"All people that on earth do dwell,Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice——"
"All people that on earth do dwell,Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice——"
"All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice——"
The incongruity of it, sung by a handful of fisherfolk here on an islet of the Atlantic—the real congruity (if indeed the Church be, as the Bidding Prayer defines it, "the whole body of Christian people dispersed throughout the world")—was probably less perceptible to the Commandant after fifteen years' sojourn on the Islands than to Vashti, newly returned from great continents and crowded cities. But if she smiled the darkness did not betray her. The Commandant saw her lift a hand beckoning him to follow, and followed her up the knoll to a whitewashed gate glimmering between the dark masses of the tamarisks.
She opened it and disappeared into the churchyard. He followed, stumbling along the narrow path, and overtook her at the angle of the south porch. She was in the act of mounting upon a flat tombstone which lay close in the wall's shadow. A panel of light streamed from the window directly above, and fell on Vashti's face as she drew herself erect upon the slab and leaned forward, her fingers resting on the granite mullions; but a light not derived from this shone in her eyes a moment later. With a little sob of joy she pressed her forehead close against the leaded panes.
The Commandant heard the sound, and guessed the cause of it. The light in her eyes he could not see. He stood among the dark nettles, looking up at her, waiting for the hymn to conclude.
The "Amen" came at last. He heard the shuffling of feet as the congregation knelt to pray ... and, with that, Vashti turned and bent to whisper to him.
"She is there—almost abreast of us, standing by the pillar. She is kneeling now—my own Ruth—and her face is hidden."
He supposed that she bent to step down from the slab, and he put up a hand to help her. A tear fell on the back of his fingers, as it were a single raindrop out of the night.... But she turned impulsively, and pressed her face again to the glass.
"She is praying. She will not look up again.... She would not turn her eyes just now, though her own sister stood so close! They were lifted to the lights in the chancel and to the dark window." Then, as it seemed, with sudden inconsequence, she added: "Forgive me, sir! You have been kind to me, and it is so many years—so many years——"
"My dear," said the Commandant, gravely, as he handed her down, "you honour me more than I can tell. All my life I shall remember that you have so honoured me."
But it did not appear that she heard him. Letting go his hand, she seated herself on the edge of the tombstone, and looked up at him with eyes that, barely touched by the light from the window, seemed to him strangely, almost pitifully childish—eyes of a child that had lost its mother young.
"Her face was not changed, or a very little; far less than I feared. She is beautiful, my own Ruth—beautiful as she is good."
"And happy?" he found himself asking.
"Happy and unhappy. Happy in her good man, in her children?—oh, yes. But unhappy, just now, because they are unhappy and in trouble. There was a gloom upon Eli Tregarthen's face, a look of pain——"
"Of anger, too, and of wonder mixed with it, I daresay. He has been hit by a blow he does not understand."
"But we will help them."
The Commandant stared into the darkness. There was gloom, too, on his face, had there been light enough to reveal it.
"The Lord Proprietor is a very obstinate man."
"Yes, yes; but I mean that we will help them to-night. I cannot bear to think of Ruth carrying her trouble home and lying awake with it."
"Perhaps she will not." The Commandant remembered how he himself had carried a burden to church that morning and left it there.
"Ah!" exclaimed Vashti, swiftly, guessing his thought, though not the occasion of it. "That may do for you and me. For my part, I am not a religious woman—I mean, not religious as I ought to be. Yet I understand. Often and often when worried or out of temper I go to church and sit there alone until peace of mind comes back to me. But I have no husband, and you no wife; whereas with Ruth all her soul's comfort is bound up in those she loves. While Eli Tregarthen wears that look on his face, she can never go home happy."
"But have we power to lift it?"
"We will try, and to-night."
She stood up, cast one look behind her at the lighted window, and led the way back along the path, through the gate, and down the knoll to the beach. While she cast off the rope from its mooring-stone he eased the boat off and launched her.
"Shall I take the paddles?" he asked.
No; Vashti would pull back as she had come; and as she pulled she talked of Ruth, out of her full heart. He listened, between joy and pain—joy to be sitting here, honoured with her confidences, though he had none but a listener's share in them—here, in the still, scented evening, caressed by her marvellous voice; and pain, not because her talk charged life full of new meanings, every one of which he felt to be vitally true and as certainly missed by his own starved experience, but because it took him for granted as a kindly stranger, an outsider admitted to these mysteries, and warned him that his time on this holy ground was short; nay, that it was drawing swiftly to a close. And how could he go back to the old monotony, the old routine?
He remembered that, to whatever he went back, it would not be to these—at any rate, not for long. The future might hold degradation, poverty of the sharpest, hard work for a pittance of daily bread; but at least his dismissal would send him back to a life in which lay somewhere these meanings that trembled like visions of light in the heart of Vashti's talk. They gave him glimpses of the heaven which, by their remembered rays, he must seek for himself. How many years had he wasted—how many years!
They moored the boat close under the cliff's shadow, and, climbing the rocks, between the cove and the East Porth, sat down to wait. Vashti sat in reverie, plucking and smelling at small tufts of the thyme; then, rousing herself with a happy laugh, she challenged the Commandant to name her all the islets, rock by rock, lying out yonder in the darkness. He tried, and she corrected omission after omission, mocking him. What did he care? It was enough to be seated here, close with her in the starry, odorous night.
Presently she tired of the contest, and clasping her knees began, without warning given, to croon a little song—
"Over the rim of the moor,And under a starry sky,Two men came to my doorAnd rested them wearily.Beneath the bough and the starIn a whispering foreign tongue,They talked of a land afar,And the merry days so young."
"Over the rim of the moor,And under a starry sky,Two men came to my doorAnd rested them wearily.
"Over the rim of the moor,
And under a starry sky,
Two men came to my door
And rested them wearily.
Beneath the bough and the starIn a whispering foreign tongue,They talked of a land afar,And the merry days so young."
Beneath the bough and the star
In a whispering foreign tongue,
They talked of a land afar,
And the merry days so young."
She sang it as though to herself, or as though answering the murmur of the tide on the rocks at their feet; but at the third verse her voice lifted:
"Beneath the dawn and the boughI heard them arise and go—But my heart, it is aching—aching now,For the more it will never know."
"Beneath the dawn and the boughI heard them arise and go—But my heart, it is aching—aching now,For the more it will never know."
"Beneath the dawn and the bough
I heard them arise and go—
But my heart, it is aching—aching now,
For the more it will never know."
The song died away in a low wistful minor, as though it breathed its last upon a question. "The merry days—the merry days, so young," she echoed, after a pause, and lifted her head suddenly.
