Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘I don’t like foreign sailors,’ said Smithson, looking perplexed and worried; ‘and I have perfect confidence in Wilkinson.’

  ‘Which is as much as to say that you consider me a liar! Go to the bottom your own way, mon ami: ce n’est pas mon affaire,’ said Montesma, turning on his heel, and leaving his friend to his own devices.

  Had he pressed the point, Smithson would have suspected him of some evil motive, and would have been resolute in his resistance; but as he said no more about it, Smithson began to feel uncomfortable.

  He was no sailor himself, knew absolutely nothing about the navigation of his yacht, though he sometimes pretended to sail her; and he had no power to judge of his skipper’s capacity or his men’s seamanship. He had engaged the captain wholly on the strength of the man’s reputation, guaranteed by certain certificates which seemed to mean a great deal. But after all such certificates might mean very little — such a reputation might be no real guarantee. The sailors had been engaged by the captain, and their ruddy faces and thoroughly British appearence, the exquisite cleanliness which they maintained in every detail of the yacht, had seemed to Mr. Smithson the perfection of seamanship.

  But it was not the less true that the cleanest of yachts, with deck of spotless whiteness, sails of unsullied purity, brasses shining and sparkling like gold fresh from the goldsmith’s, might be spiked upon a rock, or might founder on a sand-bank, or heel over under too much canvas. Mr. Smithson was inclined to suspect any proposition of Montesma’s; yet he was not the less disturbed in mind by the assertion.

  The day wore on, and the yacht sailed merrily over a summer sea. Mr. Smithson fidgeted about the deck uneasily, watching every movement of the sailors. No boat could be sailing better, as it seemed to him; but in such weather and over such waters any boat must needs go easily. It was in the blackness of night, amidst the fury of the storm, that Montesma’s opinion had been formed. Smithson began to think that his friend was right. The sailors had honest countenances, but they looked horribly stupid. Could men with such vacuous grins, such an air of imbecile good-nature, be capable of acting wisely in any terrible crisis? — could they have nerve and readiness, quickness, decision, all those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend with the fury of the elements?

  Mr. Smithson and his guests had breakfasted too late for the possibility of luncheon. They were in Cowes Roads by one o’clock. A fleet of yachts had arrived during their absence, and the scene was full of life and gaiety. Lady Lesbia held a levée at the afternoon tea, and had a crowd of her old admirers around her — adorers whose presence in no wise disturbed Horace Smithson’s peace. He would have been content that his wife should go through life with a herd of such worshippers following in her footsteps. He knew the aimless innocence, the almost infantine simplicity of the typical Johnnie, Chappie, Muscadin, Petit Creve, Gommeux — call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil. But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia’s low bamboo chair, and administering obsequiously to the small necessities of the tea-table.

  It was while this tea-table business was going on that Mr. Smithson took the opportunity of setting his mind at rest, were it possible, as to the merits of Captain Wilkinson. Among his visitors this afternoon there was the owner of three or four racing yachts — a man renowned for his victories, at home and abroad.

  ‘I think you knew something of my captain, Wilkinson, before I engaged him,’ said Smithson, with assumed carelessness.

  ‘I know every skipper on board every boat in the squadron,’ answered his friend. ‘A good fellow, Wilkinson — thoroughly honest fellow.’

  ‘Honest; oh yes, I know all about that. But how about his seamanship? His certificates were wonderfully good, but they are not everything.

  ‘Everything, my dear fellow,’ cried the other; ‘they are next to nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.’

  This was not encouraging.

  ‘He has never been unlucky, I believe.’

  ‘My dear Smithson, you are a great authority in the City, but you are not very well up in the records of the yachting world, or you would know that your Captain Wilkinson was skipper on the Orinoco when she ran aground on the Chesil Bank, coming home from Cherbourg Regatta, fifteen lives lost, and the yacht, in less than half an hour, ground to powder. That was rather a bad case, I remember; for though it was a tempestuous night, the accident would never have happened if Wilkinson had not mistaken the lights. So you see his Trinity House papers didn’t prevent his going wrong.’

