CHAPTER XXXIXALL ADRIFT
The Marquise scarcely heard him. She was intent on those two figures scrambling up the opposite shore, and fast disappearing into the darkness beyond. It seemed that the darkness was closing in around herself, never again to be dispelled. When those were gone what was there left on earth forher? She had lost Cerise, she told herself, the treasure she had guarded so carefully; the darling for whom she would have sacrificed her life a thousand times, as the events of the last few hours proved; the one aim and object of her whole existence, without which she was alone in the world. And now this man had come and taken her child away, and it would never be the same thing again. Cerise loved him, she was sure of that. Ah! they could not deceiveher; and he loved Cerise. She knew it by his voice in those few words when he suggested that the girl should cross the water first. The Marquise twined her fingers together, as if she were in pain.
They must be safe now. Walking side by side on the peaceful beach, waiting for the boat that should bear them away, would they forget all about her in the selfishness of their new-found happiness, and leave her to perish here? She wished they would. She wished the rioters, coming on in overwhelming numbers, might force the pass and drive these honest blue-jackets in before them to make a last desperate stand at the water’s edge. She could welcome death then, offering herself willingly to ensure the safety of those two.
And what was this man to her that she should give himup her daughter, that she should be ready to give up her life rather than endanger his happiness? She winced, she quivered with pain and shame because of the feelings her own question called up. What was he to her? The noblest, the dearest, the bravest, the best-beloved; the realisation of her girl’s dreams, of her woman’s passions, the type of all that she had ever honoured and admired and longed for to make her happiness complete! She remembered so well the boy’s gentle brow, the frank kind eyes that smiled and danced with delight to be noticed by her, a young and beautiful widow, flattered and coveted of all the Great King’s Court. She recalled, as if it were but yesterday, the stag-hunt at Fontainebleau; the manly figure and the daring horsemanship of the Grey Musketeer; her own mad joy in that wild gallop, and the strange keen zest life seemed to have acquired when she rode home through those sleeping woods, under the dusky purple of that soft autumnal night. How she used to watch for him afterwards, amidst all the turmoil of feasts and pleasures that constituted the routine of the new Court. How well she knew his place of ceremony, his turn of duty, and loved the very sentries at the palace-gate for his sake. Often had she longed to hint by a look, a gesture, the flirt of a fan, the dropping of a flower, that he had not far to seek for one who would care for him as he deserved; but even the Marquise shrank, and feared, and hesitated, woman-like, where she really loved. Then came that ever-memorable night at the Masked Ball, when she cried out aloud, in her longing and her loneliness, and never knew afterwards whether she was glad or sorry for what she had done.
It was soon to be over then, for ere a few more days had elapsed the Regent ventured on his shameless outrage at the Hôtel Montmirail, and lo! in the height of her indignation and her need, who should drop down, as it seemed, from the skies, to be her champion, but the man of all others whom most she could have loved and trusted in the world!
Since then, had she not thought of him by day and dreamt of him by night, dwelling on his image with a fond persistency none the less cherished because sad and desponding—content, if better might not be, to worship it insecret to the last, though she might never look on its original again?
The real and the ideal had so acted on each other, that while he seemed to her the perfection of all manhood should be, that very type was unconsciously but a faithful copy of himself. In short, she loved him; and when such a man is loved by such a woman it is usually but little conducive to his happiness, and thoroughly destructive of her own.
If I have mistaken the originator of so beautiful and touching an illustration, I humbly beg his pardon, but I think it is Alphonse Karr who teaches, in his remarks on the great idolatry of all times and nations, that it is well to sow plenty of flowers in that prolific soil which is fertilised by the heart’s sunshine and watered by its tears—plenty of flowers, the brighter, the sweeter, the more fragile, perhaps, the better. Winter may cut them down indeed to the cold earth, yet spring-time brings another crop as fair, as fresh, as fragile, and as easily replaced as those that bloomed before. But it is unwise to plant a tree;because, if that tree be once torn up by the roots, the flowers will never grow over the barren place again!
The Marquise had not indeed planted the tree, but she had allowed it unwittingly to grow. Perhaps she would never have confessed its existence to herself had it not thus been forcibly torn away by roots that had for years twined deeper and deeper among all its gentlest and all its strongest feelings, till they had become as the very fibres of her heart.
It is needless to say that the Marquise was a woman elevated both by disposition and education above the meaner and pettier weaknesses of her sex. If she was masculine in her physical courage and moral recklessness of consequences, she was masculine also in a certain generosity of spirit and noble disdain for anything like malice or foul-play. Jealousy with her—and, like all strong natures, she could feel jealousy very keenly—would never be visited on the object that had caused it. She would hate and punish herself under the torture; she might even be goaded to hate and punish the man at whose hands she was suffering; but she would never have injured the woman whom she preferred, and, indeed, supported by a scornfulpride, would have taken a strange morbid pleasure in enhancing her own pain by ministering to that woman’s happiness.
Therefore she was saved a keen pang now. A pang that might have rendered her agony too terrible to endure. She had not concealed from herself to-night that the thrill of delight she experienced from the arrival of succour was due rather to the person who brought it than to the assistance itself; but almost ere she had time to realise its charm the illusion had been dispelled, and she felt that, dream as it all was, she had been wakened ere she had time to dream it out.