"Hark!"
The sound—it was the plash of oar—grew upon the darkness. A light shot out beyond the last point of Brefar, and its ray fell waving on the black water. It came from a lantern in the bows of the Tregarthen's boat, and as it drew nearer the two listeners could distinguish the children's voices.
They shrank back there in the shadow above the ledge, as the boat took ground and Eli Tregarthen, stepping ashore in his sea-boots, set the lantern on the stones of the beach, lifted out the children, and lent a hand to Ruth. The little ones scampered up the path; but Ruth waited by her husband while he heaved the boat high and dry with his easy, careless strength, and saw to her moorings. When all was done, and as he stooped to pick up the lantern, she came to him, and put a hand on his arm. So, and without speech, they went up the path together.
The rays of the lantern danced on the furze-bushes to right and left of the path.... Vashti leapt to her feet; her hands went up to her lips and hollowed themselves to a low call.
"Lul—lul—loo—ee!"
From the brake above came a little cry, a little gasping cry; and gruffly upon it Eli Tregarthen's voice challenged—
"Who goes there?"
"Caa-ra! caa-ra!... Oh, Ruth—my sister!"
The Commandant saw Tregarthen's lantern lifted above the gorse, and by the light of it Ruth came down to the narrow pathway—came with the face of a ghost, as Vashti sprang up the slope towards her.
"Vassy! Not Vassy!——-"
But Vashti's arms were about her for proof. The Commandant, standing below in the shadow of the brake, heard the younger sister's sobs.
"Vassy! And to-night!"
"To-night, and for many nights——-"
"Thank God! Thank God!"
The Commandant, by the light of the lantern which Eli Tregarthen held stupidly, saw them go up the path, their arms holding each other's waist. They disappeared, but their questions and eager, broken answers, as they climbed towards Saaron, came down to him where he stood alone, forgotten.
He stood there for half an hour almost. Then, as he felt the chill of the night he recalled himself to action with a shiver, and shouldered Vashti's valise. Slowly he climbed the hill with it, to Saaron Farm, and rapped on the door.
Tregarthen opened to him, staring.
"I have brought your sister-in-law's luggage."
"Is it the Governor?... But won't you step inside, sir?"
"I thank you; no. It is late," answered the Commandant, curtly, and turned on his heel.
As he went by the window he saw—he could not help seeing—Ruth in her chair, with Vashti on the hearth beside her, clasping her knees. The children looked on in a wondering semi-circle.
He stumbled down the hill, and as he went he heard the door softly close behind him.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LORD PROPRIETOR'S AUDIENCE
Sir Cæsar Hutchins, Lord Proprietor, paced the terrace of his great house at Inniscaw, and paused ever and anon to survey the prospect with a lordly proprietary eye. He had breakfasted, and at breakfast (to use his own words) he always did himself justice. Indeed, throughout a strenuous business career he had never failed to take very good care of himself, and was now able to enjoy a clear conscience with an easy digestion.
The reader may ask with some surprise how such a man, accustomed all his life to the bustle and traffic of Finsbury Pavement, E. C., could choose, in his middle age, to turn his back on these and purchase an exile out in the Atlantic, where no one bought or sold shares, and where only Mr. Fossell, perhaps—and he from a week-old newspaper—caught an echo of the world's markets, whether they rose or fell. But, in truth, Sir Cæsar had chosen carefully, deliberately. He had always intended to enjoy in later life the wealth for which he had worked hard in his prime; and as soon as his fortune was assured, he had made several cautious but determined experiments to discover where enjoyment might abide. He had, for instance, rented a grouse-moor, and invited a large company to help him, by shooting the birds, to feel that he was getting a return for his money. But somehow his guests, though very good fellows in London, did not harmonize (to his mind) with the highland wastes. He was glad when they departed; the scenery improved at once—at any rate, he took more pleasure in it. He tried a deer forest and found this tolerable, but he soon made the further discovery that shooting bored him, that is to say, all shooting of higher rank that the potting of rabbits. He was one of those enviable persons who "know what they like." If he made trial of these expensive recreations, it was simply because he saw men ambitious for them, and supposed they would certainly yield some gratification to explain it; but, having made trial for himself and missed the gratification, he abandoned them without a sigh. Hence his wardrobe had come to include a pair of deer-stalking breeches, very little the worse for wear. (He had never anticipated any satisfaction in wearing a kilt).
At another time he had owned a steam yacht; and this had taught him that he liked the sea and suffered no inconvenience from its motion. But from the yacht itself he derived small satisfaction after he had shown it to his friends, and been envied by poorer men for possessing such a toy. It might have been amusing to carry these admirers about with him in extended cruises; but they, being poor, were busy and could not afford the time, while his rich acquaintances owned steam yachts of their own. Moreover, though unaccustomed to sport, he had always taken a fair amount of exercise; his liver required it; and at yachting—that is to say, sitting on deck in a comfortable chair—he put on flesh at an alarming rate. Therefore, from this pastime also he retired.
Though these experiments were in themselves uniformly unsuccessful, he had not made them in vain; but, keeping his wits about him, had arrived by a process of exhaustion at some of the essentials of pleasure; and this, after all, was not so bad for a man who had started with no knowledge concerning it and with a deal of false information. He knew now that he required exercise, that he could be happy in solitude, and that his landscape would be all the better if it neighboured on the sea. (Of his immunity from sea-sickness he was honestly prouder than of anything his money had been able, as yet, to purchase.) He had scarcely made these discoveries when the lease of the Islands came into the market.
Then, as he read the advertisement in theTimesnewspaper, in a flash he had divined his opportunity, had seen a happy future unrolled before him. His error hitherto had lain, not in exchanging Finsbury Pavement for scenes where the free elements had play, but in seeking to change himself and do violence to his own habits of mind and body. In the Islands he could practice, as a benevolent despot, that mastery of men which had given him power in the city; he could devote uncontradicted to the cause of philanthropy—or with only so much contradiction as lent a spice to triumph—those faculties which he had been sharpening all his life in quest of money. They remained sharp as ever, though the old appetite had been dulled.
He was a widower. He had no ambition but his own to consult; he alone would suffer if he made a mistake—and he felt sure he was not making a mistake. Though not given to day-dreams (Finsbury Pavement discouraged him), he had an ounce of imagination distributed about his brain (few, even among money-making men, succeed with less), and it had once or twice occurred to him that a king's must be, in spite of drawbacks, a highly enviable lot—at any rate in countries west of Russia. Well, here was his chance.
