“You asked me how old I was. Do you know I never was young — I never had the chance of youth! When the chance came, I had forgotten what youth can do. That accounts, surely, for those eight years. I was tired then, and I was never young.”
“Until to-night,” she said quietly, and the music quickened. I suppose that she was right, for I had never spoken so intimately to any one, whether man or woman; and I cursed myself for a fool, as one does when one is first betrayed into speaking of one’s secret self.
She took the violin from her shoulder, and the glory of the music died off the sea, but lingered for a little faintly upon the hills. I rose up to go and Helen drew a breath and shivered.
“This afternoon,” said I, “a brig went out from the islands through Crow Sound, bound for Milford. I’ll wager the five were on it.”
“But if not?”
“There’s the ‘Palace’ kitchen.”
“Speak when there are others by, not within hearing, but within reach! You will? Promise me!”
I promised readily enough, thinking that I could keep the promise, and she walked back with me through the house to the door. There is a little porch at the door, four wooden beams and a slate roof on the top, and half a dozen stone steps from the porch to the garden. Helen Mayle stood in the porch, with her violin still in her hand. She wished me “Good-night” when I was at the bottom of the steps, but a little afterwards, when I had passed through the gateway of the palisade and had begun to ascend the hill, she drew the bow sharply across one of the strings and sent a little chirp of music after me, which came to my ears, with an extraordinarily friendly sound. The air was still hereabouts, though from the motion of the clouds there was some wind in the sky, and the chirp came very clear and pretty.
It was a few minutes short of ten when I left the house, and I set off at a good pace, for I was anxious to keep my promise and make my bargain with George Glen, quietly in a corner, before the fishing-folk had gone home to bed. A young moon hung above the crest of the hill, a few white clouds were gathering towards it, and the gorse at my feet was black as ink. I walked upwards then steadily. I had walked for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when I heard a low, soft whistle. It came to me quite as clearly as the chirp of the violin, but it had not the same friendly sound. It sounded very lonesome, it set my heart jumping, it brought me to a stop. For I had heard precisely that whistle on one occasion before, on the night when I first crossed this hill with Dick Parmiter down to Merchant’s Rock.
The whistle had sounded from below me and from no great distance away. I turned and looked down the slope, but I could see no one. It was very lonely and very still. Whoever had whistled lay crouched on the gorse. And then the whistle sounded again, but this time it came from above me, higher up the slope. Immediately I dropped to the ground. The gorse which hid them from me might well hide me from them. A few paces above me the gorse seemed thicker than it was where I lay. I crawled laboriously, flat upon my face, till I reached this patch. I forced myself into it, holding my face well down to keep the thorns out of my eyes, until the bushes were so close I could crawl no further. Then I lay still as a mouse, holding my breath, listening with every nerve. I had eluded them before in just this way, but I got little comfort from that reflection. There had been a fog on that night, whereas to-night it was clear. Moreover, they had a more urgent reason now for persevering in their search. I possessed some dangerous knowledge about them as they were aware — knowledge, too dangerous; knowledge which would harden into a weapon in my hand if — if I reached the Palace Inn alive.
I lay very still, and in a little I heard the brushing of their feet through the grass. They were closing down from above, they were closing up from below; but they did not speak or so much as whisper. I turned my head sideways, ever so gently, and looked up to the sky. I saw to my delight that the clouds were over the moon. I buried my face again in the grass, lest they should detect me by its pallor against the black gorse. I was very thankful indeed that I had not accepted that proffered loan of hair-powder — I was dressed in black, too, from head to foot; I blessed the good fortune which had led me to buy black stockings at St. Mary’s, and, in a word, my hopes began to revive.
The feet came nearer, and I heard a voice whisper:
“It was here.” The voice was Peter Tortue’s, as I knew from the French accent, and the next instant a stick fell with a heavy thud not a foot from my head. If only the clouds hung in front of the moon! Round and about they tramped — the whole five of them. For in a little they began in low tones to curse, first of all me, and afterwards Peter Tortue, who had whistled from below. Let them only quarrel amongst themselves, I thought, and there’s a good chance they will forget the reason of their quarrel. It seemed that they were well on the road to a quarrel at last; a man, quite young as I judged from his voice, flung himself down on the grass with an oath.
“But he is here, close to us,” said Peter. “I heard the girl thrum good-night to him on her fiddle, and then I saw him, and followed him, and whistled.”
“Well, it is your business, not mine. Yours and George Glen’s,” the other returned. I learned later that his name was Nathaniel Roper. “I was never on no Royal Fortune, devil damn me.”
“Whist, you lousy fool” — and this was George Glen speaking. I am sure he was winking and pinching the fellow’s arm,— “we are all in the same boat whether we’ve sailed in the Royal — —” and he stopped.
