CHAPTER XIII
THE LADY FROM THE SEA
How it happened the children never precisely knew. When they came to compare notes that evening their recollections varied on several important particulars. But this was certain, that before they could rise and run—and Matthew Henry protested that, for his part, he had never an idea of running—the apparition had stepped down from her pedestal and seated herself among them in the friendliest way.
"Good day!" she nodded. "Now let me see ... this is Annet, and this is Linnet, and that is Matthew Henry, and I hope you're all uncommonly well."
Annet gasped that they were quite well, thank you. Who and what could she be, this lady out of nowhere?... Not a witch, for no witch could smile with such a beautiful face or wear such beautiful clothes. On the other hand, Annet had not supposed that fairies were ever so tall. Yet something of the sort she must be, for she knew their names....
"You want to know where I come from? But that is easy." The stranger reached out a white hand with a diamond upon it, and Annet yielded the book to her without resisting. "I come from here"—and she tapped the pages mysteriously.
"But how can that be?" demanded Linnet, who was always the matter-of-fact one. "Out of a book! Such things do not happen."
Vashti laughed merrily. "I assure you," she answered, with a glance at the fly-leaf, "I have been in the book all the while you were reading; and," she added, her eyes softening as they rested on the child, "of you three it is Linnet who is most like her mother."
They had not thought of this before, but she had no sooner said it than they knew it to be the truth; and the discovery made her more marvellous than ever.
"Yes," she went on, "I have lived inside this book; and, what is more, I know the man who wrote it."
She looked around on the three faces; and—so strange are children—for the first time in his life Matthew Henry at once asserted himself as a person entirely different from his sisters. For Annet and Linnet merely looked puzzled; to them the book was a book, just as the hill upon which they sat was a hill, and they had never troubled their heads about such a thing as an author. But Matthew Henry opened his infantine eyes still wider.
"Tell us about him," he demanded.
Vashti eyed the child curiously for a moment before answering. "He lives in the north," she said, "in a city where the sea is sometimes frozen for weeks in the winter, and where night after night you may see the Northern Lights over the roofs. That is why he writes so much of snow and fir-trees and cold winters."
Annet nodded. "I have seen the Northern Lights—once—from Saaron here," she announced proudly. "Father took me out of my bed and held me up to the window to look at them; Linnet, too—but she was too young to remember, and Matthew Henry was not even born at the time."
"But tell us," persisted Matthew Henry, "about the man who wrote the book."
"Well, the Northern Lights were shining in the streets on the night when I met him. I drove to his house in a sleigh from the theatre—if you know what a theatre is?" Vashti paused dubiously; but Annet nodded and assured her—
"That's all right. We don't know about these things, but they are all in the book."
"And so," said Vashti, "is the man himself, or most of him. He was a queer, shy old man, with oddly-shaped hands and feet, but oh, such timid eyes! And he lived in a fine house all by himself, for he had no wife. In the days when he wanted a wife he had been an Ugly Duckling, and now, when he had turned into a swan, it was too late to marry. He was very old indeed; but this was his birthday, and he had lit up all his rooms for us and made a great feast, and at the feast he made me sit on his right hand.... There were princesses to do him honour, but he chose me out because I had sung to him; and the princesses were not angry because he was an old man. Out in the streets the people were letting off fireworks, and while he talked to me I could hear the whole sky banging with rockets and crackers. It put me in mind of his story of 'The Flying Trunk.' But he talked of Italy and the South, because I had come from there; and of the Mediterranean and of beautiful inland lakes which he had known, but would never see again; for he was over seventy. And he told me that, in spite of the snow and frost outside, he could feel the spring coming northward again with the storks. It was the last time (he said) that he should ever see it, but he filled his glass and drank to me because, as he put it, I had sung the South back to him for this last time. So now you know why I was proud to come to you out of his book."
"But," said Linnet, gravely, "we were reading about mermaids; and you can't be one ofthem, because there aren't any."
Matthew Henry would by no means allow this. "But Jan's father caught one," he objected, "in a pool just inside Piper's Hole, where she was left by the tide. He has told us about her, dozens of times. And besides," he added, getting in a home-thrust, "if there isn't any such thing, why were you crying over the story, just now?"
"I wasn't," contended Linnet, very red in the face. But she shifted her ground. "Why," pointing to Vashti's skirts—"her clothes aren't even wet, to say nothing of a tail!"
Vashti laughed. "My dears, you are both right and both wrong. As for the mermaids, Linnet, they were friends of mine before I reached your age, and you must let me introduce you to one by-and-by, to cure you of disbelieving. But you are right about me. I am not a mermaid; and yet I have come from the sea ... like the Queen Zenobia."
"Who was she?" asked Annet, speaking for the others.
