Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

“Such news may come to-morrow!” he retorted. “And what shall we feel then? What shall we say for ourselves? I am still her father, you are her sister! And shall we then forgive ourselves, shall we then blame her only? No, go to her, provide for her, see that she lacks nothing — so far as may be in that poor place! And God grant that she come through her trial! When that is over it will be time to talk of forgiveness!”

  For almost the first time in her life Augusta felt a touch of contempt for her father. She had no clue to the agitation that shook him, and his sudden volte-face seemed to her of the weakest. His fears appeared excessive and far-fetched, she told herself that he was growing old. But if he failed as a father, she would not fail as a daughter, and “Certainly, if it is your wish, sir, I will go,” she said. “And I may give her your love?” She could not quite keep the note of irony out of her tone.

  He detected it, but he replied to it in his own way. “My love and my blessing!” he said. But having said it, whether he read the amazement in Augusta’s eyes or no, he turned and went hurriedly from the room.

  Yet, safe in his study, he was thankful that he had acted. He was thankful that he had spoken. He felt as one at sea in a leaky vessel who desperately and painfully strengthens every plank that threatens to give way, caulks every seam by which fate and the devouring waves may enter. He asked himself if there was anything else that he could do, any further precaution that he could take. He added up the days that the Lively Peggy had been at sea; he calculated the earliest date at which, reaching her cruising ground, she would enter the sphere of danger; he deduced the earliest time at which bad news, if bad news came, might be expected. He strove to comfort himself with the reflection that if a snare awaited her the odds would be overwhelming, and the Peggy would have no choice but to surrender — there would be no engagement and no loss of life. And over and over again he told himself that he trembled and sweated without reason; that the chances were in the man’s favour, that he at least would survive.

  But he reassured himself to no purpose. For at the back of his mind loomed the shadow of a Nemesis, the idea that he could not put from him of an avenging Providence not to be denied. It over-rode reason, it defied probability. And if the worst happened? Then he felt that all his life he would have upon his mind that on which he dared not dwell, though a hundred times he cried with an exceeding bitter cry that he was innocent. Ay, he was innocent — could he only be sure of it! Meantime he foresaw hours and days, weeks it might be, of suspense, through which he must live with that dreadful fear on his conscience.

  He had done in his life not a few hard and some harsh things. He had been ruled by convention rather than by sympathy, by justice rather than by charity; his standard had not been higher than the standard of his neighbours. He had seen his own rights clearly, and had taken care that others respected them; and dowered with the good things of this world he had enjoyed them without overmuch thought of others or of his responsibility for them. But he had never wantonly done evil. He had broken no law — save, it might be, the law of love. He had dispossessed no man, shifted no landmark. The suspicion that he had done so now, that thoughtlessly, blinded by ill-will, he had involved himself in a dreadful thing and become the participator in a possible crime, haunted him like a nightmare from which he could not awake!

  While he suffered Augusta wondered. And presently she acted. She had no strong objection to her father’s shift, sudden as it was, and though it lowered him in her eyes. H he chose to turn about and forgive Peggy, he was the person offended and it was his business. But she could not rid herself of the feeling that the step was unfair to her. She had not offended, she had been obedient, she had done her duty and she would still do it. But the one scale, she felt, could not be raised without lowering the other, the erring sister could not be forgiven without lessening the merit of the sinless. Still, she would obey, though she expected to derive no pleasure from her errand, but rather discomfort and embarrassment. The meeting would be awkward, and Peggy might ride the high horse — the girl had been ever queer and unaccountable — while Augusta had a distaste for low life and a shrinking from the conditions that she expected to encounter. It would be unpleasant to see her own sister so low, and mortifying to rub shoulders with the poverty in which she lived, the shifts to which she had been driven.

  But duty was duty, and Augusta prepared herself, and set forth. She winced as she turned in at the wicket-gate, and looked about her with a doubtful eye as she knocked at the door of the cottage.

  But she knocked in vain. Peggy was out, and Augusta turned away with a sigh of relief. She ascended the path with a lighter step.