All at once there was a dead silence. I have never in my life experienced anything so horrible as that sudden, complete silence. I could not see what caused it, for my face was buried in the grass, and I dared not move. One moment I had a sensation that they were gazing at my back, and I felt — it is the only way I can express it — I felt naked. Another moment I imagined it to be a ruse to beguile me into stirring; and it lasted for ever and ever.
At length one sound — not a voice — broke the silence: the man who had thrown himself down was getting to his feet. But when he had stood up he made no further movement; he stood motionless, like the others, and the silence began again and again it lasted for ever and ever.
All sorts of tremors began to creep over my body; the muscles of my back jerked of their own accord. The suspense was driving me mad. I had to move, I had to see, if only to hinder myself from leaping to my feet and making a headlong rush. Very slowly I turned my head sideways; I looked backwards along the ground, until I saw. The moon had swum out from the clouds, and the five men were standing in arrested attitudes with their eyes fixed upon something that glittered very bright upon the ground. I could see it myself through the gorse glittering and burning white, like a delicate flame, and my heart gave a great leap within me as I understood what it was. It was a big silver shoe-buckle that shone in the moonlight, and the shoe-buckle was on my foot.
The game was up. I thought that I might as well make a fight of it at the last, and I jumped to my feet suddenly, with a faint hope that the suddenness of the movement might startle them and let me through. But there was to be no fighting for me that night. It is true that the men all scattered from about me, but a voice a few yards to my right thundered, “Stand!” and I stood stock-still, obedient as a charity-school boy.
For Peter Tortue was standing stock still too, with his right arm stretched out in a line with his shoulder and the palm of his hand upturned. On the palm of that hand was balanced a long knife with an open blade, and the moonlight streaked along that blade in flame, just as it had burned upon my shoe-buckle.
George Glen rubbed his hands together.
“You will lie down, Mr. Berkeley,” said he, with his most insinuating smile. “You will down, ‘flat on my face,’ says you.”
“But I have only just got up,” said I.
Glen tittered nervously, but no one else showed any appreciation of my sally. I thought it best to lie down flat on my face.
“Cross your hands behind your back,” said George Glen, and I knew he was winking.
; “Any little thing like that, I am sure,” I murmured, as I obeyed. “Only too happy,” and in a trice I was nothing more than a coil of rope. It cut into my wrists, it crushed my chest, it snaked round my legs, it bit my ankles.
“To be sure,” said I, “they mean to send me somewhere by the post.”
Mr. George Glen sniggered and mentioned my destination, which was impolite, though he mentioned it politely; but Roper thumped me in the small of the back, and thrust my handkerchief into my mouth. So I had done better to have kept silence.
Two of the men lifted me up on their shoulders and staggered up hill. In a moment or two they descended a small incline, and I saw that I was being carried into the hollow where the shed stood. Glen pushed at the door of the shed and it fell open inwards. A great cavern of blackness gaped at us, and they carried me in and set me down unceremoniously on the floor.
“Brisk along with that lantern, Nat Roper,” said Glen, and the young fellow who had flung himself down on the grass struck a light and set fire to the candle. The shed was divided by a wooden partition, in which was a rickety door hardly hanging on its hinges.
“In there!” said Glen, swinging the lantern towards the inner room. My bearers picked me up again and carried me to the door. One of them kicked at the door, but it did not yield.
“It’s jammed,” said the other, “there’s some- thing ‘twixt it and the floor,” and raising a great sea boot, he kicked with all his might.
I heard a metallic clinking, as though a piece of iron was hopping across the stone floor, and the door flew open.
They carried me into the inner room and set me down against the partition. There was no furniture of any sort, not even a bucket to sit upon; there was no window either, a thatched roof rested upon heavy beams over my head. They placed the lantern at my feet, four of them squatted down about me, the fifth went out of the shed to keep watch.
It was, after all, not in the inn kitchen of the Palace Inn that any bargain was to be struck. I could not deny that they had chosen their place very well. Not a man in Tresco but would give this shed the widest of berths, and if he saw the glint of this lantern through a chink, or heard, perhaps, as he was like to do, one loud cry — why, he would only take to his heels the faster. The ropes, too, made my bones ache.
I would have preferred the kitchen at the Palace Inn.
CHAPTER XII
I FIND AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND
GLEN BADE ROPER take the handkerchief from my mouth, and when that was done his creased face smiled at me over the lantern.
“About the Royal Fortune?” he said smoothly.
Peter Tortue nodded, and absently cleaned the blade of his knife upon the thighs of his breeches. There was no reply for me to make, and I waited.
“You were over to St. Mary’s to-day?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do there?”
“I bought a pair of silk stockings and some linen.”
George Glen sniggered like a man that leaves off a serious conversation to laugh politely at a bad joke.
“But it’s true,” I cried.
“Did you speak of the Royal Fortune?”
“No,” and, as luck would have it, I had not — not even to the Rev. Mr. Milray.
“Not to a living soul?”
“No.”
“Did you go up to Star Castle?”
“No.”
“Did you speak to Captain Hathaway?”
“No.”
