Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Why, Lord ha’ mercy, what’s the matter with you?” Ozias retorted, and he hastened to reassure him. “Why, the best news! The best! Why, Budgen, man, what’s come to you? You couldn’t look more scared if a ghost had come in! And ‘stead of that I bring you news, rare news, glorious news, man! News that’d curl the hair of a dead corpse, I tell ye!”

  But Budgen’s eyes still wore that look of fear. He muttered something incoherent, he passed his tongue across his lips. “Is it — is it news o’ Joe?” he muttered.

  Ozias rose in his scorn. “Of that little rat!” he cried. “It’s a deal better than that! Why, that brig o’ yourn that sailed out of here so quiet as may be, her’ll be the talk of Devon! Ay, and foreign parts! Her’ll be in the papers, and the Gazette, I shouldn’t wonder! And Rector giving thanks o’ Sunday for special mercies! Why, her’ll never be forgotten, man — never be forgotten, will the Lively Peggy! There’s not a Beremouth man don’t walk an inch higher and not a stranger but may call for what he wills, and where he wills, and no reckoning!”

  “But nothing — nothing o’ Joe?” Budgen muttered. He looked askance at a dark corner of the floor as if he saw something lurking in the shadow. “You’ve heard — nothing of him?”

  “Gosh, man!” Ozias retorted, out of patience. “Canst think of nothing but him — that rubbishy rag of a chap, when I tell you — but there, I ain’t told you! And you’ll sing another tune when you’ve heard! Howsoever, let’s taste your tipple, for I’m darned if you wouldn’t take the heart out of a -flea!” He poured some liquor into Budgen’s glass, swigged it off with gusto, and having smacked his lips proceeded to tell the story with many heightening touches and as many oaths of admiration.

  Budgen listened, but he listened with the same downcast look. He did not rise to the occasion. As the other said, it would have taken the heart out of a flea. Ozias climbed to greater and greater heights; never had his favourite preacher beaten the desk to more advantage. But to his amazement neither the story nor his comments wiped the look of gloom from Budgen’s face. The man did at last, as the tale unfolded itself, speak a word, but his thoughts took a direction that rendered Copestake both angry and unhappy.

  “How — how many lost?” he muttered, his eyes averted.

  “Lost their numbers? Well, two for certain, poor chaps, and no one more sorry than me! But, Lord, ’tis the fortune of war, and what we’re paid for! And cheap, man — cheap at that!”

  But, “Two?” Budgen repeated, and he shivered. He still kept that sidelong watch on the corner that, as the other said afterwards, made his flesh creep.

  “Oh, bother!” Ozias scolded. He began to think that the other had the horrors. “Never did I see such a wet blanket!”

  Budgen shook his head. “He’ll never bring her in,” he muttered.

  “Confound you for a Jeremiah!”

  “He’ll never bring her in!” Budgen repeated drearily. “And for why? The brigantine left her half-manned and crippled. In a sea, with a head wind.”

  “That come after, I tell ye!” Ozias argued irritably. “’Twas the day after the wind shifted.”

  But Budgen took no heed. “With a head wind,” he muttered, “and th’ enemy’s coast under his lee. He’ll not save her. ’Tis— ’tis over by now, over, I doubt.”

  “You’re a liar!” Ozias swore, put beside himself by this evil augury.

  “He’ll not be let to,” Budgen persisted, his eyes still avoiding Ozias’s. “There’s — there’s a fate in it.” His gaze rose for a second to the other’s face, and fled again. Ozias saw his lips move without sound.

  He made Copestake so uncomfortable with his dark words and his darker looks that the man wished that he had not come. “Well,” he said, “Budgen, you be the coldest of cold comforters in this ‘varsal world, and that for certain! As well never send a ship to sea as call her lost before she’s reported! And bad luck too. And odds are she’s safe in Falmouth or the Cattewater in half a dozen tides, if she bain’t there now!”

  Budgen looked at him. “She’ll never see Lizard Head,” he said.

  “Well, I’m d — d!” Ozias cried. He felt some fear as well as anger. What if the man did see more in that shadowy corner than was there? And spoke out of some dark knowledge, not his own, hell-born, may be!— “See me bring you news again! Why, you are worse than the old witch at Netherhampton! You ought to be swum for an old woman, darn me if you oughtn’t!” And he was so disgusted that he was glad to make an end of it and escape — to fling out of the house and stalk fuming and cursing down to the boat.