"She was a Queen in Carthage, more than two thousand years ago. She came to the Islands in a ship, to visit the tin-mines which used to lie between them and the mainland before the sea covered them, and from which she drew her great wealth. Her ship arrived in the middle of the Great Storm; and before she came to land, here on Saaron, the waters were rolling over the richest part of all her dependencies. Little she cared; for in the first place she had never seen it, and could not realise her loss, and moreover her ship had been tossing for three days and nights, past all hope, so that she was glad enough to reach a shore, however barren. She reached it, holding on to the shoulders of a brown man, a Moor, who swam for land as the ship began to break up; and the story goes that when his feet touched the sand he fell forward and died, for the swimming had burst his heart. But have you never heard the song about it?" Vashti sank her voice and began to chant, and low though the strain was, and monotonous, the children had never heard such wonderful singing—
It was the Queen ZenobiaWith her gold crown,That sailed away from AfricaWith a down-derry-down!—To westward and to northwardFrom Carthage town,Beyond the strait of CadizThe sky began to frown."Well-a-mercy!" cried her ladies,All of high renown;"I think the sea is troublesomeAnd we shall all drown."The seas came white aboardAnd wetted her gown;"Would I were back in CarthageA-walking up and down!That I were back in CarthageWhich is dry ground,I would give my jewelsAnd a thousand pound."Then round went the good ship,And thrice she went round,The third time she brast herselfWith a down-derry-down!Some cried misericordia,And others did swoun;But up there stood a guardsmanA naked man and brown—"You are the Queen of CarthageAnd gey young to drown;But hold you to my girdleThat goes me around;And swim with me to Saaron,As I will be bound.""Your girdle it is breakingThat goeth you around.""Nay, hold you to the girdleThat is strong yet and sound;My heart you felt a-breaking,But here is dry ground."With white sand and shingleThe shore did abound;With white sand she covered himAnd built him a mound.With flotsam and with wreckageThe shore was all strown;She built of it a cottage,And there she sat down."Though this be not Africa,Nor yet Carthage town,Deo-gracey," said Zenobia,"That I did not drown!"
It was the Queen ZenobiaWith her gold crown,That sailed away from AfricaWith a down-derry-down!
It was the Queen Zenobia
With her gold crown,
That sailed away from Africa
With a down-derry-down!
—To westward and to northwardFrom Carthage town,Beyond the strait of CadizThe sky began to frown.
—To westward and to northward
From Carthage town,
Beyond the strait of Cadiz
The sky began to frown.
"Well-a-mercy!" cried her ladies,All of high renown;"I think the sea is troublesomeAnd we shall all drown."
"Well-a-mercy!" cried her ladies,
All of high renown;
"I think the sea is troublesome
And we shall all drown."
The seas came white aboardAnd wetted her gown;"Would I were back in CarthageA-walking up and down!
The seas came white aboard
And wetted her gown;
"Would I were back in Carthage
A-walking up and down!
That I were back in CarthageWhich is dry ground,I would give my jewelsAnd a thousand pound."
That I were back in Carthage
Which is dry ground,
I would give my jewels
And a thousand pound."
Then round went the good ship,And thrice she went round,The third time she brast herselfWith a down-derry-down!
Then round went the good ship,
And thrice she went round,
The third time she brast herself
With a down-derry-down!
Some cried misericordia,And others did swoun;But up there stood a guardsmanA naked man and brown—
Some cried misericordia,
And others did swoun;
But up there stood a guardsman
A naked man and brown—
"You are the Queen of CarthageAnd gey young to drown;But hold you to my girdleThat goes me around;And swim with me to Saaron,As I will be bound."
"You are the Queen of Carthage
And gey young to drown;
But hold you to my girdle
That goes me around;
And swim with me to Saaron,
As I will be bound."
"Your girdle it is breakingThat goeth you around.""Nay, hold you to the girdleThat is strong yet and sound;My heart you felt a-breaking,But here is dry ground."
"Your girdle it is breaking
That goeth you around."
"Nay, hold you to the girdle
That is strong yet and sound;
My heart you felt a-breaking,
But here is dry ground."
With white sand and shingleThe shore did abound;With white sand she covered himAnd built him a mound.
With white sand and shingle
The shore did abound;
With white sand she covered him
And built him a mound.
With flotsam and with wreckageThe shore was all strown;She built of it a cottage,And there she sat down.
With flotsam and with wreckage
The shore was all strown;
She built of it a cottage,
And there she sat down.
"Though this be not Africa,Nor yet Carthage town,Deo-gracey," said Zenobia,"That I did not drown!"
"Though this be not Africa,
Nor yet Carthage town,
Deo-gracey," said Zenobia,
"That I did not drown!"
"That's where the tune changes," interrupted Matthew Henry, clapping his small sunburnt hands together.
"You know the song then?" asked Vashti, looking from one to the other.
All three nodded. "We know a verse or two," Annet answered. "Mother was always singing it when she rocked Matthew Henry to sleep, and sometimes we get her to sing as much as she can remember for a treat."
"But she can only remember five or six verses," said Linnet; "and her voice is not beautiful like yours."
Annet and Matthew Henry protested. Their mother's was a beautiful voice; one of the most beautiful in the world.
"But not beautiful like hers," Linnet persisted. "I mean that it's quite different."
They admitted this—so much their loyalty allowed them. "And I like the end of the song best," Linnet went on, "because it's cheerfuller. It goes on 'At daybreak she dressed her....'"
But for a moment or two, though she felt the children's eyes fastened on her expectantly, Vashti did not resume the song. Those same expectant eyes were open windows through which she looked into the past, as into a house tenanted by ghosts. Through Annet's, through Linnet's, she saw familiarly, recognising the dim children that played within and beyond the shadow of the blinds. But the child Matthew Henry's frightened her. She and Ruth had lost a brother once. He had died in infancy, a scrap of childhood, almost forgotten.... Yes, Matthew Henry's eyes too had a playroom behind them; and there too a shadowy child played at hide and seek.