He took it boldly; and to-day, had you asked him, he would have acknowledged with a smile that he did not repent. All kings, to be sure, have their worries. The army had not shown itself too well affected towards the new reign. But when an army consists of three soldiers....
The Lord Proprietor, gazing down from his terrace upon the twinkling waters of the roadstead, caught sight of a row-boat coming across from St. Lide's, and as it drew near, recognised its sole occupant for Sergeant Archelaus.
He felt for his cigar case, chose and lit a cigar, and rested his elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, watching, while the old man brought his boat to the landing-quay, landed leisurely, and crossed the meadow to the foot of the gardens, where, at the pace he was keeping, one might allow him a couple of minutes at least before he re-emerged into view at the foot of the steps leading up to the terrace. But, as it happened, a bare fifty seconds elapsed before he came darting out of the boscage and scrambled up the stairway in a sweating hurry, two steps at a time.
"You shouldn't, Sergeant; you really shouldn't—at your time of life," expostulated the Lord Proprietor, kindly, withdrawing the cigar from his mouth.
"Then you shouldn't keep ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank against a pilaster and mopped his brow.
"Take care of that urn!" cried the Lord Proprietor, in a warning voice. "It contains aPhormium tenaxthat I wouldn't lose on any account."
"A what?"
"A New Zealand Flax.... The ostriches chased you, did they?"
"They did—the pair of 'em. It goes against a man's stomach, too, being chased by a bird."
"To me," said the Lord Proprietor, "it is gratifying evidence that they are recovering their spirits, which were hipped after the long voyage from Cape Town. But here, in the Gulf Stream, my theory is that we can acclimatise almost anything, animal or vegetable. Already they begin to feel its invigorating influence."
"Talking of vegetables, sir"—Archelaus shifted a canvas bag from his shoulders to the ground and began to untie the string which bound its neck.
"Pray take breath," suggested the Lord Proprietor. "At your age—and with the little exercise you get on Garrison Hill——"
"We don't keep ostriches," said Archelaus, curtly. "But, talking of vegetables, the Governor sends his compliments to you, sir, and begs your acceptance of a few choice plants in return for the small clothes you lent me."
"'Lent' you, Archelaus? 'Gave,' you mean."
"Oh, sir, but—excuse me—I couldn't—there was them ostriches to be considered."
"It has occurred to me," went on the Lord Proprietor, who was in the best of moods this morning, "that those—er—breeches might be a trifle conspicuous—a shade too highly pronounced in pattern—to be worn with uniform."
"As for that, sir," answered Archelaus, tactfully, "life on the Islands isn't like active service, where a man has to be careful about exposing himself to marksmanship."
"In Inverness a pattern like that would excite no comment."
"I've never been there," said Archelaus.
"It—er—harmonises, as it were, with the natural surroundings: with the loch, the glen, the strath. So with those curious tartans to which the Scottish highlanders are—er—addicted. Seen by themselves, and to a sensitive, artistic eye, they appear crude and almost violent in their contrast of colours; but seen in conjunction with the expanse of native moorland, the undulating stretches of the heather——"
"'Tis but niggling scenery we have in these parts, to be sure," agreed Archelaus.
"I have sometimes thought thatmutatis mutandisthe same may be true of the bagpipes, the strains of which—'skirl,' I believe, is the proper expression—are not altogether discordant with the moaning of the wind over those desolate moors or the cries uttered by their wilder denizens; though, speaking personally, I never could endure the instrument."
"Me either," agreed Archelaus again, shuffling a little on his feet, as the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that the Lord Proprietor meant to present him with yet another pair of trousers.
Sir Cæsar, however, chose to play for a minute with his benevolent design.
"There is no more delicate study," he went on, "than that of acclimatisation. None which requires a nicer union of artistic daring with artistic judgment, patience, with decision.... I propose to go in for it pretty extensively on Inniscaw."
"Yes, sir?"
"The ostriches have been a great encouragement."
"I suppose, now, when you get accustomed to 'em——"
"Though I have yet to prove that they will breed here. Yet, why not? The Gulf Stream, I am assured, has a stimulating influence upon all forms of organic life, animal as well as vegetable. It may be compared with that inward volcanic heat which, in and around the Bay of Naples, clothes the shore with verdure, and is not without responsibility for the passions of the inhabitants.... But, as I was saying, a man must use judgment. A plant may thrive when transferred across a thousand miles of ocean, may propagate itself even more freely than in its native habitat, and yet, to the artistic eye, be never truly at home. Its colour, of flower or foliage, refuses to blend with our landscape, to adapt itself to our Atlantic skies. It is my hobby, Sergeant, to discover not only what imported plants will flourish with our soil and climate, but what particular one is worthiest of cultivation; and, having discovered that, I propose to bend all my best energies upon it.... Eh? But where did you get those remarkably fine bulbs?"
Archelaus held out three in the palm of his hand.
"From the garrison garden, sir; with the Governor's compliments, and understanding you to take an interest in bulbs."
"Daffodils? Some species of narcissus, at any rate."
The Lord Proprietor took one of the bulbs and examined it, turning it over. "I had no idea that Major Vigoureux—er—went in for this sort of thing, or I'd have done myself the pleasure of visiting his garden."
"You wouldn't find much in it, sir," said Archelaus, hastily, remembering yesterday's adventure. "At least not much to interest you. To tell the truth, the Governor sets very little store by these, though they look pretty enough in March month. But wanting to show his feelings in the matter of those trousers——"
"You shall have another pair!"
"Oh!" said Archelaus, in spite of himself, and though he had miserably foreseen the offer for ten minutes past.
"And you may take back my thanks to the Commandant, and tell him that I hope, within the next few days, to pay him a call."
Archelaus touched his forelock, bringing up his palm at the right military salute—in those days a complicated operation. To himself he breathed a thanksgiving that the Fair Lady (as he and the Treachers called Vashti) had taken her departure from Garrison Hill overnight. Ever since breakfast he had been feeling sadly dejected about it and so (if appearances might be trusted) had his master. There is a fearful joy, after all, in living on a volcano.
But, alas, for Sergeant Archelaus! He was at this moment standing on the crust of a volcano, and that crust was momentarily wearing thinner.
The shore beneath the great house of Inniscaw has two landing quays, of which the eastern (Archelaus had used the western) lies hidden from view of the terrace, and can be approached by a boat keeping close under St. Lide's shore. Engrossed in his lecture upon acclimatisation, the Lord Proprietor had missed to perceive a boat making for this eastern quay; and so had Archelaus, for the simpler reason that he stood with his back to the view.
"Step into the house with me, and you shall make your choice between half-a-dozen pairs," the Lord Proprietor invited him.
