The lady appeared at the head of the stairs, cloaked, masked, and gloved for a journey. Hearing that her deliverers were at hand, she ran down the stairs, and, not heeding the helpless landlord, thrust back the bolts, the chain, and the lock of the kitchen door.
The mariner and three companions as rude and ill-favoured as himself stepped out of the night.
“We’re behind our time, ma’am,” said Diggory Fargus; “but, d’ye see, at half-past nine we had to tack and go about, for the place was full of soldiers. We supposed they had come to take ye, but we thought it our dooty to return and satisfy ourselves.”
“God requite you, sailor,” said the woman, fervently. “My husband is still upstairs. But let us make all haste, for at any moment his enemies may return upon him.”
Even as the woman spoke, the pale figure of a man tottered down the stairs. Clinging tightly to the rail, he put one weak limb before the other and reached the kitchen before they had observed him. He too was fully accomplished for the journey.
“Oh, mine own,” said the woman, tenderly, “what a foolish valour! ’Tis ever the same headstrong, wilful, heedless fellow. Did I not order you to stay upstairs until we fetched you? Thou art much too weak to use thine own legs as yet, lad.”
“Peace, Patsy woman,” said the young man. “If I can walk into this accursed place, I can walk out of it. I am hale and strong by comparison with what I was when I came here with the bullet in my side. Landlord, give me a cup of wine, and I shall be fit to encounter the perils of the sea. Deuce take me! what hath happened to the landlord?”
As pale as linen, his eyes staring and his knees knocking, the landlord still clung in silence to the wall. Diggory Fargus looked at him grimly. Lying in concealment close at hand when the soldiers rode away, he had overheard the injunctions of Captain Culpeper.
“The Cap’n left particular orders,” said the mariner to the lady, “that this ’ere son of a rum puncheon was to hold you and your mate, ma’am, against his return, by force, if necessary. And as it goes agen his principles to use violence o’ any sort, he’s asking of himself, d’ye see, whether ye would take it amiss if he invited you to tarry.”
The woman looked at the landlord. None had had a fairer opportunity of judging his character than she during her sojourn in that place. Her eyes shone through her mask; the stern lines fell about her mouth; and then she turned away from him with the same tremor of disgust as one turns away from a venomous reptile. Even to her compassion there was a limit.