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE Rectory, the Cottage and Budgen’s were not the only roofs in Beremouth over which a cloud — though for the hopeful a cloud with a golden lining — hung during these days, or beneath which any unusual sound caused hearts to leap and flutter like frightened birds. There were low-browed windows by the waterside that in winter the spray lashed like a whip and the spindrift darkened, whence even as early as this anxious eyes night and morning searched the offing. There were humble dwellings in lane and alley, where on hot days grotesque sea-shells held the doors open, in which seamen’s almanacks were painfully thumbed by the light of tallow dips, while untravelled minds groped about distant seas, or drank in the talk of old salts, who called to council, prated of shoals and currents and dealt out outlandish names — the Berlings and the Farallones and the like. Women, old and young, but with the same hungry look in their eyes, flocked to meet the Plymouth boat, if by good hap it brought news; or ran to the wharf if word went round that a yawl from Falmouth had been driven in by weather. On the quay, men, leaning against posts or sitting upon upturned boats as their forefathers had leant and sat in Armada days, yarned and debated in soft, slow Devon voices, searching the horizon for weather signs, prosing on the set of tides, sailing old voyages, telling old tales.

  In all this there was nothing new to Beremouth. So it had been with its forefathers who had sent their seven ships to Sluys — a proud feat never forgotten and often wrangled over: for picturing the seven as tall three-deckers or frigates at the least, men never ceased to wonder how they had contrived to lie within the little breakwater or got depth of water. Now, as then, women feared and prayed, and old men, hiding their tremors behind gnarled hands, swore that there was no ground for fear. If news was slow and late to come they quoted Christian’s gales, or told of the weeks that this or that squadron had spent beating up from Alexandria to the Straits. So it had always been in Beremouth, and so it was still. Men came back, or they did not come back. Women turned to see a shadow fall on the doorstep, and he was there! Or a darker shadow crossed the threshold and the sea had taken one more, and made of another wife a widow. It was the way that life ran there and in a hundred coastward places, when war added its risks to the perils of shoal and gale.

  But on Peggy these things fell with the weight of the new and the untried. She had not been wont to lie awake and tremble when the south-wester shook the walls and rattled the casements, or the sullen gun of some passing ship struck a knell in listening ears. She had not learned in the school of patience the long, long lesson of waiting. Nor had she, like some, been a wife so many years as to be weary of her man, indifferent, care-free.

  Yet she bore up, living the past year over again, clinging to its memories as to her most precious possession, hoping steadfastly, praying humbly, praying, indeed, with desperate fervour when the winds blew. Yet — for the Cottage on the cliff stood neighbour less — there were nights when she would fain have been anywhere but where she was; when panic gripped her, and she would for choice have been in the closest alley, the darkest lane by the water-side, if she might have had beside her women in like case to whom she might cry her fears from the window and share theirs, and so have been less alone with her fancies. For on the cliff-face the winds had their will, and on rough nights the voice of the sea, as it strove with the point, rose up and menaced her wit
h its thunder.

  In the day-time she was glad to be there. From her windows as from an eyrie she could sweep the distant horizon for a sail, and not seldom she sat long hours on the watch, though she knew that her search was useless, that no return could be looked for yet, and that the odds were that news would come another way. She wearied her eyes with gazing, now into the shining distances, now at the white work on her lap; while the Captain, watching her with furtive solicitude, saw that she looked with each day more fagged, her features sharper.

  But she bore up bravely. None the less when Charlotte walked in rather abruptly one Monday, some ten days after the brig’s departure, her agitation told a tale. Her hand flew to her breast, and such colour as she still had deserted her face. “Not news?” she cried. “Not—”

  “No!” Charlotte said bluntly. “News? Certainly not! It is not to be expected yet. You know that, silly. But I bring something else, and something worth having.”

  “What?” And still she could not drive the anxiety from her voice, nor the eager look from her eyes.

  “A friend, if you will see him. If not — if you had really rather not, there are no bones broken. He is not here to worry you.”

  “A friend?” Peggy repeated in wonder — she had so few friends. “Not — not—”

  “It’s Sir Albery,” Charlotte said. “That’s all, my dear. He is outside if you would like to see him.”

