CHAPTER VIII
THE PATH OF WASTED YEARS
And I only think of the woman that weeps; But I forget, always forget, the smiling child. _Luteplayer's Song._
That night, even when sheer fatigue had subdued the currents of bloodand thought that surged in his head, Sir Adrian was too restless toavail himself of the emergency couch providently prepared by Rene in acorner. But, ceasing his fretful pacing to and fro, he sat down in thearm-chair by the hearth where she had sat--the waif of thesea--wrapped round him the cloak that had enfolded the young body,hugging himself in the salt moisture the fur still retained, to spendthe long hours in half-waking, firelight dreams.
And every burst of tempest rage, every lash of rain at the window,every thud of hurricane breaking itself on impassable ramparts, andshriek of baffled winds searching the roofless halls around, found astrangely glad echo in his brain--made a sort of burden to histhoughts:
Heap up the waters round this happy island, most welcome winds--heapthem up high and boiling, and retain her long captive in these lonelyruins!
And ever the image in his mind's eye was, as before, Cecile--Cecilewho had come back to him, for all sober reason knew it was but thechild.
The child----! Why had he never thought of the children these wearyyears? They, all that remained of Cecile, were living and might havebeen sought. Strange that he had not remembered him of the children!
Twenty years since he had last set eyes upon the little livingcreature in her mother's arms. And the picture that the memory evokedwas, after all, Cecile again, only Cecile--not the queer littleblack-eyed puppet, even then associated with sea-foam and saltybreeze. Twenty years during which she was growing and waxing inbeauty, and unawares, maturing towards this wonderful meeting--and hehad never given a thought to her existence.
In what sheltered ways had this fair duplicate of his love beengrowing from a child to womanhood during that space of life, so longto look back upon--or so short and transient, according to the mood ofthe thinker?
And, lazily, in his happier and tender present mood he tried tomeasure once again the cycles of past discontent, this time in termsof the girl's own lifetime.
It is bitter in misery to recall past misery--almost as bitter, forall Dante's cry, as to dwell on past happiness. But, be the pastreally dead, and a new and better life begun, the scanning back of asombre existence done with for ever, may bring with it a kind ofsecret complacency.
Truly, mused Sir Adrian, for one who ever cherished ideal aspirations,for the student, the "man of books" (as his father had beenbanteringly wont to term him), worshipper of the muses, intellectualEpicurean, and would-be optimist philosopher, it must be admitted hehad strangely dealt, and been dealt with, since he first beheld thatface, now returned to light his solitude! Ah, God bless the child!Pulwick at least nursed it warmly, whilst unhappy Adrian, ragged anddegraded into a mere fighting beast, roamed through the Marais withChouan bands, hunted down by the merciless revolutionists, likevermin; falling, as months of that existence passed over him, from hishigh estate to the level of vermin indeed; outlawed, predatory,cunning, slinking, filthy--trapped at last, the fit end of vermin!
Scarcely better the long months of confinement in the hulks ofRochelle. How often he had regretted it, then, not to have been one ofthe chosen few who, the day after capture, stood in front of sixlevelled muskets, and were sped to rest in some unknown charnel!Then!--not now. No, it was worth having lived to this hour, to know ofthat fair face, in living sleep upon his pillow, under the safeguardof his roof.
Good it was, that he had escaped at last, though with the blood of oneof his jailors red upon his hands; the blood of a perhaps innocentman, upon his soul. It was the only time he had taken a life otherthan in fair fight, and the thought of it had been wont to fill himwith a sort of nausea; but to-night, he found he could face it, notonly without remorse, but without regret. He was glad he had listenedto Rene's insidious whispers--Rene, who could not endure the captivityto which his master might, in time, have fallen a passive, hopelessslave, and yet who would have faced a thousand years of it rather thanescape alone--the faithful heart!
Yes, it was good, and he was glad of it, or time would not have comewhen she (stay, how old was the child then?--almost three years, andstill sheltered and cherished by the house of Landale)--when she wouldreturn, and gladden his eyes with a living sight of Cecile, while Renewatched in his tower above; ay, and old Margery herself lay once morenear the child she had nursed.
Marvellous turn of the wheel of fate!
But, who had come for the children, and where had they been taken? Totheir motherland, perhaps; even it might have been before he himselfhad left it; or yet to Ireland, where still dwelt kinsfolk of theirblood? Probably it was at the breaking up of the family, caused by thedeath of Sir Thomas, that these poor little birds had been removedfrom the nest, that had held them so safe and close.
