She was then five years old. Where was she, when he began that seemingly endless cruise with the frigate Porcupine? He tried to fancy a Cécile five years old—a chubby, curly-headed mite, nursing dolls and teasing kittens, whilst he was bullied and browbeaten by coarse petty officers, shunned and hated by his messmates, and flogged at length by a tyrannizing captain for obduracy—but he could only see a Cécile in the spring of womanhood, nestling in the arm-chair yonder by the fire and looking up at him from the folds of a fur cloak.
She was seven years old when he was flogged. Ah, God! those had been days! And yet, in the lofty soul of him he had counted it no disgrace; and he had been flogged again, ay, and a third time for that obstinate head that would not bend, that obstinate tongue that would persist in demanding restitution of liberty. The life on board the privateer had been a matter of bargain; he had bartered also labour and obedience with the merchantman for the passage home, but the king had no right to compel the service of a free man!
She was but twelve years old when he was finally released from thraldom—it had only lasted four years after all; yet what a cycle for one of his temper! Four years with scarce a moment of solitude—for no shore-leave was ever allowed to one who openly repudiated any service contract: four years of a life, where the sole prospect of change was in these engagements, orgies of carnage, so eagerly anticipated by officers and men alike, including himself, though for a reason little suspected by his companions. But even the historic sea-fights of the Porcupine, so far as they affected Adrian Landale, formed in themselves a chain of monotony. It was ever the same hurling of shot from ship to ship, the same fierce exchange of cutlass-throws and pike-pushes between men who had never seen each other before; the same yelling and execrations, sights, sounds, and smells ever the same in horror; the same cheers when the enemy's colours were lowered, followed by the same transient depression; the cleansing of decks from stains of powder and mire of human blood, the casting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work, broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him again. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, the next occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate of Adrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber or falling tackles should put an end to his dreary life, welcome as such an end would have been to him then.
Then ... but not now. Remembering now his unaccountable escape from the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind the trite old adage:
"Man proposeth..."
It was not destined that Adrian Landale should be shot on the high seas any more than he should be drowned in the rolling mud of the Vilaine—he was reserved for this day as a set-off to all the bitterness that had been meted out to him; he was to see the image of his dead love rise from the sea once more. And, meanwhile, his very despair and sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not be said, if history should take count of the fact, that while the Lord of Pulwick had served four years before the mast, he had ever disgraced his name by cowardice....
Whether such reasonings were in accordance even with the most optimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might have doubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with the grateful relaxation that a happy break brings in the midst of long-drawn melancholy.
Everything had been working towards this end—that he should be the light-keeper of Scarthey on the day when out of the raging waters Cécile would rise and knock and ask for succour at his chamber.
Cécile! pshaw!—raving again.