  Good heavens! This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma’s charge. The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would honesty serve a ship spitted on the Jailors off Jersey? Montesma was right. If the Cayman was to make a trip to St. Malo she must be navigated by competent men. Horace Smithson hated foreign sailors, copper-faced ruffians, with flashing black eyes which seemed to threaten murder, did you but say a rough word to them; sleek, raven-haired scoundrels, with bowie-knives in their girdles, ready for mutiny. But, after all, life is worth too much to be risked for a prejudice, a sentiment.

  Perhaps that St. Malo business might be avoided; and then there need be no change in captain or crew. The yacht must be safe enough lying at anchor in the roadstead. By-and-by, when the visitors had departed, and Mr. Smithson was reposefully enjoying his tea by Lady Lesbia’s side, he approached the subject.

  ‘Do you really care about crossing to St. Malo after this — really prefer the idea to Ryde?’

  ‘Infinitely,’ exclaimed Lesbia, quickly. ‘Ryde would only be Cowes ever again — a lesser Cowes; and I thought when you first proposed it that the plan was rather stupid, though I did not want to be uncivil and say so. But I was delighted with Don Gomez de Montesma’s amendment, substituting St. Malo for Ryde. In the first place the trip across will be delicious’ — Lady Kirkbank gave a faint groan—’and in the second place I am dying to see Brittany.’

  ‘I doubt if you will highly appreciate St. Malo. It is a town of many and various smells.’

  ‘But I want to smell those foreign smells of which one hears much. At least it is an experience. We need not be on shore any longer than we like. And I want to see that fine rocky coast, and Chateaubriand’s tomb on the what’s-its-name. So nice to be buried in that way.’

  ‘Then you have set your heart on going to St. Malo, and would not like any change in our plan?’

  ‘Any change will be simply detestable,’ answered Lesbia, all the more decidedly since she suspected a desire for change on the part of Mr. Smithson.

  She was in no amiable humour this afternoon. All her nerves seemed strained to their utmost tension. She was irritated, tremulous with nervous excitement, inclined to hate everybody, Horace Smithson most of all. In her cabin a little later on, when she was changing her gown for dinner, and Kibble was somewhat slow and clumsy in the lacing of the bodice, she wrenched herself from the girl’s hands, flung herself into a chair, and burst into a flood of passionate tears.

  ‘O God! that I were on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea — an island where Europeans never come — where I might lie down among the poisonous tropical flowers, and sleep the rest of my days away. I am sick to death of my life here; of the yacht, the people — everything.’

  ‘This air is too relaxing, Lady Lesbia,’ the girl murmured, soothingly; ‘and you didn’t have your natural rest last night. Shall I get you a nice strong cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea! no. I have been living upon tea for the last twenty-four hours. I have eaten nothing. My mouth is parched and burning. Oh, Kibble!’ flinging her head upon the girl’s buxom arm, and letting it rest there, ‘what a happy cre
ature you are — not a care — not a care.’

  ‘I’m sure you can’t have any cares, Lady Lesbia,’ said Kibble, with an incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within a few minutes of eight.

  ‘I am full of care. I am in debt — horribly in debt — getting deeper and deeper every day — and I am going to sell myself to the only man who can pay my debts and give me fine houses, and finery like this,’ plucking at the crêpe de chine gown, with its flossy fringe, its delicate lace, a marvel of artistic expenditure; a garment which looked simplicity itself, and yet was so cleverly contrived as to cost five-and-thirty guineas. The greatest effects in it required to be studied with a microscope.

  ‘But surely, dear Lady Lesbia, you won’t marry Mr. Smithson, if you don’t love him?’

  ‘Do you suppose love has anything to do with marriages in society?’

  ‘Oh, Lady Lesbia, it would be so unkind to him, so cruel to yourself.’