That was in '97, in the yellow autumn of which year Adrian Landale,then French fisherman, parted from his brother Rene L'Apotre upon thesea off Belle Isle; parted one grizzly dawn after embracing, asbrothers should. Oh, the stealthy cold of that blank, cheerlessdaybreak, how it crept into the marrow of his bones, and chilled thelittle energy and spirits he had left! For a whole year they hadfruitlessly sought some English vessel, to convey this Englishgentleman back to his native land. He could remember how, at themoment of separation, from the one friend who had loved both him andher, his heart sank within him--remember how he clambered from aboardthe poor little smack, up the forbidding sides of the English brig;how Rene's broken words had bidden God bless him, and restore himsafely home (home!); remember how swiftly the crafts had moved apart,the mist, the greyness and desolateness; the lapping of the waters,the hoarse cries of the seamen, all so full of heart-piercingassociations to him, and the last vision of Rene's simple face, withtears pouring down it, and his open mouth spasmodically trying to giveout a hearty cheer, despite the sobs that came heaving up to it. Howlittle the simple fellow dreamed of what bitterness the future was yetholding for his brother and master, to end in these reunions at last!
The vessel which had taken Adrian Landale on board, in answer to thefrantic signals of the fishing-smack, that had sailed from Belle Isleobviously to meet her, proved to be a privateer, bound for the WestIndies, but cruising somewhat out of her way, in the hope of outgoingprizes from Nantes.
The captain, who had been led to expect something of importance fromthe smack's behaviour, in high dudgeon at finding that so much bustleand waste of time was only to burden him with a mere castaway seekinga passage home--one who, albeit a countryman, was too ragged anddisreputable in looks to be trusted in his assurances ofreward--granted him indeed the hospitality of his ship, but on thecondition of his becoming a hand in the company during the forthcomingexpedition.
There was a rough measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrianaccepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jumpoverboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removedfrom his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruiselasting over a year, during which the only changes rung in the gamutof its purpose were the swooping down, as a vulture might, uponunprotected ships; flying with superior speed from obviously strongercrafts; engaging, with hawk-like bravery, everything afloat thatdisplayed inimical colours, if it offered an equal chance of fight.
And this for more than a year, until the privateer, much battered, butsafe, despite her vicissitudes made Halifax for refitting. Here, atthe first suitable port she had touched, Adrian claimed and obtainedhis release from obligations which made his life almost unendurable.
Then ensued a period of the most absolute penury; unpopular with mostof his messmates for his melancholy taciturnity, despised by the morebrutal as one who had as little stomach for a carouse as for a bloodyfight, he left the ship without receiving, or even thinking of hisshare of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such meanmec
hanical employment as came in his way, till an opportunity wasoffered of engaging himself as seaman, again from sheer necessity, ona homeward-bound merchantman--an opportunity which he seized, if noteagerly, for there was no eagerness left in him, yet under thepressure of purpose.
Next the long, slowly plodding, toilsome, seemingly eternal courseacross the ocean.
But even a convoy, restricted to the speed of its slowest member, ifit escape capture or natural destruction, must meet the opposite shoreat length, and the last year of the century had lapsed in the evenrace of time when, after many dreary weeks, on the first of January1801, the long low lines of sandhills on the Lancastrian coast loomedin sight. The escort drew away, swiftly southwards, as if in joyfulrelief from the tedious task, leaving the convoy to enter the Mersey,safe and sound.
That evening Adrian, the rough-looking and taciturn sailor, set foot,for a short while, on his native land, after six years of an exilewhich had made of him at five and twenty a prematurely aged andhopelessly disillusioned man.
And Sir Adrian, as he mused, wrapped in the honoured fur cloak, witheyes half closed, by his sympathetic fire, recalled how little of joythis return had had for him. It was the goal he had striven to reach,and he had reached it, that was all; nay, he recalled how, when athand, he had almost dreaded the actual arrival home, dreaded, with theinfinite heart-sickness of sorrow, the emotions of the family welcometo one restored from such perils by flood and field--if not indeedalready mourned for and forgotten--little wotting how far that returnto Pulwick, that seemed near and certain, was still away in the dimfuture of life.
