The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

And on his finger one had blood; the other's finger shook.

    Luteplayer's Song.
Broken lengths of wall, a crumbling indication of the spring of once exquisite arches, windows gaping darkly like the eye sockets of a skull – this was all that was left of the old priory of Pulwick, whilom proud seat of clerical power and learning. But the image of decay was robbed of all melancholy by the luxuriance of climbing vegetation, by the living screen of noble firs and larches arranged in serried ranks upon the slopes immediately behind it, with here and there a rugged sentinel within the ruinous yards and rooms themselves; by wild bushes of juniper and gorse and brambles. And, with the bright noon sun pouring down upon the worn red sandstone, and gilding the delicate tassels of the larches' green needles; with the light of young love, spreading glamour upon every leaf and stone, in the eyes of the lovers, the scene, witness of so many sweet meetings, bore that day a beautiful and home-like aspect.

Captain Jack was standing upon the grass-grown floor of what had been the departed monks' refectory, with ears eagerly bent to listen.

Three ragged walls, a clump of fir trees, and a bank of brambles screened him from any chance passer-by, and he now and again peered through a crevice on to a path through the woods, cautiously, as if fearful to venture forth. His face was pale beneath its tan, and had none of its usual brightness; his attire for him was disordered; his whole appearance that of a man under the pressure of doubt and anxiety. Yet, when the sound of a light footfall struck among the thousand whispering noises of wind and leaf that went to make up the silence of the ruins, the glory of joy that lit up eye and lip left no room for any other impression.

Madeleine stood in the old doorway: a vision of beautiful life amid emblems of decay and death.

"I come alone to-day," she said, with her half-shy smile. And then, before she could utter a further word of explanation, she was gathered into her lover's strong arms with a passion he had never as yet shown in his chivalrous relations with her. But it was not because they met without the sympathetic rapture of Miss Landale's eye upon them; not because there was no other witnesses but the dangling ivy wreath, the stern old walls, the fine dome of spring sky faintly blue; not because of lover's audacious joy. This Madeleine, feeling the stormy throbbing of his heart against hers, knew with sure instinct. She pushed him gently from her as soon as she could, the blushes chased from her cheeks by pale misgivings, and looked at him with eyes full of troubled questioning.

Then he spoke, from his full heart:

"Madeleine, something has happened – a misfortune, as I wrote to you. I must now start upon my venture sooner than I thought – at once. I shall have to fly in fact, to-day. There have been spies upon me, and my secret trust is in danger. How they have tracked me, how suspicion has been aroused, I cannot guess. But I have been tracked. A fellow came at dawn. I had to defend my secret – the secret not my own, the charge entrusted to me. The man was hurt. I cannot explain, dear love, there is no time; even now I run the risk of my life by being here, and life is so dear to me now, my Madeleine! Hush! No, do not be afraid! I am afraid of nothing, so long as you trust me. Will you trust me? I cannot leave you here behind; and now, with this cursed stroke of ill-luck, this suspicion upon me, it may be long before I can return to England. I cannot leave you behind, I cannot! Will you trust me, Madeleine, will you come with me? We shall be married in France, my darling. You should be as a queen in the guard of her most humble slave. I am half mad to think I must go. Ah, kiss me, love, and say yes! Listen! I must sail away and make believe that I have gone. My Peregrine is a bird that none can overtake, but I shall come back to-night. Listen: If you will be on the island to-night – Sir Adrian is there already, and I hear your sister is coming – a freak of fancy – and he, God bless him, has told her to bring you too (it shows my luck has not deserted me yet). I shall be there, unknown to all except Renny. I cannot meet you nearer home, but you will be my own brave bride and keep your own counsel. You will not be frightened, will you, my beautiful love? All you have to do is to follow Renny's instructions. My ship will be back, waiting, an hour after dark, ready, when you set foot on it, to spread its wings with its treasures – treasures, indeed! And then we shall have the world before us – riches, love, such love! And once safe, I shall be free to prove to you that it is no common blood I would mate with that dear and pure stream that courses in your veins. You shall soon know all; will you trust me?"