Her voice shook a little as she picked up the old song—
At daybreak she dressed her,Her wet hair she wound,When she saw a lithe shepherd,Stood under the mound.He stood among the wreckageWith crook and with hound,Alone in the morning,That most did astound."O tell to me, lithe shepherd,What king owns this ground?""No king, ma'am, but Zenobia,A Queen of renown.""Lithe lad, she is shipwrecked;Myself saw her drown.""Then 'tis you are Queen of SaaronIf you will step down."I have sheep, goat, and cattleAnd a clear three pound,If you'll mate with me and settleIn goods we will abound.""Well-a-way!" sighed Zenobia,"I have lost Carthage town,But I like this lithe shepherdSo handsome and brown."If I marry you," said Zenobia,"Farewell to renown!If I marry you," said Zenobia,"I mate with a clown.But I'll marry you for all that,With a down-derry-down!"
At daybreak she dressed her,Her wet hair she wound,When she saw a lithe shepherd,Stood under the mound.
At daybreak she dressed her,
Her wet hair she wound,
When she saw a lithe shepherd,
Stood under the mound.
He stood among the wreckageWith crook and with hound,Alone in the morning,That most did astound.
He stood among the wreckage
With crook and with hound,
Alone in the morning,
That most did astound.
"O tell to me, lithe shepherd,What king owns this ground?""No king, ma'am, but Zenobia,A Queen of renown."
"O tell to me, lithe shepherd,
What king owns this ground?"
"No king, ma'am, but Zenobia,
A Queen of renown."
"Lithe lad, she is shipwrecked;Myself saw her drown.""Then 'tis you are Queen of SaaronIf you will step down.
"Lithe lad, she is shipwrecked;
Myself saw her drown."
"Then 'tis you are Queen of Saaron
If you will step down.
"I have sheep, goat, and cattleAnd a clear three pound,If you'll mate with me and settleIn goods we will abound."
"I have sheep, goat, and cattle
And a clear three pound,
If you'll mate with me and settle
In goods we will abound."
"Well-a-way!" sighed Zenobia,"I have lost Carthage town,But I like this lithe shepherdSo handsome and brown.
"Well-a-way!" sighed Zenobia,
"I have lost Carthage town,
But I like this lithe shepherd
So handsome and brown.
"If I marry you," said Zenobia,"Farewell to renown!If I marry you," said Zenobia,"I mate with a clown.But I'll marry you for all that,With a down-derry-down!"
"If I marry you," said Zenobia,
"Farewell to renown!
If I marry you," said Zenobia,
"I mate with a clown.
But I'll marry you for all that,
With a down-derry-down!"
"And," said Linnet, as the song concluded, "they married and had twelve children—six boys and six girls. Mother told me about it."
But Matthew Henry turned to the singer gravely. "Is it true?" he asked. "And are you really Queen Zenobia?"
"Come and see," said Vashti, rising. "The sands are bare between us and Brefar, and if Linnet is brave enough we will take a boat and she shall be shown the cave where Jan's father caught the mermaid."
"But we must get back again," objected Annet.
"I will see that you get back again."
"The sands may not be safe."
"When you told us yourself that they were quite safe!" protested Matthew Henry. "And you said you would lead us over and back without any danger at all."
"The fact is," said Vashti, quietly, "Annet feels herself responsible for you, and thinks that very likely I am a witch."
The child faced her bravely, biting her lip upon the inward struggle.
"You are not a witch," she said. "Your eyes are too good. And, besides, there are people in Brefar who will take care of us if we miss our way back."
Vashti smiled, and again half sadly, for out of her own past this child confronted her. "That is brave, Annet; brave enough for the moment, though by and by we shall have to be braver. See how the sands shine below us! Shall we race for them and see who wins?"
She took Matthew Henry's small, unresisting hand, and the four pelted down the slope. Something in Vashti's eyes—it could not have been in the words of her last answer, for they were mysterious enough—had apparently reassured Annet, who cast away care and called back in triumph as she won the race down to the golden sands.
They were damp yet in patches, and these patches shone like metal reflecting the greenish-blue spaces that showed between the clouds in the heart of the gathering sunset. But along the fairway the sand lay firm to the tread, yet soft to the look as a stretch of amber-coloured velvet laid for their feet. Beyond rose Brefar, with its lower cliffs in twilight, its rounded upper slopes one shining green. Vashti had kilted her gown higher and helped the two girls to pin up their short skirts. All had taken off their shoes and stockings, for here and there a shallow channel must be waded.
They crossed without mishap, and, having shod themselves again, mounted the turfy slope where the larks flew up from their hiding-places among the stones. Vashti's talk was of the birds, for in all Brefar the spot best worth visiting is Merriman's Head, where the birds congregate in their thousands—cormorants, curlews, whimbrels, gulls and kittiwakes, oyster-catchers, sandpipers—these all the year round—and in early summer the razorbills and sea parrots. Zenobia, it appeared, knew not only Merriman's Head, but every rock, down to the smallest and farthest in the Off Islands, where these creatures nested. She spoke to them of the island from which Annet took her name—a low-lying ridge to the west of St. Ann's, curved like a snake, in nesting-time sheeted with pink thrift. There the sea-parrots breed, and so thickly that you can scarcely set foot ashore without plunging into their houses; but there is a mound near the western end where no sea-parrot may come, for the herring-gulls and the black-backs claim it for their own. She spoke of Great Rose, still further westward, where the gulls encamp among the ruined huts once used by the builders of the Monk Lighthouse; of Little Rose, where the great cormorant is at home; of Melligan and Carregan, the one favoured by shags, the other by razor-bills and guillemots. And so talking, while they wondered, she brought them across the hill to the great headland.