Yet, but for the fit of hypochondriacal humour which had fallen blackupon him that day of deliverance and made him yearn, with an intensityincreasing every moment, to separate himself from his repugnantassociates and haste the moment of solitude and silence, he might havebeen rescued, then and for ever, from the quagmire in which perversecircumstances had enslaved him.
"Look'ee here, matey," said one of his fellow-workers to him, in atransient fit of good-fellowship which the prospect of approachingsprees had engendered in him even towards one whom all on board hadfelt vaguely to be of a different order, and disliked accordingly,"you don't seem to like a jolly merchantman--but, maybe, you wouldn'ttake more kindly to a man-o'-war. Do you see that there ship?--afrigate she is; and, whenever there's a King's ship in the Mersey thatmeans that it's more wholesome for the likes of us to lie low. Youtake a hint, matey, and don't be about Liverpool to-night, or untilshe's gone. Now, I know a crib that's pretty safe, Birkenhead way;Mother Redcap's, we call it--no one's ever been nabbed at MotherRedcap's, and if you'll come along o' me--why then if you won't, goyour way and be damned to you for a----"
This was the parting of Adrian Landale from his fellow-workers. Theidea of spending even one night more in that atmosphere of rum andfilth, in the intimate hearing of blasphemous and obscene language,was too repulsive to be entertained, and he had turned away from theoffer with a gesture of horror.
With half a dozen others, in whose souls the attractions of the townat night proved stronger than the fear of the press party, hedisembarked on the Lancashire side, and separating from hiscompanions, for ever, as he thought, ascended the miserable lanesleading from the river to the upper town.
His purpose was to sleep in one of the more decent hotels, to call thenext day for help at the banking-house with which the Landales haddealt for ages past, and thence to take coach for Pulwick. But he hadplanned without taking reck of his circumstances. No hotel of reputewould entertain this weather-beaten common sailor in the meanest ofwork-stained clothes. After failing at various places even to obtain ahearing, being threatened with forcible ejectment, derisively referredto suitable cribs in Love Lane or Tower Street, he gave up theattempt; and, in his usual dejection of spirit, intensified byunavowed and unreasonable anger, wandered through the dark streets,brooding. Thus aimlessly wandering, the remembrance of his youngUtopian imaginings came back to him to mock him. Dreams of universalbrotherhood, of equality, of harmony. He had already seen the apostlesof equality and brotherhood at work--on the banks of the Vilaine. Andrealising how he himself, now reduced to the lowest level in thesocial scale, hunted with insult from every haunt above that level,yet loathed and abhorred the very thought of associating again withhis recent brothers in degradation, he laughed a laugh of bitterself-contempt.
But the night was piercing cold; and, in time, the question arosewhether the stench and closeness of a riverside eating-house would notbe more endurable than the cutting wind, the sleet, and the sharperpangs of hunger.
His roaming had brought him once more to that quarter of the town"best suited to the likes of him," according to the innkeeper'sopinion, and he found himself actually seeking a house ofentertainment in the slimy, ill-lighted narrow street, when, from outthe dimness, running towards him, with bare feet paddling in thesludge, came a slatternly girl, with unkempt wisps of red hair hangingover her face under the tartan shawl.
"Run, run, Jack," she cried, hoarsely, as she passed by breathless,"t' gang's comin' up...."
A sudden loathly fear seized Adrian by the heart. He too, took to hisheels by the side of the slut with all the swiftness his tired framecould muster.
"I'm going to warn my Jo," she gasped, as, jostling each other, theydarted through a maze of nameless alleys.
And then as, spent with running, they emerged at last into a broaderstreet, it was to find themselves in the very midst of another partyof man-of-war's men, whose brass belt-buckles glinted under theflickering light of the oil-lamp swinging across the way.
Adrian stopped dead short and looked at the girl in mute reproach.
"May God strike me dead," she screamed, clapping her hands together,"if I knew the bloody thieves were there! Oh, my bonny lad, I meant tosave ye!" And as her words rang in the air two sailors had Adrian bythe collar and a facetious bluejacket seized her round the waist withhideous bantering.
A very young officer, wrapped up in a cloak, stood a few paces apartcalmly looking on. To him Adrian called out in fierce, yet anguished,expostulation:
"I am a free and independent subject, sir, an English gentleman. Idemand that you order your men to release me. For heaven's sake," headded, pleadingly, "give me but a moment's private hearing!"
