Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “There is no more to be said,” Wyke muttered. He was amazed, silenced, awe-stricken. “God give you and her a good deliverance.” Habit put the words into his mouth, and he used them and added nothing to them. Nor did he make any show of leave-taking, but turned and went out as in a dream.

  They had risen above him, far above him! Or she had! He felt it, he owned it. She had reached a plane beyond his strength, if not his conception, and he acknowledged it with awe. As he returned over the point he met men who saluted him respectfully but he went by them unseeing. That was not the Squire’s custom, and the men stared after him, and saw that as he climbed the hill he made strange odd gestures with his cane. They thought him mazed, and they wondered.

  CHAPTER XXI

  BUDGEN’S COVE lay so snugly sheltered behind the headland that it kept its secrets, and Budgen was no talker. But there are things that cannot be hidden long. The bilge-pumps and the caulkers’ mallets had voices if Budgen had not, and the reek of the first sizzling tar-kettle had barely got the better of the tang of the seaweed and the various smells of the foreshore before it was rumoured on the other side of the point that something was afoot. From that to the knowledge that the Lively Peggy was to sail was but a step.

  The news made a stir that was not confined to Beremouth. It reached the ship-chandlers in Plymouth and the armourers in Devonport; it moved the fish-curers on the giddy steeps of Saltash. For Letters of Marque were good customers. They sailed well-armed — for fighting, when it could not be avoided, was their trade — and well-found, for something like equality reigned aboard, and the fo’c’sle looked to live on more than hard-tack and salt horse. Men with samples, men with lists, men with oily voices, shadowed Budgen, waylaid him on his doorstep, and were heartily cursed for their pains.

  But that which was a mere question of profit to the Three Towns was for Beremouth a thing of both profit and pride. The taverns that of late had scored much on the slates behind their doors looked to have them cleared out of the men’s advances — and other scores run up, for would not every soul in the place drink to the success of the venture? Then if all went well there would be more money when the crew came back with lined pockets. Coopers hooped casks, and sail-makers, squatting on their hams, sewed clothes; for others there were odd jobs about the brig and always the hope of a prize to flood the little port with gold, or the things that made gold — laces and cognac, Lyons silks and Bordeaux wines — a flood that would irrigate many a thirsty channel.

  But in Beremouth itself the hope of profit stood second to pride. The town was bestirring itself to wipe off its disgrace. It was lifting its head again, to compete with Falmouth and Plymouth and Dartmouth. It was once again sending forth its ship to harass the hated foreigners who closed their ports to its pilchards and herrings; and sending it forth with just as much chance of a prize as its neighbours. Not a man on the quay with its weedy fish-crates and crab-pots but saw just beyond the offing a main strewn with merchantmen and golden with argosies, all waiting to be taken by the first comer. And then how great the glory, how fine the story, how shrill the cock-crowing over Yealmpton, and Torbay and Brixham! There would not be a tavern, a Sailors’ Rest or a Hole in the Wall from Portland Bill to the Manacles that would not ring with the tale of a good capture, wiping out the unlucky memory of the last fiasco.

  Men held their heads higher, and walked more briskly, smiling as they walked. Old salts not often seen upon the street, shy, ringleted men who lodged in Beremouth, holding it safer than Plymouth where the press-gang worked, showed themselves openly, spat on their hands and sought secret interviews with Budgen. The very children chanted that the Peggy was going out, and on most days there would be half a dozen groups watching from the churchyard walk the workers in the Cove.

  But fame is a fickle thing, and though the name was in all mouths, not one in a hundred, strange to say, thought of the girl now living humbly in their midst, in whose honour the brig had been christened. Some were ignorant of the fact. Others had forgotten it. Her nine-days’ romance had sunk merged in dull every-day life, and if one here or there did recall her association with the thing of beauty that day by day, as casks and bales went aboard, floated lower in the water, it was much.

  Amid all this one secret was well kept. Men wondered who was to command. Budgen was dumb, the Rector was too formidable to be questioned, and the Cove was as ignorant as the town. Budgen had sworn to Dr. Portnal that the crew would sail with Bligh, but the wish had been father to the thought, for not a man from Barney Toll to the galley-drudge had been consulted. Nine out of ten believed that, wife or no wife, Ozias would sail. That was the common talk. But when Ozias came round from Portsmouth to hear all about the matter, there was an end of that. He brought with him a buxom, black-eyed Devon woman who very soon proved in no equivocal fashion that she had a hold on Copestake’s shirt-tails that forbade the thought of escape.

