While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend's office in Great George Street reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden's dark-brown head almost reclining on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then, shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.
The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour of morning. The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere. The windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea. The stars seemed to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers; and these two—the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short, sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form—these two were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the room.
'We're none of us in it compared with them,' said a young naval commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia's features were undeniably regular and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.
'Is she?' asked the sailor, incredulously, 'Look at her now. What do you call that, if it isn't soul?'
'I call it simply disgraceful,' answered his partner, sharply turning away her head.
Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow. People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like automatic dancers. There must be conversation. Only it is better that the lips should do most of the talking. When the eyes have so much to say society is apt to be censorious.
Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer. A man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia's feelings Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover's breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel's last waltz? Was there still the uncertainty as to thedénouementwhich marks the third act of a good play? or was there the dread foreboding, the sense of impending doom which should stir the spectators with pity and terror as the fourth act hurries to its passionate close? Who could tell? She had been full of life and energy to-day on board the yacht during the racing, in which she seemed to take an ardent interest. TheCaymanhad followed the racers for three hours through a freshening sea, much to Lady Kirkbank's disgust, and Lesbia had been the soul of the party. The same yesterday. The yacht had only got back to Cowes in time for the ball, and all had been hurry and excitement while the ladies dressed and crossed to the club, the spray dashing over their opera mantles, poor Lady Kirkbank's complexion yellow withmal de mer, in spite of a double coating ofBlanc de Fedora, the last fashionable cosmetic.
To-night Lesbia was curiously silent, depressed even, as it seemed to those who were interested in observing her; and all the world is interested in a famous beauty. She was very pale, even her lips were colourless, and the large violet eyes and firmly pencilled brows alone gave colour to her face. She looked like a marble statue, the eyes and eyebrows accentuated with touches of colour. Those lovely eyes had a heavy look, as of trouble, weariness; nay, absolute distress.
Never had she looked less brilliant than to-night; never had she looked more beautiful. It was the loveliness of a newly-awakened soul. The wonderful Pandora-casket of life, with its infinite evil, its little good, had given up its secret. She knew what passionate love really means. She knew what such love mostly means—self-sacrifice, surrender of the world's wealth, severance from friends, the breaking of all old ties. To love as she loved means the crossing of a river more fatal than the Rubicon, the casting of a die more desperate than that which Cæsar flung upon the board when he took up arms against the Republic.
The river was not yet crossed, but her feet were on the margin, wet with the ripple of the stream. The fatal die was not yet cast, but the dice-box was in her hand ready for the throw. Lesbia and Montesma danced together—not too often, three waltzes out of sixteen—but when they were so waltzing they were the cynosure of the room. That betting of which Maulevrier had heard was rife to-night, and the odds upon the Cuban had gone up. It was nine to four now that those two would be over the border before the week was out.
Mr. Smithson was not neglectful of his affianced. He took her into the supper-room, where she drank some Moselle cup, but ate nothing. He sat out three or four waltzes with her on the lawn, listening to the murmer of the sea, and talking very little.
'You are looking wretchedly ill to-night, Lesbia,' he said, after a dismal silence.
'I am sorry that I should put you to shame by my bad looks,' she answered, with that keen acidity of tone which indicates irritated nerves.
'You know that I don't mean anything of the kind; you are always lovely, always the loveliest everywhere; but I don't like to see you so ghastly pale.'
'I suppose I am over-fatigued: that I have done too much in London and here. Life in Westmoreland was very different,' she added, with a sigh, and a touch of wonder that the Lesbia Haselden, whose methodical life had never been stirred by a ruffle of passion, could have been the same flesh and blood—yes, verily, the same woman, whose heart throbbed so vehemently to-night, whose brain seemed on fire.
'Are you sure there is nothing the matter?' he asked, with a faint quiver in his voice.
'What should there be the matter?'
'Who can say? God knows that I know no cause for evil. I am honest enough, and faithful enough, Lesbia. But your face to-night is like a presage of calamity, like the dull, livid sky that goes before a thunderstorm.'
'I hope there is no thunderbolt coming,' she answered, lightly. 'What very tall talk about a headache, for really that is all that ails me. Hark, they have begun "My Queen." I am engaged for this waltz.'
'I am sorry for that.'