A loud guffaw rang through the group. In truth, if appearances makethe gentleman, Adrian was then but a sorry specimen.
The officer smiled--the insufferable smile of a conceited boy raisedto authority.
"I can have no possible doubt of your gentility, sir," he said, withmocking politeness, and measuring, under the glimmering light, firstthe prisoner, from head to foot, and then the girl who, scratching andblaspheming, vainly tried to make her escape; "but, sir, as afree-born English gentleman, it will be your duty to help his Majestyto fight his French enemies. Take the English gentleman along, mylads!"
A roar of approbation at the officer's facetiousness ran through theparty.
"An' his mother's milk not dry upon his lips," cried the girl, with acrow of derisive fury, planting as she spoke a sounding smack on abroad tanned face bent towards her. The little officer grew pink."Come, my men, do your duty," he thundered, in his deepest bass.
A rage such as he never had felt in his life suddenly filled Adrian'swhole being. He was a bigger man than any of the party, and the roughlife that fate had imposed on him, had fostered a strength of limbbeyond the common. A thrust of his knee prostrated one of his captors,a blow in the eye from his elbow staggered the other; the next instanthe had snatched away the cutlass which a third was drawing, and withit he cleared, for a moment, a space around him.
But as he would have bounded into freedom, a felling blow descended onhis head from behind, a sheet of flame spread before his eyes, andbehind this blaze disappeared the last that Adrian Landale was to seeof England for another spell of years.
When he came back to his senses he was once more on board ship--aslave, legally kidnapped; degraded by full and proper warrant f
rom hislegitimate status for no crime that could even be invented againsthim; a slave to be retained for work or war at his master's pleasure,liable like a slave to be flogged to death for daring to assert hislight of independence.
* * * * *
The memory of that night's doing and of the odious bondage to whichit was a prelude, rarely failed to stir the gall of resentment in SirAdrian; men of peaceable instincts are perhaps the most prone to thefeeling of indignation.
But, to-night, a change had come over the spirit of his dreams; hecould think of that past simply as the past--the period of time whichwould have had to be spent until the advent of the wonder-workingpresent: these decrees of Fate had had a purpose. Had the past, by onejot, been different, the events of this admirable day might never havebeen.
The glowing edifice on the hearth collapsed with a darting of suddenflame and a rolling of red cinders. Sir Adrian rose to rebuild hisfire for the night; and, being once roused, was tempted by theruddiness of the wine, glinting under the quiet rays of the lamp, toadvance to the table and partake of his forgotten supper.
The calm atmosphere, the warmth and quiet of the room, in which hebroke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by thehearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiryconcerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; theserene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angryvoices of elements without, answered to the peace--the strangepeace--that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of suchuncongenial memories as now rose up before him in vivid concatenation.
She was then five years old. Where was she, when he began thatseemingly endless cruise with the frigate _Porcupine_? He tried tofancy a Cecile five years old--a chubby, curly-headed mite, nursingdolls and teasing kittens, whilst he was bullied and browbeaten bycoarse petty officers, shunned and hated by his messmates, and floggedat length by a tyrannizing captain for obduracy--but he could only seea Cecile in the spring of womanhood, nestling in the arm-chair yonderby the fire and looking up at him from the folds of a fur cloak.
She was seven years old when he was flogged. Ah, God! those had beendays! And yet, in the lofty soul of him he had counted it no disgrace;and he had been flogged again, ay, and a third time for that obstinatehead that would not bend, that obstinate tongue that would persist indemanding restitution of liberty. The life on board the privateer hadbeen a matter of bargain; he had bartered also labour and obediencewith the merchantman for the passage home, but the king had no rightto compel the service of a free man!
She was but twelve years old when he was finally released fromthraldom--it had only lasted four years after all; yet what a cyclefor one of his temper! Four years with scarce a moment ofsolitude--for no shore-leave was ever allowed to one who openlyrepudiated any service contract: four years of a life, where the soleprospect of change was in these engagements, orgies of carnage, soeagerly anticipated by officers and men alike, including himself,though for a reason little suspected by his companions. But even thehistoric sea-fights of the _Porcupine_, so far as they affected AdrianLandale, formed in themselves a chain of monotony. It was ever thesame hurling of shot from ship to ship, the same fierce exchange ofcutlass-throws and pike-pushes between men who had never seen eachother before; the same yelling and execrations, sights, sounds, andsmells ever the same in horror; the same cheers when the enemy'scolours were lowered, followed by the same transient depression; thecleansing of decks from stains of powder and mire of human blood, thecasting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work,broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would tasteblood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that allthe waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from himagain. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, thenext occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate ofAdrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber orfalling tackles should put an end to his dreary life, welcome as suchan end would have been to him then.