"If you are sure it's not troubling you," said Archelaus.
"My good man—" began the Lord Proprietor, leading the way; and with that he turned about, surprised that Archelaus was not following. "Eh? What's the matter?"
But Archelaus, speechless, was staring along the terrace to its eastern end, where, at the head of a flight of steps leading down among the shrubberies, a head had suddenly uprisen into view—a head in a gray bonnet with trimmings of subdued violet—the head of Miss Gabriel.
"H'm!" said Miss Gabriel, and turned to Mr. and Mrs. Pope, who were mounting the stairway at her heels.
CHAPTER XVII
THE LORD PROPRIETOR RECEIVES A DOUBLE SHOCK
"H'm!" said Miss Gabriel again, as she once more surveyed the shrinking Archelaus. "So you allowed you'd steal a march on me?"
"I had no such thought, ma'am," stammered Archelaus.
"You'll get no good out of it, anyway; and of that I warn you. Good morning, sir!"—this with a curtsey to the Lord Proprietor.
"Good morning, ma'am! How d'ye do, Pope?—and your good lady is well, I hope? But to what do I owe this unexpected—er—honour?"
"Him," said Miss Gabriel, nodding, and with scarcely a change of tone.
"To Sergeant Archelaus, ma'am? Why, what has he been doing?"
"You might better ask—" Miss Gabriel answered slowly, emphatically, with her eye on the culprit—"what he has not."
"Whichever you please, ma'am. Come!"
"I find a difficulty in putting a name to it," pursued Miss Gabriel, still in the same level tone. "But Mr. Pope will bear me out. If he doesn't, I shall still allow no false delicacy to stand between me and my duty."
"Miss Gabriel means, sir," explained Mr. Pope, "that the articles in question——"
"What articles, man?" asked the Lord Proprietor, as Mr. Pope, in his turn, hesitated.
"Trousers," said Miss Gabriel, setting her face. "No, Charlotte"—she turned upon Mrs. Pope—"this is no time for mincing language. They were on a scarecrow, sir, in the very middle of the garrison garden, along with my waistcoat——"
"Your waistcoat, ma'am!"
"That is to say, with my antimacassar, which I had converted into a waistcoat and presented, in the innocence of my heart, to Treacher; the clothing of these men being nothing short of a scandal. But for scandal, sir, their clothes won't compare with their doings. Not to mention——"
"My dear lady, I implore you, let us take one thing at a time! You wish to make some statement about a scarecrow—in the garrison garden—adorned (am I right?) with a waistcoat you were once kind enough to present to Sergeant Treacher, and (I gather) with a pair of trousers about which you are less explicit." The Lord Proprietor paused. His eyes grew round with sudden, terrible suspicion. "You don't mean to tell me—" he asked slowly.
Miss Gabriel nodded, and wagged an accusing forefinger at Archelaus.
"That's just what Idomean. And if you want a picture of guilt, look at that man!"
The Lord Proprietor turned and stared at him, gasping.
"My trousers?Mine?" But here speech failed him, and he stood opening and shutting his mouth like a newly-landed fish.
Archelaus flung a wild glance about him, vainly seeking escape.
"You're looking at it in the wrong light, all of you," he mumbled, feebly.
"And on the Sabbath, too!" put in Mrs. Pope.
"This man"—the Lord Proprietor held up a hand as though calling Heaven to witness—"On what pretence do you suppose that he came here this morning? Why, to thank me! To thank me for those very—er—articles of which you tell me he makes a public mock! Look at the bag in his hand—what do you suppose that it contains?"
"Adders," suggested Mrs. Pope. "I shouldn't be surprised."
"You may well say so, ma'am. It might well be adders. Indeed, I'm not sure it isn't worse."
"Oh!" Mrs. Pope, already backing before the horrors of her own imagination, caught at the balustrade for support.
"Daffodils, ma'am! A present of daffodil bulbs, with the Commandant's compliments, and in acknowledgment of my gift! Could hypocrisy go farther?"
"Major Vigoureux," said Miss Gabriel, "was never a friend of mine. Let those who thought better of him defend him now, when he shows himself in his true colours."
But here Archelaus pulled himself together.
"The Governor," he answered sullenly, "had nothing to do with it. The Governor was in church at the time, as is well known to all of you."
"Yes, yes," interposed Mrs. Pope. "Let us be just. The Commandant was certainly in church at the time. On our homeward way we met him returning from church; and I would add, sir—if you will forgive me—that he is a gentleman quite incapable of suggesting or conniving at so vulgar a trick."
"H'm!" The Lord Proprietor accepted this with a snort, for he could not help being aware of its truth. But his wrath still needed a vent, and he turned upon Archelaus again.
"The Governor?" he echoed. "Are you ignorant that Major Vigoureux is not Governor of these Islands, nor has he been for three years?—even if he had ever a right to the title."
"He'smyGovernor, anyway," answered Archelaus, turning more and more dogged; "and he's Treacher's; and I reckon you'll find, if you try any games, that he's Treacher's missus' Governor, too."
"Insolent!"—This from Miss Gabriel.
"I ain't denyin' it, ma'am. Insolent I be, and a little freedom o' speech about it is no more than your rights. Insolent I've behaved, and if you'll take and ask the Governor to punish me for it, 'tisn't more than I deserve. He'll do it, be sure. As Mister Pope told you just now, the Governor's a gentleman; he wouldn't play such a trick, not if you was to offer him the world and the kingdoms thereof; and he'll be teasy as fire when he hears about it. But I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, all, don't you take the law into your own hands over this distressin' case, but go to him meek-like an' say you want Arch'laus punished. That's all. Leastways, that's all, unless you ask my honest opinion on the breeches in question, which is, that I wouldn't put 'em astride a clothes-horse and call him a son o' mine."
The Lord Proprietor stepped back, purple in the face.
But Miss Gabriel flew at game higher than Archelaus.
"That is all very well," she interposed, in her coldest, most incisive tone. "But to whom does the credit of this insult belong if not to Major Vigoureux? You may talk till doomsday, my man, before I'll believe that you and Treacher thought of it." She stood for a second or two, eyeing him. "A-ah!" she said, a little above her breath. "I thought as much!... Therewasa woman, Charlotte, and that woman is at the bottom of the whole business. I ask you, if you doubt it, to look at his face."
"She'd nothin' to do with it," affirmed Archelaus, stolidly, drawing the back of his hand across his brow.
"She?" mocked Miss Gabriel. "And pray who is 'she'?"
Archelaus made a bold effort to recover himself. "Why, Treacher's missus ... unless you mean the Ghost."