  “No, Ozias don’t do any more privateering,” she declared to an admiring throng in the Keppel Head. “Nor no such ungodly work! He don’t step across the quay without his wedded wife, nor go aboard so much as a cockboat. He’s converted is Ozias. He sees the error of his ways. He’s a man o’ peace, and not before ’twas time too!”

  Ozias groaned. “It’s deadly work for sure,” he said. “Deadly to the soul it is! There’s nights I canna sleep for thinking o’ the men, poor benighted creatures, cursing and swearing in the jaws of hell. It’s a crowning mercy I were not cut off. Though, lads,” he added softly, “I were always careful — careful.”

  “Ay, and you’ll be more careful now,” Mrs. Ozias said darkly.

  From amid the throng of hairy, sunburnt men, some with kerchiefs about their heads and pig-tails at their necks, on whom the naked lamp, hung from the ceiling, cast a fierce light, a shrill voice issued. “But to fight the French, missus? I never heard as ’twas anything but lawful!”

  With one spacious gesture Mrs. Ozias cleared a space before her. She set her arms akimbo, and if no one else trembled Ozias did. “Now who be you?” she asked. “Let me see you, little man!” And as the crowd fell back and disclosed the unfortunate Fewster, who had piped up, fancying himself safe in obscurity. “Let me see you!” the terrible woman continued. “And how much fighting o’ the French ha’ you done? But I see. You be one o’ them random, reckless, neck-or-nothing fire-eaters as cursed at the guns while Ozias was in his sins! A bloody-minded limb of Satan never content but with a linstock in your hands! A-breathing fire and slaughter! It’s written on you plain what you be, my man! One o’ those as set Ozias astray you be!”

  Now no one in all Beremouth looked less like a desperado then Joe; a rag of a man, who, as everybody knew, had never been out of sight of land in his life. So the room rocked with Homeric laughter. But Joe whether drunk or sober was of the vainest, and he did not see the joke. Stung by the sarcasm, he broke into “language,” cursing his limbs and all that was his if he wasn’t as ready to fight the French as another! “I’d go to-morrow,” he raved, “and I will go, sink me if I don’t! You’re a set of fools! Fools and gabies!”

  “Well, you’d best go,” Mrs. Ozias retorted, contemptuous in her strength. “But you don’t ‘list Ozias in your crew, my little bantam cock — crow as loud as you like!”

  The room rocked anew at the notion of Joe’s crew. One clapped another on the back and swore he would sign on. “But he’s greater with a quart pot than a linstock, is Joe!” cried a stentorian voice.

  “Oh, lord, I do see Joe ‘mid smoke and slaughter!” hiccoughed the man next him, and smacked Joe on the back till he reeled.

  Assailed on all sides Joe spattered the crowd with wild words, crying that he’d show them, he’d go, he’d fight the French as well as another! But his weak passion and his oaths only provoked fresh diversion. Even those who every day drank at Joe’s cost laughed with the loudest.

  He broke away at last, almost weeping with rage, and made for the door. But before he passed it he planted a dart that rankled. “
Any way, if I took a Frenchman I’d not sink her in harbour!” he shouted. “And how many of you shirkers owe your lives to me! Asleep and drunk you were, and the water washing you! And I saved you, you swabs, you lubbers, you thickheads!”

  Perhaps it was well for him that the door closed on his last word. “Well,” Ozias said, fairly mazed at finding himself wounded by so puny an opponent, “he be a scorpion! Surelie the poison of asps is under his lips!”

  However, Joe gone, the merriment died down. Some one raised the question of the skipper, and, assured that Ozias was not the man, they debated it. Those who knew least leaned to Barney Toll, who was not present; they could think of no one else. But the wiser, and Ozias with them, shook their heads; they knew Barney’s limitations, and that, stout seaman as he was, a land-fall and a faculty of shooting the sun were not within him. “He be at Budgen’s now,” Ozias commented. “But he knows no more than we do, does Barney.”

  “Well, I’d want to know,” said one with deliberation, “‘fore I slung my hammock.”