  Peggy’s pale face flushed. “Oh, I don’t,” she stammered, “I don’t think that!”

  “But I think,” Charlotte rejoined, seeing how it was and determined to take the thing into her own hands. “I want you to see him, Peggy. It will be good for you, dear. He is a true friend, and they are not to be picked up in every ditch. They are rare, my dear,” Charlotte repeated, her colour rising a tone. “And he is true as steel and loyal as—”

  “As you are yourself!” Peggy exclaimed, tears rising to her eyes. “You dear girl! No sister was ever—”

  “Sister!” Charlotte ejaculated with contempt. “Don’t compare me to a sister, if you please — unless you want to quarrel with me! Sisters indeed! A plague on your sisters! I wouldn’t give that for one, from what I see of them!” And she snapped her fingers. “No, I bring you a brother, and that’s another kind of thing, or I’m mistaken! Sister!” Charlotte repeated, anxious to give Peggy time to recover herself. “If he don’t stick closer than a sister, I’m a bigger fool than I think I am! Let me fetch him.”

  A prey to more emotions than one, Peggy hesitated. Then “Fetch him,” she said.

  He came in a little awkwardly, but his greeting was simple and like himself. “We cannot,” he said, “have too many friends, Mrs. Bligh. And I dare not lose one.”

  “I am blessed in two,” she replied, smiling through her tears.

  “In one you are certainly blest,” he said, and he looked at Charlotte. “I envy her and I congratulate you. Such friends are rare, Mrs. Bligh.”

  “That is agreed,” Charlotte said, though her eyes shone. “We settled that before you came in, sir. You must find something new to say.”

  “I thought that Charlotte might have news!” Peggy said, eyeing him closely. She could not get away from that; from the hope and the fear.

  “We must not expect it yet,” he replied cheerfully.

  “Perhaps in another fortnight we may begin to look for it. Mr. Bligh has made so many long voyages — I suppose he has spent half his life at sea — that he would smile at our expectations.” And deftly turning the conversation to Bligh’s experiences, and in particular to his service in the Naiad when she had cruised, as a part of Sir Borlase Warren’s squadron off Arcachon, he pressed the matter. He had never heard the rights of that affair; he would be glad to hear them. Peggy was induced to tell the story, and grew warm in the telling. Her eyes shone, she reddened with indignation, she looked a different creature. Charlotte, seated close to Wyke, murmured “Bravo!” in his ear, and pleading ignorance of the sea-terms that Peggy uttered so glibly, egged her on. Sir Albery chimed in, echoing the wife’s indignation at the scurvy treatment that Bligh had suffered at the Admiral’s hands — but he was a man with a certain reputation, he added: arbitrary, he had heard, and too proud to own to a mistake. “Not popular in the Service, I am told. Such men — but possibly I may misjudge him — hamper themselves, and lack support when they most need it. A stiff man, I gather, though I may be mistaken.”

  By the time that they had rightly or wrongly judged and condemned Sir Borlase, and Wyke had drawn a sharp contrast between him and the sailors’ idol Nelson, who never, he said, forgot the man who sailed under him, and resented a slight to one of his captains as an offence against himself, they were all on easy terms, and Peggy had for twenty minutes at least forgotten her anxiety. Charlotte, viewing the change with delight, could not refrain from repeating “Bravo!” under her breath, and when Wyke coloured, laughed aloud. Apparently he had thought out the subjects he would raise, for he passed on to the wonderful luck that some ships had, and quoted the case of the Thetis and the Santa Brigida eighteen months before. The capture had been worth forty thousand pounds to the captain of the lucky frigate and five thousand to each of the lieutenants.

  “But little enough to the crew, I expect,” Charlotte said.

  “No, indeed. I believe every A.B. took a hundred and fifty.”

  “Well, that was a stroke of luck!” she agreed, while Peggy’s eyes grew thoughtful and she immersed herself in calculations.