  ‘Cruel to myself. Yes, I am cruel to myself. I had the chance of happiness a year ago, and I lost it. I have the chance of happiness now — yes, of consummate bliss — and haven’t the courage to snatch at it. Take off this horrid gown, Kibble; my head is splitting: I shan’t go to dinner.’

  ‘Oh, Lady Lesbia, you are treading on the pearl embroidery,’ remonstrated poor Kibble, as Lesbia kicked the new gown from under her feet.

  ‘What does it matter!’ she exclaimed with a bitter little laugh. ‘It has not been paid for — perhaps it never will be.’

  The dinner was silent and gloomy. It was as if a star had been suddenly blotted out of the sky. Smithson, ordinarily so hospitable, had been too much disturbed in mind to ask any of his friends to stay to dinner; so there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia’s absence, and the idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air.

  After dinner Smithson and Montesma sat on deck, smoking their cigars, and lazily watching the lights on sea, and the lights on shore; these brilliant in the foreground, those dim in the distance.

  ‘You can telegraph to your Rio Janeiro friend to-morrow morning, if you like,’ said Smithson, presently, ‘and tell him to send a first-rate skipper and crew. Lady Lesbia has made up her mind to see St. Malo Regatta, and with such a sacred charge I can’t be too careful.’

  ‘I’ll wire before eight o’clock to-morrow,’ answered Montesma, ‘You have decided wisely. Your respectable English Wilkinson is an excellent man — but nothing would surprise me less than his reducing your Cayman to matchwood in the next gale.’

  * * *

  CHAPTER XL.

  A NOTE OF ALARM.

  That strange scene in the old house at Fellside made a profound impression upon Lord Hartfield. He tried to disguise his trouble, and did all in his power to seem gay and at perfect ease in his wife’s company; but his mind was full of anxiety, and Mary loved him too well to be for a moment in doubt as to his feelings.

  ‘There is something wrong, Jack,’ she said, while they were breakfasting at a table in the verandah, with the lake and the bills in front of them and the sweet morning air around them. ‘You try to talk and to be lively, but there is a little perpendicular wrinkle in your forehead which I know as well as the letters of the alphabet, and that little line means worry. I used to see it in the old days, when you were breaking your heart for Lesbia. Why cannot you be frank and confide in me. It is your duty, sir, as my husband.’

  ‘Is it my duty to halve my burdens as well as my joys? How do I know if those girlish shoulders are strong enough to bear the weight of them?’

  ‘I can bear anything you can bear, and I won’t be cheated out of my share in your worries. If you were obliged to have a tooth out, I would have one out too, for company.’

  ‘I hope the dentist would be too conscientious to allow that.’

  ‘Tell me your trouble, Hartfield,’ she said, earnestly, leaning across the table, bringing her grave intelligent face near to him.

  They were quite alone, he and she. The servants had done their ministering. Behind them there was the empty dining-room, in front of them the sunlit panorama of lake and hill. There could not be a safer place for telling secrets.

  ‘Tell me what it is that worries you,’ Mary pleaded again.

  ‘I will, dear. After all perfect trust is the best; nay, it is your due, for you are brave enough and true enough to be trusted with secrets that mean life and death. In a word, then, Mary, the cause of my trouble is that old man we saw the other night.’

  ‘Steadman’s uncle?’

  ‘Do you really believe that he is Steadman’s uncle?’

  ‘My grandmother told me so,’ answered Mary, reddening to the roots of her hair.

  To this girl, who was the soul of truth, there was deepest shame in the idea that her kinswoman, the woman whom of all the world she most owed reverence and honour, could be deemed capable of falsehood.

  ‘Do you think my grandmother would tell me an untruth?’

  ‘I do not believe that man is a poor dependent, an old servant’s kinsman, sheltered and cared for in this house for charity’s sake. Forgive me, Mary, if I doubt the word of one you love; but there are positions in life in which a man must judge for himself. Would Mr. Steadman’s kinsman be lodged as that old man is lodged; would he talk as that old man talks; and last and greatest perplexity of all, would he possess a treasure of gold and jewels which must be worth many thousands?’