'So am I. I would ever so much rather have stayed out here.'
Two hours later, in the steely morning light, when sea and land and sky had a metallic look as if lit by electricity, Lady Lesbia stood with her chaperon and her affianced husband on the landing stage belonging to the club, ready to step into the boat in which six swarthy seamen in red shirts and caps were to row them back to the yacht. Mr. Smithson drew the warmsortie de bal, with its gold-coloured satin lining and white fox border, closer round Lesbia's slender form.
'You are shivering,' he said; 'you ought to have warmer wraps.
'This is warm enough for St. Petersburg. I am only tired—very tired.'
'TheCaymanwill rock you to sleep.'
Don Gomez was standing close by, waiting for his host. The two men were to walk up the hill to Formosa, a village with a classic portico, delightfully situated above the town.
'What time are we to come to breakfast? asked Mr. Smithson.
'Not too early, in mercy's name. Two o'clock in the afternoon, three, four;—why not make it five—combine breakfast with afternoon tea,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with a tremendous yawn. 'I never was so thoroughly fagged; I feel as if I had been beaten with sticks, basti—what's its name.'
She was leaning all her weight upon Mr. Smithson, as he handed her down the steps and into the boat. Her normal weight was not a trifle, and this morning she was heavy with champagne and sleep. Carefully as Smithson supported her she gave a lurch at the bottom of the steps, and plunged ponderously into the boat, which dipped and careened under her, whereat she shrieked, and implored Mr. Smithson to save her.
All this occupied some minutes, and gave Lesbia and the Cuban just time for a few words that had to be said somehow.
'Good-night,' said Montesma, as they clasped hands; 'good-night;' and then in a lower voice he said, 'Well, have you decided at last? Shall it be?'
She looked at him for a moment or so, pale in the starlight, and then murmured an almost inaudible syllable.
'Yes.'
He bent quickly and pressed his lips upon her gloved hand, and when Mr. Smithson looked round they two were standing apart, Montesma in a listless attitude, as if tired of waiting for his host.
It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps, and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.
'Now really,' he asked, just before the boat put off, 'when are we to be with you to-morrow?'
'Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.'
'You look as if you needed sleep badly,' answered Smithson. 'I'm afraid you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.'
The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.
Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.
Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board theCayman.
'Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,' she said; 'and I think if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it. Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a spectre as you look this morning.'
Poor Georgie's own complexion left something to be desired. TheBlanc de Fedorahad been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness, then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow's-foot ground. The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year of their age in the ghastly morning light.
Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined, fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were—Mestizoes, Coolies, Yucatekes—she knew not, but she felt that they were something wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear.He, whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best, all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind—all things so calm, so perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home—no peril, no temptation, no fever—only peace: and she had grown sick to death of peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails shining against the blue.
She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She was always listening—listening for the dip of oars, listening for a snatch of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so well.
It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her cushions with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars,'La donna e mobile—'
Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.
'My own, my very own,' he murmured, passionately.
He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and then the sails were unfurled, theCaymanspread her broad white wings, and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding, gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth with the broad light of morning.
When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side, gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.
They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets. Surrendered were all Lesbia's ambitious hopes—forgotten—gone; her desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion—her thirst to be wealthiest among the wealthy—gone—forgotten. Her dreams now were of thedolce far nienteof a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama—with him, with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along which her lover's hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she renounced the world. The rest did not count.
The summer hours glided past them. TheCaymanwas far out at sea; all the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue, with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon. More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words. Lady Kirkbank would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them till they were married, and could shake her off altogether. So Lesbia stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails. But now it was broad morning. The hour when society, however late it may keep its revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ. At ten o'clock the sun sent his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly. The little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr. Smithson's cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon Lady Kirkbank's couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees. There was more swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.
'Mercy on me! this horrid thing must be moving,' she exclaimed to the empty air. 'It must have broken loose in the night.'
She had no confidence in those savage-looking sailors, and she had a vision of the yacht drifting at the mercy of winds and waves, drifting for days, weeks, and months; drifting to the German Ocean, drifting to the North Pole. Mr. Smithson and Montesma on shore—no one on board to exercise authority over those fearful men.
Perhaps they had mutinied, and were carrying off the yacht as their booty, with Lesbia and her chaperon, and all their gowns.