Merriman's Head, in truth, is itself an islet, being cut off from Brefar by a channel, scarcely eight feet wide, through which the seas rush darkly with horrible gurglings. The cleft goes down sheer, and was cut, they say, with one stroke of a giant's sword. Beyond it the headland rises grim and stark—a very Gibraltar of the birds, that roost in regiments on its giddy ledges.
As the children came down to the brink a flock of white gulls seemed to drop from the rock, hung in the air for a moment, and began wheeling overhead in wide circles, uttering their strange cries. A score of little oyster-catchers, too, tucked up their scarlet legs and skimmed off in flight. But the majority kept their posts and looked down almost disdainfully.
"They know we can't get to them," said Matthew Henry. "But wait till I am grown up! Then I'll come over to Brefar and build a bridge."
"You will not need a bridge when you are grown up," said Vashti. "See!" She stepped back a pace or two, and the children, before they guessed her purpose, saw her flash past them and leap. She cleared the chasm, easily alighted, and stood smiling back at them, while the birds poured out from their ledges, cloud upon cloud of them. Their wings darkened the air. Their uproar beat from cliff to cliff, and back again in broken echoes, like waves caught in a narrow cave and rebounding. Vashti looked up and laughed. Like a witch she stood, waving her arms to them.
"It is easy," she called back to the children; "easy enough, if you don't let the water frighten you. Why, Annet could jump it if she dared. Annet ... but no, child! go back!"
But Annet, with a quick glance at her, and another at the water swirling below, had set her teeth and stepped back half-a-dozen paces. She would follow this woman, witch or no witch.
Linnet cried, too, and Matthew Henry. Vashti, stretching out both hands to wave back the child, opened them suddenly to catch her—and not too soon, for Annet alighted on a rock that sloped back towards the gulf, and had measured her powers against the leap so narrowly that her heels overhung the water and her body was bending backward when Vashti gripped, and, dragging her up to firm ground, took her in both arms.
"But why? Why, Annet?"
"I don't know," Annet answered, almost stupidly. The danger past, she felt faint of a sudden and dazed; nor could she understand what the strange lady meant by embracing her again, almost with a sob, and murmuring:
"The little water, and so hard to cross! But we had the courage, Annet—you and I!"
She turned and lifted her voice in a long, full-throated cry, that sent the birds flying in fresh circles from the eyries over which they were poising; and before its echoes died between the cliffs a boat came round the point—a boat with one man in it, and that man Major Vigoureux.
At another time they might have wondered how a boat came here, and why the Governor himself—whom they had seldom seen, but regarded from afar with awe—should be in charge of it. But the afternoon had fed them full with marvels. Here the great man was, and in a boat, and the strange lady stood apparently in no awe of his greatness.
"The little ones are tired," said Vashti. "We will sail them home and land them on Saaron."
The Commandant backed his boat skilfully into the passage between the walls of rock, lifted the two younger ones on board, and then stretched out a hand to the other shore to help Vashti and Annet. When all were stowed, he pushed out for an offing, and hoisted his small lug-sail, while Vashti took the tiller.
The breeze blew off the shore. The little boat heeled, flinging the spray merrily from her bows. Beyond and under the slack of the sail a golden sea stretched away to the dying sunset.
It was an enchanted hour, and it held the children silent. In silence they were landed on the beach of West Porth, and climbed over the hill to their house. From its summit they looked down upon a small sail dancing through the sunken reefs towards the Roads, away into the twilight where the sea lights already shone from the South Islands.
CHAPTER XIV
AFTER SERVICE
"They are good children," said Vashti, as she and the Commandant sat at breakfast together next morning, which was Sunday.
The Commandant did not answer for a moment. He was stirring his tea, in a brown study, nor did he note that Vashti's eyes were resting on him with an amused smile. She supposed these fits of abstraction to be habitual with him, due to living and taking his meals alone; but in fact his thoughts were wrestling with two or three very urgent problems. To begin with, he had plunged yet deeper in debt to Mr. Tregaskis. The total, to be sure, amounted to something under twenty-five shillings; but to a man with just one penny in his pocket this left no choice but between recklessness and panic, and the Commandant's spirits swung from one to the other like a pendulum. Panic asserted itself in the small hours, when he awoke in his bed and wondered what would happen when pay-day came, should it bring no pay with it ... and to a man lying sleepless in the small hours, the worst seems not only possible but likely. Then, as daylight waxed and he awoke again from a short doze, to his surprise he found himself absolutely reckless. As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb! The ordeal lay three days off, and in three days anything might happen; but meanwhile this was certainly happening—a woman accomplished and beautiful had stepped into his life and was changing all the colour of it. He guessed the danger, put purposely averted his thoughts from it and from the certainty of scandal. Archelaus, Treacher, Mrs. Treacher—all three had been sworn to secrecy, and all three could be trusted. These folks read no harm, nothing beyond an amusing mystery, in Vashti's sojourn, and in particular she had made Mrs. Treacher her obedient slave. Yet the secret must come out, and in spite of Archelaus, who had brought his master's boat round and moored her cunningly under the lee of the rocks overhung by the Keg of Butter Battery. There, while the weather held, the Commandant and his guest could slip away without fear of prying eyes and sail off among the islands—as they had sailed off yesterday, Vashti sitting low and covering herself with a spare-sail, until beyond sight of St. Lide's quay and the houses on the slope. To be sure they had to reckon with Mr. Rogers' telescope, or rather to leave it out of account. If Mr. Rogers' telescope should prove indiscreet, Mr. Rogers must be let into the secret, and might be relied on to join the conspiracy.