Then ... but not now. Remembering now his unaccountable escape fromthe destruction which had swept from his side many another whoseeagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from adesire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mindthe trite old adage:
"Man proposeth..."
God had disposed otherwise.
It was not destined that Adrian Landale should be shot on the highseas any more than he should be drowned in the rolling mud of theVilaine--he was reserved for this day as a set-off to all thebitterness that had been meted out to him; he was to see the image ofhis dead love rise from the sea once more. And, meanwhile, his verydespair and sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not besaid, if history should take count of the fact, that while the Lord ofPulwick had served four years before the mast, he had ever disgracedhis name by cowardice....
Whether such reasonings were in accordance even with the mostoptimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might havedoubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with thegrateful relaxation that a happy break brings in the midst oflong-drawn melancholy.
Everything had been working towards this end--that he should be thelight-keeper of Scarthey on the day when out of the raging watersCecile would rise and knock and ask for succour at his chamber.
Cecile! pshaw!--raving again.
Well, the child! Where was she on the day of the last engagement ofthat pugnacious _Porcupine_, in the year 1805, when England was freedfrom her long incubus of invasion? She was then twelve.
It had seemed if nothing short of a wholesale disaster could terminatethat incongruous existence of his.
The last action of the frigate was a fruitless struggle againstfearful odds. After a prolonged fight with an enemy as dauntless asherself, with two-thirds of her ship's company laid low, and commandedat length by the youngest lieutenant, she was tackled as the sun wentlow over the scene of a drawn battle, by a fresh sail errant; and, hadit not been for a timely dismasting on board the new-comer, would havebeen captured or finally sunk then and there. But that fate was onlyheld in reserve for her. Bleeding and disabled, she had drawn awayunder cover of night from her two hard-hit adversaries, to encounter asquall that further dismantled her, and, in such forlorn conditions,was met and finally conquered by the French privateer _Espoir deBrest_, that pounced upon her in her agony as the vulture upon hisprey.
Among the remainder of the once formidable crew, now seized andbattened down under French hatches, was of course Adrian Landale--hebore a charmed life. And for a short while the only change probable inhis prospects was a return to French prisons, until such time as itpleased Heaven to restore peace between the two nations.
But the fortune of war, especially at sea, is fickle and fitful.
The daring brig, lettre de marque, _L'Espoir de Brest_, soon after herunwonted haul of English prisoners, was overtaken herself by one ofher own species, the _St. Nicholas_ of Liverpool, from whose swiftnessnothing over the sea, that had not wings, could hope to escape if shechose to give the chase.
Again did Adrian, from the darkness among his fellow-captives, hearthe familiar roar and crash of cannon fight, the hustling and the thudof leaping feet, the screams and oaths of battle, and, finally, thetriumphant shouts of English throats, and he knew that the Frenchmanwas boarded. A last ringing British cheer told of the Frenchman'ssurrender, and when he and his comrades were once more free to breathea draught of living air, after the deathly atmosphere under hatches,Adrian learned that the victor was not a man-of-war, but a free-lance,and conceived again a faint hope that deliverance might be at hand.
It was soon after this action, last of the fights that Adrian thepeace-lover had to pass through, and as the two swift vessels, nowsailing in consort, and under the same colours cleaved the waters,bound for the Mersey, that a singular little drama took place on boardthe _Espoir de Brest_.
Among the younger officers of the English privateer, who were le
ft incharge of the prize, was a lad upon whom Adrian's jaded eyes restedwith a feeling of mournful sympathy, so handsome was he, and so young;so full of hope and spirits and joy of life, of all, in fact, of whichhe himself had been left coldly bare. Moreover, the ring of the merryvoice, the glint of the clear eye awakened in his memory some fitfulchord, the key of which he vainly sought to trace.
One day, as the trim young lieutenant stood looking across the waters,with his brave eager gaze that seemed to have absorbed some of theblue-green shimmer of the element he loved, all unnoting the haggardsailor at his elbow, a sudden flourish of the spy-glass which he, withan eager movement, swung up to bear on some distant speck, sent hiswatch and seals flying out of his fob upon the deck at Adrian's feet.