  “But we must not expect such luck as that,” Sir Albery said cautiously, and he explained the circumstances. Then it was Charlotte’s turn. She had seen the Exeter paper, and she brought the prospects of peace on the carpet. It was believed to be very near. There was talk of a meeting to settle the terms — at Amboise or at Amiens — she could not remember which, but it began with an A. She thought Amiens, and she was explaining why, when a tap on the door surprised them.

  Peggy rose. “I am afraid,” she said with a touch of her old gaiety, “it is the baker. If you call at a cottage, Sir Albery, it must not shock you if the bread comes in through the parlour.”

  “Those are not the things that shock me,” he said. “Let me be your footman.”

  But Peggy was before him. She opened the door, and there, confronting her, stood her sister, her hands in her muff.

  “Augusta!” Peggy cried.

  It was an awkward moment for Augusta; more awkward than she knew, for Peggy’s figure filled the doorway and Augusta did not see that there were other visitors in the room. If she had, her greeting might have been different. “Well, my dear,” she 6aid good-humouredly, “you’ve brought your pigs to a pretty market!” She had to break the ice, and it seemed to her well to do it at once and thoroughly. “Come in,” Peggy answered. “I have visitors,” she added a little shyly. She made way for the other to enter.

  Out of the tail of her eye Augusta, as she crossed the threshold, saw who they were, and she felt that the fates were against her. But she would not have been Augusta if she had not made the best of it. She would have embraced Peggy, but she did not know how her sister would take it, so she contented herself with pecking her cheek. “Dear Peggy!” she said. “So here you are! And here I am! Father at last, dear—” she seemed for the first time to recognize Charlotte, and, breaking off, nodded gaily to her. “Well, I never!” she exclaimed, “this is an unexpected meeting!”

  “Perfectly!” said Charlotte.

  “And Sir Albery! I confess” — in her annoyance Augusta could not refrain from the thrust—” I did not expect to find you here!”

  “No?” he said. “Yet I do not see why, Miss Portnal.”

  She had no answer ready, and while he busied himself pushing forward a chair Charlotte replied for her. “Augusta is a little late herself,” she said. “However, never mind, Augusta,” she continued in a rallying tone. “Better late, my dear, than never!”

  For once Augusta had need of all her aplomb. She felt the atmosphere unfriendly, and t
he notion that Sir Albery and Charlotte had called in company was upsetting. But she smiled, and ignoring Charlotte’s hit, “I am relieved to see Peggy looking so well,” she said. “I can see that you have done her good already.”

  “Oh, don’t give us the credit,” Charlotte retorted. “I’ve no doubt it’s the surprise of seeing you has brought the colour to her cheeks. It’s a pity you did not come before, my dear.”

  Sir Albery, who, man-like, hated a scene, put himself between them. “I think Sirs. Bligh is looking better,” he said.

  “The better for seeing you all!” Peggy replied. Then, turning timidly to her sister, “I hope that my father is well?” she said.

  “Quite well,” Augusta rejoined, and played her trump card, the value of which she had only grasped during the last minute. “He bade me give you his love, Peggy.”

  The colour fled from Peggy’s face, and returned with a rush. “Oh, I am glad!” she murmured. “I am glad. Thank you, dear.” She gripped one hand in the other in the effort to control her emotion, but the tears rose to her eyes.

  “Well, that’s something,” Charlotte said grudgingly. “I hope that he’s on the way too. It is time, I am sure.”

  “I think he will be soon,” Augusta replied.

  “At any rate he has let you come.”

  “Yes.” Augusta managed without more to convey the impression that she had striven to that end and succeeded. “But that is not all, Peggy,” she continued in a lower tone. “He sent you his blessing, dear.” She knew, as she said it, that she had risen to the top of the occasion and done herself justice.

  Peggy looked at her with brimming eyes and with difficulty stifled a sob. Sir Albery saw that she was agitated and he rose. “I am afraid I must be going,” he said. “I am glad to leave you, Mrs. Bligh, so much happier, and with one care removed.”

  “I must be going, too,” Charlotte said. “It is well that some people are coming to their senses, Augusta. Good-bye, my dear. See you soon, but never more glad to see you than here and now. And heart up, Peggy! Courage, and courage, and again courage! All will be well.”