But their looks belied his words, and Rachel’s fears began to get the better of her. Still, with an effort, “Then here is the shilling,” she said. “You are very-welcome to it.” She fumbled for her purse, and got it out. But her fingers shook so nervously that she had much ado to separate the coin from others, and meantime the shadowy path on which the men’s eyes were fixed disclosed no followers.
The man who had spoken nudged the other. “All right,” he said, more roughly. “Give us your shilling!” He advanced a step and held out his hand. But when Rachel presented the coin he grabbed the purse instead, and when she recoiled in terror, she found that the second man had slipped behind her and had cut off her retreat.
Then, “D — n your shilling,” the man with the purse growled, casting off the mask. “A pretty slut you, to offer us a shilling! Blast your impudence! What else have you got?”
She was far from help, and she could have no doubt now that they meant the worst, and that she was in deadly peril. But she kept her head, though she knew that at any moment panic might seize her by the throat. “Then keep the purse, and give me the bracelet,” she said as steadily as she could. “And I will — I will say nothing about it. But the bracelet is Lady Ellingham’s, and if it is missed there will be a search.”
“Search be d — d!” the man retorted. “We’ll search you, and see if there’s no more of the rhino about you! Or another of these pretty shiners!” and before Rachel could move the rogue sprang forward and grasped her by the shoulder. “Here, Droughty,” he cried, as she made a desperate attempt to wrest herself from him, “hold the little devil’s hands, and we’ll see what she’s good for! Hold the trull’s hands, do you hear, you fool, and I’ll soon—”
But at that, and at last, Rachel’s courage gave way, and she shrieked — what else could she do? — shrieked with all the power of a woman’s lungs. The wretch who held her tried to thrust the tippet that covered her shoulders into her mouth. “Stow it, you little slut!” he cried. “Shut your pipe, will you?” But she fought with the strength of despair, her cries rang again and again down the dark aisles, scaring the wood-pigeons from their perches; and happily ‘ the second man was more timid or less forward, and hung off. But her resistance could not have lasted many seconds, she was nearly at the end of her strength, when a sound louder than her screams — the report of a gun — rent the air. It paralysed her assailant, for the explosion was so near that the shots passed through the branches overhead. The ruffian’s hands lost their grip, and she tore herself loose. The second man was already wheeling about, ready-poised for flight.
“What the devil is it?” a voice shouted from the farther side of the brook. The undergrowth in that quarter rustled and quivered, a figure broke through it, and appeared at the brink of the water. “What’s wrong there?”
It was enough. The intruder might be alone, but he had a gun, and the law, with its short shrift and halter, was behind him. As he leapt the brook, the men turned and fled. He had a glimpse of them, saw that they were two, had time to mark their appearance. Then only the sound of breaking branches betrayed the direction in which they were making off.
The man whose arrival had been so timely had reached the fallen trunk, and a second man had emerged beside the brook before the former saw the girl leaning exhausted against a tree. He stared at her almost as if he had not expected to see something of the kind. “The devil!” he exclaimed. “Well, I thought, by G — d, no rabbit could squeak like that!
A boatswain’s whistle was nothing to it! Are you hurt?”
His tone was abrupt and compelling, but Rachel could not speak. She could only shake her head. “D — d landsharks!” he muttered. “Lord, who’d live ashore where such things be and your life not safe an hour? Were they for robbing you, my girl?”
Still she could not speak — she was feeling very sick — but she nodded. “Here, Tobin,” the Captain said — for the Captain it was—” take my gun and chase those sharks. If they show fight, bear away and fire into them. Haul them to the constable’s, d’you hear, and see them in irons! I’ll stand by the young woman.”
The keeper took the gun and hurried away down the stream in the direction that the men had taken. The Captain turned to the girl. “Coming to?” he asked.
Rachel heaved a deep sigh and found her voice. “Yes,” she whispered. “But if you had not come up” — a shudder seized her, shaking her from head to foot—” they would have murdered me.”