She hung upon his hot words, looking at him with loving, frightened eyes. Now he gathered her to his arms again, again his bursting heart throbbed its stormy passion to her ear. She was as one carried away by a torrent against which resistance is useless. He bent his head over her face; the scent of the bunch of violets in her breast rose deliciously to his nostrils. Alas! Hubert Cochrane was not to reach that kiss of acquiescence, that kiss from which it seemed that but so small a fraction of space and time divided him! Some one, who had stepped along in the shadow as silently as a cat coming upon a bird, clapped here a hand upon his shoulder.

"Who are you, sir, and what do you want?" exclaimed Captain Jack, wrenching himself free, falling back a pace and measuring the new-comer from head to foot with furious glances, while, with burning blushes Madeleine faltered:

"Rupert!"

Nothing awakens anger in hot blood sooner than an unsanctioned touch. In certain moods the merest contact is as infuriating as a blow. Such an insult, added to the irreparable injury of interrupting their meeting at the most exquisite and crucial moment, drove Captain Jack beside himself with rage.

But Madeleine's hand was still on his arm. She felt it suddenly harden and twitch with murderous anger. But, by an effort that made the veins of his temple swell like whipcord, he refrained from striking the double offender.

Mr. Landale surveyed the pair for a moment in silence with his grave look; then coldly he answered the sailor's irate speech.

"My name, fellow, is Rupert Landale. I am here to protect my cousin from an unprincipled and criminal adventurer."

"You take a sharp tone sir," cried Captain Jack, the flush on his face deepening yet a shade, his nostrils ominously dilated, yet speaking without further loss of self-control. "You probably count upon the presence of this lady to prevent my resenting it; but as my time with her is short and I have still much to say, I shall be forced promptly to eject you from the ruins here, unless you will be good enough to immediately remove yourself. I shall hope for another meeting with you to discuss the question as to your right of interference; but to-day – I cannot spare the time."

Rupert smiled without moving; then the sailor gently disengaging himself from Madeleine would have put her behind him but that she pressed forward and laid a hand upon an arm of each of the men.

"Stay, Jack," she pleaded, "let me speak. There is some mistake here. Cousin Rupert, you cannot know that I am engaged to this gentleman and that he is a friend of your brother's as well as of other good friends of mine."

"My poor child," answered Rupert, closing a cold hand gently over hers and speaking with a most delicate tenderness of accent, "you have been grossly imposed upon, and so have others. As for my poor brother Adrian, he is, if anything, easier to deceive than you, innocent convent-bred girl! I would have you to go home, my dear, and leave me to deal with this – gentleman. You have bitter truths to learn; would it not be better to wait and learn them quietly without further scandal?"

This was too much for Captain Jack, who fairly ground his teeth. Rupert's honeyed tones, his grasp of Madeleine's hand were more unbearable even than the words. He advanced upon the elder man and seizing him by the collar whirled him away from the girl as easily as a straw puppet.

The fine gentleman of sensitive nerves and unworked sinews had no chance against the iron strength of the man who had passed all the years of virility fighting against sea and storm. The two faced each other; Jack Smith, red and panting with honest rage, only the sense of his lady's proximity keeping him from carrying his high-handed measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst enemy could have attributed it to fear.

An unequal match it would seem, yet unequal in a way that the young man, in the conscious glory of his strength could not have conceived. Madeleine neither screamed nor fainted; she had grown white, in natural apprehension, but her eyes fixed upon her lover's face shone with admiration. Mr. Landale turned slowly towards her.