'I am almost glad that harpy Seraphine has my diamonds,' thought poor Georgie, 'or I should have had them with me on board this hateful boat.'
And then she rapped vehemently against the panel of the cabin, and screamed for Rilboche, whose den was adjacent.
Rilboche, who detested the sea, made her appearance after some delay, looking even greener than her mistress, who, in rising from her berth, already began to suffer the agonies of sea-sickness.
'What does this mean?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank; 'and where are we going?'
'That's what I should like to know, my lady. But I daresay Lady Lesbia and Mr. Montesma can tell you. They are both on deck.'
'Montesma! Why, we left him on shore!'
'Yes, my lady, but he came on board at five o'clock this morning. I looked at my watch when I heard him land, and he and Lady Lesbia have been sitting on deck ever since.'
'And now it is ten. Five hours on deck—impossible!'
'Time doesn't seem long when one is happy, my lady,' murmured Rilboche, in her own language.
'Help me to dress this instant,' screamed her mistress: 'that dreadful Spaniard is eloping with us.'
Despite the hideous depression of that malady which strikes down Kaiser and beggar with the same rough hand, Lady Kirkbank contrived to get herself dressed decently, and to stagger up the companion to that part of the deck where the Persian carpet was spread, and the bamboo chairs and tables were set out under the striped awning. Lesbia and her lover were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman, and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking her first lesson.
'You shameless minx!' exclaimed Georgie, pale with anger.
'Where is Smithson—my poor, good Smithson?'
'Fast asleep in his bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,' the Cuban answered, with perfectsang froid. 'Smithson is out of it, as you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady Lesbia as good a husband as ever Smithson could have done.'
'You!' exclaimed the matron, contemptuously. 'You!--a foreigner, an adventurer, who may be as poor as Job, for anything I know about you.'
'Job was once rather comfortably off, Lady Kirkbank; and I can answer for it that Montesma's wife will know none of the pangs of poverty.'
'If you were a beggar I would not care,' said Lesbia, drawing nearer to him.
They had both risen at Lady Kirkbank's approach, and were standing side by side, confronting her. Lesbia had shrunk from the idea of poverty with John Hammond; yet, for this man's sake, she was ready to face penury, ruin, disgrace, anything.
'Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier's sister, a young lady under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?' demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.
'Yes; that is what I am going to do,' answered Lesbia, boldly. 'It would be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid.Thisis what you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world, where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out of all the world for my husband—the man God made to be my master.'
'You are----' gasped Lady Kirkbank. 'I can't say what you are. I never in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.'
'Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,' pleaded Montesma; 'you can have no interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.'
Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.
'I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,' she answered, with dignity. 'I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez. You have always been vastly civil, I am sure----'
'Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the staunchest friend you ever had.'
'I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so abominably.'
'It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we shall be married to-morrow—shall we not, Gomez?'
She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other; this man's fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind of influence with women which is almost 'possession.' It smells of brimstone.
'Come, my dear good soul,' said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron, 'why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker's book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,' he added, with his eyes kindling; 'and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish to occupy.'
'How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?' said Lady Kirkbank, piteously. 'How do I know that you will not bury her alive in your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over there—kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?'
At these words of Lady Kirkbank's, flung out at random, Montesma blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister look.
'Yes,' she cried, hysterically—'kill her, kill her! You look as if you could do it.'
Lesbia nestled closer to her lover's heart.
'How dare you say such things to him,' she cried, angrily. 'Itrust him, don't you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.'
'Very much for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get a cup of tea.'
Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking. She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.
Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a well-trained servant.
Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank's side, and tried to coax her into good humour.
'Why can't you take things pleasantly, dear?' she pleaded. 'Do now, like a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten, don't you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder? By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my engagement ring,' looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling it off her fingers as she talked. 'I had a kind of presentiment----'
'You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.'
'No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better than what has happened.'
'I don't know, I'm sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.'
'Don Gomez has arranged all that—everything has been thought of—everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas, and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.'
'But the marriage—the licence?'
'I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.'
'Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.'
'How dreadfully disagreeable you are,' said Lesbia, pouting, 'just because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is frightfully selfish of you.'
Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly, and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not accommodate themselves.
After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily, yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and slept in a corner of the saloon.