The Captain cast an eye round. In the open space a faint light still lingered, but in the wood about them it was night. He doubted. The circumstances were queer. “You’re the governess, ain’t you,” he said, “that I gave a lift to?”
“Yes.” She was beginning to recover control of herself.
“I thought so, by gad! Thought I knew the cut of your jib. Well, ma’am, what the blazes were you doing here? At this time of night?” There was suspicion in his tone.
“I left the bracelet — Lady Ann’s bracelet — here,” she murmured. “It was my fault and I came back for it.”
“A d — d silly thing to do!”
“Those men had found it. Please, will you look. I saw them drop it when — when you came up. It is by the tree, I think.” With a shudder she pointed to the place.
He stooped, peered about, and after a short search he found the bracelet lying among the fallen leaves. “Five pounds worth,” he said. “And you were foolish enough to come here for it — at this time! You ought to be broke for it, ma’am. But,” he looked doubtfully at her, “are you sure that you are speaking by the mark, young woman? Not pipe-claying the account, eh? Didn’t come here to meet some young shaver?”
The blood returned to Rachel’s face. “No!” she said indignantly. “I left the bracelet and I came back to look for it. The men had found it and I — I was too near them, when I saw them, to escape. I had to — to do the best I could!” Her voice shook, for she was on the verge of angry tears. “I — I offered them a shilling — for finding it. I thought that they were going to take the shilling, but they seized my purse and — and took hold of me, and!” At last, under the stress of the things remembered, she broke down and sobbed without check.
The Captain, staring at her, wished himself anywhere else, and after watching her for a moment, “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t pipe up like that,” he said irritably. “They’ve cleared off, and you are safe and there’s an end of it. It was your fault for coming ashore without leave, young woman. Come, come, ma’am, enough of that! Can you walk?”
She tried to choke back her sobs. She stammered that she could.
“Then let’s be going! The sooner the better, if you don’t want your name to be sent up to the quarterdeck to-morrow! Come, come, brace up, ma’am! And first haul in your sheets!”
He pointed to her tippet and kerchief which the ruffian’s violence had dragged from her shoulders, leaving them partly bare. Rachel had been unconscious of it; now with a blush which the darkness covered, and a healthy sting of anger that did her good, she tucked in the kerchief and drew the tippet down. The Captain’s roughness spared her at any rate the pain of obligation, and as she turned with trembling limbs to go with him, the effort costing her more than he thought, she made up her mind that he was the most odious man she had ever met. When he offered his arm she declined it curtly — she would walk till she dropped before she would take it!— “No,” she said. “I can walk better by myself — I thank you.”
“Well, I dare say you can. There’s certainly one thing you can do, young woman, and that is scream! Lord, it goes through my head now.”
Brute! Rachel thought.
“Tobin would have it that it was a rabbit, but I said, no rabbit!” He chuckled at the remembrance. “No rabbit in a stoat’s mouth ever made a noise like that.”
And the man called himself a gentleman! Rachel trembled with indignation. And presently, her wounded spirit giving her strength, “Have you ever been in danger of your life?” she asked. “Ver
y near to — to death, sir?”
He seemed to take time to think. Then, “Well, young woman, once or twice. Within hail of it, may be.”
“And were you not frightened?” she asked viciously.
She fully expected that he would deny it and she had made up her mind not to believe him. But with a sort of relish, “Frightened?” he said. “Lord, you may swear to that! Frightened? I wished myself anywhere else I can tell you, as I wager you did! Wished myself ashore, by G — d!”
The admission disappointed her, but she took it up. “Yet you are a man!” she said, a sting in her tone. “And — and I was a woman and — helpless!
Don’t you think I had a right to be frightened?”
“And to scream. To be sure! Why not? Of course you had, and you did it too, ma’am!” He laughed again at the remembrance. “You did it, by Jove, as if you’d been tied up at the gangway.”