  The man who was waiting for him read his inflamed face aright. “Well, Cap’en,” he said, “I told you so.”

  Ozias had put one foot in the boat and was about to thrust off with the other. He changed his mind. He withdrew the foot. “You are as big a fool as Budgen!” he said viciously. “If I sit there and listen to you I’ll burst. Off you go!” And he thrust off the boat. “You’re all blessed Jeremiahs together! I would not sail with such a crew on half shares and soft tack, for the best prize afloat. I’ll walk!”

  The result was that as, still fuming and scolding, he tramped back, taking the longest way to work off his feelings, he met the Rector, who had parted twenty minutes before from his daughter and Wyke. The Rector was striding along with his head in the air, and hope in his heart. Seeing Ozias, the man whom at that moment he most wished to see, he quickened his pace. Ozias could tell him everything, and first hand, he thought.

  “Well, Copestake,” he said genially, “this is grand news that you’ve brought.”

  An hour before Ozias would have crowed like a cock and answered jubilation with jubilation. But he had had his cold douche, and he was out of temper, for in spite of his teeth Budgen’s gloomy face haunted him. Still he tried to rally. He didn’t deny that the news was fine.

  “Ay,” he said, “it’s grand news, your reverence, grand news. If so be as all goes well with the brig!” But this was measured praise and fell so much below the Rector’s expectations that his confidence, a little shaken before, felt the shock. “If all goes well?” he repeated. “Do you mean, then, that you have doubts, Copestake?”

  “Well, sir, it depends on whether he brings her in, don’t it? That’s how ’tis, sir.”

  “But I thought — I thought that you had every hope of that?”

  Ozias looked about him for a place to spit, but in the Rector’s presence he refrained. “Well, I had!” he allowed, puzzled himself by the change in his feelings. “Ay, for sure I had. But that dark owl down there would shake a marble saint, and that’s the truth! I wish to heaven I’d never seen his nightmare of a face! You might wring my clothes out since I listened to him, your reverence. He don’t answer nor argufy, but squints as if the devil was whispering in his ear, and telling him what’s to come of it! I came very near to knocking in his ugly face, and I wish I had! I wish I had! What’s the sense o’ talking as if all’s lost, I’d like to know?” The lightsomeness had fled from the Rector’s face. “Of whom are you speaking?” he asked, though he knew the answer well. “Whom have you been seeing, Copestake?”

  “Why, the devil himself, I think! Budgen, to be sure! I never knew,” Ozias continued in a burst of confidence, “such a croaker ship-board or shore, as what he is! The man won’t hear but what they are lost! All lost! Never see the Lizard, never see the Lizard is all his song, as certain as if he could see ‘em in Davy’s locker this moment! Says it’s fate! D — n his fate!” Ozias exclaimed, forgetting in whose company he stood. “I do b’lieve he thinks his nevy a Jonah, and they must all be lost ‘cause his ugly carcase is aboard!”

  The Rector’s face was very grave as he looked down the road. “What do you think yourself?” he asked. He wanted comfort, but he had little hope of it.

  “Well, since I talked to him I don’t know what I think. There’s risks — of course there’s risks!” Ozias repeated irritably, kicking away a stone. “There’s always risks at sea, same as on land! And there�
��s no denying they be half-manned and half-rigged, and the pumps’ll be going, I warn; and odds are they’d have a headwind out of the Bay. And if they fell in with another mounseer, well, they’d be in poor fettle to fight.”

  The Rector’s face had grown more and more serious as he listened. “Then you don’t feel much confidence?” he said.

  “Confidence!” Ozias spoke querulously. “Who would feel confidence after talking to that bird of ill omen? For that is what he is, and looks it! Truth is, I don’t know. An hour ago I’d ha’ said that the man as could take that sloop in fair fight would be man enough to bring her in if he swam behind and pushed her! But since I talked to Budgen — if ’twas Budgen and not the old ‘un in his skin — I don’t know what to think. Still, Mr. Bligh’ll make a thundering good try, I’m sure o’ that. He’ll bring ‘em in if ’tis to be done!”