'This is the happiest day of my life,' Lesbia murmured, in a pause of their reading, when they had dropped Endymion's love to talk of their own.
'But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.'
'Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each other?' she asked, incredulously.
'Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is easy enough; but when tempest and peril come—that is the test, Lesbia. Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?'
'You know that I will,' she answered, with her hand locked in his two hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.
She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a fuss, perhaps—an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying whomsoever she pleased.
'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said, passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.
'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.
'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is chasing us.'
Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that distant spot.
'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'
He was right. Although theCaymanstrained every timber so that her keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside theCayman, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr. Smithson's deck.
'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once, and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don Gomez de Montesma.'
The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her about himself or his past life was the question which the next few minutes would solve.
'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we arrive.'
'To be married—at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'
'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'
Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.
'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'
'I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Señor; and I should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.'
'That you shall not do unless she desires it,' answered Montesma.
'No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer you,' said Lesbia.
Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.
'As you please,' he said. 'It will make the disclosure a little more painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.'
They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord Hartfield and his friend.
'Did you give your consent to my sister's elopement with this man, Lady Kirkbank?' Maulevrier asked, brusquely.
'I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I've no doubt: but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.'
'I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.'
'I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield's to interfere with my actions, and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,' said Lesbia, standing by her lover's side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.
'Your sister's husband has the strongest right to control your actions, Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,' answered Hartfield, with grave authority. 'Accept me at least as a member of your family, if you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.'
'Friend!' echoed Lesbia, scornfully. 'You might have been my friend once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my grandmother's house as an impostor, under a false name!'
'I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your brother's friend, here to save you.'
'To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!' cried Lesbia, with a voice strangled by sobs; 'tell him that I am to be your wife to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!'
'Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,' said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully, pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in the fowler's net. 'I am assured upon undeniable authority that Señor Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so—were he free to marry you—his character and antecedents would for ever forbid such a marriage.'
'A wife! No, no, no!' shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the other. 'It is a lie—a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated me—by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity's sake answer them! Don't you see that they are driving me mad?'
She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her agony.
Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover's grasp.
'You shall not pollute her with your touch,' he cried; 'you have poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is—what trade he followed yonder, on his native island—this Spanish hidalgo—this all-accomplished gentleman—lineal descendant of the Cid—fine flower of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance, his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in a year—that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar upon the hidalgo's forehead, Lesbia—a token of knightly prowess, you think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia—the living cargo stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and then—short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten sheep sometimes—bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think, Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this particular dealer in blackamoors is not.'
'Is this true, this part of their vile story?' demanded Lesbia, looking at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his strong white teeth.
'There is some truth in it,' he answered, hoarsely. 'Everybody in Cuba had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running his cargo—a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there again.'
'Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad specimen in that line,' said Lord Hartfield. 'But I doubt if there is any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich planter's heiress—the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your return to her native island.'
'She will wait a long time,' said Montesma, 'or fare ill if I go back to her. Lesbia, his lordship's story of the Octoroon is a fable—an invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a poisonous hatred. But this much is true. I am a married man—bound, fettered by a tie which I abhor. Our Havre marriage would have been bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours. I could not have taken you to Cuba. I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world. I am rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth living. I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave to woman. All that would have been wanting would have been the legality of the tie: and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness. Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might. The worst has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.'
She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird. Montesma, Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except the dire necessity of arresting her flight. Each in his own mind had divined her purpose.
They were not too late. It was Hartfield's strong arm that caught her, held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just where there was a space open to the waves. Another instant and she would have flung herself overboard. She fell back into Lord Hartfield's arms, with a wild choking cry: 'Let me go! Let me go!' Another moment, and a flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast, with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed unconsciousness.
They carried her on to the steam-yacht, and down to the cabin, where there was ample accommodation and some luxury, although not the elegance of Bond Street upholstery. Rilboche, Lady Kirkbank, Kibble, luggage of all kinds were transferred from one yacht to the other, even to the vellum bound Keats which lay face downwards on the deck, just where Lesbia had flung it when theCaymanwas boarded. The crew of the steam-yachtPhilomelhelped in the transfer: there were plenty of hands, and the work was done quickly; while the Meztizoes, Yucatekes, Caribs, or whatever they were, looked on and grinned; and while Montesma stood leaning against the mast, with folded arms and sombre brow, a cigarette between his lips.