Oh, he was a brute! He deserved no answer and Rachel vouchsafed none. If obligation there was, if he had saved her life, he had certainly wiped off the debt, and she owed him nothing! She plodded doggedly up the ascent, dragging one foot after another, and presently he began to whistle to himself. Then in place of whistling he fell to humming; “At the Battle of the Nile I was there all the while, I was there all the while at the battle of the Nile,” in a way that vividly recalled to her her ride in the post-chaise. Her nerves were on edge with exhaustion, and after a time she could bear it no longer. She had to speak. “That is doggerel! she said irritably. “It isn’t poetry.”
“No,” he replied coolly. “It is better. It is truth.”
“Were you there?” She longed to snub him.
“Well, it happens I was,” he answered dryly. “There or thereabouts.”
She was taken aback, a little shocked too by her own rudeness. “Then do you know Lord Nelson?” she asked with, weary as she was, a scrap of interest. For Nelson’s name was already a name to conjure with. His portrait and Lady Hamilton’s were in every print-shop; his character, his exploits, his past, were the subjects of a thousand arguments, debates, disputations. He was belauded, slandered, deified, belittled. Some worshipped him, some sneered at him. But with the populace he was an idol, and when he appeared in public the common people crowded about him as if he had been a monarch walking the streets.
“Yes, I’ve seen him,” the Captain admitted — reluctantly as it seemed. “Nothing to see! A little chap, light in the waist and thin as a curl-paper, about your rig, ma’am! Thinning on the fore-top, which you are not. Nothing to look at and mild as milk, God bless you. One arm, one eye, about half a man, and sick as a three-months-old puppy when there’s a breeze. Weighs about half a ship’s boy. But in action, when the bulkheads are down and the linstocks are lighted, then, ma’am—”
He paused so long that Rachel said “Yes?”
“A flame of fire!”
“Oh!” The words were so unlike the speaker that Rachel gasped.
He whistled. “Lights ahead!” he announced. “Thank God we’re here.” His next words were a fresh surprise. “Well, I’ll say this, young woman! You are not of the swooning sort, and thank heaven for that, for I know more about missing stays than unlacing them, and begad I thought at one time that it would come to that! What? Sheering off ? The door’s open and they’re looking out for us. I expect—”
“I go in by the side door,” Rachel said. “Thank you!” She paused in the act of turning away, and then — she could not be churlish after all—” I am much obliged to you — for what you did,” she added.
“Well, I could not do much less!” In a moment he was almost good-humoured.
“No, that is true,” she said. “Thank you.”
She was moving away to the side door, her one desire to enter without notice. But unfortunately, as she did so, the light that poured from the open entrance fell upon her. “Is that Miss South?” a voice asked — a voice bleak as the east wind.
Rachel had no choice after that but to advance into the light.
“Yes,” she faltered. “I have been detained, Lady Ellingham. I am very sorry. I sent Lady Ann back. I — I hope she came in.”
“She came in, yes — soaked to the waist,” Lady Ellingham replied in cutting accents. “If this,” as poor Rachel, hardly able to keep her feet, crept into the full light of the hall, and, white with fatigue, stood exposed, in all the disorder of her dress, to the looks of the servants whom my lady’s anger had brought to the spot, “if this is an instance of your care of Ann, Miss South! And of your own conduct—”
“She’s had a bit of a burst-up,” muttered the Captain, making eyes over the culprit’s head.
But my lady was too angry to be diverted. She had never taken to the governess, for reasons best known to herself; and those unlucky wet petticoats and this late return, which the Captain’s company did not mitigate, completed the business. “I am most seriously displeased, Miss South,” she said.
Rachel was too sick and too weary to contend, but she made an effort to explain. “I left Lady Ann’s bracelet,” she pleaded. “And I went back for it, and—”
The Countess cut her short. “I will hear your excuses to-morrow,” she answered. “I wish to hear no more now. Will you be good enough to go to your room?”