  ‘But you cannot know for certain that those things are valuable; they may be rubbish that this poor old man has scraped together and hoarded for years, glass jewels bought at country fairs. Those rouleaux may contain lead or coppers.’

  ‘I do not think so, Mary. The stones had all the brilliancy of valuable gems, and then there were others in the finest filagree settings — goldsmith’s work which bore the stamp of an Eastern world. Take my word for it, that treasure came from India; and it must have been brought to England by Lord Maulevrier. It may have existed all these years without your grandmother’s knowledge. That is quite possible; but it seems to me impossible that such wealth should be within the knowledge and the power of a pauper lunatic.’

  ‘But if that unhappy old man is not a relation of Steadman’s supported here by my grandmother’s benevolence, who can he be, and why is he here?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Oh, Molly dear, these are two questions which I cannot answer, and which yet ought to be answered somehow. Since that night I have felt as if there were a dark cloud lowering over this house — a cloud almost as terrible in its menace of danger as the forshadowing of fate in a Greek legend. For your sake, for the honour of your race, for my own self-respect as your husband, I feel that this mystery ought to be solved, and all dark things made light before your grandmother’s death. When she is gone the master-key to the past will be lost.’

  ‘But she will be spared for many years, I hope, spared to sympathise with my happiness, and with Lesbia’s.’

  My dearest girl, we cannot hope that. The thread of her life is worn very thin. It may snap at any moment. You cannot look seriously in your grandmother’s face, and yet delude yourself with the hope that she has years of life before her.’

  ‘It will be very hard to part, just as she has begun to care for me,’ said Mary, with her eyes full of tears.

  ‘All such partings are hard, and your grandmother’s life has been so lonely and joyless that the memory of it must always have a touch of pain. One cannot say of her as we can of the happy; she has lived her life — all things have been given to her, and she falls asleep at the close of a long and glorious day. For some reason which I cannot understand, Lady Maulevrier’s life has been a prolonged sacrifice.’

  ‘She has always given us to understand that she was fond of Fellside, and that this secluded life suited her,’ said Mary, meditatively.

  ‘I cannot help doubting her sincerity on that point. Lady Maule
vrier is too clever a woman, and forgive me, dear, if I add too worldly a woman, to be content to live out of the world. The bird must have chafed its breast against the bars of the cage many and many a time when you thought that all was peace. Be sure, Mary, that your grandmother had a powerful motive for spending all her days in this place, and I can but think that the old man we saw the other night had some part in that motive. Do you remember telling me of her ladyship’s vehement anger when she heard you had made the acquaintance of her pensioner?’

  ‘Yes, she was very angry,’ Mary answered, with a troubled look. ‘I never saw her so angry — she was almost beside herself — said the harshest things to me — talked as if I had done some dreadful mischief.’

  ‘Would she have been so moved, do you think, unless there was some fatal secret involved in that man’s presence here?’

  ‘I hardly know what to think. Tell me everything. What is it that you fear? — what is it that you suspect?’

  ‘To tell you my fears and suspicions is to tell you a family secret that has been kept from you out of kindness all the years of your life — and I hardly think I could bring myself to that if I did not know what the world is, and how many good-natured friends Lady Hartfield will meet in society, by-and-by, ready to tell her, by hints and innuendoes, that her grandfather, the Governor of Madras, came back to England under a cloud of disgrace.’

  ‘My poor grandfather! How dreadful!’ exclaimed Mary, pale with pity and shame. ‘Did he deserve his disgrace, poor unhappy creature — or was he the victim of false accusation?’

  ‘I can hardly tell you that, Mary, any more than I can tell whether Warren Hastings deserved the abuse that was wreaked upon him at one time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after years. The events occurred forty years ago — the story was only half known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of exaggeration and perversion.’