  “Ay, ay.”

  “And ‘taint everyone I’d go with, lads. The skipper’s every man’s meat.”

  “Or poison, Zekiel! Or poison. You’re right. Sure, us’ll have a word to say to he.”

  A strong feeling ran that way; men shook their heads. One suggested that those concerned should march to Budgen’s in a body and have it out with him. “‘Twon’t do to sail with a pig in a poke! No, indeed,” said Ezekiel, something puffed up. “If ‘twere Ozias, now—”

  “Ay, my lad,” Mrs. Ozias said, “but it ain’t Ozias, and you may swear to it and not choke yourself! None o’ that, d’ye hear?”

  Zekiel collapsed, and no one seemed to be particularly eager to beard Budgen. Then the door opened and Barney came in, and was hailed with loud cries. He was the man to tackle Budgen, he was the lad! They put it to him, one speaking before another.

  Barney set down the pot that had been thrust into his grasp, and wiped his mouth with a powder-blackened hand. “Another pot!” he said coolly, and not until he held it would he speak. Then, “No use to go to Budgen,” he said. “You’ll soon know what you want to know. The old man’s told me not an hour ago, and not afore ’twas time, by Jehoshaphat.”

  “Then who is it, Barney?” They leaned forward, eager to learn. But Barney, feeling the greatness of the moment, was in no haste to speak. At last, “Well, ’tis the Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Bligh!”

  “Ay, it be young Bligh.”

  No one spoke. Devon men are cautious and think slowly. They are slow if sure, and one and all they looked to Ozias. “Well,” he said at last, his eyes on the drink he held in his hand, “I think ‘twill do. I think ‘twill do. What do you say, Barney?”

  “I think as you do, Ozias,” Barney replied solemnly, with a ruminating eye on his liquor. “Not as I’m wedded to him, nor saying there mightn’t be better — such as you, Cap’en. But then again I’m thinking there might be worse.”

  A dissentient yet a doubtful voice put in a word. “I’m not liking these silk-stockin’ gentlemen, if you ask me,” it said.

  A murmur showed that the speaker had his supporters — rash men. But Ozias shook his head. “There’s silk stockings and there’s silk stockings,” he said sagely—” as Barney knows well. And some runs and reeves and some don’t — same as woollen. But I’m thinking if ’tis to be a Beremouth man, as well him as another. That’s my ‘pinion. I don’t know,” he added magnanimously, “as Budgen could ha’ done better.”

  “If he don’t use his eppilets over us!”

  “There you’re wrong, my lad,” Ozias said sharply. “Tight hand, safe hand. Fo’c’sle orders, it’s good sea lore, spells raffle atop and a white lee shore! And you mind it, Zekiel. No, I’m thinking he’ll do. He’ll give you your bellyful of fighting, and what’s lost ‘twon’t be for lack of a look-out!” But with that, unregenerate memory captured Ozias’s thoughts and his eyes began to sparkle. “D’you mind, Barney,” he continued, “that time, ’twas off Peniche with the Berlings abeam and a sea, when we sighted—” But at that point his gaze met his wedded wife’s, the sparkle died out of his eyes and Ozias groaned. “To be sure, ’twas sinful work,” he said meekly, “sinful work, as I should know, and be thankful as I was not cut off in my sins.”

  “You’re right there,” said Mrs. Ozias briskly. “But you needn’t fear no more, Ozias. I’ll see as you’re no backslider.”

  “No, Ozias,” said a tactless voice — needless to say the speaker was near the door. “You’ll never ship along o’ them tubs no more! The missus will see to that, Ozias!”

  CHAPTER XXII

  AUGUSTA for the first time in her experience was inclined to criticize her father. She had cast in her lot with him, she had separated herself from her sister, she had been guided in all things by his wishes. And though she had not felt as keenly as he had the importance of removing the Blighs to a distance, of the principle which underlay his action — that the good should be rewarded and the naughty suffer — she had thoroughly approved. But of late she had come to think his methods lacking in finesse, and the tactless manner in which he had dealt with Sir Albery — and offended him — had surprised and dismayed her.

  Nor was that the only thing that shook her faith in him. She could not but remark that he had become in these days strangely unlike himself. He had grown moody and irritable, and more than once he had turned on her — his faithful and dutiful daughter — and without cause had rent her.

