Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  The sun was low as he descended the road, and in comparison with the stir and bustle which had enlivened it for many days the Cove was deserted. Work had ceased, and it was hard to believe that the town lay near. The tide was at flood, and a lonely sea broke sullenly on the ridge of shingle, its measured fall and the rattle of the pebbles drawn down by the ebbing waves supplying a bass to the shrill wailing of gulls. No human figure moved on the wide beach, and the Rector was turning in the direction of Budgen’s house when he remembered that the man might be in the moulding-loft. His tread as he crossed the pebbles was not light, but it fell on deaf ears. When he looked into the shed and discovered Budgen the man did not move.

  He was gazing, sunk in thought, on the plan of the Lively Peggy that figured in outline on the side of the loft. He did not turn or stir, but the Rector, pausing a moment in surprise, heard a sound from the man’s breast. It was half a sigh and half a groan — or it might have been a stifled oath. Whatever it was, it did not bespeak depression more eloquently than Budgen’s attitude; he might have been looking on the corpse of his mother. And he continued to stand and to gaze, until the Rector touched him on the shoulder. Then he turned abruptly, and to the Rector’s astonishment there were tears on his rugged cheeks.

  He turned not only abruptly but savagely; only by an effort it seemed did he withhold himself from striking the other. His hand was raised to the Rector’s breast, when with an oath he withdrew it, and passed it across his face. “What the hell do you want?” he exclaimed, forgetting himself in his surprise. His eyes were wild.

  “Steady, man, steady!” the Rector said. “You forget yourself.”

  “But is no place a man’s own, but you come creeping, creeping, creeping, and—”

  “I made noise enough, Budgen, if you had had ears to hear,” the Rector said sternly. “What in the world is the matter with you, man? One might suppose you were committing a crime!”

  “I thought I was alone,” Budgen muttered sullenly, his eyes falling. “What is your errand?”

  “An unwelcome one, I am afraid. Where is your nephew, Budgen?”

  “My nevy?” The man raised his voice. He spoke with temper. “In the Keppel Head, sotting, ten to one! Why do you ask? It’s what he’ll be doing most days.”

  “And what you have supported him in doing,” the Rector rejoined, speaking severely. He had suffered, and he was not sorry that it was in his power to make this man suffer. “But I think you are mistaken. He is not in the Keppel Head, Budgen. I am told — it’s common talk — that he is at sea.”

  Budgen laughed sourly. He had got himself in hand again. “At sea!” he repeated. “Joe? I’d like to see him, the lazy swab! Not in a hundred years, I’ll go bail!” He spat on the ground in his contempt. “Who’s told you that lie, asking your pardon?”

  “I don’t think it is a lie,” the Rector said quietly. He was watching his man.

  “Well, you may take your davy, it is,” Budgen retorted. “He’s not the spunk. What should he be at sea for — Joe? He’s too well off here, confound him! See him go to sea! As if I wouldn’t know! Eh? Wouldn’t I know if he was?”

  “I can’t say. But it is true. I have it from one who saw him go.”

  For the first time the man was shaken. “Saw him go?” he repeated — and now there was a grain of doubt in his voice. “Saw him go? Where, I’d like to know, the swab? To Plymouth in the market-boat? And why not? It’s no odds to me, sink him, whether he drinks i’ Plymouth or here.”

  “No,” the Rector replied. “He’s gone farther than that, Budgen. And I wonder that you have not heard. He sailed on the Lively Peggy last Thursday.”

  Budgen’s face swelled. He glared at the Rector. “Sailed! Sailed!” he ejaculated, struggling for utterance and unable to get the words out. At last, “On the Peggy! On the Peggy a-Thursday? It’s a lie! It’s an infernal lie!” he repeated violently. “Why he couldn’t? He couldn’t! He wasn’t signed on.”

  “He stowed away, I’m told.”

