he saw a scar on the old man's face, the puckered red mark of an ancient sword-stroke; and the old man moved toward him with the soft sure steps of a great cat. Anthony, in horror, protested; and he could hear his voice lifting through all space against the cold derision in the aspect of Monsieur Lafargue. Then, with the damp of fear on him, he labored heavily through the zone of half-sleep and burst into wakefulness.
He was still in bed next day. Dr. King came to see him; he had his breakfast, which the good woman who rented the lodgings brought him, and then lay back, thinking. The spring day fluttered in at the window; a man who had early greens to sell chanted their quality and price in the street; a knife-grinder's bell tinkled steadily along; the voices of some children arose gleefully from a garden. There was a knock on the door, and Captain Weir came in. He shook Anthony's hand, and sat coldly down by the bed.
"Sparhawk visited us at the counting-room this morning," said he, "and we were astonished by what he had to tell. What does the doctor say?"
"That I shall be fit and out to-morrow," said Anthony.
"That is excellent. The rogues," said Captain Weir, "to attack you in the open street, and carry you aboard ship!" His green, stone-like eyes searched Anthony. "She was a Frenchman, I understand."
"She flew the French flag," said Anthony.
Captain Weir shook his head.
"I understand," said he. There was a moment's silence; his eyes still searched the young man, and then he spoke again. "It was quite fortunate that Sparhawk walked home with you yesterday. He says you went quite weak."
"More so than he thought," said the young man.
"You have very pleasant quarters here." Captain Weir looked about, approvingly. "Quite snug for a bachelor; your pipes and tobacco, your wine-flask and brandy-bottle near at hand, your books on a rack where they may be had in a moment." His eyes, like those of Mr. Sparhawk, rested upon the bulky ledgers; and he smiled oddly. "That is the last of them, I suppose," said he. And, as Anthony nodded, the captain went on: "All the others have gone back to your uncle."
"No," said Anthony; "those of interest are inside there."
Captain Weir laughed; but his eyes narrowed as he said:
"If Sparhawk had seen those, he'd have marveled at your industry."
"He saw them," said Anthony. "We had some conversation about them."
"Trust an old gossip like him for that," said the captain, the narrowed eyes cold and green, and more like stone than ever. "Nevertheless, he's a useful little man, and with quite a place in the community."
The two talked for some time of Anthony's misadventure; then Captain Weir arose to go.
"We shall expect you to-morrow, then?" said he.
"I think I can safely say that," answered Anthony.
"Your uncle will be interested to hear your story," said Captain Weir. "It is not a usual one." He stood looking down at Anthony; the side of his face was turned toward the window and the sword-cut along his jaw was red and puckered and angry-looking. "No," he added, and shook his head, "it is not at all a usual one."
Then he bade Anthony good day, and warned him to rest quietly; then the door closed behind him, and the young man lay listening to his footsteps as they sounded on the stairs.