"That Treacher's missus (as you call her) bore her hand in the sport I have the evidence of my own eyes; and if by 'the Ghost' you allude to a painted hussy that Mrs. Pope and I surprised, the other night, in your master's quarters, I advise you to keep that for the Marines. Sir,"—Miss Gabriel turned to the Lord Proprietor—"this petty insult of the scarecrow is the smallest part of our complaint against Major Vigoureux. We have reason to believe—we have ocular proof—that the Major is at this moment and by stealth entertaining a most undesirable guest at the Barracks."
"My dear Elizabeth, we cannot be altogether sure!" objected Mrs. Pope.
"Speak for yourself, Charlotte." Miss Gabriel folded her hands and bent on Archelaus a gaze under which he felt himself withering. "I am quite sure."
"Undesirable, ma'am?" asked the Lord Proprietor, thoroughly mystified. "In what sense undesirable?"
"—Unless," answered Miss Gabriel, tapping her foot, and with the air of one who curbs a virtuous impatience, "unless you can suggest a term more appropriate to a Jezebel; in which case I shall stand corrected."
"Jezebel? Jezebel? But, my dear Miss Gabriel, consider before you bring such a charge: here especially in the presence of Major Vigoureux's servant, who will doubtless report it to his master. Reflect how serious it is. Reflect——"
"Why, bless the man!" Miss Gabriel cut him short disdainfully. "As if I hadn't been reflecting for three days on end! Let him sue me for slander if he dare. I'll stick to my guns, if I kiss the book upon it; and what's more, so will Charlotte Pope."
"I never said so, Elizabeth," pleaded Mrs. Pope.
"And very wisely, ma'am." Sir Cæsar nodded approval. "For, as I was about to say, reflect upon the extreme improbability—nay, the utter impossibility—that—er—such a person could visit the Islands unnoticed and actually spend three days on Garrison Hill undetected by any save yourself. Nay, if we grant the miracle of her arrival, who is to assure us that she has not by this time as mysteriously vanished? In that case, what have we to show for our suspicions? How, setting aside the Major's indignation, shall we find ourselves less than a laughing stock for the whole population of the Islands?"
"And sarve ye right!" added Archelaus, who began to perceive that this thundercloud had its silver lining. But if he counted on daunting Miss Gabriel, he was mistaken.
"Turn you round, my man," snapped that indomitable lady. "Turn you round, and give me a look at those coat-tails of yours. Ha!" she exclaimed, as Archelaus, by habit obedient to the word of command, faced about towards the balustrade. "There was a coat-tail missing yesterday, if I remember, when you crept out from the bushes like a whipped urchin, and now there's two: and you'll be telling me that these fine stitches were put in by Jane Treacher, who is like most soldier's wives, and sews like a cow!"
"The Lord have mercy upon us!" said Archelaus, in a hushed voice.
It took them two or three seconds to understand that the words were not an answer to Miss Gabriel; that he had spoken them to himself, staring—as he still stared—down the steps, down the green alley leading to the terrace.
Then, perceiving that something was amiss with the man, they too stepped to the balustrade and looked down—as up the leafy path came the very woman of their speculations—Vashti, faultlessly arrayed, trailing a neat parasol and humming a song as she drew near.
"The same!" gasped Miss Gabriel. "I call you to witness, Charlotte!"
"But, you'll excuse me," Mr. Pope objected, "she don't appear to answer precisely to a Jezebel."
"You men think of nothing but outward show," snapped Miss Gabriel.
"Well, and that's something," Archelaus put in with affability, his spirits rising as the danger drew nearer. "Talk about Garrison Hill! She seems to be pretty well at home on Inniscaw, too." For Vashti, halting in the chequered sunlight beneath a trellised arch, had reached up the hooked handle of her sunshade to draw down the spray of a late autumnal rose, and stood for a moment inhaling its odour.
It may be that just then she caught sight of the watchers upon the terrace. If so, not a movement betrayed her. As though reluctantly, she released the branch and, as it sprang upward, resumed her way up the path, disappearing for a moment under a massed canopy of Virgin's Bower. A few seconds, and she would emerge into view again, almost at the foot of the terrace stairs.
They waited.
"But whatever has become of the woman?" asked Miss Gabriel.
"It's confoundedly odd!" growled the Lord Proprietor.
"She may have turned down a by-path."
"There's no by-path within fifty yards of her. More likely she's stopping to take a smell of the clematis.... We might step down and see." The Lord Proprietor suited the action to the words and led the way.
"In my opinion, if you want it," said Archelaus, "you won't find her there. Because why? She's a ghost."
"A ghost?" quavered Mrs. Pope.
"Nonsense, my dear!" Her husband offered his arm to assist her down the steps. "Such a beautiful young person!"
"The first time I saw her she didn't frighten me at all," agreed Mrs. Pope; "but if she's going to bob in and out of sight in this way, I shan't sleep in my bed to-night."
A cry from the Lord Proprietor startled them. He had plunged down the path beneath the overarching clematis. They ran to overtake him, and found him staring at vacancy. Vashti had vanished, apparently into thin air.
"Oh, but this is midsummer moonshine!" declared Sir Cæsar. "The woman must be hiding somewhere near. Miss Gabriel, if you will kindly attend to Mrs. Pope, her husband and I will search the thickets hereabouts."
They searched in the thickets and along the garden paths, but without recovering a trace of the unknown. Not so much as a glimpse of her skirt rewarded them.
Sergeant Archelaus abandoned the search early, dodged into the plantations on the left, and went his way chuckling, back to his boat.
"A terrible trying morning," he allowed, as he cast loose; "but the end was worth it."
CHAPTER XVIII
VASHTI PLEADS FOR SAARON
For twenty minutes Sir Cæsar and Mr. Pope beat the shrubberies, and even carried their search down to the great walled garden which was one of the wonders of Inniscaw. Tradition said that the old monks had built it, of bricks baked upon the mainland; and that it had been their favourite pleasance, because its walls shut out all view of the sea. Certainly if the old monks had built this garden, they had built it well. The Priory itself, of Caen stone, had lain in ruins for at least two hundred years before the Lord Proprietor came to clear the site and build his new great house on the old foundations; but these brick walls defied the tooth of time.
Magnificent walls they were, four feet in thickness, heavily buttressed; the bricks set in mortar tougher than themselves. They enclosed two acres of rich black soil at the mouth of Inniscaw's one valley, where it widens into a marsh beside the shore. Between them and the water's edge stood the Lord Proprietor's new schoolhouse, above a small landing quay; and within the schoolhouse a class was singing as Sir Cæsar and Mr. Pope entered the old garden. The children's voices came floating prettily over the old wall—so prettily that Abe Jenkins, the septuagenarian gardener, ceased working to comment upon it, leaning on his hoe and addressing Eli Tregarthen, who lounged by the gateway leading to the shore.