And now it seemed to her that nothing would be so good as the excitement of another skirmish, another struggle, and a sudden death, with the cheers of these brave Englishmen ringing in her ears. A death that Cerise would never forget had been encountered for her safety, thathewould sometimes remember, and remembering, accord a smile and a sigh to the beauty he had neglected, and the devotion he had never known till too late.
Engrossed with such thoughts, the Marquise was less alive than usual to surrounding impressions. Presently a deep groan, forced from her companion by combined pain and weakness, against which the sufferer could no longer hold out, roused her to a sense of her situation, which was indeed sufficiently precarious to have warranted much anxiety and alarm.
Hastening to his side, she was shocked to perceive that Bottle-Jack had sunk to the ground, and was now endeavouring ineffectually to support himself on his knees in an attitude of vigilance and defence. The Captain’s pistols lay beside him, and he carried his own in each hand, but his glazing eye and fading colour showed that the weapons could be but of little service, and the time seemed fast approaching when the old sailor should be relieved from his duty by an order against which there was no appeal.
The Marquise had scarcely listened to the words while he spoke them, but they came back now, and she understood what he meant when he told her that, if she pleased, “he would keephiswatch first.”
She looked around and shuddered. It was, indeed, a cheerless position enough. The moon was sinking, andthat darkest hour of the night approached which is followed by dawn, just as sorrow is succeeded by consolation, and death by immortality. The breeze struck damp and chill on her unprotected neck and bosom, for there had been no time to think of cloaks or shawls when she escaped, nor was the air sufficiently cold before midnight to remind her of such precautions. The surrounding jungle stirred and sighed faintly, yet sadly, in the night air. The waters of the deep lagoon, now darkening with a darkening sky, lapped drearily against their bank. Other noises were there none, for the rioters seemed to have turned back from the resistance offered by Slap-Jack with his comrades, and to have abandoned for the present their search in that direction. The seamen who guarded the defile were peering stealthily into the gloom, not a man relaxing in his vigilance, not a man stirring on his post. The only sounds that broke her solitude were the restless movements of Bottle-Jack, and the groans that would not be suppressed. It was no wonder the Marquise shuddered.
She stooped over the old seaman and took his coarse, heavy hand in hers. Even at such an extremity, Bottle-Jack seemed conscious of the contrast, and touched it delicately, like some precious and fragile piece of porcelain. “I fear you are hurt,” said she, in his own language, which she spoke with the measured accent of her countrywomen. “Tell me what it is; I am not a bad doctor myself.”
Bottle-Jack tried to laugh. “It’s a flea-bite, my lady,” said he, setting his teeth to conceal the pain he suffered. “’Tis but a poke in the side after all, though them black beggars does grind their spear-heads to an edge like a razor. It’s betwixt wind and water, d’ye see, marm, if I may be so bold, and past caulking, in my opinion. I’m a-fillin’ fast, that’s where it is, askin’ your pardon again for naming it to a lady like you.”
She partly understood him, and for the first time to-night the tears came into her eyes. They did her good. They seemed to clear her faculties and cool her brain. She examined the old man’s hurt, after no small resistance on his part, and found a deep wound between his ribs, which even her experience warned her must be mortal. She stanched it as well as she could, tearing up the lace and other trimmingsof her dress to form a temporary bandage. Then she bent down to the lagoon to dip her coroneted handkerchief in water and lay it across his brow, while she supported his sinking frame upon her knees. He looked in her face with a puzzled, wandering gaze, like a man in a dream. The vision seemed so unreal, so impossible, so unlike anything he had ever seen before, Bottle-Jack began to think he had reached Fiddler’s Green at last.
The minutes dragged slowly on. The sky became darker, the breeze colder, and the strangely matched pair continued in the same position on the brink of the white lagoon, the Marquise dipping her handkerchief at short intervals, and moistening the sailor’s mouth. It was all she could do for him, and like a faithful old dog, wounded to the death, he could only thank her with his eyes. More than once she thought he was gone, but as moment after moment crept by, so sad, so slow, she knew he was still alive.
Would it never be day? She could scarcely see him now, though his heavy head rested on her knees, though her hand with the moistened handkerchief was laid on his very lips. At last the breeze freshened, sighing audibly through the tree-tops, which were soon dimly seen swaying to and fro against a pale streak of sky on the horizon. Bottle-Jack started and sat up.
“Stand by!” he exclaimed, looking wildly round. “You in the fore-chains! Keep you axe ready to cut away when she rounds to. Easy, lads! She’ll weather it now, and I’ll go below and turn in.”
Then he laid his head once more on Madame de Montmirail’s knees, like a child who turns round to go to sleep.
The grey streak had grown to a wide rent of pale green, now broadening and brightening into day. Ere the sky flecked with crimson, or the distant tree-tops tinged with golden fire, the life of the whole jungle was astir, waking the discords of innumerable menageries. Cockatoos whistled, monkeys chattered, parrots screamed, mockingbirds reproduced these and a thousand other sounds a thousandfold. All nature seemed renewed, exulting in the freshened energies of another day, but still the Marquise sat by the lagoon, pale, exhausted, worn out, motionless, with the dead seaman’s head in her lap.