  “Stowed away?” Budgen repeated the phrase mechanically, but his voice dropped to a whisper. And with a sinking of the heart the other saw the change that he had come to see, and had feared to see. Budgen’s face, a moment before crimson with rage, turned to an unhealthy sallow; the hand that he raised to hide his quivering lips shook, his form seemed to sink into itself. “It’s — it’s not — not possible,” he said weakly. “They’re — it’s their joke.” He tried to smile, but the sweat stood in great beads on his forehead. “They will ha’ their joke — to be sure!”

  The Rector was watching him with hard, ruthless eyes, and he asked for no further evidence. He had judged the man and he had no pity to spare for him; for one whose monstrous, whose most wicked act he now more than suspected. Pity? He needed all his pity for himself. “I am afraid it is no joke, Budgen,” he said sternly. “It may have been kept from you, but it is no secret that he sailed.”

  For a few seconds Budgen stood, a stricken man. Only his lips moved, and they without a sound. Then he turned, and as he turned he reeled. The Rector thought that he was about to fall, struck down by the news, and he stepped forward. But Budgen straightened himself. With his back still turned he muttered a word or two, ill-heard. “I’m — I’m ill, I”

  With unsteady steps he staggered from the shed, turned the corner, disappeared.

  Surprised by the suddenness of the man’s retreat, the Rector paused where he stood. Then with a sinking heart, he stepped out into the open, and followed the other with his eyes. He watched him, and his heart sank lower. For Budgen, pressing the pace, his head bent, made from time to time strange gestures that the watcher was at no loss to interpret. He read in them the horror of a man caught in his own trap, crushed by his own invention, sensible too late of the avenging hand of Providence — that out of a man’s own sin could weave his punishment!

  “My God!” the Rector cried, and felt and owned in that moment of vision the horror of complicity. On him, too, the bolt might fall, and his sin, if he had indeed sinned, might find him out! And only too well he knew where that bolt might fall, how and through whom his sin might work out his punishment. He did indeed still cry in his heart that he was innocent, that he had not known, that he had not imagined! But in the same breath he uttered a prayer for mercy. That he might be spared — that he might be spared that! But he feared.

  He stood awhile as one in a maze, then he crossed the strand, the horror still upon him. Mechanically he climbed the steep path that he had climbed so often in his pride and strength. Stripped of both now, he had but the one instinct, to hide himself, to be alone; and he had reached the churchyard without knowing how he came thither before he collected his thoughts and regained a measure of composure. There he took breath, passed his handkerchief across his brow, and strove to throw off the obsession that had gripped him. But he was a scared man, a man who had passed through the fire and felt the scorching. He removed his hat and bared his head to the breeze, and gradually calmness returned to him. He told himself, with a shudder, that his nerves were not what they had been, that he was growing old. He muttered that he had suffered himself to be upset, to be alarmed by — by shadows. He must control himself. He must not give way to — to exaggeration.

  But the fact remained, and he was conscious of it and shuddered at it. As he dwelt on it, he closed his eyes in pain. The fact remained, and what was he to do about it? Could he do anything to alter it? He could prove nothing, and if he spoke it would avail nothing. He had no evidence, no man would believe him; and if the Lively Peggy and her crew were indeed betrayed they were lost already.

  And after all it might not be so. He had been swayed by the man’s demeanour, and by that alone. Now he came to think of it more soberly, the risk to Fewster might account for all — and Budgen might be innocent. The news was ill news, even if the boat-builder’s hands were clean and his conscience clear; ill news, and he might well be overwhelmed by it. Budgen had shown over and over again that he placed an a
bnormal value on Fewster’s life, the life upon which his lease of the Cove depended.

  The Rector wiped his brow again, and this time his hand was steady. He had frightened himself for nothing. It must be so. With his hat in his hand and his face turned seaward he fanned his heated brow. He had had an evil dream, and he had suffered it to master him. A sigh relieved his over-charged heart, and he put on his hat. He turned his face towards the Rectory. And then he saw coming across the churchyard, limping in the direction of the path to the Cove, the frail but upright form of the old Captain.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE sight affected him strangely. The composure that he had so newly recovered fell from him, the old terror, or much of it, returned. It did more, it drove him to action, thrusting him forward as if an impulse from without had moved him. An hour earlier he would have gone a hundred yards about to avoid the man. Now he no longer saw in him an emblem and a reminder of disgrace, but a possible help in trouble, and he bore down upon him without at the moment knowing what he would say.

