Before he closed the door in the hedge, he turned and looked seaward. Some three miles out a brilliant streak of light was visible. It was moving rapidly westward, like a golden snake gliding on the face of the dark waters. The phenomenon was evidently caused by the port-hole lights of an electrically-lit steamer.
The watcher drew a deep breath of satisfaction. "Brant has lost no time in getting under weigh," he muttered, as he softly shut the door.
CHAPTER XXII
THE SHADOW OF HORROR
Leslie Chermside, having taken his seat in the launch, felt more at ease in his mind than he had done for many a day. Ever since he had been told of the suspicion that threatened him in respect of Levison's death, he had been reconciling himself to the loss of Violet. That dream of midsummer madness had from the first, he realized, from the nature of the circumstances, been doomed to a rude awakening, in spite of Aunt Sarah's generosity. The shattering of his ill-starred love idyll might be borne manfully, as an adequate punishment for his iniquity, and when time had healed his wound he might even rejoice in his expiation.
But with very different feelings had he viewed the possible revelation of his misdeed. That simply would not bear thinking about. That Violet should ever know that he had sought her out in order that her proud young beauty should be offered as an unwilling sacrifice to a licentious Eastern prince was an ever-present nightmare that set him trembling like a frightened child.
And now the strain was over. By his flight he had escaped the terrible disclosures which would have followed arrest, no matter what the verdict might have been. That Violet would resent his conduct and despise him for it he could not help. Even if Nugent kept his promise of trying to soften it down, the girl's displeasure was inevitable, but it would be as heaven to hell compared with the ignominy he would have incurred by full disclosure. And, to do him justice, he had not been wholly selfish in shrinking from that ignominy. He knew his sweetheart's pure faith in him, and he had been honestly anxious to spare her virginal soul the shock of discovering the loathsome thing from which her short-lived romance had sprung. It might even have been her death-wound—to find that she, the coldly-critical social queen, had surrendered, after so brief a wooing, to a miscreant who had set out to sell her into bondage.
Now, if his luck held, that hideous spectre of disgrace was laid for ever. He would go forth a lonely and a penniless man, to commence life afresh with what courage he could muster in some refuge for human derelicts beyond the seas. If he could not retrieve the past, he might at least lock it up in his own seared heart, as in a chamber of horrors to which he alone had access—to be a torment to himself alone.
So, as the launch cleft the calm sea, his troubled spirit caught something of the influence of the summer night, and he began to take an interest in his immediate prospects. Before he left London to come down to Ottermouth on his misguided mission, he had accompanied Nugent occasionally to the docks where the Cobra was fitting out, and he had made the acquaintance of Captain Brant. In those reckless days he had conceived a great antipathy to the crafty and cruel sailor, and he had reason to believe that the dislike was reciprocated. He wondered how much Nugent had told Brant of their original scheme, and whether he had informed him that he was the cause of its failure. If so, he was likely to be treated with scant courtesy during the voyage.