"Always fond of children, I was," said Abe Jenkins, "though I never picked up courage to marry. 'Twas the women that always daunted me. And now I've a-come to a time o' life that I'm glad of it. A married man throws his roots too deep, an' when Death come along, 'tis always too soon for 'en. He wants to bide and see his youngest da'rter's child, or he wants to linger and mend a thatch on the linhay—his married son can't be brought to see the importance o't.... What with one thing and another, I never knowed a married man yet 'was fit to die; whereas your cheerful bachelor comes up clean as a carrot. What brings you across from Saaron to-day, Tregarthen? I'll wage 'tis to fetch your children back from school."
"Partly," assented Eli.
"Iss; partly, that, an' to listen here to their voices soundin' so pretty across the wall. And partly, I reckon, 'tis on the chance to get speech with the Lord Proprietor and persuade 'em to let you bide on Saaron. But that you'll never do. Mind, I'm not sayin' a word against th' old curmudgeon. He's my employer, to start with, besides being what God made 'em. But, reason? You might as well try reason on the hind leg of a jackass. Go thy ways home, Tregarthen: go thy ways home an' teach yourself that all this world and the kingdoms thereof be but what the mind o' man makes 'em, and Saaron itself but a warren for rabbits."
Tregarthen shook his head.
"A barren rock.... Come now, bring your mind to it!" Abe suggested, coaxing.
"'Tis no good, Abe."
"A cottage in a vineyard—what says holy Isaiah? A lodge in a garden of cucumbers—a besieged city——"
"Abe Jenkins!"—It was the Lord Proprietor's voice calling from the upper gate.
"Y'r honour!" Abe snatched his hoe and wheeled about sharply as the great man came down the path with Mr. Pope at his heels.
"How long have you been working here?" demanded Sir Cæsar. "Perhaps I had better have said 'idling,'" he added, with a frown and a curt nod at Tregarthen in the gateway. Sir Cæsar's gray eyebrows had a trick of bristling up, like a cat's, at the first hint of unpleasantness, even at sight of anyone who crossed his will; and they bristled now.
"'Been workin' here the best part of the morning," answered Abe, with an old man's freedom of tone and a complacent look backward at the patch of turned soil. "And 'might have been workin' yet but the children singin' their hymn yonder"—with a jerk of his thumb towards the wall that hid the school building—"warned me 'twas time to knock off for dinner."
Now, the Lord Proprietor had meant his question for preface to another. "Had Abe, while at work, caught sight of a strange lady anywhere in the garden?" The question, if put just then, and in Tregarthen's hearing, might have changed the whole current of this small history; for Tregarthen was a poor hand at dissimulation—or, rather, was incapable of it. But the sight of his back, as he turned away, caused Sir Cæsar's eyebrows to bristle up yet more pugnaciously.
"Hi, sir?"
Tregarthen turned slowly.
"You are waiting here to fetch your children from school, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Tregarthen.
"And isn't that an instance, man, of what I tried to make you understand two days ago? Cannot you see what time and trouble you'll be saving yourself—let alone the children—when you're comfortably settled on Brefar and within half-a-mile of a handy school?"
"Yes," said Tregarthen again. His eyes met the Lord Proprietor's without servility as without disrespect, but with a kind of patient wonder.
"Well, then"—Sir Cæsar turned to Mr. Pope for confirmation—"here is a man who—to give him his due, eh?—works as hard as any on the Islands; harder, I daresay, than his own hired labourer——"
Mr. Pope nodded.
"—A man," continued Sir Cæsar, "who never gives himself a holiday; a man whose nature it is to grudge every hour of the day that isn't employed in wringing money out of a desert. Come now!"—warmed by his own eloquence to a geniality equally hearty and false, Sir Cæsar swung around again upon Mr. Pope—"I daresay we may call him, to his face, about the best of my farmers!"
Mr. Pope inclined, with the half of an embarrassed smile. As an agent, he felt any such appreciation of a tenant to be, if not dangerous, at least uncalled for, liable to be misinterpreted. He contented himself with answering—in a murmur—that Mr. Tregarthen had given the estate in the past every satisfaction; that it would surprise him indeed if (at this time of day) Mr. Tregarthen were (of all men) to raise trouble.
But the Lord Proprietor, as a master of men, brushed this hesitancy aside, and with jovial tact. "A first-rate fellow," he insisted. "One of our best! Only pig-headed, as the best always are. And so, when I offer him a choice of two farms, each better than his present one, he must needs take it into his head that I'm doing him an injury. Such a man"—here Sir Cæsar wagged a forefinger at the accused—"needs to be protected against himself. Such a man needs to be told—and pretty straight—that he is injuring others besides himself, and that, as I have authority in these Islands, so I owe it to my conscience to forbid his letting his children grow into little savages."
Eli Tregarthen looked up as though a stone had struck him. The colour on his face darkened. Hitherto (though suffering from it) he had not argued, even in his own mind, against Sir Cæsar's evicting him from Saaron. He had resented it, as one resents mere brute force; but he had not argued with that which had never presented itself as resting upon argument.... Though he knew himself to be a slow-witted man, Eli had a clear sense of his wife's wisdom, and that wisdom irradiated for him any argument which came—as this accusation of neglecting the children surely came—within range of Ruth.
"If you dare to say that again," said Eli, "I'll knock your head off."
All three of them heard it—the Lord Proprietor, Mr. Pope, and old Abe—though neither could believe his ears. For Eli had spoken quite quietly and distinctly. Mr. Pope was the first to recover; but before he could get in a word, Eli was following up the attack—still not hastily, still with a slow pause on every word.
"You? What do you know of children, that never had a child? And what do you know of Saaron or any other island, that never took your life here nor made your living? You fill your pockets in a London shop; you go off to an auction, and there you bid for these Islands, that you've never seen. But what did you buy, you little man, over and above the power to make yourself a nuisance in your day? Was it understanding of the Islands? Or a birthright in 'em? Or a child to leave it to?... There, I do wrong to be angered with 'ee—you've got so little by your bargain! But you put a strain upon a man, you do—talkin' of children in that way. Children?" The man paused with something like a groan. An instant before it had been in his mind to tell Sir Cæsar passionately that, so far from grudging the time spent in fetching Annet, Linnet and Matthew Henry from school, he looked forward to it as the one bright break in a day that began before sunrise and lasted till after sunset. It had been on the tip of his tongue, too, to say, with equal passion, that any man who spoke of them as savages insulted his wife's care of them. But eloquence had come to him, now for the first time in his life, as an inspiration. At the first check he stammered, and broke down; and so, with a hunch of his shoulders, turned his back on his audience and walked off heavily down the lane.