  The Captain saw him coming and tried to escape. But his feebleness and his limping gait were no match for the other’s hale strength, and as he reached the head of the path the Rector overtook him.

  “A word with you!” Portnal said. He did not mean to be harsh, but in the Captain’s terrified ears his voice sounded doom, and the old man cringed before him, remembering the last occasion on which they had spoken. He waited with a scared face to learn the great man’s pleasure. “Have you heard from your son?” the Rector asked.

  “From my son?” the old man bleated.

  “Yes, man, yes! Have you heard from him — since he sailed?”

  The Captain was dumbfounded. He shook his head, wondering in what new way they had offended, what fresh transgression this imported. He glanced furtively at the other’s massive face. He saw that he was agitated and he supposed him to be angry.

  “You might have,” the Rector insisted, pressing the point. “He might have spoken an inward ship?”

  At this Bligh perceived a change in the other’s attitude, and he gathered his wits. “We have not, sir,” he muttered. “We do not expect to have news yet.” At another time the Rector would have winced at that word “we.” But he was far from thinking of that now. “Listen to me,” he said earnestly, “and mark, sir, if you please, and carefully, what I say. My daughter is expecting a child, I hear?”

  The Captain, fancying that this was the new offence, murmured humbly that it was so — he believed.

  “When?”

  “In a month, I am told, sir.”

  “Then listen to me!” The Rector, in his anxiety to bring his words home to the old man, laid his hand on his shoulder, and shook him as he had shaken him once before, though more gently. “Listen, if you please, sir, and mark what I say. Bad news may come — God forbid, but it may. It is useless to deny it or to close your eyes to it. If it come — keep it from her! Do you hear? Keep it from her!” he repeated with desperate earnestness. “Watch her night and day if it be necessary, and see that no one comes to her to tell her. If you value her life and the child’s life, see to it. See to it, sir! Do you understand? Now, do you understand?”

  Old Bligh’s eyes filled with tears. He could not speak, but he nodded, nodded vehemently. None the less was he confounded. So this man had bowels like another! He had affections, was human! Parted from his daughter by his own act, he still thought for her. It was a thing that the Captain had not suspected. He had thought the man hard as iron, unfeeling as granite! He could only nod, and did nod, but in his surprise he was speechless.

  The Rector was not satisfied. The old man seemed to him half-imbecile. “Do you understand?” he insisted. “Speak, man! Let there be no mistake about this.”

  The Captain found his voice. “God knows I’ll do my best,” he said fervently. “I will guard her, sir, day and night. You may depend on me. You may depend on me. But God forbid,” and his old face broke up and worked piteously. “My son! My son!”

  “Amen! Amen!” the Rector said solemnly. “We will hope and pray that all may be well. But we must also use the means we have. In a month? I am afraid that if the worst happen it will happen long before that. With the wind as it is, she should be near her cruising ground by now. You know where that is?”

  Old Bligh shook his head. “My son did not tell me. He thought it wiser to tell no one,” he said.

  “Right! Quite right! The secret cannot be in too few hands — for all our sakes, God knows.”

  So feeling was his tone that the Captain plucked up spirit and ventured greatly. He said a thing that an hour before he would have found it impossible to say. “Will you not come and see her?” he asked meekly.

  Few had caught the Rector more at fault. He was like a fencer touched when he least expected it. For a moment he seemed to be at a loss what to say: it might even have been thought that he wavered. Then “I will send my daughter,” he said awkwardly. And with a last “Be careful, sir, I beg! Be careful,” flung over his shoulder, and pressed home by a wave of his gold-headed cane, he turned away. He walked quickly towards the Rectory.