"Madeleine," he said, readjusting his stock and smoothing the folds of his collar with a steadfast striving after coolness, "you have been grossly deceived. The man you would trust with your life and honour is a mere smuggler. He has no doubt told you fine stories, but if he has given himself out for aught else he lied, take my word for it – he lied. He is a common smuggler, and the vessel he would carry you away in is packed with smuggled goods. To-day he has attacked and wounded an officer, who, in the discharge of his duty, endeavoured to find out the nature of his suspicious purpose. Your would-be lover's neck is in danger. A felon, he runs the risk of his life every moment he remains on land – but he would make a last effort to secure the heiress! Look at him," his voice raising in spite of himself to a shriller pitch – "he cannot deny it!"

Madeleine gazed from one to the other. Her mind, never a very quick one at decision, was too bewildered to act with clearness; moreover with her education and ignorance of the world the indictment conveyed no special meaning to her.

But there was an agony of suspense and beseeching in the glance that her lover cast upon her; and to that appeal she smiled proudly. Hers were no true love, she felt, were its confidence shaken by the slandering of anger. Then the thought of his danger, danger admitted by his own lips, flashed upon her with terror. She rushed to him,

"Oh go, Jack, go! – As you love me, go!"

Mr. Landale, who had already once or twice cast impatient looks of expectation through a window of the east wall, taken by surprise at this unforeseen result of his speech, suddenly climbed up upon a broken piece of stone-work, from which there was an abrupt descent towards the shore, and began to signal in eager gesticulation. There was a sound of heavy running footfalls without. Captain Jack raised his head, every nerve on the alert.

"Go, go," again cried Madeleine, dreading she knew not what. – A fat panting red face looked over the wall; Mr. Landale turned for a second to throw at the lovers a glance of elation.

But it seemed as if the sailor's spirits rose at the breath of danger. He rapidly looked round upon the ruins from which there were no other outlets than the window guarded by Mr. Landale, and the doorway in which the red-faced new-comer now stood, framed in red stone; then, like a cat he darted on to the ledge of the wall at the opposite end, where some invading boughs of larch dropped over the jagged crest, before the burly figure in the blue coat of the preventive service had recovered from the surprise of finding a lady in his way, or gathered his wits and his breath sufficiently to interfere.

There the nimble climber stood a moment balancing himself lightly, though the ivied stones rocked beneath him.

"I go, love," he cried in ringing voice, "but one word from you and I go – "

"Oh, I trust you! I will trust you!" screamed the girl in despair, while her fascinated gaze clung to the erect figure silhouetted against the sky and the stout man looked up, open-mouthed. Mr. Landale snarled at him:

"Shoot, fool – shoot!" And straining forward, himself drew a pistol from the man's belt, cocked it and thrust it into his grasp.

Captain Jack kissed his hand to Madeleine with a joyful gesture, then waved his hat defiantly in Rupert's direction, and with a spring disappeared, just as the pistol cracked, drawing a shriek of terror from the girl, and its bullet flattened itself against the upper stone of the wall – considerably wide of the mark.

"Come, this way – !" screamed Mr. Landale from his window sill, "you have another!"

But the preventive shook his head, and thrust his smoking barrel back through his belt, with an air of philosophical resignation; and slowly approaching the window, through which the fugitive could now be seen steadily bowling down the seaward slope, observed in slow, fat tones:

"Give you a hand, sir?"

Rupert, thrusting his extended arm aside jumped down beside him as if he would have sprung at his throat.

"Why are you so late? – why have you brought no one with you? I gave you notice enough. You fool! You have let him slip through your fingers, now, after all! Couldn't you even shoot straight? Such a mark as he made against the sky – Pah! well may the sailors say, lubberly as a land preventive – !"

