“Madame, justice and I are many miles asunder. I have no indulgent memory. It is best that there should be no talk of what has been. Only what is and what is to be has any power to open my ears or my lips. And so, if you will permit me,” and once more he made the motion to withdraw.
“It is the present and the future, Monsieur le Chevalier,” she began. But at the sound of that name he turned abruptly towards her, frowning darkly.
“It cannot be, madame,” he cried, with a brusqueness which frightened her. “I have no name but Bras-de-Fer aboard this ship. Please address your needs to him.”
She recoiled in dismay in the corner of the bulkhead to listen to the tramp of his heavy sea-boots down the passage. For the first time she feared him. She could not know that it was the sight of her face and of something new he saw there which raised a doubt that had entered, a canker, into his mind. She could not know what a struggle it was costing him and at what pains he took refuge in the silence he demanded. His brutality was but the sudden outward manifestation of this battle, which, should it not take one side, must assuredly take the other. He had decided. Nothing should turn the iron helm of his will. But as he sought the deck, hot memory poured over him in a flood. He recalled the times she had tossed her head at him, even before the incident of the coach. That, too, he remembered, even with a sense of amusement. The coranto! and how he had sought to patch and mend his wounded pride by fruitlessly assailing hers, battering abortively at the citadel of the heart he could never hope to win. Ferrers! The precious papers he had had for a sweet half-hour in his bosom and had thrown away! Where had Ferrers hidden them from her? The priceless heritage with which he could have daunted this woman-enemy of his whom he had loved and hated at the same time and from whom he had received only scorn and misprision. Could he refuse her now that she was a helpless captive, weak, frail, and unfriended among a crew of rascals who stood at nothing and from whom only himself could preserve her? Had he not secretly welcomed her wish last night to be carried aboard the Saucy Sally, and the contingency which made it impossible for her to be returned to the San Isidro? Was he not conscious of a sense of guilt that he had not found an opportunity to send her back to safety? She was completely in his power. His heart sang high; but the cord was frayed, and the note rang false. It was impossible; no matter how deeply he had seared his soul, no man born as he had been born could refuse the mute appeal of a woman in distress. He thought of his dishonor the night he had come upon the Saucy Sally, when in a fury against the fortune which still denied him he had railed, madly, impotently, against all virtue, and in a passion of vengefulness sunk so low that he had loudly threatened, like a common street ruffian and card-room bully, this woman, whom—God help him!—he loved and would love throughout all time. The depth of his degradation cumbered him about, remorse fell upon him, and anguish wrung his heart from his body as nothing—not even the loss of the papers—had done.
The old life in London, with its gaming, its carousing and gallantry—he could see it all through new eyes, washed clean and clear by the purging winds and storms of heaven. Himself he marked from a great moral distance, almost as though from another planet—the silly, spoiled child of folly that he had been. And it was this impotent creature who had cried out against his fate, which, with a rare honesty, had only lowered him from the high estate to which he had won, in accordance with the same inexorable regulations of the human law which had raised him there. The figures in that London life passed before him like a row of tawdry puppets, serving the same martyrdom to folly as himself, at the expense of love, charity, and all true virtue. Soft thinking for a powder-blackened, bearded flibustier, with hands even yet red from his last depredation! He smiled supinely to himself, that he could think thus of the things that so recently had been his very existence. In that London life, amid that throng of tinsel goddesses, one figure stood eminent and conspicuous. It was that of the woman who in all companies of men and women held her fame so fair that, whatever their reputations for high deeds or ignoble vices, none was so great as she. In that great court where virtue was a gem of so little worth that it was kept hid and secret, Mistress Barbara had worn it openly, broadly, high upon her brow, with a rare pride, as the most priceless of her inestimable jewels.
He loved her. Flaunted, scorned, despised, he loved her the more. The past was engulfed and vanquished. He only saw her an actuality of the flesh here aboard his very ship—the dove in the eagle’s nest, whom every law and impulse, human and divine, impelled him to succor and protect. The vibrant voice, the gentle touch, the soft perfume of her presence provoked the covetous senses and stole away his will. It was with mingled feelings of apprehension and alarm that he discovered to himself the persistency of his attachment. He acknowledged it only when he learned that nothing else was possible. And when that was done he planned and resolved again, with a new fervency of determination. The future should atone. She had thought him a wild, reckless gallant, who had won his way and continued to win—by his wits—a worthless creature who consorted with the worst men of the court and presented in the world the characteristics she most despised. How he hated the thing that he had been, the mask that he had worn! If she had cared, she could have seen, she would have learned that he was not all that she had thought him. The reckless gallant was become a rough boucanier and pirato. She had seen him in the red fever of battle. Eh bien. He would not undeceive her. Red-handed pirato he would remain. No glimpse should she have of the struggle beneath. He would set her safe ashore at Port Royal. He would sail away from her forever, and she should enjoy her fortune. That was the price that he would pay.
None the less, he found the occasion to wash away the stains of battle, and in fresh linen and hose became less offensive to the sight. When he sought the deck there was no sign of a vessel upon any side. Cornbury he found at the after-hatch, puffing upon a pipe.
“Ochone, dear Iron Arm,” the Irishman began, “ye’re the anomalous figure of a pirato, to be sure. One minute your form is painted broad upon the horizon with a cutlass in your teeth, an’ glistenin’ pikes in both your fists. I’ the next ye’re playin’ the hero part of ‘Vartue in Distress.’”
Bras-de-Fer smiled.
“Oh, ye may laugh. But in truth ’tis all most irregular. Ye violate every tradition of the thrade. By the laws, ye’re no dacent figure of a swashbuckler at all at all.”