Mr. Pope, with great tact, laid a hand lightly on the Lord Proprietor's arm and conducted him back to the gate by which they had entered. There, yet gasping for speech, the great man lifted his eyes, and was aware of Mrs. Pope and Miss Gabriel distractedly advancing along the path.
With a gulp he pulled himself together, and walked forward to inform them that the chase had been unsuccessful; that not a glimpse of the fugitive had been discovered. Resuming a hold upon his gallantry, he hoped that his visitors would remain for luncheon. "After which," he added, with a creditable smile, "we may, if we will, resume the search in more philosophical mood."
But here again Mr. Pope was tactful. He divined that his patron was suffering; that the wound needed, for the moment, solitude and silence to ease its smart. He was sorry to deprive the ladies of such a pleasure; but, for his part, business called him back to Garland Town. He had, he regretted to say, an engagement at two o'clock sharp. To be sure, if the ladies chose to stay, he could send back the boat for them.... But this he said knowing that his wife was thoroughly frightened, and that (as she herself put it later) wild horses would not induce her to remain, lacking his protection.
The Lord Proprietor escorted his visitors down to the landing quay and there helped the ladies to embark. The search for the fair fugitive (he promised them) should be vigorously prosecuted. She was not likely to elude it for long, and he would at once report success. The leave-takings over, he stood by the shore until the small boat had made her offing, and so, with a farewell lift of the hat, turned and walked moodily towards the house.
He was relieved to be alone after the morning's very painful experiences. Twice since breakfast he had been wounded in his dignity, and nowhere does a man of his nature suffer more acutely. Nor could the wounds be covered over and hidden, for he had taken them openly, almost publicly. His anger swung helplessly forward and back between the two outrages, both to him inexplicable. To be sure he had not reckoned on any gratitude for the gift of the breeches. But what had he done that they should be flaunted on a scarecrow?... Oh, it was monstrous!
As little could he understand Tregarthen or Tregarthen's language. Some gadfly must have stung the man. A few acres of the barrenest land in the whole archipelago—and the fellow talked as though he were being dispossessed of an Eden! Yes, and as though that were not enough, he had used the flattest disrespect. The Lord Proprietor was not accustomed to disrespect. From the first his Islanders had treated him with the deference due to a king. Save and except the Commandant, no man had ever crossed his will or disputed his authority.
His rage swung back again upon the Commandant. It was all very well to plead that the Commandant had been in church at the time; but, after all, an officer must be held responsible for his men's doings. Let Major Vigoureux beware! More than once the Lord Proprietor had been minded to memorialise the War Office and inquire why the taxpayers' money should be wasted to maintain three superannuated soldiers at full pay in a deserted barracks.
"Upon my word," said the Lord Proprietor to himself, "I've a mind to run over to Garrison Hill and ask Vigoureux what the devil he means by it. Either he knows of this, or he doesn't: I'll soon learn which. In either case I'll have an apology; and, what's more, I'll teach him who's master here, once for all."
He had reached the terrace, and paused there for a moment to draw breath after his climb, at the same time throwing a glance across the blue waters of the roadstead towards Garrison Hill and the white buildings upon it slumbrous in the autumn haze. The glance threatened mischief to that unconscious fortress and a sharp nod of the head confirmed the threat.
"Yes, yes, this very afternoon! The sooner the better!"
He swung about and stepped across the terrace to a French window that stood open to the air and sunshine. It was the window of the morning room, where he usually took his luncheon, and he passed in briskly, meaning to ring the bell and give orders to have the meal served at once. But, as he stepped across the low sill somebody rose in the room's cool shadow and confronted him, and he fell back catching at the jamb for support and staring.
It was the stranger herself: the woman for whom they had all been vainly searching!
"Good morning!" said Vashti, with a self-possessed little bow. "Oh, but I fear I have startled you?"
"Ah—er—" the Lord Proprietor pulled himself together with an effort—"Well, to tell the truth? you did take me by surprise; the more so that——"
"It was dreadfully uncivil of me—not to say impudent—to walk in here unannounced. But the fact is I could find no door along the terrace; nothing but windows. Forgive me."
"Certainly, madam, certainly.... The front door is, so to speak, at the rear of the building.... But I was going to say that you took me the more by surprise because, as a matter of fact, I had just given up hunting for you."
Vashti laughed. She looked adorably cool and provoking; and still, as he stared at her, the Lord Proprietor wondered more and more whence in the world she came. He knew little of female beauty (the late Lady Hutchins had been plain-featured) and less of clothes; but three or four times in his life, at public functions, he had mixed with the great ones of the land, and here patently was one of them. Her speech, dress, bearing, all proclaimed it; her easy self-possession, too, and air of authority. Out of what Olympus had she descended upon these remote Atlantic isles?
"I saw that you had company," she answered, "and I ran away. To tell you the truth I was a little afraid of them—that is to say, of some of them. But what was Archelaus doing here?"
The Lord Proprietor frowned.
"Did he come to apologise? Oh, but that is just one of the reasons that brought me here! You must not be angry with Archelaus; no, really, it was not his fault, at all, but mine."
"I think, ma'am," said the Lord Proprietor, "we are talking at cross-purposes."
"No, no, we are not," she corrected him briskly with a little laugh. "We are talking about that unhappy scarecrow." She paused, as though checked by irrepressible mirth, and he flushed hotly. "And no, again!" she went on, perceiving this; "I was laughing at Archelaus—poor fellow!—overtaken here by his accusers. Did they make it very painful for him?"
"Even supposing him capable of shame—which I doubt—I certainly do not think he suffered more than he deserved."
"You are very much annoyed?" asked Vashti, suddenly serious. "Well, then, I am sorry. It was all my suggestion—though it never entered my head that anyone would be walking that way and catch sight of—of the thing. I meant it to be a little surprise for the Commandant when he came home from church; though when he returned and heard what had happened, he scolded me terribly."
"You will excuse me"—the Lord Proprietor drew himself up stiffly—"if I fail to see either where the humour comes in, or why you—a stranger, unknown to me even by name——"
"Ah, to be sure! My name is Cara."
"Then, as I was saying, Miss Cara, I fail to see——"
"And you are quite right of course," Vashti made haste to agree. "I ought not to have done it. But weren't you, too, a little bit to blame? It wasn't very nice of you, you know."