  “He’d steer for Falmouth, I suppose?”

  “Plymouth or Falmouth — first port under his lee, or he might fall in with a frigate or an armed sloop, like as not! But ’tis rare to meet with them when they’re wanted! They’d see him in.”

  “When do you think we shall hear?” the Rector asked, his head bent down, and his eyes on the road that he was prodding with his cane.

  “Ay, when? No saying at all. Depends on how much she’s crippled and how long he’s getting up his jury masts, and the wind and a mort o’ things. There’s no time at sea, sir. He might be in to-morrow, though it’s not what I’d expect. Or he might be a week out, or supposing him driven into the Atlantic — and you may be sure he’d haul off the coast — he may be a fortnight beating up.”

  The Rector sighed. “We must hope for the best,” he said.

  Ozias had never met the Rector in this mood before, and he thought to himself that they had not given the devil his due.

  “That’s it, your reverence,” he agreed heartily. “And keep up the young lady’s spirits. Her man’s a man, and I’d give ten pounds o’ my own money to see him set foot on Beremouth jetty.”

  The Rector nodded. “Thank you, Copestake,” he said. “Yes, we must keep up our hearts — and hers. You won’t, of course, tell her there’s any danger?”

  “God forbid, sir! No, no! She’ll know soon enough, poor thing, if it comes.”

  They parted, and the Rector went on. But the jauntiness was gone from his step, and he no longer swung his cane. His face was gloomy with thought. He gazed before him, but he saw, not the things that were in sight, the winding, rutted road, the gorse-clad hill-side, a glimpse of shining sea peeping over a sloping green shoulder. He saw instead Budgen’s face as Copestake, blind and undiscerning, had limned it — sullen and hopeless, the face of a man taken in evil, caught in his own net, of a man aware too late of the vengeance that he had called down upon his own head. And with something of the old horror the Rector owned the guilty man his fellow; his fellow not in the crime — God forbid! — but in the retribution, in the judgment that had not yet fallen, but hung ready to fall, and that Budgen by every word he had said, and every look, had owned to be his due!

  “O miserable man!” the Rector reflected, his face darkened by his thoughts. “Taught too late that there is a God that judgeth the world! And am I, too, in the same condemnation? Must I, too, look forward with the same hopelessness, the same certainty of a price to be paid? Must I, too, see the sins of the father visited upon the innocent child?”

  He tried to put the thought from his mind. He called reason to his aid. He told himself that nothing was changed, nothing was altered, that things were as they had been when the news came in and cheered all hearts. He strove to think that the chances were good, the risk, great as it was, inevitable. And he prayed earnestly and humbly, his pride put off. But in vain. A cloud had fallen upon his spirit, and though he walked far along the cliffs, walked until the sea stretched dark below him, and lights shone from the scattered farms that lay to landward, he could not shake off the depression that weighed him down.

  What he could do, he did. He sent that night, and within the hour, messengers to Plymouth and to Falmouth, a third even to Portsmouth; bidding them await the event each in his place. And upon all he impressed the same thing with endless repetition. They were to bring the news, good or bad, to him — to him. They were to tell it to no one — to no one at all, until they had seen him. He would remain at home. He would be there at all hours, day and night. He could not say this often enough to them. He lost minutes, he kept the men standing while he repeated the warning again and again.

  If he could but stop one cranny against fate!

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE fiercer the fire the sooner it burns down.

  Whatever was the reason, the jubilation that for a few hours turned Beremouth crazy and filled the night with raucous choruses did not last. Whether the shortness of its reign was due to reaction, or to the little band of women, who flitted white-faced and tearful from door to door and would not be quieted, or to some word let fall by Ozias in his cups, the last rant of “Spanish Ladies” had barely died upon a bleak dawn before the little port began first to count the cost of victory and then to doubt the victory itself.

  Sober heads of families, men who a few hours before had roared and bragged with the best, became — and all in a moment as it seemed — critical and despondent, sharers in the women’s alarm. Gathered before the Keppel Head to take the dram that queasy stomachs demanded, or in knots upon the quay where the smell of fishes’ heads was least pungent, they fell to asking what news of Bill, and if aught had been heard of Barney; and they got no answer. From this to noting the scantiness of the news and the lack of detail was but a step, and depression set in. Presently a man more clear-sighted than his fellows lifted his voice and in an unhappy moment of vision put the question.

