He waited till the heated boy went to get himself a drink, and then shouldered through the press and claimed Tamsin for the next dance, claiming her smilingly, inevitably, as though she was his private property and there had not been a moment’s break between them. The girl’s eyes went blank with dismay, she tried to decline. He didn’t seem to hear, but took her hand. She hung back weakly. There was no weakness in Ortho’s grip; he led her out in spite of herself. She couldn’t resist him, she never had been able to resist him. Fortunately for her he had never demanded much. Poor Tamsin! Two years had not matured her mentally. She had no mind to mature; she was merely a pretty chattel, the property of the strongest claimant. Ortho was stronger than Trevaskis, so he got her.
When the boy returned she was dancing with the tall Free Trader; the golden head drooped, the life had gone out of her movements, but she was dancing with him. Trevaskis tried to get to her at every pause, but always Ortho’s back interposed. The farmer went outside and strode up and down the yard, glaring from time to time through the window; always Tamsin was dancing with Penhale. Trevaskis ground his teeth. Two years ago he had been jockeyed in the same way. Was this swart gypsy’s whelp, whose amorous philanderings were common talk, to have first call on his bright girl whenever he deigned to want her? Trevaskis swore he should not, but how to frustrate him he did not know. Plainly Tamsin was bewitched, was incapable of resistance; she had admitted as much, weeping. Thrash Ortho to a standstill he could not; he was not a brave man and he dared not risk a maul with the smuggler. Had Penhale been a “foreigner” he could have roused local feeling against him, but Penhale was no stranger; he was the squire of Bosula and, moreover, most popular, far more popular than he was himself. He had a wild idea of trying a shot over a bank in the dark—and abandoned it, shuddering. Supposing he missed! What would Penhale do to him? What wouldn’t he do to him? Trevaskis hadn’t courage enough even for that. He strode up and down, oblivious of the rain gusts, trying to discover a chink in the interloper’s armor.
As for Ortho, he went on dancing with Tamsin, and when it was over took her home; he buried his face in that golden torrent. He was up at Church-town the very next night and the next night and every night till the gale blew out.
Trevaskis, abandoning a hopeless struggle, followed in the footsteps of many unlucky lovers and drowned his woes in drink. It was at the Kiddlywink in Monks Cove that he did his drowning and not at the “Lamb and Flag,” but as his farm lay about halfway between the two there was nothing remarkable in that.
What did cause amusement among the Covers, however, was the extraordinary small amount of liquor it required to lay him under the bench and the volume of his snores when he was there.
CHAPTER XVI
1
The southeasterly gale blown out, Ortho’s business went forward with a rush. In the second week in January they landed a cargo a night to make up for lost time, and met with a minor accident—Jacky’s George breaking a leg in saving a gig from being stove. This handicapped them somewhat. Anson was a capable boatsman, but haphazard in organization, and Ortho found he had to oversee the landings as well as lead the pack-train. Despite his efforts there were hitches and bungles here and there; the cogs of the machinery did not mate as smoothly as they had under the cock-sparrow. Nevertheless they got the cargoes through somehow and there was not much to fear in the way of outside interruptions; the dragoons seemed to have settled to almost domestic felicity in Penzance and the revenue cutter had holed her garboard strake taking a short cut round the Manacles and was docked at Falmouth. Ortho got so confident that he actually brought his horses home in plain daylight.
Then on the fourteenth of February, when all seemed so secure, the roof fell in.
Mr. William Carmichael was the person who pulled the props away. Mr. William Carmichael, despite his name, was an Irishman, seventeen years of age, and, as a newly-joined cornet of dragoons, drawing eight shillings a day, occupied a position slightly less elevated than an earth-worm. However, he was very far from this opinion. Mr. Carmichael, being young and innocent, yearned to let blood, and he wasn’t in the least particular whose. Captain Hambro and his two somewhat elderly lieutenants, on the other hand, were experienced warriors, and consequently the most pacific of creatures. Nothing but a direct order from a superior would induce them to draw the sword except to poke the fire. Mr. Carmichael’s martial spirit was in a constant state of effervescence; he hungered and thirsted for gore—but without avail. Hambro positively refused to let him run out and chop anybody. The captain was a kindly man; his cornet’s agitation distressed him and he persuaded one of the dimpled Miss Jagos to initiate his subordinate in the gentler game of love (the boy would come into some sort of Kerry baronetcy when his sire finally bowed down to delirium tremens, and it was worth her while). But Mr. Carmichael was built of sterner stuff. He was proof against her woman’s wiles. Line of attack! At ’em! The lieutenants, Messrs. Pilkington and Jope, were also gentle souls, Pilkington was a devotee of chess, Jope of sea-fishing. Both sought to engage the fire-eater in their particular pastimes. It was useless; he disdained such trivialities. Death! Glory!