The Commandant, however, was in no hurry to share his happiness. Since his youth he had made few friends, and in all his life had never known comradeship with a woman. Suddenly, and as a well-spring in the desert, Vashti had come into the dull round of his duty—his purposeless, monotonous duty—to refresh it; nor perhaps were the waters less sweet for the feeling that they were stolen. So he lived in the day, and put off thinking of the inevitable end.
One thing only troubled his happiness. He foresaw that the end, when it came, would mean for him something more serious than parting. He could not have told why, but from the moment when Vashti had turned on him and asked, "For what work do they pay you?" he had known that henceforward his conscience would not sleep until he had made a clean breast to the War Office and resigned his commission. It was not that her question told him anything new; only that he saw himself judged in her eyes, and in their light discovered that his conscience had been tolerating what was really intolerable. Her departure, then, would mean the end of all things; for on the very next day he would send in his papers and face the world alone—the very next day, and not until then. So much respite he gave himself; and this respite, and not the prospect of parting, cast the only shade upon his happiness. For he felt that he held her friendship on a false pretence; that if she knew the truth, she would despise him. That is why the Commandant sat in a brown study.
"They are good children," repeated Vashti, "but like all other children they know nothing of their elders' troubles. I remember that I was nine or ten before ever it occurred to me that my father could have any troubles.... Now from the top of the hill where those three youngsters sat talking their fairy-tales, I looked over Cromwell's Sound and saw their father, Eli Tregarthen, pulling across from Inniscaw. By the very stoop of his shoulders over the paddles I seemed to read that the world had gone wrong with the man, and when he beached his boat and walked up the hill towards Saaron Farm, I felt sure of it. Of course you may laugh and set it down to fancy, for the man was a good three-quarters of a mile away."
The Commandant, however, did not laugh. "I think, very likely, you are right," said he; "and the man had been over to Inniscaw to make a last appeal to the Lord Proprietor."
"I wonder," mused Vashti, "if he is the sort of man to tell his wife?"
The Commandant pondered this and shook his head, meaning that he found it hard to answer. "I know very little of Tregarthen. In manner, though polite enough, he always struck me as reserved to the last degree."
"Men of that manner are often the frankest with their wives," said Vashti; "though again, if you ask me how I know it, I must answer that I can't tell you." She sat for a moment, her brows puckered with thought; then, leaning forward, rested her elbows on the table, while with eyes fixed seriously upon him she checked off the pros and cons on her fingers. "On the one hand Eli Tregarthen, being a reserved man, and brought up on Saaron, probably loves the island after a fashion that Ruth understands very dimly if at all. I love my sister——"
The Commandant nodded.
"—But all the same I know where she is weak as well as where she is strong. She never had that feeling for the Islands which helps me to guess how her husband feels about Saaron. I can't explain it"—here Vashti opened her palms and lowered them till her arms from the elbows rested flat upon the table. "Perhaps I can't make you, who were not born here, understand why it would be grief to me to think of being buried in any other earth. But I expect that Eli Tregarthen feels it, and feels that, if they uproot him from Saaron, his life will from that moment become a different thing, in which he has not learnt—perhaps never will learn—to take much interest. It's queer that, with just this difference between us, Ruth should have been the one to stay behind and I the one to go. But fate is queer.... Ruth is like her namesake in the Bible; home for her is the roof covering those she loves, and would be though she changed the Islands for the other end of the world. Therefore," said Vashti, sagely, "if she feels for her husband's trouble at all, it would be not as for a trouble that afflicted them both equally; she would be sorry for him as she would be if he were hurt or diseased. And you know that silent men, like Tregarthen, when they are struck by disease, will sometimes hide it from their wives to the last possible moment—will tell no one, but least of all their wives."
"Yes, that is true," the Commandant agreed.
"On the other hand"—here Vashti resumed her checking—"Ruth has a wonderful gift of coaxing people to confide in her even those things they very much doubt her understanding. She used to get me to tell my woes for the mere consolation of feeling her cheek against mine. She had a wonderful knack, too, of obliging me to be open with her, without ever asking it; and unless those children's faces and talk misled me quite, they were formed in a house where the parents keep no secrets from one another.... You can always tell."
This was news to the Commandant; and he admitted that, as an old bachelor, he had never observed it.
"Always!" insisted Vashti, nodding. "They spoke of their father quite as if he were one of themselves; which is not only rare, and not only proves that Eli Tregarthen is a good man, but persuades me that, being in trouble, he has told his wife."
"You are reasoning beyond my depths," said the Commandant. "But it all sounds admirably wise, and I grant it. What next?"
"Why, if Eli has told her, she will be in trouble to-day and I must go to her."
"To Saaron? This morning?"
"To Saaron, certainly; but not this morning, if you are engaged."
"To tell the truth I had meant to go to church; that is, if you can spare me."
Simple man that he was, he had meant—having a load to lift presently off his conscience—to receive and be confirmed by the Sacrament. "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent"—the words had been in his ears at the moment when he took his resolve. Hopeless though the prospect might be, he steadfastly intended to lead a new life.