When the women and all their belongings were on board thePhilomel, Lord Hartfield addressed himself to Montesma.
'If you consider yourself entitled to call me to account for this evening's work you know where to find me,' he said.
Montesma shrugged his shoulders, and threw away his cigarette with a contemptuous gesture.
'Ce n'est pas la peine,'he said; 'I am a dead shot, and should be pretty sure to send a bullet through you if you gave me the chance; but I should not be any nearer winning her if I killed you: and it is she and she only that I want. You may think me an adventurer—swindler—gambler—slave-dealer—what you will—but I love her as I never thought to love a woman, and I should have been true as steel, if she had been plucky enough to trust me. But, as I told her an hour ago, women have not lion hearts. They can talk tall while the sky is clear and the sun shines, but at the first crack of thunder—va te promener.'
'If you have killed her—' began Hartfield.
'Killed her! No. Some small bloodvessel burst in the agitation of that terrible scene. She will be well in a week, and she will forget me. But I shall not forget her. She is the one flower that has sprung on the barren plain of my life. She was my Picciola.'
He turned his back on Lord Hartfield and walked to the other end of the deck. Something in his face, in the vibration of his deep voice, convinced Hartfield of his truth. A bad man undoubtedly—steeped to the lips in evil—and yet so far true that he had passionately, deeply, devotedly loved this one woman.
It was the dead of night when Lesbia recovered consciousness, and even then she lay silent, taking no heed of those around her, in a state of utter prostration. Kibble nursed her carefully, tenderly, all through the night; Maulevrier hardly left the cabin, and Lady Kirkbank, always more or less a victim to the agonies of sea-sickness, still found time to utter lamentations and wailings over the ruin of her protégée's fortune.
'Never had a girl such a chance,' she moaned. 'Quite the best match in society. The house in Park Lane alone cost a fortune. Her diamonds would have been the finest in London.'
'They would have been stained with the blood of the niggers he traded in out yonder,' answered Maulevrier. 'Do you think I would have let my sister marry a slave-dealer?'
'I don't believe a syllable of it,' protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. 'A vile fabrication of Montesma's, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson's character in order to extenuate his own crimes.'
'Well, we won't go into that question,' said Maulevrier wearily. 'The Smithson match is off, anyhow; and it matters very little to us whether he made most money out of niggers or bubble companies, or lotteries or gaming hells.'
'I am convinced that Smithson made his fortune in a thoroughly gentlemanlike manner,' argued Lady Kirkbank. 'Look at the people who visit him, and the houses he goes to. And I don't see why the match need be off. I'm sure, if Lesbia plays her cards properly, he will look over this—this—little escapade.'
Maulevrier contemplated the worldly old face with infinite scorn.
'Does she look like a girl who will play her cards in your fashion?' he asked, pointing to his sister, whose white face upon the pillow seemed like a mask cut out of marble. 'Upon my soul, Lady Kirkbank, I consider my sister's elopement with this Spanish adventurer, with whom she was over head and ears in love, a far more respectable act than her engagement to Smithson, for whom she cared not a straw.'
'Well, I hope if you so approve of her conduct you will help her to pay her dressmaker, and the rest of them,' retorted Lady Kirkbank. 'She has been plunging rather deeply, I believe, under the impression that Smithson would pay all her bills when she was married. Your grandmother may not quite like the budget.'
'I will do all I can for her,' answered Maulevrier. 'I would do a great deal to save her from the degradation to which your teaching has brought her.'
Lady Kirkbank looked at him for a moment or so with reproachful eyes, and then shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
'If I ever expected gratitude from people I might feel the injustice—the insolence—of your last remark,' she said; 'but as I never do expect gratitude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to retire to it,' she added. 'My cares are thrown away here.'
There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank's disposal. It had been already appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest of the voyage.
They were in Cowes Roads at eight o'clock next morning, and Lord Hartfield went on shore for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine, and who pronounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily Lord Hartfield had borrowed thePhilomeland her crew from a friend who had given himcarte blancheas to the use he made of her, and who freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht, where she was away from the gossip and tittle-tattle of the town.
The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde. Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she was—sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.
She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way, with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes, the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.