“May God help you,” she said, in a kind of sobbing whisper, “who have so little kindness and pity for others.” And in a moment she had faded, a slender, shrinking shade of sorrow, from his vision.
When she was gone he fell upon the bulwarks and buried his face in his hands.
“Ah, bon Dieu!” he murmured; “how could I do it! She who has been so kind—so kind.” The new delight that swept over him at the thought of all that this rare, sweet woman had done for him came over him in a delicious flush, which drove away the pallor of his distemper like the warm glow of the tropics upon the frozen north. The heavy burden of his melancholy was lifted. If he crept about with bowed head now, it was because of some failing of the spirit or some craven dishonor of his own. He and his were forever raised to high estate, and no careless proscription of his inconsequent Mistress Fate could cast him down again. The freedom of his soul from the blight which his birth had put upon it lent it wings to soar gladly into the wide empyrean of his imagination. And he gave himself up without stint to the new joy in their motion. Did he wish, he could go at once to London and take a place among the men of his kind, a place which no mere art could win for him.
To London! There was a time when that word was magic for him—when, in careless bravado, he was challenging his fortune to deny him what he wished. Now he wondered at the singular distaste which grew at the very thought of the life that had been. With such a fortune and such a name there were no favors or honors he could not buy. He would know how to win his way again. But his spirit was listless at the thought. With the joy at his freedom from the cloud of his birth his pleasure ended. The estates, his titles and honors, dwelt so little in his mind that he marveled again at his change of disposition. He could go to London. But at what cost! Summon the goddesses of his past as he might, their essenced wiles and specious blandishing, distance gave them no added charm. He could only see this pale, proud woman, with a rare and imperturbable honesty which showed how justly she had worn the honors she relinquished, in a pure nobility which brought a flush to his cheek, giving up without a qualm or faltering the life and habits, the high condition, to which she had been born and in which she had been so carefully nurtured. Could he go back to London to leave this woman a wanderer, a servant, whose only hope even for a bare existence lay in the bounty of a Spaniard? The thought grew upon him and oppressed him and drove all the joy from his heart. All this she had done for him—for him. He rolled the thought over and over in his mind, like a sweetmeat in the mouth, with a new taste of delicacy and delight at every turn. She had given it all for him—that he, the man she had affected so profoundly to despise, might be exalted. It was not a triumph, but a quiet joy, the joy that the sick feel at the touch of a ministering angel. It did not matter what the cause, whether she had made this sacrifice for the principle or whether she had made it for the individual. He was the cause of this great outflow of human kindness and self-sacrifice from the deep, warm well-springs of this wonderful woman’s heart, which he had so often sought to reach and sought in vain. The glimmer of a single tear which had trembled a moment upon her cheek in the lantern-light reached to the very quick of the unrevealed secret depths of his nature, where no plummet had ever before sounded. It had glistened a jewel more inestimable than all the wealth she had brought him. Could he leave this woman upon the world, at the mercy of every bitter occasion? He had chosen wisely. Red-handed boucanier he would remain. He would not undeceive her. The light in which she held him removed all chance of an understanding. He would set her safely ashore at Porto Bello; then, with the aid of Cornbury and the English government, so dispose his affairs that the fortune would revert to her in case of his death whether she willed it or no. Then he would set to sea and take the precaution to die as speedily and publicly as might be. So far as she was concerned that would be the end. He would see England no more. It was here that his talents found their readiest employment. Of all his fortune, he would take only the ship upon which he sailed, and under another name, which would serve his purposes as adequately as the one he now bore, he would continue as he had begun, with a wider license only, a free-trader, a picaroon, a pirato, if you will.
It was Jacquard who broke, without ceremony, upon his meditations.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” he began, with an air of some brusqueness.
“Oh, Jacquard,” he replied, abstractedly, “are we well repaired?”
“Monsieur, it is not that. For some days I have wished to see you. There is a muttering in the forecastle. Yan Gratz—”
“Ah! Well—”