‘Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier’s sister, a young lady under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?’ demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.
‘Yes; that is what I am going to do,’ answered Lesbia, boldly. ‘It would be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid. This is what you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world, where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out of all the world for my husband — the man God made to be my master.’
‘You are — —’ gasped Lady Kirkbank. ‘I can’t say what you are. I never in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.’
‘Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,’ pleaded Montesma; ‘you can have no interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.’
Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.
‘I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,’ she answered, with dignity. ‘I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez. You have always been vastly civil, I am sure — —’
‘Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the staunchest friend you ever had.’
‘I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,’ said Lady Kirkbank. ‘I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so abominably.’
‘It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we shall be married to-morrow — shall we not, Gomez?’
She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other; this man’s fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind of influence with women which is almost ‘possession.’ It smells of brimstone.
‘Come, my dear good soul,’ said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron, ‘why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker’s book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,’ he added, with his eyes kindling; ‘and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish to occupy.’
‘How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?’ said Lady Kirkbank, piteously. ‘How do I know that you will not bury her alive in your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over there — kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?’
At these words of Lady Kirkbank’s, flung out at random, Montesma blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister look.
‘Yes,’ she cried, hysterically—’kill her, kill her! You look as if you could do it.’
Lesbia nestled closer to her lover’s heart.
‘How dare you say such things to him,’ she cried, angrily. ‘I trust him, don’t you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.’
‘Very much for evil, I’m afraid,’ said Lady Kirkbank. ‘Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get a cup of tea.’
Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking. She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.
Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a well-trained servant.
Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank’s side, and tried to coax her into good humour.
‘Why can’t you take things pleasantly, dear?’ she pleaded. ‘Do now, like a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten, don’t you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder? By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my engagement ring,’ looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling it off her fingers as she talked. ‘I had a kind of presentiment — —’
‘You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.’
‘No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better than what has happened.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.’
‘Don Gomez has arranged all that — everything has been thought of — everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas, and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.’
‘But the marriage — the licence?’
‘I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.’
‘Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.’
‘How dreadfully disagreeable you are,’ said Lesbia, pouting, ‘just because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is frightfully selfish of you.’
Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly, and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not accommodate themselves.
After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily, yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And so, with inte
rvals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and slept in a corner of the saloon.
‘This is the happiest day of my life,’ Lesbia murmured, in a pause of their reading, when they had dropped Endymion’s love to talk of their own.
‘But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.’
‘Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each other?’ she asked, incredulously.
‘Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is easy enough; but when tempest and peril come — that is the test, Lesbia. Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?’
‘You know that I will,’ she answered, with her hand locked in his two hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.
She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a fuss, perhaps — an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying whomsoever she pleased.
‘Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,’ he said, passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.
‘Against all the world,’ she answered, softly.
‘I believe your courage will be tested before long,’ he said; and then he cried to the skipper, ‘Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is chasing us.’
Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that distant spot.
‘It is a steam-yacht,’ he said. ‘They will catch us.’
He was right. Although the Cayman strained every timber so that her keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the Cayman, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr. Smithson’s deck.
‘I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,’ said Maulevrier. ‘I’m not going to make any undue fuss about this little escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once, and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don Gomez de Montesma.’
The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her about himself or his past life was the question which the next few minutes would solve.
‘I am not going back with you,’ answered Lesbia. ‘I am going to Havre with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we arrive.’
‘To be married — at Havre,’ cried Maulevrier. ‘An appropriate place. A sailor has a wife in every port, don’t you know.’
‘We had better go down to the cabin,’ said Hartfield, laying his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. ‘If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.’
Lord Hartfield’s tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.
‘You can talk at your ease here,’ said Montesma, facing the two men with a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. ‘Not one of these fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.’
‘I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Señor; and I should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.’
‘That you shall not do unless she desires it,’ answered Montesma.
‘No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer you,’ said Lesbia.
Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.
‘As you please,’ he said. ‘It will make the disclosure a little more painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.’
* * *
CHAPTER XLIV.
‘OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!’
They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord Hartfield and his friend.
‘Did you give your consent to my sister’s elopement with this man, Lady Kirkbank?’ Maulevrier asked, brusquely.
‘I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I’ve no doubt: but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.’
‘I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this disgraceful business,’ replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, ‘Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.’
‘I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield’s to interfere with my actions, and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,’ said Lesbia, standing by her lover’s side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.
‘Your sister’s husband has the strongest right to control your actions, Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,’ answered Hartfield, with grave authority. ‘Accept me at least as a member of your family, if you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.’
‘Friend!’ echoed Lesbia, scornfully. ‘You might have been my friend once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my grandmother’s house as an impostor, under a false name!’
‘I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your brother’s friend, here to save you.’
‘To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!’ cried Lesbia, with a voice strangled by sobs; ‘tell him that I am to be your wife to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!’
‘Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,’ said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully, pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in the fowler’s net. ‘I am assured upon undeniable authority that Señor Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so — were he free to marry you — his character and antecedents would for ever forbid such a marriage.’
‘A wife! No, no, no!’ shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the other. ‘It is a lie — a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated me — by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity’s sake answer them! Don’t you see that they are driving me mad?’
She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her agony.
Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover’s grasp.
‘You shall not pollute her with your touch,’ he cried; ‘you have poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is — what trade he followed yonder, on his native island — this Spanish hidalgo — this all-accomplished gentleman — lineal descendant of the Cid — fine flower of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance, his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and w
hich could make two runs in a year — that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar upon the hidalgo’s forehead, Lesbia — a token of knightly prowess, you think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia — the living cargo stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and then — short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten sheep sometimes — bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think, Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this particular dealer in blackamoors is not.’
‘Is this true, this part of their vile story?’ demanded Lesbia, looking at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his strong white teeth.
‘There is some truth in it,’ he answered, hoarsely. ‘Everybody in Cuba had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running his cargo — a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there again.’
‘Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad specimen in that line,’ said Lord Hartfield. ‘But I doubt if there is any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich planter’s heiress — the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your return to her native island.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 785