"My friend," said Vashti. "I am contrite enough already for the amount of your time I have wasted. We will put off our voyage until the evening."
He smiled wryly, remembering how she had asked, "For what work do they pay you?"
But Vashti having decided upon an evening expedition, would not listen to his offer to sacrifice his church-going; and so to church he went, and confirmed himself, and remained to take the Sacrament on his new resolution.
Now whether or not he would have remained could he have divined what was happening on Garrison Hill I have no wish—as it would be indecent—to inquire.
But let us go back to Miss Gabriel.
Miss Gabriel, all the previous day, had been suffering from a sense of defeat, and at the hands of an enemy she had fallen into the habit of despising. A woman (or a man, for that matter) of Miss Gabriel's temper sees the world peopled with antagonists, and (perhaps fortunately for heramour propre) cannot see that her occasional victor is not only quite indifferent to his victory but has very possibly succeeded on the mere strength of not caring two pins about it, or even on the mere strength of not knowing that there was any fight going on. Such insouciance would have galled Miss Gabriel past endurance had it not, mercifully, lain outside her range of apprehension. As it was, she felt that the Commandant had taken her easily, at a disadvantage, and routed her—horse, foot, artillery, baggage.
And at the moment she had collapsed without a struggle. There lay the sting. She had meekly thrown up her hand, though it held one exceedingly strong trump. That woman in furs and diamonds.... Why had she not insisted on the existence of her own eyes and held her ground, demanding whence that woman came and what she did on Garrison Hill at such an hour?
The longer Miss Gabriel thought of it—and she thought of it all the next day—the more firmly she refused to believe herself the victim of an hallucination. She lived frugally; her nerves and digestion were alike in excellent order; in all her life she had never suffered from faintness, and but once or twice from a headache. The keenness of her eyesight was notorious, and she had a healthy contempt for anyone who believed in ghosts.... Moreover, Charlotte Pope, though inclined now to hedge about it, had undoubtedly seen the apparition.
"I wish, Elizabeth, you could find something else to talk about," pleaded Mrs. Pope, with a shiver. "You and I know everyone on the Islands and there's no one in the least like—like what we saw; while as for her jewels, they must have cost hundreds, if they were real."
"Ha!" exclaimed Miss Gabriel, with a decided sniff.
"I don't mean 'real' in that sense, Elizabeth; and I put it to you, Where could she have come from?"
Miss Gabriel could not answer this, nor did she try. "Then youdidsee her?" she was content to say.
"I—I thought I did."
"And I, Charlotte, am positive you did. Have you told your husband about it?"
"Not yet."
"Don't, then. Between ourselves, my dear Charlotte, an idea has occurred to me, and I fancy that if Major Vigoureux thinks he can delude me with his painted hussies he will find himself mistaken!"
More, for the moment, Miss Gabriel would not disclose. But it is to be feared that her design occupied her thoughts in church next morning to the detriment of her spiritual benefit. The good folk of Garland Town had—and still have—a pleasant custom of lingering outside the church porch for a few minutes after service to exchange greetings and a little mild gossip with their neighbours; and to Mr. and Mrs. Pope, thus lingering, Miss Gabriel attached herself with an air that meant business.
"Fine morning," said Miss Gabriel.
"The weather," assented Mr. Pope, clearing his throat, "is quite remarkable for the time of year. As I was observing to Mrs. Fossell, a moment ago, we might be in August month. Whether we attribute it or not to the influence of the Gulf Stream, in the matter of temperature we are wonderfully favoured."
"Quite so," said Miss Gabriel; "and I was about to propose our taking advantage of it for a short stroll on Garrison Hill, to whet our appetite." She heard Mrs. Pope gasp and went on hardily, "You and I, Mr. Pope, can remember the time when all the rank and fashion of Garland Town trooped up regularly after divine service to Garrison Hill. 'Church parade,' we used to call it."
"Indeed yes, Miss Gabriel—and with the Garrison band playing before us. Those were brave old days; and now I daresay that except for a stray pair of lovers no one promenades on Garrison Hill from year's end to year's end."
"It shocked me, the other night, to discover how completely I had forgotten it."
"You had indeed, ha-ha!" laughed Mr. Pope, with a roguish glance at his wife.
Miss Gabriel, too, glanced at her, and even more expressively. "Admire my boldness," it seemed to say, "and oblige me by imitating it as well as you can." Mrs. Pope began to tremble in her shoes.
"Oh, it was ridiculous! And I have a fancy to go over the ground again and prove to you, and to ourselves, how ridiculous it was. Shall we?"
"With pleasure." Mr. Pope bowed and offered his arm. In Garland Town, if you walked with two ladies it wasde rigueurto offer an arm to each.
The stars in their courses seemed to be helping Miss Gabriel's design. Her one anticipated difficulty—for she sought an interview with Mrs. Treacher, to pump her in the presence and hearing of the Lord Proprietor's agent—had been a possible interruption by the Commandant. To her glee she had noted that the Commandant kept his seat after service. For another thirty minutes at least the coast would be clear.