  “What if they don’t bring ‘em in after all? he asked. “Have ‘ee thought o’ that. ‘Taint enough to strip the net. Ye’ve got to bring the fish in.”

  “That’s gospel true!”

  “Ay, and past Ushant,” an old salt said, shaking his head. “And that be as plaguy a bit o’ sea both for gales and mounseers as I know anywhere. A right awk’ard bit, surelie!”

  “It be! And her half crippled, as one may say.”

  “I wish I see ‘em coming in now,” quoth the first speaker darkly. “But I’m fearing it’s a sight ye’ll none of ye see. ’Tis too good to be true, mates. How many of a crew do ‘ee guess he’ll ha’ left fit to haul and steer, much more to serve a gun? And two to sail and two to hold! He’ll never do it!”

  “And, you see,” quavered an old man who had not spoken before, “where there’s wounded there’s like to be killed. How many?” He looked at the ground before his feet, his hand shaking on his staff. “How many? And who’ll we see back?”

  This was too hopeless a view, and one of his fellows objected to it. “Come, George, that’s not like you,” he said uncomfortably. “No need to scare the women.”

  George did not reply, but a silence fell upon the group, and presently it broke up, the older men creeping home, while others turned into the Keppel Head and called for a well-thumbed chart that hung in the parlour and had hung there no man knew how long. This was spread upon a table, and they bent over it, the scholar or two among them marking off distances with their horny thumbs, and muttering of leagues and so on, Penmarch Point and the like. Even these dispersed after a time, but the voices of the women in lane and alley, clamouring for news and threatening visits, now to Budgen and now to the Rector, were not to be silenced. Their voices slowly and inexorably spread gloom through the place.

  “Bide home and rest!” men told them testily — but in vain. Who was wounded, they wanted to know. For it was no new thing that they feared. It was a common end for Beremouth folk, as we know. To sail away with the morning tide, leaving home and babes and straining eyes and sore hearts: and to return no more. To be lost in the mist of the offing and the mistier beyond, and to be just — gone! No funeral, no gathering of neighbours, no green m
ound in the churchyard on the Point — only the women for the most part lay under the squat Norman tower — but to be just — missing. It was the fate, sooner or later, of many a strong man in Beremouth. He sailed away, and his leaning-post on the quay knew him no more. The inexorable sea, or the greedy war, had taken him.

  Meanwhile, though the women’s wailing was not to be stilled, and the sound of their shrill voices drove more than one old salt into hiding, not a woman among them forgot herself so far as to carry her fear to the Cottage. Nor, to do them justice, was it her position as the Rector’s daughter that shielded Peggy; it was the charity of sex, and the babe that was coming, and perhaps more than all the whisper that ran round that the young wife in her abounding pride felt no alarm. They pitied her inexperience, but to a woman they respected it. They wondered and in sanguine moments they drew some comfort from her example. Judging her by themselves it did not strike them that she might fear and not show it; that trained to a higher control she might possess a trembling soul in silence, and that even when panic assailed her and she saw her terror reflected in the Captain’s eyes, she might set such a value on her husband’s achievement — knowing what it was to him — as lifted her above despair.

  Yet that was the case. Peggy did not know the grounds, certainly not all the grounds, there were for fear. But she did fear and did tremble, did suffer in the watches of the night, and suffered more as the hours and the days passed and brought no news, no word of the safety of the brig. But she held panic at bay for her man’s sake, she bore herself bravely before the father’s eyes, and smiling wanly, talked hopefully, making nothing of her own trial. She told herself that Charles had played his part and she must play hers. And she had fierce proud hours when she thought of his deed, and her eyes shone and she triumphed in the splendour of it. Hours, when she told herself that at last they knew him as he was, when she saw him on the deck amid the smoke and crash of guns, directing, over-seeing, cool, stern, powder-grimed! Her man! Her man! And again there were sweet moments when she allowed herself to picture his return to the wife and the home that he had ennobled.