The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

"Molly – wife! Thank God!" His arms were stretched out to her, but he saw her waver and shudder from him, and wring her hands. "My God, what has happened? The light out, too! What is it?"

She fastened on him with a sudden fierceness, the spring of a wild cat.

"Come," she said, drawing him towards the peel, "if you would save him, lose not a second."

He hesitated a moment, still; she tugged at him like one demented, panting her abjurations at him, though her voice was failing her. Then, without a word, he fell to running with her towards the keep, supporting her as they went.

The great door had swung back on its hinges, and the men were pressing, in a dark body, into the dim-lit recesses, when Sir Adrian and his wife reached the entrance.

The sight of the uniforms only confirmed the homecomer in his own forebodings anent the first act of the drama that was being enacted upon his peaceful island. He needed no further pushing from the frantic woman at his side. Lost in bringing her back, perhaps, his only friend! Lost by his loyalty and his true friendship!

They dashed up the stone stairs just as the locked door of the living-room burst with a crash, under the efforts of many stalwart shoulders; they saw the men crush forwards, and fall back, and herd on again, with a hoarse murmur that leaped from mouth to mouth.

And René came running out from the throng with the face of one that has seen Death. And he caught his mistress by the arm, and held her by main force against the wall. He showed no surprise at the sight of his master – there are moments in life that are beyond surprise – but cried wildly:

"She must not see!"

She fought like a tigress against the faithful arms, but still they held her, and Sir Adrian went in alone.

A couple of men were dragging Captain Jack to his feet, forcing his hands from the dead man's throat; it seemed as if they had grown as rigid and paralysed in their clasp like the corpse hands that had now, likewise, to be wrenched from their clutch of him.

He glanced around, as though dazed, then down at the disfigured purple face of his dead enemy, smiled and held out his hands stiffly for the gyves that were snapped upon them.

And then one of the fellows, with some instinctive feeling of decency, flung a coat over the slain man, and Captain Jack threw up his head and met Adrian's horror-stricken, sorrowful eyes.

At the unexpected sight he grew scarlet; he waved his fettered hands at him as they hustled him forth.

"I have killed your brother, Adrian," he called out in a loud voice, "but I brought back your wife!"

Some of the men were speaking to Sir Adrian, but drew back respectfully before the spectacle of his wordless agony.

But, as Molly, with a shriek, would have flung herself after the prisoner, her husband awoke to action, and, pushing René aside, caught her round the waist with an unyielding grip: his eyes sought her face. And, as the light fell on it, he understood. Aye, she had been brought back to him. But how?

And René, watching his master's countenance, suddenly burst out blubbering, like a child.

CHAPTER XXX

HUSBAND AND WIFE

Tout comprendre —

c'est tout pardonner.

Staring straight before her with haggard, unseeing eyes, her hands clasped till the delicate bones protruded, her young face lined into sudden agedness, grey with unnatural pallor, framed by the black masses of her dishevelled hair, it was thus Sir Adrian found his wife, when at length he was free to seek her.

He and René had laid the dead man upon the bed that had been occupied by his murderer, and composed as decently as might be the hideous corpse of him who had been the handsomest of his race. René had given his master the tale of all he knew himself, and Sir Adrian had ordered the boat to be prepared, determined to convey Lady Landale at once from the scene of so much horror. His own return to Pulwick, moreover, to break the news to Sophia, to attend to the removal of the body and the preparation for the funeral was of immediate necessity.

As he approached his wife she raised her eyes.

"What do you want with me?" she asked, with a stony look that arrested him, as he would gently have taken her hand.

"I would bring you home."

"Home!" the pale lips writhed in withering derision.

"Yes, home, Molly," he spoke as one might to a much-loved and unreasonable sick child – with infinite tenderness and compassion – "your own warm home, with your sister. You would like to go to Madeleine, would not you?"

She unclasped her hands and threw them out before her with a savage gesture of repulsion.

"To Madeleine?" she echoed, with an angry cry; and then wheeling round upon him fiercely: "Do you want to kill me?" she said, between her set teeth.

Sir Adrian's weary brow contracted. He paused and looked at her with profoundest sorrow.

Then she asked, hoarsely:

"Where have they taken him to?"

"To Lancaster, I believe."

"Will they hang him?"

"I pray God not."

"There is no use of praying to God, God is merciless. What will they do to him?"

"He will be tried, Molly, in due course, and then, according to the sentence of the judges… My poor child, control yourself, he shall be defended by the best lawyers that money can get. All a man can do for another I shall do for him."

She shot the sombre fire of her glance at him.

"You know that I love him," she said, with a terrible composure.

A sudden whiteness spread round Sir Adrian's lips.

"Poor child!" he said again beneath his breath.

"Yes, I love him. I always wanted to see him. I was sick and tired of life at Pulwick, and that was why I went on board his ship. I went deliberately because I could not bear the dulness of it all. He mistook me for Madeleine in the dark – he kissed me. Afterwards I told him that I loved him. I begged him to take me away with him, for ever. I love him still, I would go with him still – it is as well that you should know. Nothing can alter it now. But he did not want me. He loves Madeleine."

The words fell from her lips with a steady, cruel, deliberateness. She kept her eyes upon him as she spoke, unpityingly, uncaring what anguish she inflicted; nay, it seemed from some strange perversity, glad to make him suffer.

But hard upon a man as it must be to hear such a confession from his wife's lips, doubly hard to such a one as Adrian, whose heart bled for her pain as well as for his own, he held himself without departing for a second from his wonted quiet dignity. Only in his earnest gaze upon her there was perhaps, if possible, an added tenderness.

But she, to see him so unmoved, was moved herself to a sudden scorn.

What manner of man was this, that not love, nor jealousy, nor anger had power to stir?

"And now what will you do with me?" she asked him again, with superb contempt on eye and lip. "For a guilty wife I am to you, as far as the will could make me, and I have no claim upon you any more."

"No claim upon me!" he repeated, with a wonder of grief in his voice. "Ah, Molly, hush child! You are my wife. The child of the woman I loved – the woman I love for her own sake. You can no more put yourself out of my life now than you can out of my heart; had you been as guilty in deed as you may have been in purpose my words would be the same. Your husband's home is your home, my only wish to cherish and shelter you. You cannot escape my care, poor child, and some day you may be glad of it. My protection, my countenance you will always have. God! who am I that I should judge you? Is there any sin of human frailty that a human being dare condemn? Guilty? What is your guilt compared to mine for bringing you to this, allying my melancholy age with your bright youth?"