Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

"Telegram to hand this forenoon. Lady C. started on her way to Lausanne by the four o'clock train. She will get through to London in time to catch the Continental Express to-morrow morning. It is left to me and Vallance to look after Sir Everard during her absence. Let me know by return how you are progressing, and when you will be ready to take the next step.

"D. R."

To which Burgo replied:

"Everything going admirably. Shall be ready for next step to-morrow night. Let me know in course of to-morrow the hour and the place.

"B. B."

He had been hard at work with his file during a great part of the day, and after he had eaten his supper he lighted his pipe and began the slow constitutional pacing from end to end of his prison chamber in which he spent some hours of each day. Yes, everything would be ready by to-morrow night, he told himself. One bar was filed completely through and removed and hidden behind his portmanteau, while five or six more hours of hard work would enable him to treat the other in the same way. But although he could not help exulting as he thought of what a few more hours would bring to pass, he was yet conscious of something tugging at his heartstrings which was far removed from exultation or gladness of any kind. He could not forget--it was a thought which haunted him waking or sleeping--that with the quitting of Garion Keep by his uncle and himself would be severed the solitary strand which for a little while had served to bind Miss Roylance and him so strangely together. Yes, they must part, and it was impossible to say whether they should ever meet again. Yet a voice within him whispered that they must meet again, that neither fate nor chance could avail to sunder them for ever. Already it seemed to him as if this girl had become an inalienable part of himself; he could no longer conceive of his future as wholly dissevered from her. He had seen her for the first time less than a week ago, and yet he felt as if he had known her for a century. It was as though he and she had been united in some prior state of existence, and that Destiny had once more brought them together. In her he felt assured that his life had found its complement. It was true that she was deformed and walked with the help of a crutch, but what of that? When he had won her for his wife, as he fully meant to do, his love and protecting care would have one claim on them the more: that was all.

On one point he assured himself--that on no account would he part from her till he had revealed to her something of that which lay so close to his heart--till he had drawn from her, if it were possible for man to do so, a promise that their parting should be anything rather than a final one.

When he had smoked the last pipe to which he had allowanced himself, for by this time his stock of tobacco was running low, he opened wide the casement and stood there for some time, inhaling the salt coolness of the night air, in which there was a faint tang of seaweed, and staring into the infinitude of darkness outside his window, which to-night was unillumined by either moon or stars. The tide was coming in with a low monotonous thunder, which rose and fell rhythmically as it drew forth and back in unceasing repetition. It would be high-water about an hour after midnight. Presently Burgo would put out his lamp and turn in, to wake up long before daybreak and resume work with his file. Again and again he murmured exultingly to himself: "To-morrow night I shall be a free man!"

But although the main current of his thoughts was still with Dacia, he was not so oblivious of things external to him as not to be aware of an occasional gleam of light which came and went like a firefly within a certain limited space of darkness, and nearly in a direct line with his window. He recognised it at once for what it was--some one with a lantern moving on board the steam yacht which for the last three days had lain at anchor opposite the tower, about a hundred yards beyond low-water mark. Burgo had spent some of his unoccupied hours in watching it, and wondering as to the nature of the business which had brought it to that remote part of the coast, and kept it there for so long a time. But to wonder was all that was permitted him. Had he been free to question the landlord of the "Golden Owl" on the point, he would have learnt that the yacht's name was the Naiad, that its owner was an Irishman of the name of Marchment, that it had put into Crag End while certain slight repairs were effected in its machinery, and in order to obtain a supply of fresh provisions; and that Mr. Marchment, after having lian for one night in the little harbour, had declared its odours at low water to be unbearable, and had thereupon steamed out to the position which the yacht had since occupied. Such was the sum and substance of what was known about the Naiad at Crag End. Its crew came and went, and were hail-fellows with the inhabitants, while the very liberal prices paid by its owner for such country produce as he required had raised him in the course of a few hours to the height of popularity.

Burgo watched the light with indifferent eyes while it moved to and fro, but at the end of a few minutes it went suddenly out, and was seen no more. But for the shifting light he would not have known that the yacht was still there. On such a night from where he stood it was wholly invisible.