She had never a doubt of bribing Mrs. Treacher—or, to put it more delicately, of inducing her to talk. Mrs. Treacher's manner had been brusque the night before last; but Miss Gabriel's own manner was brusque, whether to friend or to foe, and nice shades of address escaped her. Mrs. Treacher was certainly poor, and with a poverty to which a shilling meant a great deal. And Miss Gabriel had a shilling ready in her pocket, as well as half-a-crown as a heroic resource in case of unlooked-for obstinacy. But the shilling would almost certainly suffice. Had not the donative antimacassar already established a claim upon the Treachers' gratitude?
Again, the stars in their courses seemed to be fighting for Miss Gabriel's design. For as the two ladies climbed the hill on Mr. Pope's arm, and when they were almost abreast of the barrack door, who should appear at the garden gate, on the opposite side of the road, but Mrs. Treacher herself? Catching sight of the visitors she halted in startled fashion, with her hand on the hasp of the gate.
"So few ever walk this way in these times," said Miss Gabriel, "I declare we have frightened the poor woman. Mrs. Treacher!"—she lifted her voice as she advanced.
"Ma'am."
"Mrs. Pope and I have been feeling not a little ashamed of ourselves that at the time we did not—er—recognise your—your kindness to us the other evening."
"Night, to be accyrate," said Mrs. Treacher, still interposing her ample body between them and the entrance to the garden. "Didn't you?"
"You put yourself to some inconvenience on our account," pursued Miss Gabriel; "and—and if you won't mind accepting—" Miss Gabriel held out the smaller coin by way of finishing the sentence.
"What's that for?" asked Mrs. Treacher.
"The circumstances were so unusual, and in a way—ha, ha!—so amusing——"
"Oh!" Mrs. Treacher interrupted. "Unusual, was they? I'm glad to hear it."
"Why, of course, they were unusual," Miss Gabriel persisted, albeit a trifle dashed; "and indeed so incredibly absurd that we have brought Mr. Pope to hear your account of them; for, I assure you, he'll hardly believe us."
Mrs. Treacher looked at Mr. Pope solemnly for the space of about ten seconds, and then as solemnly at the ladies.
"Whatwon't he believe?"
"Why"—Miss Gabriel plucked up her courage—"there was so much that afterwards, when we came to compare notes, neither of us could explain—as, for instance, who was the strange lady that walked into the room and was evidently surprised to see us, as we were naturally surprised to see her——-"
Mrs. Treacher turned slowly again to Mr. Pope, whose face (since this was the first he had heard of any strange lady) expressed no small astonishment.
"Poor man!" she murmured, sympathetically, "did they really go so far as all that?"
"I assure you—" began Mrs. Pope stammering.
"Oh, go your ways and take 'em home!" cut in Mrs. Treacher. "I'm a friend to my sex in most matters; but to come askin' me to back up such a tale as that, and for a shillin'!" She turned her palm over and let the coin drop on the soil at her feet.
But here unhappily, at the height of Mrs. Treacher's indignation, a sneeze sounded from a bush across the patch of garden; and the eyes of her visitors, attracted by the sound, rested on an object which Mrs. Treacher, by interposition of her shoulders, had been doing her best to hide—a scarecrow standing unashamed in the midst of the garrison potato patch—a scarecrow in a flaunting waistcoat of scarlet, green, and yellow!
"My antimacassar!" gasped Miss Gabriel.
"The Lord Pro—" Mr. Pope checked the exclamation midway. "You will excuse me, ma'am. I was referring to the lower part of the figure."
"Was ever such ingratitude?"
"It is worse, ma'am—ten times worse. You may call it sacrilege."
CHAPTER XV
BREFAR CHURCH
"It was all my fault," confessed Vashti.
"I was thinking so," said the Commandant, drily. "It had not occurred to me that Archelaus and the Treachers were acting on their own initiative."
Vashti laughed, and her laugh rippled over the waves to meet the sunset gold. They had taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St. Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as she checked herself with a glance at her companion's face, which also was reproachful and sternly set, but with a slight twitch at the corners of the mouth to betray it.
"Forgive me!" she pleaded, but her voice, too, betrayed her.
"You are not penitent in the least."
"As you are only pretending to be angry. Remember that I belong to the 'profession,' and no amateur acting can impose on me."
"You will admit that you have behaved abominably." The Commandant conceded a smile.
"Oh, abominably!"
"And perhaps you will be good enough to indicate how I am to restore my credit with—with those people. When I met them coming down the hill and pulled up to salute, Miss Gabriel froze me with a stare, Mrs. Pope looked the other way, and her husband could only muster up a furtive sort of grin. 'Excuse me,' it seemed to say; 'things may right themselves by and by, but for the present I cannot know you.' The three between them knocked me all of a heap. Of course I could not guess what had happened, but I made sure they had seen you."
"It was the closest miss that they did not. When they hove in sight I was actually standing in front of our masterpiece, with my back to the road; calling orders to Archelaus and Treacher, who were at work stuffingthem(so to speak) with straw. I fancy they have forgotten, on Garrison Hill, to guard against surprises. At any rate, we should have been taken in a highly unsoldier-like fashion if Mrs. Treacher hadn't kept her eye lifting. She gave the alarm, and we scuttled into the bushes like rabbits, and watched while she held the gate. What is more, I believe she would have fended off the danger if Sergeant Archelaus hadn't sneezed; and then—oh, then!—" Vashti paused, her eyes brimful of laughter.
"He broke cover?"
"I snatched at the tail of his tunic—hastily, I will admit—but until he had stepped past me I had no idea he meant to be so foolish. It came away in my hand. They heard the noise it made in ripping."