“‘There’s poor old George,’ you said. ‘Old George Glen,’ says you, ‘what was quartermaster with Cap’n Roberts on the Royal — —’”
“No,” I cried.
“Did you mention Peter Tortue?” said the Frenchman.
“No. Would you be sitting here if I had? There would be a company of soldiers scouring the island for you.”
“That’s reasonable,” said Tortue, and the rest echoed his words. In a little there was silence. Tortue set to work again with his knife. It flashed backwards and forwards, red with the candle light as though it ran blood. It shone in my eyes and dazzled me, and somehow, there came back to me a recollection of that hot night in Clutterbuck’s rooms when everything had glittered with an intolerable brightness, and Dick Parmiter had been set upon the table to tell his story. I was vaguely wondering what they were all doing at this moment in London, Clutterbuck, Macfarlane, and the rest, when the questions began again.
“You came back from St. Mary’s to New Grimsby?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Parmiter?”
“No.”
“From St. Mary’s you crossed the island to Merchant’s Point?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell the girl?”
Here a lie was obviously needful, and I did not scruple to tell it.
“No.”
Peter Tortue leaned forward to me with a shrewd glance in his keen eyes.
“You are her lover,” he said. “You told her.”
I lifted my eyes from his knife, looked him in the eyes, and sustained his glance.
“I am not her lover,” I said; “that is a damned lie.”
He did not lose his temper, but repeated:
“You told her,” and George Glen looked in again with his whole face screwed into a wink.
“You said to her, ‘My dear,’ says you, ‘there’s old George,’” and at that I lost my temper.
“I said nothing of the kind,” I cried. “Am I a parrot that I cannot open my lips without old George popping out of them? But what’s the use of talking. Do what you will, I have done. If I had betrayed your secret, do you think I should be walking home alone, and you upon the island? But I have done. I had a bargain to strike with you, I thought to find you all at the inn — but I have done.”
To tell the truth, I had no longer any hope of life. Glen, for all his winks and smiles, would stop short of no cruelty. Peter Tortue quietly polished his knife upon his thigh. He was a big Brittany man, with shrewd eyes and an unchanging face. The rest squatted and stared curiously at me. The light of the lantern fell upon their callous faces, they were lookers-on at a show, of which perhaps, they had seen the like before, they were not concerned in this affair of the Royal Fortune nor how it ended.
“So you told no one.”
“No one.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the partition. I was utterly helpless in their hands, and I hoped they would be quick. I remember that I regretted very much I could send no word to the girl at Merchant’s Rock, and that I was very glad she had not delayed her music till tomorrow night, but both regret and gladness were of a numbed and languid kind.
Then Glen asked me another question, and it spurred my will to alertness.
“How did you know that I was quartermaster on the Royal Fortune?”
I could not remind him that he had let the ship’s name drop from his lips four years ago. It would be as much as to say that Helen had told me. It would confess that I had spoken with her of the Royal Fortune. Yet I must answer, and without the least show of hesitation. I caught at the first plausible reason which occurred to me. I said: “Cullen Mayle told me,” and that answer saved my life. For Glen remarked, “Yes, he knew,” and nodded to Tortue: Tortue lifted the knife in his hand, and again I closed my eyes. But the next thing I heard was a snap as the blade shut into the handle, and the next thing after that Tortue’s voice deliberately speaking:
“George Glen, you never had the brains of a louse. You can smirk and wriggle, and you’re handy with a weapon, but, you never had no brains.”
I opened my eyes pretty wide at that, and I saw that the three younger faces were now kindled out of their sluggishness. It was that mention of Cullen Mayle which had wrought the change. These three took no particular interest in the Royal Fortune, but they had every interest in the doings of Cullen Mayle, and they now alertly followed all that Tortue said. George Glen leaned forward.
“Who’s cap’en here, Peter Tortue?” said he
. “Was you with us on the Sierra Leone River? Nat Roper there, Blads, you James Skyrm, speak up, lads, was he with us?”
“My son was,” said Tortue calmly.
“And what sort of answer is that? ’Tis lucky for you Cap’en Roberts isn’t aboard this shed. He wouldn’t have understood that language, not he — and he wouldn’t have troubled you for an explanation neither. Here’s a fine thing, lads! If a man dies, his father, what’s been lying in the lap of luxury at home, is to have his share. That’s a nice new rule for gentlemen adventurers, and not content with his share, wants to set up for cap’en. I have a good mind to learn you modesty, Peter, just as Roberts would have learnt you.”
He was talking quite smoothly, with a grin all over his face, but I never saw a man that looked so dangerous. Peter Tortue, however, was in no way discomposed.
“Why, you blundering fool,” he answered, “where would you ha’ been but for me? No, I wasn’t on the Sierra Leone River with you, or you wouldn’t be eating your hearts and your pockets empty upon Tresco. No, I am not your captain, or you wouldn’t never have lost track of Cullen Mayle at Wapping.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 327