  Still Augusta’s temper was equable and her principles were fixed, and though her faith in her leader was shaken she was not as yet prepared to abjure him. When Charlotte therefore came in one morning about this time and made a certain request, she was firm. No, she could not, she said. Whatever her own wishes, as long as her father — she owned a duty to him. The rest, Charlotte had heard before. She became personal, and left in a huff.

  But when she was gone and the thing done, Augusta did not feel quite so sure of the wisdom of her answer.

  That her father would have directed her to reply as she had replied she hardly doubted; but that was not all, she reflected. He was not always wise, or he would not have dealt with Sir Albery as he had. The longer indeed Augusta dwelt on the matter the more her mind misgave her.

  If the windows of the drawing-room had looked on the churchyard instead of on the sea, she would have felt her doubts as good as justified. But the outlook told her nothing, and she had no warning vision of the pair who, meeting as if by arrangement, stood long in conference at the farther end of the churchyard wall. As a fact, no arrangement to meet had been made, but a common object had brought the two thither and the meeting surprised neither.

  “And she won’t go to her sister?” Wyke tapped the wall impatiently as he spoke.

  “No! I said all that I could, but she is more Augusta than ever! I declare,” Charlotte continued viciously, “I could beat her!”

  He smiled. “I don’t think that that would do much good.”

  “It would do me good! Not that I ought to abuse her, I suppose,” Charlotte continued, with a hurried glance at her companion. “No doubt she thinks it right or she wouldn’t do it.”

  “I suppose so. But you will go, Miss Bicester?”

  “Of course, I shall go, the moment Bligh leaves her. Oh, I do think life is hard!” Charlotte continued. “That child left like this! He ought not to go! He ought not to go!” she repeated with passion.

  “I am far from sure of that,” Wyke replied. “Indeed, I think I am of their opinion. He has so much to gain by going.”

  “And she everything to lose!”

  “But something to gain, too,” he said soberly.

  “Six eternities!” Charlotte exclaimed. “Forty-two days, and every day a terror, every hour one long listening, watching, waiting! Every step that comes, the step of one who brings bad news! Think of it, when a woman loves! But men don’t think,” Charlotte said, a sting in her tone. “They don’t think.
They don’t understand!”

  Wyke looked at her curiously. “Yet you understand!” he said.

  She coloured to her brow. For a moment she seemed to be so confused that she could not speak, and when she spoke her reply was brusque. “Well, I’m a woman as much as another — though you may not think it,” she said.

  “My dear Miss Bicester!” he protested, surprised by her tone, “I did not mean to offend you. I only wondered—”

  “You didn’t mean—” she took him up hurriedly.

  “Of course not. Of course you didn’t. But you see I’m — I’m so savage on Peggy’s account I must fly out at someone. She has so few friends, poor girl!”

  “And you are so good a friend!”

  She looked away, some of the colour still in her face. “Well, it is all that I can be,” she said bluntly, “to any one! A friend. So I try to be a good one. Anyway, Sir Albery, you may count on me. I will go to her as soon as he leaves her. But, good gracious, talk of the devil, here the man comes!”

  He did, and alone for a wonder; striding towards them with hurried steps, plucked for a brief moment from the turmoil and frenzy of the Cove — the Cove, where watching crowds fringed the beach, and boats splashed ceaselessly ‘twixt brig and shore, and sailors stamped and winches squealed, and confusion reigned, with Barney’s curses driving through it like a plough!

  Bligh came from all this and from pressing cares and labours — respited, too, for just this moment, from the leave-taking that weighed his spirits down like lead, that one instant he would fain have had behind him and over, and that the next was the atom of time the most precious, the most poignant, the dearest; the moment upon which he must look back with heart-break through many a lonely watch! Since day-break he had not seen Peggy. He had had no word with her. He had been hailed this way and that, called here and summoned there; he had stowed, tallied, checked, enforced orders, slung tipsy Jacks below, been merged in a hundred tasks. But never had he forgotten the parting to come; and many times with his eyes busy and his brain absorbed he had raised eyes and mind to the white walls and the green shutters, where she waited for him, waited for that last moment, that last embrace, that last clinging of the arms that, it might be, might never hold him again!