"But they did not see you?"
"No; for seeing that the mischief was done Sergeant Treacher stepped out too. You should have heard them explaining to Miss Gabriel! But they were quite brave and determined. They told me afterwards that rather than allow one of the visitors to enter and catch sight of me they would have picked up all three and carried them outside the garrison gate."
"The Lord Proprietor will certainly hear of this," said the Commandant, musing.
Vashti, who had bent to pin the sheet closer, lifted her head and regarded him with a puzzled frown; then, averting her eyes, let them travel under the foot of the sail towards the sunset.
"Decidedly the Lord Proprietor will hear of it," she said, after an interval during which he almost forgot that he had spoken. "Indeed, if it will help to get you, or Archelaus, or anyone out of a scrape, I propose to call on him to-morrow and confess all. Do you think he will be lenient?"
There was a shade of contempt in the question, and it called a flush to the Commandant's cheek. He was about to answer, but checked himself and sat silent, looking down at the foam that ran by the boat's gunwale.
"He must be worth visiting, too; that is, if one may reconstruct him from—from them."
The Commandant smiled. "My dear lady, you have already made one attempt to reconstruct him from them."
Vashti pondered awhile, her chin resting on her hand and her eyes yet fixed upon the sunset.
"I give you fair warning that I am here on a holiday," she murmured.
"I don't know what you consider a fair warning; but I had guessed so much."
"The first for fifteen years," she pursued; "and I won't promise that I shall not behave worse—considerably worse. Are you very angry with me?"
"My dear," answered the Commandant ("My dear," it should be explained, is the commonest form of address in the Islands, and one that even a prisoner will use to the magistrate trying him), "if you really wish to know, I am enjoying myself recklessly; and it would be idle to call my garrison to put you under restraint, since you have already suborned them. I started, you see, with the imprudence of showing you my defences, and now you have us all at your mercy."
"You have been more than good to me," said Vashti, after a pause; "but the fortress is already vacated." She nodded towards a valise which rested under the thwart by the foot of the mast. "Mrs. Treacher packed it for me," she explained, "and her husband carried it down to the boat. If Ruth needs me—as she almost certainly does—and if her husband will tolerate me, I shall sleep on Saaron to-night."
"But you will come back?" he asked, dismayed.
"Certainly not, unless the Lord Proprietor drives me to seek refuge."
The Commandant did not answer. He had known that this happy time must be short; he had known it from the first, and that the end would come unexpectedly.
The wind had fallen slightly, and the boat crept up to the entrance of Cromwell's Sound with sail that alternately tautened its sheet and let it fall slack. The single bell of Brefar Church yet rung to service; but the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the sea-lights were flashing around the horizon before Saaron loomed close on the port hand; and as they crept towards the East Porth under the loom of the Island, a row-boat shot out from the beach there, and headed up the Sound towards Brefar.
"Hush!" commanded Vashti, and peered forward.
But a boat putting out from Saaron at this hour could only belong to Saaron's only inhabitants, and could be bound but on one errand. And Ruth was in her, for, presently, as the children's voices travelled back across the still water, Vashti heard Matthew Henry's pitched to a shrill interrogative and calling his mother by name.
"They are rowing to church, the whole family," said Vashti. "We can follow as slowly as we choose."
She listened a moment, but the oars in the boat ahead continued their regular plash. It may be that Tregarthen had failed to discern the small sail astern of him in the gloom of the land. She lowered it quietly, stowed it, found and inserted the thole-pins, and shipped the paddles. Yet it seemed that she was in no hurry to row. She but dipped a blade twice to check the boat from swinging broadside-on to the tide, and so rested silent for minute after minute, gazing through the gloom towards the bright sea-lights.
And it seemed to the Commandant, seated and watching her, that he could read some of the thoughts behind her gaze. His own went back again to the night of his first coming to the Islands, when, as at sunset he supposed himself to have discovered them, all of a sudden they discovered him—reef after reef opening a great shining eye upon him; and some of the eyes were steady, but most of them intermittent, and all sent long gleaming rays along the floor of the sea; a dozen sea-lights and eleven of them yellow, but the twelfth (that upon North Island) a deep glowing crimson. Since then and for fifteen years they had been his friends. Nightly he watched them for minutes from his window before undressing for bed; and in fanciful moments they seemed to draw a circle of witchcraft around the Islands.
If they meant so much to him what must they mean to her who had left home, dear ones, and all memories of youth?—and who, returned from exile, stood with her hand upon the latch of the old cupboard!
"Ruth will have changed," said Vashti, speaking aloud, but to herself. "It is impossible that she has not changed."
She dipped her paddles and began to pull, gently at first and almost languidly; but by and by strength came into her arms and the boat began to move at a pace that astonished the Commandant.
Brefar Church stands on a green knoll close by the water's edge and only a few yards above a shingly beach where the Islanders bring their boats to shore. Its bell had ceased ringing long before its windows came into view with the warm lamp light shining within; and the beach lay dark under the shadow of the tamarisks topping the graveyard wall. Vashti, not in the least distressed by her exertions, sprang ashore and sought about for a good mooring-stone. She had found one almost before the Commandant, following, could offer to help her in her search. Together they hauled the boat a few yards up from the water.
"Are we to go inside?" the Commandant asked, looking up at the lighted building.
Before Vashti could answer a reedy harmonium sounded within and the congregation broke into the "Old Hundredth" hymn—