"I beg your pardon? What wasn't very nice of me?"
"Why, to hurt their feelings; and especially the Commandant's. He is a poor man; poor, and sensitive, and easily hurt."
"You are talking to me in riddles, Miss Cara. I have done nothing at all to hurt the Commandant's feelings."
"Not intentionally, of course. I told him—and I told the sergeant too—that I was sure you never meant to wound them. It would have been too cruel."
"But," protested the Lord Proprietor, "I have done nothing, I tell you; nothing beyond presenting Sergeant Archelaus with—with an article of attire of which he stood badly in need. Miss Gabriel, some weeks ago, drew my attention to the state of the poor fellow's—er—wardrobe, and suggested that something might be done."
"I thought so," Vashti nodded. "I dare say now," she went on, after seeming to muse for a moment, "you are one of those strong-minded men who find it hard to understand how sensible people can worry over what they put on their backs!"
"That happens to be a constant source of wonder with me," he confessed; "though for the life of me I can't tell how you came to guess it."
"Never mind how I guessed it," said Vashti, smiling. "The point is, that you take this lofty and very scornful view of clothes, and yet you must have noticed that many men of your acquaintance—men otherwise sensible—take quite another; that in the city, for instance, a hard felt hat is not usually worn with a frock coat."
"Granted," said the Lord Proprietor; "though I could never understand why."
"And you have noticed that soldiers are even more particular; and the reason with them is perhaps a little more easily grasped. Their uniform is a symbol, so to speak. It stands for the service to which a good soldier should be devoted."
"If you had seen that man's small-clothes!"
"Yes, I grant that Archelaus neglects his regimentals. But to neglect them, and to be willing to mix them up with civilian clothes, are two very different things. Perhaps you did not think of this?"
"Really, now," answered Sir Cæsar, "I should not have supposed that it mattered what these men wore, in such an out-of-the-world spot."
Vashti's eyes rested on him for a second or two, in a kind of wondering despair at his obtuseness. But she controlled herself to reply quite patiently:
"At any rate, it was wrong of me to encourage the men's resentment, and I came here this morning to beg your pardon."
He acknowledged this with a bow, but stood silent for a moment, eyeing her.
"You are a relative of Major Vigoureux?" he asked, after a pause.
"No."
"You are staying with him, I understand?"
"No." Vashti shook her head, with a smile. "But I very much want you to forgive me," she went on; "for I have another favour to ask you."
Again he bowed slightly. "You give my curiosity no rest, Miss Cara, and I perceive you mean to satisfy it only in your own way. As for the—er—incident we have been discussing, pray consider that—so far as you are concerned—I dismiss it." He did so with a slight wave of the hand. "You wish to ask me a favour?"
"I do. I came to plead with you; to say a word on behalf of Eli Tregarthen, your tenant on Saaron Island."
The Lord Proprietor started. "Are you at the bottom of that also?" he asked, angrily.
Vashti's eyes opened wide in astonishment.
"I beg your pardon?" she murmured. "I do not understand."
"It seems to me," he caught her up, "that for a total stranger, you are losing remarkably little time."
"In what, sir?" she demanded, facing him fairly, with a lift of her handsome chin.
"In subverting my authority, ma'am; or, rather, in prompting others to subvert it.... Though, to be sure," he went on, in sarcastic wrath, "it may again be an accident that I happened on Eli Tregarthen less than an hour ago, and that he used very insolent language to me in the presence of my agent."
"It was not only an accident," said Vashti, slowly, and with patent sincerity; "it was one that, since I came here to urge his suit, I would have given a great deal to prevent." She paused, and for a moment seemed to be musing. "Must I understand, then, that you refuse to hear a word in his favour?"
"The man is a fool!" Sir Cæsar clasped his hands behind him under his coat-tails, and paced the room. "His insolence to me apart, he is a complete fool! I offer him the choice of two farms—either one of them acre for acre, worth twice the rental of Saaron.... I simply cannot understand!"
"No," said Vashti, with a little sigh, "you cannot understand."
He had reached the fireplace, and wheeled round on her, his back to the hearth and his legs a-straddle.
"What can I not understand?" he demanded.
"Many things." Vashti met his eyes for a moment, then turned her own to the window and the blue waterways beyond the terrace, beyond the massed tree-tops of the pleasure grounds. "Many things, and the Islands in particular. You did not understand just now that a soldier, though condemned to stand sentry in a forgotten outpost, can still be sensitive for the honour of his service, because the root of his life lies there. You cannot understand that the root of Eli Tregarthen's life goes down into the soil he has tilled from childhood as his parents tilled it. To you Garrison Hill is a tumble-down fort, and Saaron Island a barren rock; yet you call them yours, because you have purchased them. And, nevertheless—to do you justice—you are not one who rates everything by its price in money. If you were, I could beg you to take a higher rent for Saaron and leave Eli Tregarthen undisturbed."
He shook his head. "The man pays me a fair rent; as much as I can conscientiously ask. I have a conscience, Miss Cara, and a sense of responsibility. It is not good that Tregarthen lets his children run wild there, so far from school."
"And if, sir," she went on, "you are doing this for the children's sake, I could promise you that there are means to educate them better than any children on the Islands. But the difficulty does not lie with the children. It lies in your sense of possession, which makes Saaron Farm there"—she waved a hand—"an eyesore in the view from this window, and simply because Eli Tregarthen has crossed your will. You defend an instinct of selfishness that takes about five minutes to pass into a principle with any man who buys land. You maintain the landlord's right to ordain the lives on your estate, and command them to be as you think best; nor does it seem to you to affect your claim for power that we understood and drew our nature from the Islands for years before ever you came to hear of them."
"Radicalism, ma'am!"
"Yes, sir. It is for the roots I plead, against your claim that the surface gives all."
He thrust his hands under his coat-tails again, and took a turn up and down the room.
"I do not affect to agree with you, Miss Cara," said he, not looking towards her when she stood by the French window, but stretching out his hand to the bell. "Yet, as owner of these Islands, I desire to be just. I desire also to understand these Islanders, of whom, it appears, you know so much more than I. And if you do me the honour to take luncheon with me—" Here he broke off, to ring at the bell-pull. "But I warn you I am tenacious as well as curious, and shall demand to know a little more of my lecturer."
He turned and stood blinking. Vashti had disappeared. The room was empty.
He took a step to the open window, sprang out upon the terrace, and glanced to right and left.
The terrace, too, was empty. He hurried to the stairway leading down through the shrubberies. Not so much as the glimpse of a flying skirt rewarded him.