“So you don’t know where she comes from?” said Davy.
“I couldn’t bring myself to follow her, Capt’n.”
“And right too, mate. It’s sneaking. Following a girl in the streets is sneaking, and the man that done it ought to be wallopped till all’s blue. But you’ll see her again, I’ll go bail, and maybe hear who she is. Rael true women is skess these days, sir; but I’m thinking you’ve got your flotes down for a good one. Give her line, mate—give her line—and if I wasn’t such a downhearted chap myself I’d be helping you to land her.”
Lovibond observed that Capt’n Davy was more than usually restless after this conversation, and in the course of the afternoon, while he lay in a hazy dose on the sofa, he overheard this passage between the captain and his boy:—
“Willie Quarrie, didn’t you say there was an English lady staying with Mistress Quiggin at Castle Mona?”
“Miss Crows; yes,” said Willie. “So Peggy Quine is telling me—a little person with a spyglass, and that fond of the mistress you wouldn’t think.”
“Then just slip across in the morning, and spake to herself, and say can I see her somewheres, or will she come here, and never say nothing to nobody.”
Davy’s uneasiness continued far into the evening. He walked alone to and fro on the turf of the Head in front of the house, until the sun set behind the hills to the west, where a golden rim from its falling light died off on the farthest line of the sea to the east, and the town between lay in a haze of deepening purple. Lovibond knew where his thoughts were, and what new turn they had taken; but he pretended to see nothing, and he gave no sign.
Sunday as it was, Capt’n Davy’s cronies came as usual at nightfall. They were a sorry gang, but Davy welcomed them with noisy cheer. The lights were brought in, and the company sat down to its accustomed amusements. These were drinking and smoking, with gambling in disguise at intervals. Davy lost tremendously, and laughed with a sort of wild joy at every failure. He was cheated on all hands, and he knew it. Now and again he called the cheaters by hard name, but he always paid them their money. They forgave the one for the sake of the other, and went on without shame. Lovibond’s gorge rose at the spectacle. He was an old gambler himself, and could have stripped every rascal of them all as naked as a lettuce after a locust. His indignation got the better of him at last, and he went out on to the Head.
The calm sea lay like a dark pavement dotted with the reflection of the stars overhead. Lights in a wide half-circle showed the line of the bay. Below was the black rock of the island of the Tower of Refuge, and the narrow strip of the old Red pier; beyond was the dark outline of the Head, and from the seaward breast of it shot the light of the lighthouse, like the glow of a kiln. It was as quiet and beautiful out there as it had been noisy and hideous within.