“Oh, come, Kitty,” the Captain remonstrated.
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand enough,” Lady Ellingham retorted. “I wish to hear no more. Be good enough to go to your room, Miss South, and I will speak to you in the morning.” —
Rachel attempted no further defence. She walked trembling to the staircase, her heart bursting with indignation. Oh, these cruel, inhuman, unfeeling people! The lights dazzled her, the floor moved up and down, the stairs wavered before her, it was only by seizing the friendly hand-rail that she managed to keep her feet until she had passed up and was out of sight. And that coward who had said hardly one word for her! Who had allowed her to be blamed and reprimanded and put to shame before the servants! Who had let her fight her own battle, though he knew what she had gone through, though he knew what she had suffered, and how ill she was!
She went giddily along the passages and gained at last the haven of her room. She turned the key in the lock, and the world, the hard cruel world shut out, she flung herself, crying bitterly, on her bed. One thought was still uppermost in her. “The coward! Oh, the coward!” she sobbed again and again. And she thought how differently, how nobly another would have behaved in his place! How boldly, and with what eloquence he would have sprung to the rescue, how staunchly, how manfully he would have insisted on being heard! Ah, he would! He would not have suffered her to be wronged and stood by silent — though for him to take up her cause spelled courage indeed! For he, like her, was a dependant!
It was in the injustice, the unfairness of it that the sting lay. She was a dependant, and therefore, wrong or right, she was condemned in advance. She was helpless, powerless.
But it was all for the best — she was brought so low that she admitted it bitterly. In the morning she would be sent away, she would be sent home in disgrace. But better so! Far better that she should go, before she had fresh occasion to compare him with others, before his goodness so grew upon her as to sap the last strongholds of pride and self-respect! Before the sweet plague, that had stolen so insensibly, so subtly, into her veins, overcame her altogether, and she had no longer the strength of mind to hide ber folly.
CHAPTER X
BROTHER AND SISTER
“WRETCHED little girl!” the Countess exclaimed, as the door of the library closed on her and her brother-in-law. “She let Ann come home alone, though it was as good as dark. And the child’s petticoats were drenched to the gathers!” The Captain took out his case and chose a cigar with care. He settled himself in a chair. “May I smoke?” he asked. “Bad habit, but second nature. West Indian station, you know.”
She was too much out of temper to assent by more than an ungracious gesture. She stood before the fi
re, tapping the floor with her foot. At length, at his ease, and his cigar alight, “Discipline — officers must be supported,” the Captain said, “so I kept my mouth shut. But you are on the wrong tack, my dear. And you’ll have to go about.”
His quiet leisurely words only increased her irritation. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “don’t tell me that you too are taken with that little creature with the turn-up nose! I thought that you had some sense, George. If it had been Fred now—” She shrugged her shoulders.
“I believe that that is what you have in your mind — Fred,” he answered placidly. “But you are wrong, my dear.”
“Well,” she retorted, with two angry spots on her cheeks, “I believe you thought so once.”
“If I did then, I was wrong. And I did Fred an injustice. Believe me, he’s not come down to that yet. But I am not dealing with him now — only I think it is that which has set you off your course, Kitty. So let’s put back to — to to-day. If anyone was to blame it was Ann. She got wading—”
“In November!” my lady cried with a flash of indignant eyes. “And whose business was it to prevent her?”
The Captain shrugged his shoulders. “The girl’s, of course. But the woman’s not born that can control Ann when the devil’s in her. A boatswain and two boatswain’s mates with a rope’s end apiece and every man of them with eyes at the back of his head couldn’t keep Ann out of mischief when she has a mind to it. And you expect that little chit as big as a sprit-sail yard to keep her from it? Ann got in the water — as get in the water she would if there was water to get in — and the girl dried her as well as she could and hurried her home.”
“But she did not bring her home.”
“She brought her to within a hundred yards of the house.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 717