  Go and see Peggy? Why not? For his heart was soft towards her. A hundred recollections of her childhood, of her youth, of her laughing eyes and gay prattle, of her clinging arms, her waywardness and her repentance, crowded upon him and moved him.

  For the first time he viewed in another light the privations that she must be suffering, and that his prejudices multiplied fourfold. He viewed them no longer as a degradation in which he was involved, but as a claim upon his pity. Go and see her? He was willing, hut, alas, he owned it with shame, he had not the courage. He shrank from the scene. The thought of facing her with that on his mind which lay there and would not be shaken off, unnerved him. In the past he had judged her and condemned her, and she had indeed been at fault. Grievously at fault. But now their places were changed. It was her judgment that he feared, her condemnation from which he shrank, even while he pleaded with passion that he was innocent. But was he innocent?— “God knows!” he said.

  “God knows!”

  He found Augusta seated at her tambour frame, as he had found her a hundred times before. But to-day the placidity that he had so often, though tacitly, commended, the sedate calm that he had so often approved, had the effect of irritating him. She sat there surrounded by the still life of the handsome, spacious room — and she worked and she smiled while her sister — He did not follow out the thought, for even in his irritation he was just, and he owned that her sister had offended while she was perfect. He owned, for he knew it was the fact, that before she had seated herself there she had fulfilled the household duties, arranged all, ordered all, seen that the wheels on which his comfort rested ran smoothly. Nevertheless the thought that he nipped half-conceived put tartness into his tone.

  “Augusta,” he said, “I wish you to go and see your sister.”

  Augusta looked at him. It was not in her to be flustered, but for once she let him see that she was surprised, while her incredulous “Sir?” conveyed and not too subtly a reproach.

  He repeated his words. “I wish you to go and see your sister,” he said, colouring slightly under her gaze. “She is expecting a child — in a month I am told. I have weighed the matter and I wish you to go to her. In the circumstances it is right that she should have one of her own kin at call — badly as she has behaved.”

  “Then you mean to forgive her, sir?” Augusta said. “I am glad.” She spoke with the submission that became her, but the faint smile on her lips found a raw place in the Rector’s self-esteem and provoked him.

  “It is not a question of forgiveness,” he said, “but of accepting the fact. The husband is absent, and this, while it renders indulgence more easy, makes it also more incumbent. She is alone, without friend or protection, and at such a time, I have decided, Augusta, that it is neither right nor becoming that we should stand aloof.”

  To say that Augusta, the perfect daughter, was ruf
fled would be to say too much. But she was surprised. “If you had spoken before, sir,” she said with a gentle sigh, “I should have gone, of course. But I gathered that you did not wish it.”

  “I did not,” the Rector replied, accepting the position that she thrust on him. “That is true, quite true. But I wish it now. I have determined that the time has come—”

  “To forgive her?” Augusta repeated softly.

  “At any rate to cease to hold aloof. To give what help we can. I shall be glad if you will see her to-day and learn in what way we can help her.”

  Augusta was silent for a time. She took up her needle and paused with her eyes on her work. Apparently she was considering the effect of her last stitches. But at length, “I am afraid, sir,” she said, “you must tell me what attitude you wish me to take up. Am I to tell Peggy that she is forgiven? And that the things that flow from that will follow? That you are prepared to accept Mr. Bligh and to treat him as belonging to the family? Because if I am not to go as far as that, I know Peggy well, and I foresee that my visit will rather widen the breach than close it — if that is what you wish, sir.”

  Perfect daughter as she was, she knew when she was annoying, and she was prepared for an irritable reply. But the tone of the reply and her father’s agitation when he spoke surprised her.

  “Girl! Girl!” he cried, and the apostrophe was so unlike him, that it startled her. “Have done! Or think, think before you speak! What if your sister do not live? What if we lose her? A first child, her husband away, and in peril, and she friendless and alone! I am” — with a sudden drop in his voice—” I am unhappy about her! If aught befall him, if bad news come, and bad news may come at any time, in her condition it may be fatal to her!”

  “But that is looking a long way ahead, sir.”