Adrian picked them up, and as he waited to restore them to theirowner, who tarried some time intent on his distant peering, he hadtime to notice the coat and crest engraved upon one of the massivetrinkets hanging from their black ribbons.
When at last the officer lowered his telescope, Adrian came forwardand saluted him with a slight bow, all unconsciously as unlike theaverage Jack Tar's scrape to his superior as can be well imagined:
"Am I not," he asked, "addressing in you, sir, one of the Cochranes ofthe Shaws?"
The question and the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enoughto astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adriansurmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a veryschool-boy found at fault. Speaking with much sharpness:
"My name is Smith, my man," cried he, seizing his belongings, "andyou--just carry on with that coiling!"
"And my name, sir, is Adrian Landale, of Pulwick Priory. I would likea moment's talk with you, if you will spare me the time. The Cochranesof the Shaws have been friends of our family for generations."
A guffaw burst from a group of Adrian's mates working hard by, at thisrecurrence of what had become with them a standing joke; but theofficer, who had turned on his heels, veered round immediately, andstood eyeing the speaker in profound astonishment.
"Great God, is it possible! Did you say you were a Landale of Pulwick?How the devil came you here then, and thus?"
"Press-gang," was Adrian's laconic answer.
The lad gave a prolonged whistle, and was lost for a moment incogitation.
"If you are really Mr. Landale," he began, adding hastily, as if tocover an implied admission--"of course I have heard the name: it iswell known in Lancashire--you had better see the skipper. It must havebeen some damnable mistake that has caused a man of your standing tobe pressed."
The speaker ended with almost a deferential air and the smile that hadalready warmed Adrian's heart. At the door of the Captain's quartershe said, with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye:
"A curious error it was you made, I assure you my name is Smith--JackSmith, of Liverpool."
"An excusable error," quoth Adrian, smiling back, "for one of yourseals bear unmistakably the arms of Cochrane of the Shaws, doubtlesssome heirloom, some inter-marriage."
"No, sir, hang it!" retorted Mr. Jack Smith of Liverpool, his boyishface flushing again, and as he spoke he disengaged the trinket fromits neighbours, and jerked it pettishly overboard, "I know nothing ofyour Shaws or your Cochranes."
And then he rapped loudly at the cabin-door, as if anxious to avoidfurther discussion or comment on the subject.
The result of the interview which followed--interview during whichAdrian in a few words overcame the skipper's scepticism, and wasbidden with all the curiosity men feel at sea for any novelty, torelate, over a bottle of wine, the chain of his adventures--was hispassing from the forecastle to the officers' quarters, as an honouredguest on board the _St. Nicholas_, during the rest of her cruise.
Thinking back now upon the last few weeks of his sea-going life, SirAdrian realised with something of wonder that he had always dwelt onthem without dislike. They were gilded in his memory by the rays ofhis new friendship.
And yet that this young Jack Smith (to keep for him the nondescriptname he had for unknown reasons chosen to assume) should be the firstman to awaken in the misanthropic Adrian the charm of humanintercourse, was singular indeed; one who followed from choice theodious trade of legally chartered corsair, who was ever ready tobarter the chance of life and limb against what fortune might bring inhis path, to sacrifice human life to secure his own end of enrichment.
Well, the springs of friendship are to be no more discerned thanthose of love; there was none of high or low degree, with theexception of Rene, whose appearance at any time was so welcome to therecluse upon his rock, as that of the privateersman.
And so, turning to his friend in to-night's softened mood, Sir Adrianthought gratefully that to him it was that he owed deliverance fromthe slavery of the King's service, that it was Jack Smith who had madeit possible for Adrian Landale to live to this great day and await itscoming in peace.
The old clock struck two; and Jem shivered on the rug as thelight-keeper rose at length from the table and sank in his arm-chaironce more.
Visions of the past had been ever his companions; now for the firsttime came visions of the future to commingle with them. As if caughtup in the tide of his visitor's bright young life, it seemed as thoughhe were passing at length out of the valley of the shadow of death.
* * * * *
Rene, coming with noiseless bare feet, in the angry yellow dawn of thesecond day of the storm, to keep an eye on his master's comfort, foundhim sleeping in his chair with a new look of rest upon his face and asmile upon his lips.
The Light of Scarthey: A Romance Page 10