"Why, there you are, Mr. Landale!" answered the man with imperturbable, greasy good-humour. "The way you shoved that there pistol into my hand was enough to put off anybody. But you country magistrate gentlemen, as I have always said, you are the real sort to make one do illegal actions with your flurry and your hurry over everything. 'Shoot!' says you, and damme, sir, if I didn't shoot straight off before I knew if I were on my head or on my heels. It's a mercy I didn't hit the sweet young lady – it is indeed. And as for the young gentleman, though to be sure he did show a clean pair of heels at the sight of me, I had no proper time for i-dentification – no time for i-den-ti-fi-cation, Mr. Landale, sir. So I say, sir, it's a mercy I did not hit him either, now I can think of it. Ah, slow and sure, that's my motter! I takes my man on his boat, in the very middle of his laces and his brandy and his silk – I takes him, sir, in the very act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why it's a good job too – but none of this promiscuous work for Augustus Hobson. Slow and sure, that's my motter."

The speaker who had been rolling a quid of tobacco in his mouth during this exposition of policy, here spat emphatically upon the grass, and catching Madeleine's abstracted eye, begged pardon for the liberty with a gallant air.

"Aye, so slow, man, that you are pretty sure to fail," muttered Mr. Landale.

"I knows my business, sir, meaning no offence," retorted Mr. Hobson serenely. "When I has no orders I acts on regulation. I brought no one with me because I had no one to bring, having sent, as per regulation, my one remaining man to give notice to the water service, seeing that that there schooner has had the impudence to come back, and is at this very moment cruising quite happy-like just the other side of the bank; though if ever their cutter overhauls her – well, I'm a Dutchman! You might have done wiser, perhaps (if I may make so bold as to remark), to leave the management of this business to them as understands such things. As to being late, sir, you told me to be in the ruins at twelve noon, and I beg to insinuate that it's only just past the hour now."

At this point the preventive man drew from his capacious breeches a brass time-piece, of congenial stoutness, the face of which he turned towards the magistrate.

The latter, however, waved the proffered witness impatiently aside. Furtively watching his cousin, who, leaning against the door-post, her pale head thrown out in strong relief by the dark stones, stood as if absolutely detached from her surroundings, communing over troubled thoughts with her own soul, he said with deliberate distinctness:

"But have I been misled, then, in understanding that you were with the unfortunate officer who was so ferociously assaulted this morning? that you and he did come upon this Captain Smith, red-handed as you call it, loading or unloading his vessel on Scarthey Island?"

"Aye, sir," rolled out the other, unctuously, "there you are again, you see. Poor Nat Beavor, he was one of your hot-headed ones, and see what it has brought him to – a crack in his skull, sir, so that it will be days before he'll know himself again, the doctor says, if ever he does in this world, which I don't think. Ah, I says to him, when we started in the dawn this morning agreeable to our arrangement with you: 'For peeping and prying on the quiet without any running risks and provoking others to break the law more than they're doing, I'm your man,' says I; 'but as for attacking desperate individles without proper warrant and authority, not to speak of being one to ten, I tell you fair, Nat Beavor, I'll have nothing to do with it.' But Nat, he went off his head, clean, at the sight of Captain Jack and his men a trundling the little kegs down the sands, as neat and tidy as could be; and so he cut out from behind the rocks, and I knew there was mischief ahead! Ah, poor fellow, if he would only have listened to me! I did my best for him, sir; started off to call up the other man, who was on the other side of the ruins, as soon as I saw his danger, but when I came back – "

"The birds were flown, of course," interrupted Rupert with a sneer, "and you found the body of your comrade who had been dastardly wounded, and who, I hear, is dead now. So the villain has twice escaped you. Cousin Madeleine," hastily breaking off to advance to the girl, who now awakening from her reflective mood seemed about to leave the ruins, "Cousin Madeleine, are you going? Let me escort you back."

She slowly turned her blue eyes, burning upon him from her white face. "Cousin Rupert, I do not want your company." Then she added in a whisper, yet with a passion for which Rupert would never have given her credit and which took him vastly by surprise, "I shall never forgive you."

"My God, Madeleine," cried he, with genuine emotion, "have I deserved this? I have had no thought but to befriend you, I have opened your eyes to your own danger – "